Bush / GOP

(via Marc Ambinder) Lindsey Graham's primary challenger, Buddy Witherspoon, is running an incredibly harsh anti-immigration spot in South Carolina. It basically has people with Spanish accents saying "Gracias, Linsdsey Graham" and "Lindsey Graham" the entire time. Check it out below:

It seems as if Witherspoon's candidacy is focused heavily on immigration, as his Google search ad displays his immigration position (below) and his website features the same position above all other issues.

David Leonhardt of the Times today has an excellent piece today comparing the 1992 Bush Recession to what might be end up being called the 2008 Bush Recession. As he notes what makes this coming slowdown/recession different from 1992 is that in the Bush era the middle class was already in what might be called a recession despite record GDP and productivity growth and very strong corporate profits and a soaring stock market. Even before this slowdown the typical family's income had dropped by over a $1,000 after gaining more than $7,000 in the Clinton era; wages have been flat; and the number of those in poverty, without health insurance and struggling with high levels of debt had increased.

At NDN we agree with the sentiment of some in the piece that the critical thing for policymakers is to focus on offering a new economic agenda that makes this new age of globalization work for all Americans. The most important impact of a stimulus will be to show the American people that their government, after 7 years of ignoring their increasing struggle, is watching their backs, and working to help them and their families once again prosper. But it would be unfortunate if the stimulus debate ended up distracting our political leaders from focusing on the much larger and more difficult challenge of restroring broad-based prosperity in our new economic age.

It is also important for our leaders to realize that the American people's concerns about the economy was sky high long before this recent downturn. As this analysis of the 2006 exit polls shows, there is a strong argument that concerns about the economy drove the outcome of the 2006 Congressional elections much more than the Iraq War. Political and economic elites have been very slow to recognize these pre-slowdown economic realities because for those on the upper end have had a remarkable decade. Their incomes increased, their assets soared, their taxes were significantly reduced. I know from my travels that few American elites were intuitively sympathetic to the middle class struggle of the Bush era because for them things were getting better, much better. And now that the economy is slowing, and their friends on Wall Street are getting fearful of the future, it is essential that the governing class in the United States not accept a $100 billion stimulus as an adequate response the economic challenges of our day. Much more must be done. And offering this new economic strategy that makes globalization work for all Americans is what our Globalization Initiative has been focusing on for the past several years.

So let's say McCain wins, and either Obama or Clinton win. The Senate becomes the epicenter of the Presidential campaign in a way we haven't seen too often in our history.

The Democrats will clearly use the Senate to bludgeon McCain. Tough amendments. Votes scheduled during his fundraisers, all that stuff. McCain will grow weary of this, and decide he has to change it. He will have two choices:

1. Quit the Senate and just run for President.
2. His close friend Joe Lieberman becomes a Republican and hands the Senate to the GOP. McCain then uses the Senate to bludgeon the Democrats.

Quitting the Senate doesn't really fit the Mac is back narrative. So he chooses 2. He puts incredible pressure on his good friend Joe to switch and give him a very powerful campaign weapon while stripping it from his opponent. Senator Lieberman accepts, switches, and earns himself a senior position in the McCain administration, perhaps even as Vice President.

Sound possible to you?

Update: Joe Scordato and a few others have weighed in that this scenerio will not happen because a new Senate rule prevents the flipping of the Chamber in the middle of a session.  I will be looking into this on Monday a little more and report back, and would welcome any additional info.  If this is true, and a Lieberman party switch cannot give the GOP control of the Senate, I assume then that Reid will strip him of his Committee Chairmanship for supporting a GOP Presidential candidate.  He clearly can no longer easily participate in Democratic legislative and political strategy in any meaningful way.

So, the two candidates to win on the GOP side so far? McCain, Huckabee.  Both have been relentlessly attacked, mostly by Mitt Romney, for their "liberal" positions on immigration.  Yet they won, and today both seem better positioned to win the nomination than Mitt, or certainly more than the other immigration demagogues in the field, Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo. 

How can all those arguing that immigration is the make or break issue in the election explain this? One explanation from the NH exits is that it is a 2nd tier issue, and trails far behind the economy, national security and health care - and leadership and character - as issues of great concern to the American people.  

Once again, immigration has not delivered for the GOP, even in a well-funded Republican primary.

And if Arizona Senator McCain wins the nomination it will give the GOP a candidate who has been a nationally recognized leader on immigration reform.  His presence will also the GOP a shot at contesting the Hispanic vote that has turned so hard against them in recent years, and may make the task of a Democratic win much tougher as he could make the all important region of the Southwest harder to bring back into the Democratic camp.

As I wrote the other day this very compressed primary calendar is going to have a big impact on governing and Congress this year. What is Bush - Mr. either you are with us or against us - going to do with the new GOP nominee for 8 or 9 months? How will they work with Republicans in Congress to develop a strategy to go after the Democratic nominee who may very well be a sitting Senator? Who will be calling the shots? And how will they get along if it is either Huckabee or McCain, who are now clearly distancing themselves from Bush?

Consider this exchange with Senator McCain from Meet the Press yesterday:

MR. RUSSERT: And you said something that caught my attention. I want to play it for our viewers and come back and talk about it.

SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Here's John McCain.

(Videotape)

SEN. McCAIN: I think we all know that the American people have lost their trust and confidence in their government of the United States. Our failures at Katrina, the war in Iraq, corruption and spending in Washington. We know that.

MR. RUSSERT: Lost their trust and confidence.

SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: Katrina, the war in Iraq and spending.

SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: That's a denunciation of George W. Bush.

SEN. McCAIN: Well, it's certainly a criticism, but I also have pointed out, as I did last night in the debate, we've not had another attack on the United States of America. I think he deserves credit for that. He led this nation after 9/11 and united us. There's a number-at least he's had the good judgment, finally, to change the strategy in Iraq so that we now have a winning strategy. Look, I think the president of the United States has made mistakes, but I would say the biggest one is spending. That, that's what our base is unhappy about. That's what I'm going to fix. That's what I've fought against for years, and I've done so pretty effectively. Saved the taxpayers a couple of billion dollars in a Boeing tanker deal. I-the reason-I led the investigation of Jack Abramoff. But our base has got to have-restore-got to have their confidence and their trust restored because they have lost it, and there's no doubt about that. And spending...

MR. RUSSERT: But you say...

SEN. McCAIN: ...on the part of Congress has been one of the big factors. The approval rating of Congress is far lower than it is of the president.

MR. RUSSERT: But Katrina and Iraq...

SEN. McCAIN: Yes. Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: ...and spending, that's George Bush.

SEN. McCAIN: Yes. It's, it's, it's George Bush with a lot of help from a lot of people, and one of them was Donald Rumsfeld, who I said I had no confidence in, and I believe that he should be-should have resigned long before he did.

There is a lot of drama left in the GOP race this year.

On the final Sunday before the Iowa Caucuses, The NY Times chooses once again to focus on the immigration reform debate, offering up another thoughtful look at this tough issue. This one focuses on the positions of the Presidential candidates. It concludes:

One of the strong arguments for passing immigration reform last summer was that it was a last chance. If Congress did not seize it, the presidential race would blot out hopes of reform for two years or more.

Congress did not seize it, and all the problems are still there. The issue has left the country divided, fretful and ambivalent, and voters are yearning for honesty and thoughtfulness. The Republicans are not giving it to them. The Democrats should fill the vacuum. They have said the right things. Amid all the Republican shouting, it would help if they would speak louder.

This morning's Washington Post has a very good piece on the US diplomatic efforts that brought Bhutto back to Pakistan ten weeks ago. It also has a quick look at how Bhutto's death is effecting the Presidential campaigns.

The NYTimes offers up this thoughtful editorial on the future of Pakistan after Bhutto. An excerpt:

Ms. Bhutto’s death leaves the Bush administration with no visible strategy for extricating Pakistan from its crisis or rooting out Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which have made the country their most important rear base.

Betting America’s security (and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal) on an unaccountable dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, did not work. Betting it on a back-room alliance between that dictator and Ms. Bhutto, who had hoped to win a third try as prime minister next month, is no longer possible.

That leaves Mr. Bush with the principled, if unfamiliar, option of using American prestige and resources to fortify Pakistan’s badly battered democratic institutions. There is no time to waste.

Paul Krugman has a very good column today that puts the emerging home mortgage crisis in sharper relief - 10 million homes effected, $400 billion in potential losses. A staggering outcome. I've called it a Bush era financial market equivalent of Katrina - an extraordinary failure of government to meet its basic responsibilities.

And as Krugman suggests, it is important for progressives to use this crisis to highlight the difference in economic and governing philosophies between our world and theirs. But what is most important is for Democrats next year is not to allow the urgency of dealing with the mortgage crisis to get in the way of a much needed process to develop a much broader strategy for the American economy that addesses the already difficult struggle of too many Americans. While the Bush era produced strong GDP and productivity growth, record corporate profits and a high-flying market, the median income of a typical family actually declined; more are now without health insurance, more are in poverty and too many with dangerous levels of debt. The failure of immigration reform has left 5 percent of our workforce undocumented, dragging down wages and working conditions for all American workers. And Bush took our nation's vast wealth and invested it only in one great project - Iraq - which has, shall we say, not delivered the return we all had hoped.

Rahm Emanuel is right that the economy is going to be a dominant issue next year. Our recent poll like most others show the incredible concerns Americans have about their current and future prospects. But like most things in governing, the question is what are we are going to about it all? It is our belief that our leaders need to generate a 21st economic strategy that is comensurate with the size of the struggle Americans feel in their daily lives. Our Globalization Initiative has set forth a 3 part plan, one that calls for a reform of our energy and health care policies, promotes innovation throughout our new "idea-based" economy, and invests in our people and in our infrastructure. This plan will take years and hundreds of billions of dollars to implement. But I think at this point we have little choice other than to offer a plan of big and bold ambition, and then fight with everything we have to get it done over the next few years. Our heritage and philosophy - and the needs of the American people - demand no less.

Offering up such a modern and 21st century agenda will also help solve one of the country's other great challenges - how to best create an immigration system that meets the needs of our modern economy and does so in a way that is consistent with our values. The fear some Democrats have about the immigration debate should be taken seriously. Even though Comprehensive Immigration Reform has broad and deep support with the American people, it would be much more effective to package the issue in with this broader agenda to show that we are addressing the economic concerns of all American workers not just those of undocumented immigrants. To us at NDN the single best way to counter the nativist chants from the other side is offer a bold and ambitious economic agenda that includes aggressive support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

The enforcement-only approach to immigration reform is simply bad policy and bad politics. It won't actually fix the immigration system. It has been tried by Republicans for the last few years and gotten them very little in return. It will deeply anger the fastest-growing part of the American electorate, Hispanics, and I believe is deeply inconsistent with core progressive values. It connotes fear and cowardice rather than strength and strong leadership. It is the very opposite of tough - as it appears to be all about politics and not about problem solving. Which is why we oppose the legislative manifestation of this idea, the Shuler bill.

Getting our politics to work again after the terribly disapointing age of Bush will require bold and resolute leadership, and a commitment to many years of tough and difficult battles ahead. But once one enters the political arena, that my friends is the job, and this is no time to allow fear to continue to triumph over hope, and no time for us to walk away from the tough battles the American people are expecting us to fight on their behalf.

There are all sorts of news reports this morning that Tom Tancredo, who has based his entire campaign on an anti-immigrant platform, is ending his bid for the Presidency. As all of us trying to make sense of the current immigration debate and how Tancredo's total rejection by Republican primary voters fits in let's consider these two figures: 1% and 62%. 1% is the share of the Republican vote Tancredo has been receiving. 62% is the share of Republicans who support an earned path to citizenship, according to a new LA Times poll taken two weeks ago. Taken together it appears that Tancredo's approach to immigration, "Deport Those Who Don't Belong, Make Sure They Never Come Back" has been overwhelmingly rejected by even Republican voters, and is just one more example of how the GOP's investment in the immigration issue has failed time and again to produce the results they had hoped for.

Later today Tancredo will probably try to argue that the reason he never got traction is that the rest of the Republican field has adopted his position. But that really isn't true. Mitt Romney, who has made intense anti-immigration rhetoric a centerpiece of his campaign, is dropping across the board. Mike Huckabee, who seems to rise for every new anti-immigrant ad Romney runs against him in Iowa, has adopted at least rhetorically a much more compassionate path (see here for his new, wacky immigration position). Fred Thompson who has also taken a very hard line on immigration isn't getting any traction, despite his recent endorsement by Iowa Rep. Steve King, a Tancredo ally. John McCain, the Republican most associated with Comprehensive Immigration Reform, is rising in mosts polls and is now very much back in the race. And Rudy, who leads in most national GOP polls has embraced a version of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and is now running an ad that openly talks about citizenship. Rather than triumphing inside the GOP field, it seems much more plausible to conclude that the Tancredo vision is in the process of being rejected by a Republican Party unwilling to embrace his racist and nativistic approach while acknowledging the importance of the issue itself.

The immigration issue is crying out for strong and forceful leadership. As I argued recently, I see immigration reform as one of the Democratic Party's greatest opportunities to contrast their pragmatic, common-sense approach to tackling the tough problems of the 21st century with the failed conservative approach which, all too often in recent years, has chosen politics over progress. The Comprehensive approach to fixing our broken immigration system has a deep and broad bi-partisan coalition supporting it that includes many important business, labor, religious and immigrant leaders and elected officials of both parties; is one of the few issues embraced by both Bush and Clinton; has a history of bi-partisanship, as it is one of the few important bills to actually pass the Senate in recent years; is supported by all the Democratic candidates running for President, most of the Democrats in the Senate, and many other critical Democrats like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chairman Howard Dean; and in poll after poll is supported by a majority of the American people.

As I wrote: "Democrats should be viewing this ongoing GOP obsession with immigration not as something to fear but as a powerful sign of the collapse of the modern Republican Party. In 2008 the GOP cannot run on its governing accomplishments. Cannot run on its health car plan. Cannot run on its vision for our security. Cannot run on its strategy to help a struggling middle class. Cannot run on their high moral and ethical standards. Cannot run on fiscal responsibility. So what is left? An issue that nostalgically evokes the racism of their now anachronistic Southern Strategy, that doesn't even have majority support in their own Party, is reinforcing that their Party has become more interested in scoring political points than solving vexing national problems, and that is managing to anger the fastest growing part of the American electorate, Hispanics."

Our immigration system is broken. That is something we all know. We also know the American people are rightfully unhappy about it and that it has risen to be one of their top 5 or 6 issues of 2008. The real question, then, is what we are going to do about it? As Rudy argues in his new ad, leaders will bring people together, step up and fix it. Other politicians, including some in the Democratic Party, will continue do what Tancredo has done which is to confuse toughness with strong leadership. This approach has been rejected again and again, as the American people desperately seach for a politics that is not safe but bold; that is not just tough but smart and effective; that is not calculating but courageous; that is not divisive and angry but that brings us together; that once again puts the interests of Americans and their families above all else.

Immigration is one of the great early political tests of the 21st century. To date the Republicans have failed their test of whether they have what it takes to solve the emerging problems of the new century. For the good of the nation I hope the Democrats do not fail theirs.

Reading the Times editorial today on the spreading financial crisis, and the big story it broke on Tuesday, it sure feels that way.  Like Katrina it wasn't the event itself that was so bad, or even the government's lack of anticipation or preparedness; it was the lack of a sufficient government response once the warning signs appeared and demanded action.

Can there be any doubt now that President Bush has simply been the worst President in history? We will be digging out from his mess for a very long time.