David Mills: More than a soundbite
The Republican Party has mastered the art of looking good. They have an impressive ability to carve out campaign slogans, political sound bites and punchy policy catch phrases that resonate with voters and help them get elected. The problem, as the newest batch of Republican leaders are finding out as we speak, starts a few weeks after election day, when you raise your right hand and pledge to solve the problems that were so easy to describe on the stump.
Sloganeering is easy. Governing is hard. The trouble really starts when our representatives make promises so completely driven by campaign slogans that there is no way to actually make good on them. That inability to deliver is exactly where Virginia Republicans find themselves right now.
In 2009 candidate Bob McDonnell (R) told Virginians that privatizing the state’s Alcohol and Beverage System would be a painless way to find hundreds of millions of dollars for transportation. Gov. Bob McDonnell quickly found out that his plan would actually cost taxpayers money, but given the promises he made on the stump, he blindly went ahead and tried to get it passed anyway. It has become a classic example of slogan-guided politics failing to solve a big problem.
In 2010, candidates John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan told Americans they had a plan to cut the national debt without raising revenue. They failed to mention what we all learned shortly after they took the majority in the House of Representatives: Their deficit reduction plan breaks America’s promise to the elderly and the poor on items like Medicare and Medicaid, and then spends that money on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
That plan, which Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Krugman calls “a sick joke,” is the product of a Republican Party that recognizes the need to take action but is too bound by the rigid dogma (and their Tea Party base) that got them elected to propose a serious solution.
As good as Republicans are at campaigning, we are now seeing how poorly their slogan-driven election efforts prepare them to govern. Conversely, Democrats, who are often better at governing than they are at campaigning, are taking on complex policy challenges with clarity and purpose. Last week President Obama (D) put forth his own plan to reduce the national debt that offers a serious path to avoiding the looming crisis without leaving the elderly and the needy out in the cold.
During that speech, President Obama forcefully articulated what Republicans hope we all forget on Election Day: the solutions to the problems we face don’t often fit on a bumper sticker or in a tweet. Paul Ryan introduced a budget plan that in bumper sticker form sounded pretty good to a lot of serious people. But, as Krugman points out, upon close inspection, “The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy.”
Paul Ryan and the Republicans are proving that government by campaign slogan isn’t just dishonest; it’s dangerous to the health of this Commonwealth and this nation. President Obama, Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.), and our Virginia Democrats in Congress and in state government continue to strive for serious solutions to serious and complex problems. The sooner the Republicans drop the dogma and come to the table, the sooner we can confront our challenges and build a brighter future for this country.
David Mills is the executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia.
David Reynolds: Wishing for jobs
Be careful what you wish for because you may get it. That’s what my mother always told me. I trust your mother was just as wise. Now, years later, I’m worried. Everyone is wishing for more jobs. What happens if we get them? Here!
Once upon a time in this great land there were two major political parties. One was called the Republican Party. Others called themselves Democrats. Then there was a financial meltdown. It flowed like lava over the land. The people were scared. So they united to form a single party. They called it the Jobs Party. No one leans left or right, everyone stands straight for jobs. No matter where.
However, before the lava flowed into our neck of the woods, we were fond of proclaiming that this place was special, that the quality of life here meant more than a bigger pay check elsewhere.
I liked that kind of thinking. So I moved to be with such thoughts.
I believe that you and I are in agreement on matters of time and money. Time counts more. A big boost in our work hours versus our free time can upset our way of life. If we get all of the jobs we wish for maybe we will be at risk of killing what we most cherish about our area. I recently returned from the Big Apple, a great place to visit, but who from the valley wishes to live there? We plain don’t like city life – even when it means fatter pay checks.
Do Virginia’s leaders know this? I’m not sure. Lt. Governor Bill Bolling sent me an email. He wrote, “During the past decade, the manufacturing sector in America has shed 5.5 million jobs.”
Mr. Bolling, I have a simple solution for getting those jobs back. It is for the American worker to be less productive. We have the most productive workers in the world. It’s why the Japanese don’t build most of their cars in Japan. We have a labor distribution change, not a manufacturing problem. The manufacturing share of our economy is down somewhat, but what is really down is the number of workers engaged in manufacturing, from 50% to 16%.
Now I don’t believe Mr. Bolling wishes for Virginians to be less productive. Yet we keep going after jobs as if it is simply a numbers game. Life is more than numbers. When Toyota quietly pulled out of a plant site near the Augusta-Rockbridge County line and headed for Mississippi we cried. And when ground was recently broken for the new Heatex plant at Natural Bridge Station we cheered, in spite of the fact that only 14 new blue collar jobs will be created.
Ah, blue collar jobs! Why don’t I hear about campaigns attempting to bring white collar, higher paying, more professional jobs to the area? Because we are still stuck in a blue over white frame of mind. An imbalance of work collars can unbalance our lives. And what are the side effects of more jobs? Do we really wish to be like Northern Virginia? Or another old plant city?
What’s the answer? It is not in the wishing – it is in being careful – - careful that we have the right numbers and the right mix of jobs and knowing that the valley has a good thing going. And not to mess it up in order to be like too many other places in Virginia.
I think I’ll quit the Jobs Party and rejoin one of the other two. When the donkey and the elephant battle it out we will get the right jobs mix.
Column by David Reynolds
Rozell: Gridlock could aid Tea Party
Roughly two-thirds of the candidates running on the Tea Party label went down to defeat in Tuesday’s congressional midterms. And yet the new voice of the conservative wing of the Republican Party will get its way almost from the moment the next Congress convenes in January.
One word: gridlock.
“There’s the irony. The Tea Party movement may not have the ability to push its agenda items forward given that the Democrats control the Senate and of course the presidency, but if the Tea Party movement is genuinely about less government, less involvement in people’s lives by government, fewer government programs, well, you can point to the likely gridlock of the next two years as sort of of an accomplishment of the Tea Party movement itself,” said Mark Rozell, a political-science professor at George Mason University, who has written extensively on conservative and Republican Party politics.
Nothing much of consequence will happen, indeed, in the next Congress, with Republicans in control of the House, and the Tea Party caucus, 40 members strong, making waves in the majority caucus, and Democrats in control of the Senate and the White House.
What we will see is a lot of hot air as both sides posture with an eye to 2012 in mind. The focus of Tea Party leaders, in Rozell’s reckoning, will be on pushing agenda items like the repeal of the 2010 health-care reform that many in the Tea Party set campaigned on this fall to try to force Democrats to take issues that can be used against them in the 2012 election cycle.
“What they’re going to have to do in the next two years is present their own vision to the American people and try to make the case that the country would be better off with a different president, presumably a Republican, and hope that down the road with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a Republican president, if they are so fortunate, that they can then have some significant policy influence later on. But in the next two years, I just don’t see any policy momentum coming out of the Tea Party movement,” Rozell said.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
Alan Ramsey: Questions about the 2010 elections
I was a Reagan Democrat and Republican activist from ’80-’06. My views have changed as this new-age, anti-Reagan Republican Party has devolved away from the Constitution into a party of extreme hatred and racial, religious and ethnic bigotry, claiming they’re the only “true” patriots and “real” Americans: everyone else is somehow un-American and “liberal” (as if liberal is a bad word!). That’s just socially regressive bigotry and America needs to rain on their TEA party.
I’ll trust a “liberal” over a corrupt conservative any day, especially with our government.
I’m proud to be a liberal in the tradition of the Founders who declared all people to be equal “regardless” of the racial, religious or ethnic bigotries of the few (or the many). That was a very liberal declaration in an era of extreme social conservatism under the church-state empires and their slave-based institutions. We fought a Revolutionary War for freedom from such religious oppression and decadence. The TEAnutz haven’t read the Constitution, or they wouldn’t say the things they say. In fact, they’re using the same verbiage and rhetoric as the evangelical Ku Klux Klan of last century. See History Channel’s piece on the KKK to see the similarities. Their extreme agenda raises many questions.
Why don’t they register with a “T” and follow the same rules as other candidates/parties and pay their fair share instead of using the media to “buzz” their extreme message? Are they afraid of how few votes they’ll actually get? Do they seek to be a “shadow party” over the Republicans, an unaccountable “shadow” government, without designated party status? Is that what the Founders intended? With all the free “buzz” they’ve received, if they don’t take 100 seats in Congress (House and Senate), they’re a failure.
They claim America is founded on their narrow religious opinions. The Constitution doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say we have to be of one particular religious opinion to be “true” citizens or “real” patriots. It is grounded in the innate values of secular humanistic principles. Political religionism is a Ku Klux Klan mindset and their cultural war against America is anathema to our Constitution, our rights and our freedoms. Please continue to defend these constitutional principles because the social regressives have an openly stated theocratic agenda:
“Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors – in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”
Dr. D. James Kennedy, pastor at Coral Ridge Ministries, “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference, February 2005
Note: “whatever the cost.” It’s Machiavellian. Anything goes: lies, deceit, murder, even mass murder. John Kerry called it ‘christo-fascism.’ I call it “evangelical jihad.” It’s theocracy, same as Islamofascism. We’ve seen its results in the eyes of McVeigh, Nichols, Rudolph, Roeder, Koresh, the Sovereign Citizens, et cetera. The evangelical militias (jihadists) were planning to murder our police and then use WMDs against potentially tens of thousands of children, families and public officials at their funeral processions … to promote a general evangelical uprising to overthrow our government and impose their theocracy against America. Why: racism, pure and simple. It can’t be policies, because Barack Obama is less “liberal” than Ronald Reagan ever was.
President Reagan “bailed out” Chrysler, the unions and associated financial institutions; gave amnesty to millions of illegals; raised taxes twice; was an avowed secularist; said religion belongs in the homes and churches, not in the schools or in the halls of government; believed in providing a safety net for the poor and seniors; believed that the middle class is the strength of America; believed in American families and jobs first, not in communist child slave labor.
President Reagan was more “liberal” than Barack Obama. So why the obsessive hatred? Barack is not 100 percent White Anglo. It’s the racist core of the Republican Party on full display, no matter how much they live in denial of their deeply seated bigotries and hatreds. It’s no wonder they don’t call Reagan’s name much anymore: if he were alive, they’d be calling him a liberal! Not that “liberal” is a bad word. The Founders were the secular, socially progressive liberals of their time and gave us a secular Constitution in such context. Some were religious and they could have written a religious Constitution, but they didn’t. They wrote a secular one.
But you have to LOL: the “liberal” Ronald Reagan. We’ve come a long way, baby.
The FOXnutwork-alcoholic televangelist Glenn Beck is casting himself as the “messiah” of the theocratic evangelical agenda. He preaches that his (republican) God has called them to “Take Back America.” From what? Constitutionalism? Free thought? Individual rights? The right to make private medical decisions, to love whom we choose without the “sheet sniffers” drooling at our bedroom windows? Honestly, I worry more about the TEA theocrats than I do some bearded guy in a cave on the other side of the planet buffing his rusty AK-47 and jackin’ his own jerky.
When religio-political groups engage in tithing-financed hate-based legislation as they did in ’06 with Mehlman, Haggard, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention against the constitutional rights of taxpaying citizens, the church welfare state must end. James Madison warned us against “ecclesiastical corporations” and their threats against society. They must pay taxes on high-profile properties and six-figure incomes. They cry ‘separation’ over their tithing wealth but not when it comes to interfering in government, schools, or public policy.
They use God and the Bible as political props to promote their own self-righteous vanity. That’s violating one of the Big Ten. Can honest oath be made to our Constitution by religious fanatics with such an extremely radical, socially regressive and anti-constitutional agenda? This theocratic TEA Party is everything the Founding Fathers, Mothers and Reagan were against.
Economic policies: Failed ‘trickle down’ redistribution scheme of class warfare
We thought it would work. It didn’t, especially in the South. The results are everywhere. We were sold out to the child slave labor nations for CEO wealth and corporate perks. It was “bait-and-switch” politics, but it was my fault: I voted for it. Now they’re blaming everyone else for what were our failures. So much for their “personal accountability” and “values” thingey things.
Sunset those tax cuts for the top 2 percent. They instructed it be done and must have had good reason for that language … or they acted in bad faith. Which was it? They say such cuts help the economy? They need new glasses. If it were true, we’d have zero unemployment. Where are those millions of jobs promised from their golden microphones and propaganda hate-radio? If you lose the House, still sunset those tax cuts. Even David Stockman said it decried the liturgy of “tax cuts” as a failure to America and responsible for our fiscal mess. But then again, as President Reagan’s point man on budget policy, he’s just another “liberal.”
Fact: we’re the biggest consumer market, and if the slave-wage corps want to leave, let ‘em: reopen American plants to American communities. “Tax cuts” should only apply to those companies that spend those benefits here, who create American jobs here. Republicans didn’t put fair trade for Americans above free trade for our enemies and their benefactors. There should be incentives to labor groups or any community who wants to reopen local plants through community ownership. Community organizing can be a shared capitalistic/collective endeavor.
The truth is that the social progressives have created more jobs, opportunities, and wealth in history than the Social Regressives ever have. Think about it: Hollywood with all its high-paying American jobs and derivatives in entertainment, the media, television, sports, video games, theater, the environment, aviation, space exploration and all of its derivatives, et cetera … all the things the social regressives hate and call “evil” according to their narrow religious opinions and dogma. Liberals produce and spread the wealth. Grounded in their morally debased mindset of greed and selfishness, conservatives hate to share the wealth and worry only about their own arses as they squeeze the communities and workers for CEO wealth and corporate perks.
That’s the big difference between Democratic conservationism and Republican conservatism: Democrats make long-term investments to spread the wealth while Republicans feed their own short-term greed.
Hey, folks … thanks for fighting the good fight. Centrist Constitutional Liberals (in the tradition of the Founders) are our last line of defense against the socially regressive “evangelical jihadists” who claim their “job” is to impose their theocracy “…over every aspect and institution of human society” … “whatever the cost.”
That’s a morally-debased theocratic decadence worth fighting against every day of every month of every year….without pause.
Guest op-ed by Alan Ramsey
David Reynolds: Defining moments
The phone rang. No, it was not three in the morning. It was a far more civilized hour. And a more civilized time. It was 1992. However, as far as I was concerned it was a political wake-up call.
“Dave, this is Vivian, how would like to be a Bill Clinton delegate at the Democratic State Convention in Salem?” Vivian is Vivian Watts, since 1996 a delegate to the General Assembly from Fairfax County.
Her question was most reasonable. She was a neighbor and her husband, David, and I car pooled to work. (In Washington, a car pool is as close as you can be to another person and still be dressed.) More importantly, Vivian knew my politics. We worked for Doug Wildler for governor and helped other Democrats.
It took me about ten seconds to say, “Yes!” I had never been to a political convention and it sounded like fun. However, it is not easy to have fun in Salem, unless you are at a baseball game. But this was a convention.
So, what did we do at the Salem Civic Center in ‘92? As good Democrats we looked out for ourselves. Public school teachers were there. An so were other union members. No surprise. But then came the big eye-opener.
I sat down to vote for delegates to the national convention. Two ballots were passed. One was for male candidates; the other for female candidates. The winners had to balance. Gender neutrality ruled. Equal results – not equal opportunity.
Allow me to explain. Since 1972 the Democratic National Committee has operated under what are known as the “McGovern Rules.” While George McGovern lost his bid to become president that year he was able to steer his party to the social left. One result: If it were not for two Southern governors the party would have been shut out of the White House for forty years!
The current Democratic Party — as well as many Americans — believe in categorical representation. This form of democracy infers that only those of the same social category can properly represent the interests of that group. Thus, equality is judged not on an individual basis, but on a sociological basis. The civil rights industry has its basis in categorical representation, as well as affirmative action.
Such a self-serving view of humanity clashed with everything I had been carefully taught — that race and gender do not matter. That each of us possess special and unique qualities. And that is why there was an unlimited budget to rescue 33 miners in Chile.
So I left the convention hall. And the party.
Now, fast forward to next Wednesday. That is the day when some political pundit will declare that the McGovern presidency is over. It, too, will be a defining moment. He will say that if the Democratic Party is to rise from yesterday’s ashes it must tack back to the center, that is, the fiscal center where politics will be played over the next two years. He will go on to say that it was the tea party movement that forced how the game is be played here by both Republicans and Democrats.
That is why I talked with Jeff on the poach on the Col Alto Hampton Inn. Jeff who? Jeff Vanke. Mr. Vanke is running as an Independent, a centrist, against Mr. Goodlatte. Try as I could, I could not put Jeff into an R or a D box.
Jeff Vanke believes that neither major party fully understands the public’s angry mood. Maybe a few votes for Vanke can light a fire under our nine-term congressman. But, don’t count on it. Whether you support Bob Goodlatte or not, there is a need to change how business is conducted in Washington. Or are the Republicans again going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
Bob, how about no more earmarks to go along with your balanced budget amendment? Show some leadership. Otherwise why have a safe seat? A no earmarks bill can be the “No Broken Windows Bill” for the federal government. When local governments (New York City is the best example) made strong efforts to reduce serious crime they first stopped tolerating broken school windows. Crime rates went down.
Four items on my early Christmas wish list: (1) a Democratic Party like the one we had before 1972; (2) a Republican Party that takes ideas from the tea party movement, not just their votes; (3) a GOP excited about governing, not just playing pin the tail on the donkey; and (4) true independents like Jeff Vanke to be heard.
This month I had another defining moment. In Princeton, New Jersey, where Albert Einstein once lived, I bought a poster. It hangs in my garage. There was his familiar pipe, along with this and other quotations: “Wisdom is not the product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” On Tuesday our political class will have a postgraduate exam in wisdom. Many are predicted to fail.
Column by David Reynolds
Bradley Rees: A time for choosing
“A political battle is merely a skirmish fought with muskets. A philosophical battle is a nuclear war.” These words were written by Ayn Rand way back in 1964. This sentiment was, at one time, shared by the Tea Party groups that inhabit central Virginia. They understood that the time for fixing those metaphorical rusty bayonets to unreliable antique muskets was past, and that a new war was raging.
This new struggle represents a fundamental disagreement over the very philosophical basis of our great Republic, and whether our future course will reflect or even remotely resemble it.
There are still a few who recognize this central fact upon which the national Tea Party movement was built, but there are many more who fall into the ranks of what the central Virginia Tea Party has now become: yet another partisan group, concerned merely with short-term political victory. Preferably Republican.
There are far too many examples of this paradigm shift to include in the limited space allotted here, so the most egregious will have to suffice. During the 5th District GOP primary, 6 truly conservative candidates garnered over fifty-two percent of the vote, giving a clear indication of their lack of enthusiasm for and/or trust of State Senator Robert Hurt.
Tea Party leaders throughout the Fighting Fifth also voiced their displeasure with his voting record, some even going so far as to formally endorse other candidates.
But all that changed rapidly, once the primary was over. The GOP, which already had their hooks deep into the local Tea Party groups, began flexing their muscles even more.
The whispers of “Come with us. We’ve been around longer and we understand how to get things done in politics” gained volume and force, and the Tea Party groups (and some former primary candidates) believed that they were becoming the bestest buddies of the GOP. They were convinced they would be granted a prime place at the GOP table, if only they would capitulate, grovel, and compromise “just this once.”
And the Tea Parties, throwing caution to the wind and consciously ignoring those old warnings from Mom and Dad, accepted the sucker and climbed into the panel van with the nice man who was surely sent by Mom to pick them up, just as he told them he was.
Some have said that the Tea Party movement has been hijacked. I disagree and submit that it is much more in keeping with the preceding scenario; a consensual kidnapping.
The next indication that local Tea Party groups have confused this battle with a political one is their shameful treatment of Independent conservative Jeff Clark. The fear campaign from the right has convinced Tea Party “leaders” that the future of the entire Republic hinges on Virginia’s Fifth District.
In a classic case of missing the forest and running face-first into an individual tree, they have conflated Tom Perriello with Nancy Pelosi, his values and record be damned.
I am by no means a Perriello supporter, as evidenced by the fact that I launched a campaign to run against him, before the ’08 recount was even finalized. My concern here is that principles be paramount.
I know Tom’s principles, and I know Jeff’s. Because they both draw their principles from a deeply-held personal philosophy. Robert Hurt’s principles, according to me and every single candidate that challenged him in the primary, are skin deep and subject to change without a moment’s notice.
The local Tea Parties staunchly opposed Hurt in the primary. This race is being watched closely on a national (and even international) level. Adding those two factors together, a victory by Robert Hurt next Tuesday will be trumpeted by the vast majority of the national media as an embarrassing defeat for the Tea Party movement.
To return to the beginning: “A philosophical battle is a nuclear war.” And a vote for Robert Hurt is the equivalent of signing a unilateral disarmament treaty in 1977.
Bradley S. Rees resides in Bedford.
David Reynolds: Getting serious
Posted by afp on May 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment
I consider myself a conservative. Our congressman wears the same political stripes. But, I have this sinking feeling that he has never gone into battle for our common cause.
Why? I believe it is because the congressman from the Sixth District of Virginia is like too many members of the Republican establishment. They play politics like I swing a tennis racket. They hit the ball. But there is no follow through. As a result they fail to score any lasting policy points.
Nonetheless, they keep getting elected. And keep letting us down. Could it be because of their reelection strategy? You know it. It is when incumbents infer that they may be the devil – but it is always better to vote for the devil you know than the one you don’t.
This better-than-the-other guy strategy is common in Washington political circles. It is why DC is a town where cynicism rules – no matter who rules at the ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
And we wonder why so few bother to vote. If those we elect get serious about governing – not just campaigning – we will get serious about voting.
Our congressman reminds me of two others who came up short in representing me. One was a Republican; the other a Democrat. Yet they shared the same values. They valued their job above policy and party.
First the Republican. He served Northern Virginia. And did he serve NoVa! His name was Joel Broyhill. And Joel was all about serving his constituents. Not even the federal policy wonks who lived in Arlington could tell you much about his views. However, if anyone’s social security check was late, he got it fixed in short order. This led to a long term.
The other was a Democrat from Pennsylvania. His name was Dan Flood. Few knew much about his accomplishments, except that he was able to grow a mustache and wax it. And I’ll also credit him with three large federal buildings in Wilkes-Barre, PA. One is a Social Security Administration office, one is a VA hospital and the other one allowed my dad a place to work. But Dan’s real longevity weapon was that every constituent received a birthday card from their congressman. That’s how Dan used his campaign funds. He bought birthday cards!
Bob also sends more than a few cards. I love his Christmas cards. Bob, you sure have a fine growing family and your wife, Maryellen, is a gem. She is smart. And I have never seen her on the campaign trail without a smile.
But, Bob, as with dear old Dan, I expect more of my congressman than smiles, cards and handshakes, especially one with seniority. It’s called leadership. Leadership isn’t acquired by taking strong positions on safe issues of minor importance. It’s tackling the major issues and making enemies. And I also expect him or her to debate all credible opponents.
If I could, I would pull up the stakes of my elephant tent and rejoin my old friends who did a fairly decent job running the circus we call government. But I can not. They are dead. And so is their party.
So, Bob, you’re it. You’re a good man, but drop the symbolism. We know that your balanced budget amendment is just that. Do a Mark Warner and form your own Gang of Six. And please stop giving speeches to friendly groups telling us how devilish the other guys are. And then leave.
Mr. Congressman, terms on the hill can be long, but life is always short. When you get serious about leading, I’ll get serious about you. And I’ll stop throwing your fund raising letters in the waste basket. Fair enough?
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with bob goodlatte, david reynolds, republican party, shenandoah valley