Thread: Republicans facing 'electoral hurricane'

Republicans facing 'electoral hurricane'

28 October 2006 08:46

He repeatedly boasted at a Tennessee campaign stop this week that he was pro-life, pro-gun, and against gay marriage. He attacked the Democratic party for being weak on defence and family values and he even had a go at President Bush for being soft on immigration.

It sounds like another day in southern politics -- except that in this case, the candidate was a Democrat. Harold Ford Jr is one of a new breed looking for votes in places his party does not usually win and talking the language of the US heartland more fluently than any high-profile Democrat since former US president Bill Clinton.

"Yes, I am a Christian and I love my Jesus," Ford (36) told an audience of Tennessee county officials. He is a congressman from the state's best-known black political family, which is a blessing and a burden. His father, aunt and uncle have all been in trouble with the law on charges ranging from accepting bribes to voter fraud.

Unsurprisingly then, the mostly white crowd in the Knoxville ballroom was initially cautious towards the young pretender, but it warmed rapidly to his remarkable speaking skills, charisma and conservative credentials.

His proud claim to have signed legislation to build a fence along the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out was greeted with approval. But the last line of his speech won an ovation. "I won't take your gun and I won't take your bible," he promised.

Ford is attempting to become the first black senator from the South since the 19th century reconstruction era that followed the civil war. If he succeeds, it would represent a breakthrough for the Democrats, and a potential disaster for George Bush.

If the polls are to be believed, the Bush administration's unpopularity is propelling the Democrats to a takeover of the House of Representatives.

Balanced
The Senate is more finely balanced, and the race has come down to a handful of seats. To win a majority, the Democrats must defend New Jersey, where senator Bob Menendez looks vulnerable, and win at least two out of three tight contests in Tennessee, Virginia and Missouri, where the Republicans are making a determined stand.

A Democratic win in the House would put a spanner in the works of the Bush presidency, giving the opposition party control of the federal purse strings, and opening the door to all manner of investigations into the Iraq war.

A takeover of the more powerful Senate, would shove the Bush machine into reverse. The president would be forced onto the defensive on almost every aspect of policy in his last two years in office. But to achieve that on November 7, the Democrats will need more than just anti-war and anti-Bush sentiment.

To that end, the national Democratic leadership is trying to break the party stereotype of the effete urban liberal, and mix varying doses of social conservatism with progressive economic policy and a multilateral approach to global affairs. The assumption is that the party does not have to protect its left flank, as the left will vote for any kind of Democrat to defeat the Bush Republicans.

Centrist candidates have in many cases been forced on local party activists by a newly assertive leadership in Washington, led by Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton aide managing the House races, and Charles Schumer on the Senate side.

The strategy appears to be paying moderate returns. Ford has drawn level with his Republican opponent, Bob Corker, but is now feeling the heat. The Republican national headquarters in Washington is pouring funds into the close races, in a last-ditch campaign orchestrated by Karl Rove, the president's personal Machiavelli. According to Republican officials quoted in the Washington Post, 90% of that money is being spent on attack adverts.

The anti-Ford ad has been one of the most egregious. It plays on the fact that the congressman once attended a party at the Superbowl which was sponsored by Playboy magazine, and received a campaign donation from a Hollywood company that turned out to make porn movies. He returned the donation and pointed out he was among 3 000 people who crowded into the Superbowl party, but the damage was done.

The Republican commercial showed a young white actress, shown naked from the shoulders up, smiling knowingly into the camera and reminding Ford they had met at the Playboy party. "Harold, call me," was the punch line, delivered with a lascivious wink.

The ad caused uproar. Many saw it as a deliberate attempt to play on Southern white fears, conscious or unconscious, of their women going off with virile young black men. Even Corker, a former mayor of Chattanooga, complained and the Republican party withdrew the ad, but replaced it with another claiming, falsely, that Ford supported gay marriage and urged the distribution of "day after" abortion pills to teenage girls.

On Thursday, when Ford appeared on a conservative Knoxville radio show, Southern Roots, he was showered with invective for abetting "genocide" against babies, and generally being a libertine without true southern values, but one caller said: "Independent Republicans are realising we don't have to give Bush a blank cheque for this war."

After his ballroom speech his exit was blocked by burly Republican county commissioners who had heard him speak and were lining up to hug him.

"There's an awful lot of Elvis Presley in him. He's got more charisma than any politician I've seen in a long time," Fred Congdon, head of the Association of County Mayors, said afterwards.

Jo Jones, a shopkeeper, collared the candidate on his way out to make sure he opposed gay marriage. "Before I got here I was really undecided, but I think he's got me," she said. "I'm from the Bible belt and he believes in the Bible and he believes in doing what's right."

Harold Ford is not alone. In House and Senate races across the country, the Democrats are running social conservatives in an attempt to make inroads into "Red America", the vast area of God-fearing, patriotic territory outside the big cities. While Ford's declared "pro-life" position involves placing restrictions on abortions (he voted to ban late term abortions and favours parental notification in teenage cases), Bob Casey, the party's Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is an all-out opponent of abortion.

Brandish guns
Many more are proud to brandish their guns, hoping to emulate Brian Schweitzer, a firearm-toting Democrat who became governor of conservative Montana two years ago, partly by emphasising his inner redneck. Asked how many guns he owns Schweitzer's stock response is: "None of your business but not as many as I'd like."

In the culture wars, the Democrats have not beaten America's conservatives, but joined them in many states. It is a strategic retreat aimed at bigger gains. It gives ground on some hot-button social issues and focuses instead on populist economics, raising the minimum wage redistributing tax breaks from the wealthy and big corporations to the working poor, while attempting to wrest control of US foreign policy.

The Democrats have been carried along by widespread anger at the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war, cronyism, and its disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina. Only a quarter of Americans polled think the country is going in the right direction, and less than a fifth think Congress is doing a good job.

In post-Katrina America, the metaphors for this political moment have been decidedly watery. Pundits talk of an anti-incumbent flood, or a tsunami. Charlie Cook, the country's pre-eminent election guru, talks of a "Category-Five hurricane" heading for the Republicans.

By several measures, national sentiment is more anti-Congress than it was in 1994, when the Republicans swept to victory with a net gain of 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate, stunning Bill Clinton's administration. However, even the most optimistic Democrats do not expect a victory on that scale.

"I have a cautionary note to my friends in the Democratic party. This year is different from 94," Dick Gephardt, a former party leader in the House said. "Over the last six months, the Republicans have been on alert that they could lose the election. That was not the case for us in 94, and if you're expecting something, you fight harder."

It is the political equivalent of English football fan's fear of penalties. If the game is tied at full time, they expect to lose. For one thing, the Republicans have more money in hand at the end of the campaign. In an election that will end up costing a record total of $2,6-billion, the Republicans have a $200-million advantage, much of which it will spend in the last few days. According to Jennifer Dunn, a former Republican congressman, her party has more money on hand than the Democrats in 19 of the closest 25 House races. In the Tennessee Senate contest, Corker has raised nearly $13-million, more than $4-million more than Ford. Furthermore the Republican contender can count on much more financial help from Republican headquarters in Washington than his Democratic rival.

Some of that money is being spent on last minute attack ads. The rest will go towards getting Republican voters to the polls to make sure they actually cast a ballot, something the party has excelled in over recent years. That political art form used to be a speciality of the Democratic party, which could rely on an army of union members, black civil rights workers and liberal activists.

That army is still standing, but in the 2004 it was surpassed by the Republicans' hi-tech approach championed by Rove. It used a huge computer database, known as Voter Vault, which merged political and commercial data about voters to provide a nuanced and detailed picture of the electorate. Potential Republicans in Democratic areas could be "micro-targeted" by campaign literature specifically tailored to their interests. This potent weapon was one of the principal reasons Democratic election night celebrations driven by polls in the John Kerry campaign headquarters in 2004, turned to despair when the actual results came in.

Crash programme
The fact that the Democratic party remains years behind in the use of this technology says a lot about its continuing organisational difficulties. The congressional leadership pushed for a crash programme to build an equivalent to Voter Vault in the battleground states in time for this year's election. Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate who is now chairman of the independent Democratic National Committee, in charge of the party's permanent apparatus, has seen it as less of a priority, preferring to spend its money on a long term strategy to build up the party's grassroots in all 50 states. This year, the DNC is only experimenting with a trial database in only six states. Meanwhile, the congressional Democrats are using their own database, much of it outdated, and a coalition of liberal pressure groups, called America Votes, is using a third, also in a handful of states.

"Under Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, micro-targeting is seen as short term, but that strategy comes at the expense of investing in technology that has been proven many times over," grumbled a Democratic database expert.

That sort of disarray is just one reason Democrats should avoid premature hubris this time around, argues Mark Mellman, a leading Democratic pollster.

"People shouldn't be counting their chickens as far as I'm concerned," Mellman said. On the other hand, he said, nor should the Republicans, for all their technological superiority. "You can't turn out voters you don't have," he said.

At the heart of this election that is the great unknown: whether the Republican defences are strong enough to survive the storm heading towards them. That will only be clear on election night in a handful of states like Tennessee.

What if ..? The Capitol Hill scenarios
Democrats win the House of Representatives alone
This would put a serious dent in the last two years of the Bush presidency. Democrats would be able to put forward their own legislation and control the federal budget. They would also take over the chairs of the powerful House committees, armed with power of subpoena, allowing them to launch investigations into the Iraq war and other presidential decisions taken in the first six Bush years.

Democrats win both the House and Senate
They would have total control of the legislative agenda, forcing the president to accept it or use his veto. The Senate can launch its own investigations, which are taken more seriously. It has the additional power of ratifying treaties and confirming judicial nominations and cabinet appointments. With control of both houses, the Democrats could bring the Bush presidency to a virtual halt. George Bush would be a lame duck.

The Democrats fail to capture either chamber
It would stun the party and plunge it into even deeper despair and defeatism, triggering an all-out fight between its competing power centres. The Bush White House would be given a new lease of life at home and abroad, and the president's influence over his party would be reasserted. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx...ticleid=288031

Ford voted for HR 4437. He may be serious. I don't care which party they belong to as long as they are serious about this country. I will vote for the candidate, not the party.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll661.xml
H R 4437 RECORDED VOTE 16-Dec-2005 10:33 PM
QUESTION: On Passage
BILL TITLE: Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act

Ayes Noes PRES NV
Republican 203 17 11
Democratic 36 164 2
Independent 1
TOTALS 239 182 13




---- AYES 239 ---

Aderholt
Akin
Alexander
Bachus
Baker
Barrow
Bass
Bean
Beauprez
Berry
Biggert
Bilirakis
Bishop (UT)
Blackburn
Blunt
Boehlert
Bonilla
Bonner
Bono
Boozman
Boren
Boswell
Boucher
Boustany
Bradley (NH)
Brady (TX)
Brown (SC)
Brown-Waite, Ginny
Burgess
Burton (IN)
Buyer
Calvert
Camp (MI)
Campbell (CA)
Cannon
Cantor
Capito
Carter
Case
Castle
Chabot
Chandler
Chocola
Coble
Conaway
Costello
Cramer
Crenshaw
Cubin
Culberson
Davis (KY)
Davis (TN)
Davis, Tom
Deal (GA)
DeFazio
DeLay
Dent
Doolittle
Drake
Dreier
Duncan
Edwards
Ehlers
Emerson
English (PA)
Everett
Feeney
Ferguson
Fitzpatrick (PA)
Flake
Foley
Forbes
Ford
Fortenberry