It is often argued that the contemporary conservative movement possesses a laser-like focus on a “smaller government” agenda at the expense of the Cultural Right’s longstanding support for government intervention in private sexual and reproductive matters. You might even think the Cultural Right is in retreat, and on a few issues, like DADT, it certainly is.
But on core issues of reproductive rights, social conservatives are as aggressive as ever, and in some respects, more radical. A good example of that little-discussed phenomenon is the renewed drive of the Right-to-Life movement to go beyond tactical efforts to impose marginal limits on late-term abortions or harrass abortion providers, or even to reverse Roe v. Wade, and instead demand legal recognition of its conviction that protection of human life should begin at the moment of fertilization.
This is the conviction that has always been at the root of hostility to embryonic stem cell research, nothwithstanding scare-talk about human cloning. But more recently, many right-to-life activists have taken the logical next step by pursuing restrictions on in vitro fertilization insofar is it involves creation of “surplus” embryos (echoing developments in Europe, notably Italy).
The shift towards what might be called “zygote politics”–which extends anti-abortion politics into the politically treacherous area of infertility treatments and even efforts to ban oral contraceptives (on grounds that they are actually abortifacients), has popped up this year in the highly competitive Republican gubernatorial primary in Georgia. Georgia RTL, the state’s premier anti-abortion group and a major player in GOP politics, endorsed all but one of the Republican gubernatorial candidates, and then went out of its way to attack the exception, Secretary of State Karen Handel. Here’s how Handel’s campaign described the conflict:

GRTL’s real problem with Karen is twofold: First, they disagree with her stance regarding exceptions to an abortion ban in cases of rape and incest.
Secondly, Karen opposes the group’s push to ban invitro fertilization, which has helped so many couples realize their dream of having children. The group has proposed legislation to virtually eliminate invitro.
In a meeting with Karen, the group’s leadership told her directly that fertility treatments are immoral and that their goal is to completely ban the procedure.

This was a rather pointed and potentially counter-productive personal rebuke, since Handel and her husband are childless, and might have some natural allies among couples resorting to IV clinics to have children.
What makes this contretemps especially interesting is that Handel occupies very much the same ideological turf as Nikki Haley in next-door SC: a “conservative reformer” determined to take on the “good ol’ boys” whose power lust has overriden their alleged right-wing principles. Handel hasn’t been endorsed by Sarah Palin yet, but she’s a natural Mama Grizzly, or at least was until she got cross-ways with the right-to-life movement, which is Palin’s original base in the GOP. Palin has already made some of her old allies mad by endorsing Terry Branstad over Bob Vander Plaats in Iowa; a second gesture against RTL orthodoxy would really raise eyebrows.
But conversely, anti-abortion activists are in serious danger of getting cross-ways with middle-class conservative voters who don’t mind shutting down abortion clinics but are likely to be less than enthusiastic about doing the same with IV clinics, much less banning the Pill. It’s all well worth watching in the future.

One of the more pernicious if deeply entrenched constitutional doctrines in this country is the idea that spending money on political campaigns is inherently an exercise of first amendment free speech rights whose regulation requires the strictest judicial scrutiny. It’s why we do not have any effective national system for campaign finance limitations, and indirectly why at any given time about half the country thinks our politicians have been bought and sold for campaign contributions. Most fundamentally, self-funding candidates can pretty much do whatever they want, and despite the hard economic times, we are seeing self-funders arise this year in extraordinary numbers, particularly on the GOP side of the battlelines.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court seems determined to undo every effort to provide candidates who face self-funders with anything like an equalizer. In 2007, in Davis v.F.E.C., a 5-4 majority of the Court struck down the so-called “Millionaire’s Amendment” to the Feingold-McCain campaign finance law on grounds, basically, that it discriminated against millionaires by allowing the opponents of self-funders higher contribution and spending limits.
By the same dubious logic, as National Journal‘s Eliza Newlin Carney explains, the Court may be about to strike down “equalizer” provisions in six state public financing systems (Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin). In a case involving Arizona, the Court has issued a stay on the collection of “extra” public money from candidates facing self-funders until it can hear a constitutional challege to the system. Given the Davis precedent, campaign reform advocates are bracing for a bad result.

At a time when the Gulf Oil Spill is becoming a virtually unprecendented environmental disaster, while the main point of contention about the Great Recession is whether it’s about to recur or hasn’t yet ended, it’s worth wondering if the apocalyptic tone of American politics these days isn’t in large part just a reaction to extended trauma.
Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect makes that case:

In the 12 years since the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, being interested in politics or lucky enough to write about it has been an endless, often terrifying thrill. We’ve witnessed a series of high-stakes gambles, all-or-nothing showdowns, frauds, and schemes for total power that look a lot like some of Wall Street’s more hare-brained high-flying plays. There was Bush v. Gore, Karl Rove’s plan for 30 years of Republican rule, Dick Cheney’s hidden government, and the “nuclear option” — not to mention the deceptions of the rush to war in Iraq, the endless state of emergency, and the wiretapping and other abuses of civil liberties after September 11. These schemes, like those of the bankers’, created huge systemic risks to democratic government.
All those moves were by Republicans, but in response, progressives and Democrats developed their own sense of urgency and total commitment to victory in the 2006 congressional elections, and then again in the huge crusade that elected Barack Obama by a wide margin, the most fascinating electoral drama of my lifetime. Since the election, we’ve returned to winner-take-all battles: Legislative fights — notably on health care — quickly become showdowns over the very legitimacy of the administration and the Democratic majority. The Tea Party movement demands, “Give us our country back.” Arthur Brooks, the mild-mannered academic who runs the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote a book called The Battle in which he invites a “culture war” between the 70 percent of the country that loves free enterprise and the 30 percent that is socialist, hates free enterprise, and yet has somehow usurped power.

Now Mark seems to think these ferocious outbreaks of total-war politics are in part cyclical, and he believes a disappointing GOP performance in the fall elections and the natural ebbing of the Tea Party will help create a politics that is refreshingly boring. And he points to the period between Bill Clinton’s re-election and his impeachment as the last model era of undramatic but productive governance.
If so, that’s pretty sad, since the Lewinsky scandal first broke just one year and one day after the beginning of Clinton’s second term. If and when the next era of good feelings arrives, we’d better enjoy it while it lasts.

I don’t have a lot of use for Tim James, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Alabama who cynically tried to inflame xenophobic passions in his state in the wake of national controversy over the Arizona immigration law with his viral “Language” ad. For that matter, I’m not a fan of James’ role back in 2003 in the defeat of a tax reform initiative that would have helped fix one of the world’s most regressive tax structures.
Still, you have to feel for James’ efforts to get a recount of Robert Bentley’s 167-vote margin over him for second place and a runoff spot in the June 1 primary, which would have happened automatically at public expense in many states. Instead, in Alabama, counts have to be challenged in individual counties, with the challenger bearing the entire cost (in this case several hundred thousand smackeroos). James fished in, but just as the recount was about to begin, lame-duck Republican Attorney General Troy King (who was trounced on June 1 in a renomination bid) weighed in with an opinion saying that candidates can’t get a recount until a nomination is final, and that won’t happen until the runoff is over.
So Tim James can’t spend his own money to find out if he really made the runoff until the runoff’s already happened. Catch-22.
Alabama GOP leaders are apparently mulling over what to do during the weekend, and James says he’s hasn’t given up. But sounds like a simple English-language interpretation of his situation would be: “Just fergit’ it.”

If you want to hear how loudly money can talk in politics, check out the new Quinnipiac survey in Florida. Two very rich men who leapt into statewide contests very late are doing very well.
One of them is Republican Rick Scott, a former for-profit hospital exec who was forced from his job amidst a massive fraud investigation, and then won fame by putting together national-level anti-health-reform ads. He leapt into the governor’s race very late, and now, after a $7 million barrage of ads that mostly express his support for Arizona’s immigration law, he’s leading conservative warhorse Bill McCollum–whose time finally seemed to have come this year after two unsuccessful U.S. Senate races–by a 44-31 margin.
Meanwhile, in the Democratic contest for the U.S. Senate, already roiled by the independent candidacy of Gov. Charlies Crist, billionarire real estate investor Jeff Greene, who got into the race right before the end of qualifying just over a month ago, has moved into a statistical tie with congressman Kendrick Meek. Advised by Democratic bad boys Joe Trippi and Doug Schoen, Greene is playing the outsider card as hard as he can.
Neither of these guys has held public office or has any deep roots in Florida. Both have been questioned about their business ethics. But they’ve got the loot, and while political history is littered with the wreckage of ego-driven campaigns by rich people, more than a few have succeeded. And if you are Bill McCollum or Kendrick Meek, who were both focused on the general election until their rich challengers came out of the woodwork, it’s got to feel like Sisyphus watching that rock roll back to the bottom of the hill.

The big development in non-election news from Washington this week has been the collapse of bipartisan negotiations for cap-and-trade legislation, caused by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s defection. Said defection has been a long time in the making; earlier Graham broke off longstanding negotiations with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman on climate change, allegedly because he was angry with Harry Reid for hinting that immigration reform might come first in the Senate. Now that Reid’s backed off that idea, Graham’s been forced to more or less flip-flop entirely on climate change, and is now backing a far less ambitious bill introduced by Richard Lugar that would have no cap on carbon emissions.
The CW has suggested that Graham’s happy feet on climate change is the product of pressure from his Republican colleagues in Congress who don’t want any “cap-and-tax” bill and basically don’t want any cooperation with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. But I think the problem may be a little closer to home for Graham.
Earlier this year, a couple of Republican county committees down in South Carolina raised eyebrows with censure resolutions aimed at Graham for his support for cap-and-trade, comprehensive immigration reform, and TARP. One of those committees was from Lexington County, which happens to be the residence of Nikki Haley, who then became the only gubernatorial candidate to embrace Graham’s censure for ideological heresy.
Now maybe it’s a coincidence that Graham threw in the towel on cap-and-trade the day after Haley became a national political rock star in the wake of her strong (49%) performance in the SC Republican gubernatorial primary, but maybe it’s not. Graham won’t be up for re-election until 2014, but as Bob Dylan once said (though not in the context of climate change): “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
I bring this up in part as a reminder to progressives who are naturally sympathetic to Haley as a woman and as a minority member who has been accused without much evidence of being a cheat and a liar, and called a “raghead” to boot. That’s all well and good, but don’t forget she is also a serious hard-core conservative who eagerly identifies herself with the Jim DeMint, take-no-prisoners wing of her party, and who may have just played a role in blowing up what was once a promising effort to deal with one of the most important challenges facing the country and the world. To be sure, she should be judged on her ideas and record and not subjected to gender-based double standards or sexual innuendo. But make no mistake, her “ideas” are really bad from any progressive point of view. She’s only a breath of fresh air in SC politics if you think, like she does, that the good ol’ boys who’ve been running things are dangerously liberal.

For those of us in the politics biz, last night was a long night, with returns trickling out over a eight hour period. Despite the best efforts of headline writers to impose some order on the ten primaries, one runoff, and one special election runoff, there was no overriding pattern or big theme to these elections: just a lot of individual contests whose importance we mostly won’t even know until November. I won’t try to cover everything that happened; you can consult news sources for detailed results. But there were some pretty interesting happenings.
The biggest surprise for the chattering classes (and I’ll plead innocence on this one, since I consistently labeled it as too close to call) was the survival of Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, whose dominant performance in Pulaski County (Little Rock), her opponent’s home base, was crucial. The heavy commitment of resources by the labor movement on behalf of Bill Halter will be second-guessed for quite some time. And once again, it’s been established that you don’t mess with Bill Clinton in his old stomping grounds.
Probably the second biggest story of the night was Nikki Haley, who came within an eyelash of winning the SC Republican gubernatorial nomination without a runoff. Congressman Gresham Barrett finished a distant second, and is already getting pressure to drop out save the GOP the trouble of a runoff. It’s clear in retrospect that the maelstrom of the last two weeks, in which Haley was hit with two separate poorly documented allegations of marital infidelity, gave her a significant sympathy vote and all but extinguished the ability of her opponents to get any kind of message out. Meanwhile, state rep. Vincent Sheheen scored an impressive majority win in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and can now spend his time raising money and watching future developments, if any, in the Haley saga.
The third biggest story of the night was in Nevada, where the easy victory of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle in the Republican Senate primary gave Harry Reid the matchup he wanted for November. Angle benefitted from the implosion of long-time front-runner Sue Lowden, and from national conservative support. Third-place finisher Danny Tarkanian faded in the clutch even more than Lowden.
Speaking of the Tea Folk, their movement had a very mixed evening. Establishment Republican candidates turned back Tea Party-affiliated challengers in Virginia and New Jersey. But in SC, congressman Bob Inglis, who made the mistake of voting for TARP, was knocked into a runoff by local DA Trey Gowdy, and will be the heavy underdog going forward.
One result with significant 2012 implications was in Iowa, where as expected, former Gov. Terry Branstad beat conservative firebrand Bob Vander Plaats for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. But given his many advantages in the race, Branstad’s 9-point margin of victory was underwhelming, and should warn potential presidential candidates that the social conservative forces represented by Vander Plaats could be more formidable than ever in the 2012 caucuses. Certainly Sarah Palin, whose late endorsement of Branstad enraged some of her Iowa fans, will need to do some repair work if she’s interested in entering the contest that will begin in Iowa.
And finally, in a result that got virtually no national attention but that could prove important down the road, California voters approved Proposition 14, which abolishes party primaries in favor of a “jungle primary” in which the top two finishers, regardless of political affiliation, meet in a runoff if no candidate wins 50%.

This item is crossposted from The New Republic.
Political junkies rejoice! There are twelve states holding elections today, including ten primaries, one runoff, and one special-election runoff. Among these, the contests that have drawn most national attention are in California, South Carolina, Nevada, Iowa, and Arkansas. The following is an overview of why these primaries matter and what you should look for in the results.
California: Mega-Money Chases Micro-Voter Interest
The Governor’s Race
As I recently explained for TNR, citizens of the Golden State are in a very bad mood, even by the jaundiced national standards of Election 2010. But as much as Californians hate politicians right now, politicians are relentlessly pursuing them. By far the most aggressive of these, in terms of sheer dollars spent, are the two Republican gubernatorial candidates, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. Together, they’ve already blown $110 million to win the honor of opposing the famously diffident Democrat Jerry Brown in November. If all you knew about Whitman and Poizner came from each of their attack ads, you’d think the former is a corrupt Goldman Sachs crony who lives for a chance to open the borders to unlimited immigration, while the latter is a baby-killing, tax-loving lefty whose major recent accomplishment was to buy a bunch of souped-up cars for state bureaucrats. Perhaps because she’s outspent Poizner about three to one, Whitman has had the better of this nuclear exchange, and polls show that she overcame a rough patch in May to regain an insurmountable lead going into today’s primary.
Whitman will now have to sort through the wreckage and regroup, in an attempt to pose as an eminently reasonable, middle-of-the-road businesswoman who just wants to straighten out the books in Sacramento. She’s already burned through nearly half of the $150 million of her personal fortune that she vowed to spend in order to obtain one of the worst jobs in America. If you tune in to her victory party tomorrow night, you may be deafened by the grinding of gears as she repositions her Death Star campaign for the general election.
The Senate Race
Whitman’s doppelganger, Carly Fiorina, another (female) corporate executive who parachuted into California Republican politics from a spot on John McCain’s presidential campaign, has smartly managed to position herself for a big statewide primary win tomorrow without spending more than a fraction of Whitman’s loot. Late in the race, Fiorina did scrounge up several million for a well-timed ad blitz that pushed her past the early frontrunner, cash-strapped former congressman Tom Campbell. But it was probably a combination of Campbell’s fatal social liberalism (he’s both pro-choice and pro-gay marriage) and the patent non-viability of teeth-grinding true conservative Chuck DeVore that truly pushed Fiorina to the cusp of the nomination. And while she is, by all accounts, a more personable campaigner than eMeg, she’s also saddled herself with positions on abortion (hard-line pro-life) and immigration (she supports the hated Arizona law) that will hurt her in a general-election contest with Barbara Boxer–who I’m guessing will manage to squeak past the original cranky blogger, Mickey Kaus (identified on the ballot in Spanish as a redactor de blogs), in the Democratic primary. Indeed, Boxer was up nine points over Fiorina in the latest PPIC poll, and six points in the USC/LA Times survey.
The Lieutenant Governor’s Race and Proposition 14
There are plenty of other fascinating contests on the California ballot tomorrow, the best of which will be a glamour match for the Democratic Lieutenant Governor’s nomination between San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, the favorite, and Los Angeles political heavyweight (and sister of the former LA mayor) Janice Hahn. There’s even a major ballot initiative worth watching: yet another effort to fix California’s polarization, via a switch to a “jungle primary” system that forces all candidates to run together, regardless of affiliation and face a runoff if no one wins a majority. The initiative seems to have become Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revenge on both major political parties–his PAC is the major financial force behind Proposition 14–and polls show it is likely to pass.

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