It’s another big primary day, with contests on tap in Arizona, Florida, Vermont, Alaska and Oklahoma (a runoff). You can read my pithy analysis of all these primaries over at FiveThirtyEight.
Here, though, I’d like to mention an extraordinary contrast in the tones exhibited in two primaries: the Democratic gubernatorial race in Vermont, and the Republican gubernatorial and Democratic Senate primaries in Florida.
The tilt in Vermont has many of the ingredients that often create nasty-fests. It’s very close, with all five candidates being viable, and most handicappers suggesting a four-way dead heat. There are some notable differences in the candidates, though they mostly agree on the issues of the day. Activists in Vermont’s famous Progressive Party (which to the delight of Democrats, has decided against running its own gubernatorial candidate this year) seem attracted to state senate president pro tem Peter Shumlin and former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz and state senator Susan Bartlett have long been considered “centrists.” Though he’s been in public office, former Google exec Matt Dunne could have probably played the “outsider” pretty hard.
But this has been, best as I can tell, an exceptionally civil primary, with lots of debates, lots of substance, and lots of concern for party unity going forward.
Compare that to what’s been going on down in Florida, where both major parties have been torn apart by self-funders and the reaction to them. Rick Scott, a recent transplant to the state, parachuted into the Republican governor’s race not long before qualifying ended and began beating his chest as a self-proclaimed conservative outsider aligned with the Tea Party movement, and soon broke every spending record in Florida history. Poor old Bill McCollum, who’s trudged along in the party harness for decades, losing two Senate races but finally winning statewide as Attorney General in 2006, didn’t know what hit him. But even when it looked like Scott had left McCollum for dead, the Attorney General’s backers (which included former governor Jeb Bush and virtually the entire state party establishment) plotted a comback, and soon McCollum and the 527’s associated with him savagely went after Scott on his former company’s massive Medicare fraud fines. As McCollum climbed back into contention (he now leads in several late polls), both candidates’ negatives soared, and what originally looked like a Republican cakewalk in November’s now a dead heat.
But unfortuntately, the dynamics of the Scott-McCollum race have largely been replicated in the Democratic Senate primary between congressman Kendrick Meek and billionaire investor Jeff Greene. Like Scott, Greene barged into the Senate race very late with an open checkbook, and in an ad blitz that’s ultimately cost $23 million, Greene moved quickly into the lead. As noted in an earlier post here, Meek was spared much of the demolition work on Greene, thanks to media reports of Greene’s loosey-goosey lifestyle, complete with jaunts around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea with BFF Mike Tyson, and at least one apparently accidental jaunt to off-limits Cuba. Greene has fought back with charges that Meek and his mother, former congresswoman Carrie Meek, are, basically, crooks, but it hasn’t worked other than to lower the tone of the contest even more.
People who oppose campaign finance reform should take a long look at what’s happened in Florida this year and explain why it’s essential to the First Amendment to let wealthy people with virtually no connection to a constituency come in and turn elections into chainwaw massacres. But money-equals-speech fans aren”t the only culprits. Many political professionals love nothing more than to find a clueless self-funder who will write lavish checks while either deferring to the pros or flaming out quickly. Jeff Greene’s first chief strategist was the legendary Joe Trippi; his eventual replacement was Tad Devine, who was John Kerry’s general election campaign manager in 2004. It’s likely both men did enough research to realize that their candidate’s background doomed him to destruction, but in the meantime, the livin’ was easy; too bad the floundering Greene had to throw mud at Kendrick Meek as he sank in the polls.
All party primaries can’t be as civil as Vermont’s, but Lord-a-mercy, must so many of them be like Florida’s? Maybe so, as long as money talks so loud, and mud’s the only way to get the free media attention money can’t buy.

In her ‘The Notion’ post, “Fight Tea Party Voters with Fresh Voters,” The Nation’s Laura Flanders has some good news for Democrats, who may be getting discouraged by downer opinion polls. Apparently the Justice Department’s decision to finally enforce the National Voter Registration Act is having a significant impact. Flanders explains:

In a handful of swing states where voting rights groups have sued and won in recent years, the result is impressive: hundreds of thousands of low-income people, two-thirds women, registering since 2008.
In Missouri, where John McCain beat Barack Obama by less than 4,000 votes, nearly a quarter-million voter registration applications have been filed by Missourians while applying for state public assistance benefits since August 2008. In Ohio, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly 119,000 votes in 2004, low-income Ohioans filed 100,000 voter applications in just the first six months of 2010.
Project Vote, Demos, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the local civil rights groups who sued these states and won (forcing turnarounds at state public assistance agencies) have been waging a lonely fight to implement the National Voter Registration Act. The 1993 law requires a range of state agencies, not just motor vehicles, offer voter registration services.
That fight became a little less lonely in June, when, for the first time, the Justice Department announced it would start enforcing the NVRA’s voter registration mandate. This April, 40 million Americans applied for Food Stamps. If 10 percent of those people registered to vote – a smaller percentage than seen at Missouri public assistance agencies after settling its NVRA suit – the nation’s voter rolls would grow by several million…The numbers from Missouri and Ohio dwarf the size of the largest tea party rallies. Already, right-wingers fear these voters and NVRA compliance, commenting on websites that poor people should not vote for any number of ugly reasons…

Turnout and voter registration are not the same thing. But, if Democrats pay a little more attention to turning out these ‘fresh’ voters, it could insure that we retain control of the House and Senate. As Flanders concludes, “…Instead of obsessing about the tea partiers — give those newest voters some good reason to use that vote!.” Less nail-biting about unfavorable polls and putting more time, sweat and money into our midterm ground game will serve Dems well.

This item is a guest post from the National Security Network’s Executive Director, Heather Hurlburt, and its Director of Outreach, Ryan Keenan. The views expressed herein are their own.
The “Ground Zero mosque” debate of recent weeks has claimed several casualties: Muslim-Americans’ confidence in their homeland and its Constitution, Howard Dean’s credibility on the left, and, as Peter Beinart wrote, the U.S.’s ability to lay claim to intellectual generalship in a global “war of ideas.” But perhaps less-noticed was a body blow to the 2012 presidential hopes of Newt Gingrich.
Early on, he had signed up to headline a fear-mongering rally at the site of the proposed Cordoba House on September 11 with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, conservative media luminary Andrew Breitbart and far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders. But an onslaught of opposition from all ends of the political spectrum led Gingrich to withdraw, leading his staff to deny he had ever intended to appear – though the announcement on Wilders’ website that the anniversary “will witness two eagles” suggests otherwise.
Make no mistake about it: This appearance was about the 2012 Republican presidential race, not the “Islamization of America.” In order to win the Republican nomination, Newt needs to get past religious conservatives’ reservations about his personal life. He must reel in Tea Partiers to whom his credentials make him part of the Establishment; gain the blessing of that same establishment; and court neoconservatives without scaring off independents.
For Newt in 2012 – and for far too many GOP candidates in 2010 – rhetoric about Shariah law, “Ground Zero mosques” and “Terror Babies” is a tempting “us”-vs.-“them” narrative that papers over an ugly little secret.
As much of the national narrative leading into November’s midterms has been division and disappointment among the Democratic base, on national security there are unnoticed but enormous policy and ideological differences within the Republican base. The nativism of the Tea Party movement and the neo-isolationism of Ron and Rand Paul directly contradict the priorities of mainstream Republicans and neoconservatives. Only with difficulty can conservatives embrace the Pauls, with their opposition to the Iraq invasion, skepticism on the Afghanistan war and waffling on issues of detainee treatment. As Ann Coulter said earlier this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “if Ron Paul supports it and it’s not about foreign policy, I’m for it.” [Emphasis added].
Tea Party-driven candidates add another layer of challenge. Dan Maes in Colorado thinks the UN is using bicycles to take over his state. Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck brags about turning down Dick Cheney’s offer of a Pentagon job. Sharon Angle in Nevada spent six years in the American Independent Party, the Nevada branch of the Constitution Party (with whom a variety of other tea party-oriented Republicans have links). The foreign policy platform of the Constitution Party deserves quotation in full:

The only constitutional basis and purpose of foreign policy is to serve the interests of this nation. We should not be the world’s police-man. We pledge our only allegiance to the American Republic. We shout a resounding “NO!” to any one-world government or so-called New World Order. Not one whit of American autonomy may be surrendered to any international organization or cartel of nations. We oppose entangling foreign alliances. The United States [sic] should withdraw from the UN and NATO and bring home our overseas forces. We should review all existing treaties to determine which go beyond constitutional limits. Those that do should be rescinded.

These differences can be managed in an off-year election dominated by an endless trickle of bad economic news – if your opponents allow you to manage them. The strategy is simple: Limit discussion of Afghanistan (see for example the reaction to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, whose comments track public opinion as closely as any public official pronouncements of late). Pick some hardy perennials that get the base riled up – thus the GOP in-district playbook’s emphasis on missile defense, military spending, borders, terrorists and Iran. (The Obama administration and Democratic Congress have increased spending on all those things, in fact. But who’s counting?)
But to emerge in a crowded field to unseat the commander-in-chief two years from now, it’s tempting to try something a bit more daring: a new culture war. Gingrich’s soundbite — “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia” — gives religious and social conservatives the “Christians under attack” narrative we remember from fights over abortion, gay marriage and Teri Schiavo. This time, the “them” refers to Muslims, not liberals – at a moment when 46% of Republicans tell a Time pollster that Obama is a Muslim. For the Tea Partier, the message is slightly different. Although one would think freedom of religion would logically be appealing to people who brag about constitutionalism and limited government, spinning this as an outside “them” intruding on American soil “us” hits the nativist nerve of a movement with leaders like Mark Williams who think Muslims worship a “monkey god.”
Third, this line plays to the neoconservative obsession with power and the Middle East. It creates an image of American impotence with “them” (Muslims) intruding into American society and “us” not being able to build a church or synagogue in Saudi Arabia. And finally, the fact that it involves 9/11 and Ground Zero loops-in Independents.
There’s just one problem – as Gingrich’s precipitous retreat from the rally shows. The public’s position on this is far more nuanced, combining a discomfort with the unfamiliar with an awareness of the deep constitutional issues that the debate raises. In a recent Fox News poll, by a 53% to 41% margin, Independents believed it was “wrong” to build the mosque. But in the same poll, by a 69% to 29% advantage, Independents believed the group had the right to build the mosque. A CNN Opinion research poll of the nation at large shows similar numbers with a 70%-29 % margin opposing the construction but 64% supporting the developers’ right to build it. This week a spate of respected Republican, Independent and national security voices spoke out to warn that the debate harms our social cohesion, our Constitution and our national security.
Can a presidential candidate lie down with the animalistic motivations behind the current spate of hate-filled rhetoric, Koran burnings and disgraceful retreats from our Constitution without waking up with a potentially-fatal case of the fleas? It looks as if Gingrich has decided the answer is “no.” Others in his party might want to learn from his example – and Democrats as well as Republicans might want to think about what it means when one of our two major parties’ national security platform can be summed up as, “build missile defense, not mosques.”

It’s one of the great ironies of this political era of discontent that some of the most exceptional indicia of economic inequality in recent American history are being accompanied by a populist backlash against income redistribution, even in its most time-honored forms.
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, who wrote an important analysis of latter-day conservatism and it impact on political discourse in Off Center, have returned with a book on the politics of inequality: Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
I’ve done a full review of this book for the Washington Monthly, and you can check that out at your leisure. But the book is useful in two major respects: (1) It focuses not just on the ever-growing divide in wealth and income between the top and everyone else, but between the top-of-the-top and everyone else, a process that has been largely immune to the economic vicissitudes of the last decade. (2) It makes a very strong case against the assumption that this sort of inequality is the “natural” product of market forces, rather than the artificial results of government policies deliberately promoted for that purpose.
I tend to think that Hacker and Pierson undestimate the deep-seated, non-contrived extent of anti-government sentiments among Americans, and the contributions of poor public-sector performance in abetting them, but all in all, their book is a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the politics of the economy today and yesterday. It’s a book that will probably make you mad–but in a constructive way. It’s certainly an appropriate read for the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

There’s quite a boom market right now for theories about what Barack Obama’s done wrong, and/or what he could or should have done right but didn’t. The most impressive of those, as noted here the other day, was by John Judis, who makes the case that a “populist” approach could have positioned Obama and the Democratic Party much better for the midterms and for 2012.
Matt Bai of The New York Times also penned an influential piece arguing that Obama’s focus on legislative accomplishments has fatally interfered with his ability to project big national political messages.
Now comes Ezra Klein with a succinct rejoinder to anyone trying to essay some single-bullet theory explanation of Obama’s political standing, or where it might be if he had adopted a different strategy.
Ezra begins by tartly noting that we’ll never know what might have happened in some parallel universe where Obama did what Judis or Bai think he should have done. But using objective measurements against the only recent presidents who took office in similar circumstances–Carter, Reagan and Clinton–Obama’s approval ratings look reasonably good:

Obama’s current approval rating of 44 percent beats Clinton, Carter and Reagan. All of them were between 39 percent and 41 percent at this point in their presidencies. And all of them were former governors who accomplished less legislatively than Obama has at this point in his presidency. That seems like a problem for Bai’s thesis. At least two of them are remembered as great communicators with a deft populist touch. That seems like a problem for Judis’s thesis.

Indeed. But Ezra goes on to make a point about the midterm results we are anticipating that’s become something of an obsession for me: the Democratic “losses” in the House everyone’s talking about are from the base of a strong Democratic majority. With the sole exception of 1934, the first midterm after the beginning of the Great Depression, and 2002, the first election after 9/11, every new president since Theodore Roosevelt has seen his party lose House seats in the first ensuing midterm.
But “gains” and “losses” are always relative. All 435 Members of the House are up for re-election. If Democrats lose 37 seats, they will have won the midterms, albeit by a reduced margin from 2006 and 2008.
All in all, while theories of what Obama woulda shoulda coulda done are interesting and sometimes informative, context is still essential in understanding the extent to which his actual conduct in office has or hasn’t damaged his political status. As Ezra concludes:

There’s plenty to criticize in Obama’s policies and plenty to lament in his politics. But when it comes to grand theories explaining how his strategic decisions led him to this horrible — but historically, slightly-better-than-average — political position, I’m skeptical. There are enormously powerful structural forces in American politics that seem to drag down first-term presidents. There is the simple mathematical reality that large majorities are always likely to lose a lot of seats. There is a terrible and ongoing economic slump — weekly jobless claims hit 500,000 today — that is causing Americans immense pain and suffering. Any explanations for the current political mood that don’t put those front and center is, at the least, not doing enough to challenge the counterfactual.

Selah.

It was pretty alarming when Pew released a poll earlier this week showing that the percentage of Americans who believe the president is a Muslim has actually increased in recent months from 11% to 18%. But then came a Time Magazine poll actually conducted this week in the midst of the Muslim-bashing frenzy involving the “Ground Zero Mosque,” showing 24% of Americans–and 46% of Republicans–beleving the president is a Muslim. It’s about time to conclude this phenomenon has transcended the Americans-believe-funny-things meme that dismisses findings of this nature as simply a reflection of the gullibility or suggestibility of low-information voters.
But the really maddening thing is that Obama–who in my own opinion is one of the most profoundly Christian politicians in memory–is getting blamed for this belief on grounds that he hasn’t made a sufficient display of his faith. Here’s Josh Gerstein at Politico:

When he came to Washington as president, many expected Obama would select a new church or sample many different ones. But in more than 19 months he’s been in office, he has been seen heading to the golf course more than to church.

No one, of course, doubted Ronald Reagan’s religiosity even though he never affiliated with a church in Washington. And the famously pious George W. Bush wasn’t much seen in churches as president, either.
As for playing golf on the Sabbath, I’m reminded again of the time when the wife of “Mr. Republican,” Sen. Robert Taft, was asked where her husband worshipped on Sunday mornings. “Burning Tree,” she blurted out, referring to the congressional golf course.
In this as in many other respects, Barack Obama is being held to a different standard than most politicians, but I guess that’s just his cross to bear.

CNN Senior Political Editor Mark Preston has a post up at CNN.com’s ‘Political Ticker,’ reporting on the Republicans’ campaign to sink Democratic midterm candidates by linking them to ‘Obamacare.” Preston notes that Democratic candidates are treating the GOP effort as a distraction, trying to refocus voters on economic issues, which the Republicans generally ignore, lacking any alternatives, other than offering tax and spending cuts as a panacea. Preston highlights the spending behind the GOP propaganda campaign:

A new analysis by Campaign Media Analysis Group for CNN shows that federal and state political candidates have spent $24 million on anti-health care reform television commercials since Congress passed the bill in late March. Over the past 30 days alone, more than $6 million has been spent on TV ads attacking the law, and there is no sign these commercials are going away…Of the $24 million spent so far criticizing the health care law, Republicans have run $11.3 million worth of commercials where the term “Obamacare” is used – a not so subtle attempt to link Democratic candidates to a president who suffers from a disapproval rating of 51 percent.
“Based on the advertising and messaging, this is clearly being used by Republicans as a wedge issue,” said Evan Tracey, president of CMAG and CNN’s consultant on political TV ad spending. “The GOP is using the passage of the bill against Democrats in a growing proportion at both the state and federal level.”
In contrast, the CMAG analysis shows that $6.3 million has been spent on pro-health care reform TV ads since Congress approved the legislation.

The Republicans may be wasting their money. Recent Polls indicate that the health care issue now ranks well behind the economy among voters priorities. And, as TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira recently noted in his ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ post,

On the health care reform law, the most recent Kaiser Health tracking poll now has 50 percent voicing a favorable reaction to the new law, versus just 35 percent unfavorable. This reverses a 44-41 unfavorable verdict from two months ago.

In addition, other polls indicate that many who disapprove of the Affordable Health Care Act wanted the coverage to be broader, with a greater investment and role for the federal government, and they are not likely to be receptive to the Republicans effort to gut the legislation entirely.
Sure, it’s possible that the GOP could do some damage with their ads. But it may not be a cost-effective investment, or to use an Econ 101 analysis, the opportunity cost of not investing the dough in promoting their competitive candidates could be substantial.
Democrats ought not invest too much of their midterm financial resources, nor media face time, in defending the health care Act. But it would be a perfectly legitimate investment for the federal government, particularly HHS, to produce and distribute public service ads and interviews with experts on the legislation for television, radio, print media and the internet debunking the distortions being promulgated about the Act and explaining why is a good law. This is not pending legislation; it’s the law of the land, and the federal government not only has the right to explain the Health Care Reform Act to the public; it has a duty to do so. This law can save countless lives and help millions of people with their health care struggles, and the government has an obligation to help citizens understand it better. And, as Teixeira explains, concerning the findings of another Kaiser Health tracking poll back in the Spring,

…As the poll shows, the public does not currently believe they have enough information about the new law to clearly understand how it will affect them personally. Just 43 percent say they now have enough information to make this judgment, compared to 56 percent who say they don’t. Thus, more information could presumably make a difference to current feelings about the Affordable Health Care Act.

Yes the GOP would whine and howl about using government resources for what they believe to be a partisan cause. Tough. And yes, Republican-friendly media probably wouldn’t take the Affordable Health Care Act PSA’s or interviews, but many stations would, as might PBS and NPR. It would be a shame, bordering on political negligence, if the Administration failed to seize this opportunity. This is one of those times when it might be useful to ask WWFDRD — “What would FDR do?”

I don’t know what Jonathan Chait (who has undertaken what he calls the Boss Hogg Oppo Research Project) will do with today’s big sloppy wet kiss of an article about Haley Barbour in today’s Politico, penned by Jim VandeHei, Andy Barr and Kenneth Vogel. Personally, the adoring prose about Barbour’s ability to shake down corporations for campaign dollars made me alternatively chuckle and shudder. Check out this passage:

Barbour, who runs the Republican Governors Association, has more money to spend on the 2010 elections — $40 million — than any other GOP leader around. And in private, numerous Republicans describe Barbour as the de facto chairman of the party.
It’s not just because he controls the RGA kitty but, rather, because he has close relationships with everyone who matters in national GOP politics — operatives like Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie and other top Republicans running or raising cash for a network of outside political groups. Together, these groups are essential to Republican hopes of regaining power because Democrats are cleaning their clocks through more traditional fundraising efforts.
The political class, in particular, is consumed with Barbour’s behind-the-scenes endeavors — this week, with the $1 million he got from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Yet the reality is that Barbour has been uniquely adept at leveraging concerns about President Barack Obama into huge contributions from many others. Bob Perry, the Texas businessman who funded the Swift boat attacks in the 2004 campaigns, has given more than twice as much as News Corp…..
“He’s clearly the top political strategist and political operative of his generation,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former RNC chief of staff. “He is without peer when he is raising money.”

Barbour’s Mammon-power is so awesome, in this account, that it’s almost inevitable he will run for president in 2012, his fame spread across the land by the likely harvest of GOP gubernatorial wins in November, fueled by the RGA. On that note, I was particularly amused by the testimony to Barbour’s greatness offered by hapless Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, saddled with a disaster of a gubernatorial nominee and a right-wing third party revolt. He sure does need a heapin’ helping of Haley’s money.
The article does include what’s known in the trade as a “to be sure” graph, briefly acknowledging the counter-argument to the writers’ hypothesis before going on to brush it aside:

[T]he obstacles to a Barbour candidacy are substantial. A portly Southern conservative who represented tobacco firms and made millions building a lobbying firm isn’t the ideal profile for a Republican nominee in this or any political environment. In recent polls, Barbour is stuck in low single digits, way behind Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin.

Instead of meditating on those rather formidable problems, the Politicos return to still more admiring details about Barbour’s rules-bending fundraising techniques.
Now I used to look at the prospect of a politician like Haley Barbour gaining real political power as follows: “Well, could be worse. Yes, he’s venal and mean-spirited, but at least he’s smart. How bad could it be?”
Then Dick Cheney became vice president, and the limits of brainpower became rather obvious.
If, as appears likely, Barbour does move towards a serious presidential run, his background will offer an extraordinary opportunity for dumpster-diving. It’s not just the ethics stuff, either, or Barbour’s devotion to the interests of the very rich. Long before he moved to Washington and became a mover-and-shaker, Barbour was the leader of the right wing of the Mississippi Republican Party. That requires some serious wingnuttery, and as Chait observes, a long paper-trail of associations that will not look good in the twenty-first century.
I realize that the Republican field for 2012 is not terribly impressive, and that many GOPers long for a candidate who is both a hard-core conservative and a demonstrated party loyalist. But it may take even more money than Haley Barbour can raise to make Americans want this man to become president.

It appears that a circular firing squad composed of his fellow Republicans is forming around Newt Gingrich. The GOP’s 2012 front-runner (in some polls) for President is getting slammed right and left by fellow Republicans, including Pat Buchanan. Here’s the video clip J.P. Green flagged in his post below, which is also worth watching for the insightful comments on the controversy by several of the participants.

Dems who are nervous about President Obama’s comments regarding the placement of the Islamic Center near ground zero should read Michael Scherer’s ‘Swampland post’ at Time, “Grover Norquist Says Mosque Controversy Is Bad For Republicans.” Here’s Norquist, quoted by Sherer:

It’s the Monica Lewinsky ploy…The Republican Party is on track to win a major victory in November based on the issue that Democrats are spending the country blind…There isn’t a single voter in the country that was planning on voting for the Ds, who says, ‘Oh, mosque issue, now I will vote for the Rs.’

Norquist cites the Lewinsky affair as an example of being “distracted by shiny things,” one which lead the GOP in the wrong direction: “They nationalized the election around an irrelevancy” and lost 5 House seats.” Norquist also feels the Mosque issue gave Harry Reid a hook to separate himself from President Obama: “Harry Reid says, ‘Oh, is this a get out of jail free card?'”
In addition to the distraction effect, Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a former operative for Newt Gingrich, worries about the damage targeting any minority does to GOP hopes for votes from other minorities, as Scherer explains:

Over the long term, Norquist also sees danger for Republicans not just among Muslim voters, but among other religious groups as well. “Religious minorities all go, ‘I get it. This means me too,'” he said. He pointed to a recent story in the Jewish newspaper The Forward, called “When Shuls Were Banned in America,” which draws connections between the current mosque controversy and New York’s history of antisemitism.
“Long term, you could do to the Muslim vote and every other religious minority what Republicans did to the Catholic vote in ‘Rum Romanism and Rebellion,'” Norquist added, using a phrase uttered at a speech attended by Republican presidential candidate James Blaine in 1884, which arguably cost him victory in that election, by alienating Catholic voters.
Such stands are not out of character for Norquist, who has long waged a battle to make the Republican Party more inclusive of racial and religious minorities. 
During the Bush Administration, Norquist served as an informal envoy to the American Muslim community. He has also been an outspoken supporter of immigration reform, arguing that it was important that Republicans not alienate Hispanic voters. “Tom Tancredo has done damage to the Republican Party in states he has never visited,” Norquist says, referring to the former Colorado congressman best known for his frequent denunciation of illegal immigration on cable television.

Former Republican congressman from Florida and now CNN anchor “Morning Joe” Scarborough agrees with part of Norquists’ argument. In blasting Newt Gingrich for saying the Mosque at ground zero would be “a symbol of Muslim triumphalism,” Scarborough protested, “This is madness…There are elements of our party that are marching through the fevered swamps of ideology.” (Do watch the ‘Morning Joe’ video clip at the link for an interesting take on the controversy).
That’s a discovery which won’t come as much of a shocker to alert followers of American politics. I would add, however, that such ‘shiny things’ won’t help Dems much, if we get distracted by them. Let the Republicans and tea party folks ride that turkey to political oblivion if they like — while Democratic candidates focus instead on establishing their cred as strong advocates of Social Security, Medicare and jobs.