GOP Identity Crisis Worsened Romney's Primary Struggle
(The Associated Press, March 31, 2012)
With more endorsements by prominent Republicans and a new poll showing him leading next week’s Wisconsin primary, Mitt Romney is on the cusp of becoming the party’s presumptive nominee.
Yet it’s taken Romney far longer to win the nomination than most observers expected, especially against under-funded and under-organized competitiors.
Why?
Republicans and analysts point to several culprits: the proportional delegate system, Romney’s gaffes, his flip-flops, his message, even his Mormon faith.
But he's also been plagued this primary season by a Republican Party still in the midst of an identity crisis, which has made things rocky for the former governor (and former moderate) from Massachusetts.
A wave of conservative enthusiasm -- with the new “Tea Party” movement as its leading edge -- propelled Republicans to record victories in the 2010 midterm elections, which delivered them control of the House and gains in the Senate.
The new freshman class, though, demanded more purity from their leaders. The very enthusiasm that helped Republicans win back part of Congress hampered their ability to govern; House Speaker John Boehner encountered great difficulties in convincing the newly elected ideologues to join in legislative compromises.
These fratricidal squabbles continued into the presidential campaign, where conservatives have resisted, at virtually every turn until now, the opportunity to get onboard with the establishment-favored candidate who’s regarded as most electable: Romney.
“There's clearly a bit of a crisis,” said former Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, a moderate Republican who was considered a shoo-in to win his state’s Senate seat in 2010 before losing a primary to the Tea Party-backed Christine O’Donnell.
“The division and savagely attacking of other Republicans when they don't vote the right way I think is very counterproductive,” added Castle, who is supporting Romney (ironically, along with O’Donnell). “I don't think that has appealed to some Republicans, and I'm sure it doesn't appeal to independents and Democrats.”
Other reasons why Romney has been unable to gel conservatives behind his candidacy are probably more technical. Republicans cite his campaign's shoddy work in courting conservatives, the new primary rules that prolong the nominating process, and the candidate's gaffes at key points in the campaign. Romney also struggled to shake his image as a “flip-flopper” at points in the campaign, an image underscored by a senior aide’s recent comment likening the candidate’s pivot to the general election to an Etch A Sketch.
But while Romney is hardly a perfect candidate for today’s Republican Party, such a mythical creature might not exist anywhere on the planet. In some important respects, Romney's troubles stem from a party that is re-fighting its internal struggles from 2010.
“I think it's directly attributable to the spirit of 2010,” said Ken Buck, one of the Tea Party-linked Senate candidates that year, said in reference to the former Massachusetts governor’s struggles.
While the Tea Party -- a group of especially conservative activists angered by the bailouts to the financial industry and President Barack Obama’s health care law -- helped give kindling to the GOP in 2010, its insistence on ideological fealty in Republican candidates was seen as a factor that limited their success.
Republicans were successful in retaking the House but fell short of winning the necessary seats in the Senate, where Tea Party-backed nominees in Nevada, Delaware, and Colorado lost in opportunities Republicans had hoped to gain.
(Other candidates backed by the Tea Party were able to win in states like Utah, Kentucky and Florida, however.)
But the fallout hasn’t been limited to those primaries; Boehner’s struggles to win the votes of conservative freshmen elected in 2010 are well-documented. Those freshmen have pushed their leader to hew to strictly conservative positions at major junctures in the last year and a half, fueling a perception of Republicans in Congress as an intransigent lot, while weakening the speaker’s bargaining position in fights over spending cuts and the debt ceiling.
The tug of war between ideological purity and practical politics has been on display, again, during the campaign for Republicans to pick their nominee versus Obama.
Romney has long been considered the tentative frontrunner to become the GOP’s nominee, and he appears poised now to accrue the necessary delegates to accomplish that task.
But this primary has been defined, if nothing else, than by the flailing search by conservatives to identify a more palatable alternative to Romney.
While he’s stayed steady in primary voter polls, a veritable merry-go-round of challengers -- Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Gingrich again, and now, Santorum again -- have overtaken him in the polls before fading.
Moreover, exit polls of the primary contests to date have borne out Romney’s struggles in winning over self-described “very conservative” primary voters -- the core of the modern Republican Party.
While Republicans of all stripes express confidence that the party will rally around the eventual nominee, the conservative wing of the party has been nothing less than dogged in its resistance to Romney.
Romney and his current main rival, Santorum, “reflect different parts of the Republican Party,” said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, one of the GOP’s veteran political strategists, who has remained neutral in the primary fight.
“Both of them have proven remarkably tough and durable -- it's like watching a great bar room fight. That's the kind of punching match that we're in right now,” Cole said. “In a sense, Republican voters want to be assured that whoever emerges is tough enough to go toe to toe with the president.”
Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman who represented the Tea Party in her presidential bid, acknowledged last week on “Morning Joe” that the Republican Party is “factionalized” at the moment.
But some Republicans argue that Romney’s struggles were essentially avoidable, and they blamed his campaign for doing a poor job of reaching out to conservatives.
A former chairman of a major state Republican Party, who is sympathetic to Romney’s candidacy and requested to speak anonymously in order to offer more candid analysis, argued that the former Massachusetts governor’s struggles were directly related to poor outreach.
“They’ve been unwilling or unable to close the deal among conservatives,” the chairman said of the Romney campaign.
“Why don’t they send someone to Grover’s meeting in D.C.?” added that person, referring to the weekly meeting of conservative activists hosted by anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist.
The suggestion was that Romney’s campaign was basically self-involved and did little to show conservatives that Romney was one of them -- an especially curious strategy given Romney’s presidential run in 2008, which was staked on running as the conservative alternative to John McCain.
“There’s no history there; they’ve never dated,” said Craig Shirley, a Reagan biographer whose public relations firm did work for the Gingrich campaign for a stretch this primary. “It’s a little hard to ask people to marry you when you haven’t courted them first.”
The Romney campaign’s strategy, though, has sought to maintain the candidate’s viability for the general election to the best of their ability. The Romney campaign has been nothing if not careful in navigating Romney through the briar patch of conservatives’ demands on the candidate.
But the primary campaign appears to have taken its toll; a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday had Romney’s unfavorable ratings at an all-time high. Romney will no doubt pivot toward the center in the general election, but he has more ground to make up than many Republicans would like.
“The question becomes: Can the eventual Republican candidate, diminished by the primary, come back and win the election,” said Castle.
But Buck, perhaps illustrating conservatives’ ambivalence toward Romney, said it would be “fascinating” to see really how competitive Romney would be versus Obama.
“The question is, which Mitt Romney?” he asked.
Haley: Allen West could be a 'good' pick for Romney's VP
(Justin Sink, TheHill.com, April 5, 2012)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a top surrogate for GOP front-runner Mitt Romney, suggested Wednesday night that controversial Tea Party freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) could be a "good" choice as the party's vice presidential nominee.
"You've got great ones. You have heard Gov. Palin talk about West, and he's good," Haley told Fox News. "Of course, Marco Rubio is great, and Chris Christie. We know he can be the fighter, and I think there are so many really great ones out there. I think Romney is going to have a hard time picking."
Palin told Fox on Tuesday night that she hoped Romney "goes rogue" and picks someone like West for the nomination.
"Top of my list is Allen West," Palin said. "I love that he has that military experience, he is a public servant willing to serve for the right reasons. When I talk about going rogue, what I want is to encourage the GOP nominee to not think that they have to go with somebody necessarily safe."
West, a conservative firebrand, has won over Tea Party supporters with his frank and unfiltered criticism of not just President Obama, but the Republican congressional leadership. But he's also raised eyebrows with some comments, like when he suggested that President Obama "get the hell out of the United States of America" or called Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) a "plantation overseer."
Tea Party Test in Orlando
(Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2012)
Conservatives in Congress and tea party activists are infuriated with GOP Rep. John Mica, the 20-year veteran from Florida, for deciding to run for re-election in the Orlando-area district of popular freshman Sandy Adams.
Mr. Mica, the chairman of the Transportation Committee, had met with his colleague and assured her that he would not run in the newly drawn Seventh Congressional District.
"After they drew the new lines and I saw we both lived in the same district, I went to see him on the House floor," said Ms. Adams in an interview. "He said, 'Sandy, don't worry about it. It's not going to be a problem. I lived outside my district the first 10 years I was in Congress.'" She notes that the Sixth Congressional District on the new maps, which is Mr. Mica's current district, "contains more than 70 percent of his current voters."
After her conversation with Mr. Mica, Ms. Adams decided to run in the new Seventh District. That's where more than half of her constituents live, where she was a state legislator and where she patrolled when she was deputy sheriff. Two weeks later, Mr. Mica changed his mind and said he would run against her in that same district. According to Ms. Adams, "He said to me, 'Sandy, you have to move. I will have $1 million in my account.'"
What has everyone puzzled about this bullying tactic is that polls show that the Sixth District was easily winnable for Mr. Mica. In fact, it's more Republican than the one he decided to run in against Ms. Adams, a tea party favorite. We're told that the House Republican leadership tried to persuade Mr. Mica not to run against an incumbent freshman whom the party invested so much money in to get elected. Mr. Mica dismissed the request, reportedly saying, "I took a hit for the team 10 years ago," the last time new district lines were drawn.
The early head-to-head polls show Mr. Mica with a narrow lead, but Ms. Adams wins when voters are told that her primary opponent has been in Congress for two decades. As head of the Transportation Committee, Mr. Mica has access to lots of trade association money. He raised $450,000 in the first quarter of this year, or more than twice the amount raised by Ms. Adams. She estimates that at least $2 million will now be spent on this Republican vs. Republican head-on collision, which figures to be a key test of how much clout tea party activists still have in GOP primary politics.
Freshmen showdowns with GOP leaders
(Paul Kane, The Washington Post, April 22, 2012)
In 1790 the first Congress, assembled in New York’s Federal Hall, was consumed with the young nation’s $54.1 million debt accumulated in the Revolutionary War. Rep. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, who helped craft the First Amendment a year earlier, spent months helping craft a debt deal that both created the capital city of Washington and a new Treasury to assume the state debts.
It was the high-water mark of his career. By 1796, disgusted with “these days of faction,” he announced his retirement with a blunt assessment of Congress: “Do not ask what good we do.”
That declaration forms the title of a new book by author Robert Draper, who spent 2011 practically embedded with a half dozen of the members of the tea-party-infused House GOP freshman class, a group that started 87 strong and added two members through special elections last year. The book tracks the freshmen and their incredible clout, becoming a force that prompted veteran lawmakers such as House Speaker John A. Boehner to bend to their will.
In the process a new “days of faction” emerged as Congress and President Obama became paralyzed amid partisan gridlock, sending congressional approval ratings to all-time lows. Here are a few moments the book uncovered to demonstrate the impact that the freshmen have, so far, had on the 112th Congress:
— On Dec. 30, 2010, Allen West took off from his home in Plantation, Fla., in a U-Haul and drove to Washington. A former Army lieutenant colonel — discharged after a controversial interrogation of an Iraqi insurgent — West spent four days before his swearing-in wandering the halls and basement corridors of the Capitol complex trying to learn every inch of his new command post. His first big public action was to send a letter to House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) telling him the new floor schedule was soft: “We start off being in session only 10 days the entire month of January?”
— Summing up the attitude of many freshmen, Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.), a former auctioneer, reportedly told lobbyists early last year that party elders such as Boehner and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a former House leader, should not be trusted. “John Boehner and Roy Blunt are what’s wrong with Washington,” he said. Bret Funk, Long’s spokesman, said Sunday: “Rep. Long denies this incident ever took place and has nothing but the utmost respect for both Speaker Boehner and Senator Blunt.”
— After the freshmen rebelled against a spending bill, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) met with senior members of the Appropriations Committee in early February 2011 to inform them they had to rewrite the bill to appease the freshmen. The lawmakers asked McCarthy if he had done a formal “whip check,” a vote count, but he simply declared, “It won’t pass.” The appropriators angrily rewrote the bill, a process they repeated again last September after many freshmen opposed another spending bill. The senior lawmakers pleaded with McCarthy and Boehner to punish the recalcitrants. “It’ll just make martyrs out of them,” Boehner declared, saying only positive encouragement could work.
— By the summer many freshmen urged the strongest possible action on the debt ceiling showdown, demanding the inclusion of a constitutional amendment requiring a strict balanced budget in exchange for allowing the Treasury to borrow trillions of dollars more to fund the government. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), a freshman who Boehner sometimes called “Hardhead” because he so regularly opposed leadership, helped lead some conservatives to watch the Democratic-run Senate’s vote to reject the balanced budget amendment. First, he arranged a meeting in the Capitol Rotunda with his conservative hero, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who counseled the House members on Senate decorum for House members. Then DeMint told them to deliver a message: “You’ve gotta tell Boehner to cut the bulls---. When we go over to the White House like children ...”
— The freshmen opposition to lifting the debt ceiling prompted four of Boehner’s closest friends to warn him that his dealings with Obama could lead to a revolt that would replace him with his No. 2, Cantor. The four lawmakers first met with Boehner’s chief of staff, Barry Jackson, who also feared the motives of Cantor and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the budget chief. “That’s what Cantor and Ryan want. They see a world where it’s Mitch McConnell [as Senate majority leader], Speaker Cantor, a Republican president and then Paul Ryan can do whatever he wants to do,” Jackson told the four Boehner allies. (On Saturday, Boehner’s office said Jackson’s remarks referred to initial differences in strategy during the first round of debt negotiations and noted that the speaker and majority leader worked closely together during the second round that led to a final deal. Cantor’s office declined to comment.)
— In the fall a clear fault line split the freshmen into camps of those who supported Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy, and those who reflexively opposed leadership. Reps. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), a former nurse who has become a leadership favorite, and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) got into a fight at a GOP meeting after Labrador ridiculed the leadership’s new plan to promote legislation that had died in the Senate. “You’re going against whatever leadership does,” Ellmers said dismissively to her fellow freshman.
“And you’re just going to support everything they do!” Labrador shouted back, summing up the divide.
In the process a new “days of faction” emerged as Congress and President Obama became paralyzed amid partisan gridlock, sending congressional approval ratings to all-time lows.
Earmarks: GOP frosh face dilemma
(By: Kate Nocera and Adam Snider, Politico.com, May 1, 2012)
House Republican freshmen are figuring out that it’s hard to hate Washington and need Washington at the same time.
Take New York Rep. Michael Grimm for example, who has lobbied for a revamping of the Bayonne Bridge that connects commuters to New Jersey. Or New York Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, who has said the “federal government can have real and legitimate impact on the economic health of a region by supporting improvements to local infrastructure” — as she pushed the Syracuse Connective Corridor road project. And even Florida Rep. Allen West has touted a $21 million grant to help construct a second runway at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
That’s not exactly a bunch of earmarking Big Government liberals trying to bring home the bacon.
But these earmark-like promotions reveal the serious tension between the conservative anti-government ideology that swept the freshmen into office and the political pressure to deliver the federal goods back home. Rookie lawmakers have revolted over cuts to mass transit that affect them on the home front while expressing sticker shock at the overall cost of the $260 billion bill. In a different time, a highway bill would have been greased for passage with hundreds — if not thousands — of earmarks for highways, bridges and transit projects.
But the larger transportation bill never made it to the floor and a shorter, trimmed-down version of the bill the House did pass is now heading into conference committee where there are eight freshmen waiting to help out with negotiations. Their biggest concern now is: What is this going to do for us? That’s not exactly the tune they were singing when they ran for office in 2010.
“When we went around to each of the freshmen to ask them what their main concerns were, a lot of those were more specific things to their district or specific highways or different things like that,” said Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.).
Though many freshman Republicans pledged to abandon the funding for special projects, it turns out a lack of money for those kinds of projects ended up making a longer-term bill unworkable for members.
“You didn’t have the hope of a process for local projects,” said Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.), a freshman member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “Really every project is local but there wasn’t really anything laid out about how we were going to get there, how we were going to identify the money that we did have, which was going to be less than we had in the past.”
“I really wish we could have passed something similar to [the long-term bill] with some changes to it,” he added. “People just weren’t convinced it was ultimately going to be beneficial for their districts.”
The “ultimately beneficial for their districts” part is exactly what Republicans abandoned when they swept into office in 2010. The earmark ban has made it tough on members and leadership to get bigger pieces of legislation done, but Speaker John Boehner said the ban is a “positive step in the right direction” in the revamping of Congress.
“You know we’ve been through 16 months now with not one earmark. It’s made my job a lot more difficult in terms of how to pass important legislation because there’s no grease,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
There’s a now bubbling movement on both sides of the aisle to bring back earmarks.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), founder of the Tea Party Caucus, has said earmarks shouldn’t count when they’re for transportation projects. And just last week, the Transportation panel’s top Democrat, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, made a public plea that Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) join him in writing a letter asking Boehner to bring back earmarks.
Some lawmakers say the highway bill failed for other reasons.
“I can’t say that it failed because of a lack of earmarks,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.). “We still have to make choices about how to use our resources most effectively. I know that I had trouble getting to a yes vote when they decoupled mass transit from the highway fund. I see how mass transit is crucial to the economy of my region, and I think we have to make a sustained commitment to mass transit the same way we do all infrastructure.”
Not only are congressional earmarks gone — lawmakers have handed over to the Obama administration the authority to make executive decisions on which projects to fund. Some lawmakers are left in a tough spot: publicly deriding the grant programs as “administrative earmarks” at the same time they’re privately lobbying for some of the money to flow back to their district.
Most disappointing to the transportation community, though, is that the earmark ban hasn’t changed the debate on the Hill. When Republicans took back the House in 2010 and banned earmarks, there were high hopes that the “me first” era of transportation policy was over. With local projects off the table, the thinking went, lawmakers will finally focus on a national transportation policy that benefits the entire country.
Freshman members like New Hampshire Rep. Frank Guinta ran on a pledge that he wouldn’t ask for earmarks, telling the Union Leader: “Being a member of Congress today shouldn’t be about bringing money back to your community or your state or your district. It needs to be about how do we get our economy back on track, how do we put ourselves in financial and fiscal control again.”
But things didn’t turn out that way: Politicians are still haggling over what it means for their home turf. They’ve replaced district earmark figures with complicated formulas to divvy up money among the states and programs with a small but targeted constituency. But the endgame is the same: What does it mean back home?
There are still conservative freshmen who say they still think a lack of earmarks is the best approach, even if it means a more painful legislative process.
“There’s no question that the lack of earmarks makes it more difficult to pass legislation, and that’s probably a good thing,” said Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). “With an abundance of earmarks, more people are happy, but the American people get a bigger bill. The truth is while lawmaking is more painful and slower-moving without earmarks, it’s probably in the best interest of our country for the long term.”
And the back and forth over whether to earmark has not gone unnoticed by Democrats. During the House’s final transportation bill vote, Democrats offered an amendment that would have ended funding for two projects approved by previous Congresses. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee then sent out press releases to 60 districts alerting voters their Republican member of Congress just “opposed ending two earmarks in the Surface Transportation Extension Act.”
“Having done nothing to strengthen the middle class, these tea party House Republicans are now digging the ditch even deeper — breaking promises they made to the voters of their districts. It turns out GOP really does stand for Get Our Pork,” DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson said.
Governing Could Be Hard for a GOP-Led Senate
(By Meredith Shiner, RollCall.com, May 10, 2012)
Richard Mourdock hasn’t even been elected to the Senate and he’s already calling for its leadership to be more conservative. But if Republicans regain control of the chamber on the back of the tea party, it could make the job of governing nearly impossible for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The appeal from the Indiana Republican — fresh off his primary victory over six-term Sen. Dick Lugar — is not new. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has been trying for years to force his Conference to the right. But if Republicans succeed in switching McConnell’s title from Minority Leader to Majority Leader, the caucus will likely be torn between tea party demands to eschew compromise and the need to govern with the help of Democrats.
After all, McConnell’s majority — if he wins one — is not expected to be a filibuster-proof 60 votes. The GOP needs to net four seats to win a 51-vote majority, and many political prognosticators don’t believe they can snag more than six.
So Mourdock and DeMint’s insistence on “changing leadership” in the party raises the question of how McConnell will navigate a more conservative caucus without encountering the same pitfalls and policy failures that have plagued Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) this Congress.
“Our leadership can only go as far as their Conference will let them go. And I think if we have a conservative and committed caucus, then I think our leadership can move us in that direction,” DeMint said Wednesday. “But as long as we’re divided, as long as some keep wanting to bring back earmarks and some don’t, it’s very hard for our leadership to lead.”
The reality, however, is that those divisions are likely to continue to exist, regardless of who controls the Senate or even the White House. Even the most conservative veteran lawmakers differ in approach from their tea party freshman counterparts.
It will be McConnell’s job to show attentiveness to the conservative cause while also keeping his Conference under control.
“McConnell is a very good Minority Leader. He knows how this place functions ... [but] his biggest strength is his ability to make sure Republicans don’t shoot themselves in the foot, and that would come in handy as Majority Leader,” one Republican aide said.
The aide suggested that the best way to avoid internal conflict likely would be to avoid taking on “big, bold initiatives” and to focus instead on smaller bills that not only could bring on Democratic support but also would not divide the Republican Conference from inside. It’s a strategy that Democrats and the White House have been trying to employ this year to secure GOP support for their initiatives.
“On big issues, you can’t bring DeMint and [Sen.] Susan Collins on the same page unless that page is a ‘no,’” the aide said.
Multiple sources conceded that McConnell’s work would be more difficult if the Republicans take the majority and even worse if they do so under President Mitt Romney, who is the presumptive GOP nominee.
Obama’s presence in the White House would pressure Hill Democrats to work with Republicans, especially on issues such as raising the debt ceiling or extending the Bush-era tax cuts at least in part. If the GOP controls both branches of government, then there is more incentive for Democrats to become the new party of “no,” despite years of railing against the GOP for holding that title.
Of course, no one is suggesting that “changing leadership” means ousting McConnell, although some had interpreted Mourdock’s comments that way. Mourdock clarified his position Tuesday saying, “We can certainly change the leadership but not necessarily the people.”
Even the most serious challenges to McConnell’s leadership have fizzled out. A Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by DeMint last Election Day, for example, did not seem to move the freshman class to revolt. And McConnell has proved time and again he is not one to be trifled with.
On one occasion, a Republican Senator made comments about McConnell on Fox News that the Minority Leader deemed unflattering. McConnell printed out a transcript, highlighted the offending remarks and handed the papers to that Member on the Senate floor. It was a tacit but stern warning.
Sources also said McConnell is an expert in keeping his friends close and his enemies closer. They predicted that he’d give enough room to committees to make people feel productive but not so much that he wouldn’t have control over their final products — a problem encountered frequently in this Congress by Boehner.
But, despite the buzz surrounding Lugar’s defeat and the death of pragmatic Republicanism, Senators still in Washington, D.C., are standing behind their conservative credentials.
“I have a very conservative voting record,” said Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), a member of the GOP leadership team. Barrasso said he doesn’t see a problem with the tea party and the more establishment factions of the Conference jibing.
“We continue to look for ways, to find things in which we agree, and advance those things,” Barrasso said.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) issued a bit more critical take.
“It could be more sensitive to the mood of the country and the direction we’re going,” Sessions said when asked whether leadership is attentive enough to its conservative Members. “When you have somebody of the quality of Dick Lugar losing, I think it indicates that people are not happy with Washington. Nobody disliked Sen. Lugar — everybody knew he was competent — but there is a sense that we’re not moving enough to address the American people’s concerns ... and all of us need to be alert.”
Joe Walsh: Democrats Want Hispanics, African Americans 'Dependent On Government'
(Elise Foley, HuffingtonPost.com, May 30, 2012)
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) made another controversial remark last week, telling constituents that Democrats want Hispanics to be dependent on government -- and claiming that African Americans already are.
"The Democratic Party promises groups of people everything," Walsh, a conservative freshman from suburban Chicago, said during a Schaumburg, Ill., speech caught on video provided by CREDO SuperPAC, an anti-tea party group. "They want the Hispanic vote, they want Hispanics to be dependent on government, just like they got African Americans dependent on government. That's their game."
Walsh goes on to say that civil rights activist Jesse Jackson "would be out of work if [African Americans] weren't dependent on government."
Walsh was elected in 2010, part of a wave of tea party-backed candidates elected to the House of Representatives that year. His district in the northern Chicago suburbs is a key target for Democrats this year. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is putting its weight behind his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, as part of a "Red to Blue" effort to take back the House, the DCCC chairman, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said in March.
Welfare: A White Secret
Come on, my fellow white folks, we have something to confess. No, nothing to do with age spots or those indoor-tanning creams we use to get us through the | winter without looking like the final stages of TB. Nor am I talking about the fact that we all go home and practice funky dance moves behind drawn shades. Out with it, friends, the biggest secret known to whites since the invention of powdered rouge: welfare is a white program. Yep. At least it’s no more black than Vanilla Ice is a fair rendition of classic urban rap.
Despite prevailing stereotype, Whites, not Blacks, collect greatest share of public aid dollars
Tea party report card: peril and promise
(Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., Baltimore Sun, June 10, 2012)
The emergence of the tea party movement as a force within GOP politics is a storyline worthy of analysis during the run-up to what promises to be a fiercely contested presidential election in 2012.
In 2010, many tea party candidates fought and won competitive races, thereby ensuring GOP control of the House while narrowing Harry Reid's Democratic majority in the Senate. As a result, the last 18 months have witnessed a number of high-stakes budget battles, albeit with mixed success on policy and politics.
On the upside, only a GOP House guaranteed that (at least some) deficit relief would get accomplished on the heels of two major (Bush-era) wars and profligate deficit spending during the Obama years. A Nancy Pelosi-led House would have simply rubber-stamped tax and debt limit increases over the last two years, with no questions asked by a tax-and-spend-happy Congress.
Further, only a Republican House could guarantee no tax increases as part of a budget deal. An Obama-Reid-Pelosi leadership team would have done what comes naturally by including the termination of the Bush tax cuts as an essential element to any budget plan. A new, tea party-influenced majority would have none of this business-as-usual, however. In the words of Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, any proposed tax increase "is not going to happen." America's primary job creators — small business entrepreneurs — are forever grateful.
Entitlement program cuts (Washington-speak for smaller increases) did not survive the final debt limit agreement of 2011. But newly elected tea party Republicans are more than ready to attack this third rail of modern politics. This determination to (finally) reform heretofore unchecked entitlement spending is not entirely new to Washington; there have been elements within both parties willing to engage in the past. What makes the present situation so historic is the number of members (mostly tea party freshmen) dedicated to doing what everyone knows needs to be done, future sophistic attack ads and fierce establishment criticism notwithstanding.
The way in which the media elite has gone about the business of demonizing the tea party and bemoaning the dysfunction (read: inability to raise taxes) in Washington has been quite a circus. The acrimony with which leading commentators approached the debt limit and other federal budget debates speaks to their deep frustration with those who simply refuse to be co-opted by the time-tested methodologies of the establishment. One notable observation about the newly empowered tea party freshmen: This crowd is not terribly intimidated when labeled "malcontents," "terrorists," "hostage takers," "Nazis," etc. Such willingness to suffer the slings, arrows and demonization campaigns of progressive activists is refreshing and a welcome change in congressional spending culture.
Of course, there are pitfalls attached to any activist campaign. The tea party movement is no exception. One obvious example concerns the NAACP, whose leadership decided early on in the Obama administration that the tea party's agenda was contrary to the interests of its constituency.
In short order, charges of racism against all things tea party were lodged by a number of high-profile Democrats intent on minimizing political damage to the president and his administration. A successful demonization campaign against "tea party Republicans" soon followed. Indeed, I still recall the vitriol directed against the tea party and its sympathizers during my campaign appearances on urban radio in 2010.
Tactical results have been decidedly mixed. In 2010, GOP Senate losses in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada were attributed to conservative tea party primary winners' inability to attract moderate and independent voters in the November general election. Conversely, Scott Walker's strong victory in Tuesday's Wisconsin recall election reflected tea party organizational teeth in a state that has been reliably Democratic in presidential election years.
Regardless, 2012 will see more races wherein tea party favorites challenge moderate, establishment Republicans in expensive primaries but remain potentially vulnerable in general elections.
So, where does the tea party stand at midterm? Well, moving Congress in the general direction of fiscal sanity is certainly a worthy goal. The addition of fiscally conservative newcomers with backbone (from both parties) is sorely needed, particularly in the Senate. But tea party candidates must win general elections against vulnerable big spenders if the movement is to maintain itself as a long-term, viable force within American politics.
Steny Hoyer says GOP on mission of destruction
(Chuck Sweeny, Rockford Register-Star, June 16, 2012)
I had an interesting interview last Tuesday at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center with U.S. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who was the featured speaker at a fundraiser for Cheri Bustos, the Democrat from East Moline challenging U.S. Rep. Bobby Schilling, R-Colona, in the 17th Congressional District.
Hoyer has been a congressman in southeastern Maryland since he won a special election in 1981. Bustos, then a University of Maryland student, worked on his first campaign.
Hoyer, a moderate Democrat, said Congress has changed for the worse since the tea party took over the Republican Party in 2010.
“I’m good friends with Bob Michel and Ray LaHood,” Hoyer said about two former GOP congressmen from Peoria. Michel was House minority leader; LaHood is now secretary of transportation. Hoyer said he also was friends with former U.S. Rep. Lynn Martin, R-Loves Park.
“Their party no longer exists. Ronald Reagan’s party no longer exists. We used to be able to come to the table together and see what we can do for America. That party has gone away, it has the smallest base ever. It’s a party that wants to bring down the president, and it is pursuing policies that will bring down the country in the process.”
As a prime example, Hoyer noted House Republicans’ refusal to pass a transportation bill, which passed the Senate with 74 votes. Normally, the highway bill is approved routinely, for six years at a time. And he said the Republicans’ hesitancy to raise the debt ceiling, another routine happening in the past, led to downgrading the country’s bond rating for the first time in history.
We talked about the economy, and I told him Rockford is a manufacturing city that has suffered greatly from the loss of thousands of industrial jobs, which in turn has kicked the former workers and their families out of the middle class. I also told him of my many conversations with small factory owners over the years, and of their hesitancy to invest in job creation or expansion given the uncertainty about new regulations, taxation and the future of health care laws. How do we create a predictable, pro-business environment?
“They’re not confident we can get our fiscal house in order. We have to get this country on a fiscally sustainable path, which will be tough,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to have to follow some template along the lines of the Bowles-Simpson plan. And we have to pursue an agenda of growing jobs. We have a plan, we call it the Make it in America plan. We have to deal with taxation and regulation. They have to make sure it’s profitable to make things in America, not just airplanes and automobiles, but to make widgets and small things again.
Hoyer used a football analogy to describe the ideal regulatory playing field:
“You can’t take referees off the field because then the big guys trample the little guys. But you can’t put the refs in front of the wide receivers, either. In other words, you have to have regulations but you can’t make it impossible to operate profitably.”
Hoyer said the Republicans say they believe in small government and lower taxes, “right up until they want to fight terrorism, or vets want help with the G.I. Bill, or their constituents want good highways.”
Hoyer defended President Barack Obama’s record in turning the economy around: “This president created 4 million jobs and 11 straight quarters of economic growth. The stock market has doubled in value since he took office.”
