With the recent hullaballoo over U.S. Rep. Charlie Rangel’s ethical troubles, we were reminded of the person he beat in the Democratic primary for the seat in 1970 — Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Like a lot of people, we lament the passing of an era when if people did things they shouldn’t, they went big and were unapologetic. This is a damn good story. Enjoy.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was perhaps the epitome of wealth, power, and ego — a modern Narcissus. Powell’s charisma propelled him to represent Harlem in New York’s 18th Congressional District in 1944, and holding the seat until his ouster by Charles Rangel in 1970. Contributing to Powell’s downfall was the scandal that centered on the case, Powell v. McCormack. The central issue in Powell was that the 90th Congress sought to exclude Powell — that is, to expel him before seating him. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court found for Powell, stating that Congress has to seat all of its duly elected and constitutionally qualified members before voting to expel one of its members. However, the story is not with the bare facts. One must answer several questions. First, what events could have precipitated such an action? Second, how could have over two-thirds of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to refuse to seat one of its most senior and most powerful members? Third, what did the Supreme Court think of the proceedings, what did they decide, who dissented and why?
Powell was seemingly in scandal from the first day he appeared on the House floor. From openly breaking with his party and supporting Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1956, to his three botched marriages, to his globe-trotting and behind-the-scenes chicanery. Many congressmen sincerely despised Powell, yet were overcome by his personality when one-on-one with him. Southern congressmen especially resented how Powell would take his committee into investigating the backcountry of Alabama and Louisiana; indeed, into the congressmen’s own staffs. They also resented Powell’s trappings of luxury, his Jaguar convertible that was so conspicuous in the Capitol garage. Powell was notorious for his proclivities with women. He caught the wrath of S.C. congressman Mendel Rivers when Rivers found his wife and Powell having a jovial time together at a Washington social event. By the time Powell v. McCormack rolled around, Powell had his third wife in de facto exile in Puerto Rico while traveling and cavorting publicly with Corinne Huff, one of his staffers. Powell was also developing into the very definition of a loose cannon. According to Max Rabb, a member of the Eisenhower administration, Powell “…was a power. You knew he was there…. You couldn’t control Adam Clayton Powell.” Powell himself and his contemporaries both credit him with much of the civil rights, desegregation and antipoverty legislation that came out of the Congress. Indeed, the War on Poverty itself. Considering these facts, there would not be surprise in the situation that Powell found himself in 1966, with an enemy lurking behind every desk in the House. One could begin at the beginning with Powell’s actions and notoriety and the resentment by the press and public, but we will begin with the Esther James scandal.
Esther James was a grandmotherly Harlem woman, but to make ends meet after her husband died in the ‘50s, she took to handling the money for neighborhood gamblers. In a 1960 speech, Powell claimed that James was a “bag woman” taking cash from gamblers to pay off the police. James soon thereafter sued for libel. Powell never could fit the trial into his schedule, and after several continuances, the court finally convened and rendered a $211,500 judgment against Powell. One of the jurors stated that the jury ruled for James on the basis “…nobody has a right to shoot off his mouth that way, especially a member of Congress….” This was not the end of the case, however. Powell made every effort to evade payment. He stayed out of New York every day except Sunday in order to avoid being served with a civil contempt warrant, spending much of his time with his third wife in Puerto Rico. After being served with a criminal contempt warrant, Powell tried to enlist the President Lyndon Johnson and the Justice Department to try to defend him, to no avail. By this time, the date was 1965, and Powell began to use the argument that he was in trouble because of some sort of racist establishment police conspiracy against him because of his anticorruption efforts. In November of 1966, Powell was ordered to either work out a payment arrangement with James or be incarcerated. Powell’s attorneys worked out a deal with James, and the event was settled. The press did not particularly approve, since James would be 121 years old by the time the debt would be paid off.
Instigated by the protracted James ordeal, during the fall of 1966 rumors were floating around the Capitol about a coup in the House Education and Labor Committee, which Powell chaired. Indeed, people began to go around Powell by taking their concerns to the party leadership and the White House, sensing that Powell was losing control of his committee. Powell’s loss of power was almost entirely his own fault. He rarely tried to keep his appointments with the committee. Often, people felt Powell was too distracted and busy with the business of being Adam Powell to pay attention to the creation and passage of legislation. Powell’s prejudices may have also affected his plight. In his autobiography, Powell asserts that,
A white Northerner is one who says openly that he has no prejudice and yet who practices it every day of his life. The white Southerner is the one who says, “I am prejudiced, but I have certain friends [not just Uncle Tom friends] I would do anything in the world for.” In other words, one is a hypocrite and one is bluntly honest.
Powell loved to mispronounce the name of a Northerner on his committee, saying the Indiana congressman’s name as Braydemas, not Brademas, as the name is supposed to be pronounced. This small attack incensed U.S. Rep. John Brademas, and caused him to be one of the leaders of the coup against Powell, in which he was joined by two other Northerners, Frank Thompson of New Jersey and Jim O’Hara of Michigan. Powell was shocked. He thought he has treated his “…committee with more fairness and justice than any other chairman of the House or Senate.” Regardless, U.S. Rep. Sam Gibbons, a Florida Dixiecrat, submitted the committee reorganization proposal, and it passed 27-1. Powell seemed to think that he was being attacked for being a black man with power. That detail may have been part of the reason his fellow congressmen pounced on him with such fervor, but not the entire reason.
A week after the committee reorganization vote, a special subcommittee was formed to look into Powell’s use of committee funds for staff and travel. There also seemed to be evidence of Powell’s estranged third wife being on the payroll. Ironically, U.S. Rep. Wayne Hays of Ohio was named to the committee. At the time, Hays was believed to have taken a House dining room headwaiter on a taxpayer-financed jaunt to Paris. Powell had once seen Hayes in a risqué Paris nightclub. Furthering the irony, Hays was later expelled from Congress a little more than a decade later for having a mistress on the House payroll.
The Hays committee discovered that many airline tickets that had been taken out in the names of staffers had, in fact, been used by Powell and Huff on trips to places like Puerto Rico, Miami and the British island of Bimini, 60 miles off the Florida coast. In addition, evidence surfaced that Powell used committee funds to pay for a maid for a three-week vacation to Bimini. Moreover, there was a strange circumstance with Powell’s wife’s payroll checks from the committee. The checks were sent to Powell’s office, endorsed in his name and deposited in his account. Powell, however, explained that his finances were administered by Maxine Dargans, and that she had endorsed the checks and placed the money into a joint account held by both Powell and his third wife. Powell goes on to insinuate that Dargans was bought off by the Hays committee. When Powell’s third wife, Yvette, came to testify before the committee, she said that she had not given consent for anyone to endorse the checks and that she had not heard from Powell in over a year. Powell asserted that she had been bought, as well.
The Hays committee reported what had been suspected, that there was strong evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Powell, and asked for an inquiry by the Justice Department. Speaker of the House John McCormack sought to stop the bloodletting, though, and tried to get Powell to return from Bimini to Washington and retake political control of his position. In spite of efforts from such notables as A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin to convince Powell to return to the Capitol, Powell saw it fit to stay on Bimini and snipe. When the House Democratic Caucus met on Jan. 9 of 1967, it installed U.S. Rep. Carl Perkins as the new chair of House Education and Labor. Powell retaliated by public statements that there was a campaign of racial bigotry afoot and a double standard in the Congress for black and white congressmen. This statement may have, indeed, been true, but bigotry was not the reason Powell was removed from his committee chairmanship. In a conversation with Johnson advisor Henry Wilson, Powell remarked that his present position was a “dark plot” among three Mormon representatives, including the Udalls, Stewart and Mo.
A stir, but not major action, occurred among blacks in the civil rights movement and the entertainment community. Floyd McKissick and Rustin came to Powell’s aid, as did Dick Gregory and Sammy Davis Jr. Rangel, then a young Harlem politico, also helped by organizing a rally for Powell at the Capitol.
The day following the Caucus vote, the House voted by more than 80 percent to not seat Powell until a committee decided if Powell was fit to serve or not, in light of the New York court actions and the evidence of misappropriation of committee funds. McCormack then appointed the select committee, which included such notables as U.S. Reps. Emanuel Celler, Claude Pepper and John Conyers. Legal machinations were already beginning. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the committee detailing the unconstitutionality of refusing to seat Powell, and Powell himself was already assembling a crack legal team of perhaps the best eight antiestablishment attorneys in the nation. The report of the committee was uncertain; the initial sentiment was split down party lines, with the Democratic majority in favor of Powell. Powell maintained that as long as he fit the constitutional requirements — age, citizenship, and residence, he should be seated. The committee was not so sure. The Hays report was factored in, as well as Yvette Powell’s testimony, the “bag woman” deliberations and every questionable action Powell took since assuming his chairmanship in 1961.
Powell reacted to the House’s action in what had become typical behavior from the distinguished congressman. Immediately preceding the House vote to not seat him, Powell harangued the congressmen on the House floor that he knew of no congressman that did not have a few skeletons in his closet, insinuating that he was being singled out for reasons other than those mentioned by the House. Powell continued to assert that he was being attacked because as a friend of his said, “…[Powell] is a Negro and wields power like a white man wields power.” Using this method of defense he attempted to rally civil rights leaders and other activists to his cause. However, even those like Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy could not exert enough influence in Congress to effect any change in the House’s chosen path.
Many on the select committee feared making a martyr of Powell by expelling him, so on the first day of March, 1967, the committee recommended that Powell be seated, censured, stripped of his seniority and fined $40,000. The committee members felt a lack of rules about such situations, and the need to make up the rules as they went along, but they seemed satisfied with the report. During debate on the committee decision, Powell was in Bimini, and the congressmen present were trying to decide what, constitutionally, they could do to reprimand their colleague. There were not many people present who were sure about which course of action was the best and most legal. Holland claimed that Powell was a victim of latent racism in the House, but the overwhelming cry came from Republicans and Southern Democrats who claimed that Powell was guilty, arrogant and irresponsible, among other personal defects. After four hours of debate, the committee report was defeated and U.S. Rep. Tom Curtis of Missouri’s resolution to exclude Powell from the 90th Congress was passed by an overwhelming majority. One week later, Powell filed suit against the Speaker, sergeant at arms, clerk, doorkeeper and certain members of the House.
A month later, a special election was held to fill the vacancy in Powell’s seat. The Republicans tried to get every sort of famous black conservative to run. Baseball player Jackie Robinson and jazz musician Lionel Hampton’s names were bandied about, but James Meredith, who had integrated Ole Miss, was the person to announce his candidacy. However, soon after he retracted and a relative nobody was put against Powell, who had decided to run for reelection. Powell won, 86-12 with a third-party candidate splitting the difference. However, Powell waited to present his certificate of election to House, stalling to see what the courts would decide.
Initially, the district court ruled against Powell, and he sought immediate appeal to the Supreme Court, which was denied. Powell went to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where he was rebuffed by future Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, before he was allowed to appear before the Supreme Court. Powell contended that the Speaker denied him the oath, the clerk refused him duties due to a representative, the sergeant at arms refused to pay him and the doorkeeper refused him access to the House floor. However, Powell had to win another election before the Court granted certiorari on November 18, 1968. He did, and went into court with a peoples’ mandate. During the layover between certiorari and the oral arguments in April of 1969, Powell was seated in the 91st Congress as a freshman and with a $25,000 fine.
As a result, the Court had to deal with not only with the constitutionality of exclusion, but whether the case was moot or not in light of the actions of the 91st Congress. The Court also considered the charges of racism. In the oral arguments, Justice Hugo Black asked Bruce Bromley, attorney for the appellees, whether the House excluded Powell because he was black. Bromley gave an unequivocal denial. Chief Justice Earl Warren also had suspicions about whether the House’s exclusion of Powell was completely without racist overtones. The attorneys in the room had the distinct impression that the Court was focusing more than expected on race and was leaning towards Powell.
On June 16, the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 against the House, with Warren’s majority opinion stating that the House had exhibited a dangerous misuse of its powers. The Court decided that the House must seat all of its members if they meet the constitutional requirements and only then seek an expulsion resolution. However, the exclusion path that the House followed was patently unconstitutional. Warren was particularly upset about the fact that the House believed it had supreme authority over treatment of its members. Warren therefore took pains to point out that the Supreme Court is “the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.” The Court dismissed the claims against the congressmen mentioned in the suit and also dismissed the back-pay argument, and therefore cut away the entire scandalous back-story with Powell and the House. It was for this reason that mootness was not considered, since the parts of the case pertaining to mootness were thrown out. This action left the Court able to openly reprimand the House for abuse of power, which the Court seemed to gladly do. The only justice to dissent was Potter Stewart, who asserted, simply, that the 90th Congress had ended, Powell had been seated by the 91st Congress, and the matter was moot.
The House did not take kindly to their legal spanking, and U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford first asserted that the House would not abide by the judgment, soon thereafter seeking a Justice Department investigation of Powell. Still, the case had been decided and the House had its wings clipped by a watchful judiciary, providing a case study in the balance of powers and the checks and balances system. The legacy of Powell can be seen in what instances the case has been cited. Perhaps the best time Powell was cited was in United States v. Nixon, where the Court made the point that sometimes the Court has to look beyond the “names that symbolize the parties to determine whether a justiciable case or controversy is presented.”
You would think that Democratic candidate for SC-02, Rob Miller, would have taken some good lessons from his 2008 campaign against incumbent U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson. When he announced again, it looked a lot to us like it would be similar to Beaufort architect Jane Frederick’s second run against the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Spence. He’d pull some votes, but wouldn’t significantly challenge Wilson.
Last fall’s fun and games infused both campaigns with an insane amount of money for a South Carolina race for Congress. Miller now has more money than Democratic Sen. Vince Sheheen, who actually has to run a statewide campaign for governor instead of just one of six districts. Capitalizing on his buzz, Miller has been traveling the country to raise money and making the best of his Internet fundraising.
But other than that, his campaign has largely been a low-key affair. So, it came as an interesting revelation to see the report and fallout from Miller’s appearance at a meeting of the Greater Irmo Democratic Club. From what we’ve been able to gather, the Club invited WIS to the meeting, then there was a brouhaha about who ordered the WIS cameras be kept out.
After a couple days of thinking about this, we consider it Miller’s, or his campaign’s, fault. The woman who spoke for the GIDC, Joanne Hafter, said in a story by WIS, “I just want to set the record straight, neither I or anyone from GIDC made the decision to exclude the media, especially after we invited the media in the first place. It was Rob’s campaign manager who was adamant about not having press coverage.”
We actually met Ms. Hafter years ago, when we went to school with her daughters. Between the person we knew (however briefly) and the person we don’t, we’re siding with the GIDC on this incident. After all, we’ve been alerted to other screw-ups with the media committed by the Miller campaign.
When you’re the underdog in a district that skews against your party, you have to be very careful about what your campaign does, who it courts for support and how you manage your media exposure. Common sense would say that Miller would have known this already. Doesn’t seem like his campaign figured that part out.
The joke around town after the Americans for Job Security ad against U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett came out was that the organization was really named, “Americans for Nikki Haley.” Guess it’s not so far-fetched. Per the petulant child, Haley consultant Jon Lerner was involved with the advertisement and Gov. Mark Sanford solicited donations to put it on the air.
That rumbling sound you heard emanating from Columbia on Friday was a collective expression of, “Pfft. No shit.” Nobody except for a reporter for The State would think that an ad like that would be regarding anything else beside the race for governor.
We don’t know if it ran statewide, but this morning there was an interesting ad running on Fox News in Columbia. While we were generally ignoring the television — background noise is a necessity for the Information Generation — suddenly the talk on the flickering screen commanded our attention.
It was an advertisement for U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, one of the “big three” candidates for governor. It was responding to a statewide ad buy by the rather secretive “independent” group, Americans for Job Security. The ad talks about Barrett’s conservative leadership in the House, among other things.
Here’s the kicker, though — the ad was paid for by Barrett’s Congressional campaign. Or, that is, funds from that campaign account. Seems a little strange, but the AJS toady that was interviewed by the press said their ad was about his time in Congress, not his gubernatorial campaign, so hitting back with money from the Congressional account makes some sense.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is having the same issues that usually befall political types — coming up with a name for something that can has some fun made of it. So it is as the NRCC rolled out a project to flip marginal districts, something they’re calling, “Project Code Red.”
The essence of the effort is that the targeting of certain representatives and certain districts related to votes on the Democratic health care plans. So, the thought was: “OK, it’s a health care emergency, so that’s a code blue. But we’re Republicans, so…code red!” Right.
And that’s while everybody else is having visions of Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise. Really — even Politico used “NRCC orders ‘Project Code Red.’” It leaves you thinking that the slogan for the effort will be, “You want them in the House, you need them in the House!”
Of course, it could have been intentional just to get this sort of reaction. The more people who talk about the project, the more people know about it, and the more successful it could be.
U.S. Rep Bob Inglis has been around politics for a while. Indeed, he was even the Republican nominee against former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, in Hollings’ last run for the seat. Inglis lost, took some time off, came back and again won the SC-04 office he held previously. That makes the following even more unusual. From a story in The Herald-Journal, it appeared that his campaign violated state campaign finance ethics laws.
According to paper, a staffer from the campaign told the SHJ that another candidate for the GOP nomination for the seat, Solicitor Trey Gowdy, broke ethics laws. Thing is, mentioning such a thing, whether or not it is true, before a ruling has been handed down, is not OK.
State law says that all investigations, inquiries, hearings and documents are confidential until a final resolution is reached. The “willful release” of such information is a misdemeanor, carrying a penalty of up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Pretty cut-and-dry, right? But, the Inglis campaign maintains that because it submitted a Federal complaint as well, the state complaint is just a part of it and not a violation. Au contraire, monsieur.
“Since every state violation was included in the federal complaint, there’s nothing we did wrong,” [Inglis spokesman Price] Atkinson said via e-mail.
But that statement in itself is a potential violation, because it acknowledges the state complaint and indirectly reveals its contents. When asked about that possibility, Atkinson said: “The media made the connection, not us. We’ve discussed only the substance of the [Federal] complaint.”
Oh, come on. If you’re going to file an ethics complaint and you intend on talking to the media about it, it might be a good idea to check up on what the laws and regulations are regarding such speech, unless you want it coming back to bite you on the ass. Really — we’re not in a high-level position in a campaign, and even we’ve known for years that you can’t talk about such an investigation.
Honestly, you’d think that Inglis would hire people who are slightly more intelligent about the rules of the game. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t look that way.
This whole outgrowth of political teabaggery can be rather entertaining. We’ve said it before, but those jokers remind us of when Diane Keaton as Louise Bryant admonished Warren Beatty as John Reed in “Reds.” She said that what the hell were they doing — what did it matter which part of the left of the left was the real Communist Party in America? Factionalism, though more at home on the left, is not unknown on the right. And so, we’ve got teabaggers.
Christina Jeffrey, ostensibly the tea party candidate in the SC-04 Republican primary race, seems to be a candidate without a base. Friday morning, she was at a meeting where the state Republican Party and its leadership was getting ripped apart by the assorted teabaggers (we’re just upset we missed Earl Grey and Mr. Oolong).
Basically, she tried to take the podium, demanding to speak. They told her no — it’s become a custom of teabaggers not to let candidates talk — but then she asked the audience, “Don’t y’all want to hear what I have to say?” The gentleman running the event, Harry Kibler, told her that no candidates could speak. She kept demanding, so they gave her two minutes. When she started speaking, the audience started booing and half of them left.
Insanity, all around.
Somebody please save U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith from himself. He ran in 2008 in northern Alabama as a conservative Democrat. Because he’s totally cool with screwing over everyone that supported him in order to get reelected, he flipped parties in the middle of the first term. That pissed of his Democratic former supporters and the Republicans he now says he’s sympatico with. He’s angered damn near everybody.
The National Republican Congressional Committee may not have paid attention to the recent party switch, or maybe it’s a mistake that’s not a mistake, but last week a story came out about a direct mail solicitation by the NRCC to get people to help support defeating Griffith in his reelection run.
“We’ve been up on the air all over Alabama’s 5th Congressional District so that voters there know your Democrat in Congress has been falling in line with Nancy Pelosi’s destructive liberal agenda,” reads the solicitation.
The National Republican Congressional Committee issued the letter. While that line might apply to the Griffith elected in 2008, he has since changed sides, switching in December from the Democratic Party to the Republicans. A committee spokesman said the letter was sent because of administrative oversight.
Ha!
Not only that, but Alabama is a state that has an unusual history with unions, compared to other states in the Deep South. Yeah, it’s not as strong as it used to be, but labor still has more pull in industrial areas of the state than most other Southern states. Now, the state AFL-CIO wants its money back.
Speaking at a news conference at the downtown Holiday Inn, Al Henley, secretary-treasurer of the Alabama AFL-CIO, said labor groups felt like they had elected a “pro-working family” congressman in Griffith, but now feel “swindled” by his votes on major legislation.
Here’s something to ponder. Don’t consider it too much, though, because it takes actual thought and holding two separate ideas in one’s head, which is rare in political discourse or study in the past several years. Like, how President Ronald Reagan and the Teamsters were tight. That’s an interesting story, if you ever care to look deep into it.
OK, so let’s look at it — when Howard Dean beat South Carolina’s own Donnie Fowler to head the DNC, he launched something that changed the last two election cycles (that, and President George W. Bush turning off America to the GOP for four years). It was the 50-state strategy. The idea at the time was that Democrats shouldn’t give up any district, any state, and try to be competitive anywhere. We’re on record as saying at the time that this was a damn fool idea.
Really, it was all, “What, Mr. BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA? You think you have the money and ability to recruit to beat Republicans in the South and Midwest? Go back to Vermont and keep your crazy to yourself.” Still couldn’t believe it when, late for a morning grad school class in early 2006, heard Charlie Cook on NPR saying the numbers heavily favored the Democrats. “Sure, Charlie. We’ll believe it when we see it. Have you seen the Dems the past six years? They can’t win dick. Except Jim McGreevey. He had that nailed down.”
Good thing we don’t gamble…that much. The 50-state strategy paid off. Conservative Democrats took districts all across the country. Jim Webb took out that smarmy douchebag George Allen (seriously — we wouldn’t vote for Allen if he bought us a pony and crapped rainbows. His dad was a legendary football coach. Wha’ happen’?). Not that Webb is a saint, but Allen is just so personally distasteful. Back to the story.
President Barack Obama and his team was able to build on that and flip North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana. The fact Obama’s approval rating is hovering around 50 percent and everybody hates Congress is not a surprise. Everybody always hates Congress, and U.S. Sen. John McCain was not a strong candidate the last time. This looks to us like a 50/50 country still. But here’s the rub.
People are retiring right and left. Democrats and Republicans. The retirement of U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh on Monday, a reliable moderate Democrat, is a continuation of a troubling development. It’s also a natural outgrowth of the eternal conflict between politics and policy. What’s good for one is not necessarily good for the other.
For example, we’ve heard from Dems that Dwight Drake could really get things done as governor, considering his extensive contacts in business and years of working the General Assembly. Maybe like an LBJ-as-lobbyist turn. But Drake’s a horrible candidate. He’s got more baggage than a large passenger plane and, though he shows political acumen, sometimes misses the cues that people who have run a few contested races catch on to.
In Congress, a bumper crop of moderate and conservative Democrats keeps the chambers balanced and the battles tough. Horse-trading, all types of dealing and the compromises that come from legislative action where no one has an iron hand has become the way things go. As liberals complain about and conservatives don’t like to admit, shit’s a lot closer than the numbers say. And it’s because of Democrats elected in marginal districts that are willing to work with the GOP.
With this year appearing like a very good year for Republicans, the NRCC, NRSC, RNC, every consultant far and wide and probably even your mother (but not ours) are doing whatever they can to pick up open seats and unseat Dems in marginal seats that won in the past two cycles.
This. is. bad. news.
We don’t blame the campaign types. We love campaign types. In the parlance of a Carolina crowd on gameday, “Go. Fight. Win. Kick ass.” Their job is to win. You don’t win, you no longer have a job, Bubba. Screw policy, alliances, whatever. If the person has the right letter next to their name, let’s win.
Here’s the problem, though. The lefties have cooled down since the big flare-up of 2003-04, and now it’s time for the far right to collectively lose its shit. Tea party this, secession that, and let’s carry firearms on trains, because that’s a great idea. We don’t have patience for extremists, but if it’s one party, OK, we can sit it out. Consider this, though — if a whole gigantic group of moderate and conservative Dems are gone, and all you have are liberals from liberal places, the average mainstream conservative Republican is going to be fucked.
Hardcore liberals to the left, activists in rebellion to the right. Talk about gridlock. And if you think the American public hates Congress now, just wait to see what happens when Code Pink and the John Birchers draw knives on the House floor. Actually, we do want to see that: “Speaker Pelosi! Minority Leader Boehner! It’s time to ENTER THE OCTAGON!” The favorite would be Boehner, but Pelosi’s short, wiry and has a low center of gravity. It would probably be a pick ‘em by match time.
Unless there’s a hostile takeover of the Republican leadership, we’re willing to bet they’re not going to be happy a month or two into 2011. You’ve got members of your own party who will not compromise on anything, and then there are liberal Democrats who think you’re an ignorant theocrat. There’s no win there. And forget about any meaningful legislation. If Congress can manage to pass the budget in 2011 and 2012 without a government shutdown, it’ll be a fucking miracle, if what is expected to happen in November does happen. It’s not like the GOP is solely to blame. Democrats went after moderate Republicans in the Northeast for years. You’d think that there’s a lot of Dems in Congress that wouldn’t mind having a few more Chafees and a few less Scott Browns to deal with. Well, you reap what you sow.
We’d like to think that the fire-breathers at the extremes could examine what’s really important and stop posturing. Believe it or not — and a lot of people don’t — real change happens between the center-left and the center-right. If you want an example, check the super-majorities that LBJ managed to pull off with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
After this election cycle, we’re going to see a whole lot of nothing, a lot of grandstanding and any attempt to fix the problems we have in this country will be delayed for another two years. That’s a pox on both the parties.
Stop the insanity. It broke wide today, but it’s been assumed for a while that Rep. Tim Scott, in just his first year in the House, is jumping into the race to replace U.S. Rep. Henry Brown in the First District. Yesterday, Scott’s consultants at Starboard Communications sent out an invitation to meet the candidate in Conway this evening.
We consider it funny that even before a proper announcement, people were already being invited “to meet Republican Congressional candidate Tim Scott.” Wait, really? The AP, which sent a story across the wire around lunch time, apparently didn’t know, either. Leaving the lieutenant governor’s race, he was second in money with over $170,000 on hand.
Here’s something to ponder — five months out from the primary, there are seven Republican candidates and three Democratic candidates. Trading the coast for DC must be a really attractive option these days.
