The Blue Voice

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

"There’s nothing conservative about a lynch mob"

Gene Lyons has been watching the Republican Party morph into an authoritarian religious party for years. So have the rest of us. But the difference is, he's one of the people who recognized what he was seeing. Lord knows I've never been a fan of the Republican Party. But until 2002 or so, I kept hoping and thinking that they would have to swerve back toward some more sensible perspective. In Will real conservatives please stand up? Arkansas Democrat Gazette 10/18/06. Lyons writes about what passes for "moderation" in today's Republican Party:

Almost from the first, President Bush has acted as if there would never be another election. That’s the main thing adepts of the cult of personality surrounding this arrogant, befuddled little man love about him. ... What most Americans have appeared reluctant to grasp, [Sidney] Blumenthal thinks, is the radical extremism behind the administration’s concept of the "unitary executive" — seizing upon the metaphorical war on terror to declare the commander-in[-]chief above the strictures of the U. S. Constitution and unfettered by whatever limitations a timorous Congress might seek to impose. By and large, the rubber-stamp Republican House and Senate have imposed none. On critical issues, the so-called GOP moderates and mavericks have feigned resistance, then gone along for the ride. Last month’s shameless capitulation allowing Bush to strip “enemy combatants” - American citizens included - of the right to challenge their imprisonment in court was a dramatic example.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., for example, opined that the White House’s bill permitting indefinite detention by presidential fiat set American law back 900 years. ... Lest he be branded soft on terrorism, Specter then voted for it with the rest, including alleged maverick Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

There’s long been an undercurrent of authoritarianism in American politics, particularly across the South and agrarian Midwest. Some of Bush's warmest supporters are direct descendants of the 19 th century nativist Know-Nothing Party. Many seem morally outraged by anybody who can count higher than two. I get frequent e-mails telling me that being anti-torture makes me pro-terrorist or that it’s un-American to oppose life imprisonment without a trial. Some take grim pleasure in identifying the enemy as Islam itself, making the conflict religious and racial - just how they like it

There are many ways to characterize such views, but conservative isn’t one of them. There’s nothing conservative about a lynch mob. To his credit, Bush stresses that "Islamic" and "terrorist" aren’t synonyms. But he also tells thunderous falsehoods casting Democrats as enemy sympathizers. (my emphasis)

The whole thing is good - definitely worth reading in full.

Josh Marshall also has a good comment about the effect of perceived "strong leadership".

His topic in the post of 10/17/06 was the fear of many Democrats that the entire Mark Foley dust-up was a Machiavellian plan by Karl Rove. And he writes:

I'm a big critic of media bias of different sorts, which I've chronicled over the years at this site. But a lot of the slavishness toward Republicans and contempt for Democrats one sees in the media, again, is the product, to put it baldly, of seeing Democrats lose three straight national elections. People without strong grounding respect power and have contempt for weakness. They inpute power and sense and sagacity to victory and all the opposites to defeat.

If you want some sense of how this works, give me an example of the losing political campaign that wasn't run by idiots. Have any examples?

This isn't just a cliff-notes version of social psychology. It's an important element in understanding the politics of the last six years. Not just the Democrats and the Republicans, but the weight of conventional wisdom, how the most silly and outlandish gambits from the GOP get a respectable hearing while ineptitude and weakness are the favored storyline for Dems. To borrow a concept from Chinese politics and cosmology, since 2000 the GOP has had the Mandate of Heaven. (my emphasis)

Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby would probably think Marshall is being too generous to our "press corps". And he would probably be right. But he's still describing an important aspect of the press deficiency.

The bolded sentence caught my eye in particular, because we're seeing media speculation now in California about whether Democratic gubernatoral candidate Phil Angelides will hurt other Democratic candidates and causes because he's supposedly so far behind Republican rightwinger Arnold Schwarzenegger in the polls. See, for instance, Will GOP ride governor's coattails? Low turnout for Angelides threatens Democrats, causes by By Steven Harmon San Jose Mercury News/MediaNews 10/18/06.

Harmon's article seems to be a good example of the press script at work that Marshall describes. He bases speculation on low turnout essentially on the fact that Angelides is down in the polls. But very last paragraphs of the article say (sometimes the most interesting part is buried in the middle or the end):

A survey last month by the Public Policy Institute of California - taken before the congressional page scandal - showed that 44 percent of Republicans lack enthusiasm about voting, compared with 38 percent of Democrats.

And even if Schwarzenegger does win by a landslide, that will probably be in part due to his popularity with some Democrats - Democrats who may very well still vote the party line in other races.

"Even if Democrats don't choose to vote for Angelides,'' Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said, "they are still more likely to vote for Democrats down-ballot."

But whether enough of those Democrats bother to vote remains to be seen in an election where turnout may be defined less by which party is the most energized than which is the least enthusiastic.

This is classic. Forty-four percent of Republicans in polls "lack enthusiasm" for voting in November, while only 38% of Democrats are in the same mood. Six percentage points is surely beyond the statistical margin of error. And this was before the Mark Foley scandal broke, an event which is more likely to decrease Republican turnout.

And what conclusion do the headlines and most of the article draw from this? That Democrats have a worry about low turnout. Say what?

Then there's this one, California's voters are an electorate in exile by Peter Schrag Sacramento Bee 10/04/06:

The speculation isn't so much about whether moderate [sic] Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's coattails are long enough to drag an unlikely conservative such as Tom McClintock in as lieutenant governor or whether he'll help Silicon Valley businessman Steve Poizner, a relative unknown, beat Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante in the race for insurance commissioner. Since Bustamante is already a thoroughly tainted piece of political goods, it shouldn't take much.

But the talk is less about the governor's strength than about Angelides' negative coattails: Is he so weak that many Democratic voters won't turn out at all?

The press script is what Marshall describes: oh, those Democrats, what a bunch of losers. And I'm sure that if Angelides does lose, we'll hear immediate complaints about what idiots his campaign handlers were. When the biggest problem that I see so far is that the Democrats in the legislature decided to become stooges for Schwarzenegger's phony "moderate" act and therefore gave away the advantage they had when Schwarzenegger's popularity was at a low ebb in 2005. That's not Angelides' fault. The main reason I preferred him in the primary over Steve Westly was that Angelides had been more consistent in fighting Schwarzenegger than Westly had. Westly had kissed up to him just after Schwarzenegger won the post-recall election in 2003.

But Schrag also puts it into a little better perspective later in the column:

Nonetheless, the speculation about Angelides' drag on the down-ballot candidates is itself evidence that, contra the conventional wisdom, California is neither as permanently Democratic nor as liberal as political folklore sometimes has it.

In our presumably immutable Democratic era, California voters have recalled a Democratic governor; passed a ballot measure prohibiting same-sex marriage; overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to reduce the two-thirds legislative margin necessary to pass the budget or raise taxes; rejected an initiative to require that the third strike in the state's "three-strikes" sentencing law be a serious felony; and passed an initiative designed to eliminate bilingual education. Proposition 13, of course, remains sacrosanct.

Nor, despite the classic ineptitude of his campaign ["classic" here apparently meaning "Democratic"], can anyone blame Angelides alone for the possible - though not certain - low turnout of Democratic voters next month. A good chunk of that blame goes to the leaders of the Legislature in 2001 who, in close cooperation with Karl Rove, Bush's "boy genius" campaign meister, cooked a gerrymander so tight that not one California congressional seat changed in party control in 2004. Probably none will this year either. (my emphasis)

People think of California as a "blue" state because it consistently votes Democratic in Presidential elections, at least starting with 1992. The reality, as Schrag points out, is more complicated. Prior to 1992, the state consistently voted Republican in Presidential elections.

The most recent Rasmussen poll has Angelides down by 9%. Not where he wants to be three weeks before the election. But not out the running by any means:

The most recent Rasmussen Reports election survey shows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leading Democrat Phil Angelides 49% to 40%. That's a single-point improvement in the incumbent's favor since last month's poll.

The current results reflect Gov. Schwarzenegger's best performance since April. Angelides peaked in early July when he briefly took the lead 46% to 44%. Schwarzenegger rebounded a few weeks later and hasn't looked back since. It's worth noting, though, that the governor has yet to hit the 50% mark among likely voters. (my emphasis)

See more detailed breakdowns of the Rasmussen results here.

posted at 2:12:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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