There’s been a lot of hype the last week over a New York Times Magazine piece by Robert Draper suggesting that the Republican Party and the nation might be ready for a long-awaited “libertarian moment” via a Rand Paul presidential candidacy. Here’s an excerpt of my critique of the hypothesis at TPMCafe:

[T]to the extent there is something that can be called a “libertarian moment” in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, it owes less to the work of the Cato Institute than to a force genuine libertarians clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged are typically horrified by: the Christian Right. In the emerging ideological enterprise of “constitutional conservatism,” theocrats are the senior partners, just as they have largely been in the Tea Party Movement, even though libertarians often get more attention.
There’s no universal definition of “constitutional conservatism.” The apparent coiner of the term, the Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz, used it to argue for a temperate approach to political controversy that’s largely alien to those who have embraced the “brand.” Indeed, it’s most often become a sort of dog whistle scattered through speeches, slogans and bios on various campaign trails to signify that the bearer is hostile to compromise and faithful to fixed conservative principles, unlike the Republicans who have been so prone to trim and prevaricate since Barry Goldwater proudly went down in flames. The most active early Con-Con was Michele Bachmann, who rarely went more than a few minutes during her 2012 presidential campaign without uttering it. It’s now very prominently associated with Ted Cruz, who, according to Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has emerged as “the new standard-bearer for constitutional conservatism.” And it’s the preferred self-identification for Rand Paul as well.
What Con-Con most often seems to connote beyond an uncompromising attitude on specific issues is the belief that strict limitations on the size, scope and cost of government are eternally correct for this country, regardless of public opinion or circumstances. Thus violations of this “constitutional” order are eternally illegitimate, no matter what the Supreme Court says or who has won the last election.
More commonly, Con-Cons reinforce this idea of a semi-divine constitutional order by endowing it with — quite literally — divine origins. This is why David Barton’s largely discredited “Christian Nation” revisionist histories of the Founders remain so highly influential in conservative circles, and why Barton himself is welcome company in the camps of Con-Con pols ranging from Cruz and Bachmann to Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee. This is why virtually all Con-Cons conflate the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, which enabled them to sneak both Natural and Divine Law (including most conspicuously a pre-natal Right to Life) into the nation’s organic governing structure.
What a lot of those who instinctively think of conservative Christians as hostile to libertarian ideas of strict government persistently miss is that divinizing untrammeled capitalism has been a growing habit on the Christian Right for decades. Perhaps more importantly, the idea of the “secular-socialist government” being an oppressor of religious liberty, whether it’s by maintaining public schools that teach “relativism” and evolution, or by enforcing the “Holocaust” of legalized abortion, or by insisting on anti-discrimination rules that discomfit “Christian businesses,” has made Christian conservatives highly prone to, and actually a major participant in, the anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party. Beyond that, the essential tea party view of America as “exceptional” in eschewing the bad political habits of the rest of the world is highly congruent with, and actually owes a lot to, the old Protestant notion of the United States as a global Redeemer Nation and a “shining city on a hill.”
So perhaps the question we should be asking is not whether the Christian Right and other “traditional” conservatives can accept a Rand Paul-led “libertarian” takeover of the conservative movement and the GOP, but whether “libertarians” are an independent factor in conservative politics to begin with. After all, most of the Republican politicians we think of as “libertarian”–whether it’s Rand Paul or Justin Amash or Mike Lee–are also paid-up culture-war opponents of legalized abortion, Common Core, and other heathenish practices. As Heather Digby Parton noted tartly earlier this week:

[T]he line between theocrats and libertarian Republicans is very, very faint. Why do you think they’ve bastardized the concept of “Religious Liberty” to mean the right to inflict your religion on others? It appeals to people who fashion themselves as libertarians but really only care about their taxes, guns and weed. Those are the non-negotiable items. Everything else is on offer.

And then there’s the well-known but under-reported long-term relationship of Ron and Rand Paul with the openly theocratic U.S. Constitution Party, a Con-Con inspirational font that no Republican politician is likely to embrace these days.

To the extent that the Republican Party becomes identified with Con-Con systematic hostility to government, it’s not a creed that’s going to appeal to millennials or even to serious secular libertarians. Even if there’s a “libertarian moment” in the GOP, and that’s highly debatable, it will be the Christian Right’s hour.

Alex Isenstadt’s Politico post “Running as a Dem, Sounding Like a Republican” suggests a “blue dog rising” trend aborning among Dems running for House seats in 2014, incumbents and challengers alike. Isenstadt argues that Dems are embracing Republican memes not only in red states, but also “in purple or even blue territory.”
Isenstadt does provide some examples:

Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, who’s running in a district that Obama won in 2012 and 2008, has started airing a commercial that strikes a tea party theme. It highlights his record as speaker of the state House of Representatives when, he says, he helped balance the state’s budget…”It’s really pretty simple. You don’t buy things you can’t pay for,” Romanoff states.
As Romanoff narrates, a graph of the nation’s soaring debt pops up on the screen. The image looks strikingly similar to one that appears in a Web video Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan released in 2011 to sell his controversial budget plan, though a Romanoff spokeswoman insisted that the campaign hadn’t borrowed from the former GOP vice presidential contender.
New Hampshire Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, whose district broke for Obama by a yawning 11-percentage-point margin in 2012, is running an ad that touts her support for small-business tax cuts while showing her touring a local microbrewery. Separately, former Iowa state Sen. Staci Appel, in a district Obama won by 4 percentage points two years ago, underscores her record of fighting overspending in state government, a populist theme often heard from tea party-aligned conservatives.
Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, in a swing southern Arizona district that is slightly more conservative than the others, uses his first TV spot to highlight his support for increasing border security funds. The ad — complete with the image of a border patrol car — doesn’t mention elements of immigration reform that are typically more popular among Democratic voters.
Like the commercials aired by Romanoff, Kuster and Appel, Barber’s doesn’t mention his Democratic Party affiliation.
Democrats who have the especially high hurdle of competing in deep-red districts are striking multiple conservative themes. Democrat Patrick Henry Hays, the North Little Rock mayor who’s running in an Arkansas district that Mitt Romney won in 2012, uses his first TV ad to discuss the need for a balanced budget, limited government regulations and less wasteful spending. Like Romanoff, Hays includes a graphic to depict the national debt…”I approve this message because it’s simple,” Hays says. “You cut waste, you pay your bills, and you do everything in your power to create jobs. That’s what we need in Congress.”

Those are five interesting examples of Dems putting on a little blue dog lipstick to steal a quick kiss from high turnout seniors and other demographic groups who tend to show up at midterm polling sites. But it’s a bit of a stretch to imply that 5 races out of 435 constitute a big trend. Nor do Republicans have a monopoly on budgetary prudence. There have always been Democrats who are more concerned about moderation in spending than many of their party fellows, and there always will be. That’s life in the big tent.
Isenstadt quotes a grumbling Democratic strategist, who is concerned about Dems losing their populist edge and his Republican counterpart, who says it just goes to show how lame are Dems who copy Republicans. Both are stock characters in this biennial playlet.
What we are not seeing much of among such Democrats is the over-the-top government, immigrant, union or gay-bashing that prevails among many tea party types and, increasingly, Republicans in general. There’s none of the pod-people finger-pointing contagion that afflicts today’s GOP.
Maybe the better story is that so few Republicans are embracing moderate messages in their campaigns. Isenstadt offers only one example.
It’s pretty much biz as usual for Democratic mid term candidates. As congressional races begin to narrow, there will be some movement toward moderation in messaging, perhaps more so on the Democratic side. But anyone looking for a sea change in Democratic policy will likely be disappointed.

David Catanese’s “The Democrats’ (White) Male Problem: The party’s problem with males may be even worse than the GOP’s troubles with women” at U.S. News is one of those articles that spotlights a significant problem, but offers no solutions. Nothing wrong with that, if the analysis of the problem is sound, it can be useful for the problem-solvers.
As for the nature of the problem in the short run, Catanese says it well: “In a campaign cycle set to see a handful of margin-of-error races that determine U.S. Senate control, it’s an often overlooked and undervalued element of the election.” Further,

An early August Wall Street Journal/NBC News national poll crystallized the canyon that exists between men and women’s views on the midterm elections. While women prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress by a 14-point gap, the difference is even larger among men. Males want a Republican-led Congress by a full 17 points.

As Catanese notes, however, there is some debate among Democrats about whether the problem is worth solving, given demographic realities and trends:

Above all, women are more coveted voters because of simple mathematics: There are more of them. In the 2012 presidential election, 53 percent of the voters were female while just 47 percent were male, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2010, the breakdown was slightly narrower, with women making up 4 percent more of the midterm electorate than men. Fewer younger women come out to vote in nonpresidential years, but women as a whole still outnumber men.
Republicans won men by 14 points in their banner 2010 midterm year, and this off-year Democrats could face a similar staggering deficit. But largely, their focus remains on increasing their margins with women rather than attempting to persuade men.
“You don’t need to,” says Benenson, dismissing the importance of carrying the male vote. “They won men in the presidential election and they lost. They win white voters in the presidential election and they lost. There’s no absolute rule that you have to win this group or that group.”

Catanese also argues, with only a generalized reference to data backing him up, that males are just more, well, stubborn:

…Men, in general, are just less likely to be persuaded, according to Democratic pollster John Anzalone…In some ways, men dig in. You see it in the numbers where generically they’re just much more Republican and they dig in,” he says. “It’s just much more difficult to move them. Women are more open-minded to the dialogue between Democrat and Republican candidates and I think men have shut themselves off to hearing a lot of messages.”

But maybe Dems can get back some white male voters with specific reforms in cherry-picked races, notes Catanese. “Anzalone believes hammering home a message on protecting entitlements like Medicare and Social Security can snag the attention of a sliver of silver-haired males.”
Catanese doesn’t address the role of class in the GOP’s edge with white males. Yet, the GOP has little to offer working class whites in terms of economic policy, while Democrats offer a range of reforms. Catanese leaves it to others to decide whether or not there is a broader strategy that can win more male support for Democrats. With so many races narrowing as we near the midterm elections, it’s a challenge that demands more attention.
It may be that Dems can hold the senate without assigning more resources to winning white male support. But if Democrats can figure out a way to cut into the GOP’s edge with white males across the nation, even by just a few percentage points, the GOP will have to start worrying about it’s House majority as well.

Newsmax, frequently a source for Republican spin, has an interesting post, “Democrats Cashing In on Email Strategy” by Drew Mackenzie. Among the share-worthy nuggets is this one from Brandon English, hailed as the Dems’ top email fund-raising wizard: “English estimates that one-third of the people who read the DCCC emails do so on a mobile phone, so he makes certain that no messages are longer than 70 words before the first donation link…We know we have to get to the point quick,” he said. “I’m very incredibly nit-picky about every single word in our emails. Any extra words, extra sentences, unnecessary anything can just kill an email.”
There’s “No dominant issue leading into midterm elections,” say Washington Post opinion poll analysts.
NYT’s Adam Nagourney reports that “Midterms Give Parties Chance for Sweeping Control of States,” reminding Dems that a lot more is at stake in November than just control of the U.S. Senate. “Republicans now control 59 of the 99 partisan legislative chambers, and have complete political control — both legislative houses and the governor’s mansion — in 23 states, while Democrats control 13. The total number of states ruled by a single political party, 36, is the highest in six decades…Today, Republicans, even after losing some chambers in 2012, control about 55 percent of all state legislative seats.”
Amid pessimistic reports about Democratic prospects for actually picking up seats in the U.S. House in the midterms, Susan Davis notes that Charlie Cook sees only 16 or so seats as genuinely competitive, with 13 of them being defended by Democrats. However, writes Davis, “Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., who runs the House Democrats’ campaign operation, maintains that the election climate is still unfolding. He believes Democrats could easily benefit from mounting voter frustration at the House GOP’s ongoing struggles with governing. “You’re going into a midterm election with voter revulsion aimed at Republicans,” he says.”
At the Wall St. Journal Beth Reinhard’s “GOP Ads Go On Attack Over Border: TV Spots Slam Democratic Senate Candidates on Immigration Policy” exposes the Republicans’ media strategy to whip up nativist frenzy for the midterms.
Michael Barbaro writes at the New York Times that Republicans are exploring all kinds of gimmicks in a dubious attempt to distract Latino voters from their party’s embarrassing track record on immigration and other issues.
The Plain Dealer’s Thomas Suddes’s “Ohio’s out-of-power Democrats need to emulate ’80s GOP in the grass-roots grunt work that can turn the political tide” offers some advice for Ohio Dems that might work in lots of places: “…Three years and a cloud of dust…That is persistence, not spectacle…Rank-and-file grunt work – and that’s what electing state legislators is – seems to offer too little glamor (compared to, say, a Hillary Clinton appearance) to draw workers. But…running opponents even in politically hopeless General Assembly districts at least had a chance of distracting the other party’s campaign managers.” Suddes has other insights meriting consideration by Dems in other states.
Despite all of the pundit doom-saying for Democratic midterm prospects, Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik observes “…It’s possible — though perhaps not plausible — for Republicans to net the six seats they need to flip the Senate simply by winning six Democratic-held Senate seats in six states where President Obama won less than 42% of the vote.” As for the House of Reps, Kondik says “for now we’re sticking with a GOP gain of five to eight…Unlike this year’s Senate map, the competitive races this year are not being held on obviously Republican turf.”
Here’s some evidence that we may have reached a turning point at which Obamacare is becoming more of an asset in wooing voters. As Greg Sargent reports, “The other day, Gallup released a major new survey finding that the steepest drops in uninsured rates had occurred in two states that could decide control of the Senate — Arkansas and Kentucky. The sharpest drop in the nation was in Arkansas, where the uninsured rate was practically cut in half…Dem Senator Mark Pryor is greeting this development as good news, and — get this — is even noting that he voted for the policy that has helped make this happen.”

In discussing the strategic and tactical differences within the GOP that exist despite agreement over policy and ideology, there’s something underneath the surface that always concerns me: the steady growth of a meta-ideology on the Right that is not at all new, but is rapidly emerging from the shadows. It generally calls itself “constitutional conservatism,” and I addressed its basic nature (not for the first time, but more definitively) yesterday at the Washington Monthly:

I do worry that the still-emerging ideology of “constitutional conservatism” is something new and dangerous, at least in its growing respectability. It’s always been there in the background, among the Birchers and in the Christian Right, and as as emotional and intellectual force within Movement Conservatism. It basically holds that a governing model of strictly limited (domestic) government that is at the same time devoted to the preservation of “traditional culture” is the only legitimate governing model for this country, now and forever, via the divinely inspired agency of the Founders. That means democratic elections, the will of the majority, the need to take collective action to meet big national challenges, the rights of women and minorities, the empirical data on what works and what doesn’t–all of those considerations and more are so much satanic or “foreign” delusions that can and must be swept aside in the pursuit of a Righteous and Exceptional America. I don’t think at this point “constitutional conservatism” has taken over the GOP, but its rhetoric and the confrontational–even chiliastic–strategy and tactics it suggests are becoming more common every day, even among hackish pols who probably don’t think deeply about anything and would sell out the “base” in a heartbeat if they could get away with it. Some of the moneyed interests bankrolling the GOP and the conservative movement probably just view all the God and Founders talk as a shiny bauble with which to fool the rubes, but others–notably the Kochs–seem to have embraced it as a vehicle for permanent domination of American politics. This is the real “struggle for the soul of the GOP” that’s worth watching, far more than the tempests in a Tea Party Pot in this or that primary.

The Con-Con self-identification has grown like topsy in just the last four years. It bears careful watching, because those who espouse this radical ideology will not be subdued by sweet reason, their own party’s “discipline,” or even temporary setbacks. They’re playing a long game, and a dangerous game.

At The New Republic Andrew Levison explains why “Democrats Have a White Working Class Problem–and Not Just in the South.” Among Levison’s insights: “Every political campaign manager knows that in the practical world of political campaigns, white working class people in places like Wichita, Yuma, or Sioux City are not strikingly more “pro-Democratic” than white working class people in Baton Rouge, Augusta, or Memphis…If the notion that “the problem is just the South” fails to properly account for the real regional political divisions in America, however, it also fails to recognize the critical importance of another aspect of the political divisions within the white working class: the substantial difference between the more urban and less urban members of the group, regardless of the region of the country.”
The Guardian’s Dan Roberts reports that “Obama doubles down on threat to act against ‘tax inversions’ by US firms” — a good example of the kind of bold executive action that scares Republicans but enhances Democratic cred as the party of working people.
NYT columnist Charles M. Blow chronicles the GOP’s rancid history of race-baiting, of which Republican Rep. Mo Brook’s “war on whites” comment is merely the latest installment.
From Janet Hook’s “5 Takeaways from the August WSJ/NBC Poll“: “Republicans have a much bigger image problem than the president and his party, as the poll found that only 19% held positive views of congressional Republicans, while 54% held negative views. Frustration about the political system and ongoing economic problems is directed at both parties: Asked what message they wanted to send with their vote in November’s midterm elections a plurality of 33% said they wanted incumbents of both parties to lose.”
But new Associated Press-GfK poll gives GOP slight edge in ‘faith/trust,’ within MOE.
At Salon.com Jim Newell and Joan Walsh explain why Sen. Rand Paul is likely to tank in the glare of a presidential race.
Democratic political ad-makers have an angle to mine at At ThinkProgress.org, where Tara Culp-Pressler reveals that “The States With The Highest Uninsurance Rates Are All Led By Republicans.”
RMuse argues “The Truth Is That It’s Republicans Who Have Been Waging War On Poor Whites” at PolitcusUSA.
Chartheads may get a kick out of Phillip Bumps post, “Who wants to impeach President Obama? A visual scorecard” at The Fix, which provides a quick visual guide to the who’s who of GOP impeachment denialists, vacilators and advocates.

In the course of writing a column for TPMCafe arguing that GOP “Establishment” wins in this year’s Republican Senate primaries disguised the broader Tea Party influence over the party, I decided it was time to step back and sort out what we all mean when we talk about “battles” and “wars” on the Right these days. Here’s how I sought to do that at the Washington Monthly today:

I’ve been pretty outspoken for years now in arguing that aside from foreign policy, the main “battles” within the Republican Party have been over strategy and tactics, not policy or ideology. Now strategy and tactics do matter, as last year’s government shutdown and the incessant obstructionism that is the congressional GOP’s default position demonstrate. But the main function of the Tea Party Movement has been to intensify and defend a rightward movement in the Republican Party that’s been underway for decades but has gained hellish momentum since the 2008 elections, regularly overwhelming the efforts of GOP elites to instill some “pragmatic” caution. In that sense, the Tea Folk are winning “the war” even if they lose a number of primary “battles.”
If you look at the rhetoric and positioning of many of the “Establishment” winners in this year’s Senate primaries, it’s like the 2012 Republican presidential nominating contest all over again. There’s remarkable near-unanimity in favor of hard-core positions on fiscal matters, the economy, cultural issues, and immigration–and above all a violent resistance to the idea that government can play a positive role in national life other than at the Pentagon. “Pragmatic outsider” David Perdue of GA won his runoff in no small part by going Medieval on “amnesty,” just like Mitt Romney did during the 2012 primaries. “Establishment” icon Thom Tillis of North Carolina won his primary by branding himself as leader of a “conservative revolution” in his state (much as Romney called himself “severely conservative”), and identifying with “base activist” hostility to the poor and minorities (much as Romney went over the brink with his “47%” comments). Joni Ernst of Iowa, initially vulnerable in her primary for having supported a gas tax increase in the legislature, cozied up to every conservative activist in sight, indulged in harsh Obama-bashing, and endorsed a “personhood” amendment.
This rightward movement of the GOP remains the most important political phenomenon of our time, and despite all the “rebranding” talk after the 2012 presidential defeat, it’s still happening. So whereas no one should exaggerate the differences of opinion among Republicans at present, the rightward pressure based on real and threatened primary challenges is an important factor.

Perhaps in using military language in talking about intramural conflict on the Right, we should talk about a “Cold War”–one in which it’s reasonably clear who is on the offensive and seems likely to prevail. It’s not any sort of “pragmatists.”

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand up Straight: : How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The Republican Leadership may be doing just fine with the Wall Street crowd and extremists who oppose birth control, but for the majority of ordinary Americans its actions over the last several weeks have rapidly begun to seal its fate as a minority party.
First, let’s start with the fact that the Republican Party is — at this very moment — a distinctly minority party in American politics.
The Gallup poll reports that the number of Americans identifying as Republicans has fallen to its lowest level in the quarter century it has been tracking the number: 25 percent.
Republicans lost the last presidential popular election by almost five million votes.
The FEC reports that combining the total number of votes cast by Americans for president, House and Senate in 2012, Americans voted for the GOP 158,605,000 times and for the Democrats 176,167,000 times. In other words they cast over 17 million more Democratic votes than Republican votes in 2012.
And even though Republican gerrymandering allowed the party to maintain control of the House by a slim margin, 1.17 million more votes were cast for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans.
Right now, GOP hopes for victories do not rest on their ability to appeal democratically to the majority of voters. They hinge entirely on successful gerrymandering and voter suppression policies that reduce the turnout of ordinary Americans. That means their hopes for political success in the future rest on very, very thin ice. And — amazingly — they seem to be doing everything they can to make the ice that separates them from complete political marginality thinner and thinner.
For instance, last week the House voted to authorize its leaders to sue President Obama for “exceeding his executive authority” — even though he has issued fewer executive orders than most recent Presidents from either party.
Polling shows that most Americans think the lawsuit is a political stunt that will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars — and many believe it is a first step toward attempts by House extremists to impeach the president.
Polling also shows that the issue of the lawsuit simultaneously convinces swing voters to support Democrats and fires up Democratic base voters. And it allows President Obama — who has leaned into the GOP lawsuit — to say, correctly, that the GOP is suing him for doing his job helping ordinary Americans, while the GOP leadership has prevented votes on scores of bills that would benefit ordinary people and would pass if they were allowed to come to the floor.
That includes the minimum wage bill that would immediately benefit 28 million ordinary Americans and would indirectly benefit millions more by putting money in people’s pockets to spend on goods and services sold and produced by other workers and businesses across the country. Polling shows that over 70 percent of Americans agree that America should increase the minimum wage and over 80 percent agree that no one who works full-time should live in poverty. No matter, the GOP leadership won’t bring the bill to the floor — because if it did the bill would pass.
Recently my wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, and I joined other Democrats taking the “Minimum Wage Challenge” to call attention to how difficult it is to live on today’s minimum wage. We worked very hard at trying to live on the $77 per week of discretionary income that the average minimum wage worker has to buy groceries, transportation, gas, pet food, entertainment, clothing, cleaning, etc. We still went over by about $5.
The “Minimum Wage Challenge” makes it really clear how little workers take home who work hard flipping burgers, cleaning hotel rooms, or bussing tables. Some small examples: One trip a day to Starbucks costing $3.25 per visit — that many people take for granted — would gobble up $22.75 or 30 percent of that $77. A five-dollar meal at Subway each day would consume $35 or almost half of the $77. The fare on the DC metro five times a week, eats up almost a third of the $77 just trying to get to and from work at the minimum wage job.
And to those in the Republican Party and corporate community who claim the minimum wage is adequate, I say: take the “Minimum Wage Challenge” yourself — see what you think after a week.
Of course the minimum wage is just one of a series of popular measures that the GOP leadership refuses to consider — including extending unemployment payments for the long-term unemployed — many of whom have worked all of their lives, paid their taxes, and now have been kicked by the GOP to the side of the road.
On the other hand the GOP was right there, passing extensions of tax breaks for Big Business.

Read more…