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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Month: July 2011

P.R. Campaign Needed to Check Government-Bashing

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on July 19, 2011.
A couple of paragraphs from former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s blog jump out to underscore a huge gap in public awareness that must be addressed:

A recent paper by Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler surveyed how many recipients of government benefits don’t really believe they have received any benefits. She found that over 44 percent of Social Security recipients say they “have not used a government social program.” More than half of families receiving government-backed student loans said the same thing, as did 60 percent of those who get the home mortgage interest deduction, 43 percent of unemployment insurance beneficiaries, and almost 30 percent of recipients of Social Security Disability.
…One would have thought the last few years of mine disasters, exploding oil rigs, nuclear meltdowns, malfeasance on Wall Street, wildly-escalating costs of health insurance, rip-roaring CEO pay, and mass layoffs would have offered a singular opportunity to explain why the nation’s collective well-being requires a strong and effective government representing the interests of average people.

Andrew Levison and others have advocated government reform and getting people more involved in decision-making to challenge the GOP’s “government is the problem” meme. No doubt this is correct. But I think the federal government has an additional problem — lousy public relations. It’s as if even Democratic administrations have been hustled to believe that promoting the effectiveness of government programs is somehow an unacceptably partisan activity.
The selection above from Reich’s blog indicates that it’s not safe to assume that citizens have an adequate awareness of what government does for them. Citizens do need to be expressly reminded from time to time about what they get for their taxes. It’s not a panacea for government-bashing. Government certainly needs reforms to improve public attitudes toward it. But not educating the public about what government does for them makes the Republicans’ anti-government propaganda a lot easier.
I think there should be a permanent public education campaign, using every facet of the mass media to remind people of the important things that government does for them. It should be creative, use humorous skits — whatever it takes to get the public’s attention.
When corporate America wants to sell a product, they promote the hell out of it. Government should do the same, if it wants people to know that they are getting value for their money.
Government funding of such a campaign could certainly be justified. In fact not doing it is more of an indefensible failure, something that is understandable only when it happens during Republican administrations. Progressive groups should also participate in a major public education campaign. Doing no p.r. is a gift to the Republicans.
The website, governmentisgood.com, one of the best internet-based antidotes to government-bashing, has an interesting post “Publicizing What Government Does for Us,” which argues,

We also need to become more aware of what government is doing for us. Many of us rarely think about what we get for our tax dollars – the kinds of services that our local, state and federal governments are providing for us every day. Remarkably, when asked if government has had a positive effect on their lives, 45% of Americans insisted that it has not. But it is revealing that when these same people were asked about specific government programs, a majority said that they had benefited from programs on food and drug safety, consumer protection, workplace regulations, public universities, public schools, roads and highways, parks and recreation, environmental laws, medical research, police and the courts, and social security. So when people stop thinking about government in the abstract, and are made to think of particular government programs, they are more apt to recognize their beneficial effects on their own lives.
Pollsters have found that if they first remind people of the various government programs and services provided for them, and then ask them to rate government, the results improve. “After people consider different government activities and programs, they are more likely to report that government has a positive effect on their lives.” Hardly surprising.
…Governments could also learn from non-profit organizations and charities, which send out annual letters to their donors explaining all the good works that have come from their donations. Our state and local governments should be sending out “annual reports” that inform citizens of all the good their tax dollars are doing. For example, our local government should tell us how many criminals it has arrested, how many supermarket scanners and gas pumps it has checked, how many fires it has put out, how many parks it has been maintaining, how many construction sites it has inspected, how many miles of roads it has cleaned and plowed, how many gallons of clean water it has provided, how many drunk drivers it has gotten off the roads, how many restaurants it has inspected, how many people have used the public libraries, how many children it has educated, and so on. As the old saying goes, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it” – and government is “doing it” for citizens every day.

Nothing is going to stop the Republicans from wholesale government-bashing. But a strong, well-crafted response from Democrats and progressives can help limit their effectiveness.


Scratch ‘Entitlement’ from Dem Vocabulary

This item by J.P. Green was originally published on July 16, 2011.
Political correspondent Bill Boyarsky makes a good point in his Truthdig post “Entitlement Is a Republican Word.”

At his news conference this week, President Barack Obama seized on a misleading Washington word–“entitlements”–to describe the badly needed aid programs that are likely to be cut because of his compromises with the Republicans.
“Entitlement” is a misleading word because it masks the ugly reality of reducing medical aid for the poor, the disabled and anyone over 65 as well as cutting Social Security. Calling such programs entitlements is much more comfortable than describing them as what they are–Medicare, Social Security and money for good schools, unemployment insurance, medical research and public works construction that would put many thousands to work.
It’s also a Republican word. It implies that those receiving government aid have a sense of entitlement, that they’re getting something for nothing. And now it’s an Obama word as he moves toward the center and away from the progressives who powered his 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination over centrist Hillary Clinton.
“There is, frankly, resistance on my side to do anything on entitlements,” he said before heading into another negotiating session over raising the debt limit and cutting the budget. “There is strong resistance on the Republican side to do anything on revenues. But if each side takes a maximalist position, if each side wants 100 percent of what its ideological predispositions are, then we can’t get anything done.”

Having been guilty of using ‘entitlements’ on many occasions, I now realize Boyarsky is right. It is a convenient catch-all term, but it is freighted with negative overtones and plays right into the Republican scam of making programs working people have paid for sound a little like privileges provided to slackers.
Boyarksky goes on to fault the President for caving on social program cuts and adds “To stop them, Obama has to be honest, forthright and progressive–and stop using “entitlements” to refer to worthwhile government programs. He’s a writer. He must know what negative nuances the word carries.”
I’m not so sure as Boyarksy that President Obama used the term with full awareness of its more nuanced implications. The term has creeped into mainstream reportage and common parlance, even among liberals. But Boyarksy is dead right that the President and all progressives need to stop using it, because every time we use it, we reinforce the GOP meme that needed — and hard-earned — social programs are extravagant give-aways.


Bowers: concentrate progressive resources on strategic elections

This item by James Vega was originally published on July 12, 2011.
Chris Bowers one of the most consistently insightful progressive electoral strategists. In a June 19th Kos post he put forward a provocative thesis – that progressives should concentrate their resources on elections where a win is clearly recognized as a victory for progressive ideas.
You should read the whole piece but here is the gist of his argument:

We have to start winning elections in ways so that the majority of political observers believe the defeated candidate lost because s/he opposed one or more progressive legislative priorities. Just defeating someone who opposes progressive legislation with someone who supports it is not enough. A wide array of pundits, candidates and political professionals must believe that opposition to progressive policies was the primary reason an elected official was removed from office. That is the only way we are going to start convincing people that opposing progressive legislation is truly bad idea for someone’s political career. As such, it’s also the only way we’re going to start getting progressive legislation passed on a regular basis.
If political observers think we won an election because our opponent had corruption issues, it won’t build progressive power. If political observers think we won because the other side had crazy candidates, it won’t change legislative outcomes. If people think we won because we were well-organized or because we used clever new tactics, then they will come to our seminars about how to run a campaign-but they will not pass our desired public policy into law. Hell, even if we win because the country is in the dumps and we get a wave election, that will give us a brief shot at power but nothing over the long-term (see 1977-1980, 1993-1994, and 2009-2010).
Right now, there are at least two fights that fit this mold:
• The first is the recall campaign in Wisconsin. The vast majority of political observers know and admit that this campaign is about Republicans stripping collective bargaining rights. As such, winning the recalls has real potential to strike a blow against the idea that pissing off the left has no electoral consequences. We can show that stripping collective bargaining rights can and will result in the people supporting it being removed from office. This will have a major impact on other states.
• The second campaign that currently fits this model is the battle over Medicare. This is because it isn’t really that hard to get candidates, pundits and political professionals to believe campaigns can be lost for favoring cuts to Medicare and/or Social Security. …the NY-26 special election, even though it featured a semi-major third party candidate, was an important step in cementing that belief. Imagine how deeply ingrained that belief will become if we retake in the House in 2012 while defeating Paul Ryan!
If tactics are how you fight a battle, but strategy is the rationale behind what battles you choose to fight, then the strategy to building lasting progressive power is to choose to fight battles like Lamont vs. Lieberman, the Wisconsin recall elections, and going explicitly after Republicans–or anyone–on Medicare and Social Security. We can’t just win elections, and we can’t just win elections with Better Democrats. We have to win elections in which people believe the outcome was determined by popular support for progressive policies, and a backlash against those who opposed them. That’s the only way politicians will believe they have to support progressive policies in order to stay in office, and thus the only way progressives are going to stop being thwarted and disappointed even when Democrats are the party in power


Capping Spending As the Population Ages

One of the reasons the GOP’s drive to cap (either via statute or a constitutional amendment) federal spending at 18% of GDP is even more radical than it sounds is that it’s a mite strange to insist the federal government dramatically shrink on the very brink of the retirement of the baby boom generation, which will represent a momentous if temporary boost in government’s obligations under current policies.
At National Journal, Ron Brownstein notes that the last time federal spending was at 18% of GDP was in 1966, which also happens to be the year Medicare was inaugurated. Now federal expenditures targeted to retirees are guaranteed to swell without an abrupt abandonment of the entire New Deal/Great Society safety net:

Two factors above all are swelling those programs. One is the unbroken rise in per capita health care spending as medical technology advances. The other is the growing elderly population. When Medicare began in 1966, it served about 19 million seniors. Today, the program serves nearly 48 million. Its trustees project that by 2035 that number will approach 86 million.
Against that overwhelming demographic pressure, mandating that federal spending return to its 1966 level is like ordering the tide to reverse its course. Although many Republicans want to cap federal spending at 18 percent of the economy, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone will consume about 15 percent of the nation’s total economic output by 2035. And under other scenarios that CBO has explored, even that figure might be optimistic.
That prospect points toward two large conclusions. One is that it’s unrealistic to limit federal spending to levels last seen when the elderly represented only about half as large a share of the population as they will in the decades ahead. Given the demographic demands, future federal spending will almost certainly require more than 21 percent of the economy–although likely less than the swollen 25 percent level reached after 2009’s stimulus program. A corollary is that sooner or later, the demands of providing for an aging society without gutting everything else that government does will require Washington to raise more revenue.

To hear Republicans tell it, Democrats in Washington are on some sort of ideological bender aimed at massively expanding the federal government; all GOPers are doing is putting on the brakes. (Actually, the more honest conservatives admit they are trying to return to the size and role of government as it existed long, long ago, perhaps as long ago as the 1920s, but they are the exception).
The reality is that (a) current policies produce higher federal spending in the short term because bad economic times automatically propel millions of people into eligibility for federal benefits; and (b) they produce higher federal spending over the long run because health care costs (private as well as public) remain out of control, and because the population is both growing and aging. You can make the argument that we just can’t afford the kind of society we enjoyed in past decades, but it’s long past time that conservatives stop pretending they are just bravely defending the status quo against crazy liberal efforts to turn America into Sweden.


Debt Default and Public Opinion

As the two parties in Washington reach a critical point in the negotiations and maneuvering over the debt limit and an impending default, there are wildly varying claims being made about public opinion on the subject. At HuffPost Pollster, Mark Blumenthal sorts through the claims and provides some clarity on a very murky subject:

First, the debt ceiling issue is inherently complex and remote. Fewer than a third of Americans say they are closely following the debate. A Pew Research Center/Washington Post survey in early July found just 18 percent of Americans saying they understood “very well” what would happen if the government does not raise the debt ceiling, and a subsequent Pew Research poll found more than half (52 percent) saying they find the debt limit issue hard to understand.

Even among those who feel they have a grip on the whole interlocking set of topics, different survey wordings elicit very different emotions:

Americans don’t like the sound of debt or deficits. So when a pollster asks, as the Fox News poll did this week, whether Congress should pass an “up or down vote on raising the nation’s debt limit,” 60 percent say they would vote against while only 35 percent would vote in favor.
But Americans also don’t like the idea of default and bankruptcy. So when a pollster explains, as an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll question did this week, that an increase is necessary for the U.S. Treasury “to avoid going into bankruptcy and defaulting on its obligations,” more favor raising the debt limit (38 percent) than not (31 percent).
Perhaps more important, the anxiety about rising debt is strongly related to worries about government overspending. So when pollsters ask about proposals to increase the debt ceiling that also include cuts in government spending — as on this week’s CNN poll — they find majority support.
Of course, huge majorities also oppose cuts on spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, as the new CNN poll reaffirms. So if a deal achieves significant spending reductions that include cuts in those popular programs, some future polling question may well show majority opposition to that deal.

So is public opinion on the debit limit and a possible debt default just a meaningless hash that politicians should ignore–or fee confident they can manipulate? Not exactly.

[F]or all the contradiction, the polls of the last week or so have produced some consistent findings:
* Every poll released this week that asked found Americans prefer a deal featuring a mix of tax hikes and spending cuts to a deal featuring just spending cuts.
* Most of the surveys find strong sentiment in favor of compromise, especially among Democrats and independents.
* The surveys all show Americans expressing significantly more confidence and trust in President Obama’s handling of the issue than of either the Republican or Democratic leadership in Congress.
* The polls that have tracked identically-worded questions about raising the debt ceiling, such as CBS News, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Pew Research Center and YouGov/Polimetrix, have all shown sentiment rising in favor of increasing the limit.

This is probably why congressional Democrats are increasingly encouraging their leadership to toughen their stance at a time when they are beginning to hold a stronger, if hardly steady, hand in public opinion.


Voters With Disabilities — A Growing Political Force

You don’t see much in the MSM or political blogosphere about the political priorities and impact of one large political demographic in particular, people with disabilities. Perhaps it’s because the category cuts across many other demographics, race, age, gender, class, sexual orientation etc. with all of the political concerns that come with overlapping identity facets.
With one exception, however, Democrats have demonstrated an edge with this constituency in presidential elections.
In 1992, for example, President George H. W. Bush was that rarest of Republican birds — an actual champion of rights for a group of disadvantaged citizens, in that he strongly supported Americans with Disabilities Act. Yet, here’s what happened in the election, according to Humphrey Taylor, writing for The Harris Poll as its president/ceo:

In the election, Clinton enjoyed a 24 percent lead among disabled voters, which was 19 percentage points better than his 5 point margin of victory. In 1988, George Bush lost the disabled vote by 5 percentage points to Michael Dukakis, which was only 13 points worse than Bush’s 8 point margin of victory.

Taylor goes on to note that people with disabilities were then about 13 percent of the population, roughly the same percentage as African Americans. Other estimates are much higher, including a broader universe of disabilities and “impairments” of varying severity — currently as many as 51 million Americans. Their political impact may be even greater, considering family members who are also affected by their disabilities.
In 1992, however, only about 10 percent of total votes were cast by people with disabilities, notes Taylor. According to Taylor’s analysis of the pro-Democratic tilt in that year:

In 1992, it seems likely that disabled voters — who are much poorer and are much more likely to be unemployed than other voters — were particularly badly hit by the nation’s economic problems for which George Bush was generally blamed.
Furthermore, they were more concerned about health care reform, an issue where Clinton enjoyed a clear advantage. For these and possibly other reasons, disabled voters did not vote to support a president who has pushed very hard for their rights, harder than many Conservatives and Republicans would have liked.

Taylor tracked the presidential preferences of voters with disabilities at several points over the 1992 campaign, noting that Bush got a very significant bump with these voters after the Republican convention — he referenced the constituency and strong support for the Americans with Disabilities Act in his acceptance speech. But his bump quickly tanked over the following weeks as Clinton gained ground.
In 2004 available data indicates that voters with disabilities changed course. “People with disabilities have historically been much more likely to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate with the exception of 2004 when they appeared to be more likely to vote for the Republican candidate, President George W. Bush,” according to the Kessler Foundation/National Organization on Disability 2010 report, “The ADA: 20 Years Later.”
In 2008, however, they cast 50 percent of their votes for Sen. Obama, vs. 44 percent for Sen. McCain, according to the final pre-election Harris Poll survey. The 2012 election should be an interesting test of this constituency’s preferences, considering the impact of HCR’s protection of people with disabilities from discrimination based on ‘prior condition’ by health insurance companies. They are also disproportionately impacted by budget cuts for health and social services, as well as unemployment.
Recent Harris Poll data indicates an impressive increase in turnout for voters with disabilities in presidential elections, with participation rates of 33 percent in 1996; 41 percent in 2000; 52 percent in 2004; and 59 percent in 2008, about the same as the general population for the first time. If this rising turnout trend continues among voters with disabilities — and their family members — it could provide an edge for President Obama and Dems in 2012.


Unemployment: The Broader Context

At the New Yorker, George Packer offers a vivid reminder that unemployment rates significantly understate the number of people struggling to survive in this economy, and requiring a bit of help from their government, if it deigns to offer it:

In the midst of the debt crisis in Washington, D.C., Danny Hartzell backed a Budget rental truck up to a no-frills apartment building that is on a strip of motels and pawnshops in Tampa, Florida. He had been laid off by a packaging plant during the financial crisis of 2008, had run through his unemployment benefits, and had then taken a part-time job stocking shelves at Target in the middle of the night, for $8.50 an hour. His daughter had developed bone cancer, and he was desperate to make money, but his hours soon dwindled to four or five a week. In April, Hartzell was terminated. His last biweekly paycheck was for a hundred and forty dollars, after taxes. “It’s kind of like I’ve fallen into that non-climbable-out-of rut,” he said. “If you can’t climb out, why not move?”
On the afternoon of July 1st, Hartzell was loading the family’s possessions into the rental truck–and brushing off the roaches that had infested the apartment, so that the bugs wouldn’t make the move, too–when a letter arrived from the State of Florida. Four days earlier, Governor Rick Scott, a Republican backed by the Tea Party, had signed a law making it harder for Floridians to collect jobless benefits, and the letter informed Hartzell that he was ineligible for new benefits after losing his job at Target. “I guess it’s just all water under the bridge at this point anyway, being that we’re going to stake a new claim,” Hartzell told his fifteen-year-old son. “Right, Brent?” Then the Hartzells drove ten hours north, to rural Georgia, where no job or house awaited them–only an old friend Hartzell had reconnected with on Facebook, and the hope of a fresh start.
On the day the family moved, there were officially 14.1 million unemployed Americans, or 9.2 per cent of the workforce. Hartzell himself probably isn’t counted in these statistics. In recent years, he has fallen into the more nebulous categories of the part-time employed, the long-term unemployed, and the “marginally attached”–the no-longer-looking unemployed. Economists report that the broader, and more accurate, unemployment rate is 16.2 per cent. Three years after the economic meltdown, nearly one in six Americans are out of work.

This tale of tragedy is totally aside from the number of Americans who have jobs but whose employers are using the leverage supplied by the economy to keep their wages and benefits low, and their mouths shut. It’s a perfect environment for the bullying of middle-class working Americans, in the workplace and in state legislatures and in Congress. We are a long, long way from anything resembling what used to be called “The American Dream,” and you don’t have to be a big believer in class warfare to note that all the abstract arguments for austerity and limited government are on behalf of people who have for many years cruised through hard times doing very well, without much thought for their fellow-countrymen in this nation conservatives claim to adore.


Balanced Budget Shenanigans

Dave Weigel has been all over this story, which is strange enough that it might otherwise be difficult to credit: Republicans promoting the “cut, cap, balance” proposal keep talking about robust numbers of Democrats who have supported a Balanced Budget Amendment, as evidence their pet rock is more viable than other debt limit solutions circulating around Washington. A list being circulated by Sen. Mike Lee of UT counts 23 such Democrats in the Senate alone.
As Dave points out, some of the Democrats on the Lee’s list are just talking generally about how nice it would be to balance budgets (in at least one case, at the state level), and most of the others are touting very old versions of a BBA that simply required, you know, a balanced budget, often with significant loopholes.
But what makes this gambit outrageous and significant isn’t just that it’s mendacious: it also helps underscore the fact that the constitutional amendment called for in the CCB legislation isn’t primarily about balancing the federal budget. It’s about the provisions in the amendment proposal that would create a permanent supermajority requirement for enacting tax increases (a faithful echo of the Prop 13 requirement that has made such a fiscal mess of California over the years), and a permanent limitation on federal spending linked to a permanent percentage of GDP.
Republicans are perfectly within their rights to promote these terrible ideas for writing their inflexible fiscal and economic theories into the U.S. Constitution, but they shouldn’t get away with pretending the balanced budget part of the proposal is any more than a pretext. In reality, they oppose balanced budgets unless they are achieved solely through sharp and arbitrary spending reductions. It’s sort of like Republican support for “pro-family policies”–it’s only “pro-family” if you accept their definitions of “families” and their assumptions about what is good for “families.” In other words, it’s all a smokescreen for their real agenda.


Michele Bachman’s Very Rough Road Ahead

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
In a remarkably short period of time, Representative Michele Bachmann has been transformed from a fringe figure, known mainly for her abrasive and often inaccurate attacks on the president and other Democrats, into a legitimate presidential candidate. The latest national poll of Republicans (from Public Policy Polling) shows her pulling ahead of long-time front-runner Mitt Romney. The latest poll of likely Caucus-goers in Iowa has the same result. She’s even gaining rapidly on Romney in New Hampshire, and making a splash in many other states. She is now poised to win the first real contest of the cycle, the Iowa GOP Straw Poll on August 13, and could do so in a way that destroys the candidacy of her fellow Minnesotan and one-time smart-money favorite for the nomination, Tim Pawlenty.
But now that Bachmann is the real deal, her candidacy is about to endure its toughest moments yet–including intensified scrutiny of her background and character (which is already very much under way), unrealistic expectations for her candidacy, a possible existential threat from Governor Rick Perry, and GOP elite misgivings about her electability. In the coming months, this multi-faceted stress test might just send her back to obscurity well before the first delegate-selection events in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina even take place.
Heightened scrutiny of Bachmann has already begun, notably in the form of derision towards her husband, Marcus, whose Christian counseling firm and effeminate mannerisms have drawn horselaughs from such media figures as Jon Stewart, and claims in a Daily Caller piece that she suffers from “incapacitating” migraine headaches and heavy medication to combat them. So far Bachmann has done well, largely ignoring the mockery about her husband and denying the reports that she might be medically unfit to serve as president (she’s sought to turn the innuendoes around by identifying herself with the “30 million Americans [who] experience migraines that are easily controlled with medication.”) But you have to figure there is a lot more to come, including a more thorough examination of long-standing reports of instability on her congressional staff. And while a handful of progressive journalists have sought to draw attention to her extremist background (particularly her association with “Dominionist” thinkers who argue that America should be transformed into a Christian theocracy), only now can we expect the mainstream media to follow the scent and ask their own questions.
Moreover, heightened expectations surrounding Bachmann’s recent surge in the polls could also pose a problem. Iowa observers are wondering if she’s spending enough quality time in the state to satisfy the demands of its conservative activists, or building the kind of statewide organization necessary to get supporters to Ames for the Straw Poll. And she’s already a bit handicapped by the fact that two of her biggest likely stealth supporters in the state, Representative Steve King and social conservative kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, have promised to stay neutral until after the Straw Poll. But anything short of a Bachmann victory in Ames will be billed as disappointing, and if Tim Pawlenty manages to parlay his sizable state-level organization into an upset win (unlikely but possible), all bets are off as T-Paw could recapture his early claim to be the “true conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.”
Probably the biggest challenge to Bachmann, however, may be developing down in Texas. Rick Perry, whose minions have been burning up the phone lines to potential donors, is already generating excitement (and regular double-digit poll showings) as a candidate with all of Bachmann’s appeal to Christian Right and Tea Party activists, but much better credibility with the GOP establishment and a tailor-made “story to tell” to the entire electorate about his state’s superior record generating jobs. One leading Republican observer suggested recently that Perry’s entrance into the race would instantly make it a three-way contest between Perry, Romney, and the eventual Iowa winner. Another replied that a Perry campaign could make the Iowa winner irrelevant. And that’s aside from the fact that Perry would be likely to contest Iowa as well. This weekend, in fact, the Iowa State GOP might choose to put Perry on the Straw Poll ballot even though he’s given no formal indication he’s going to run.
One indicator of the threat Perry poses to Bachmann’s base of support is the growing involvement of a broad array of Christian Right figures, including such warhorses as James Dobson and Richard Land, in the August 6 prayer gathering the governor is hosting in Houston. As Religion Dispatch‘s Sarah Posner puts it, “The religious right is signing on en masse” to the event. This infatuation with Perry has to be disturbing to Bachmann, a graduate of Oral Roberts University’s law school and a long-time soldier in Christian Right causes.
Finally, even if Bachmann can maintain her lead in Iowa, she has yet to win over conservative elites, even among those whose views are as reliably extreme as her own. Any plausible path to the nomination for Bachmann includes a win in South Carolina, a state whose Republican voters are a lot like those of Iowa, with the exception that the Palmetto State’s Tea Party movement is highly organized and active. But early indications are that Senator Jim DeMint, himself an important national power-broker, has succeeded in convincing most SC pols and donors to “keep their powder dry” in the presidential contest until such time as he has scrutinized the candidates and made his own choice. Bachmann, who visibly annoyed DeMint by initially refusing to take the “cut, cap, and balance” pledge on the debt limit issue (she eventually relented after previously vowing to vote against the CCB legislation on grounds that a repeal of ObamaCare should also be a condition of any debt limit increase), is not off to a great start in the DeMint Primary. It also doesn’t help her with party elites that she’s closely (if somewhat unfairly) associated with Sarah Palin, and thus might be expected to emulate Palin’s pattern of steadily growing disapproval ratings from political independents and more moderate Republicans. While Bachmann is faring better than Palin against Barack Obama in the few recent trial heat polls that have appeared, her approval-disapproval split among the general electorate isn’t very promising (29/45 in a recent PPP survey).
So there are storm clouds amidst the bright skies ahead for Michele Bachmann as we enter the Dog Days of the invisible primary leading into 2012. If she hopes to hold on, she’d better batten down the hatches for a very rough ride.


Reagan Without Tears — or Illusions

I disagree with the crux of the conclusion of Dana Milbank’s Washington Post column, “The New Party of Reagan,” in which he says,

…While Reagan nostalgia endures, a number of Republicans have begun to admit the obvious: The Gipper would no longer be welcome on the GOP team. Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.” This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”

While the point about Reagan’s willingness to compromise is historically accurate, my take is that Reagan was more the party hack than the man of principle Milbank’s conclusion suggests. If Reagan were alive and alert today, I would be very surprised if he didn’t issue statements supporting McConnell, Cantor and Boehner as they do their worst.
Perhaps Reagan would side more with McConnell than Cantor in the debt ceiling negotiations. But I doubt he would make a big deal about it. “No longer welcome on the GOP team” is a stretch. As Milbank shows, they trot out his speeches every chance they get.
What Milbank got right is Reagan’s track record of supporting economic policies today’s GOP no longer tolerates:

Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency.
Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times.
Tea Party Republicans, in “cut, cap and balance” legislation on the House floor Tuesday, voted to cut government spending permanently to 18 percent of gross domestic product; under Reagan, spending was as high as 23.5 percent and never below 21.3 percent of GDP.
That same legislation would take federal spending down to a level last seen in 1966, before Medicare was fully up and running; Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare.

All of which shows that Reagan once supported economic polices that are no longer acceptable to GOP leaders. But none of that proves he wouldn’t adjust to the GOP party line today. Were he alive today, it’s hard to imagine him steering the tea party and GOP leaders toward sweet reason and compromise, especially since he used his majorities in congress to steam-roll Dems every chance he could.
Some Democrats believe that referencing Reagan’s legacy to suggest he would be agreeing with Democratic economic policy today is a good idea. I think it distorts history and confuses Reagan’s real legacy, which is an all-out assault on America’s labor movement, de-regulation and carte blanche for corporate abuses. It’s a mistake to whitewash all that to score a few points about his willingness to compromise when his puppet masters told him it was OK.
Reagan didn’t get a free ride from the mainstream media during his presidency. But he got off easy much of the time. Let’s not compound the error by holding him up today as Mr. Moderate, when his presidency was overwhelmingly directed toward screwing working people to give the fattest of cats as much as possible.
Yes, it’s fun to use Reagan’s quotes and policies against today’s Republican leaders. But It would be wrong to forget Reagan’s central contribution to the GOP-driven gridlock we are now experiencing. His statement that “Government is the problem” is still the ideological mantra of the Republicans ideologues who are devoted to obstructing any reforms that benefit the middle class. That, regrettably, remains his most enduring legacy.