Kentucky voters seeking a better understanding of the roots of the political, social and economic beliefs of GOP senate nominee Rand Paul should have a gander at some of the more revealing, but largely overlooked articles about his father’s views.
For openers, sample “Who Wrote Ron Paul’s Newsletters?” by Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, posted at Reason.com, the website of libertarian Reason Magazine. The article is mostly an expose of the influence of two libertarian activist-‘intellectuals,’ Llewellyn Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, on Rand Paul’s father, Ron Paul. The authors, who apparently identify with the anti-racist wing of the Libertarian movement, give no quarter to Paul’s mentors:

Ron Paul doesn’t seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has “no idea” who might have written inflammatory comments such as “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks”–statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists–including some still close to Paul–all named the same man as Paul’s chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul’s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared–roughly 1989 to 1994–Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist “paleoconservatives,” producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul–accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman’s recent writings and audio recordings.

The authors go on to cite several credible sources affirming the close ties between Rockwell, Rothbard and Ron Paul, and note other issues of the newsletters that printed vicious slurs against Martin Luther King, Jr.They say Paul once claimed that his most lucrative source of donations was the mailing list for “The Spotlight,” a virulent anti-Semitic tabloid run by Holocaust denier Willis Carto. Elsewhere Rockwell has railed against “state-enforced integration,” and the authors say:

…Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an “unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America.”…Anyone with doubts about the composition of the “parasitic Underclass” could look to the regular “PC Watch” feature of the Report, in which Rockwell compiled tale after tale of thuggish black men terrifying petite white and Asian women.

Perhaps there is a distinction to be made between the racial views of Ron Paul and his mentors on the one hand, and Rand Paul’s views on the other. But, as Joe Conason notes in his Salon.com post, “The roots of Rand Paul’s civil rights resentment”:

To understand Rand Paul’s agonized contortions over America’s civil rights consensus, let’s review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades with a faction that described itself as “paleolibertarian,” led by former Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They eagerly forged an alliance with the “paleoconservatives” behind Patrick Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose trademarks are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism.

In his article in The New Republic, “Angry White Man:The Bigoted Past of Ron Paul,” James Kirchick sheds light on a sort of split in the Libertarian movement, which puts Paul and his followers and mentors in the ‘paleo-libertarian’ camp:

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute–including Paul–may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine. Instead, they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history–the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states. As one prominent Washington libertarian told me, “There are too many libertarians in this country … who, because they are attracted to the great books of Mises, … find their way to the Mises Institute and then are told that a defense of the Confederacy is part of libertarian thought.”

Kirchick’s article goes on to cite even more repulsive examples of racial slurs and bigotry towards other groups in Ron Paul’s newsletters. Of course the elder Paul has done as much as he can to distance himself from the views he was so proudly associated with a decade ago. Rand Paul stretches even further to disavow such overtly racist views, but seems unable to completely let go of the racial attitudes he was raised around, and so he stumbles around the Civil Rights Act.
History provides numerous examples of political leaders who were more progressive than their parents, and Rand Paul has been given that opportunity. Regrettably, there are also plenty of politicians, like W and Rand Paul, who make sympathetic noises about change and equal opportunity, but when it comes to policy, can’t quite make the break.
Rand Paul has been muzzled by his GOP handlers, as far as “Meet the Press’ and other in-depth interview programs are concerned. They hope to deprogram some of his paleo-libertarianism, steer him toward the center, or at least the neo-con right and block one of the Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities. There won’t be any free rides, however, from his Democratic opponent, Kentucky Attorney-General Jack Conway, who is equally-determined to hold Paul accountable for his noxious views on race and economic privilege.

MyDD‘s Jonathan Singer has a post up that should be of interest to the Jack Conway for Senate campaign. Singer focuses on one of Rand Paul’s more significant vulnerabilities revealed in recent interviews:

…Paul made fairly clear that he did not believe it within the bounds of Congress’s powers to address issues of private discrimination. In legal parlance, Paul does not believe that Congress’s power under Article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution to “regulate Commerce… among the several States” extends to the private actions of the citizens of these states…
…The problem with this view is apparent to just about anyone who lives in a world of reality rather than ideology. It is fine enough to believe that, in theory, individuals’ contractual and property rights should not be trampled on by the state, and that, what’s more, the market will solve all problems. But the fact is the market did not solve the problem of institutional racism. It took state action, not only in directing state actors but also in directing the practices of private individuals like the ones who owned restaurants. The same can be said about the Americans with Disabilities Act, which like the Civil Rights Act restricted individual action to ensure access for those who otherwise might be denied access. The good acts of individual property owners to accommodate their workers in the ways described by Paul in his NPR interview are important — but they were not enough. Only when the state stepped in were the rights of the disabled to access restaurants and other accommodations ensured.

Singer then suggests four very good questions for Paul, “considering his apparently limited views of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers”:

1. Do you believe the federal minimum wage is constitutional?
2. Do you believe federal overtime laws are constitutional?
3. Do you believe the federal government has the power to enact work safety laws and regulations?
4. Do you believe that federal child labor laws are constitutional?
A “no” answer to any of these questions would presumably be problematic for the Paul campaign considering folks seem to like the minimum wage, laws that stop employers from, say, making their workers use machines that cut off their hands, and laws that prohibit 7 year olds from laboring in coal mines.

So it’s not only the racial aspects of Paul’s views that are going to cause him trouble. Singer has hit on a major weakness of Paul’s knee-jerk libertarianism, the belief that the private sector has constitutional protection from damn near all regulation. The politically-alert segment of the white working class in KY would be very interested in Paul’s answers to Singer’s questions.
Jack Conway didn’t get to be Kentucky A.G. by missing opportunities like this one. This senate seat should be a Democratic pick-up.

Thoughtful Republicans won’t find much to cheer in the results of Tuesday elections, while both moderate and progressive Democrats are hailing the results.
In the special election to fill the PA-12 congressional seat vacated by the death of Rep. John Murtha, Democrat Mark Critz, a Murtha aide, beat Republican Tim Burns, who Critz will oppose again for the November general election. With 70 percent of precincts counted in the potential bellwether election, Critz lead Burns by a margin of 53-45 percent, according to Paul Pierce’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article.
Democrats were encouraged by the victory in the swing district (2-1 Democratic registration edge, but a Cook PVI rating of R+1), as DNC Chairman Tim Kaine noted:

Tonight’s result demonstrates clearly that Democrats can compete and win in conservative districts, including ones like Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, which was won by John McCain in 2008…The Republican Party’s failure to take a seat that they themselves said was tailor-made for them to win is a significant blow and shows that while conventional wisdom holds that this will be a tough year for Democrats, the final chapter of this year’s elections is far from written.

Dr. Melanie Blumberg, a poly Sci professor at California University of Pennsylvania, quoted in Pierce’s article, added,

I think the GOP’s attempt to nationalize the election by all the references to (House Leader) Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama failed miserably. Critz read the district better, and he apparently knew their conservative leanings from working with Congressman Murtha

Former half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and House Minority Leader John Boehner, stumped for Burns, as did Sen. Scott Brown and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Former President Clinton and Sen. Bob Casey campaigned for Critz, a “pro-life, pro-gun” Democrat, who made jobs his top policy priority. Critz’s win suggests that candidates who articulate a convincing vision for job-creation and economic recovery will have an edge with working class voters.
Joe Sestak’s decisive win (8 percent) over Arlen Specter is getting lots of national attention, and soon perhaps, contributions from Democrats who see him as a rising star. (For an interesting map depicting the geographic breadth of Sestak’s win, click here). Let it not be lost on Dems that his win was also an impressive demonstration of the power of media over Specter’s well-established ground game — Sestak’s uptick in the polls tracked the emergence of his sharply-focused attack ads. In a tough economy, it appears that well-done attack ads have more resonance than the warm and fuzzy ‘I love my family and my country’ ads of more prosperous times.
Perhaps one lesson of the May 18 elections is that making primary endorsements is not such a good idea for a sitting president, who after all, is the leader of his party. I understand the argument for rewarding a Senator who made an important party switch — to show others who may be considering a switch that they won’t be left out on a limb. Obama reportedly backed off some as more recent polls showed Sestak gaining. Primary neutrality may give the President more leverage as a unifying force in the party and in campaigning for the primary victor in the general election, especially when the winner may not have been his first choice.
Sestak, a retired rear admiral with 31 years of naval service, is a mediagenic candidate of considerable promise, a rust-belt progressive with strong national security cred. Dems, including Obama, should work like hell to get him elected.
In the Arkansas Democratic primary, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is supported by many progressive Dems, forced Sen. Blanche Lincoln into a run-off. Democratic voters cast more than twice the number of Republican ballots in the Arkansas Senate primaries, and both Lincoln and Halter out-polled Republican primary winner Boozeman. The so called ‘enthusiasm’ gap favoring Republicans did not materialize in the May 18 elections.
Even in KY, Dem Senate candidates Jack Conway and Daniel Mongiardo both received more votes in the Democratic primary (226,773 and 221,269 respectively) than did MSM and tea party darling Rand Paul in the GOP primary (206,159). Nearly half a million Kentuckians voted for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, compared with less than 350 thousand who voted for Republicans.

Tonight political junkies will be closely monitoring the Sestak-Specter race in PA’s Democratic primary, by all accounts a close one, made more interesting by the rise of Sestak, a favorite of many progressive Dems. The added complexity of Specter’s party-switching, along with rain in Philly, however, make it problematic to divine a broad trend with November implications. Instead, pundits are calling the PA-12 congressional race the more interesting bellwether, pitting Democrat Mark Critz and Republican Tim Burns in a close contest for the late John Murtha’s congressional seat.
PA-12 is a predominantly white working class district with a Cook Partisan Voting Index score of R +1, the only congressional district in the nation that voted for Dem presidential candidate John Kerry in ’04 and GOP nominee John McCain in ’08. It’s being called a must-win for the Republicans, but Democrat Critz is running a good campaign — a Talking Points Memo Poll Average has Burns at 43.0 percent compared with 42.4 percent for Critz.
As Christina Bellantoni reports at TPM,

If Democrats keep that seat in a battleground district, they think that bodes well for this fall…”If the bottom were really falling out the GOP should be walking away with this race,” a Democrat close to the White House told me. Given the district demographics, the tough year for the majority party and the president’s diminished approval ratings, Republicans have a great chance at a pickup, the source said. “Even if it’s close it’s a good sign for us.”

Bellantoni also quotes former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), “They should win this election today…If the Republicans don’t win this I think they have to look mechanically at what they’re doing.”
Critz is getting lots of love from Democratic leaders, including Bill Clinton, who campaigned for Critz. The DCCC reports that Critz is being outspent by Burns more than 2-1, but the Democrat is still hanging tough. If Critz wins, or even loses by a close margin, it will be a good sign that, contrary to GOP spin, the white working class of 2010 is not jerking its knees for Republicans just yet.

You already knew it, but WaPo columnist Michael Gerson puts it exceptionally-well in his op-ed today. As W’s former speechwriter and a GOP political operative, his concerns about the Latino vote are of interest. Here’s Gerson on why the GOP’s latest round of immigrant-bashing looks a lot like “political suicide”:

…it would be absurd to deny that the Republican ideological coalition includes elements that are anti-immigrant — those who believe that Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to American culture and identity. When Arizona Republican Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth calls for a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico, when then-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) refers to Miami as a “Third World country,” when state Rep. Russell Pearce (R), one of the authors of the Arizona immigration law, says Mexicans’ and Central Americans’ “way of doing business” is different, Latinos can reasonably assume that they are unwelcome in certain Republican circles.
…Never mind that the level of illegal immigration is down in Arizona or that skyrocketing crime rates along the border are a myth. McCain’s tag line — “Complete the danged fence” — will rank as one of the most humiliating capitulations in modern political history.
Ethnic politics is symbolic and personal. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gained African American support by calling Coretta Scott King while her husband was in prison. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater lost support by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A generation of African American voters never forgot either gesture.

Coming after the debate over GOP-sponsored Proposition 187 in California and the disastrous (for Republicans) immigration debate during the last mid term elections, the new Arizona immigration law may well be strike three for the GOP regarding Hispanic voters in particular. (It will probably hurt some with all voters of color). Gerson cites a 2008 poll by the Pew Hispanic Center, which indicated that 49 percent of Hispanics believed “Democrats had more concern for people of their background,” while only 7 percent believed it true of Republicans. Says Gerson, “Since the Arizona controversy, this gap can only have grown. In a matter of months, Hispanic voters in Arizona have gone from being among the most pro-GOP in the nation to being among the most hostile.”
Gerson trots out some interesting demographic data to underscore his point:

…Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona, 44 percent in Texas, 47 percent in California, 54 percent in New Mexico. Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.

Gerson tries to conclude on a hopeful note for his GOP brethren, pointing out that Hispanics tend to be “socially-conservative” and “entrepreneurial,” adding that “…Republicans do not need to win a majority of the Latino vote to compete nationally, just a competitive minority of that vote.” But cold logic forces his final sentence: “But even this modest goal is impossible if Hispanic voters feel targeted rather than courted.”
The rapidly-tanking GOP brand in Latino communities is one of the reasons why Republican leaders are so excited by Hispanic candidates like Marco Rubio in Florida — they think it helps project an image that they are Hispanic-friendly, despite their miserable track record on issues of Latino concern. Sort of a ‘Potemkin village” with large smiling portraits in the front and very little behind it.
Dems have been given a gift by the xenophobic wing of the GOP. That doesn’t, insure, however, that Latino voters will always turn out for Dems. But it does strongly suggest that Dems have much to gain by supporting accelerated naturalization of Hispanics applying for citizenship, investing in Hispanic registration and GOTV and especially by recruiting and training more Latino candidates.

it will come as no great surprise that the NRA, and some of their Republican errand boys are now defending the rights of terrorists to buy guns and even explosives. Even in the wake of the attempted Times Square bombing, we have conservative Republicans like Senator Lindsay Graham prattling on about how the lofty principles they ascribe to the second amendment are somehow more compelling than the safety and security of Americans on our own soil.
To be fair, not all Republicans have shrugged off concerns about terrorists legally purchasing weapons. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) has testified in favor of legislation he is co-sponsoring with Sen Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) to close the “terror gap.” There are a few Republican mayors spinkled among the 500+ mayors supporting the restrictions. Heck, even the Bush administration supported restrictions, which were blocked by NRA lobbying and their (mostly) Republican supporters in congress.
The NRA’s defense of terrorist gun rights is underscored, as you might guess, by the usual “slippery slope” argument. You know, the one about how the mere mention of gun control will lead us inexorably toward a dictatorial confiscation of all firearms to pave the way for our incoming communist masters. It seems crazy to imply that this paranoia should trump legitimate concerns about suspected terrorists buying arms and explosives willy-nilly.
A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed that persons listed on the terrorist watch list have purchased firearms and explosives from licensed U.S. dealers on more than a thousand occasions over the past six years, and quite legally. As William Branigan reported in the Washington Post,

According to the GAO report released Wednesday, FBI data show that individuals on the government’s terrorist watch list were involved in firearms or explosives background checks 1,228 times from February 2004 through February 2010. Of those transactions, 1,119, or about 91 percent, “were allowed to proceed because no prohibiting information was found — such as felony convictions, illegal immigrant status, or other disqualifying factors,” the GAO’s Eileen R. Larence said in prepared testimony.
She said the 1,228 transactions involved about 650 individuals, of whom about 450 engaged in multiple transactions and six were involved in 10 or more.
From March 2009 through February 2010, Larence said, 272 background checks yielded matches to persons on the terrorist watch list, one of whom was purchasing explosives. Several others were listed not only in the FBI’s Known or Suspected Terrorist File but were also on the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list, she said…”According to FBI officials, all of these transactions were allowed to proceed because the background checks revealed no prohibiting information under current law,” Larence testified.

Do the Dems have an opening here? I think so. An Ipsos/McClatchy Poll conducted 1/ 7-11 found that 51 percent of respondents agreed generally that it’s “necessary to give up some liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.” A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted 6/4-5, 2008, found 88 percent supporting reforms “Preventing certain people, such as convicted felons or people with mental health problems, from owning guns.” I would thus be very surprised if a strong majority of Americans would not support some reasonable weapons purchasing restrictions on suspected terrorists.
UPDATE: A poll by The Word Doctors (Republican strategist Frank Luntz’s outfit), conducted 11/25-12/2 on behalf of Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that a stunning 82 percent of NRA members supported “a proposal prohibiting people on the terrorist watch list from purchasing guns,” with only 9 percent of NRA members opposing the proposal. Clearly, the NRA leadership is very much at odds with its rank and file membership on this issue. (Thanks to Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence for flagging the poll)
Polls do show that the GOP has a small edge in public confidence regarding which party can fight terrorism most effectively. Democratic solidarity for reasonable restrictions on suspected terrorists could help level public opinion on national security concerns respecting the two parties — and just might prevent a great tragedy.

Anyone interested in the politics of HCR should check out Alan I. Abramowitz’s “Health Care as an Issue in the Midterm Election” at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Abamowitz, a TDS Advisory Board member, provides an updated analysis of whether HCR “has the potential to influence enough voters to affect the results of the House and Senate elections.”
Noting that “that the most important influence on voter decision-making in congressional elections is party identification,” Abramowitz argues that “the influence of an issue depends on the proportion of partisans on each side who disagree with their own party’s position. The potential of an issue to influence the outcome of an election is greatest when the proportion of cross-pressured partisans is much larger in one party than in the other party.”
Using this framework, Abramowitz taps recent Gallup poll data, obtained 3/26-28, in which respondents expressed preferences for generic Democrats or Republicans for House seats, along with their opinions about the HCR Act. Abramowiz found:

The first thing that stands out when one examines the results of this poll is the powerful influence of party identification on vote choice. Among all registered voters, 48% favored a generic Republican, 46% favored a generic Democrat, and 6% were undecided. However…well over 90% of party identifiers and leaning independents supported their own party’s candidate. There was almost no difference in this regard between identifiers and leaners…92% of Republican identifiers and 97% of Republican leaners favored a generic Republican while 95% of Democratic identifiers and 90% of Democratic leaners favored a generic Democrat.
When registered voters were asked about the effect of the health care law on their congressional vote, they divided fairly evenly: 40% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported the law, 46% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law, and 13% said it would have no effect on their vote.
…These opinions were generally consistent with voting intentions. 75% of Democratic voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law while only 8% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law; 84% of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law while only 9% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law. Among undecided voters, 28% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who favored the law, 34% said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposed the law, and 38% said it would have no effect on their vote.

Abramowitz concludes,

…Only a small minority of voters are cross-pressured on the issue of health care reform and…the numbers of cross-pressured Democrats and Republicans are about equal. Moreover, among undecided voters, there is a fairly even split between those saying they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports the law and those saying they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes the law. Based on these results, there appears to be little potential for this issue to produce a shift in voter preferences. The main effect of health care as an issue would probably be to reinforce voters’ partisan preferences.

Regarding the voter enthusiasm factor, however, Abramowitz cautions that,

…So far this year most polls have found Republicans to be more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats and that was also the case in the Gallup survey. 71% of those supporting a generic Republican indicated that they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting this year compared with only 56% of those supporting a generic Democrat.

Certainly the ‘enthusiasm gap’ favoring Republicans is cause for some concern. But the flip side, says Abramowitz, is that “there appears to be more room for increased enthusiasm among pro-reform Democrats than among anti-reform Republicans.” Thus Dems stand to benefit from an effort to energize HCR supporters, as well as an educational campaign to increase their number.
All of which also suggests that the economy, particularly jobs, may well trump health care as the pivotal concern for midterm voters.

Donald Carr, a senior policy and communications advisor for the Environmental Working Group, has a post up at HuffPo that should cause considerable squirming among Republican critics of big government, a substantial number of whom have been funneling millions of taxpayer dollars into subsidies to agribusiness. Carr explains in “Will Farm Subsidies Be the Tea Partiers’ Achilles’ Heel?“:

A wide swath of leading conservative and libertarian organizations, pundits and thinkers are no fans of the farm subsidy system: The Wall Street Journal editorial page, National Review, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, just for starters. Even Glenn Beck called for severely limiting farm subsidies just weeks ago on his Fox News program.
When conservative thought leaders decry the billions of federal dollars that ensure profits for the largest growers of corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans as a glaring example of wasteful government spending — you might think politicians who call themselves conservative would hear the music.

If you think this means government-bashing Republican office-holders would be railing against the Big Ag give-aways, you would be wrong, very wrong. As Carr notes,

But right now, there seem to be plenty of Tea Party-favored candidates who willingly collect government assistance in the form of farm subsidies. In early April, the Washington Post reported that Stephen Fincher, a Tea Party Senate candidate from Tennessee, was facing criticism over his acceptance of farm subsidy payments, as is Indiana Senate candidate Marlin Stutzman. Michele Bachmann’s farm subsidies have opened her up to charges of hypocrisy for her limited government stands.
The situation is similar with members who flaunt their success at steering government money to their home states and districts. In March, at the height of the heath care debate, nine Republican senators sent President Obama a letter decrying his proposed cuts to lavish farm subsidy programs. The senators who signed the letter were Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Pat Roberts (Kan.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), John Thune (S.D.), James Risch (Idaho), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) and David Vitter (La).

Of course the GOP politicians will be quick to describe the multi-billion dollar give-aways as much-needed help for family farmers, which is a shameless lie.

You call this a “safety net?” The data show that the vast majority of the subsidies defended by the nine senators go to the largest and wealthiest plantation-scale farm operations in the country. In 2009, the top 10 percent of the largest farm recipients in America collected 74 percent of all farm subsidies. At the same time, according to the USDA, 62 percent of farmers — nearly two thirds — received no payments whatsoever.
Keep in mind that the farm economy has been white hot compared to other economic sectors. USDA projects that farm income will rise by 12 percent in the next year, following a decade that produced the five highest years ever for farm income. But agriculture’s bipartisan appetite for taxpayer money is insatiable. …

Carr points out that some Democrats have joined in supporting the subsidies. But it’s not Democrats who are doing all of the self-righteous bellowing about the evils of unmerited government spending while doling out billions in corporate welfare to Big Agriculture, which returns the favor in campaign contributions. Carr has opened up a big can of GOP hypocrisy here, and Democratic candidates should not hesitate to make the most of it in their midterm campaigns.

Open Left‘s Chris Bowers comments on the limp Democratic turnout in yesterday’s primaries and urges the DNC to commission some polling to find out what’s behind it. Bowers notes, via Hotline on Call a disturbing decline in Democratic voters, compared to figures for the ’06 mid-term elections:

Just 663K OH voters cast ballots in the competitive primary between LG Lee Fisher (D) and Sec/State Jennifer Brunner (D). That number is lower than the 872K voters who turned out in ’06, when neither Gov. Ted Strickland (D) nor Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) faced primary opponents.
…in IN, just 204K Hoosiers voted for Dem House candidates, far fewer than the 357K who turned out in ’02 and the 304K who turned out in ’06.

Worse, the GOP turnout numbers were up dramatically, according to Hotline:

By contrast, GOP turnout was up almost across the board. 373K people voted in Burr’s uncompetitive primary, nearly 9% higher than the 343K who voted in the equally non-competitive primary in ’04. Turnout in House races in IN rose 14.6% from ’06, fueled by the competitive Senate primary, which attracted 550K voters. And 728K voters cast ballots for a GOP Sec/State nominee in Ohio, the highest-ranking statewide election with a primary; in ’06, just 444K voters cast ballots in that race.

Bowers notes that “This is more than just a demographic problem based on age–there really is a meaningful enthusiasm gap,” and urges the DNC to make a smart investment with some of the $30 mill it has pledged for mid-term GOTV this year:

…There are still no public, national polls looking for answers on why Democratic turnout is so low. All it would take would be to ask a single, open-ended question to 500 people who voted in 2008, but self-identify as unlikely to vote in 2010, “why don’t you intend on voting?” Everyone has theories, but those theories lack empirical supporting evidence…
…Surely, they could spend a little of that money on a transparent, representative, scientifically random, poll of unlikely voters of the sort I listed above. A lot of people are going to be working to try and improve turnout this year, and our jobs would be a lot easier if we actually knew what was motivating unlikely voters.

It’s a good idea. The DNC should take nothing for granted in budgeting midterm GOTV expenditures, and certainly not rely on unverified speculation about the specific reasons for the Dems’ mid-term voter enthusiasm decline.

WaPo columnist Chris Cillizza’s “Democrats’ young voter problem” in today’s edition of The Fix addresses a challenge facing Democrats regarding an important constituency. Drawing from a Gallup tracking poll, conducted 4/1-25, Cillizza explains:

Less than one in four voters aged 18-29 described themselves as “very enthusiastic” about the 2010 midterm election. Those numbers compare unfavorably to voters between 50 and 64 (44 percent “very enthusiastic”), 65 and older (41 percent “very enthusiastic”) and 30 to 49 (32 percent “very enthusiastic”).

Cillizza argues plausibly enough that this youth “enthusiasm” gap, especially in context of current events, makes it very difficult to recreate the pro-Democratic coalition that elected Obama for the mid-term elections. The concern is that low enthusiasm will translate into low turnout, which is especially worrisome because young voters are tilting Democratic, as the Gallup data indicates:

The Gallup data affirms the clear Democratic tilt of young voters. On a generic congressional ballot test, 51 percent of 18-29 year old vote opted for the Democratic candidate while 39 percent chose the Republican. In every other age group, the generic was either statistically tied or the GOP candidate led. (Republicans’ best age group was voters 65 and older who chose a GOP candidate by a 50 percent to 41 percent margin over a generic Democrat.)

Of course, Democrats would like a strong youth turnout in November. But how important is the youth turnout, compared to other age groups? Here’s an age breakdown of the last (2006) mid-term turnout, according to CNN exit polling:

18-29 12%
30-44 24%
45-59 34%
60+ 29%

Assuming age demographics in 2010 are not terribly different from ’06, it appears that the youth vote will be a relatively small segment, compared to older age groups. Perhaps youth turnout can be increased slightly with a targeted GOTV campaign. But it seems prudent to ask if putting more resources into targeting the 45-59 cohort — almost triple the percentage of young voters in ’06 — might be more cost-effective.
Of course it’s not so easy to craft appeals to arbitrary age groups. But one experience being shared by many in the 45-59 cohort is financing their kids’ college education, as tuition costs continue to rise dramatically. A brand new, well-publicized Democratic plan to provide tuition assistance through beefed up scholarships and tuition tax breaks might do very well with this high mid-term turnout group. And, as a collateral benefit, it could also help with young people who would like to go to college but can’t afford it.
There is nothing parents want more than for their kids to do well, and they know that a good education is the surest ticket to fulfilling that goal. The party that strives to help fulfill this dream will not go unrewarded by middle-aged voters.