Turmoil In Ohio Backfiring on GOP?

We've tweeted a lot about the sad referendum (supported by both the Republican and the Democratic candidates for governor) tomorrow in Mississippi, a referendum likely to make that grotesquely backward state virtually uninhabitable for women. And we've written a lot about the Iowa state Senate race tomorrow that will determine whether or not that state slips into an unchecked/unbalanced willful fascism being offered by Republicans. No one in Iowa can say they didn't know what they were getting. They can see what would be in store for them-- can barely avoid seeing what would be in store for themselves-- every day in neighboring Wisconsin and in Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Kansas and, perhaps, most clearly, in Ohio. (Polling over the weekend shows that Iowans are not likely to embrace fascism the way Wisconsin did.) And tomorrow Ohio also goes to the polls.

The best polling data in Ohio indicates that John Kasich and the forces of domestic fascism are about to get their weiners whacked. "Labor is poised for a big victory in Ohio Tuesday. PPP's final poll on Issue 2 finds 59% of voters plan to reject Senate Bill 5, with only 36% voting for approval... Democrats are almost unanimous in their opposition to SB 5, supporting repeal by an 86-10 margin. Meanwhile there's division in the Republican ranks-- 30% are planning to vote down their Governor's signature proposal while only 66% are supportive of it. Independents split against it by a 54/39 spread as well." The turmoil that has ensued since Kasich rushed through his unfair anti-union laws is being blaming on... Kasich and the GOP by the voters and it sure appears that they're likely to reject him and his approach tomorrow. It's useful to recall Corey Robin's definition of conservatism from the introduction to The Reactionary Mind:

When the conservative, looks upon a democratic movement from below, this (and the exercise of agency) is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power. Witnessing the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Theordore Sedgwick lamented, "The aristocracy of virtue is destroyed; personal influence is at an end."

...Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty-- or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force-- the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere.

This something vestigial in the Ohio collective unconsciousness willing to embrace this concept and do the right thing. It's quite the opposite in the vestigial mind of the white Mississippian. He understands it to-- and well, the reactionary mind is his mind. Words like "emancipation" and "liberation" trigger feelings of loss-- loss of social status and "specialness" of white skin, loss of dominance over women-- and those feelings trigger anger. Most mainstream conservatives are opposing the clearly unconstitutional proposal. But it's likely to win anyway... possibly be a lot. Over the weekend Greg Sargent discussed how the fairness debate around the concept of shared sacrifice in Ohio has turned the voters against Kasich and against the march towards fascism in that state.

With the Ohio labor referendum coming to a vote in two days-- and with the Occupy Wall Street protests continuing-- I wanted to point you to something that neatly captures what all this is really about.

In recent weeks, proponents of Governor John Kasich’s law rolling back the bargaining rights of public employees have argued that their sacrifice is necessary for the state’s fiscal health. But labor and Dems have pointed out that some Ohio GOP legislators are not agreeing to a pay cut of their own-- so why no shared sacrifice?

In a recent interview, a top Ohio Republican defended this in a curiously belligerent way, one that may reverberate in the race’s final days: He claimed lawmakers don’t need to take a pay cut in the spirit of shared sacrifice, because “I earn my pay,” adding: “Republicans earn their money.”

GOP state Rep. Lou Blessing-- a prominent Republican voice in this fight, as the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Ohio House of Representatives-- made the claim during an interview with Ohio public radio, audio of which is right here. Pressed on why he and some other GOPers wouldn’t agree to labor’s insistence that legislators also accept a pay cut, he said:

“Because it’s not merited. I earn my pay. I think that was just political baloney. So they can say in an ad, `Gee, you know, they didn’t support a pay cut.’ Well, no, I don’t support a pay cut. Republicans earn their money. Apparently Democrats don’t. They feel they should be paid less. That may be true. Maybe we’ll just cut the Democrats’ pay.”

Blessing also argues that public employees wouldn’t necessarily see a pay cut as the result of the rollback of bargaining rights. But PolitiFact recently concluded that it was very likely that the rollback would lead to pay sacrifices.

Blessing’s clumsy attempt at sarcasm is awfully revealing. He simply doesn’t think the sacrifices needed to right the state’s finances should fall on himself or fellow GOP legislators. When people say, “Hey, if you’re asking others to give something up to help the state, maybe you should do the same in the name of shared sacrifice,” the rejoinder is nothing but scorn and contempt, as if the idea is plainly ludicrous on its face.

And there you have it. The vote is Tuesday.

I know Ohio's 8th CD just north of Cincinnati pretty well. Last year Blue America got very involved in helping Justin Coussoule make a stand against John Boehner there. Has he won, he would have been the first Democrat to win since early in FDR's administration. Boehner is very entrenched and the district is considered very, very, very red. Obama won Ohio in 2008 with 52% of the vote but lost the 8th CD 38-60%, his worst performance in the state, and one of the worst outside the former slaveholding states. (He did marginally better than Gore and Kerry did against Bush.) In short, it's the worst district in the whole state. Yet, shockingly, Mother Jones reports that "the current fight over SB 5, Gov. John Kasich's new anti-union law, is defying political logic." CD-8 looks like a toss-up!

"People certainly value the public unions and, in particular public-safety unions, but also are not in favor of seeing taxes go much higher," says Larry Mulligan Jr., the mayor of Middletown, the second largest city in the 8th. He estimates local support for repealing SB 5 at “50-50."

If Kasich loses Boehner's district or even wins by a hair, the magnitude of his defeat across the state is going to devastate right-wing initiatives against working families in Ohio. And hopefully warn voters in other states as well. Let's just hope that warning doesn't come too late for Iowa.