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Immigration, the Tea Partiers and the GOP’s Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s long been apparent that immigration is an issue that is the political equivalent of unstable nitroglycerine: complex and dangerous. It arguably splits both major parties, although national Democratic politicians generally favor “comprehensive immigration reform” (basically a “path to citizenship” for undocumented workers who meet certain conditions and legalize themselves, along with various degrees of restriction on future immigration flows), and with George W. Bush gone, most Republicans oppose it.

It is of most passionate concern, for obvious reasons, to Latino voters, and also to many grassroots conservatives for which widespread immigration from Mexico into new areas of the country has become a great symbol of an unwelcome change in the nation’s complexion. But the fact remains that perceived hostility to immigrants has become a major stumbling block for Republican recruitment of otherwise-conservative Latino voters, which explains (along with business support for relatively free immigration) the otherwise odd phenomenon that it was a Republican administration that last pursued comprehensive immigration reform. (Some may remember, in fact, that immigration reform was and remains a big part of Karl Rove’s strategy for insuring a long-range Republican majority.)

I’m not sure how many progressives understand that immigration policy is a significant part of the narrative of “betrayal” that conservatives have written about the Bush administration — right up there with Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, and big budget deficits. And implicitly, at least, when Republicans talk about “returning the GOP to its conservative principles,” many would make repudiation of any interest in comprehensive immigration reform — or, as they typically call it, “amnesty for Illegals” — part of the litmus test.

This is one issue of many where professional Republican pols are almost certainly happy that Barack Obama is in office right now — they don’t have to take a definitive position on immigration policy unless the president first pulls the trigger by moving a proposal in Congress, and it’s unlikely he will until other priorities are met.

But at some point, and particularly if Republicans win control of the House in November and inherit the dubious prize of partial responsibility for governance, they will come under intense pressure to turn the page decisively on the Bush-Rove embrace of comprehensive immigration reform. And no matter what Obama does, immigration will definitely be an issue in the 2012 Republican presidential competition.

So it’s of more than passing interest to note that the pressure on Republicans to take a national position on this issue has been significantly increased by the rise of the Tea Party Movement.

At 538.com today, Tom Schaller writes up a new study of tea partiers and racial-ethnic attitude in seven key states from the University of Washington’s Christopher Parker. While the whole thing is of considerable interest, I can’t tease much of immediate political signficance from the fragmentary findings that Parker has initially released, beyond the unsurprising news that Tea Partiers have general views on race, ethnicity and GLBT rights that you’d expect from a very conservative portion of the electorate.

But one finding really does just jump off the page: Among the 22 percent of white voters who say they “strongly support” the Tea Party Movement in the seven states involved in the study, nearly half (45 percent to be exact) favor the very radical proposition that “all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should be deported immediately.” That’s interesting not only because it shows how strong anti-immigrant sentiment is in the Tea Party “base,” but because it embraces a very specific and proactive postion that goes far beyond resistance to comprehensive immigration reform or “amnesty.” The finding is all the more remarkable because it comes from a survey on “racial attitudes”; I don’t know what sorts of controls Parker deployed, but polls that dwell on such issues often elicit less-than-honest answers from respondents who naturally don’t want to sound intolerant.

So if and when push becomes shove for the GOP on immigration, the shove from the Tea Partiers could be especially strong. And that won’t make the GOP happy: Republican elites understand that however bright things look for them this November (in a midterm contest that almost always produces an older-and-whiter-than-average electorate), their party’s base of support is in elements of the population that are steadily losing demographic ground. Beginning in 2012, that will become an enduring and ever-worsening problem for the GOP, and a position on immigration guaranteed to repel Latinos would be a very heavy millstone, just as Karl Rove concluded when he pushed W. to embrace comprehensive immigration reform.

The issue is already becoming a factor in the 2010 cycle. This is most obvious in Arizona, where J.D. Hayworth’s Tea-Party-oriented challenge to John McCain is in part payback for McCain’s longstanding support for comprehensive immigration reform. But it could matter elsewhere as well. You’d think that Cuban-American Senate candidate Marco Rubio would be in a good position to do very well among Florida Latinos. But actually, his potential achilles heel in a likely general election matchup with Democrat Kendrick Meek (who, as it happens, is an African-American with his own close ties to South Florida’s Cuban-American community) is a weak standing among Latinos, particulary the non-Cuban Latino community in Central Florida, attributable in no small part to his vocal opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. Indeed, even if he defeats Meek, if Rubio gets waxed among Florida Latinos, Republicans will have an especially graphic illustration of the continuing political peril of opposing legalization of undocumented workers, even when advanced by a Latino politician.

The real acid test for Republicans on immigration could come in California, the state where in 1994 GOP governor Pete Wilson fatally alienated Latino voters from his party for years to come by championing a cutoff of public benefits for undocumented workers (a far less draconian proposal than immediate deportation, it should be noted). Underdog conservative gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner has made his campaign all about reviving Wilson’s proposal. If Republican front-runner Meg Whitman can crush Poizner without any accomodation of his views on immigration, it could help her overcome a problem with Latino voters that emanates not only from Democrat Jerry Brown’s longstanding ties to the Latino community, but from the fact that her campaign chairman is none other than Pete Wilson.

In any event, whether it’s now or later, in 2010 or in 2012 and beyond, the Republican Party is going to have to deal with the political consequences of its base’s hostility to the levels of Latino immigration, and to growing demands for steps ranging from benefit cutoffs to deportation of undocumented workers. With the Tea Partiers exemplifying instensely held grassroots conservative demands for a more aggressively anti-immigration posture, even as the political costs of obeying these demands continues to rise, Republicans will be juggling explosives on this issue for the foreseeable future.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/people/vpickering/

Progressives Must Own the National Security Narrative

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Jim Arkedis’s op-ed in today’s Roll Call online:

With the health care bill safely signed into law, I hope you’re feeling better about yourselves, Democrats. While this November could be tough, at least progressives have one victory to avoid a complete wipeout in the election, right?

Or is that two victories?

You bet it is. Even as health care and the economy have commandeered our attention, the Obama administration has quietly put together a sterling record on national security. So why are Democrats so down in the dumps? As one party strategist put it, Democrats “are behaving like the president has a 30 percent approval rating. On these [security] issues, Democrats inherently believe that no one will believe our arguments.”

There’s plenty for progressives to cheer. President Barack Obama has proved to be a smart, decisive commander in chief. He has focused on Afghanistan instead of Iraq, by changing the American leadership in Kabul, embracing a new counterinsurgency strategy and sending more troops to back it up. Top Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent weeks, including military commander Mullah Baradar.

On top of the terrorism accomplishments, the White House just this week signed a new arms control treaty with Russia and is inching China closer to supporting sanctions against Iran.

Read the full column at Roll Call.

Obama’s Nuclear Initiatives: Public Supports Means If Not Ends

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the administration’s Nuclear Security Summit takes place in Washington this week, CNN has a new look at public opinion on a variety of issues related to nuclear weapons policy. And it’s safe to say that there is strong public support for what the President’s is proposing, if not always for the utopian-sounding goals he has articulated.

The latter problem is not new. In a May 2009 Democracy Corps survey that found remarkably strong support for Obama’s foreign policy and national security leadership — strong enough, in fact, to all but erase the traditional “national security gap” between Democrats and Republicans — Obama’s stated goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons got a decidedly lukewarm reaction, with 60 percent of Americans agreeing that “eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world is not realistic or good for America’s security.”

The DCorps question on this subject combined skepticism about a nuclear-weapons-free world with opposition to the idea on national security grounds. But CNN separates the two issues, and while respondents split right down the middle (with significant differences based on age, as over-50s who remember the Cold War tend to be negative) on the desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons, the percentage thinking this can actually happen has dropped from one-third in 1988 to one-fourth today.

But the big difference between May 2009 and today in terms of nuclear weapons policy is that the President is now taking concrete steps to address the “loose nukes” issue, to build-down nuclear weapons in conjunction with Russia, and to strengthen the international non-proliferation regime (in conjunction with efforts to isolate Iran’s defense of its nuclear program). And CNN finds strong support for Obama in every tangible area, even if his long-range goals still produce skepticism.

Most importantly, 70 percent of Americans — including 68 percent of independents and even 49 percent of Republicans — think the Senate should ratify the START Treaty with Russia, despite the predictable charges of “weakness” against Obama that have been emanating from many conservative circles since the treaty was signed. With a two-thirds Senate vote being required for ratification of the treaty, that’s probably just enough public support to keep Republican defense hard-liners (and/or obdurate Obama-haters) from launching a big Senate fight.

Moreover, by giving high-profile attention to the “loose nukes” issue, Obama is tapping a deep well of public anxiety about the possibility of nuclear terrorism. By a 7-to-1 margin, respondents to the CNN poll said “preventing terrorists from getting nuclear weapons” should be a high priority than “reducing nuclear weapons controlled by unfriendly countries.” One of the great ironies of the Bush years was that his administration constantly promoted fears about nuclear terrorism while making nuclear security a very low priority, even in bilateral relations with Russia. Dick Cheney, in particular, treated truculent and unilateral behavior towards potential adversaries as the sole means of preventing nuclear terrorism. By unpacking nuclear security from other issues and making it a focus of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Obama is linking diplomacy with a national security concern that Americans care about passionately.

Public support for the president’s nuclear weapons policies will get its strongest test beginning next month with the beginning of a scheduled review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As Steven Clemons notes in an excellent overview of Obama’s “nuclear wizardry” at Politico today, that’s where the rubber will need to start meeting the road in terms of the administration’s efforts to round up the world community for an effective united front towards Iran’s nuclear program. But it’s clear the president’s nuclear initiatives are off to a very good start despite generic conservative carping.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

McDonnell’s Political Travails: Living & Dying by the Sword

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Mike Signer’s op-ed in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Bob McDonnell’s recent troubles have surprised me; when I first met McDonnell three years ago, I found him both thoughtful and careful — traits in scarce evidence today.

In January 2007, McDonnell keynoted a panel at the University of Richmond about a law review article I had written on the conflicts between governors and separately elected attorneys general. As deputy counselor to Gov. Mark Warner, I had been deeply troubled by the aggressive, ideological lawyers in then-Attorney General Jerry Kilgore’s office, who constantly challenged our positions. In an article for the University of Richmond Law Review, I proposed that Virginia allow governors, rather than attorneys general, to direct the legal strategy of state agencies.

McDonnell had been elected attorney general just a year before. Initially, his election seemed like a recipe for only more conflict between another Republican attorney general and Democratic governor. Yet while he’d planted a conservative flag or two, McDonnell had also studiously avoided legal and policy conflicts with the new Democratic governor, Tim Kaine.

I hadn’t met McDonnell before and was curious about what he’d be like. From the moment he shook my hand and gave me a warm smile, I found him both personable and thoughtful. When he got behind the podium, he worked through my argument carefully. He cordially disagreed with my proposal, explaining that his very different approach from Kilgore meant a mandatory remedy was unnecessary. Like good Virginian gentlemen, we agreed to disagree.

Fast forward to today. In a few short weeks, Gov. McDonnell has abandoned his hallmark restraint and instead whipsawed all over the political map, delivering incoherent and incompetent governance in the process. Both Democrats and Republicans would do well to learn from McDonnell’s disastrous first 100 days.

Read the full column at the Times-Dispatch.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Brain Gain: Why We Should Grant Visas to Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A recent post highlighted the importance of new and young companies to job creation in the U.S., implicitly raising an important question for policy makers: How can we increase the number of startups? Assuming it can be done, such an increase would not solve all of the economic challenges facing this country, but it would certainly help. New companies not only create millions of jobs across all sectors of the economy — they also introduce product and process innovations, boosting overall productivity.

Saying startups are important is one thing, of course; actually designing policies to increase their number is something else entirely. Before making any recommendations, for example, we need to know more about the universe of startups. Are they more prominent in some sectors than others? Does the impact of new companies differ across sectors or geographic regions? Should policy focus on encouraging more new firms, or on enhancing the growth of those already in existence? How would any such policies affect established companies, large and small?

Policymaking around entrepreneurship is evidently not clear-cut as there is still quite a bit we do not understand regarding startups. In the coming weeks we will try to explore these questions and illuminate the world of startups for policymakers. We’ll start with the lowest-hanging fruit of all, though one that may seem like poison to some in Washington: immigration.

It’s commonly accepted that the United States is a nation of immigrants, settled and populated by those fleeing persecution, seeking commercial opportunities in a new land or looking for a fresh start. We have always recognized the important contributions of immigrants to the U.S. economy, from entrepreneurs like Samuel Slater (textile mills) to Andrew Carnegie (steel) to Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun Microsystems) to the laborers and workers who built this country with their hands.

Recently, researchers have begun to paint a broader picture of the economic role of immigrant entrepreneurs. For example, Vivek Wadhwa and his research team have found that, from 1995 to 2006, fully one-quarter of new technology and engineering companies in the U.S. were founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, the figure was one-half. These firms constitute only a sliver of all companies, yet contribute an outstanding number of jobs and innovations to the economy.

It makes sense, then, that if we are seeking to increase the number of new companies started each year in the U.S., we might look to immigrants. It turns out that Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) are thinking precisely along these lines, introducing the StartUp Visa Act (PDF) in the Senate. This bill would grant a two-year visa to immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise $250,000 from an American investor and can create at least five jobs in two years. Without question, such a visa is a good idea and this legislation hopefully paves the way for future actions that would reduce the pecuniary threshold and focus more on job creation.

Quite naturally, however, the promotion of immigrant entrepreneurs arouses suspicion among those on the right who harbor nativist views, and those on the left who perceive progressive immigration policies as a threat to American labor. Such views take the precisely wrong perspective: immigration, as we have seen, is a core American value. Immigrant entrepreneurs, moreover, come to the U.S. to make jobs for Americans, not take them.

Further, many of those who promote immigration as a way to boost economic growth narrowly focus on “high-skilled” entrepreneurs, those who might start technology companies. Clearly, as Wadhwa’s research indicates, such companies are important to American innovation. But we exclude non-technology entrepreneurs at our peril — every new company, including those founded by immigrants, represents pursuit of the American dream. By closing our borders to immigrants in general or welcoming only those with certain skills, we leave out many who will start new firms in other industries. If not in the United States, they will go elsewhere to start their companies and create jobs.

Entrepreneurs are implicit in Emma Lazarus’ poem: “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Entrepreneurs start from nothing and work endlessly to build their companies, expressing their individual freedom through commerce. Why should we want to exclude them from the home of entrepreneurial capitalism?

Democracy as a Free Lunch for Islamofascists

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As I am sure you have noticed, one of the big conservative talking points in recent months has been that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats despise democracy because they have (sic!) used “revolutionary methods” to (sic!) “cram down” health reform against the manifest wishes of the American people, who wisely oppose socialism. Fortunately, Republicans are determined to help Americans “take back their country” in November.

But at the very same time, bless them, conservatives can’t help but express some long-held negative feelings about this small-d-democratic claptrap. One sign is their great hostility to any efforts to encourage higher levels of voting (though this is typically framed as opposition to “voter fraud,” evidence for which is completely lacking). Another is the Tea Party theory that there are absolute limits on the size and cost of government that either are or should be enshrined in the Constitution or enforced by the states, regardless of the results of national elections. And still another involves periodic bursts of outrage over people who don’t pay income taxes being allowed to vote.

This last meme got a boost very recently when estimates emerged that 47 percent of U.S. households won’t have any 2009 federal income tax liability.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” sneered Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Sean Hannity chipped in with alarums about the implications of “half of Americans not paying taxes.”

One conservative site took the AP story on this data and added this helpful subtitle: “Tax Day Is Just Christmas For Many.”

Another had an even more suggestive title: “Let’s Make You Spend More on Me,” along with a chart showing upward federal spending trends. This interpretation is clearly just a hop, skip and jump from the “culture of dependency” rhetoric most famously expressed by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in his speech comparing subsidized school lunch beneficiaries with stray animals who shouldn’t be encouraged with free food. And in retrospect, Bauer showed some unorthodox brilliance in galvanizing conservative anger about socialist “free lunch” redistribution toward kids who are literally receiving free lunches.

Now the various conservative “analysts” of the free-lunch, free-rider phenomenon rarely go to the trouble of acknowledging that most of that lucky 47 percent not owing federal income taxes (which represent less than half of federal revenues) pay high and very regressive federal payroll taxes, not to mention even more regressive state and local sales and property taxes. Nor do they note that most non-federal-income-tax-paying households are either retirees living on savings and retirement benefits or working poor families with kids (the beneficiaries of those child tax credits that conservatives are always promoting as “pro-family” policies). And I’ve yet to see even one concede that the 47 percent figure is a temporary spike attributable to the recession and to short-term tax credits that will expire with the economic stimulus program.

While the reverse-class-warfare subtext of some of the conservative angst about alleged tax-and-benefit freeloaders is pretty clear, there are those who would link it to an even more lurid, culture-war theme. Check out this remarkable weekend post from National Review’s Mark Steyn, who compared our system of “representation without taxation to” — no, I’m not making this up! — Muslim oppression of non-Muslims. Gaze in awe:

United States income tax is becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the “jizya” — the punitive tax levied by Muslim states on their non-Muslim citizens: In return for funding the Islamic imperium, the infidels were permitted to carry on practicing their faith. Likewise, under the American jizya, in return for funding Big Government, the non-believers are permitted to carry on practicing their faith in capitalism, small business, economic activity, and the other primitive belief systems to which they cling so touchingly.

So there you have it: socialism and Islamofascism nicely bound up in the policies of that madrassa-attending elitist, Barack Obama.

However you slice it, the conservative commitment to democracy sometimes seems limited to those “real Americans” who think right and vote right. At a minimum, progressives should not let them combine such attitudes with pious invocations of the Popular Will.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/katerkate/

Our Eco-Friendly Military

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“The Army’s mission is not to be green. Our mission is to defend the nation. In that context, we’ve found it’s in our interest to develop sustainable projects.”

This is the powerful quote by the Army’s program director for energy security in a new must-read article in USA Today. At the E3 Initiative, we’ve been arguing for months that new energy practices are essential to upgrading our national security strategy.

The military has recently spent over $100 million to insulate tents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? It cuts the leakage of air conditioning by at least 50 percent. Taxpayers recoup their investment within 90 days.

All this is important to defense because it addresses the sluggish, dangerous practices of our old-energy defense posture. For example, truck convoys carrying water and gas (required by inefficient energy in theater) are vulnerable to roadside bombs, which themselves are the biggest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. As USA Today reports, “Greater energy efficiency also helps keep troops in war zones safer, because it reduces the number of trucks on the road carrying fuel to outlying bases.”

As the Army recognizes, sustainability isn’t about ideology — being “green” for the sake of being green. It’s about making America smarter, tougher, more competitive and more resilient: lessons we should remember as we head into the inevitable fight in Congress about legislation to price and control carbon.

The Cold War Is Over, But the Nukes Are Still Here

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama sure is spending a lot of time worrying about nuclear weapons this week. Today’s Nuclear Security Summit – a meeting of over 40 world leaders in Washington, D.C. – caps seven days of highly publicized events on nuclear security.

The attention lavished on atomic weapons feels almost anachronistic, invoking a Cold War-era standoff that now seems so distant. Twenty-five years ago, I was a third grader at St. Joan of Arc in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Once a month, Ms. Elliot would trot my class into the hallway where we’d kneel down and clasp our hands behind our necks. This wasn’t some strange Catholic school ritual – we were “protecting” ourselves from a Soviet nuclear attack.

While I realize now that this defensive maneuver wouldn’t have kept me safe from a direct hit on the jungle gym, the looming threat of a mushroom cloud over the American Midwest felt real.

It doesn’t today. The end of the Cold War, years of American military dominance and improving, if occasionally frustrating, relations with Moscow have effectively banished the threat of mutually assured destruction. Beyond Russia, it’s nearly impossible to imagine China, perhaps the United States’ “near-peer” military competitor but also its financial Siamese twin, launching its nuclear weapons.

But nuclear security must be important – just glance at Obama’s schedule. Before signing the New START accord with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last Thursday, his administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, an important document that redefines the way America will use the 1550 deployed warheads New START permits. And today the president is convening the summit of world leaders in Washington, D.C.

It’s not only this week. These events are part of a yearlong effort that began last April when President Obama spoke about his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

It’s a long-term goal to be sure — Obama has been clear that America would retain its arsenal as long as others did. But it’s hardly a liberal fantasy — conservative icons like former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz have joined forces with mainstream Democrats like former Senator Sam Nunn and Defense Secretary Bill Perry to promote a nuclear-free world.

They’re following the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who nearly signed on to sweeping nuclear restrictions with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986, and George H.W. Bush, who signed the START treaty in 1991.

So with no Cold War threat, what’s the urgency? Why is the president wasting time negotiating with countries that wouldn’t dare attack us anyway?

Here’s why — it’s not state-sponsored atomic destruction that’s the threat. It’s the al-Qaeda operative with a nuclear suitcase. That sounds crazy, right? Then again, we never could have imagined that three airliners could bring down the Twin Towers and slam into the Pentagon. President Obama realizes that a nuclear arsenal in the hands of nation-states still poses a threat, albeit from stateless ones.

How, then, does a stuffy gathering of world leaders at a conference center in Washington, D.C. keep the bomb away from a small-fry terrorist? First, curbing nuclear proliferation depends on the large nuclear powers — U.S., Russia, China, U.K. and France — showing a serious and sustained effort towards nuclear disarmament that convinces the smaller nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — and nuclear weapons aspirants — North Korea and Iran — to feel comfortable without them. That dialogue needs to start on a big stage, particularly for American allies India and Pakistan, who may want to do the right thing but happen to be mortal enemies.

What’s more, it’s the North Koreas, Irans and Pakistans of the world that stand the greatest chance of selling nuclear technology to the black market’s highest bidder. Getting those countries to swear off nuclear weapons planning is critical. Just ask A.Q. Khan — he might be a hero as the father of the Pakistani A-bomb, but he has also sold nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea in the 1980s and 1990s for tens of millions of dollars.

We need nation-states to control their nuclear scientists, and getting everyone on the same page — as Obama’s doing — is the first step to achieving that goal.

We are long-removed from cowering in the hallway of my Catholic school in Ohio, but that doesn’t mean the nuclear threat died with the Cold War. It has simply changed. That’s why the Obama administration is spending so much time yanking America’s nuclear security policy into the 21st century.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/travlr/

The Party of “Hell No” Parties in New Orleans

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This marks the first of a series of semi-weekly columns (on Mondays and Fridays, whenever possible) I’ll be doing for ProgressiveFix summarizing and digesting political news from around the country as we head towards the November midterm elections and inch inexorably towards the 2012 presidential cycle.

I will periodically do reports on the various regions, and will also regularly give readers the gist (without a lot of charts, graphs or wonkery) of current polling that is of interest (those interested in charts, graphs or wonkery should visit pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com). I will also make every effort to lift horse-race analysis from isolated snippets on specific campaigns into a general sense of political trends, and give a taste of the strategic debates that are going on in both major parties.

This weekend’s major political event was the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in New Orleans, which rivals February’s CPAC conference in Washington as an unofficial “kickoff” event for the 2012 presidential nomination contest. Naturally, SRLC featured a lot of speakers who are on the 2012 “mentioned” list, along with a couple of underlying stress points.

The stress points were (1) the widespread unhappiness with unhelpful news from Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee, which no one in New Orleans explicitly mentioned, but which was clearly a subtext (Steele’s own speech quickly emptied the room), and (2) the debate on whether Republicans should or should not be satisfied to be thought of as “the party of no,” more interested in obstructing Barack Obama’s agenda than in offering their own.

My take is that you can forget what the various SRLC speakers explicitly said on the “party of no” meme; they generally, for what it’s worth, spoke out of both sides of their mouths, first denying a hardcore negative message and then endorsing it in every rhetorical and policy specific. Newt Gingrich, for example, emphatically said the GOP had to become “the party of yes,” but then called for an appropriations-driven government shutdown to force major concessions from the president if Republicans win control of Congress this November — which is pretty amazing considering how well that strategy worked for Speaker Gingrich back in 1995 (if you are really young or new to politics, take my word for it: it bombed disastrously).

But the real rhetorical champion (and crowd favorite) of the conference was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose speech called for a war not just on Democrats (or “liberals” and “socialists,” as he preferred to call them) but on government itself:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says Republican congressional candidates must say “no” — no to President Barack Obama, and no to anything that makes Washington relevant to the American people….

He said GOP candidates should tell voters, “Elect me and I’m going to Washington, D.C, and will try to make it as inconsequential on your life as I can make it.”

Now that should give GOPers a good positive agenda!

Meanwhile, Perry’s only real rival as crowd favorite, Sarah Palin, said Republicans should be the party of “hell no” when it came to health reform, and reprised her usual approach of personally baiting the president, particularly on energy and nuclear policy.

 

GOP: Smaller Tent Needed

The other big repetitive theme at the conference was what might be called a rather unnecessary demand that the GOP rebrand itself as relentlessly conservative. Probable 2012 candidate Rick Santorum, who’s been under attack during recent Iowa appearances for having endorsed Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey in 2004, tried to argue that his step was aimed at ensuring pro-life Supreme Court justices, not at accepting any “big-tent” thinking on issues like abortion:

You questioned my judgment, and you have every right to do so. But please don’t question my intention to do what’s right for those little babies.

There was, of course, a 2012 presidential straw poll in New Orleans, and it was a bit of a surprise that Mitt Romney’s vote-buying exercise beat Ron Paul’s, by exactly one vote. Paul, as you might recall, won the February CPAC straw poll by packing the seats with young, readily mobilized supporters. Romney (who, unlike Paul, didn’t show up in New Orleans) utilized a group called Evangelicals for Romney that bought up a bunch of tickets and offered them for free to all comers, and then pre-spun the media by predicting defeat to Paul’s hordes.

Palin edged Gingrich among the presumably non-stuffed boxes (though Palin’s PAC did offer caribou-on-a-stick to attendees), and everyone else trailed badly (notably, Rick Perry took himself off the ballot). As Tom Schaller noted, however, Romney and Paul had limited “second-choice” support (as the straw poll allowed attendees to indicate), so effectively it was a four-way wash. Invisible Primary monitors Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin of Politico adjudged the straw poll as pretty much a nothing-burger.

Poll Watch

A new poll from Dem-leaning Kos/R2K has Democrat Roy Barnes narrowly leading the three most prominent Republican candidates for governor of Georgia; Republican-leaning Rasmussen has all three major Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire leading Democrat Paul Hodes.

 

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs on Mondays and Fridays.

On Supreme Court, Bet on a Safe Pick — and a Big Fight Anyway

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The word coming out of the administration and Democrats in Congress is that President Obama would like to avoid a big fight over his next Supreme Court nominee. And indeed, the emerging conventional-wisdom shortlist reflects the desire for a nominee who can win smooth confirmation from the Senate.

The names that keep popping up are Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal Appeals Court Judges Diane Wood (of Chicago) and Merrick Garland (of District of Columbia). One less-mentioned name who is still a possibility is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

As Stuart Taylor Jr., hardly a liberal ideologue, wrote recently, “It would be hard for Senate Republicans to justify or sustain a filibuster against any of these four, based on what’s known about them. Indeed, Kagan, Garland, Napolitano, and arguably Wood have less problematic paper trails than Sotomayor, whom the Senate confirmed last summer on a 68-31 vote, with lots of complaining but no filibuster.” Indeed, if anything, the picks might be too safe for some on the left. The emergence of Kagan as a frontrunner has already led to some howls of outrage from some progressives who see her as much too accommodating to conservative and centrist views and want a more combative liberal to replace John Paul Stevens.

Bet on Obama to (as usual) block out the noise from the fray in making his selection and pick someone safe. But bet on this as well: whomever he taps will inspire a loud clamor from conservatives, both in the base and on the Hill.

Kagan may very well be the most qualified of the possible nominees (I haven’t studied all their records). But forget about her moderation cooling the temperature over the Supreme Court debate. The right has perpetuated a narrative that simply doesn’t allow for the idea of a moderate progressive. Anyone to the left of Scott Brown (and that might be too generous) is suspect, an enabler of the “most radical administration in American history.” Besides, a Supreme Court fight is the kind of thing fundraisers and the rank-and-file live for. By the time the Beck-Palin-Rush crew is done with Kagan or any Obama nominee, they will be a lightning rod anyway. And, just as with health care, the likelihood is that the left will rally around the nominee once they see the right flip out over it.

This isn’t to say that Kagan wouldn’t win confirmation. All of the four mentioned above are confirmable. But a rancorous debate is probably unavoidable. It’s simply where we are right now. Nate Silver writes, “One other dynamic to watch out for: whether the partisan split on Obama has become so entrenched that whomever he nominates will start out with 35 percent disapproval.” I’ll take the over.

Energy Realism and Hype

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Thanks to new drilling techniques, U.S. natural gas reserves may have doubled, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this week. “That’s a big deal because it will be a transition fuel as we go to renewables,” Chu said at a conference hosted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Chu’s emphasis on natural gas as a bridge fuel, together with President Obama’s decisions to allow offshore drilling and expand loan guarantees for building nuclear power plants, attest to a new realism in U.S. energy policy. The Obama administration is trying to move the deadlocked energy debate beyond a false choice between fossil and renewable fuels. For now, America needs more of both.

This “no fuel left behind” approach also lays the groundwork for bipartisan cooperation on capping carbon emissions. If Republicans say “no” to things they’ve long demanded, namely more nuclear power and offshore drilling, as part of a comprehensive climate bill, it will be another sign that they are unwilling to help solve the country’s biggest problems.

Some environmentalists (including, apparently, Al Gore) are chagrined over Obama’s support for offshore drilling, which they see as a concession to the “drill, baby, drill” right.  So let’s be clear: offshore production in U.S. waters will not lead us to “energy independence,” nor will it lower prices at the pump. Our share of the world’s oil reserves — even if much more is aggressively produced — is still not large enough to move global oil prices. This would be the case even if there was a truly competitive and free global petroleum market. But the global oil market is not free and competitive — it is dominated by low-cost producers in the Persian Gulf, who are aligned in a cartel and could easily counteract any downward price influence from an increase in U.S. supply. The only way that U.S. oil could directly and dramatically lead to low U.S. gas prices would be for us to adopt the Venezuelan model: nationalize the industry, close the borders, and grossly subsidize the industry. Not gonna happen.

Nonetheless, modest expansions of domestically produced oil would yield modest benefits. Estimates range from a low of 39 billion barrels of recoverable oil to a high of 63 billion barrels. “If ramped up quickly enough, that could overcome the underlying decline rate of current U.S. output and add significant net production for a decade or two, at a time when competition for the oil we are currently importing is likely to be fiercest,” writes energy consultant Geoffrey Styles.

In addition to marginally reducing our reliance on foreign imports, offshore drilling would create U.S. jobs and lower our massive energy trade deficit. These benefits shouldn’t be exaggerated, but they certainly aren’t negligible. Further, to the extent that our offshore development leads to large and cost-effective finds of natural gas, that is almost certainly a good thing since unlike oil, gas is not as subject to global price pressures or oligopolistic manipulation as is oil. Moreover, to really reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the United States will have to substitute baseload gas for baseload coal on a large scale and abundant gas developed in an environmentally acceptable fashion (more likely to apply to offshore development than to much of the contemplated onshore development of “unconventional” sources) is a key to that goal.

What about the environmental risks of drilling? Without question, the history of petroleum development and delivery is rife with calamities. The decades-old Santa Barbara spills are still seared into the minds of many and, of course, the Exxon Valdez has not – and should not – soon leave our collective memories. But the former was decades ago and the latter is a compelling argument for even stronger protections in the transportation of petroleum. The next Exxon Valdez could be carrying oil from onshore or offshore sources. But the technology and regulation of offshore production has greatly improved since Santa Barbara, and while one could compellingly argue for even more protections, the fact is that offshore development is much less risky than ever before.

Finally, Obama has deftly maneuvered his political opponents into a tight corner. The White House understands that the paramount goal of energy policy should be to price carbon. That goal is unlikely to be achieved in Congress as long as conservatives continue to fantasize over a supply-side panacea that will lead American to a golden age of “energy independence” and “lower prices at the pump.” This is an energy policy of abdication and isolationism. By taking a balanced approach, Obama has challenged conservatives to take “yes” for an answer — or show that they really don’t believe in their alleged “alternative” path to energy security.

The Five Most Ridiculous Conservative Statements About Obama’s Nuclear Policy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The other day, I wrote a column about how the president’s focus on nuclear weapons was a solid opportunity to finally achieve some bipartisanship. I won’t rehash those arguments here, but I encourage you to read the piece. Much of the conservative intelligentsia actually agrees with me, and some have noted that any objections to the president’s moves are simply rooted in politics because there is “no substantive disagreement with what Obama has done.” But that hasn’t stopped some from favoring politics over good governance and — as Kevin Sullivan at RCW points out – start a new “silly season.”

So here, friends, are the five most ridiculous conservative lines about this week’s focus on nuclear security:

5. “[T]he real threat today is proliferation and terrorism. This treaty, of course, doesn’t have anything to do with that.” — Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

Au contraire — the New START has EVERYTHING to do with proliferation and terrorism. The key to convincing the Irans, North Koreas and Pakistans of the world that building and/or selling nuclear weapons isn’t necessary is to have demonstrable proof that the big nuclear nations are serious about arms control themselves. So we have to start (no pun intended) with the idea that the U.S. and Russia are making a real commitment to limit their own arsenals over time. Don’t expect Tehran and Pyongyang to bite on this immediately, but this is a decades-long project and New START is a good step in this direction.

4. “[W]e don’t need the treaty, we are willing to do these things unilaterally and the Russians will probably do it unilaterally themselves.” — Doug Feith, former Bush Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Okay, fair enough…maybe both sides would do things unilaterally. But when I bought my house, I felt a lot better knowing the terms of the deal were actually written down. Feith spent a good chunk of his career negotiating arms control treaties for a living, so it’s curious why he’d slap down his former profession. Also, see #5 again.

3. “A friendly reality check for exuberant Democrats on the first day of the Nuclear-Zero Pax Obama — this treaty is almost certainly dead on arrival.” – Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard

Actually, Michael, I don’t think it is. Here‘s Sen. Richard Lugar (IN), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee: “I remain hopeful that it will be signed and that there will be time assigned on the floor for debate and a vote this year.” And here‘s Henry Kissinger and George Shultz supporting it, too. Ratification will be a tough fight — two-thirds of the Senate is needed — but it’s hardly DOA.

2. “Does anyone think that the Obama administration will use force — much less nuclear force — against Iran? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly doesn’t, to judge by his reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review.” — Max Boot, Commentary

Actually, I think Ahmadinejad does. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons program over the last decade is the act of a country that’s convinced America would use force against it. After all, we’ve only invaded both of their next-door neighbors. Obama’s nuclear policy only isolates Iran more. Boot says that Robert Gates’ assertion that all options are on the table against Iran is not true. But actions speak louder than words. Judging by Iran’s actions, they still seem pretty convinced of America’s willingness to use force, Ahmadinejad’s bluster notwithstanding.

1. “(Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs, and other conventional munitions.)” – Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

Boasting more nonsense than a Phish show, Krauthammer’s piece imagines a scenario where hundreds of Americans are dead due to a nerve gas attack in Boston. Then he claims that the new Nuclear Posture Review ties the U.S. president’s hands because America couldn’t respond with a nuclear strike, and would have to — sigh – respond with just bullets, bombs and the like. Yeah, that’s right – apparently, the only good deterrent is a nuclear one. Really, why would anyone be scared of a conventional military that spends more on bullets, ICBMs and other conventional weapons than the rest of the world combined?

Turnout Rumblings

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we inch closer to the November 2010 elections, some of the early indicia affecting turnout are showing remarkable numbers predictive of an unusually high turnout for a midterm election.

Now it should come as no great surprise that when asked by USA Today/Gallup if they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting in November, 69 percent of Republicans respond affirmatively. This comports with the general sense that Republicans are getting ready to joyfully snake dance to the polls in November to get rid of the socialist usurpers in Washington and restore the natural order of things. But as Nate Silver has pointed out, the same survey shows 57 percent of Democrats expressing unusual enthusiasm as well — a higher percentage than ever registered before a midterm by voters in either party, until now.

At pollster.com, turnout guru Michael McDonald of George Mason University stares at the data and suggests we could be seeing a historic turnout rates this November, since overall enthusiasm levels are about where they were two years ago. He’s pretty sure turnout will exceed that of the last midterm election, in 2006, which was considered a very good turnout year by historic standards.

Normally high overall turnout in a midterm election would be good news for Democrats, but turnout predictions based on voter enthusiasm must note the advantage GOPers have on that measurement. We’ll see if conservative excitement about November can be sustained at its current high-pitch chattering whine, and if Democrats can maintain or increase their own level of engagement.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

China’s Great Leap Forward on High-Speed Rail

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If we are going to create a new mode of intercity transportation that gets Americans out of their cars — that reduces our dependence on oil from unstable or hostile countries and cuts greenhouse gas emissions -– we have to start thinking creatively.

Like the Chinese. Ten years ago, China still operated steam locomotives on a second-rate rail network. After years of highway building, the government realized that its fast-growing economy and isolated interior provinces could be better served by improved train service.

Before embarking on a rail-building program in 2000, however, China’s leaders made a crucial decision. They mandated state-of-the-art standards for constructing, equipping and operating the new lines. In other words, they would accept only the best technology the world had to offer.

The Ministry of Railways called upon international firms, such as Netherlands’ Arcadis Infra, France’s Alstom and Germany’s Siemens, to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies to build the bridges, tunnels, track, signaling, cars and locomotives needed for the new railways.

Within a short time span, China developed leapfrog technology. This was vividly demonstrated four months ago when the country opened the world’s fastest rail line. The new service between Wuhan and Guangzhou operates at a 245-mph maximum and a 204-mph average. The trains have cut the 600-mile journey between central China and the southeast coast from 10 hours to three.

The country is on schedule to open in 2012 the centerpiece of its national system, a line between Beijing and Shanghai that will reduce the trip time to four hours from 10 hours today.

New York to Chicago is a similar distance. What would it be like to leave Manhattan on a smooth, comfortable bullet train in the morning and get to the Loop in time for lunch? That journey now takes 18 hours on Amtrak, the antithesis of high speed.

And talk about a project that generates jobs — more than 100,000 people are working on the Beijing-Shanghai line.

The U.S. desperately needs a similar success, the sooner, the better. Once Americans experience the convenience and safety of fast trains, they will demand more and, importantly, will be willing to make the large investments needed to create an efficient intercity network.

For months now, critics have assailed plans in California to link Los Angeles and San Francisco with 220-mph trains as too grandiose and pricey. But guess what? The Chinese government has just signed a cooperation agreement with the California High Speed Rail Authority. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to travel Beijing for talks with rail ministry officials to hammer out a deal.

The Chinese have expressed interest not only in selling equipment for the new railway, but to help finance the line’s construction by diverting some of China’s vast reserves of U.S. dollars into direct infrastructure investment.

This comes on the heels of a reported Chinese offer to invest $7 billion in a bid by a private group to build a 185-mile high-speed railway along Interstate-15 from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Victorville, Calif.

By insisting on the highest standards, China overcame years of inertia and pivoted itself to the forefront of a 21st-century transportation revolution.

Maybe the Chinese model — backed by Chinese capital — will help America overcome the technological timidity that now leaves us with Amtrak and the still-unfulfilled dreams of something better.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/henrie

Neo-Confederate History Month

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As most readers have probably heard, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell got himself into hot water by declaring April “Confederate History Month,” in a proclamation that did not mention the rather pertinent fact that the Confederacy was a revolutionary (and by definition, treasonous) effort to maintain slavery against even the possibility of abolition.

After the predictable firestorm of criticism, McDonnell allowed that it must have been a mistake not to mention slavery in his proclamation. And then he repeated his rationale for the whole idea, which was, he claimed, simply a matter of promoting tourism in anticipation of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s outbreak. Tourism!

I’m sure most conservatives will consider McDonnell’s act of contrition sufficient, while many liberals will cynically conclude the whole thing was a dog whistle to the far Right, much like his earlier and less notorious commemoration of March 7-13 as Christian Heritage Week, in honor of the Christian Right’s revisionist theory that the Founders were theocrats at heart.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed.

A Neo-Confederate History Month could be thoroughly bipartisan. Republicans could enjoy greater exposure to the virulent racism of such progressive icons as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, not to mention Democratic New Deal crusaders in the South like Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo. The capture of the political machinery of Republican and Democratic parties in a number of states, inside and beyond the South, by the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, would be an interesting subject for further study as well.

Most of all, a Neo-Confederate History Month could remind us of the last great effusion of enthusiasm for Davis and Lee and Jackson and all the other avatars of the Confederacy: the white southern fight to maintain racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when “Dixie” was played as often as the national anthem at most white high school football games in the South; when Confederate regalia were attached to state flags across the region; and when the vast constitutional and political edifice of pre-secession agitprop was brought back to life in the last-ditch effort to make the Second Reconstruction fail like the first.

Bob McDonnell should be particularly responsible, as a former Attorney General of his state, for reminding us all of the “massive resistance” doctrine preached by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd in response to federal judicial rulings and pending civil rights laws, and of the “interposition” theory of nullification spread most notably by Richmond News Leader editor James Jackson Kilpatrick.

Any Neo-Confederate History Month would be incomplete, of course, without reference to the contemporary conservative revival of states’ rights and nullification theories redolent of proto-Confederates, Confederates, and neo-Confederates.

Having flirted with such theories himself, Bob McDonnell probably wouldn’t be interested in discussing them in the context of Civil War history. But that’s okay: A greater public understanding of the exceptionally unsavory tradition that conservative Republicans are following in claiming that states can refuse to accept health care reform would be valuable without an explicit discussion of current politics.

So give it up, governor: If you are going to have a Confederate History Month, at least be honest enough to acknowledge that the legacy of the Confederacy didn’t die at Appomattox.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlwain/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

KickSTART to the 21st Century

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The president got a New START. Now he needs the Senate to ratify it.

This should be a no-brainer. When Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty, dubbed New START, in Prague today, they were doing a lot more than concluding a dry, complex arms reduction agreement. The accord is a pragmatic and essential first step in strengthening American security.

The Cold War is over, but the weapons remain. Though we no longer fear global thermonuclear war between America and Russia, a nuclear explosion in an American city would be an unimaginable catastrophe. There are still 23,000 nuclear weapons held by nine different nations. Our military and security leaders agree: nuclear terrorism and the emergence of new nuclear states are the greatest threat to our nation. To prevent these threats we have to reduce the global stockpiles, secure all weapons material and block new nuclear-armed nations.

The New START treaty is part of the administration’s effort to develop a comprehensive national defense strategy that focuses on these 21st-century threats. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen gave his emphatic endorsement:

Through the trust it engenders, the cuts it requires, and the flexibility it preserves this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do: protect and defend the citizens of the United States.  I am as confident in its success as I am in its safeguards.

That is why this administration worked for a year to secure this follow-on to the 1991 START agreement, which was a legacy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Those presidents knew, as did Nixon, Kennedy and Eisenhower before them, that sustained attention to arms control reductions made the U.S. stronger and safer.

The New START will make this country more secure in several ways. It lowers the limits on deployed strategic bombs to levels not seen since the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. It also establishes a cutting-edge verification process that allows us to track Russia’s nuclear activities and verify their reductions. Our intelligence agencies will enjoy enhanced monitoring capabilities that will give them greater knowledge of Russian nuclear forces and plans.

We will also gain greater international stability. This treaty is a key step in gaining the global cooperation that we need to prevent nuclear terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons. It will also help us to box in hostile states like Iran and North Korea by clearly reaffirming the U.S.’s and Russia’s commitment to disarmament, and move other states to take the steps necessary to secure nuclear materials and block nuclear weapons trade and development — steps that are often expensive or cut against the commercial interests of many key nations.

A Bipartisan Issue – But Will We See Bipartisan Support?

This is why New START has broad, bipartisan support from former military and national security leaders. Former Republican Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Democratic Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) have lauded the treaty (PDF) as an important step.

But there are problems standing in the way of quick Senate action. For one thing, there are nuclear Neanderthals that remain inside the beltway, clinging to Cold War theories and strategies. And the partisan rancor in Washington has become almost radioactive, with cheap political point-scoring taking precedent over the business of governance. Remember that treaties need to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate — a heavy lift considering the political environment.

Can the U.S. Senate rise above the partisan bluster and Tea Party talking points and focus on what’s good for American national security? The New START is an integral part of a smart, strong and pragmatic nuclear policy plan. Senators should approve this treaty before they take off for summer vacation.