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Published on Leave a comment on Grassroots Leaders Like Me

My latest letter from Tim Morgan began like this:

Dear Friend,

I don't want to believe you've abandoned the Republican Party, but I have to ask . . . Have you given up?

Our records show that we have not yet received your Republican National Committee membership renewal for the critical 2008 presidential election year.

As the Treasurer of the RNC, I know our Party's success depends directly on grassroots leaders like you.

So I am surprised and concerned especially because I know how generously you supported President Bush and the RNC in the past. You helped to advance our vision for America and elect Republicans at all levels of government.

I know other things come up, and perhaps you've just been delayed in renewing your membership. If that's the case, I understand.

But we've not heard from you this year -- and I hope you haven't deserted our Party.

Call me crazy, but I don't think "Have you given up?" is ready to stand toe-to-toe with "Yes We Can" in the general election. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn't desert the Republican Party, ...

Published on Leave a comment on Krugman’s Keys to a Landslide Victory

The phrase "Obama Derangement Syndrome" has entered public usage. It seems to have two strains. The first is adulation for Senator Obama beyond what can be linked to his accomplishments in public office. The second is the more usual strain, irrational dislike, which has to date infected a number of Democrats, but none more publicly than Paul Krugman. He continues his quest to be the poster boy for ODS in his New York Times column today, "Deliverance or Diversion." Stay with this excerpt until the punchline:

But Mr. Obama, instead of emphasizing the harm done by the other party’s rule, likes to blame both sides for our sorry political state. And in his speeches he promises not a rejection of Republicanism but an era of postpartisan unity.

That — along with his adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care — is why Mr. Obama’s rise has caused such division among progressive activists, the very people one might have expected to be unified and energized by the prospect of finally ending the long era of Republican political dominance.

Some progressives are appalled by the direction their party seems to have taken: they wanted another F.D.R., yet feel that they’re getting an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg instead.

Others, however, insist that Mr. Obama’s message of hope and his personal charisma will yield an overwhelming electoral victory, and that he will implement a dramatically progressive agenda.

The trouble is that faith in Mr. Obama’s transformational ability rests on surprisingly little evidence.

Mr. Obama’s ability to attract wildly enthusiastic crowds to rallies is a good omen for the general election; so is his ability to raise large sums. But neither necessarily points to a landslide victory.

So, in this installment of Krugman's anti-Obama screed, Democrats are supposed to be concerned about Senator Obama winning the nomination because it is not clear that he can secure a landslide victory in the general election. And if they believed him, and thought twice about voting for Senator Obama in the remaining primaries, they would instead vote for Senator Clinton.

Going first to personalities, is it really Krugman's contention that the odds of a Democratic landslide victory are higher with Senator Clinton than with Senator Obama as the nominee? Going next to tactics, is it really Krugman's contention that the odds of a Democratic landslide victory are higher with Senator Obama campaigning to the political left of where he is now? Or that they are higher if he makes partisan rhetoric a more central part of his campaign? If he holds any of these views, then he's got precious little company among rational people in holding them.

I don't doubt that Krugman and many others would be happier if they could implement a more so-called progressive agenda as a result of the 2008 election. But this group does not comprise a majority of the voting public, to say nothing of a landslide majority. Absent that majority, the candidate needs to have appeal beyond the political left.

And, yes, many people -- myself included -- do fault the Republicans of the last several years for the poor state of public policy today. They've had the presidency since 2001 and majorities in Congress over much of that time. To not hold them responsible would be ridiculous. But that does not mean that we would opt for government by a 51% majority in the opposite direction if there is a possibility of something based more on a broad-based, politically centrist consensus. People seeking that consensus will be voting for Senator McCain or Senator Obama.

Published on Leave a comment on Ethics Reform in Louisiana

The most interesting excerpt of a very interesting tale of Louisiana politics in today's New York Times:

In a town where legislators have been known to proclaim paid-for meals a principal draw to public service, this was an especially unpopular move. Last week, State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans said the limit would force her and her colleagues to dine at Taco Bell, and urged that it be pushed to $75 per person, to give them “wiggle room.”

No public groundswell took up her cause, and the $50 limit held.

Read the whole thing, and hope for more good things from Governor Jindal.

Published on Leave a comment on Ferraro on Superdelegates

Geraldine Ferraro owns up to having created the superdelegate process in 1982 when she was the vice chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus. The first part of this New York Times op-ed is a reasonable historical retelling. But then she falters, as do all justifications of this system. Here's the key excerpt:

Today, with the possibility that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will end up with about the same number of delegates after all 50 states have held their primaries and caucuses, the pundits and many others are saying that superdelegates should not decide who the nominee will be. That decision, they say, should rest with the rank-and-file Democrats who went to the polls and voted.

But the superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country. I would hope that is why many superdelegates have already chosen a candidate to support.

Besides, the delegate totals from primaries and caucuses do not necessarily reflect the will of rank-and-file Democrats. Most Democrats have not been heard from at the polls. We have all been impressed by the turnout for this year’s primaries — clearly both candidates have excited and engaged the party’s membership — but, even so, turnout for primaries and caucuses is notoriously low. It would be shocking if 30 percent of registered Democrats have participated.

If that is the case, we could end up with a nominee who has been actively supported by, at most, 15 percent of registered Democrats. That’s hardly a grassroots mandate.

More important, although many states like New York have closed primaries in which only enrolled Democrats are allowed to vote, in many other states Republicans and independents can make the difference by voting in Democratic primaries or caucuses.

Whatever its imperfections, whether genuine (low turnout) or alleged (open primaries), the nominating process is not improved by resolving a close race for pledged delegates with backroom deals for superdelegates. Read the rest of the op-ed, where her partisan interests become evident.

Published on Leave a comment on Delegates that Steal?

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein step up to the plate to argue for a positive role that superdelegates can play in the Democratic nominating process in their New York Times op-ed, "Delegates of Steel." To put it charitably, they whiff. Their thesis:

But a review of the history of superdelegates suggests they are likely to play a constructive role in resolving the nomination before the convention and in unifying the party for the general election campaign.

Strike One. Either the superdelegates vote to support the candidate who received more pledged delegates, in which case they are irrelevant, or they vote to support the candidate who did not receive more pledged delegates, in which case they overturn the democratic process.

Working up to their big finish, the authors claim:

In 2008, where two strong and capable candidates are fighting it out on every front, where the difficult issues of race and sex are on the table and where the gap between the two in total votes and pledged delegates is likely to be small, the potential for an explosive convention, where in the end half the delegates (and half the party) feels they have been cheated, is real.

Strike Two. If the candidate with slightly more pledged delegates receives the nomination, then half the delegates (and half the party) will feel like they lost a close contest to a worthy rival. Small problem. If the candidate with more pledged delegates does not receive the nomination, then half the delegates (and half the party) will feel like they have been cheated. Big problem.

And that big finish:

In this case, the nomination could come down to a difficult and complex credentials battle over whether to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida. To have a nomination settled in this way is a bit like having an election settled by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Averting this kind of disaster is just what superdelegates are supposed to do.

Strike Three. It is the substitution of the views of the (bought and paid for) superdelegates for those of the voting citizenry that makes the nomination a bit like having an election settled by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. There need not be a difficult and complex credentials battle. If the DNC wants to allow Michigan and Florida to have a voice in selecting the nominee, then it should schedule contested primaries in both states near the end of the primary season to choose those delegates. If it does not, based on its prior decisions, then the delegates don't get seated.

The current system is not perfect. Introducing superdelegates makes it further from perfect.

Published on Leave a comment on Super Delegates

Matthew Mosk and Paul Kane, writing in today's Washington Post, show just how sleazy the courtship of super delegates has become. This is a train wreck waiting to happen. If the choices of the super delegates overturn the choices of the directly elected delegates, this will not end well for the Democratic Party.

Published on Leave a comment on Governor Romney Takes His Leave

At today's CPAC conference, Mitt Romney departed the Republican primary field. Given the way he campaigned, I am not sorry to see him go. I was sorry to see the way he campaigned.

I have two grievances about his New Hampshire campaign. First, he just didn't show up. I direct a Public Policy Center at a college in New Hampshire. I didn't meet him. I met Senator McCain, Governor Huckabee, Congressman Paul, Congressman Tancredo, and unfortunately missed Congressman Hunter's event on campus. I saw the Mitt-mobile around town once or twice and was introduced to one of Governor Romney's sons by a student trying to bring Governor Romney to campus for a public lecture. What was he doing that he didn't have time to hit one of the few major colleges in the state?

Second, I know what he was doing with some of that time--spending his own money to saturate the primetime televsion hours with superficial, cynical, negative television ads. That's a fast way to alienate New Hampshire voters. It's one of the virtues of having the first primary here. The New Hampshire primary is designed for what McCain did--a rampage of townhall meetings where he took Q&A from the audience until they were satisfied he had heard and understood their concerns. And don't get me started again about Romney in Michigan.

Here's the irony. Based on his record and his personal resources, Governor Romney could have had the nomination in a walk. A Republican president in 2009 would have to work with a Democratically controlled legislature and would face a number of tough challenges. Maybe Governor Romney hasn't been keeping up with current events, but he actually faced an even more extreme version of that scenario in Massachusetts and had a reasonable record to show for it. All he had to do was to make the case that he worked with the Democrats to deliver results for the citizens of his state while holding the line on conservative issues. The problem with Senator McCain's record is that he has not held the line on conservative principles in his commendable efforts in the Senate to work with Democrats to deliver results. (Campaign finance and immigration are two prime examples.) An honest and positive campaign on that issue, without the free-lunch, supply-side economic rhetoric and the negative ads, would have generated a lot of support.

Published on Leave a comment on Two Ideas for the Primary System

Having watched the primary season unfold from a very nice vantage point, I think that the nomination processes would have been better served by approval voting. From a potentially long list of candidates, voters simply vote for as many of them as they find acceptable. The candidate with the most votes wins.

The main advantage of approval voting is that it allows voters the opportunity to express a preference for more than one candidate. The drawback to approval voting is that it does not provide voters with the opportunity to rank candidates within the set that they find acceptable. With approval voting, we wouldn't see primary voters having to worry about "wasting a vote" in expressing a preference for a candidate who has little chance of achieving a plurality. There would be less pressure on candidates to drop out of the race if they don't "win" one of the early states. This is particularly important given how much weight the early primaries seem to have.

I also find it odd that the national parties award delegates in proportion to a state's total population rather than some other measure that considers the distribution of voters across the two main parties. Consider the case of New York. There is almost no chance that it will go for the Republican candidate in the general election, regardless of the nominees from the two parties. So Senator Clinton's victory there tells us nothing about whether she is a more viable Democratic candidate in the electoral college than is Senator Obama. Ditto for Senator McCain.

It seems like a party could get a more viable candidate by awarding more delegates to states that are expected to be more competitive in the general election and fewer delegates to states that are expected to be less competitive in the general election. There is a limit to how much downweighting could be done in a state in which the party is strong--that would encourage state party leaders to discourage turnout, which is unhealthy to say the very least. But some movement in this direction could be helpful.

Published on Leave a comment on Storehouses of Ideas

I hadn't realized that Chris DeMuth is stepping down as the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Here is an essay he wrote reflecting on the nature and role of think tanks. I thought the following excerpt was interesting:

I have tried to explain it to people who have been setting up liberal and leftist think tanks in recent years, advising them that the secret of success is to go away and spend thirty years in the political wilderness. They have thought I was joking. Let me try again here.

Every one of the right-of-center think tanks was founded in a spirit of opposition to the established order of things. Opposition is the natural proclivity of the intellectual (it's what leads some smart people to become intellectuals rather than computer programmers), and is of course prerequisite to criticism and devotion to reform. And for conservatives, opposition lasted a very long time--in domestic policy, from the New Deal through 1980.

It's been more than half that period of time since 1980, and the conservative think tanks are now part of the status quo and not the political wilderness. Maybe the Lefties aren't the only ones who could benefit from a few day hikes.

Read the whole thing.

Published on Leave a comment on The Conservative Car on the Obama Express

That's where Dartmouth Professor of English Emeritus Jeffrey Hart is sitting, according to this article in today's local Valley News. There's no questioning his conservative bona fides. Here's his reasoning about Senator Obama's candidacy:

And so it is that Jeffrey Hart counts himself a member of Obama's “new American majority” -- a group of voters the Illinois senator says are fed up with the partisan excesses and wrangling of the last two decades and eager for a practical, cooperative approach to the issues that have divided Washington.

“It turns out that these political parties are not always either liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican,” Hart, a 77-year-old with thick white hair who lives in Lyme, said in an interview at his home yesterday. “The Democrat, under certain conditions, can be the conservative.”

Hart's estrangement from George W. Bush's brand of conservatism -- which Hart describes as “radicalism,” citing an expansion of federal spending and aggressive foreign policy -- began some time ago. After voting for Bush in 2000, Hart says he supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004. In the 2006 Congressional elections, Hart cast a ballot for Democrat Paul Hodes -- not Charlie Bass, the Republican whom Hart had voted for six times — out of frustration over the Iraq War, which he says has been mishandled.

“It's all wrong,” Hart said. “It's not going to be a beacon of liberty. There's no indication that Bush or Wolfowitz or Cheney looked at Iraq and said, ‘What are the problems here?' It’s as if Eisenhower did D-Day not knowing whether they had a cliff or a swamp on the other side.”

There are other problems with today's Republicans, according to Hart. He said his erstwhile party allied itself too closely with activist evangelical Christians. Perhaps more significantly, Hart said, the party has failed to adapt in order to address urgent domestic issues such as healthcare policy and the future of Social Security, thus forgetting Burke's famous caveat to conservatives: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

The current Republican field does nothing to raise Hart's hopes. He said McCain is “candid and authentic” but too committed to keeping up the U.S. military presence in Iraq; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Hart said, “would say anything to get the nomination.”

In Obama, by contrast, Hart sees a Great Communicator in the mold of Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, a leader who can inspire Americans to work together on the problems of the 21st Century.

By the end of the line, that train car might be very crowded.

Read the whole thing.