Sharron Angle. Â Rand Paul. Â Ken Buck. Â Maybe the GOP has bailed out the Dems in an otherwise terrible electoral year.
Not so fast, says Dave Weigel, warning progressives against overconfidence now that the GOP has nominated a series of loonies to run in key races.  His argument at its most general level seems spot on to me: just because the other side has an extreme candidate running doesn’t mean that that candidate can’t win.  Jim Bunning, James Inhofe, Jim deMint (is there something about the name “James”?), and Tom Coburn are all in the US Senate, after all.
But let’s look at Weigel’s argument a little more closely. Â It turns on the notion that in 2006, Â the Democrats also nominated candidates that were not the national party establishment’s favorites, and that no one thought could win. Â Let’s look at his prime example:
Nowhere was this more obvious than in New Hampshire. In 2006, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put its weight behind state legislator Jim Craig, seen as the best candidate to take on then-Rep. Jeb Bradley. Craig was challenged in the primary by Carol Shea-Porter, a liberal activist who won some glancing fame for being escorted from a George W. Bush rally wearing a T-shirt that read “Turn Your Back On Bush.”
So let’s see if I’ve got this straight.
Sharron Angle wants to privatize Social Security. Â She said that Obama’s actions should tell American that they should resort to “Second Amendment remedies.” Â She also claims that the Affordable Care Act violates the First Commandment of the Ten Commandments (viz. Â “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt — you shall have no other gods before Me”) because it means worshipping the federal government. Â Her chief legacy as a Nevada state legislator was championing a mental health program based upon the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.
Rand Paul opposes the public accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act. Â He says that there is a conspiracy to create a NAFTA superhighway across the United States. Â He says that President Obama’s protests against BP’s conduct in the Gulf of Mexico are “un-American.” Â He favors shutting down the IRS, the Fed, the American military presence overseas, the Department of Education and much of the rest of the federal government.
And Carol Shea-Porter is like them because…she wore an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush rally?
This is sort of Broderism gone wild. Â If the Republicans say something insane, you have to criticize the Democrats for equivalent insanity even if there is nothing of the sort. Â If the Republicans say 2+2=5, and the Dems insist that 2+2=4, the “unbiased” reporter has to somehow insinuate that 2+2=four and half.
Weigel is a hell of a reporter: his writing is must-read when if you want to know about the conservative movement, and I check his stories every day. Â But I think he printed “publish” before thinking through this a little bit.
As I said, his general point is clearly correct: the mere fact of Republican insanity will not protect the United States from having them govern us. Â But let’s not get into even crazier moral equivalences.
Strictly speaking, the mere fact that a left-wing Democrat thinks a Republican candidate is insane doesn't guarantee that candidate is a loser, since not all voters are left-wing Democrats.
We all tend to exaggerate the obvious insanity of people we disagree with, and downplay it among people we do agree with. Don't let it fool you into thinking that, just because you'd never vote for a particular candidate of the other party, they're doomed to lose. Counter-examples abound.
All voting is by Party label. It is no longer possible for the individual identity of a candidate to affect the outcome of an election. Every voter has already decided which Party they are going to vote against, in every election for the rest of their life. There are, to a second or third approximation, no "independents"; there never were; it is no longer even possible to figure out who benefits from continuing to propagate the myth. Elections are decided by turnout and to a lesser degree by generational shifts.
I think you're being too hard on Weigel. He's equating the anti-establishment mood among Democratic and Republican voters and how that mood benefitted Democratic candidates in recent elections, and might benefit Republican candidates in November, not candidates themselves.
Weigel may be off in this report, but I've been mostly impressed with what he's done since the JournoList affair. He's pretty sharp and aware of what's going on.
Was this passage in Weigel's article as originally posted?:
The "crazy" thing about Carol Shea-Porter was that she passionately opposed the Iraq war. Lucky for her, so did New Hampshire. The "crazy" thing about Angle, by contrast, is that she wants to privatize Social Security, and she's trying to fight back by disingenuously pretending that she doesn't.
Brett, since you disagree with the Democrats more than most commenters here, please feel free to tell us about recent Democratic candidates for federal or statewide office who took stances you feel are crazy.
Alternately, maybe you can lessen the contrast by saying how you think some of these recent Tea Party-backed Republican nominees have been unfairly traduced and misrepresented.
But unless you can find a recent Dem with a record of statements remotely comparable to the Colorado gubernatorial candidate saying that support for urban bike paths is part of a UN plot, to take just one of many examples, I think you'll have trouble with the first of my suggestions, and surely you're too smart and too sane to attempt the second, at least for that example.
This extraordinary disconnect in sanity levels between all too many of the current crop of Republican nominees and the nominees of either the Democratic party or even the recent Republican party is exactly what the post is talking about, and you seem to being implying that there us a parity of madness that I for one just don't see.
All that said, JM's point is well taken: the candidates may be qualitatively different, but the voter energy mag be very similar.
Brett, since you disagree with the Democrats more than most commenters here, please feel free to tell us about recent Democratic candidates for federal or statewide office who took stances you feel are crazy.
Alternately, maybe you can lessen the contrast by saying how you think some of these recent Tea Party-backed Republican nominees have been unfairly traduced and misrepresented.
But unless you can find a recent Dem with a record of statements remotely comparable to the Colorado gubernatorial candidate saying that support for urban bike paths is part of a UN plot, to take just one of many examples, I think you'll have trouble with the first of my suggestions, and surely you're too smart and too sane to attempt the second, at least for that example.
This extraordinary disconnect in sanity levels between all too many of the current crop of Republican nominees and the nominees of either the Democratic party or even the recent Republican party is exactly what the post is talking about, and you seem to being implying that there us a parity of madness that I for one just don't see.
All that said, JM's point is well taken: the candidates may be qualitatively different, but the voter energy mag be very similar.
"Brett, since you disagree with the Democrats more than most commenters here, please feel free to tell us about recent Democratic candidates for federal or statewide office who took stances you feel are crazy."
Since I happen to live in South Carolina, Alvin Greene springs to mind… I don't think anybody on the right is significantly more nutso than that Democratic party Senate candidate.
Meanwhile, you're attacking Rand Paul for proposing to pull our troops out of Iraq? For suggesting that we should rely on corporate taxes instead of taxes on individuals? You know, it IS possible to disagree with the policy status quo without being certifiably insane.
I'm not one of those people who likes to jump up and down about bad faith in blog commenting, but, seriously, Alvin Greene? You do understand his place in the Democratic universe, right?
Another fascinating bit of reality creation from Mr. Bellmore. To take this quote "Rand Paul opposes the public accommodations provisions of the Civil Rights Act. He says that there is a conspiracy to create a NAFTA superhighway across the United States. He says that President Obama’s protests against BP’s conduct in the Gulf of Mexico are “un-American.” He favors shutting down the IRS, the Fed, the American military presence overseas, the Department of Education and much of the rest of the federal government."
And turn it into "you’re attacking Rand Paul for proposing to pull our troops out of Iraq? For suggesting that we should rely on corporate taxes instead of taxes on individuals?"
Takes quite a bit of disconnect from reality. Hence the title of this blog. Once again this blog proves that, for conservatives, 2+2 really does equal 5.
Brett, what Charley and Benny said.
Per Charley, Alvin Greene is a nutball, but he won a primary that no-one was bothering to contest very hard, the source of the money that funded his ballot access is mysterious and alleged to come from Republican coffers, and it's a seat that the Dems never considered winnable absent the famous dead girl/live boy scenario. The various Republican-nominated nutballs under discussion, by contrast, all won their spots on the ballot in hard-fought primaries and are running for offices that a genetic Republican nominee should have a better-than-even chance of winning.
Per Benny, no-one here is questioning the sanity of Rand Paul's beliefs about Iraq or his every statement about taxes. In fact, most here, and likely also the oh-so-controversial Carol Shea-Porer, would embrace an exit from Iraq (though the second thing you name, of which I haven't previously heard, that we should shift absolutely all taxation from personal to corporate sources, sounds like a half-baked notion that I doubt he'd bother to defend himself, however much I'd like to see the corporate world bearing far more of the taxation burden). We also haven't attacked Rand Paul for his presumably anodyne notions about the adorableness of puppies, nor for any of his undoubtedly numerous undesirable-but-not-ridiculous policy prescriptions. In fact, Zasloff listed those of Paul's positions that he felt were so extraordinary as to call his seriousness into question, in a passage Benny quoted in his comment. Why did you skip over those in your response?
Er, "genetic" s/b "generic". Although "genetic" maybe works a bit, almost.
"You do understand his place in the Democratic universe, right?"
Yeah. He's your candidate for Senate. Are you claiming that insane Democratic candidates somehow aren't really Democratic candidates, while insane Republican candidates automatically retain their party affiliation?
"And turn it into “you’re attacking Rand Paul for proposing to pull our troops out of Iraq? For suggesting that we should rely on corporate taxes instead of taxes on individuals?”"
Ok, let's tackle this. You gave a list of supposedly crazy policies he advocates, which implies you think they're ALL crazy. That means you have to defend the craziness of every single one of them.
The fact that they're not Democratic positions doesn't make them crazy. You've got to actually explain what's crazy about them. Not just wrong, mind you, but crazy. Insane. Nutso.
So, he wants to pull our troops back from the world. Ok, what precisely is your beef with this? We're currently involved in several wars, which Democrats claim to either oppose, or want winded up as fast as possible. So you apparently want our troops returned from THOSE venues.
That leaves a whole bunch of countries where we have troops stationed, though we're not at war with them, or aiding them in a war. Defend having all those troops there. Expecting the Soviet tanks to roll through Europe at any moment?
So, he wants to abolish the IRS. This means exactly what I said: He thinks the US should rely on corporate taxes, not on taxes on individuals. What's your beef with that? That you don't want corporate taxes raised? Or that maybe you think it's outrageous that a wealthy person might pay their taxes through reduced dividends, rather than cutting a check themselves?
He opposes the public accommodations provision of the Civil Rights act. Big deal. I do, too. A simple, straightforward reading of the 14th amendment makes clear that it does NOT give Congress any authority to reach the acts of private citizens. So that's not a crazy position, it's just not a Democratic party position.
Come on, if they're crazy, you can demonstrate that they're crazy. I'll even spot you the NAFTA thing, to make it fair.
Brett, I do not believe that anybody claims that the 14th Amendment gives Congress authority over the acts of private citizens. The Supreme Court, however, has held that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce allows it to prohibit racial discrimination in public accommodations. Do you disagree with that, and, if so, why? Note that I am not denying that the Court may have gone too far in interpreting the Commerce Clause to allow regulation of intrastate acts, such as growing your own marijuana, that have only a tenuous connection to interstate commerce.
So, he wants to abolish the IRS. This means exactly what I said: He thinks the US should rely on corporate taxes, not on taxes on individuals.
And those corporate taxes could be collected by . . . ? Are you under the misimpression that the "I" in "IRS" means "individuals?"
"Abolishing the IRS" has nothing — NOTHING — to do with who pays what taxes. It's just a right-wing shibboleth, it's not a policy position.
Although I have to admit, I'm experiencing major lulz at "libertarians," of all people, not maybe considering that financing the US government's operations entirely through corporate taxes might maybe just possible result in a lot fewer corporations doing business in the US.
Then again, they might just figure, "Bottom line's the same, why should we care if the taxes are nominally assigned to us, or the employees? We're paying them either way…"
1) Did Brett read any of my August 15 6:04 PM comment? Did he read Charley or Benny's comment in any good faith in the slightest? Because Brett seems to have doubled down on the notion that an unknown candidate winning the job of sacrificial lamb in the South Carolina Senate primary, in a race that had no national press attention, no debates, and almost no spending on advertising or other excitement is the same as all these nutso candidates winning hard-fought statewide primary battles to claim the Republican nomination in Republican-leaning or Republican-overwhelming states, and Brett also seems to have doubled down on the idea that we want to debate those Rand Paul positions that Brett feels are defensible, rather than the obvious actual situation, i.e. that we're pointing out some of Rand Paul's other positions that are indefensible and inexplicable.
2) One of those irrelevant Rand Paul proposals Brett seems dedicated to defending the idea, attributed by Brett to Rand Paul, that the complete burden of taxation be shifted from individuals to corporations. For the life of me I can't see how Brett hopes to bolster his case by debating this. Zasloff didn't include this proposal in his bill of particulars against Paul's sanity or seriousness, and nor did the other commenters (I for one had never heard of it), and so if this idea is sane that only proves that Rand Paul has some sane notions, which no-one doubts, while if this idea isn't sane that would harm Brett's case.
3) That said, and aside from whether or not this proposal really is a fair representation of what Rand Paul is suggesting, why does Brett think that a system of taxation can usefully be created in which the total burden of taxation is shifted from individuals to corporations? I think most of us would like to see corporations paying more tax, but there's all sorts of economic activity that this system would leave completely untaxed (most obviously, all unearned income, and even for earned income a small business and its workers would go completely untaxed: all of its revenue could be dedicated to capital repayment, overhead, and employee salaries, all of which are deductible business expenses so far as I know), and it's difficult to see how it could be implemented with respect to foreign corporations.
Oh, STFU Brett - until the corp sector quietly accepts a massive tax increase, it'll be clear that nobody except right-wingers believe that.
Back in the real world, the corp sector treats taxes as if *they* have to pay them.
Barry, you eliminate the payroll tax, which is paid by corporations through withholding, and replace it with a corporate tax, and the point is, the average tax burden on corporations won't change. They'll just adjust the nominal salary they pay their workers, to deliver the same after tax income, and nothing changes. Now, depending on details of implementation, the details of the distribution will change the relative tax burden of different corporations…
But, just in case you're confused, I think that's a bad policy. Bad, because corporations don't vote, people do, and to control government spending you want the people to feel the tax burden as directly as possible. Abolishing the IRS would, thus, be bad policy, because it would cause people to lower their resistance to tax increases, thinking that THEY weren't being taxed, corporations were. They'd be wrong, but their mistake would have consequences.
But just because something isn't good policy, IMO, doesn't mean it's insane.
OK, so Brett is reading this thread, but is demonstrably not responding to my comments. Good to know.