Surely 2010 will go down in American history books as one of the more interesting years in American history.

2010 is in many ways a lot like both 1884 and 1992.

1884 gave us the Mugwumps - conservative and moderate Republicans that revolted and openly distanced themselves from the official choices of the Republican Party. In many cases the Mugwumps actively worked against Republican candidates, this includes even the Republican nominee for president. Unlike today, Mugwumps were a top down revolt of Republicans already elected that thought the party was on the wrong path.

1992 – how quickly we forget the anger that existed, to include real concern about our national debt. National polling shows that Americans were much more “angry” at the government back in 1992, significantly much more angry. That anger got channeled however through the candidacy of Ross Perot who stepped forward and very explicitly challenged the political establishment — with charts and predictions in hand Ross Perot made a difference. We later got “Contract with America” which turned out to be: vote us in, we promise to use all of your favorite buzzwords, and then we’ll do what is best for the party.

Ross Perot got my vote and the vote of 19% of America in 1992.

The lessons of 1884 and 1992 are that populist movements to reform government are usually shortlived. They can linger on for a few years; Ross Perot later formally founded the Reform Party which actually won some elections. We have some few remaining elected officials here in Virginia that are officially Reform Party … this is now a party footnoted in history.

Without structure and organization there is no future for a movement. Perhaps even with structure there is no future; witness the inability of the Libertarian Party to connect, or the Constitutionalist Party — the “fastest growing party in America” as it bills itself … I don’t think so.

So here we are at 2010. Anger we have plenty of, but alas no Ross Perot to represent us or any central personality capable of convincing America that someone with a name cares. There is no cross-generational Ronald Reagan, whom we literally had decades to know and to mature with and to evolve with. 2010 is all about chaos, impending financial entropy on a scale that we cannot yet imagine … although some are trying hard.

2010 is all about having to represent ourselves against the machine — and the machine is both red and blue.

Tea or coffee? Coffee or Tea?

Until now I have been uninvolved in the TEA Party movement. I don’t do anger. Anger blinds you and makes you do silly stuff. I’m a solutions person. I have never let not knowing what I am doing get in the way of achieving something. Until recently the TEA Party movement has largely been against and not for anything. That is changing.

The TEA movement is maturing, and now that the Republicans (Romney/Rove/Steele) have informed TEA Partyers that they really are Republicans and that they should act accordingly, there is more sober thought among TEAers to consider what comes next. Conservative Texas’ voter thumping of TEA candidates has also caused many TEAers to pause and to reflect.

Now comes this new creature: the Coffee Party. The premise of Coffee is that government is not the enemy. It may not have the answer, but it is not the enemy.

We are the government. If it is wrong then we are wrong. Coffee suggests that ‘we the people’ should focus our energies on helping guide government by being both its watchdog and by being involved. We must do more than be angry. We must be part of the solution.

So for me I will now get involved in both. Although many in TEA distrust Coffee, and certainly Coffee is in reaction to TEA, we are at a crossroads in American history. They both are a distraction and yet they both may hold answers.

One thing is certain: 2010 is the chapter that follows 1884 and 1992.

BTW #2 – Republicans claim to be serious about passing some form of a Balanced Budget Amendment if only we give them the chance. Really? Those two wild and crazy South Carolinians Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint (both R-SC) introduced a Balanced Budget Amendment in 2007. Surely you remember!? Don’t you? Surely you do. Anyway, Republicans always run to this ploy when politically in trouble. I believe that Graham and DeMint were serious about it — but where was the rest of the party?

The short answer? Probably no one.

It seems that way at times. Republicans tend to consider moderates and their liberal Republican cousins, traitors. Democrats profess their love of moderates usually years after they were in office.

The history of moderate Republicans is one that is not well known. It tends to be forgotten because in the battle between conservatives and moderates the winner (in this case, the conservatives) wrote the history. When they are remembered, it isn’t very fondly. While Ross Douthat is too classy to call Northeastern Republicans both past and present “RINOs” he basically has said that many times in blog posts and op-eds. He does so again today in a post about the current health care bill. This is his take on the current Senate bill and what kind of Republicans would like this bill:

The Senate legislation is the kind of bill that the early-1970s Richard Nixon might have backed, or the early-1990s John Chafee (who crafted a Republican alternative to Clintoncare), or (self-evidently) the Mitt Romney of 2005.

But keep in mind that the kind of “moderate Republicanism” (or “Rockefeller Republicanism,” to use a better term of art) that bound all of those figures together was often closer to a liberal Republicanism — a pro-business version of the prevailing liberal paradigm, that is, rather than a intellectually-distinct alternative. On domestic policy, Richard Nixon generally resembled a more cynical version of Lyndon Johnson, not a Ronald Reagan avant la lettre. (Is anyone nostalgic for the days when the Republican Party was “moderate” enough to favor wage and price controls? I hope not.) Likewise, John Chafee’s views on most domestic issues (like those of his son, and successor) bore roughly the same relationship to an ideologically-consistent conservatism that Zell Miller’s views on, say, defense policy bore to the liberal mainstream when Miller was a Democratic Senator from Georgia. And while conservative health-care wonks did have some input on Mitt Romney’s health care efforts, calling Obamacare a centrist-Republican proposal because it resembles a compromise forged in the nation’s most liberal state is still a little like claiming that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 were a centrist-Democratic effort because Ben Nelson voted for them.

Nelson Rockefeller might well have liked the current health care bill. So would Jacob Javits, Lowell Weicker and a whole generation of politicians for whom the point of being a Republican was to head in the same direction as the Democratics, but more slowly, with more attention to the concerns of corporate America, and with a greater zeal for balancing the nation’s books. But while I have all kinds of problems with what the contemporary Republican Party has become, and where it might be going, I can’t say I’m sorry that Rockefeller Republicanism no longer plays a major role in shaping the G.O.P.’s agenda. In the end, the country is better off with an opposition party that offers Americans a real choice — whether on health care or any other issue — rather than being content to supply a “moderate” and business-friendly echo.

I will agree that the Republicanism that Douthat disdains was responding to the then-dominant liberal paradigm. But responding to that era when liberalism was the main thrust in America doesn’t make one just simple echo. Their views are lost to history, but I’ve read books by some of those liberal Republicans that Douthat disses, and they stake out their positions. They had convictions and strong beliefs that were once part of the Republican party. Read Jacob Javits’ Order of Battle and you see a man that gives strong compelling reasons for why he was a Republican. One might read one of the many biographies written by Geoffrey Kabaservice on moderate Republicans to see that these moderates were not spineless.

Frankly, Douthat’s disgust for moderates in the GOP both past and present make no sense to me. Douthat has long argued that the GOP needs to adopt a more robust agenda. In the book he co-authors with Reihan Salam, he maps out a plan that would use the government to help the working class and the poor. It’s a worthwhile read. Douthat laments that Republicans have not yet taken this new agenda to heart and in looking at the current crop of Republicans, he is correct- they have no interest in his ideas. Of course, there is a certain sector of the party that might be interested, moderate Republicans. Mind you, the moderates he spurns came up with ideas in response to what the Democrats were proposing. They had an interest in dealing with poverty or trying to help the working class. They were interested in making sure that Americans had access to health care.

The problem is, Douthat expects that the current crop of Republicans will somehow come up with bold, new ideas that will rejuvenate the party. Well, Ross can keep waiting, cause it ain’t going to happen. It’s not that there aren’t conservatives in the GOP that are coming up with good ideas, but there aren’t enough of them to make a difference. Even if a conservative Republican comes up with an idea, like Bob Bennett of Utah and health care, he is attacked by outsiders for consorting with Democrats. How many conservatives have come up with a decent health bill?

I understand Douthat’s game. To maintain some gravitas in the conservative realm, he has to learn to take down moderates. But that means taking down the one group that has the passion and the willingness to carry the water for his ideas.

But maybe the thing that bothers me most is that while he shares his disgust of moderates over here, Douthat raves about the Conservative Party accross the pond. The rejuvenated Conservatives got that way because they started listening to their moderates. They decided to branch beyond the base instead of looking down on them.

The moderates of today can’t be the moderates of yesteryear. Moderates in the GOP from the 40s until the 70s were dealing with aftermath of the New Deal. Liberalism is no longer dominant, so moderates of today have to learn to respond to the current situation.

But the leaders of that time, the Javitses, Chaffees and Brookes, should not be looked down upon. They worked for the poor in urban areas, supported legislation that cleaned up our water and air, and helped African Americans gain their civil rights. These are achivements that should never be forgotten.

I don’t expect Douthat to ever be nice to moderates like me. After all, he has a reputation to maintain. But he also should not expect that the GOP will ever rise to dominance. Unless the Republican party listen and accepts the moderates in its midst, Douthat’s words will be like speaking to the wind.

Washington (CNN):

Mitt Romney has a message to Tea Party candidates nationwide: If you lose your
Republican primary bids, stay on the sidelines.
The former Massachusetts
governor on Monday warned the grassroots movement not to mount third party
efforts in general elections, which he said would siphon votes from Republican
nominees.

“If there is a conservative candidate that runs in the general
election, then obviously, divide and fail is the result,” Romney said in an
interview with the conservative Web site Newsmax. “Hopefully Tea Party
candidates will run in respective primaries and they will either win or lose.
And if they win, they will go into the general. If they lose, they won’t, and
they will get behind the more conservative of the two finalists.”

Romney explained that “dividing our conservative effort in the general elections” would “basically hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made similar remarks last month in a speech sponsored by the Arkansas Republican Party. “Now the smart thing will be for independents who are such a part of this Tea Party movement to, I guess, kind of start picking a party,” she said, adding that the GOP would be the most natural fit for such activists.
Romney had kind words for the Tea Party movement. “I’m really pleased that the silent majority is silent no longer,” he said, predicting that the movement “will have have an impact on this election.”
“Not all the Tea Partiers are Republicans, not all of them vote for Republicans, but I think most of them will,” he said.

Continuing with the Tea Party series, I thought what Romney said was quite appropriate. Earlier, I said that the GOP could use the Tea Party, and in fact needs the Tea Party, because the Tea Party has engaged the “silent majority” to be silent no longer. Then, in the second part of the series, I showed that while the GOP needs the Tea Party, it also needs to make sure to silence and repudiate the “crazy parts” and the fringe of the tea party in order to make sure that the whole is not defined by the rotten few.

Here, I think what Romney says is that while the GOP needs the Tea Party, the Tea Party also needs the GOP. It may be the more conservative part of the Republican Party, but it is undeniably part of the Republican Party. A limb cannot survive without the body, but the body can survive without a limb.

If the Tea Party were to put more conservative candidates in the primaries, that would be great. Let the voters decide. But if the Republican voters choose a more progressive or moderate candidate, like Brown, then the Tea Party needs to honor that choice and try elsewhere. To try and then push someone as a third, more conservative party, would only mean that both the conservative and the republican candidate would split votes, and what would happen? I think Romney said it best: It would “…hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”

Eleven Republican incumbents had Tea Party challengers in the recent elections in Texas.

Ten of the eleven Tea Party challengers went down to defeat. Incumbent Republican State Rep. Tommy Merritt lost to Tea Party challenger David Simpson, running as a Republican.

James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, commented after analyzing Tea Party candidates and voting results: “there was a lot more flash than bang.”

Most Tea Party candidates were soundly defeated with incumbents garnering 80% of the votes in most cases.

The highest level of votes received was 19% by Debra Medina in her bid as the Republican candidate for governor.

Rep. Kay Granger, a Fort Worth Republican and seven-term incumbent, received 70 percent even though Tea Partyers specifically targeted her as being a probable win for them. Granger got 70 percent of the vote despite having two opponents.

Texas 2010 primary elections had a record turnout with 1.4 million Republicans casting votes, almost double that of 2008.

Bill4DogCatcher sez: There were some local races where Tea Partyers won. Ultimately local candidates have to discuss local issues. How you fill potholes and pay for it requires some level of specificity. Tea Partyers either have answers or they don’t. Some did.

However, raging against Washington when you really don’t have a plan of your own obviously doesn’t sell well. Rage may get lots of attention in front of cameras at town hall meetings but we don’t want to elect angry people. If ultraconservative Texas is any indication, Americans continue to prefer the devil it already has rather than vote for rage and a set of fuzzy political beliefs that do not seem to point to any definable sense of what it all means as public policy.

Sources:

• McClatchy, “Texas primary shows Tea Party has a weak brew“, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/03/89777/commentary-texas-primary-shows.html
• CNN: “Tea Party changes tone, but not outcome of Texas primary“, http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/05/texas.tea.party/index.html
• TaxDayTeaParty.com: “Tea Party Factors Playing Into the Texas Primary“, http://taxdayteaparty.com/2010/03/tea-party-factors-playing-into-the-texas-primary/
• Chron | Houston & Texas News: “Lackluster showing puts damper on Tea Party“, http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6896043.html

I read an interesting op-ed piece today, by Leonard Pitts Jr., entitled Crazy and Incoherent. It was printed in the Oregonian, and you can read the entire article here.

Pitts talks about the Tea Parties and many of the extremists found within its ranks. He gives a surprising quote, by Editor in Chief Erick Erickson of RedState, a big name conservative blog:

“At some point, you have to use the word ‘crazy.’”
…
Erickson was recently quoted on Politico in a report about how he and other
conservatives are attempting to distance their ideology and the Republican Party
from the paranoid theorizing and loud, incoherent screaming that have recently
passed for discourse on the political right. And of course, the darkly comic
thing about it is that, less than a year ago, some conservatives were exulting
over the tea parties, believing they brought needed energy to a movement
demoralized by its 2008 shellacking at the polls. “The Republican comeback has
begun,” declared GOP chief Michael Steele.

What a difference a year makes. Or not.

Some of us after all, have argued all along that the tea parties were about
as “conservative” — insofar as that term has traditionally been understood –
as ladies night in a Castro Street bar. Indeed, some of us made the same point
about George W. Bush, the putatively conservative president who nevertheless
presided over an expansion of the federal government and of a federal
entitlement program (Medicare), a costly war of choice in Iraq founded on a
shifting rationale, and financial mismanagement that turned surplus into deficit
seemingly overnight. For at least the last decade, then, conservatism has not seemed particularly conservative — a
disconnect many of the ideology’s adherents managed to ignore so long as it was
useful to do so, i.e., so long as it played well at the ballot box. “Just win,
baby” was their mantra; intellectual honesty, their casualty…

This, I believe, is completely on the nose. The reason Republicans lost so badly in 2008 wasn’t because the Democrats and liberals are great—far from the truth, as we have clearly seen with our current administration and Democrat majority. Washington is still broken. No, Republicans didn’t lose due to their competition; Republicans lost because of themselves. One thing Americans hate, hate, is hypocrisy. And when Republicans talk about conservativism, less government, fiscal responsibility, and then use their majority to do the opposite, America reacts. And that is why we currently have a Democratically controlled, well, everything.

Pitts continues on why the Tea Parties really haven’t accomplished a lot in the last year:

…the tea party movement [was found] to be amorphous and largely without
an organizing principle other than its anger toward government and fear of a
supposedly imminent dictatorship. Beyond that, partiers are an unwieldy amalgam
of tax haters, global warming holdouts, illegal-immigration protesters,
secessionists, gun rights advocates, white supremacists, militia types and
conspiracy theorists, all banging their gongs at the same time. Like the liberal
noisemakers who follow the World Trade Organization around, their lack of
message discipline renders them — that word, yet again — incoherent. Like
them, they have yet to figure out that to protest everything is to
protest nothing.

Make no mistake: every movement or marginalized people has its fringe
extremists who threaten to define the whole. Thus, moderate American Muslims are
periodically required to rebuke Islamic terrorists, environmentalists are
obligated to rebuff eco-terrorists, and moderate African-Americans are expected
to reprove Louis Farrakhan.

But conservatives, outside of a few integrity-driven souls over the years,
have not rushed to repudiate the crazies among them, even as the crazies have
grown crazier and threatened to engulf the whole.

And here he is right. We need to continue to repudiate, as Erick Erickson has done, the crazier parts. Otherwise, the fringe of the tea party will take over the tea party, and the tea party will, in turn, define the Republican Party. And that would be disastrous for the party, not to mention for the entire country.

Why must it cost $75-150 for a five-minute consultation with a doctor?

Why can’t I email my doctor and get a reply the way I do with my accountant, attorney, financial planner, pastor, kids’ teachers, etc?

Does it really take a professional who scored a 1350 on her SAT’s, finished top of her class at UT, then completed seven years of expensive post graduate education and residency to determine whether my kid has an ear infection?

Why can’t I know what a test, procedure, or visit will cost and a) compare that cost among providers, and/or b) make some judgment about which care makes sense based on what it will cost and what I need?

If our restaurants and grocery stores had no prices listed and you only got a coded bill weeks later partially covered by someone else, do you think you spending would be efficient?  Would we as a society have serious problems with the cost of food?

Those who complain about a government takeover of healthcare should check their facts.  We already enjoy all the frustration, bureaucracy, and obstacles to innovation of a government-run health system without the benefits.  We live under government-run healthcare, we just pay a fortune for it and don’t cover everyone.

The challenge of making affordable insurance coverage available to all Americans is actually a just one component of our healthcare problems.  Our process for delivering and paying for healthcare was cobbled together about eighty years ago and has been slow to adapt to changes in our society.  It is a system that has become spectacularly rigid, mostly hidden from view, influenced by innumerable separate state, federal, local, corporate, and professional bureaucracies and presided over by none of them.

This doesn’t mean that pure deregulation will work.  Medicine does not and never will function as a truly efficient market.  After falling off a ladder, you are not going to shop ambulance companies for the provider best suited to your particular needs.  Consumer choice is limited by the specialized knowledge required, the vulnerability of the patient, and difficulties in comparing value.  Regulation of the healthcare industry can’t be eliminated, but it needs to be loosened and updated.

Obama’s plan takes the healthcare industry in the wrong direction.  Instead of bringing simplification, it adds layers of new bureaucracy.  It does nothing to strip back the generations of largely irrelevant regulation; building instead a concrete monster on top of the muddle.  It addresses cost by moving toward rationing instead of opening the field for greater efficiencies and better practices.

As Republicans we should understand this one fact – You will never choose healthcare the way you pick which brand of peanut butter to buy.  And some more effective system will have to be put in place to address the needs of the less fortunate.  That system will cost money in the form of taxes.  Have a drink.  Say a prayer. Whatever it takes.  Make peace with it.

However, simply creating the largest government entitlement in history (largest in anyone’s history, not just America’s) on a party line vote with no fundamental restructuring will be a recipe for disaster.

There may not be a more technically complex problem we have ever been asked to solve as a nation.  As Obama’s plan falls apart, Republicans are positioned to propose a conservative process that could bring meaningful improvements and set the stage for wider reforms.  Before we can do that, we have to get over our favorite solution for everything, better than aspirin – “how about a tax cut/credit?”

First step toward a solution?  Empower states to come up with their own solutions.  Give them greater regulatory freedom over existing programs like Medicare/caid.  Offer greater funding from the federal government for state programs that extend coverage significantly.  I’m not saying this for the frequent Republican reason – toss a problem we don’t care about to the states so it can disappear from the agenda.  I say it for these reasons:

- States already have far more experience, breadth of authority, and insight into the healthcare system.  States regulate medical professionals, administer Medicare and Medicaid, along with their own programs.  Any structural changes in the way we administer healthcare would almost have to originate at the state level in order to make sense.  Imagine for example of version of Obama’s plan that was made available for states to adopt or not.

- States have more freedom than the federal government to innovate.  They are smaller, more accountable, and in a worst case, have the larger federal government to fall back on for assistance if their efforts fail.  Who do the feds fall back on…?

- There are fifty states and only one federal government.  Again, more opportunity for ideas to emerge.

Congress could help further by clearing obstacles that limit insurance company competition at the state level.

We are not Canada. We are not France.  We could adopt their healthcare legislation down to the last silent “g” and not see the same results.  The best approach to making quality healthcare available to everyone will take into account our size, our existing systems, our politics, and our values.  There is an opportunity here for the GOP to take a leadership role on an issue we have given little attention.  We need to have the maturity and courage to seize it and act.

If you want to know why conservatism is viewed as a joke by some people, one only has to look at bloggers like Erick Erikson of Red State. In response to a recent column by David Frum, where Frum talked about how Congress and Washington as a whole are getting little done in the way of legislation, Erikson had this to say:

Maybe, just maybe there is a different reason Congress has done little since the seventies. Maybe, just maybe it could be because conservatives largely took over in the 80’s through Republican controlled White Houses or Congresses and conservatives tend to think we don’t need sweeping legislation to solve all the ills of the American people.

Isn’t this the quintessential vanity piece of liberal drivel? Those elites back in the 50s to the 70s could get great things done because they didn’t have to interact with the people. But once they were forced to interact with those C-SPAN cameras, they couldn’t solve all the problems the American people never knew they had.

To which David Frum responds:

If it were possible for two paragraphs to sum up everything that is wrong with the American conservative movement, these are them.

The total indifference to policy and governance – the glib equation of ideological activists with “the people” – the assumption that conservatives just needed to “take over” and then all problems would spontaneously disappear …. it’s all on display.

The suggestion that conservatives don’t need to legislate – or anyway don’t need to legislate anything much – is ignorant of history, ignorant of policy, ignorant of government.

To their critics, the deregulation of oil and gas in the 1970s was “sweeping.” Ditto the deregulation of air, trucking and rail. Ditto the Reagan tax cuts. Ditto welfare reform.

The problems ahead for conservatives will require even bigger action still.

Do you want to balance the budget? You can’t do it without curbing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid, and that will take major reforms in both programs.

How about a shift from unskilled to more skilled immigration? Not a small project.

Concerned to protect the environment while enhancing U.S. energy security? That too will require legislation that some would call sweeping.

My beef with Erickson and his ilk is that they have no interest in governing, in trying to solve national problems with conservative ideas. No, instead, they are interested in frontin’ , in striking a pose and yelling about the evils of big government, all the while doing nothing to actually shrink government. As Jonathan Rauch has said, this is all about George Wallace-style cultural resentment against the “elites” and nothing more. It might win a few elections here and there, but when things go bad, people want their government to do something, not just spout angry rhetoric.

Do I want some kind of Euro-style big government? No. I want a smaller goverment, but I also want it to be efficient. If I want it to take on entitlement reform or really deal with the deficit, then I want it to be competent and just.

Which reminds me: two of those sweeping laws that the “elites” passed in the 1960s were the Voting and Civil Rights Acts. The Voting Rights Act allowed my relatives in the American South to vote without being harrassed or subject to poll taxes and the like. The Civil Rights Act allows me to purchase a home or get a job without being discriminated against. Are these laws that Erickson would rather not have Congress do, because they are “big government?”

Instead of making “limited government” no more than a battle cry, we should be engaged in seeking ways for government to be efficient and limited in its influence.

But such an approach would require thinking, something very few conservatives seem interested in doing these days.

Ross Douthat’s weekly column is about my favorite governor, Mitch Daniels. Here’s a taste:

In a just world, Daniels’s record would make him the Tea Party movement’s favorite politician. During the fat years of the mid-2000s, while most governors went on spending sprees, he was trimming Indiana’s payroll, slowing the state government’s growth, and turning a $800 million deficit into a consistent surplus. Now that times are hard, his fiscal rigor is paying off: the state’s projected budget shortfall for 2011, as a percentage of the budget, is the third-lowest in the country.

But Daniels hasn’t just been a Dr. No on policy. His “Healthy Indiana” plan, which offers catastrophic coverage to low-income residents, aspires to eventually cover 130,000 people, about a third of the state’s long-term uninsured. He’s pushed targeted investments in kindergarten programs, the police force and the child welfare office. And he’s been a pragmatic free-marketeer, rather than a strict ideologue. His controversial decision to lease the Indiana toll road reaped $3.8 billion for the state. But when an attempt to outsource welfare enrollment went awry, Daniels yanked the system back into the public sector.

It wasn’t that long ago that there was talk, again, about the end of Moderate Republicans.  Now with Scott Brown’s win, we are back in fashion, again.

As a moderate I generally am in favor of Independents entering politics. As a center-right nation, most Independents tend to slant right (see Joe Lieberman and Lincoln Chafee). While these sorts of candidates generally infuriate the party the are most closely aligned with, I tend to see them as free to make more principled decisions without having to play to the base. And at the end of the day I am just as happy with an Independent who organizes with the Republicans as I am a down the line conservative. There will never be a shortage of partisans, so some independent thought mixed in has to be good for debate- as long as it doesn’t get in the way of leadership.

All that said, I am not sure what to make of Florida’s Charlie Crist.  From The Hill

Either Charlie Crist realizes he can’t escape the stimulus, or he’s leaning toward an independent run for Senate.
Crist is saying some curious things for a man in the midst of a conservative primary challenge.
An independent run is easily the most tempting scenario for political junkies, and polls show Crist would stand a better chance of winning in a three-way race with Marco Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) than he would of winning the GOP primary. He’s got to know that he will probably never win the presidency as a Republican, so now is as good a time as any to reevaluate.

He is sounding more and more independent lately, but Rubio is a solid conservative candidate that I would welcome in the Senate as well. If Crist makes the jump it could be an interesting race. If he is successful, would Bayh entertain and independent bid for the White House? Just asking.

Crossposted at The Moderate Republican.

Crossposted at The Moderate Republican

In a recent post, Joe Gandleman praised California Governor Arnold Scharzenegger for calling Republicans out for their hyprocrisy regarding the stimulus package passed last year.

This is what Joe said:

Lame-duck California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has criticized fellow Republicans for being hypocritical in the oppose-it-then-take-it-and-brag-about-it position on President Barack Obama’s stimulus money — and shrugged off the Tea Party movement as unproductive.

It’s just the latest step in the evolution of Schwarzenegger, who has swung in varying degree to be a more ideological Republican and a more independent one — with his poll numbers generally going up when he is more independent. Independent voters helped elect Schwarzenegger — but biographies of him confirm that he is indeed an independent thinker, generally part of that vanishing breed called “Moderate Republicans.”

The statement had some thing about it that troubled me, especially the perception of moderate Republicans. When Joe talks about how Scharzenegger has morphed from a more ideological Republican to an independent one, he is no doubt talking about his speech to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. I know that some on the left as well as a number of independents did not like the speech, thinking it was too ideological. A few years back I might have agreed, but these days, I tend to think it wasn’t a big deal. Speaking at a national convention of one’s political party tends to give one license to be partisan. Being proud of being a Republican should not be considered a crime. People are Republicans or Democrats for a reason. A bit of pride in your political party is okay. If one can’t be proud of their party, then they really have no reason to be part of said party.

But what was more disturbing is the perception that what makes a moderate Republican…a moderate Republican is that they tend to criticize their fellow Republicans and don’t show any pride for being a Republican.

With all due respect, that is not what defines a moderate Republican. Such a definition only hurts moderates in the GOP and gives the impression that we really are “RINOs,” Republicans-in-Name-Only. Read more »

This year’s race to win the Republican nomination for Texas Governor was set to be a pivotal test of whether reasonable people in the Party could retake control from the extremists.  Sitting Governor Rick Perry has carved a solid base out of the fundamentalist movement and recently stirred national controversy with a thinly veiled reference to secession.  He is being challenged by U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.  Senator Hutchinson is a “moderate” which in this context means someone who is comfortable allowing Texas to remain in the union and won’t try to write creationism into our schools’ science textbooks. Read more »

For the last six to eight months, the Democrats have been placing their hopes in the tea parties. Yes, I said the Democrats. They have placed their hope that the tea partiers, or “tea-baggers,” as they’ve derisively labelled them, will redeem everything wrong with them, that the Nazi-sign wielding right-wing extremists would make the GOP look so bad that all the mistakes of the current administration would be dwarfed by the ineptitude of the opposition. And at first, they were right.

Read more »