The Political Disloyalty Effect

This morning CNN trotted out retiring ConservaDem Brian Baird (D-WA), one of Congress' most detestable assholes, to brag about how he wants to take down the Democratic Party with him when he goes. He seems as eager as ever to vote against healthcare reform. "The House bill is better than the status quo; the Senate bill is better than that [...but] I don't think this bill is what I would like to see us do if I ran the universe." Much to his chagrin, he doesn't. Instead he runs a subcommittee of the Science and Technology Committee and he's a big macher on the Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus and the Congressional Mental Health Caucus.

Unless you just stumbled upon DWT today for the first time, you probably know how we feel about Jim DeMint, the John C. Calhoun of our day, around here. As treacherous and reactionary as DeMint is-- and as poisonous as his conservative ideology is for American working families-- he isn't a moron when it comes to political calculations. When he declared that if the GOP could defeat Obama on healthcare reform it would "break him" and it would be his Waterloo, he knew exactly what he was saying and what he was starting-- and it wasn't an Abba revival.

Democratic Party pollster Stanley Greenberg took to the pages of The New Republic last month to examine the similarities-- and the differences-- shaping up between the 2010 election cycle and the 1994 election cycle. He offers a prescription on how to avoid a repeat of 1994, something Ben Goddard hearkened back to in a thought-piece on the teabaggers for The Hill this week.

Before we look at Greenberg's and Goddard's analysis, let me remind you that-- aside from my day of actual teabagging-- I spend a lot of time talking with candidates running for office-- and that includes Tea Party candidates. Although Katherine Jenerette in South Carolina may be my favorite, besides going back and for with her online yesterday, I spent some time on the phone with Chris Riggs, the Tea Party fave running against Republican corporate whore Ken Calvert just south of where I live. I even introduced the two of them so they could network against the GOP establishment they are both running against.

Earlier in the day I had left a comment on Katherine's behalf (and at her request) on some right wing South Carolina blog and she had some mixed feelings about me comparing her to South Carolina heroes John Calhoun and Strom Thurmond, pointing out that I probably don't have their pictures on my wall while calling them "political giants."

My philosophy is that if I get elected, I won't just be representing the right, left or either extreme or the people in the middle - I represent them all.
 
Maybe the Army is responsible for my perspective. I joined when I was 19 and I never asked the soldiers that I went with the Persian Gulf War with whether they were Democrats or Republicans and they never asked me.
 
My duty was to those serving with me - and that's how I see going to Congress. My duty is to the people of my district.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some moderate or liberal and most people view my issues as being right-winged conservative. But, I view myself as a Constitutionalist. But I will not forget that I serve the people of my district and that includes the richest businessmen in the district and it includes single-moms with kids who are trying to get them through school to educate them and the ordinary people like me who go to work and pay their taxes and wished their government wasn't so damn big. (I've always thought that the bigger the government, the smaller the individual - that one small voice is important because when we lose that, we lose what the American dream is all about).
 
I'm just wanting to find solutions to our problems which is nothing new. I think we can do it. No, I know we can do it.

Katherine may seem hopelessly naive, but she's no dummy. She also has more charisma than the whole Republican Party machine that's trying to tear her down. Riggs is also a young, family-oriented outsider candidate, another well-meaning but severely misguided idealist buying into the right-wing propaganda that's rotted the minds of so many millions of Americans. Now, back to Goddard, who, like Greenberg, thinks the Republican Party is all prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory-- with the help of teabaggers like Katherine and Chris. He feels certain the GOP won't be able to present themselves in a way that is even remotely attractive to voters and that no matter how disappointed voters are with Obama and the Democrats, memories are not short enough for people to forget who got us into the messes we're in and how the Republicans have obstructed Obama's every move to fix the problems they took 8 years to create.

The ranting about President Barack Obama’s secret socialist agenda and the rise of spokesmen like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck-- obvious ideologues appealing to a narrow segment of the party-- have served to define the party as right-wing. What started as a tax protest, the Tea Party, seems to be evolving into a legitimate movement within the party, with well-organized and -financed candidates challenging mainstream Republicans in primary races around the country.

...[In 1994 Greenberg] convened a meeting of top political scientists to divine what the diverging lines of support for Republicans and Democrats meant. Their conclusion was a loss of 15 to 18 seats-- a dire scenario, but nothing quite like what actually happened, which was a loss of 54 House seats and eight in the Senate. At the time, the president’s approval rating held at 50 percent. Following the disastrous defeat of his crime bill by his own party in the House, his positive numbers had fallen to 39 percent.

Are we in the same situation today? Greenberg thinks not. “Republicans have remained amazingly unredeemed,” he says. Unlike Gingrich and Dole, who gained stature with every battle, Republicans today look like a cult.

Ken Feltman surprisingly shares this view, comparing where the party is today to the Whigs in the 1850s. More recently, he recalls the “loyalty test” votes of Tom DeLay that affirmed leadership’s positions without regard for the needs of moderate constituents. He cites Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) resigning because DeLay had no idea what it took for a Republican to win in Buffalo. Moderates need not apply.

In reading Feltman’s newsletter,  Radnor Reports, I was reminded of a paper I wrote in college on how F. Clifton White and his cohorts seized control of the Republican Party from the “Rockefeller Republicans” and nominated Barry Goldwater for president. Radnor believes the pattern will repeat. The Tea Partiers will take over more party positions now held by the old guard. “Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others will be very like the Republicans they beat.”

Whether the movement will be a short-lived adjustment in GOP philosophy or a wholesale shifting of the political foundation in this country will take some time to sort out. But the message from two very political observers from opposite ends of the spectrum is that change is coming. And it may not be the change many suspect.

If Obama is able to make the case that he and the Democrats are making a better life for real people while Republicans simply want to stop any change that affects the status quo, they may be able to weave a positive economic narrative. Communicating that message just might trigger the same kind of realignment that eventually created the Republican Party some 160 years ago.

Will right-wing idealists like Jenerette and Riggs be able to save the Democrats from the perfidy of conservative Democrats like Baird who are disappointed they don't run the universe (or even a committee)? Stay tuned-- and take a look at the place where the non-racist obsessed teabaggers actually start blending in with normal Americans: