From any purely rational point of view, you wouldn’t expect the Republican Party to invest all that much in a fight with President Obama over his nominee to replace Justice David Souter.
The retiring Justice is, after all, considered part of the current Court’s left wing, and is regarded as the Great Judas by many conservatives; how much worse could Obama do? Republicans are down to 40 seats in the Senate, and even if they had the votes to filibuster a Court nominee, they are estopped from doing so by the vast outpouring of rhetoric they deployed against judicial confirmation filibusters when Democrats threatened them during the Bush administration. And above all, a big nasty confirmation fight that they can’t win would represent a large distraction from the GOP’s other goals, most preeminently an effort to derail implementation of the Obama budget in general, and health care reform in particular.
But we’re not talking about people who are necessarily in a position to be purely rational right now.
As I’ve already argued, Republicans are going to be under intense pressure from the cultural-religious wing of the Right to fight Obama’s nominee, whoever it is, with at least as much fervor as they exhibit in fighting Obama’s economic agenda. It’s a simple matter of equal treatment: the Culture Right needs its own Tea Party Moment–its own expression of rage at having its hopes (in their case, hopes for a fifth vote on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade) dashed by the election of Barack Obama, and its own validation that it remains an indispensible pillar of the post-Bush Republican Party that cannot be trifled with. And frankly, given the donor-dampening economic climate, the Cultural Right, like everyone else in politics or issue-advocacy, needs a fundraising cause, and as CQ’s Jonathan Allen explained last week, nothing loosens the conservative pursestrings quite like a Supreme Court fight.
From the initial noises they are making, however, it doesn’t look like Republicans are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this fight; they’re eager to be thrown into the briar patch. They are leaping upon the president’s passing remark that he wanted a Court nominee who exhibits “empathy” as a reason to denounce his choice in advance as representing a dangerously radical agenda of “judicial activism.”
On one Sunday show yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch, widely considered the Republican leader most likely to play ball with the president on a Court appointment, dutifully intoned:

[I]t’s a matter of great concern. If he’s saying that he wants to pick people who will take sides — he’s also said that a judge has to be a person of empathy. What does that mean? Usually that’s a code word for an activist judge.

Funny that Hatch talked about code words, since “activist judge” is perhaps the ultimate code word for any jurist who doesn’t harbor some sort of originalist fantasy of channelling the Founding Fathers. To big elements of the Cultural Right, “activist judge” has an even more specific meaning: anyone who supports a constitutional right to an abortion, or perhaps thinks that “equal protection” applies to gays and lesbians.
On another show, Mitt Romney, who may well be the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, was even more emphatic about the likelihood of a Court fight.

“The place where I think we draw the line is: Is this an individual who will follow the Constitution and the law, or is this an individual who believes in making the law,” he said. “If it’s the latter, I think we should stand up and scream long and hard.”

Well, we all know where that line is going to be drawn, regardless of the exact identity of the president’s nominee.
I can’t really recall the last time a credible national political figure promised to “stand up and scream long and hard” about anything. But that’s what passes for a presidential temperament among conservatives these days, and that’s why we’re probably going to see a toxic confirmation fight.

After its stunning discovery that half of Texas Republicans look favorably on the idea of leaving the United States, the DKos/Research 2000 polling team has apparently decided to ask the same question in other states. The latest poll, from my home state of Georgia, shows 32% of Peach State Republicans look favorably on the idea of secession. Since only 14% of independents and 5% of Democrats agree, the secessionist GOPers are a bit isolated in pulling for a return to 1861. (Or maybe earlier: The DKos article on the poll also has a useful link to a Jay Bookman column for the Atlanta papers about a resolution recently passed by the Georgia Senate that calls for bringing back the concept of state nullification of federal laws).
The same poll also shows three potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates looking pretty competitive against the two established GOP frontrunners, with Roy Barnes (who hasn’t decided if he’s running), Thurbert Baker and David Poythress all holding Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine to a single-digit lead, and all three leading Secretary of State Karen Handel. The race was further complicated today when Republican congressman Nathan Deal (a former Democrat) announced for Governor; it’s looking increasingly likely that both parties will have intense multi-candidate primaries followed by runoffs. Georgia Republicans are notably divided over the records of term-limited incumbent GOP governor Sonny Perdue and a fractious Republican-controlled legislature.
The more surprising thing in the new poll is that it shows both Roy Barnes and congressman Jim Marshall holding incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson to a single-digit lead, and under 50%. Though the president is thought to be relatively unpopular in Georgia, his favorable/unfavorable ratings there (49/46) are quite similar to those of the generally well-regarded Isakson (47-41).
Even in the Deep South, the GOP is in less than healthy shape, and if they can’t make it there, they can’t make it anywhere.

Initial reaction in Washington to reports that Justice David Souter will retire next month has been interesting: what a pain in the butt for an overstressed Obama administration! Indeed, says the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, the court opening “could well sidetrack other legislative priorities of the administration.”
Well, sure, choosing a Supreme Court nominee and managing her or his confirmation campaign is, to use George W. Bush’s favorite phrase, “hard work.” Just like any president, Obama will have to deal with expectations of a female, or a Latino, or a “progressive” or “centrist” Justice, and with the peculiar personal investment some of his own friends may develop over the prospect of a lifetime appointment to every lawyer’s dream job.
But I strongly suspect that the Souter retirement will create far fewer problems for Obama than for his opponents, and particularly for the increasingly marginalized Cultural Right, which will likely make any confirmation fight its own Tea Party Moment.
From a rational point of view, of course, the Souter retirement probably won’t change the shape of the Court in any major way: a veteran “liberal” will be replaced by a younger “liberal,” and conservatives don’t have the votes in the Senate to do anything about it.
The Supreme Court, however, is not a rational subject for the Cultural Right, where it assumes vast, mythic proportions as the top tier of a federal judiciary blamed for all sorts of destructive havoc, most notably the legalization of abortion.
To understand how your average right-to-life activist looks at this, remember that this was supposed to be the moment, had the right candidate won the 2008 elections, when the long-awaited fifth vote on the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, and end the “holocaust” of legalized abortion, finally became an imminent prospect.
And to understand how the very mention of David Souter inflames right-wing culture warriors, remember that the reversal of Roe was supposed to happen in 1992, when the Court instead, by a 5-4 margin, reaffirmed the constitutional right to a abortion in the Casey decision, with Bush 41 appointee Souter, the famous “stealth liberal,” shocking many by siding with the pro-choice plurality. The Souter experience has weighed on conservative legal activists ever since, and was a key factor in the successful right-wing revolt against Bush 43’s effort to appoint Harriet Miers–not a known quality on the abortion issue–to the Court in 2005.
In the days just ahead, memorials to Souter’s service on the Court will be an embittering factor for those who view him as an especially insidious enabler of mass baby-killing: a Republican who disguised views that would have denied him confirmation.
And to the many organizations of the Cultural Right–in the midst of a long losing streak, treated with contempt by many Republicans, and recently taking a back seat even among “movement conservatives” to crypto-libertarian outrage about federal spending and taxes–the prospects of a Supreme Court confirmation fight over the successor to the hated Souter will be absolute catnip, and an unequalled opportunity to raise money and boost membership and morale.
Their immediate objective will be to force Senate Republicans to commit to a filibuster of any objectionable nominee. The Senate GOP has already threatened to filibuster lower-level Obama judicial appointees if he doesn’t respect their traditional veto powers over judges in their own states, making a mockery of Bush-era conservative arguments that such filibusters are unconstitutional. It’s a relatively small step to organize a filibuster against a “divisive” Obama Supreme Court nominee. And such a campaign would nicely serve as a litmus test to separate the sheep from the goats in the GOP, and to demonstrate the continuing power of the Cultural Right.
The opening skirmish, of course, will come in the form of demands from all sorts of directions that Obama appoint a “noncontroversial” Justice, which from the point of view of the Right would mean someone who disagrees with the president’s own well-honed constitutional views.
Once Obama announces a choice, however, the gloves will come off, and years of cultural conservative frustration over the Court will come flowing out, with no cohesive Republican Party or conservative movement to channel and control it. It could get very, very noisy, and very, very ugly, very very fast, particularly if Obama appoints, as he undoubtedly could, an “out” lesbian to the Court.
Maybe this is a premature prediction, but I’d bet the Cultural Right is about to undertake its version of the Tea Parties this summer and fall. And given the configuration of forces in the Senate and the country, the likely victim will not be Barack Obama or his Court nominee, but a Republican Party whose coalition is becoming unglued in every sense of the word.

Reports from oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court indicate that the Supremes may be on the brink of striking down Section 5 of the Voting Right Act, the congressional authorization for requiring Justice Department “preclearance” of districting schemes in most southern states and a few other scattered jurisdictions to ensure they do not dilute minority voting strength. The main source of this speculation was a line of questioning by Justice Anthony Kennedy, (typically the swing vote in close decisions) expressing hostility towards Congress’ alleged failure to adequately review recent voting data in deciding which jurisdictions are subject to Section 5.
Kennedy was definitely the swing vote in a recent decision prohibiting courts from requiring “majority-influence” districts on VRA grounds, which was not particularly good news for Democrats, who have been the victim of “packing” and “bleaching” practices in the past that concentrated minority voters in a small number of districts.
As with the earlier decision, the current review of Section 5 is significant due to its timing: just prior to the decennial reapportionment and redistricting process for both congressional and state legislative seats. If Section 5 were struck down, it could obviously be revisited by a Democratic Congress, and even if preclearance is no longer required, individuals can challenge districting maps on VRA grounds via a separate section of the Act.
Still, it would be nice to go into the redistricting season with a civil-rights-friendly and Democratic Justice Department exercising a full range of powers; the last two occurred under Republican presidents. In the end, the big battle affecting redistricting will be over control of state legislative chambers and governorships, which is another reason why the 2010 elections could be momentuous.

Using data from CQ’s Greg Giroux and from Swing State Project, I’ve taken a quick look at House and Senate Democrats who voted for and against the final budget resolution, and how their states and districts voted in the 2008 presidential election. And the real story is how many Democrats from tough territory actually voted with the president.
47 House Democrats represent districts carried by John McCain in a bad Republican year. They voted 34-13 for the Obama-backed budget. 13 Democratic senators represent states carried by McCain; they voted for the budget 10-3.
Of the four House Democrats voting against the budget who represent districts carried by Obama, three (Barrow of GA, Foster of IL, and Nye of VA) are from seats recently won by Republicans, and the fourth is Dennis Kucinich. Only two Senate Democrats from states won by Obama voted against the budget: Arlen Specter, who switched parties the day of the vote, and Evan Bayh, from a state that narrowly went Democratic for the first time in 44 years (true also, of course, for Virginia senators Warner and Webb, who voted for the budget).
Looking at the Democratic groupings often suspected of disloyalty is interesting, too. The Blue Dog Coalition in the House voted for the budget by a 41-6 margin. And in the Senate, the 15 Democrats whose names have most often been associated with the “moderate working group” led by Evan Bayh split 13-2 in favor of the budget.
All in all, not that bad a day for party unity.

My last post talked about Jim DeMint’s strange and dialectical “win by losing” credo. His way of “thinking” was nicely summed up in the Washington Post today by former Reagan and Bush 41 staffer Ed Rogers:

Notice to Republicans: Arlen Specter changing parties is good for the Democrats and President Obama and bad for us. If you think otherwise, put down the Ann Coulter book and go get some fresh air. There’s always a delusional element within the GOP that thinks if we lose badly enough the Democrats will gain so much power they will implement all their crazy plans, the people will revolt and purest Republicans will then be swept back into power. Even if this were true, it doesn’t take into account the damage done while our opponents are in control.

I guess it would be too much to expect for Rogers to also note the damage that could be done if conservatives insist on lashing the true-believer party base into a permanent counter-revolutionary hate frenzy. But at least he didn’t blame the whole situation on Barack Obama’s failure to be “bipartisan.”
As a son of the Deep South, I am intimately familiar with the cultural phenomenon of believing in victory-through-defeat and the glamor of “noble” failure, a spiritual disease that inflicted many of the white folks of my region for more than a century. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Jim DeMint comes from the state whose fever swamps first fed that affliction. I’d love to see the voters of the Palmetto State (my own native state), refute that suspicion before too very long.

You do have to say this for SC Sen. Jim DeMint: he represents the unmediated subconsciousness of contemporary conservatives, coming right out and saying things that others more discreetly probably just think.
That’s certainly true of his rather novel explanation for the decline of Republican fortunes in the northeast, highlighted by the Specter defection. Here’s DeMint via CNN’s Political Ticker:

Appearing on CNN Tuesday, DeMint, a hero of the conservative grassroots, denied that his party has tilted too far to the right.
“I don’t think many Americans are going to agree that the Republican party has become too conservative,” he said. “If you look at our record of spending, our record on every issue, the problem I think we have is Americans no longer believe that we believe what we say we do.”
DeMint says he isn’t worried. He denied that the GOP has become a southern party, attributing Republican losses in the northeast to some northern voters who have left the region and moved south hoping to avoid labor unions and “forced unionization.” He said Americans will eventually come back into the Republican fold because of growing alarm about the size of government and President Obama’s fiscal policies.

Let’s get this straight: southern Republicans haven’t conquered the GOP; GOP voters have just moved South, and eventually, those poor union slaves they left behind will wake up and vote Republican as well, so long as the party doesn’t do anything right now to directly appeal to their current benighted views.
DeMint is carrying dialectical reasoning to levels that would have impressed Karl Marx. Losing is winning, and winning means making no conscious effort to win.
Aside from that interesting perspective, which applauds the shrinkage of the GOP as necessary to its ultimate victory, DeMint’s geographical analysis of partisan fortunes is a fascinating variation on the ancient conservative conviction that economic growth depends on a “business climate” with no unions, low wages, low taxes on high earners and capital, and little or no regulation. According not only to DeMint but to most Republicans and (unfortunately) a fair number of Democrats in the South, keeping the Union Devil down or even out has attracted untold numbers of jobs and highly productive people from the socialist northeast and midwest.
If that hoary moonlight-and-magnolias theory of economic development were true, of course, then Mississippi would be the economic dynamo of the whole world, and DeMint’s own South Carolina wouldn’t be perpetually trailing most of the country in key economic and social indicators. (Despite its Eden-like business climate, SC’s unemployment rate according to the latest statistics is third worst in the nation, at 11.4%, rather notably higher than that of union-bossed and Democratic-governed PA at 7.8%).
But turning to the political side of DeMint’s argument, it’s highly reminiscent of the 1990s theory (dubbed the “Valhalla Syndrome” by California-based urbanologist Joel Kotkin) that prosperous white folks fleeing California’s crime, taxes and people of color were turning the Rocky Mountain States bright red even as California itself turned blue. Turns out the second half of that trajectory has panned out as predicted, but not the first, as major Democratic gains in the Rockies became one of the huge political stories of recent years.
So recent history doesn’t exactly reinforce DeMint’s theory that people in the northeast, somehow prevented from escaping the economic prisons of their anti-business homelands, and looking south with yearning eyes, will at some point start voting Republican, hoping to turn desperately poor states like Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut (ranked first, second and third in median household income) into mirror images of South Carolina (ranked 41st) or Mississippi (ranked 50th).
People do undoubtedly move or stay south for all sorts of reasons, ranging from climate and recreational opportunities to the culture, food, and sociability of the population. But for good government by the likes of DeMint or his colleague SC Gov. Mark “Herbert Hoover” Sanford? Probably not so much.

The reactions from Republicans to Arlen Specter’s defection yesterday are in some respects more interesting than the event itself.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) lost no time repairing to the op-ed pages of the New York Times to accuse conservatives of driving off Specter and deliberately shrinking the party’s Big Tent with cultural-issues litmus tests.
Snowe was obviously warning her Republican affiliation shouldn’t be taken for granted, either.
RNC Chairman Micheal Steele, in a not unprecedented case, seemed to be of two minds (as noted by Jason Zengerle), first expressing unhappiness over Specter’s move, but then dismissing him and his “left-wing voting record.”
In a spin that I am quite sure we will hear more of in the next few days, Patrick Ruffini of NextRight heaved a sigh of relief that having lost one Senate vote, Republicans may now, finally, lay down the burden of responsibility they’ve so patriotically shouldered up until now:

Today the mandate was cemented. The Democrats now have full control over Washington, D.C. They can now break the filibuster. And any failure to do so is not the result of GOP “obstruction” but of self-beclowning Democratic overreach of the sort they couldn’t possibly hope to get away with if any semblance of a balance of power existed.
The Democrats are now fully responsible for what happens in Washington. And though it is necessary that the GOP go above and beyond to demonstrate their eventual fitness to govern, their first responsibility right now as the loyal opposition is to hold the majority in check. And that will entail a lot of “no” votes — and persistent explanation of why the “no” votes will lead to better outcomes for ordinary Americans.

(BTW, Patrick, you need to get word to Norm Coleman that he’s gumming up your scenario for the GOP by refusing to concede he lost the 2008 election. There certainly ain’t no “full control” of the Senate by Democrats so long as Coleman’s lawyers keep Al Franken from assuming his seat.)
In a similar vein, Michael G. Franc at National Review‘s The Corner chortles happily that Specter’s defection will suddenly cast a giant spotlight on moderate Democrats whose perfidious support for socialism will now be exposed.
But I’ve found these examples of “constructive” thinking only after some research. By and large, and overwhelmingly, the conservative “base ‘n’ blogosphere” reaction has been one of absolute joy at getting rid of this RINO. The list of 50 trackbacks to Michelle Malkin’s “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” post about Specter speaks volumes, with titles like “PA RINO Specter Goes Home to Dems” and “Good Riddance, and Take Your Friends from Maine With You.”
All in all, the hopes and fears of many Republicans seem to have been nicely summed up in a remarks on the Senate floor last week by the increasingly rabid Jim DeMint of SC:

I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.

Looks like he could get his wish sooner rather than later.

As the chattering classes meditate over the defection of Sen. Arlen Spector (R, now D-PA), it seems as good a time as any to dust off an article I wrote for Blueprint magazine in 2001, when Jim Jeffords switched parties, that looked back to the astonishingly robust condition of moderate Republicanism, especially in the U.S. Senate, in the mid-1970s. This may be of interest to younger readers who may be under the impression that this now-virtually-extinct political species was wiped out the day Barry Goldwater won the GOP nomination in 1964.
If you do read this piece, please don’t be offended by my suggestion that John McCain had come to represent the “centrist” impulse in the GOP. That was actually true back then, before McCain subsequently rediscovered his “Reagan Republican” roots and repudiated much of what he was saying and doing from 1999-2003.

You’ll probably hear a lot of crowing and shrieking about Sen. Arlen Specter’s announcement today that he will run for re-election in the Democratic primary next year. But ritualistic reactions aside, this is probably one of those “dramatic” decisions that will actually produce little more than a mild, warm feeling among activists in both parties.
The immediate implications in Congress are modest if real. Yes, Specter’s flip theoretically gives Democrats (in conjunction with the eventual seating of Al Franken) the magic 60 votes necessary to cut off filibusters. And that may matter on relatively small Senate matters where party-line voting is routine. On bigger issues, there’s no way Democrats can entirely rely on Ben Nelson, and several other Dems have shown a willingness to buck the administration. Moreover, Specter’s no guaranteed vote, either; he’s already indicated he won’t reverse his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (though it wouldn’t be surprising if he became more amenable to a compromise, if one emerges).
On the other hand, if Specter faces or fears a Democratic primary opponent in 2010 (those promises by leading PA Dems to clear the field for him are a little stale at present), he may well toe his new party’s line more faithfully than would otherwise be the case.
In terms of PA politics, Specter definitely will have an easier path to reelection as a Democrat, even if he attracts primary opposition. He was getting pretty toasty in his Republican primary race against Pat Toomey, who nearly beat him last time around. Toomey’s own slim hopes of actually becoming a senator just went down, ironically enough, but his challenge was always more about punishing Specter than winning a general election.
It’s the high symbolism of Specter’s switch that may matter most. Departing from the GOP with Specter was another chunk of the ever-dwindling legacy of moderate Republicanism, which activists in both parties largely deplore. It certainly won’t be regretted by culturally conservative GOPers, who have long thought of Specter as a bitter enemy, or by the broad ranks of conservatives who have convinced themselves that ideological vagueness is the party’s chief political problem. Specter’s essentially a relic of those days when heterodox Republicans could create a power base in Congress for themselves through the power of the seniority system; with Republicans back in the minority, that power base was long gone.
So although some of the rhetoric you’ll hear will echo that of the days after Jim Jeffords’ party switch in 2001, which flipped control of the Senate, it’s more a matter of an old shoe finally dropping than any real change in the balance of power. Republicans decided a long time ago that they really had little use for their “moderate” wing, and what’s left of it is predictably winging away.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist
Joe’s direction.