Politico’s Politics

I was inclined to potentially believe that some of the Palin leaks had some merit, until two things happened:

• First, lack of plausibility in some of the things that were alleged became clear, as discussed here;
• Second, aide after aide refuted the allegations and actually explained where they may have come from, as explained here.

It is incumbent upon the nation GOP leadership to find out who the leakers are and punish them by preventing them from having any job at any campaign, ever, because right now these leakers are not only hurting the most powerful star that the party has going into the 2010 and 2012 elections, but also hurting the reputation and the honor of their boss, John McCain.  Their actions are utterly despicable.

Some want to compare our current difficulties to those of the civil war and the great depression. Come on! I am glad that said it before I did. We have problems, but these are nothing compare to what many a president has faced in the past.

I wrote here that it appeared initially at least that Obama would be somewhat centrist in domestic politics, and leftist in foreign policy, in part based on the appointments that are being talked about.

Well, here’s a great scenario: John Kerry becomes Secretary of State, and Russ Feingold becomes Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee… talk about a pacifist love-fest. (I like Feingold a lot, actually, and would prefer if more politicians were as honest and honorable as he is, but his foreign policy positions are not just liberal, they are not even in the mainstream of the left, as discussed here.)

Looks like some of the staffers that were with her are responding to the unidentified staffers who have been attacking her – cannot wait till these “unidentified” ones are outed, and hopefully sent to the woodshed for any future campaign (many jobs available doing silly campaign work abroad, I hear). The Hill has some good stuff here:

“It’s depressing,” said Steve Biegun, a veteran foreign policy hand who tutored and staffed Palin and travelled with her through the fall. “We worked our asses off. It was a tough campaign. Then we have this?” Biegun emphatically made the case for his much-maligned former boss. “I think she was fantastic. She just brought a special energy to our ticket. Look, I was there at those rallies.”

Politico also writes:
That she remains a player and may be the party’s nominee in four years would make it smart politics for Republican staffers to praise her in print. But those who went on the record suggest that they were doing so out of genuine affection for Palin and a sense that the image of her coming out of the election – that of a self-absorbed conniver — was not indicative of the person they knew.

“I approved the call and was in abject horror of what I had done,” he recounted. “But she said, ‘Look, it’s not about whose fault this is, don’t beat yourself up, let’s just move on.’”

I would rather take an on-the-record quote from one of the best foreign policy minds in the party, than unidentified failed staffers who did nothing to help their bosses get elected.

Nicholle Wallace is now also going on record praising Palin, on TV on Friday, and so maybe I was too harsh in suggesting that she was the source of the rumors – though Washington seems to think that she is. The article has more good stuff as well.

There are many things I do not like about Sarah Palin, largely related to her positions on issues. She is not my candidate – though I think she is an incredible politician, with great gifts, and the media’s treatment of her has been disgusting, is offensive to tens of millions of Americans. I also think that she is the most likely one to take Obama down in four years. But what some of these rumor-mill staffers have been upto is far worse than what the media has done and for its own sake, and its future, GOP must these staffers exposed and ostracized from the party, not because Palin is good or bad, but because actions like these should not be permitted on part of campaign staffers. If they have something to say, they should have the guts to do so in public, in full view of everyone else, not through ’secret’ leaks.

Blue Dogs are calling for “moderates in house leadership“. Great, and good luck – I mean that seriously, of course, but chances of success are pretty unlikely if you ask me. The idea that they have to settle for a New York centrist as Caucus Vice Chair seems pretty bad, if you ask me.

There is a lot of talk (see example here) about young voters, and how they shifted to vote for Obama in far greater numbers than they had voted for Kerry or Gore.

First of all, this is very impressive, as Obama’s whole campaign was.

But, lets not go too far with this – remember how everyone was talking about a massive new electorate that was gonna vote on Nov 4, yet it never showed? This talk about how the electorate is changing is something similar.

Young people always have somewhat more liberal views – thats to be expected. They grow older, have kids, and their views tend to shift. Now there is one issue in particular on which their views are unlikely to shift, and thats gay rights. The reason is that young people today (anyone under 40 actually) grew up and matured with openly gay friends, and so for them, someone being gay is nothing foreign, strange, or different, and the idea that their friends, or friends’ friends will be denied rights makes absolutely no sense. But on taxes and economic policy, views of young people always shift, because these views are generally shaped by what one faces, and as soon as they start to pay higher taxes, worry more about crime, start businesses, etc., their views will become more like those of their parents.

So Republicans should be concerned about not getting votes from young people, but those are votes that will eventually come to them, if they seek them, as these people get older.

What Republicans should worry about though are the Hispanic voters and black voters. Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in America. They are voters that in many respect should be Republicans – they are socially conservative and they are entrepreneurial, and their values are those that Republicans try to appeal to. The fact that they voted against McCain in such large numbers is hugely problematic, and if the GOP cannot get at least 40% of them, it will be in a lot of trouble for many years to come. Of course, some in the GOP do not get this, and will probably try to get Republicans to oppose immigration reform again. They will fail to learn from what happened in 2008. If that occurs, GOP congressional leaders better have some sense cause if the Democrats are able to present the GOP as being anti-Hispanic, trouble at the polls will be all but certain in 2010 and 2012. African Americans will be much harder for the GOP to reach, certainly in the next couple of elections, for obvious reasons. But of course, they need to reach out to them as well, one way or another.

Unless you are in California, you probably have heard next to nothing about Proposition 11, a ballot measure that appears to have narrowly passed there. Yet besides the presidency and some of the crucial senate races that may decide the extent of Democratic control of that chamber, this may very well have been one of the most important things on the ballot this year. Proposition 11 “amends the California Constitution to change the redistricting process for the state Legislature, BOE, and California members of the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning with the 2010 census” (more here) by creating a non-partisan commission which would be charged with redistricting. Other states have followed this model (Iowa is a good example), resulting in far more competitive legislative districts on the state and federal level.

Why is this so important? California is the nation’s largest state, and a growing one, so it is bound to gain at least one additional House seat. Yet right now, almost all of its federal congressional seats are gerrymandered to ensure the election of either a Republican or a Democrat member. Since Democrats controlled redistricting in 2002, and California had a Democratic Governor, they put most Republican voters in certain districts, which now elect Republicans, though far less Republicans than Republican voters in the state. They also maximized the the number of Democrat seats. As a result, the California members of the House are not only lopsidedly Democrats, but California also fails to elect many moderates – instead, most members represent fringes of both parties, because vast majority of real “races” happen not in the general election, but during the primaries, when party activists have the biggest say. This not only hurts California’s voters, but also hurts the nation, since California elects more than 10% of all House members.

(By the way, its not like Democrats are the only ones guilty of this. Republicans are as well. Everyone tends to use Texas as an example of terrible GOP redistricting, but in truth, Pennsylvania and Michigan are much better example, where GOP legislatures and Governors did exactly what California Democrats did. Texas is not as good of an example, because Texas GOP, while having attained dominance statewide, still was underrepresented in the House membership in 2002, so while Tom DeLay’s tactics were certainly heavy-handed, the end result actually equalized power between the parties, which was justified given GOP’s strength in the state. By contrast, in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the GOP redistricting in 2002 was most definitely not justified.)

What an independent commission will likely do is create more competitive districts, by equally distributing Democrat and Republican voters. This will give party activists an impetus to support moderate House candidates, who will be able to go beyond the party base to get elected. In turn, election of more moderates from California will be a very good thing for America. There will be a similar impact on the state legislature, which too will have strong benefits.

California tends to be a leader in innovative governance models. The anti-tax movement, after all, got started in California many a decades ago. If California is successful in its non-partisan redistricting, other states are bound to follow suit.

Rasmussen has a new poll out of whom GOPers want as their nominee in 2012 (Rasmussen, of course, the most accurate pollster in 2008). These numbers are amazing:

• 91% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable.
• 8% have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.
• 64% want Palin as their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee.
• Mike Huckabee of Arkansas comes in with 12% support, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

I think we can safely assume that Huckabee’s supporters are “conservative Republicans” and so are most of Romney’s.  So Palin’s backing then crosses the ideological divide in the GOP, and most definitely includes moderates.  After all this woman has been through – the unfair and totally unjustified attacks from the media; leaks and shenanigans from some on the McCain campaign who are looking out for their future more than they are for the party, the country, and the candidate that they worked for; and allegations that she is some sort of an idiot lightweight – these sort of numbers are beyond amazing.  (I doubt anyone will use this as an excuse, but just in case, these numbers are no so high because Palin was just in the news a lot as the VP nominee – I do not have numbers to prove it, but I am pretty sure that Dan Quayle and Jack Kemp, the last two losing GOP nominees, did not have this sort of support.)

I broadly hold the view that Sarah Palin enters the race for the 2012 nomination – which of course stared the day after the election was over – in the most powerful position of any non-incumbent candidate since Ronald Reagan.  She she motivates broad groups in the Republican party (from the conservative/evangelical base, to libertarians, to moderates); she can raise loads of money (which will be essential for any Republican who wants to match Obama’s fundraising); she is a political star who can compete with Obama for public attention in the next couple years when GOP will be without a leader (want to bet that # for any TV appearance that she does will go through the roof?). Nomination is not hers “for the taking” but if she does things right over the next two and half years, she can run away with it.

It hit me today, that in domestic policy, two of the three most powerful and important senators will be women. Max Baucus will sit at the top of the list in a way, cause nothing can get done without him, since he will chair the finance committee. But, he loves to be bi-partisan, and while Democrats may be able to roll over the GOP, it may not work, and I doubt he will want to. The thing is though, he has a potential great partner, Olympia Snowe, if he wants true bi-partisanship (oh the right will hate this – and of course, the end resulting policy may not be that great). And the third, of course, is Hillary Clinton, whose agenda Obama has more or less adopted.

Over at PowerLineBlog, Paul makes this point about Obama: John is correct that the left will expect Obama to distance himself from President Bush on foreign policy. But I’m guessing that by pushing an aggressively left-wing domestic agenda and throwing in a few foreign policy gestures, Obama can pacify, or else neutralize, the left.

I actually think the opposite is true. Of course, we do not yet know what will happen, but there are a few signs of what might happen. Obama appointed a semi-moderate (not a true moderate, but more moderate than left) Chief of Staff (even more moderate when compared to say Tom Daschle, who was the runner up). He seems to be leaning towards appointing a moderate Treasure Secretary – be it Larry Summers or Tim Geithner, the head of the New York Fed, both of whom seem to be leading candidates. His economic advisers at the White House are likely to be moderates: Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee (they tend to not trash Walmart, and I wonder if they support card check). We have a huge economic problem, which will limit Obama’s options when it comes to new programs and spending. We are not hearing much about government run healthcare, at least not right now. So all of that points to a potentially center of “center-left” economic agenda. I am not saying this will be an agenda as moderate as what we had from Bill Clinton in the last six years of his presidency, but it will be to the left of where the Democrats generally are. I am sure that folks in the House will try to push far more liberal ideas, but Emanuel’s appointment is a sign that Obama wants to at least try to stop some of those things from even coming up. Maybe I am too hopeful on this front, but thats the sense I get for now.

On the other hand, in foreign and national security policy the names we are hearing for appointments are far more left-wing, so much so that Cyrus Vance seems conservative. Kerry or Richardson for Sec of State? Denzing for Secretary of Defense? Susan Rice for National Security Adviser or UN Ambassador? Greg Craig for National Security Adviser? Tony Lake – someone suggested having him run the CIA? I forget his name, but Daschle’s former foreign policy aide who managed the foreign policy team for the campaign? These are all individuals on the far left of the American foreign policy debate – that is, to the left of the middle of the Democratic party. Even Chuck Hagel, a strong conservative on economic and other domestic issues, is to the left on foreign policy, as far as the current political debate is concerned. On the other hand, we are hearing very little about Richard Holbrooke, Ron Asmus, or Mark Brzezinski (who would make a very good national security adviser and supported Obama in the primary). Holbrooke is so absent that The New Republic had to ask if Byden will be able to find him a job. The only “moderate” foreign/national security policy people that you hear about is James Steinberg, about whom I know little, and Jane Harman for something in intelligence (which would be a G-d send given names above). Of course, we do not know who will land which job, but if the rumor mill is any indication, the people Obama plans on appointing in foreign policy would want to pursue an aggressively left-wing foreign and national security agenda. Add to that the fact that some in Congress want to cut defense spending by 25% (at the time when we probably need to increase defense spending by 25% in order to revitalize the military after years of Bush’s failures to keep up with needed investments and increase its size), and that the loud mouths on the web and elsewhere are far more excited by foreign policy issues than domestic economic ones, I think what we should expect is a very strong push left-wing push, largely at the expense of US security interests.

If Obama truly wants to send a bi-partisanship message in national security and foreign affairs, he’d turn to Joe Lieberman for Secretary of State, or (I know this may sound as a kicker) John McCain for Secretary of Defense. Of course, this election has been too much like the West Wing (the TV show) already, so asking McCain to be Sec of Defense would be a bit too unreal, but Iraq is no longer the central issue – we are on our way to winning there, and if Obama wants his presidency to succeed, he will let the military finish the job (which I actually think he may let it do). Yet the job beyond Iraq for the military is great. We need to rebuild out defenses, which are exhausted, we need investment in weapons, we need a larger army, etc. The Rumsfeld years were a disaster for the military, and no one disagreed and criticized Rumsfeld more than McCain, and few could rebuild the military better than McCain. Lieberman, he’d be butting heads with Obama a lot more if he were Secretary of State, but he’d be very good.

Finally, whatever one makes of Obama’s victory, he did not run a left wing campaign, so his politics people know that pushing a left-wing domestic agenda will quickly piss off the middle, which in this country is far more right than it is left. On the other hand, pushing left-wing foreign policy agenda will not have a similar impact, at least not as quickly. So foreign policy push to the left is a safer bet politically too.