issue: Politics

FCC Can Win a Supporting Role Nod on Broadcast TV Fees

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

So I wasn’t the only one who thought the FCC dropped the ball in its dealing with the carriage fee kerfuffle over the weekend—some of the nation’s largest cable and broadcast companies have sent a letter to the FCC to that effect.

In a petition filed with the FCC, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Communications, Cablevision and advocacy group Public Knowledge said that regulations governing transmissions from broadcasters to subscription-television providers are outdated and warned that last weekend’s standoff between Cablevision and Walt Disney Co. will be repeated unless the FCC issues new rules. They also called on regulators to assign an arbitrator during stalled negotiations and to require broadcasters to maintain their signals if talks break down.

Updating technology and media legislation is a perennial issue in an era where rules are oftentimes obsolete as soon as they’re spelled out. But it’s rare that you see industry players go to the government and ask to be regulated further. In this case, the FCC should take them up on the offer.

The most immediate benefits will come from the willingness of both broadcasters and cable companies to submit to arbitration, and the signal maintenance requirement. The debate between broadcasters and cable companies is broadly not one of principle, but of money. This negotiation lends itself readily to arbitration, as both sides are not facing an all-or-nothing choice, but seeking a middle ground is reached on fee pricing. Arbitration means that they will find that middle ground faster.

In the off chance that they can’t find that middle ground in time for a “major television event” (whether it be the Oscars, a bowl game, or the 24 season finale), the signal maintenance requirement means that consumers wouldn’t be the loser if talks broke down. Agreeing to extend exiting contracts an additional couple of days is much less costly to either party than the damage done by angering customers in a fiasco like last Sunday’s Oscar-fest.

The FCC should take this opportunity to work with industry—and not impose a solution on them—on a negotiation framework that will be as big a hit with consumers than Sandra Bullock’s role in The Blind Side was with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Can Charlie Crist Switch and Survive?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the more interesting ongoing spectacles this year has been the crashing and burning of Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the once invincible political titan who now appears destined to lose, perhaps badly, a U.S. Senate primary to conservative Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. Initially, Rubio was considered more or less a nuisance candidate who would keep Crist from straying too far off the conservative reservation. Now, according to a new PPP poll of Florida Republicans, Rubio is trouncing Crist 60-28.

Echoing earlier complaints among Florida Republicans that Crist should have just run for re-election, there’s been talk that the heavily tanned incumbent might switch to the governor’s race (qualifying doesn’t end until April 30). Others have suggested he should get some revenge on conservatives by staying in the Senate race but running as an independent. At 538.com, Nate Silver explores these alternatives, and concludes that Crist should probably either hang it up or run for the Senate as an indie, assuming he’s not interested in a future in the GOP. Turns out switching to the governor’s race isn’t promising:

The same PPP poll that found Crist trailing Rubio by 32 points also found him trailing Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, by 14. That’s not quite as bad a deficit to overcome, but it doesn’t account for the additional annoyance voters might feel if Crist switched races, which could come across as entitled and presumptuous. In addition, the general election could get tricky, as Crist’s approval ratings are tepid and as Democratic candidate Alex Sink — although now trailing McCollum in most polls — is considered a decent candidate.

On the other hand, says Nate, some polls have shown Crist running reasonably well as an indie against Rubio and likely Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, essentially creating a three-way tie.

Either “switch” by Crist, it’s clear, would be good news for Florida Democrats, giving them a better chance in November while promoting GOP ideological warfare.

But Charlie probably owes it to his dwindling band of friends in the GOP to make up his mind soon. In neighboring Georgia, the news that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Gov. Sonny Perdue are hosting an Atlanta fundraiser for Crist has not gone over very well in Georgia Republican circles. If Crist is perceived as double-crossing Florida Republicans, he will become truly radioactive for all who have touched him.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Win Dixie

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we all understand, Republicans are about to have a pretty good election in November. Much of the GOP excitement revolves around congressional races that could unseat “red-state” Democrats who won during the 2006 or 2008 cycles, along with a number of incumbents (some of whom have decided to retire) who have been around much longer. Ground zero for the Republican tsunami is, of course, the Deep South, where in some areas John McCain did better in 2008 than George W. Bush did in 2004, and where every available indicator shows the president to be very unpopular among white voters.

But beneath this storyline, some odd and counterintuitive things are going on. In three Deep South states, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, Democrats have a decent chance of retaking long-lost governorships, in part because of infighting among Republican candidates, and in part because Republican rule in those states has not been terribly successful or popular. It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we’re in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances.

Our own appraisal begins in Georgia, with one of the surprise winners of 1998, former Governor Roy Barnes. Barnes lost his reelection bid in 2002 to Sonny Perdue, a party-switching state senator, despite the power of incumbency and a huge financial advantage. Since then, Barnes has regularly admitted his mistakes. And, amazingly enough, in the latest Georgia gubernatorial poll, he’s running ahead of every single Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans, who have dominated state politics since 2002, are having some serious problems with their own gubernatorial bench. The consistent frontrunner in the polls, longtime insurance commissioner John Oxendine, is awash in ethics allegations about contributions from the insurance companies that he is responsible for regulating. His record is so blatantly bad that none other than Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based proprietor of the nationally influential, hard-core conservative web site RedState, has said he’d vote for Barnes if Oxendine is the GOP nominee.

Rather pathetically, the alternative to Oxendine and the favorite of some party insiders is Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia’s Ninth District (like Perdue, a party-switcher), who recently said he would resign his congressional seat after a health care vote to concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. As it happens, Deal’s resignation managed to short-circuit a House Ethics Committee investigation into a no-bid state auto-salvage contract that was awarded to a company which Deal controls. The insider buzz in Atlanta is that Deal was motivated to resign, in part, because of panic among Georgia Republican pooh-bahs who worried that Oxendine would walk away with the gubernatorial nomination on name ID alone.

The rest of the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls are struggling as well. The entire party, and several of the gubernatorial candidates, were tainted by association with disgraced former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was forced to resign after a lurid sex-and-lobbying scandal. The one candidate who seems ethically starchy, Secretary of State Karen Handel, has struggled to raise the money necessary to win, and also suffers from the perception that she’s the unpopular Sonny Perdue’s chosen successor.

All these Republican problems could eventually fade, and Roy Barnes must also navigate a Democratic primary against Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a law-‘n-order conservative who is one of the nation’s longest-serving African American statewide elected officials (as well as two other lesser but credible opponents). Nevertheless at present, Barnes—or Baker, if he could somehow upset Barnes—looks entirely viable for November.

Next door in Alabama, you’d think that the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Congressman Artur Davis, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s a member of the much-hated United States Congress; he’s African American; he’s a close personal friend of Barack Obama; and he’s frequently been tagged, like the president, as an Ivy League-educated, twenty-first-century–style black politician. But the sparse public polling available shows Davis in a very strong position for the general election, assuming that he dispenses with a primary challenge from state agriculture commissioner Ron Sparks, who’s been struggling to raise money. Davis, who has long nursed gubernatorial ambitions, carefully tailored his congressional record to Alabama public opinion: He voted against health care reform in the House, and he was also the first Congressional Black Caucus member (and, for that matter, the first one on the Ways and Means Committee) to call for Charlie Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship.

Meanwhile, there is no real frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which bids fair to become an ideological flame war. Back in 2002, the “establishment” candidate, state Senator Bradley Byrne, made the fatal mistake of voting for a-tax reform initiative that was soundly defeated in an emphatic expression of Alabamians’ mistrust of government. Tim James, son of former conservative Democratic and Republican Governor Fob James, was one of the main opponents of that initiative, and he will bring it up constantly. Meanwhile Christian Right warhorse Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge,” is actually running second to Byrne in early polls. All of the dynamics in the race will pull the GOP candidates to the hard-right, while Artur Davis continues to occupy the political center; and his candidacy will almost certainly boost African American turnout to near-2008 levels. That means anything could happen in November.

South Carolina is often thought of as the most Republican of Southern states. But Mark Sanford, the disgraced incumbent governor, has complicated his party’s prospects. Meanwhile, an ideological civil war is brewing that reflects the growing tension between the state’s two Republican senators, right-wing bomb thrower Jim DeMint and the more moderate Lindsey Graham (Graham, long suspect among home-state conservatives for his friendship with John McCain and his occasional bipartisanship, has recently been formally censured by two of South Carolina’s county GOP organizations for a variety of sins). As in Georgia and Alabama, the Republican gubernatorial field is a mess: Nobody is a frontrunner and all the candidates are stampeding to the hard right. And I do mean hard right. In a sign of the times, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who has few friends in the state’s Republican establishment, delivered a speech comparing recipients of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who should no longer be fed unconditionally. While he took a few shots from fellow Republicans for his indiscreet language, nobody disputed, and some praised, his basic premise that any form of public assistance corrupts its recipients and should come with some sort of reciprocal obligation.

The frontrunners in early polls are Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster. Upstate Congressman Gresham Barrett, who must overcome the opprobrium of voting for TARP, is close behind. Meanwhile, Sanford’s protégé, state Representative Nikki Haley (who was even endorsed by the governor’s ex-wife), is trying to push the campaign hard right by opposing any expenditure of federal stimulus dollars in this high-unemployment state. At a recent candidate forum, when the rivals were pushed to call themselves “DeMint Republicans” or “Graham Republicans,” Bauer and Haley flatly identified with DeMint, while McMasters and Barrett dodged the question.

On the Democratic side, a Rasmussen poll in December showed the front-running Democrat, State School Superintendent Jim Rex, actually beating Bauer and running within single digits against other GOP candidates. (State Representative Vincent Sheheen is also a credible Democratic candidate). Again, anything could happen, but the assumption that Republicans have a lock on this state’s elections is as dubious as the same assumption back in 1998.

So, at a time when Democrats are despairing of good news, it’s important to understand that the donkey isn’t quite dead, even in the Deep South. There are consequences to Republican extremism and malfeasance in office. And, when GOP candidates battle for first place on the crazy train of contemporary conservatism, it’s Democrats who stand to benefit.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Blue Dogs Only Chasing Their Tail

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It often seems that Blue Dog Democrats, along with a handful of Senate moderates, are the only people in Washington who are serious about fiscal responsibility. Chasing the will-o-the-wisp of a balanced budget amendment, however, seems more likely to distract from than advance that essential cause.

The idea is seductively simple: The only way to restrain deficit spending in Washington is to make it unconstitutional. That’s how the states keep their books balanced, and there’s no reason the federal government shouldn’t do the same.

In fact, there are several. Consider that today’s federal deficit is about 12 percent of GDP. It’s going to go down as the economy recovers, but the spending and tax adjustments that would have to be made to get it all the way down to zero would be unduly draconian and disruptive. Also, unlike state mandates, a federal balanced budget amendment for accounting reasons would not distinguish between capital investment and consumption. But government borrowing to invest in public infrastructure or higher education, for example, makes economic sense, because it will generate more economic activity and amortize itself over time.

What’s more, the federal government acts as the nation’s fiscal safety valve, or strategic reserve. During severe economic downturns, the only way many states can provide services while preserving their fiscal virtue is to get counter-cyclical assistance (or revenue sharing) from Washington. A constitutional ban on deficits could prevent Washington from responding to emergencies of all kinds.

In truth, we don’t need a balanced federal budget — we need a disciplined federal budget. Congress would be better off adopting Sen. Mike Bennett’s (D-CO) sensible suggestion that federal deficits be held first to four percent, then to three percent of GDP each year. At that level, they’d be gradually whittled down by economic growth, and the government could borrow without swelling the national debt.

A balanced budget amendment, moreover, is a blunter instrument than we need to deal with overspending and undertaxing in Washington. It doesn’t hone in on the real problem, which is the automatic and unsustainable growth in entitlement spending. A better idea, from the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar, is to bring Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on budget, which would require Congress to periodically reconcile income and spending to keep the programs solvent.

Finally, a balanced budget amendment is just too damn difficult to enact. Congress has to approve Constitutional amendments by a two-thirds vote, well nigh inconceivable given how hard it is to muster the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Then three-fourths of the states would have to approve an amendment.

Demanding a balanced budget amendment thus is more of a symbolic gesture than a real solution to America’s fiscal crisis. Recall that it was a key plank in the GOP’s 1994 Contract with America, but Republicans quickly lost interest once they won control of Congress. Nonetheless, Newt Gingrich has endorsed the amendment in a bid to recapture the old magic for this year’s midterm elections.

Unlike the Republicans, of course, the Blue Dogs have real street cred when it comes to fiscal rectitude. They fought successfully to resurrect “pay go” rules that require Congress to offset new spending with tax hikes or budget cuts. And key Blue Dog leaders like Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) have led the charge for a bipartisan commission to get entitlement spending under control.

It’s vital, though, that progressive deficit hawks not let the holy grail of a constitutional amendment deflect them from the gritty, day-to-day battles in Congress to get America’s exploding deficits and debts under control.

A Wake Up Call on National Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Democracy Corps and Third Way continue to hit on a theme I’ve been pushing for the last few weeks. Despite the president’s solid poll numbers on security, the organizations’ research shows that the historic national security gap is reappearing. Just after the president’s inauguration, the gap had closed to well within the margin of error. In early 2009, Democrats trailed Republicans by just three points on the question of which party was better equipped to “keeping America safe.” But in a new survey, Republicans now trump Democrats by 17 points. Ouch.

The poll digs much deeper than most polls, which traditionally lump in questions of national security with a slew of other issues. But this one is a full psychoanalysis of the country’s mood on our safety, and the results are more of a mixed bag than a downright nightmare for progressives. The president maintains stronger national security numbers than his overall approval rating (47 percent), with 58 percent approving of his handling of Afghanistan, 57 percent positive on “leading the military,” and 55 percent liking that he’s “improved America’s standing in the world,” among other similarly positive numbers.

Furthermore — and this is great — the poll continues to confirm that the public rejects accusations by Dick Cheney that Obama’s policies have made the country less secure. Oh yeah, and five percent believe Obama is doing a better job than George Bush against terrorists.

To sum up, the public approves of the commander-in-chief, but they’ve again become skeptical of generic Democrats. Or as the authors put it:

While ratings for the president may be softening, his party is facing an even more troubling trend. When the questions move beyond the president to Democrats generally, we see that the public once again has real and rising doubts about the Democrats’ handling of national security issues, as compared to their faith in Republicans. This security gap, which has roots stretching back to Vietnam, was as wide as 29 points earlier in the decade. The deficit began to close in 2006, with the Bush administration’s catastrophic mismanagement of Iraq and other national security challenges.

How do we firm this up? Basically, grab the ol’ bull by the horns, just like I’ve been blabbering on about. Seriously — Dems have a good record, now they just have to relay it through effective story-telling that connects with voters’ emotions. Progressives have been sheepishly responding to conservative attacks with wonky facts. But conservatives don’t care about facts — they painted Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet and triple amputee, as unpatriotic. Now that progressives have the facts behind them, they need to get aggressive about telling voters that we’re strong and smart on national security.

More On ObamaCare/RomneyCare

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Here’s something to tuck away in your files on both health care reform and 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, from Tim Noah at Slate (via Jon Chait). Looking at Romney’s new pre-campaign book, Noah observes:

Romney’s discussion of health reform is, from a partisan perspective, comically off-message. (How could he know what today’s GOP message would be? He probably finished writing the book months ago.) Remove a little anti-Obama boilerplate and Romney’s views become indistinguishable from the president’s. They even rely on the same MIT economist! At the Massachusetts bill’s signing ceremony, Romney relates in his book, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., quipped, “When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same piece of legislation, it means only one thing: One of us didn’t read it.”

Noah goes on to mix up some Obama and Romney quotes on health care reform, and challenges the reader to say which is which. Can’t be done.

Back in January, I predicted that Romney’s sponsorship of health care reform in Massachusetts might turn out to be a disabling handicap in a 2012 presidential race, given the shrillnesss of conservative rhetoric about features in Obama’s proposal that are also in Romney’s–most notably, the individual mandate.

Something happened since then, of course, which has been of great value to Romney in protecting his highly vulnerable flank on health reform: Scott Brown, another supporter of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, became the maximum national GOP hero and set off to Washington to try to wreck Obama’s plans. That meant that not one, but two major Republican pols would be promoting ludicrous distinctions between RomneyCare and ObamaCare as though they were actually vast and principled.

But I can’t see this illogical brush-off as working forever. If the Mittster does crank up another presidential campaign, fresh media attention will be devoted to his record and “philosophy” on health care. And more importantly, Romney’s rivals in a presidential race won’t for a moment give him a mulligan on the issue the GOP has defined as all-important. Mitt’s “socialism” in Massachusetts will eventually re-emerge as a big, big problem for him, and arguments that it was just state-level “socialism” won’t quite cut it in a Republican Party that’s moved well to the Right since the last time he ran for president. Before it’s over, they’ll make it sound like he’s the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller, money and all.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

NY Lost at the Oscars Last Night

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

“So did you watch the Oscars last night?”

You probably heard that question at least 20 times around the water cooler this morning, and followed it up debating the merits of Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker or Jeff Bridges (who will always be “The Dude” to me) vs. Colin Firth…unless you were one of three million households in New York City, in which case you were fuming that Cablevision and ABC conspired to keep the Academy Awards off your TV screen. In a last-ditch effort to not alienate all their viewers, the two companies — which had allowed ABC service to Cablevision subscribers to expire at midnight the night before the Oscars — got ABC back on Cablevision under an “agreement in principle” about the time Christoph Waltz was accepting the best supporting actor award.

How two of the largest entertainment companies in the country (ABC you know; Cablevision, in addition to being the nation’s fifth largest cable company, owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall) could work together to keep the biggest night in entertainment from viewers would seem to boggle the mind.

Cable operators provide local terrestrial broadcast stations over their cable systems under a “must carry” rule, paying carriage fees to provide free-to-air local channels. This arrangement — a leftover from the birth of the cable era in the 1980s — is how you can get your local affiliate on your cable box. But now that “everyone” has cable (87 percent of households in the U.S. subscribe to satellite or cable), terrestrial providers have noticed that they could be charging cable providers for as much as they are paying for the Home Shopping Network. Needless to say, while cable providers want rates to reflect what they feel is the cost of providing a free-to-air channel, local stations want to have the special relationship they have with viewers priced into their carriage fees.

With the conversion of free-to-air analog signal to digital broadcast TV — indistinguishable in quality from the basic cable signal — the stakes seem to have gotten higher. The first shots in this particular war rang out among the New Year’s fireworks, when Fox Television and Time Warner Cable came to a last-minute agreement on providing Fox TV (and the bowl games it broadcast) to 13 million Time Warner subscribers. Fox was looking to get one dollar per subscriber from Time Warner, while the cable provider hoped to continue paying in the neighborhood of the existing nickel-per-customer fee structure.

As local broadcasters are a patchwork across the country, their carriage fee agreements come up for renewal on an irregular basis. The game of chicken was played again this past week between ABC and Cablevision — and with no agreement and neither side blinking, the cars crashed. New York area Cablevision viewers were the losers, though I’m sure Time Warner subscribers and local bars were very popular last night.

The impasse raised the attention of Sen. John Kerry and the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet — who unsurprisingly thought this was as head-slappingly bad an idea as the rest of us — but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has jurisdiction over the issue. FCC media bureau chief William Lake emailed a tepid statement yesterday urging “both parties to quickly reach a resolution for the benefit of viewers.” Rather than taking a passive role with service providers, content providers, and consumers, the FCC should have taken a proactive role in this issue. The goal should have been to keep the players involved from grandstanding in an attempt to gain an undue advantage, and bring them both to the table in search of a solution beneficial to both parties and — most importantly — us viewers.

The Tea Party’s Retreaded Ideas

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For all the talk about the Tea Party Movement and its demands that America’s political system be turned upside down, it’s always been a bit hard to get a fix on what, exactly, these conservative activists want Washington to do.

To solve this puzzle, it’s worth taking a look at the Contract From America process — a project of the Tea Party Patriot organization, designed to create a bottoms-up, open-source agenda that activists can embrace when they gather for their next big moment in the national media sun on April 15. The 21-point agenda laid out for Tea Partiers to refine into a 10-point “Contract” is, to put it mildly, a major Blast from the Past, featuring conservative Republican chestnuts dating back decades.

There’s term limits, naturally. There are a couple of “transparency” proposals, such as publication of bill texts well before votes. But more prominent are fiscal “ideas” very long in the tooth. You got a balanced budget constitutional amendment, which ain’t happening and won’t work. You got fair tax/flat tax, the highly regressive concept flogged for many years by a few talk radio wonks, that has never been taken seriously even among congressional Republicans. You’ve got Social Security and Medicare privatization (last tried by George W. Bush in 2005) and education vouchers. You’ve got scrapping all federal regulations, preempting state and local regulations, and maybe abolishing some federal departments (an idea last promoted by congressional Republicans in 1995). You’ve got abolition of the “death tax” (i.e., the tax on very large inheritances). And you’ve got federal spending caps, which won’t actually roll back federal spending because they can’t be applied to entitlements.

My favorite on the list is a proposal that in Congress “each bill…identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.” This illustrates the obliviousness or hostility of Tea Partiers to the long string of Supreme Court decisions, dating back to the 1930s, that give Congress broad policymaking powers under the 14th Amendment and the Spending and Commerce Clauses. This illustrates the literalism of Tea Party “original intent” views of the Constitution; if wasn’t spelled out explicitly by the Founders it’s unconstitutional.

We are often told that the Tea Party Movement represents some sort of disenfranchised “radical middle” in America that rejects both major parties’ inability to get together and solve problems. As the “Contract From America” shows, that’s totally wrong. At least when it comes to policy proposals, these folks are the hard-right wing of the Republican Party, upset that Barry Goldwater’s agenda from 1964 has never been implemented.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bisongirl/ / CC BY 2.0

A Heavy Lift

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

We always knew it would be a heavy lift. When Scott Brown swept away the filibuster-proof majority in the Senate – by taking Ted Kennedy’s seat no less – it seemed like a puckish and malevolent act by the legislative gods. Now, as the endgame draws near, the degree of difficulty only continues to go up.

The problem this time is not the Senate but the House. The plan is for the House to pass the bill that the Senate passed, and for both chambers to then pass a “fix” via reconciliation, which would require only a majority in the Senate.

But since the beginning of the year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lost several “yes” votes on health care. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a liberal stalwart, resigned January 3; Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) passed away February 8; Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) stepped down on February 28. On top of that, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), the only Republican in either chamber to vote for reform, has come out and said he would not be voting for the bill this time around. Add on the Stupak bloc, the group of representatives led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) who reject the Senate bill on the grounds that its anti-abortion provisions are less strict than in the bill the House passed, and the bill’s prospects become even dimmer.

Just today, more bad news. Initially, with all the departures from the House, including that of Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA), the magic number for Pelosi had at least shrunk to 216. But Deal today said he would stick around until the vote, raising the threshold to 217 again. But there’s more! There have been reports of other previous “yes” votes now wavering as the GOP ramps up its anti-health reform campaign to “spook” Dems: Rep. Shelley Berkley (NV), Rep. Michael Arcuri (NY), Rep. Kurt Schrader (OR).

But anyone expecting less than a full-on blitzkrieg from the right to sway quaking Dems has not been paying attention. The question is: Does that include the White House?

Too Much Inside Baseball

One of the ironies of health reform legislation has been its declining popularity with the public even as it progressed up the legislative chain. As it passed each new congressional hurdle, public opinion dipped. By the time 2010 rolled around (and before Scott Brown), health reform was on the brink of passing, but the victory seemed like it wouldn’t be quite the rout its supporters had hoped, with the bill so damaged in the public’s eyes.

I always thought that this was the result of an overcorrection on the White House’s part from the mistakes of the Clinton administration. The Clinton health care plan floundered because the administration was so ham-handed when it came to dealing with Congress. This White House adjusted accordingly, and played the beltway game to perfection.

But it never learned from another Clinton mistake, which is that it’s not all about the beltway – the ground game matters, too. With a highly mobilized right wing getting its message out to congressional districts, hardcore opponents – the town hall screamers of last summer – came out of the woodwork, inevitably coloring the impressions of the casual political observer. Phone calls started coming in to congressional offices opposing the bill.  Poll numbers dropped.

Meanwhile, the White House, with both eyes on Congress, failed to fire up its own base. Obama held events here and there, but nothing like a sustained campaign to mold public opinion. Without that leadership, the progressives and moderates who knocked on doors for Obama simply weren’t there this time around to match the other side’s intensity. By the time Scott Brown showed up, some lawmakers were all but ready to be done with health care.

And so here we are. President Obama has gone all in, even going so far as to set a date for when he wants the House to vote. He has also assiduously courted iffy Democrats, inviting them over to the White House and no doubt seeking to buck them up. And with news that he’s about to embark on a barnstorming tour to stump for health care, it’s clear that the White House sees the importance of aggressively shaping public opinion and the media narrative.

But will it be enough? Or is it too little too late? And will the progressive grassroots that helped Obama win the presidency be there to neutralize motivated right-wing foot soldiers and Astroturf groups? Or will those GOP robocalls and conservative vehemence ultimately topple unsteady Democrats? It’s a real test of leadership for the president. And as others have rightly pointed out, it’s a test of the progressive base, too.

Another Bite at the Apple

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The president held a press conference today to announce that yes, indeed, he will press Congress to act on health care reform this month. There’s was nothing immensely new about that development, but it’s interesting that Obama used the occasion to lay out, quite succinctly, the three key points he made in his health care summit with Republicans: why comprehensive reform is essential, why the time for “negotiations” is over, and why there’s nothing that unusual about the use of reconciliation (though he did not use the word, a very unfamiliar term to most people outside Washington) to get the job done. He essentially took another bite at the apple of responding to the most effective Republican lines of attack, and will apparently do so some more in appearances on the road this month.

On the other hand, the presidential press conference may get demoted on the nightly news if a possible scandal involving Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) continues to develop. Massa, a freshman from a highly marginal district, abruptly let it be known he was retiring. Some sources say he’s suffering from a recurrence of cancer, but Politico is reporting that he was about to come under investigation by the Ethics Committee for allegedly sexually harrassing a male staffer. If the latter story has a basis in reality, it will be big news tonight.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Rick Perry Gets Lucky Again

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Texas governor Rick Perry is not what you’d call a statesman, but as the old saying goes, if you can’t be good, be lucky. Perry’s been a very lucky–and opportunistic–politician. He was first elected to the Texas legislature as a Democrat (hard to believe, given his current behavior), and switched parties just in time to take advantage of the rise of the GOP in Texas. In his first statewide race, in 1990, he squeaked by the famous left-populist Jim Hightower to become Agriculture Commissioner; Hightower had not exactly made life easier for himself in Texas by becoming deeply involved in Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.

In 1998, Perry hitched a ride to the top of Texas politics as George W. Bush’s running-mate, again very narrowly winning the general election (this time over John Sharp) with a lot of help from Bush associates who were getting ready for W.’s presidential run and didn’t want a Democrat wreaking havoc in Austin when the candidate was out of state. Perry inherited the governorship two years later. His two re-elections haven’t been terribly impressive: in 2002, he beat Rick Sanchez, a political neophyte widely perceived as running a very bad campaign, and in 2006, survived with just 39 percent of the vote in a crazy four-candidate general election.

Perry’s great stroke of luck this year was to run against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a formidable politician in the past, in absolutely the worst climate imaginable for a United States senator. Hutchison also obliged Perry by running an unfocused campaign with virtually no message (she joined Sanchez on the Houston Chronicle’s list of the ten worst campaigns in Texas history). Moreover, a third candidate, Tea Party activist Debra Medina, self-destructed by going on Glenn Beck’s show and sounding like a 9/11 “truther.” Perry manged to win yesterday with few votes to spare, garnering 51 percent of the vote against Hutchison’s 30% and Medina’s 19%.

We’ll see if Perry’s luck holds one more time in November; his Democratic opponent, former Houston mayor Bill White, is a respected politician who will not roll over and play dead. It says a lot about the incumbent’s residual weakness that he’s not a prohibitive favorite in a state like Texas in a year like 2010.

Perry gets mentioned now and then as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. He would definitely be stretching his luck by taking his act the national level, but don’t rule it out for a guy who had the opportunity to watch George W. Bush up close and personal when he turned privilege and perfect timing into an unlikely rise to the presidency.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The Bunning Blockade Ends

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who had held up Senate passage of a $10 billion short-term benefits extension for days, finally relented yesterday and allowed the measure to come for a vote. Bunning’s objection to unanimous consent to pass the package resulted in the elapsing of funding for a host of federal programs, including infrastructure projects, unemployment benefits, and Medicare payments.

The Kentucky senator, who is retiring after this year (with a helpful nudge from his fellow Republicans), had demanded that Democrats find offsets in the budget for the legislation. Democrats retorted that the bill was a short-term emergency measure that did not fall under “pay-go” rules. (Democrats, on a party-line vote, reinstituted “pay-as-you-go” rules in January.)

The Bunning blockade proved to be a heaven-sent illustration of Republican obstructionism and heartlessness. McClatchy came up with a handy graphic depicting its state-by-state effects:

Even as the blockade stretched over the first couple of days of this week – leaving about 1.2 million unemployed people high and dry, 2,000 Department of Transportation workers furloughed, and numerous projects halted – some of Bunning’s colleagues actually voiced their support for his actions. Sen. John Cornyn (TX) said:

It’s not fun to be accused of having no compassion for the people who are out of work, the people for who these benefits should be forthcoming, and I believe will be forthcoming. But somebody has to stand up, finally, and say enough is enough, no more inter-generational theft from our children and grandchildren by not meeting our responsibilities today.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ), in response to Bunning’s filibuster of unemployment compensation, helpfully noted: “In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” Even newly minted Sen. Scott Brown gave Bunning’s efforts a thumbs-up:

The perception in Massachusetts and other parts of the country is that Washington is broken. And if it takes one guy to get up and make a stand, to point out that we need a funding source to pay for everything that’s being pushed here, I think that speaks for itself.

Here’s the best part: Bunning, along with every Republican in the Senate, voted against “pay-as-you-go” legislation. Republicans had thundered that the pay-go bill was a political fig leaf and that Democrats weren’t really serious about budget sanity. Considering that previous pay-go rules elapsed in 2002 under the Republicans’ watch, and that they also presided over the ballooning of the deficit, I suppose they’re experts on the subject.

About Those “Green Shoots” of Moderation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday I wrote about the conservative effort to convince the news media and others that crazy people were being kept under control by the Tea Party Movement and the Republican Party. There’s an even less credible media narrative kicking around that was pursued the same day by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times: Republican moderates are making a comeback!

If you understandably missed this development, here’s how Hook puts it:

With healthcare legislation mired in partisanship, “tea party” activists on the march and GOP leadership dominated by conservatives, Capitol Hill looks like a parched landscape for the withered moderate wing of the Republican Party.But green shoots are sprouting in Washington and on the campaign trail. A small band of Republican moderates in the Senate broke a logjam on jobs legislation. They added to their ranks with the arrival of another New England Republican, Scott Brown. And several moderate Republicans are in a good position to win Senate seats in November.

The article is loaded with qualifiers of this dubious proposition, but not enough of them. The jobs bill where “Republican moderates” — including Tea Party favorite Scott Brown — offered a few votes for cloture was a vastly watered-down $15 billion measure that included a payroll tax credit for employers long beloved of Republicans (indeed, that’s why it was in the bill). Once cloture was invoked, 13 GOPers voted for the bill, including such decidedly non-moderate senators as James Inhofe (OK), Richard Burr (NC) and Hatch (UT). Indeed, the only reason the bill was even controversial for Republicans is that it was offered by the Democratic leadership in lieu of a much more expensive and tax-cut laden bill worked out between Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA)  that most Democrats intensely disliked. Anyone expecting this development to lead to an outbreak of bipartisanship or a breakdown of Republican obstruction is smoking crack.

Hook’s optimistic spin on “moderate Republican” prospects for election to the Senate is equally off-base. She cites Rep. Mark Kirk (IL), Rep. Mike Castle (DE), Gov. Charlie Crist (FL), former Rep. Tom Campbell (CA), and former Rep. Rob Simmons (CT) as potential additions to the “moderate” ranks. Kirk moved hard right to win his primary, and is running even with his Democratic opponent. Campbell is best known at present as the object of primary opponent Carly Fiorina’s cult favorite “demon sheep” web ad; I’d bet serious money he doesn’t win his primary, and the winner likely won’t beat Democrat Barbara Boxer, either. Simmons is struggling against a well-financed primary opponent, and is trailing Democrat Richard Blumenthal by double digits. Crist is political toast. I’ll grant that Castle is in good shape, and has a quite moderate record (so far). But even if Castle and Kirk win, their election would no more than offset the retirements of George Voinovich and Judd Gregg in the less-than-loudly-conservative ranks. And Hook also doesn’t mention that at least two GOP senators who occasionally cooperate with Democrats, Bob Bennett and John McCain, could get purged in primaries.

As for the forward-looking optimism of Hooks’ “green shoots” metaphor, it should be noted that Castle is 70 years old; Simmons is 67; Campbell is 56; Crist is 53; and Kirk is 50. Even by the geriatric standards of the Senate, this group ain’t exactly the wave of the future. They also don’t look much like America.

Sure, if the Republlican caucus in the Senate expands significantly this November, it is going to include a handful of members who don’t regularly howl at the moon about “socialism.” But any suggestion that the ancient tribe of moderate Republicans is much more than an anthropological curiosity these days is just not credible. It says a lot of the direction of the GOP that the early 2012 presidential favorite of “moderates” appears to be Mitt Romney, who spent the entire 2008 cycle campaigning as the “true conservative” in the race.

If words like “moderate” have any real meaning, it’s not a word that should be applied to any major faction in today’s Republican Party.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

President Obama’s Letter: Setting up the Final Push

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The White House today released a letter from President Obama pointing a way forward for passing health care reform. True to the course that he set at the Blair House summit last week, he stressed the areas of agreement between the two parties, even as he acknowledged some unbridgeable differences.

A considerable portion of the letter — and the part that has gotten everyone’s attention — goes into detail about four GOP ideas that the president said he would like to see in any final package. The president writes:

1. Although the proposal I released last week included a comprehensive set of initiatives to combat fraud, waste, and abuse, Senator Coburn had an interesting suggestion that we engage medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs.

2. My proposal also included a provision from the Senate health reform bill that authorizes funding to states for demonstrations of alternatives to resolving medical malpractice disputes, including health courts. Last Thursday, we discussed the provision in the bills cosponsored by Senators Coburn and Burr and Representatives Ryan and Nunes (S. 1099) that provides a similar program of grants to states for demonstration projects. Senator Enzi offered a similar proposal in a health insurance reform bill he sponsored in the last Congress. As we discussed, my Administration is already moving forward in funding demonstration projects through the Department of Health and Human Services, and Secretary Sebelius will be awarding $23 million for these grants in the near future. However, in order to advance our shared interest in incentivizing states to explore what works in this arena, I am open to including an appropriation of $50 million in my proposal for additional grants. Currently there is only an authorization, which does not guarantee that the grants will be funded.

3. At the meeting, Senator Grassley raised a concern, shared by many Democrats, that Medicaid reimbursements to doctors are inadequate in many states, and that if Medicaid is expanded to cover more people, we should consider increasing doctor reimbursement. I’m open to exploring ways to address this issue in a fiscally responsible manner.

4. Senator Barrasso raised a suggestion that we expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). I know many Republicans believe that HSAs, when used in conjunction with high-deductible health plans, are a good vehicle to encourage more cost-consciousness in consumers’ use of health care services. I believe that high-deductible health plans could be offered in the exchange under my proposal, and I’m open to including language to ensure that is clear. This could help to encourage more people to take advantage of HSAs.

None of those suggestions should surprise anyone who saw the summit or has been paying attention to the president on health care the last few months. Three of the four touch on cost control, which is also not a surprise considering that’s the one area that both sides agree needs to be addressed (although only one party seems to be willing to actually pass legislation to do something about it). As TNR’s Jonathan Cohn rightly points out, the fraud and Medicaid payment proposals should win Democratic support, while the other two might have more trouble.

The key part of the letter, however, comes at the end:

I also believe that piecemeal reform is not the best way to effectively reduce premiums, end the exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions or offer Americans the security of knowing that they will never lose coverage, even if they lose or change jobs.

The president, who is scheduled to speak tomorrow to chart his way forward for passing reform, here seems like he’s laying the groundwork for Congress to go down the path everyone has already discussed: passage by the House of the comprehensive bill that the Senate has passed, and a sidecar reconciliation bill to “fix” parts of the bill that House members find objectionable.

What’s important, too, is the language that he uses to justify the continued push. If cost control was the issue on which he could reach out to Republicans, coverage and affordability for ordinary families are the talking points as far as selling reform to the public and to the Democratic caucus. Ending exclusions based on pre-existing conditions, lowering out-of-pocket costs, keeping coverage even after losing your job: these are all hugely popular and marketable ideas. The Democrats have thus far done a poor job of explaining the kitchen-table benefits of reform. But those benefits are real, and they will redound to the benefit of the party who can make reform happen, something Obama seems to understand.

The Republican Civil War: Your Guide to This Year’s Primaries

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

All across the country, Republicans are fantasizing about a gigantic electoral tide that will sweep out deeply entrenched Democratic incumbents this November. In their telling, this deep-red surge will be so forceful as to dislodge even legislators who don’t look vulnerable now, securing GOP control of both houses of Congress.

But could this scenario really come to pass? That will depend, in part, on what type of Republican Party the Democrats are running against in the fall.

Hence the importance of this year’s Republican civil war. In a string of GOP primary elections stretching from now until September, the future ideological composition of the elephant party hangs in the balance. Many of these primaries pit self-consciously hard-core conservatives, often aligned with the Tea Party movement, against “establishment” candidates — some who are incumbents, and some who are simply vulnerable to being labeled “RINOs” or “squishes” for expressing insufficiently ferocious conservative views.

Below is your guide to this year’s most important ideologically-freighted GOP primaries and their consequences. Confining ourselves just to statewide races, let’s take them in chronological order:

TEXAS, MARCH 2: Today’s showdown is in Texas, where “establishment” Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is challenging conservative incumbent Governor Rick Perry. Perry, who won only 39 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race in 2006, spent much of the last year cozying up to Tea Party activists and occasionally going over the brink into talk of secession. He seemed to have the race against the Washington-tainted Hutchinson well in hand, until a third GOP candidate, libertarian/Tea Party favorite Debra Medina, started to surge in the polls early this year.

Medina’s candidacy once threatened to knock Perry into a runoff or even displace Hutchison from the second spot. But then Medina went on “Glenn Beck” and expressed openness to the possibility that the federal government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Still, it’s not clear Perry will clear 50 percent. An expensive and potentially divisive runoff would weaken him against the Democratic candidate, Houston Mayor Bill White, who looks quite competitive in early polling.

INDIANA, MAY 4: In the Hoosier State, right-wingers are flaying each other. Former Senator Dan Coats, a relatively conservative figure with strong “establishment” support, faces three even more conservative rivals in the race to succeed Evan Bayh. Coats is a longtime favorite of religious conservatives and an early member of the evangelical conservative network which author Jeff Sharlet dubs “The Family.” He’s secured early endorsements from D.C.-based conservative leaders Mike Pence and James Bopp (an RNC member who authored both the “Socialist Democrat Party” and “litmus test” resolutions). But his Beltway support has created a backlash in Indiana, and some Second Amendment fans recall that Coats voted for the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban. Coats is also smarting from revelations that he’s been registered to vote in Virginia since leaving the Senate, and working in Washington as a lobbyist for banks, equity firms, and even foreign governments (his firm represented—yikes—Yemen).

With the vote coming so soon, hard-core conservatives probably won’t have time to unite behind an alternative; some favor Tea Party-oriented state senator Marlin Stutzman, while others are sticking with a old-timey right-wing warhorse, former Representative John Hostetler. But if they do, and Coats loses, it will probably spur a headlong national panic among “establishment” Republicans, even well-credentialed conservatives who haven’t quite joined the tea partiers. Indiana Democrats have managed to recruit a strong Senate nominee in Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who might hold onto Bayh’s Senate seat.

UTAH, MAY 8: Utah Senator Bob Bennett, the bipartisan dealmaker, is in trouble. He voted for TARP, he has been a high-visibility user of earmarks, and, worse yet, he co-sponsored a universal health-reform bill with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. So right-wingers want his head. Bennett’s defeat has become an obsession of influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson of Red State, and the Club for Growth, the big bully of economic conservatism, has attacked Newt Gingrich for speaking on his behalf.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

Bennett’s first test will come on May 8, when delegates to Utah’s state GOP convention will vote on a Senate nominee. If he fails to get 60 percent, he’ll be pushed into a June 22 primary. Bennett faces three potentially credible right-wing challengers, but the “comer” seems to be Mike Lee, a former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, who has been endorsed by Dick Armey’s powerful FreedomWorks organization. Since this is Utah, there is no Democrat in sight who is strong enough to exploit such a right-wing “purge.” Bennett’s defeat would only make the Republican Party more conservative, and provide another object lesson to any GOP-er thinking about cosponsoring major legislation with a Democrat.

KENTUCKY, MAY 18: Kentuckians will choose a nominee to replace crotchety conservative Senator Jim Bunning, who, as of this writing, has succeeded in temporarily killing unemployment insurance and COBRA health care benefits in order to protest federal spending. This Republican primary matches conservative Secretary of State Trey Grayson against Rand (son of Ron) Paul. Paul has surprised Grayson’s establishment allies—a list that includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—by surging to a sizable lead. A conspiracy theory-addled ophthalmologist with no political experience, Paul rivals Florida’s Marco Rubio as a Tea Party favorite—which is why Grayson decided to go after him from the right, hitting Paul for wavering on the need for federal action to ban abortion. But Rand has obtained cover on the social conservative front from a champion of anti-abortion politics, Sarah Palin, who endorsed Rand last month. The upshot for Democrats is that one of their candidates, Lieutenant Governor Dan Mongiardo or Attorney General Jack Conway, could have a decent shot at taking over a Republican seat.

IOWA, JUNE 8: This gubernatorial primary has implications for 2012. The big question is whether social conservative hardliner Bob Vander Plaats—who was Mike Huckabee’s Iowa campaign chairman in 2008—can upset former Governor Terry Branstad, a venerable figure who led the state for 16 years before retiring in 1998 (and who has surrounded himself with Mitt Romney acolytes). Branstad, who has a big lead in early general election polls against incumbent Democrat Chet Culver, is no favorite of the right. One leading conservative group, the Iowa Family Policy Center, has pledged to sit out the general election if Branstad is the nominee. The Democrats’ candidate, Chet Culver, is in deep trouble if Branstad wins; but he’s running even or ahead of Vander Plaats in the polls.

ARIZONA, AUGUST 24: Former congressman and talk show host J.D. Hayworth is threatening John McCain, a pariah to many conservatives for championing of immigration reform, among other sins dating back to 2000. (McCain recently gave Hayworth a gift by claiming he had been “misled” by Bush administration officials about the basic purpose of TARP funds in 2008. Not a terribly credible assertion, and it recalls George Romney’s famously self-destructive statement that he was “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam War.) McCain will probably survive, given his longstanding popularity in Arizona and help from Sarah Palin. But there’s a wild card: If attorneys for the state Republican Party succeed in overturning Arizona’s open primary law, McCain could go down, providing a graphic illustration of the GOP’s rightward trend since 2008.

FLORIDA, AUGUST 24: McCain’s buddy, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, is sinking like a stone. He’s trailing national conservative superstar Marco Rubio in recent polls, with the trend lines pointing straight down. Conservatives aligned with state’s real power, Jeb Bush, never liked Crist. But he went from “squish” to “enemy” last year by supporting Obama’s economic stimulus, instead of attacking it and pocketing the cash. Crist, though, is benefiting from reports that Rubio allegedly used a state party credit card for personal purchases. But he’s probably toast, just like his famously tanned hide.

NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPTEMBER 14: In New Hampshire, Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, a National Republican Senatorial Committee recruit of indistinct ideological character, will battle “true conservative” Ovide Lamontagne for the nomination to succeed retiring Senator Judd Gregg. An early poll put Lamontagne within nine points of Ayotte. If Lamontagne wins, he may lose to Democratic Representative Paul Hodes, who polls quite well in contrast.

In sum, the Democrats could well benefit from conservative victories in several of this year’s GOP primaries. But the larger impact of such purges may occur after November 2. By 2012, the economy will likely have improved and turnout patterns will be much more favorable to Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, would be even more radical than they are today. At that point, an unimpressive Republican presidential field could become fatally weak if the nominating process is dominated by a herd of elephants stampeding to the right.

This item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

A Pretty Wild Mainstream

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I don’t quite know exactly where this is coming from, but there’s clearly a media effort underway to show that the conservative movement and the Republican Party are reining in “the extremists” in their ranks, presumably in order to look all ready to govern.

Today’s Politico features a long piece by Kenneth Vogel detailing claims by various conservative and Tea Party spokesmen that the influence of “the fringe” has been grossly exaggerated by “the Left,” and that in fact unruly elements are being ignored or excluded by the Right’s grownups.

“Birthers,” Birchers and militia types, we are told, are being shown the door, and haven’t been that important to begin with, except in the propaganda of the Left.

The door-keepers in Vogel’s account, however, are not a group that would normally strike you as moderately-tempered unless the bar for political sanity is set very low. One is none other than Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation, who told Vogel that activists needed “to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked.” That’s interesting, since Phillips’ recent National Tea Party Convention featured a race-baiting keynote address by Tom Tancredo, another speech by “birther” advocate Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, and a breakout panel headed by Christian Right extremist Roy Moore. Another is dirty-trickster and ACORN conspiracy theorist Andrew Breitbart, who is credited with disrepecting Farah at Phillips’ event. Still another is Erick Erickson of RedState, that ferocious advocate of strife against “squishes” and moderates of every variety.

If these folk want to keep “the Left” from talking about crazy people on the Right, they might want to make their policing a bit more rigorous than the occasional tip from the coach to stay on the political sidelines. “The Left” did not invent the cosponsorship of the recent Conservative Political Action Conference by the John Birch Society and the militia-friendly Oathkeepers. But more to the point, it’s a disturbing sign in intself that people like Phillips, Breitbart and Erickson are being treated as some sort of “mainstream,” where it’s perfectly normal to call President Obama a socialist, treat Democrats as presumptive traitors, and advocate an array of radical economic and social policies. All the “self-policing of the Right” narrative really shows is how far and fast conservatives have recently moved to what used to be thought of as “the fringe.” It’s cold comfort to learn there is ample frontier territory on the Right that’s well beyond that.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/heroiclife/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.