I am going to try and leave this subject behind after today, but I just read two commentaries in Slate that fit with my initial and follow-up thoughts on Specter's defection and what it means for the G.O.P.
What I'm most interested in is how this looks through the lens of history. These two pieces also look at it from that angle.Bruce Reed picks up on two key points, first that there was a time when it was the Democrats who had a tainted brand:
In the same way that 25 years ago the South soured on the national Democratic brand and spurred a mass of party defections, the Republican brand has now gone south in the Northeast and will not soon recover.
And second that without the "middle ground" a political
party will remain fringe:
Specter left the GOP because it abandoned the sensible center and stopped trying to be a Big Tent, thanks to conservative activists who were bound and determined to send moderates like him packing, no matter how much it hurt their party's interests. The object lesson is clear: Setting out to purge your party of independent thinkers won't make it stronger, but it will drive off enough independents to make your party smaller.
Finally he warns that Democrats are doomed to repeat Republican mistakes if they listen to the Progressive wing that is seeking to push moderates out.
David Greenburg reaches way back to the famous party switch of New York City Mayor John Lindsay in 1971 but points out that the Democrats of 1971 looked a lot like the G.O.P. of 2001:
As far back as the 1960s, even as Lindsay and other liberals were bolting the GOP, the Democrats' troubles seemed far graver—as white Southerners, Catholics, and blue-collar workers left the party in droves. This trend became a full-blown crisis in 1980 when Democratic votes helped elect Ronald Reagan and a Republican Congress, making the "Reagan Democrats" the demographic group of the decade.
And he goes out to echo a point that I made, namely that it was the G.O.P. moderates who gave the party power in the Senate during the ‘80s:
Although conservatives scored a momentous victory in 1980, the Republican Party's liberal wing survived. Paradoxically, the GOP's majority status allowed moderates and even liberals to remain viable within it—giving some substance to what Specter claimed, with only minor exaggeration, amounted to a "Reagan Big Tent." When you're winning, it's easy to share the electoral wealth.
Indeed, and when you are losing it is easy to retrench, which seems to be exactly what is happening.
If the G.O.P. of 2008 is indeed similar to the Democratic
Party of 1980 then this may be a long walk in the wilderness.
As Obama celebrates Day 100 with a town hall, a presser, a new Democratic Senator and House Member, and a newly passed budget, the G.O.P. is left sitting in the corner wondering WTF.
Again, smarter people than I continue to deconstruct this:
- The New York Times covers the debate that is raging inside the party (big tent or stick to our guns?).
- Slate talks about how the next 100 days will be even worse for the G.O.P. now that they have no political clout to speak of.
- Olympia Snowe pens an op-ed and points out that ten years ago the Republicans were close to a 60 seat majority but lost big in 2000. She also laments that the party didn't really learn from the Jim Jeffords departure.
But as I pointed out earlier, they are not better off without 'em. In fact, without 'em is right where they are now: an opposition party with almost no power to speak of and little agreement on how to turn it around.
What the current, strident G.O.P. forgets is that without the "RINOs" they cannot hold a majority in the Senate. Nor can the Democrats hold the chamber without moderate "Blue Dog" members. Look at the list of Senators from any given year. The margin of power greatly rests with the Senators in the middle.
Yesterday I listed six moderates from the 97th Congress ('81-'83). Just for fun I looked at another Republican majority: the 104th Congress ('95-'97). These two are good cases because they both began after landslide election years for Republicans.
In '81 the G.O.P. held 53 seats. So the six moderates I listed were the margin of power. And in '95 they had 53 seats again. And once again I can name you at least six moderates in that Senate (Chafee, Specter, Jeffords, Hatfield, Kassebaum, and Snowe). And there is your margin of power.
Just as the Democrats cannot ignore the Blue Dogs, the Republicans cannot dismiss the RINOs and expect to be anything but a fringe party in this country. When the Democrats moved too far to the left in the 70s and 80s they found themselves on the outside looking in. Now the Republicans are too far to the right and find themselves in the same situation.
People argue that America is essentially a center-right nation, but I disagree. America is essentially a pragmatic and moderate country, so whichever party can attract more voters from the the center is the one generally calling the shots.
I'm thinking that I need to lose a little weight. Not a lot, just like 5 to 10 pounds. Since going to the beach in South Africa I realized that my normal Winter pudge was a not so little this year.
I partly blame MLTU for not finishing her dinner most nights and leaving half a plate of food that I feel compelled to eat. Then there is the fact that I moved offices last year and now I only have to walk 100 feet for most meetings (instead of across the hall).
Since I already eat nothing but yogurt and coffee for breakfast and a salad with some grilled chicken for lunch (yes, that is breakfast and lunch almost every day). I have to look for other ways to attack this problem. So I've Identified three S's that I now must cut back on or avoid outright:
- Seconds
- Snacks
- Scotch
Forgive me if this shift in my internal body chemistry leads to more snarky posts. Also, please forgive the literal navel gazing of this post.
I have to say that I was completely blindsided by today's news that Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter was switching parties. It seems that the old ties and loyalty that have kept him in the G.O.P. for all these years were not enough this time.
Of course I have read more than a few takes on this development by people much smarter than I am:
- Nate Silver does the math (of course) and figures out that when members of Congress switch parties their voting records do indeed change.
- John Dickerson points out that as a Democrat, Specter will be less inclined to stand with the G.O.P. on filibusters. So while he may not vote with the Dems. all the time, he will be much less likely to be an obstructionist.
- And on Room for Debate, Glenn Greenwald points out that no matter what Micheal Steele (does he still have a job?) says, Specter stood with his party more often than not.
To me this event is just the latest evidence that the party I once belonged to no longer exists. The "moderate" Republican is dead and the party is in a self perpetuating inward spin to far right extremism (Nate calls this the Republican Death Spiral).
Consider some of the Republicans that Specter served with as a Freshman Senator in the 97th Congress: Lowell Weiker, John Chafee, Nancy Kassebaum, Mark Hatfield, Bob Packwood (personal flaws aside, he was a decent Senator) and Warren Rudman. They were all moderate Republicans and not a one of them would be in the party today because there is no room for them.
In his press conference following the announcement Specter was candid that his likely primary battle against former Congressman and former Club for Growth head Pat Toomey drove this decision:
“I’m not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate, not prepared to have that record decided by that jury,” he declared in a rather defiant tone at the conference.
One has to wonder if Specter watched the Tea Parties last week and thought "holy s**t, these are the crazy people who control my fate."
If the right is dominated by people who believe outrageous conspiracy theories like "FEMA is setting up concentration camps", "Obama is not American (and he's gay)", "Swine Flu was manufactured to get the HHS nominee appointed" and "the Humane Society is a front for gun control activists", (thanks to A Mistake for the last two links) where is a moderate (or even slightly moderate) Republican left to go?
When Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh are essentially leading the party, then it doesn't need need anyone's help being marginalize.
Apparently there is an unused maximum security detention center that was built in Hardin Montana, a small city just east of Billings. Since there are no prisoners, and thus no jobs, city officials are putting forward the idea that the Two Rivers Detention Facility could accept prisoners from Gitmo when "Camp Victory" closes next year.
This afternoon NPR interviewed an official from the authority that built the prison. He basically invited members of DOJ and the Obama administration to go up to Montana, check out the facility and at least consider the option.
So on its surface this looks lie a win, win, win right? People in a VERY RED state that just so happens to have two Democratic Senators and a popular Democratic Governor are asking the President to send the "unlawful combatants" to their city. Hardin, an economically depressed town, gets federal jobs, Obama gets to close Gitmo and he doesn't have to force the detainees on a community.
Right.
Or this could turn into a big mess. Digging deeper, it seems that the privately owned facility was built based on a gentleman's agreement that it would become part of the Montana state prison system. That never happened. What's more, it is illegal for Montana to accept out-of-state prisoners, so legislation would need to be passed to make this happen. (Thanks to the commenter on NPR.org for pointing all this out.)
When you look at it like that its a lose, lose, lose. Obama and DOJ get entangled in a local issue that seems a bit sketchy, the Montana legislature is forced to debate accepting the prisoners and the clock continues to tick down on the one year deadline.
The point of all this? Two things: One, this is a really incomplete piece of reporting by NPR (come on guys, stop with the reporting by anecdotes s**t). And two, Bush really put us in a legal and political mess with this offshore prison of his.
Oy.
Computer program to take on 'Jeopardy!'
The proposed contest is an effort by I.B.M. to prove that its researchers can make significant technical progress by picking “grand challenges” like its early chess foray. The new bid is based on three years of work by a team that has grown to 20 experts in fields like natural language processing, machine learning and information retrieval.
Really? Going head-to-head against Ken Jennings is a "grand challenge" comparable to playing Kasparov at chess? I'm not sure "Potent Potables" and castling are in the same league.
Aren't there better things we can do with an A.I. super computer right now, like, I don't know, asking it how to fix the economy or global warming?
The engineers on this project are currently debating what kind of avatar this computer should have when on the air. I nominate Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery. Think about it, how funny would it be to hear "You'll rue the day you crossed me Trebek" coming from a computer simulate voice?
This is comedy gold.
Please nominate Newt for President in 2012.
Pretty please? With sugar on top?
After all, the last two times you nominated an old(er) party standard-bearer it worked out just great.
[Post inspired by this article.]
What a throw down.
Hannity says he'd be waterboarded for charity, Olberman takes him up on it:
Your move Sean.
Via Michael Calderone.
Jim Tedisco has conceded (via AOA).The new Congressman for New York's 20th District will be Democrat Scott Murphy.
A few weeks back I started tracking the evolution of the vote count during the recanvasing. Due to different disputes of absentee ballots (and various court rulings on those disputes) the count has changed almost daily, and ofter twice a day, since election night. Since I am kind of a political geek, I thought it deserved a chart, take a look:
The current count is Murphy 80,420 to Tedisco 80,021, a 399 vote margin. I am sure it will change before the vote is certified, but none the less it seems to be over. And guess what? Nate Silver called this one, not once, but three times.
Congratulations to Rep. Murphy. Thank goodness this one is over.
So, does Michael Steele start writing his resignation letter now?
More evidence that the anti-Twits are gaining momentum:
For the second time this week, Joseph Jaffe has spoken out against the Twitter hype. This time he wonders if its all just a giant Ponzi Scheme:So it's articles and posts about Twitter being promoted, distributed and amplified via Twitter and in doing so, driving traffic back to the same sites and blogs that set the ball rolling in the first place. And it's all thanks to the A.D.D.-like 140 character limit that basically lets you say Jack Squat except for a codified bit.ly slurl whatever that pushes you to go back to the scene of the crime.
Well put Joe. (Read the whole post if you have a second, it's well worth it.)
The New York Times got two steps closer to the backlash:
Maureen Dowd doesn't like Twitter and even took the time to let it's founder know this in person. I found out two things about Biz Stone from this piece: he's kind of funny and he hates the word Twit (in reference to a user of Twitter). This means I will use the word even more.
Also, from the Times, the Bits Blog has weighed
in with a thumbs down:
The news feed on Facebook, which isn’t a slave to 140 characters, does a much better job doing what Twitter is trying to do. If you enter links on Facebook (rather than having them fed from Twitter or some other place), the headline and site name are formatted nicely instead of as a short URL. And it is much easier to read an entire conversation in one place.
My friend GB sent me that last link and asked "Are
you dictating our culture? I swear, one week after you mention something, it is
everywhere...".
Becuase he sent it to me on Facebook we were able to have a converation about this (imaging that). I thanked him for the nice compliment and told him that while I have had my share of scoopes, the reality is that the Times is generally a week or more behind everyone (especially on tech issues).
Stay tuned, I am sure there is more coming.
