Republicans

As the nation watches the events in New York's 23rd Congressional district unfold, an appropriate title for this story would be “How to squander money and alienate your base." After the Saturday withdrawal of Republican Dede Scozzfava, the GOP is reeling from a massive insurgency by its conservative base. Of course, the story got stranger as Erick Erickson

of Redstate reports

“Dede Scozzafava is throwing her support to the Democrat, Bill Owens.

"She and her husband are working with union activists to drive the vote up for the Democrat.

"The Republican Party spent $900,000.00 to help her and this is how she repays them.

"And Pete Sessions, Chairman of the NRCC, and Guy Harrison, Executive Director of the NRCC, still have their jobs and are failing to take responsibility for this disaster, instead blaming conservatives.”

In the GOP there are still some are shaking their heads and wondering what went wrong. The GOP nominated a “moderate” and if she happened to have big labor and ACORN ties, then so be it. For once, the elephant in the room was not the GOP but this blatant, illogical and damaging alliance it had formed with Scozzafava. As the Wall Street journal reports, this relationship would eventually set off a national chain of events:

“Saturday's decision by Republican Dede Scozzafava to drop out of tomorrow's special Congressional election in upstate New York is a potentially big political moment that could help to return the GOP to first principles—or could lead to internecine ruin. Much will depend on how GOP leaders and conservative activists respond.

"Picked by GOP elites without a primary and with a voting record to the left of many Albany Democrats, Ms. Scozzafava faced a revolt by local and national conservatives in favor of businessman Doug Hoffman, who was nominated on the Conservative Party line. The longtime GOP assemblywoman saw herself falling in the polls and yesterday endorsed Democratic lawyer Bill Owens, who could still win the GOP-leaning seat with a plurality.”

Republican liaisons with far left Democrats have already been detrimental to the conservative movement and Scozzafava's ties to ACORN and their “affiliated” Working Families Party was covered extensively in the blogosphere. Top Republicans chose to ignore the corruption right under their nose and to sell out their base by following the Left's mantra to elect “moderates”. These “moderates” tend to be leftists in Republican clothing. Kirsten Gillibrand is an example of a local “moderate” who abandoned her principles and base after being promoted from Congressperson to United States Senator. Republicans like Darrell Issa (who released a damning report on ACORN last July) backed Scozzafava while still pursing ACORN corruption.

In any partnership, there is compromise. Some compromise is acceptable, but fundamental values should not be compromised. When conservatives align themselves with polar opposites, it always seems that they are doing so because of race considerations or political expediency. During a panel discussion in which I participated on October 23, 2009, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media asked why Republicans in the Bush administration approved ACORN funding.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, replied that Republicans acquiesced with the pretense that these organizations are doing good work and that race is a major factor behind that acquiescence.

While partisanship should not play a role in exposing corruption, when that corruption is rooted in the pay for play politics that tip heavily to the Left, partisanship cannot be ignored. Nonprofit groups have been allowed to run rampant with charitable donations that somehow elect Democrats. To stop this trend, conservatives must become creative and steer clear of situations like the one in the NY 23 with Scozzafava. If such situations are allowed to continue, others will succeed in dividing the GOP from the grassroots conservatives, and thus strengthening the left.

ACORN is a Democrat scandal and it is hard to separate one from the other. Corruption is the overriding theme and it comes mostly from the left. Another particularly odd pairing continues to be the radical reformers of ACORN and top Conservatives and Republicans. The ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN board members, have formed a Scozzafava-like partnership with the Republicans. In attempting to expose ACORN, some appear to have ignored key facts and overlooked a pattern of withholding key information to coincide with opportunistic timing aimed at aiding Democrats. An example of this is the complete removal of two longtime Obama ACORN cronies from a complaint filed with the United States Justice Department last January by the ACORN 8. Madeline Talbott is described by Stanley Kurtz of the National Review Online as “the woman who first drew Obama into an alliance with ACORN.” And Keith Kelleher is Talbott's husband, the Chief Organizer of SEIU Local 880 in Chicago.

Another example of the GOP ignoring the evidence in front of it involves investigative reporting by the National Legal and Policy Center, a group that "promotes ethics in public life through research, investigation, education and legal action." The NLPC uncovered more on ACORN's relationship with Scozzafava. The GOP seems quick to support organizations and people with strong ties to ACORN as long as they technically are not ACORN. Unfortunately for conservatives, the credibility being bestowed on such groups receives little scrutiny beyond the blogosphere and Fox News . Key ACORN opponents have formed relationships of convenience with little thought to the outcome. As the NLPC reports, even the unions are involved:

“The powerful New York City-based health care workers union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199, also has endorsed Owens. But common sense says that if Mrs. Scozzafava is elected, she effectively will have established a Republican congressional beachhead for ACORN, who would claim its 'bipartisanship.' It's not as if her own party will be against her. Top GOP members sending her checks include House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (California), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.).

"How did leading Republicans, some of whom (like Boehner) have been ACORN's toughest critics, come to endorse a candidate with a history of endorsements by its main political front, the Working Families Party?" (emphasis mine).

Good question. In NY 23, the GOP candidate selecters chose to ignore the evidence of Scozzafava's ACORN tainted background. Just as the GOP and Fox have also ignored the clear statement on the ACORN 8's website which does not call for not for full truth, transparency and accountability by ACORN to the American people. Rather, as stated on the ACORN 8 website, they call for "truth, transparency and accountability within ACORN." Apparently in exposing ACORN it certainly does not hurt to have a black face to speak about ACORN corruption. The color of whistleblowers should not be important, but their message should be.

When groups like the ACORN 8 speak to conservatives and tell them that ACORN was a great organization that was “hijacked” by some who had sinister motives, it's believable if no one checks the facts. How can an organization whose founder remained in place for almost 40 years become hijacked? How can ACORN be reformed if the same longtime insiders are the new control group? This fiction must be exposed. Fox has been leading the way on exposing ACORN while other so called respected media outlets like the New York Times, finally admitted to having been continually scooped by Fox. But Fox needs to report all the facts to its viewers instead of promoting the ACORN 8 and wishful thinking.

As TV/Radio host Glenn Beck continues to expose the true subversive nature of ACORN, and Obama's radical roots, he contradicts many of the assertions made by this group of reformers. Though no one ever mentions the distortions on air, one has to wonder if Fox is doing its viewers a disservice by aligning themselves with groups who support Obama' s policy initiatives. As the conservative base mobilizes online, there is a disconnect between then and the so called leaders. The base sprung into action as a subsequent Glenn Beck boycott of advertisers begun by Van Jones and his organization Color of Change attempted to silence Beck and that same base is ready to fight as ACORN attempts to DeFox America.

Those outside of this boycott alliance spread the word on Twitter and Facebook about the Left's attempt to silence Beck, while the ACORN 8 remained largely silent on these issues and others that concern the very people they fundraise and ask to support their efforts. Like the $990,000 the Republicans spent on Scozzafava, conservatives are being asked to foot the bill for a partnership that was never ideologically aligned with theirs. As stated, such partnerships are rarely mutually beneficial for long. While the Left exploits the fears of conservatives on the issues of race, conservatives must be willing to fight back and respond to the blows instead of merely trying to deflect them.

After watching the ACORN prostitution stings, Americans do not see ACORN as serving a noble purpose and one has to wonder what people were doing on the ACORN board for years. Marcel Reid was active in ACORN for nine years and her story that the ACORN board was "ceremonial" does not excuse any board member. She claims to have noticed ACORN corruption only after the embezzlement scandal was publicly reported. As a former employee who started in October of 2005, I was already calling the folks at www.rottenacorn.com by May of 2007.

The question now is whether the GOP can overcome its fear of being labeled "racist" by the left and learn to respond to these attacks. Fear of that seems to be the tipping point for their ultimately disastrous relationships with liberals who wish to keep Democrats in power.

Until and unless we conservatives form our own groups and become more involved in the communities of color, we will find ourselves aligned with every group that sprouts from the ACORN seed. ACORN 8 professes to love ACORN and does not want to see it dismantled, just "reformed. " But ignoring the reality of the radical ACORN 8 potentially opens that door to other alliances with ACORN "insiders" who are willing to offer information in exchange for credibility and a chance to retaliate against the very control group that threw them out.

I'm sure many people here did too.  It was a fundraising letter on behalf of the NRCC.  I"m sure you also realize that there is a lot of buzz on our side of the aisle when it comes to the 2010 elections.  In short, people are pumped up and excited about voting the Dems (and RINOs) out of office.  Republicans have a real shot at capturing back the House.

Now I know that many people here disagree with the current direction of the Republican Party generally.  But, as a practical matter, 2010 is an opportunity to take Congress in a rightward direction, and we shouldn't squander it.  This doesn't mean that we should necessarily line up and march lockstep, but we should appreciate the opportunity that arises.

So even if you think the Republican Party is too socially conservative, too beholden to business interests, too inept in its leadership - criticisms I share, BTW - I still think we owe it to our principles overall to seize upon this opportunity.  I think it would be a mistake to pout and sit out one more election.  In 2006 - yeah, the Republican Congress had lost its way.  In 2008 - yeah, McCain was a terrible candidate.  But now?  So even if we don't agree with the Republican Party in every detail, this is a big opportunity to put the brakes on our current socialist joyride.

I am a strong proponent of the idea that candidate recruitment is the ultimate futures market of elections. Collectively, the decisions made by candidates on both sides tell a lot about where politicos on the ground see the political environment headed in the next year to 18 months. It was not surprising that in 2006 and especially in 2008, candidate recruitment on our side sucked wind. Only one Senate race -- Louisiana -- was even remotely considered a Republican pickup opportunity in '08.

For 2010, the story is different. We are by and large getting our top-tier recruits in Senate races, and in more and more House races. And the White House is not getting theirs. The bumper crop of good candidates we had in the 2002 and 2004 cycles appears to have returned. 

Though it's early -- I don't think people thought 1994 could be a really big year until at least February of that year -- I do think we have to prepare for the idea that 2010 could be a big, big year that could put us back within striking distance in both the Senate and the House. Normally, I wouldn't want to raise expectations -- but going back to that candidate recruitment futures thing: if you are remotely thinking of running for office in the next few years, 2010 could be your best shot, and here's why:

• The horrendous 2006 and 2008 cycles have depressed Republican totals in Congress to far below the historical mean. Though the fact that there were two successive 20+ seat losses in the House and 5+ seat losses in the Senate in the House is historically unique,  collectively they equal one 1980 or 1994-style wipeout -- after which Democrats finally began to recover.
• The unique confluence of youth and African American turnout for Obama padded vote totals for Congressional Democrats by about 4 points -- and in a midterm -- I'm sorry -- those votes won't be there. We saw this pretty clearly in the Georgia Senate runoff. In 2012, however, those voters might be back -- making 2010 an opportune moment for a promising Congressional challenger to gain a foothold.
• The Democrats are now clearly responsible for everything, and trying to blame Bush and the GOP wears thinner and thinner by the day. Even if the economy recovers somewhat, and with massive job losses still on the horizon, I don't see people feeling that recovery, let's remember that the economy was in a clear recovery by 1994 but that didn't help Clinton and Democrats.

On a micro-tactical level, Obama may be taking great pains to avoid Clinton's fate on health care, as Ezra Klein details in Sunday's Washington Post, but the broader optics are starting to converge for Obama and Clinton: young, energetic change agents who are being proven ineffective, overexposed, and prone to ADD (Clinton held 38 press conferences his first year, drawing this comparison to Obama's first few days in office).

In many ways, the proving ground for this hypothesis won't be Congress, but the states. There we have 50 distinct political cultures than run in parallel to Washington. And, as Michael Barone notes, the mood there seems to point in the direction of belt-tightening and more humble government, not grandiose new infrastructure or health care schemes.

   After that, all hell breaks loose as on the morning of July 23rd, over 200 federal agents swept across New York and New Jersey to round up 44 miscreants who were fire inspectors, city planning officials, utilities officials, real estate developers, political operatives, philanthropists, rabbi’s, assemblymen, mayor’s and gubernatorial cabinet officials.

Years of criminal investigation culminated in the discovery of a tangled web of corruption that included the laundering of tens of millions of dollars through Jewish charities controlled by rabbis in Brooklyn, N.Y. and Deal, N.J., the trafficking of kidneys and fake Gucci handbags and tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to public officials that were meant to get approvals for buildings and other projects in New Jersey.

The key to the arrests was Solomon Dwek, a 36-year-old religious-school head and philanthropist from Monmouth County, N.J., who became a cooperating witness after being charged with defrauding PNC Bank by writing a bad check for $25 million in 2006.

From that point on Dwek was wired, videotaped and followed by F.B.I. agents in a plot straight out of The Soprano’s. On those F.B.I. recordings are such gems as Mr. Dwek stating to one money-launderer that he had “at least $100,000 a month coming from money I ’schnookied’ from banks for bad loans.” In another tape Dwek is seen giving another coconspirator a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000 cash for a few political favors in return.

Some of the most high profile thugs rounded up were the New Jersey mayors of Ridgefield, Secaucus and Hoboken, Jersey City’s deputy mayor and two state assemblymen.

A former state senate leader and now member of New Jersey Governor Corzine’s cabinet was also implicated and forced to resign after F.B.I officials searched his home in connection to the still unfolding scandal.

All but one of the officeholders are Democrats. The lone Republican is Dan Van Pelt, a double dipping, dual office holder who serves as the mayor of Ocean Township, NJ. and an assemblyman in the state legislature. Republicans throughout the state called for his immediate resignation from both public offices. A call to his office for a reaction was answered by a woman who calmly said “Mr. Van Pelt was arrested today and is out of the office.”

Now that’s New Jersey!

The most conspicuous of all to have been rounded up so far is the Democrat mayor of Hoboken, Peter Cammarano.

Cammarano just took office on July 1st after winning a cantankerous runoff election and despite the efforts of those officials in Hoboken who have not been arrested, Cammarano refuses to resign. After all he just got the job.

On tape, Mr. Cammarano was caught accepting $25,000 in cash bribes from Solomon Dwek in exchange for expediting zoning changes and pushing through approval of building plans. After the money exchanges hands he tells Dwek “you can put your faith in me” and that “I promise you…you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be treated like a friend.” But along the way other embarrassing statements are overheard. At one point, while talking about his chances of winning what, at the time, was his upcoming mayoral race, Cammarano’s cocky bravado compelled him to declare “right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down. Nothing can change that now. . . . I could be, uh, indicted, and I’m still gonna win 85 to 95 percent of those populations”. In another very Mafioso-like moment, Cammarano is caught talking about payback for those who were not with him in the election.

None of this is helping Governor Corzine or the image of Democrats who lined up behind the new Hoboken mayor as he was sworn into office. There, U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez as well as Governor Corzine proudly embraced the 32 year old rising Democrat star with warm embraces and glowing praise.

The whole situation has produced an incredibly embarrassing state of affairs for Corzine who ran New Jersey into the ground after taking office almost four years ago and, among other things, promised to quash corruption. After seeing more than 130 public officials plead guilty or get convicted of corruption since 2001, the arrest of 43 Democrats and 1 Republican, at one time, has proven that Corzine did little to achieve that goal.

Like everything else he promised, including getting the state budget under control, Corzine has been a disastrous failure and this monumental size corruption spectacle just hammers that point harder than ever.

But aside from the increased sour impressions that this newest saga creates, is has disabled a a good portion of the Hudson County Democratic political machine and severely handicapped Corzine‘s chances to win reelection with his major campaign theme which consists of repeating Barack Obama’s name and reminding people that he belongs to the same party that the President belongs to.

Hoboken is one of the largest cities in Hudson Country and Corzine’s home town . Hudson County is one of the most heavily Democrat counties in the state and is the crown jewel of the Governor’s base of support and source of the political engine that runs Corzine’s Get-Out-The-Vote operation.

In this recent historic corruption sweep, 19 of those rounded up were Hudson County officials and operatives. All of which were gearing up to pump out the vote for Corzine in November.

Now they are otherwise occupied in criminal court.

One of these 19 is Jack Shaw, a professional politician that has strong ties and influence with unions on Corzine‘s behalf. Another arrested member of the Corzine cabal is Joseph Cardwell, an operative famous for his coordination of African-American voters, a vote so crucial to Corzine‘s reelection that, without success, he begged the new rising political star, Cory Booker, an African-American mayor of New Jersey‘s largest city, to be his Lieutenant Governor.

All of this has placed the decapitated head of a horse on the pillow of Corzine’s deathbed reelection effort that signifies things to come.

The Governor is already running about ten percent behind his chief rival, Republican Chris Christie, and the prevalent political corruption that has been flourishing among Corzine’s political network is neatly countered by the fact that as the state’s former U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie is the most high profile and successful crime buster that New Jersey’s has ever seen. This naturally compensating aspect of Chris Christie’s candidacy is just another nail in Corzine’s political coffin. That and the fact that you have key Corzine campaigners handcuffed, record high unemployment, a decimated business environment and the highest tax burden in the nation, all adds up to his defeat in November.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that the 44 recent and dramatic malfeasances that were linked together and exposed on just one sunny, summer, New Jersey morning, have officially made New Jersey the most politically corrupt state in the nation. It has also made it very clear that New Jerseyans can not trust anyone in government who asks for their support or whom they seek assistance from or discuss issues with. And to make matters worse, this criminal investigation is still ongoing. I fully expect Governor Corzine to, at some point, be implicated himself, for tampering with the case and trying to have the arrests delayed until after the election when news of the scandal could not effect his chances for reelection.

The whole ugly, unfolding, situation is simply a travesty and cry for change. Not just in New Jersey but in politics and public service in general. It makes it quite obvious that something has to give here and it can’t be the voters. They have already given too much in freedom, taxes, patience and quality of life.

But that assessment begs the question, what must give? What must and can we do? It also leads one to wonder if the systemic corruption that exists in public service is simply a byproduct of politics or is it beyond politics and just a part of human nature?

He has baffled the mainstream news media and taken the Senate Democrats by surprise, all in plain view of the American people. That man is our own U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions.

While the talking heads on network TV for weeks have warned that Republicans risked losing Latino voters forever if they challenged Judge Sonia Sotomayor during the current nomination hearings, Senator Sessions pulled the wool over their eyes and took a different tack.

His disarming Alabama charm and incisive questioning put Sotomayor on the defensive; she has been in a full retreat from every boneheaded liberal position she's taken. She even tried to stealthily distance herself from her infamous "Wise Latina" remarks of several years ago. Senator Sessions wouldn't let her off the hook.

Not even New York Senator Chuck Schumer's "Mr. Fix-it" tactic could help Sotomayor. The damage was done.

Thanks to Senator Sessions's excellent preparation and coordination with other Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor and the Democrats have sustained some direct hits on their credibility in a very public forum. Live television coverage has revealed to American voters just how disengenuous the liberal agenda really is. Legislating from the bench and going against the laws of the land aren't popular with a vast majority of Americans, except for a tiny minority of liberal activists.

Sotomayor is the choice of liberals, especially Democrats in the U.S. Senate who now have 60 members, a filibuster-proof majority. Senator Sessions has so far done a stellar job of making sure the American people have a clear picture of just who this Sonia Sotomayor is and what kind of Supreme Court Justice she will be. For that, we should be most grateful.

As an Alabamian, I am especially proud of the leadership of Senator Jeff Sessions at a time when many are looking for bold Conservative leadership.

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I have listened carefully to the Health Care debate currently raging all across this country.  There are two things that I have realized, after listening to the only people who really count – the American citizens – 1.  Most Americans want more affordable health care, with a wide range of choices and options; 2.  The politicians in Washington continue to ignore the wishes of the people.

Congress and the President continue to focus on a mandated plan, one that will require every American to have health care and will penalize those who don’t, with some politicians advocating fines of up to $1,000 per person, for those who don’t have coverage.  In typical Washington “speak” no one really wants to discuss the cost of such a system, or the reduced care that will surely result.  I don’t believe for a minute that the American people will accept a system like the Canadian system or the system in Great Britain.  A wait of six months for urgently needed tests and surgery is simply unacceptable.  In Canada, many Canadians wait even longer, and end up opting to go to the States for the surgeries they need. 

I believe strongly in the genius of the American people.  They know what kind of care they want and how they expect to pay for it.  They know that they do not want a single payer government operated system.  Why in the world would we trust politicians and bureaucrats in Washington to manage our health care system?  They haven’t been able to handle any of the major problems facing our country.

The American people know that one of the most basic things we need to do as a nation is to teach preventative health care measures in schools and to parents and families.  The key to improving health in America is to create an atmosphere of healthy behavior. Teaching young children how to take care of their bodies and teaching young parents and families the importance of healthy diet and exercise is a starting point.  We need to get our kids out of the habits of eating unhealthy foods and sitting for hours in front of the television or computer. Changing the collective attitude of the American people is vital.  We need to give people information that changes the way they think about an issue. 

Your health is like a dashboard.  If the only thing you ever look at is your speedometer, and you don’t bother to look at the oil gauge and the water gauge, you can get into serious trouble.  You may think, “hey, I’m going the speed limit” but that’s not the point.  That’s how fast your car is going, not how well it’s running.  Health is the same way – you can’t just focus on weight – you need to look at your cholesterol levels, hemoglobin AIC, blood sugar and blood pressure as well.

No, preventative health care measures won’t reduce the cost of health care, at least for a generation, but it is a necessary step.  We must also take steps to reduce the costs of employer provided health care.  Our businesses can’t compete in a global market when they face demands from employees for more and more coverage without any regard for the costs.  That is simply human nature – when a person isn’t paying for something, they want the very best they can get.  I believe that we must transition from an employer based system to a consumer based system. 

Right now, health care in America is reactive and is geared towards intervening in catastrophic situations.  We should be focusing on preventing those situations from occurring.  The whole system is upside down.  It’s like our government is focused on putting Humpty Dumpty back together again instead of keeping him from falling off the wall.  Our healthcare system is based on a broken egg concept.

Tax credits, reform of medical liability, adopting electronic record keeping, expanding health savings accounts, making health insurance tax deductible, and making health insurance more portable from one job to another, and from state to state all will help lower costs and make health insurance more affordable.  We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care.  We do need more individual control of health care options. 

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Should Republicans seek more bipartisanship? The answer is an unequivocal "Sometimes."

People mean different things by bipartisan. Most politicians mean "shut up and do what we want", and "bipartisanship" mostly becomes a rhetorical club to swing at opponents.  Practically speaking, I think there are a couple ways to approach bipartisanship.

1. Compromise [Unlikely]: Republicans and Democrats are not likely to pursue bipartisan compromise on the more significant, contentious issues.  As Atrios has so often reminded us, People Disagree About Stuff.  Compromising over those disputes is almost invariably a bad idea.  It's bad politics (because you're angering your supporters) and bad policy (because you're splitting the policy baby).

   What's more, I don't think we really want that kind of bipartisanship.  It invariably involves horse-trading (you can buy my vote if I can buy your vote).  Outside of government, we call that sort of thing collusion and those of us being colluded against get stuck with much higher prices (government spending & taxes).  Russell Roberts' terrific 1995 essay ("If you're paying, I'll have top sirloin") touched on this point.

2. Collaboration [Yes, hopefully]: The second kind of bipartisanship - working together on areas of mutual agreement - is much more possible, and Republicans really ought to pursue it.  We don't do enough collaborative, bi-partisan policy-making, because politicians tend to focus on the more contentious issues.  For instance, everybody basically agrees on things like transparency, but that means there are relatively few points to be scored.  Everybody wants to Win The War, nobody wants to fix the sink.  As a result, important things don't get done. Republicans can begin rebuilding their credibility by pursuing some of this low-hanging fruit.

What will Sarah Palin do next?  So far, the punditry has outpaced the evidence, so I won't speculate about her intentions.  However, the most interesting theory - floated by one of Glenn Reynolds' readers - is that Palin "will try to start a new Tea Party" to challenge the Republican Party.  There are some very important problems with this.

• First, Reynolds is correct that ballot access is a major barrier.  His reader suggests that Perot won 19% of the vote, and it would be very significant is Palin helped a Tea Party win "20% of the contested seats in 2010".  But winning 20% of the vote is not the same as winning 20% of contested seats.  To accomplish that, you would need to win a lot more than 20% of the vote in a lot of elections, but a brand new party just would not have the campaign infrastructure needed to do effective GOTV on anything like a large, reproducible scale.  Certainly not by 2010.

NOTE: The Barry Goldwater and Howard Dean campaigns suggest there is movement-building value even if you lose...but note that the were insurgents operating within their Party, not revolutionaries going outside of it.

• Reynolds argues that Palin would "draw almost entirely from Republican voters".  That is correct and a serious barrier.  But Palin draws almost entirely from Republican voters because Palin does not appear to differ a great deal from the Republican Party.  If she has some grand vision to sustain a new movement, she hasn't actually explained it or otherwise gone beyond standard Republican talking points.  A 3rd Party would be redundant.  Immediately.

There could, in fact, be an exploitable gap in American electoral politics.  A lot of voters just don't map consistently on the liberal/conservative spectrum in both economic and social matters.  There might be room for a fiscally liberal, socially conservative movement (i.e., Christian Democrats).  Or perhaps it could be a fiscally conservative, socially liberal movement (e.g., Goldwater).  What you can't do is build a new movement around being exactly like Republicans, except super-sincere.

Another Instapundit correspondent hit closer to the mark.

I think the third party talk is ill advised. I think Palin just needs to try and stick her finger in the eye of the Republican establishment. She can do that by supporting/encouraging challengers to incumbents, where appropriate, in the Republican primaries.

The next leaders of the Republican Party will be the people who kill some sacred cows, make a lot of Republican enemies and force the movement itself to evolve past this comfortable equilibrium.

Reform starts at home. So far, nobody has had the guts to take on the sacred cows.

The annual Personal Democracy Forum was Monday and Tuesday in New York, and it was very good.  As always. You can read more about it at TechPresident.

Naturally, there was a great deal of conversation about the imbalance between the Left and Right online.  The general consensus is that Republicans are behind on the internet, though there is a great deal of debate over how and why.  The least convincing answer was offered by a PDF audience member, and it basically boiled down to "Republicans suck. Democrats are cool.  So we're better at the internet."

Yeah, well, those who forget history...

Democrats race to catch up to GOP online

The Democratic National Committee relaunched its Web site Friday and appointed its first technology adviser in an effort to match the Republican party's success in using the Internet to build its constituency. [...] "We realized that the Republicans were ironically peddling their Stone Age ideas with modern-day technology tools, and we were just not at their level in our dedication to technology," Buck said.Insiders say it's widely acknowledged that the Republican committee has done a better job than the Democrats' committee in creating an online strategy.  The Republican committee "is far and away ahead in securing a large constituent of online activists and does a better job of using the medium to move their message," said Pam Fielding of E-advocates, an Internet advocacy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

That was 2002.

What changed?  Again, that's the subject of a great deal of debate, but I would argue that it was two things:

1. Republicans got comfortable.
2. Democrats got entrepreneurial.

In 2016, there's no doubt that the online landscape will be very different.  The Right will be much more effective.  The only question is how they will do it.  The balance of power on the Right will depend, in large part, on who the new entrepreneurs are and how they build the infrastructure.

When the #AllBarackChannel realizes something is going wrong, it's probably time to pay attention:

Obama's spending proposals and a record-breaking national debt inherited from President Bush that is projected to grow could be Obama's political Achilles heels, and one reason he often underlines fiscal prudence as a top priority.

The percentage of people in a Pew Research Center poll out today who expressed approval for the way Obama is handling the economy slipped to 52 percent from 60 percent in April.

Recent NBC/Wall Street Journal and CBS/New York Times polls showed that nearly six in 10 people said the Obama administration is not doing enough to reduce the deficit, and the Pew poll showed about the same percentage disapprove of the government spending billions to keep General Motors and Chrysler in business.

"They worry that government is going to be too involved in the economy and the everyday lives of the American people," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

Obama faces this conundrum: while the country voted resoundingly for a political change from George W. Bush, Obama continues to preside over a country that is fundamentally conservative not simply in the center-right political sense, but in its skepticism of big structural changes to the basic nature of the economy.

When hopeandchange is inextricably tied to disturbing and unsettling changes like auto nationalization and mountains of new debt, the whole "change" mantra tends to lose its luster.

The fear right now is not that the government will do too little, but that it will do too much. Popular resistance to any action to support the domestic auto industry runs counter to the natural political instinct to "do something" to help the little guy keep his job. The American people are way out ahead of Obama and the Republicans because of a basic sense that nationalizing industry is just not something we do here in America, not even temporarily. This is that basic don't-rock-the-boat mentality speaking, I think.

Furthermore, what if health care is effectively tied in to this? The proposition that the President is going to do for health care what he's doing for the auto industry seems pretty toxic, and has a kernel of plausibility, in that new government-owned entitites are springing up all over the place competing in the private market. It's not a huge narrative leap to suggest that neither the government standing behind your new muffler nor it competing in the health insurance market are particularly well-advised ideas.

It is here that I think the seeds of a Republican political recovery in 2010 are born. Republicans don't need to convince the electorate that Obama is the second coming of Karl Marx. They need merely to establish that if one has any doubt that the stimulus, or Government Motors, or health care will work out exactly as planned, the only prudent thing is to vote Republican as a hedge. There has been sweeping economic change these last few months, some of it created by the previous Administration, and little of it good. Sorting out the mess will require a huge national effort, not just one party. And times of sweeping change require accountability, not its complete absence.