Moderates

Everyone assumes Scozzafava's exit from the race guarantees Hoffman's victory.  Why?  If her 20 percent move to Owens instead of Hoffman, the Democrats get a blowout victory.

So what reason would a Scozzafava supporter have to move right instead of left?  Vocal conservatives have gone out of their way to insult moderates, denigrate them as RINOs and do everything possible to make clear they are not wanted or needed in the Republican party.  Putting Scozzaffava's scalp on the wall is being protrayed as a major victory for conservatives over moderates.  Now they are counting on these same moderates to put party loyalty over ideological preferences and swing their 20 percent of the vote to Hoffman instead of Owens. 

If I ived in New York 23, I would be voting for Hoffman regardless of whether Scozzafava stayed in the race or got out; but I would also recognize the legitimate place for moderates in the Republican party.  I would also be spending the next 2 days trying to communicate with Scozzafava moderates rather than attacking them and definately put an end to the victory dances over her electoral corpse.

In Virginia, Bob Mcdonnell has maintained open respectful communicatin between conservatives and moderates.  He is stomping the liberals into the ground.  In New York 23 Conservatives have persued a scorched earth campaign against the moderates.  On Tuesday, we will learn whether or not they have gone too far.

Conservatives may win NY23; but I think the Virginia campaign provides a better roadmap for long term progress.

so terribly gone

(Yes, I know that electric trains generally only have a powered third rail. I'm just extending the metaphor.)

One of the most tired phrases in politics is "Social Security is the third rail of American politics."  The problem is that it's true - Bush figured that out by squandering all of his political capital trying to reform it back in 2005.  It turns out that old people vote and they can be easily scared when the spectre of taking away their government checks is brought up.

We face a similar problem with health care.  It's obvious that the system doesn't work, and not just for people with pre-existing conditions and those who lose coverage.  It costs too much and isn't portable.  The lack of a true national market and the employer coverage model is a failure.  Too many people lack coverage and those people stick hospitals with huge bills for admissions that could have been solved with a visit to the family doctor, if they had one.

That being said, there are a lot of solutions better than Obamacare.  We've heard them before on this site and others and they aren't the point of this post.  The problem is that if Obamacare is defeated, no politician in their right minds will touch the healthcare issue with a 10-foot pole.  In persuing the worthy goal of defeating one specific bill, the issue has been demagogued to the point of insanity with threats of "death panels" (Sen. Isakson (R-GA), who put the provision nominally at issue, thinks this is nuts), "keep government away from my Medicare (note: WTF?) and all sorts of hyperbole about the continued "existence of the republic."

And don't think for a minute that every accusation about killing grannies and such lobbed against government can't be lobbed at private insurers.

So instead of a debate on what to do, we have people holding up pictures of Obama with a Hitler mustache shouting down elected officials before they can answer questions.  We have liberals convinced that people who oppose Obamacare are foam-at-the-mouth dittoheads and birthers organized by lobbyists.  And they're partially correct - many (not all) town hall shouters have spouted a lot of nonsense and many are making this personally about the president and anger at losing the last election.  It's embarrasing to people who have real issues with Obamacare who want to and make something work instead of yelling until they're red in the face.

The window for reasonable debate has closed by conservatives who want to make this Obama's Waterloo and liberals who are circling the wagons against a perceived onslaught of crazies.  The next reform proposal from either side will fall into the same pattern.  Eventually, everybody with power to do anything will throw their hands up.

Now healthcare is a "third rail," just like Social Security.  There are other, smaller, third rails to contend with.  Our primary system is rigged to prevent any serious talk about ethanol.  Serious agriculture subsidies reform is stymied because the committees that make ag policy are filled with congressmen from districts that feed off the USDA teat.  We can't have a serious discussion about Israel for long without someone getting called an anti-semite or a zionist likudnik stooge.

The problem?  You can't cut the size of government with all of these third rails in the way.  Everything has to be on the table.

Healthcare isn't just a sixth of the U.S. economy, it's a very big chunk of government spending.  The problem with the deficit hawkery I've heard recently is that it's small bore.  Spending freezes avoid the difficult choices about what exactly we want to cut.  Pork appropriations, non-military foreign aid and arts funding seem like ripe targets for popular cuts, but they make up a vanishingly small part of the budget and won't change the overall fiscal picture.  Survey after survey shows that people think government is too big, but they don't want to cut funding for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security education, defense or anything specific beyond the amorphous "waste."  The only real solution is to slow and reverse the growth of healthcare costs while still providing the care people demand, and we are in the process of blowing it for the next several decades by turning a deadly serious issue over to the loudest, angriest, least reasonable wing of the movement, destroying any hope of comprimise a la Wyden-Bennett.

In the zeal to stop a bad new policy, we have guaranteed decades of the bad old policy.  Good job guys.

I suppose it's my turn to once again play the same part as William Holden.

Sadly, our own Republican Senators are trying to save the bacon of the Democrats who have cobbled together a blindingly incoherent, unaffordable and unpopular excuse for a health care reform bill.

It makes as much sense as the British Colonel in Bridge on the River Kwai making sure the Japanese army had the best bridge possible. All doing a good job for the Democrats and saving their bill  is to give them something to show for their extravagant campaign promises.

And folks, weren;t we told rather unequivocally "I won ". Good. It's all yours then. You got your 60 votes. Do something with them.

OK, I know about "bipartisanship" and "good government", but folks, we will really get neither until we finally cause the Obama agenda to hit one big pothole that causes them to stop, look and listen.  Grease the skids on this one and theyll be on to the next extravaganza.

And frankly, right now the Republicans who cooperate are like caddies.  Sure they can recommend what club to use and where to aim; but if the shot works the Democrats get all the credit. If it doesn't, our side will be blamed for suggesting "the wrong club". "We would've had a great public option but for those clueless Republicans who stopped us."   All pain, no gain.

And after all, we are trusting the health of our families to the exact same people who ruined our financial system.

We've done a great job of putting the fear of political oblivion into the Blue Dogs and the Cap & Tr8ers. What do we do to get the same results with Senator Grassley?  

I've often wondered why some politicians feel so compelled to play the game within the standard two party system?

One thing I believe will be accelerating for the near future is the disintermediation of political direction from centralized authority to individuals and candidates.  This is a product both of technology, and the decline of traditional media and traditional party "leadership" to impose discipline. As we've seen, some in the DC GOP establishment seem quite offended that party members reach their own conclusions.

The wired world is a world where party members are far more likely to figure out "the score" on an officeholder, and it will be far more difficult to "talk the talk" in one's home state when one hasn't "walked the walk" in DC.

The first victim of this phenomena was CT Senator Joe Lieberman in 2006. No matter how often he had supported Democrats on other issues; the rank and file CT Democratic party saw his support for the Iraq War as a dealbreaker and he lost his primary.

Lieberman is still in the Senate because he took the advice of his mentor John Droney and ran a 3rd party race; correctly perceiving that in such a "blue state" the Republicans would not seriously contest the general election. But given that Lieberman won by 10 points, it's not clear to me even a full bore Republican effort would have been successful, and the greater risk was throwing the election to squishy Ned Lamont.

Joe Lieberman is not the first or last politician whose views, while palatable to voters in general, have moved where their party will not travel.  Oddly, the Lieberman lesson was lost on two other Senators in risk of losing Democratic primaries---Arlen Specter and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Arlen Specter thrived for decades under the rubric of being "socially liberal, fiscally conservative". or, at least moderate. The stimulus vote ripped this meme to shreds and left him easy pickens to any credible Republican who filed for a primary, in this case,Pat Toomey saw his opportunity and took it.       

Arlen Specter thought he had greener pastures as a Democrat, but now he had decades of votes in favor of Republican bills and nominees to defend. Not the least being the AUMF vote on Iraq. So unless the Democrats muscled all the serious challengers out of the way, Specter was facing serious trouble.

Delaware County Congressman Joe Sestak wasn't dissuaded (hard to browbeat those career military men) and the primary between him and Specter is already on the ugly side.

I think Specter is going to lose this primary. His prior support for George W. Bush is going to be toxic. A disproportionate number of Democratic primary voters are in metro Pittsburgh, where Specter ran weakly in both the 2004 primary and general. Sestak is an unknown there now; that won't last. Maybe the huge black vote in Philadelphia turns out for Specter in a '10 primary;he garned little of it against a weak general election opponent in '04. And Specter's support among moderates in the SEPA suburbs and the "T" is likely to erode if he tries a slash and burn against Sestak; who is a Philly suburbanite and not some raving lefty.

The only way for Specter to win a Democratic primary is to tack his policies far to the left. So if he wins, then he hands Pat Toomey the issue of whether Pennsylvania is well served by a political chameleon. Not that a Republican is a sure thing in 2010 PA, but against a self-serving DC insider, well, it starts looking a lot better. And Toomey will be the "nice guy" in the race having avoided the intermural blood match.

What if Arlen had run independent?  I think he had enough residual strength among voters who don't vote in either primary to win, plus suburban/small city PA is a bigger chunk of that electorate.than the urban dominated Democrats or the rural dominated GOP. Plus, the fear of letting a vocal conservative like Toomey in the Senate would have put a damper on Democratic funding and recruitment. Could Specter have navigated the path of being an "Obama Republican"?  Not sure he'd be worse off now for having tried; and he could grab the mantle of being too concerned about policy to worry about party politics.

So, we find a party switch didn't work out so well for a Republican who was too liberal. So how is staying in her party working for a somewhat conservative Democrat? Not so well.

Kirsten Gillibrand's misfortune was to be appointed to the Senate as an upstate ticket balancer to liberal Harlem Democrat Governor David Paterson.Paterson's standing has crashed and dragged Gillibrand with it.

Gillibrand was a pro-Second Amendment; anti-bailout; border security Blue Dog. At least she was when representing a Republican leaning upstate district. Since joining the Upper Chamber she's been reeducated to modify her views to appease liberal downstate Democrats.

And she shouldn't have bothered. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a liberal from Manhattan's "silk Stocking" district, has all but announced her primary bid and tied with her in the polls. And don't think anyone who has the Citicorp HQ in her district won't be able to raise cash at will.

Gillibrand's strength and weakness is she is viewed as "the upstate senator".  Upstate NY thinks--correctly--it is the forgotten child in NY State politics.  But it cast about 45% of the vote in an off-year general election. An upstate Democrat is well positioned to win a two way statewide race given the inevitable Democratic pluralities out of the City.

But an upstate candidate is poorly positioned to win a contested nomination. Over 50% of Democratic primary votes are cast in the City, and another 20% in the suburbs. There are very few parts of the City (the 9th CD; the 13th CD; some legislative districts in Queens) where a Democrat of Gillibrand's background is going to be well received.  As long as Maloney can frame this race as the NYC liberal against the less reliable girl from Albany, she is going to win this primary...since Gillibrand will need a virtually unanimous vote upstate to offset NYC.  And , barring sudden interest by a serious Republican--Maloney wins the general election.    

Let's assume the Republicans run someone akin to a John Spencer or a Howard Mills.  And let's assume Gillibrand did a Lieberman. I doubt the Republican could garner 20% of the statewide vote under this scenario; since I think Gillibrand pulls from their regional upstate base.

Now let's assume Upstate Democrats stuck with Gillibrand. Under these circumstances she'd just need to cobble together enough soft Republicans and independents in the suburbs and outer boroughs to win. (Hmm, Bloomberg and Giuliani endorsements?) . I think there's an easier path for her to get 42% in a general election than 50% in a Democratic primary. Especially since there already is a centrist 3rd Party (the Independence Party) which is guaranteed a ballot spot for the '10 NYS general election. 

I think that centrists of both parties are going to have to come to grips with the reality that if they want to stay in office, they will have to do it themselves. It's better to stay in office with the "cup of Joe" then to be tossed out trying to be the partisan your record proves you are not. 

Perhaps MA State Treasurer Tim Cahill, planning a independent candidacy against embattled Obama clone Gov. Deval Patrick, is the start of a trend?   

 We've been told that Republicans don't make moderates feel very welcome. How welcome are the Democrats under Obama, Reid and Pelosi?...especially if you are a moderate from a blue state? 

Yesterday was a slow day at the office, so I spent a lot of time on the I-phone seeing if we could actually give the lefties a shiner by defeating their "cap and trade" fiasco.

Then I got home, saw the result, and traded e-mails with various people in the "movement" The kindest response to the eight turncoats that enabled Waxman-Markey to pass was roughly along these lines

I don't think one can minimize why this was a truly hideous vote for those eight folks. Here we had a chance to derail the Obama socialism train and restore the Republican party to policy relevance, and these guys bailed out so they could get a nice mention in the NY Times tomorrow. Swell.  Even the White House is giving up on the "global warming" issue and you guys sign up for the mission.  Putzes,

The immediate response that I had was that the kindest thing to do to these "fredos" was to throw them out on an ice floe with the polar bears. And others were along those lines. Or at least, shut off their campaign money, demand retirements, or find primary challengers  But that's my spleen talking. Today my brain took over.

No. it's time for a more "reasonable" approach.

See we now have an even more serious threat to the future of the Republic, and that would be a socialized health care system. I'll let John Hinderaker explain.

One of my law partners asked me yesterday which of the Democrats' current initiatives is worse, the tax on carbon or the health care "public option," otherwise known as socialized medicine. I replied unhesitatingly that socialized medicine is much worse. Carbon tax-and-trade can rather easily be repealed once people realize what a dumb idea it is. However, once our health care system has been destroyed and replaced with "single payer" socialized medicine, there is no going back

We need to explain to the Octofail Republicans that there is only one way out of the flaming pit they have dug for themselves. They need to become hard line zealots against the "public option" health care "reform".

And not milquetoast statements and a quiet vote "nay" on final passage. I mean going medieval on the whole concept 24/7/365. I mean like righteous 100 decible opposition. I mean like Rudy Giuliani vs. squeegee men or Michael Moore v. the Hometown Buffett bad.

Anything less, and we re-send the pink slips with no remorse and no reconsideration.

Now for our political geniuses.  First off, let's dispense with the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" canard here. This was a statist bill from the word go and there wasn't a libertarian idea within the same zip code. It was simply an energy tax.  Ok if you want to keep the government out of my bedroom. How about letting people afford to heat their bedrooms? 

Second, this bill is going to appeal to the vocal but few Saab Socialists who put the environment ahead of the economy. It is going to be painfully unpopular with blue collar America. Maybe Dave Reichert's uber green district will like it; but if Mark Kirk or Mike Castle think this isn't going to backfire on them big time in Rockford and New Castle they are going to find the Democrats whacking them with their own bill next November.

And please explain Mary Bono Mack.  Both her and the lame hubby from SW FL are painful underachievers, proving surnames don't equal leadership. (Something we know well in CT!)

So that's the offer.  Back before he went girlie man in Sacramento Arnold Scharzenegger told John Connor this

Come with me if you want to live

Well, "Cap and Tr8-ors".....either make sure Obama's health care reform fails...or

Hasta la vista, baby!

For a guy out of office and not going to seek any, people are paying an awful lot of attention to Colin Powell.

And they shouldn't.

This puts me at odds with folks of the right who are irate at Powell and those who welcome his continued participation.

Hey, if Colin wants to stay a Republican that's fine. The bottom line is he never was a very partisan Republican and I don't think we should lose any sleep if he disagrees with much of what the party is doing. (as an aside, lets also not scream in horror everytime some Republican says he's not a Rush fan.   Makes us look rather thin skinned) 

Powell is one of those folks who although they emerge from humble beginnings are now firmly entrenched in the D.C. establishment. He has never sought elective office not campaigned much for others. and indeed suggested in 2000 he would have been willing to serve in a Gore administration. Nope, he's the inside guy to staff the less partisan levers of the federal government.  An establishment guy.

And from 1980 to 2008 that was usually a place where a Republican was pretty welcome, since we either held the White House or Congress for 26 of the 28 years.  And now it isn't.

Powell may use the rationalization that the party drifted to the right, though clearly it was more vocally conservative on many issues prior to George W. Bush's definition of the party. And using Sarah Palin as an excuse won't wash.  Evidently the equally derided Dan Quayle was insufficient reason for Powell to search for the exits back then.    

I also reject the charge by Limbaugh that Powell was solely motivated by racial kinship in his Obama endorsement.  Had Obama been unacceptable to the Beltway bramin, he'd have been unable to gain Powell's support.

Nope, this was all about Dr. Gallup. Powell is a symptom of much of what defines a moderate--they are dyed-in-the -wool frontrunners. Had McCain been leading Obama into the homestretch I have no doubt the General would have been side-by-side with Mac singing his praises.

The argument being made now by the Beltway establishment is that we need to cater to the interests of folks like Powell to gain back our path to elective success.  I'm not for RINO bashing as a path to power, but let's be real. This proposal is simply backasswards.

Moderates won;t come back to the ranks of the Republican party because we beg them. They will come back because we look like we are going to win some elections and we make the otther guys look extreme or incompetent. The DC press has cause and effect reversed.

Indeed consider this. If Powell was convinced that the GOP couldn't mount a comeback he wouldn't leave the door open to come back in.  A general always thinks strategically.

Colin Powell endorsed and worked for Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43, all of whom were to the right of John McCain..  It wasn;t the policies that drove him off in 2008, it was the popularity. Powell's influence would have sunk with the ship had he endorsed McCain.

I think the Republicans should be a "big tent" party. My point is the first thing to do is to build the tent, not worry so much about the folks who will always stand around the periphery waiting to be cajoled inside.

 I'm relatively new to this website, so feel free to disagree with what I'm saying.  However, particularly in the last week, I have noticed the level of constructive dialogue in the comments threads dropping rapidly as partisan anger increases.  Several posters seem intent on using nothing but ad hominem attacks instead of calmly and intelligently addressing their legitimate policy and philosophical differences.

It is not my role to police this forum, nor would I want to do so: I am just an observer and an infrequent commentator here.  However, I am grateful to have this forum as a place to read constructive ideas about the growth and development of conservative politics, and this forum is tainted when it becomes nothing but a pissing contest between who can repeat their mindless invective the most times.  This applies equally to posters on both sides of the political aisle.  

I have no authority here, and I would not be surprised to see the comments thread on this post filled with angry comments denouncing me for saying this.  That's cool.  All I am suggesting is that we focus on issues rather than personal attacks.  Hell, we're all anonymous on here anyway, and it's not like anyone is running for office, so we should feel free to discuss issues without being burdened by trying to tear down anyone personally.

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated” -Mark Twain

The Republican party is undergoing a rapid and drastic change. As we speak, all sorts of factions vie and joust for preeminence within a party that seems to be deflating overnight. People associated with the party for a long time look about them in disbelief, as if after an airplane crash where there seems nothing at all recognizable left of the original vehicle, just little pieces strewn as far as the eye can see.

It is speculated that the GOP have become the new Whigs, and will inevitably be cast aside in favor of a one party state into the foreseeable future. Of course, this sort of speculation is frivolous.

What happened to the GOP becomes clear with the benefit of some distance from the tremendous shifts of the 2006 and 2008 elections. It is linked to a massive shift across the board amongst our media, political class, and intelligentsia that has been so big as to have gone almost unnoticed until now.

The problem with the GOP from an electoral perspective in both 2006 and 2008 stem from a fairly simple source, but that source is deeply rooted and readjustment will inevitably be painful.

As a Congressional staffer, I worked on Capitol Hill, and saw the GOP leadership in the House from a relatively close vantage point. As a member of my generation, and coming as I do from California, I found the culture of Washington DC to be unique, and that found within Republican areas of Congress even more so. That is the first clue as to what went wrong for the party

Washington is anachronistic. The culture is a leftover from an earlier age. While the rest of the nation is culturally very firmly in the 21st century, the area inside the Washington DC beltway is probably approaching the 1980s or so. This cultural divide is a result of necessity, it is the natural effect of the machine that Washington is and the function it serves.

For decades, we were every bit the Republic. We sent our representatives to Washington based largely on our estimate of their judgment, with no idea what issues they may have to face in the years until the next election, and we judged them based on what we thought that they had done, based largely on the reports of a few media outlets and the statements they released themselves. Since the machinery for more direct government simply did not exist, this was the best system we could use, and it worked quite well for a very long time.

In the resulting culture within Washington itself, something I call the “cult of the gentleman”, and more negative people describe as an “old boy’s club” developed. It was the logical creation of our very political system, and it too had it’s uses. In this system, a person sent to Washington had to be a “gentleman” to get anything done. A gentleman was somebody who was first and foremost loyal to his friends, who stood absolutely on his word to his close associates, and who closed deals with a handshake, not a contract, and certainly never a press release. Because representatives were there to act as independent agents on behalf of the voters, and could receive but little input from those voters thanks to distance and technological limitations, they were effectively on their own. They had to rely on their own judgment exclusively, and since the landscape of Washington is composed of other such persons, the first skill they had to know was how to be a gentleman, so as to get along with the other Washingtonians, so that they could get something done; because you could not accomplish anything if you could not sign others on to your initiatives.

This is where “horse trading” comes from. Elected agents would agree to support one another, just as bloggers today mutually link to one another for support. One would vote for the bill his friend proposed, not based on the contents of that bill, but based on his relationship to it’s author. In return, one of his bills would be supported. This was logical, since politicians could rely on face to face contact with people they spoke to every day, and had to rely on one another’s word, just as their constituents relied on them based on their word.

What has happened in the last ten years is a technological revolution in America that is easily as significant as the opening of the first newspaper presses in the American Colonies. This change was rapid, and it has not yet reached the full extent of it’s tremendous impact on our whole civilization. Suddenly, average voters are able to track, through a constant stream of information coming onto the internet, the activity of their representatives in far greater detail than ever before. Suddenly people could speak back quickly and efficiently in real time, and they could use the internet to organize rallies and political activities all by themselves, coming together like the crystal in saline solution; spontaneously, with only a small spark.

In the old Washington, you voted for the bill your friend proposed because he was close and your constituents were far away. It is quickly changing into a situation where your constituents are close and your friend is far away; separated by the barriers to human interaction we all experience as information flows at us in an ever increasing stream. This utterly changes the paradigm for Washingtonians, but they are the last to realize it.

What we ourselves do not realize is the extent to which this has shifted the political game in the United States. Nor do we understand how irrevocable that shift has been. Both the Democrat and Republican parties have for many decades had two fundamental factions within their ranks; “personality politicians” and “ideology politicians”. To a greater or lesser extent, virtually every politician of any party can be placed in one of these two categories.

A personality politician runs on his personality, he makes the case that he can be trusted with the power to represent a given region because of his inherent judgment, character, or wisdom. The ideology politician makes the case that his ideology (which he will elaborate if he wants to be successful) is one which most closely represents the people of his district. This is a divide long understood and written about by political scientists; the obligation of a politician to try to accurately represent his constituents or the obligation of a politician to use his own judgment. There is no one answer to this, it is not black and white, and a politician will always have to strike some balance between what he perceives to be the will of his constituents and what he perceives to be the right thing to do.

As a result of far greater technical ability to follow every word and action of politicians, via people recording them with cellphone cameras, vloggers following them with palmcorders, and the old established leakers and journalists of days gone by, we have become a far more well informed body politic than previously. The result is the triumph of the ideological politician over the gentleman politician.

Now, traditionally, an ideologue was mistrusted in Washington, because they necessarily saw everything through the lens of their ideology. Nobody wanted to work with a guy who lived his life as a result of a political ideology. Why is this? Just think about it, you may vote for a guy who does nothing but spout his political ideology, and who becomes fiery and enraged when somebody strays from the political line, but would you want to have a drink with him in the Republican Club (or local bar)? Even more to the point; would you want that guy in your living room all the time? No, gentlemen, though ideologically slippery, were far and away more congenial to be around, and even when standing in opposition to you, were ready to go out for cocktails after the day’s joust was over. Thus, ideologues gained a reputation as people who couldn’t be taken seriously. They could raise an angry mob back home, but in DC, they couldn’t get anything done, because they estranged people.

But you say, if we are “closer” now to our politicians than we were, shouldn’t the gentlemen be rewarded for being personable? In answer, I ask if you have ever read the comments on your average youtube posting. We do not consider the internet to be equivalent to sitting in the bar with someone or we wouldn’t treat online postings the way we would a bathroom wall at a truck stop. We would never think to write on any part of our homes what we write on online forums. No, we are incredibly critical, often hostile, and always highly ideological when online, and are personable, quiet, neighborly, and uninterested in politics when we meet our neighbors mowing their lawns. That is the America of the 21st century.

Simply put; he is rewarded who can consistently put forth an ideology and intelligently defend it, and is rewarded more to the extent that that ideology is broad and consistently fits with the facts of our world. What a gentleman politician can explain eye to eye in a cocktail lounge inside the Beltway sounds like absurd flip-flopping when he explains it in writing to an online critic. In this environment, ideology is king.

The Democratic party has already dealt with this revolution, but the GOP is only going through this transition now. Back in the late 1990s, I was very surprised at the degree to which the Democratic party was beginning to drift leftward. This accelerated rapidly after President Clinton left office, and I was puzzled, and incorrectly assumed (based on 20th century political calculus) that as they moved hard to the left, they would alienate the center, which they needed for national office.

You saw personality politicians in the Democratic party left behind (Sen. Joe Lieberman is a perfect example). I knew something significant was going on when the Democrats could nominate Lieberman as Vice Presidential nominee for the 2000 election, only to abandon him as too centrist in 2006. How could a party move that much, ideologically speaking, in so short a time? How could Al Gore run as hard left as he could, for as long as he could and still be sidelined and honestly be probably too moderate for today’s Democratic party? How could Hillary Clinton have been undermined and ultimately toppled from the left in 2008? Even more interesting is why the Democrats could move so hard to the left and win such a big majority in the 2008 election if the entire nation has not shifted very much?

Clinton lost in 2008 because she was using the old calculus; you have to win the middle, and personality is more important than consistent ideology. Simply put, in the no holds barred debate forum of today’s America, a politician who consistently maintains a single ideological stance over time will win out over one who does not. Just consider the case of the criticism of Hillary’s vote on the Iraq war. Just look at Barack Obama’s voting record. He is as rock-ribbed liberal as you can be. With so many easy to use online rating systems and sites that describe every vote a politician ever made, it is easy for bloggers and pundits, and anybody else to look at a voting record boiled down to hard facts. It is easier to defend a consistent record from critics who disagree with your premises than to defend an inconsistent record from people who question your judgment.

If we analyze any one vote to make a demonstration, we should look at the most important vote cast by the Republican majority since the decision concerning the Iraq war; the financial services bailout vote of August 2008. In this vote, the GOP was split. The party divided neatly between those who stood by the Bush administration, and those who stood by Republican ideology. Tradition would dictate that a party stand by a guy they had gone to lunches with and spoken to face to face, and who was probably 75% kosher ideologically from a GOP standpoint, not that they would throw an old colleague and fellow gentleman to the wolves the first time he makes a major break from the party line. Tradition was wildly out of date in 2008, as the Democrats, still reeling from their own internal bloodbath, knew perfectly well.

The Republicans were left behind because of the nature of being in power in Washington. Remember where I said the Democratic shift accelerated after the end of Clinton’s Presidency? When a party is in power, they are very busy; they are working with other members of their party inside Washington. Ideas are bouncing from the Republicans in the House and Senate to the White House, back over to the Congress, and being churned over and put into laws or discarded. The fast pace, and volume of work to be done in running our nation do not allow a lot of time for reflection. White House staff consider it normal to suffer a rolling staff turnover as people burn out after a year or two in those conditions. In this environment, with the best and brightest in a party occupied by their jobs, there is no time or energy left for a rethinking of the party itself, and traditionally, this has led to a party too long in power getting out of touch with the country.

In this case, it isn’t just a matter of being out of touch, but a small matter of the most significant communications revolution since radio taking place across the world. The Democratic party was out of power and therefore subject to the rapid changes. This was well documented by the media, who speak of the “netroots” movement. What is not being considered is the truth that this revolution in two way communications is not limited to the left wing in politics, nor is the Internet as a whole liberal; certainly, despite the impressions given by early internet being linked to academia, it is far less liberal than the major conventional media outlets such as newspapers or television.

This brings me to predictions. We see today that the steady, individually tiny, and collectively overwhelming pressures of rapid feedback are utterly transforming our conventional media. Newspapers are increasingly obsolete. If a columnist wishes to be heard, he can make a blog like everybody else and his writing will stand on it’s own merit, not his ability to fight a bureaucratic battle within a little news company hierarchy. If he complains that he needs money, let him make a blog as well. Successful bloggers have found ways to make more money blogging than the average columnist makes writing columns. We, the blogosphere, feel no pity for the newspapers.

Major television, no matter how big the mother company, is not immune. MSNBC was moved further faster, but we see CNN also polarizing in their editorial outlook hard to the left, while Fox polarizes more and more to the right. All the media outlets are giving up the idea of “objective” journalism in favor of the far more honest understanding that everybody has some kind of bias one way or another and it is better for everybody if that bias is known in advance and not concealed. This is precisely what is effecting politics as well. We want reliability and predictability from our politicians and news anchors, not so much personality. This was the death of John McCain, whose war hero record was necessarily non-ideological, and therefore necessarily irrelevant to the principal debate. While Obama could defend a consistent stance, even if it was no the same as the majority of the country, McCain had none. We respect those we disagree with utterly but who honestly believe what they believe and stick to their guns; we do not respect those who seem to have no philosophy whatever.

This is why the GOP seemed like the party of the old boy’s club. This is why the party seemed to have no ideology at all. This is why the GOP leadership seemed to betray the country on the most important legislation in a lifetime, when it so obviously was opposite their ideological stance against out of control government, and it is why the Democrats are veering so hard to the left in so many ways in so short a time.

McCain lost the Presidency when he came back to Washington, suspended his campaign, the nation held it’s breath, and then instead of siding with the vast majority of voters against both an unpopular President Bush and his opponent, he simply echoed both of them on the bailout issue, losing his credibility and watching his poll numbers evaporate. At that moment, his campaign was lost and they knew it.

As a result of this new world, the GOP will re-form. It will do so even if it does not want to, but will be forced to by the will of the American people to have some check on the other party. The Republican ranks will be purged of those who cannot consistently defend their ideology or even explain what it is. Gentlemen will be brutally dropped, just as we saw in the bloodbath that left a former Democratic nominee for Vice President end up supporting the opposite party’s nominee for President only eight years later. What happened amongst Democrats will now happen on an accelerated time scale with the GOP, and it will look messy, but in the end, the party will be reborn far more fit, far more in tune with today’s America, and ultimately, since we have not lurched to the left as a nation, with very good prospects considering that all this is taking place in a center-right country.

For more commentary visit www.jubalbiggs.wordpress.com

It's safe to say that you have heard that Sen. Arlen Specter has switched parties from (nominal) Republican to Democrat. 

I imagine that a lot of people here and elsewhere will wish him a good riddance.  Given the frustration conservatives have felt with his decisions on many occasions, it's only natural.  However, all the whining about Specter, the primary challenges and the general abuse hurled towards this man has left us without enough votes to filibuster and yet another seat to claw back come the next election.

Congrats, guys.  We're a little more ideologically pure and a little smaller.  Funny how that works.