… so goes the nation. Maybe.
Even before Ned Lamont’s stunning victory over Joe Lieberman, it was pretty clear that Connecticut is one of the major battlefields for control of Congress. Connecticut has three relatively moderate Republican US Reps:
- Christopher Shays: of Shays-Meehan fame, the House counterpart to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law); was pro-war and now critical of its handling; frequent Baghdad visitor; challenged by Democrat Diane Farrell;
- Nancy Johnson: pro-choice, pro-war and wildly pro-PhRMA; challenged by Democrat Chris Murphy. (More at CT05.net.)
- Rob Simmons, the most vulnerable of all; he’s been prone to Lieberman-esque “Shut Up about Iraq Already” language; challenged by Joe Courtney.
We have put the Democratic opponents of all these folks on our ActBlue page. If you want to take part in the national contest, you might throw some scratch to any of these candidates.
Honestly, it gives me no pleasure to try to take down putatively moderate Republicans. I’d love to take down the real skunks like DeLay (oh — never mind!), Pombo (who’s got a good challenger, Jerry McNerney) and Joe Barton. But the fact is that the centrist (largely New England) wing of the Republican Party has not held — not since the Republican takeover of 1994, when then-Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) celebrated the destruction of not only Democrats, but moderate Republicans like RI’s Sen. John Chafee: “John Chafee’s views were not endorsed last night. I think Chafee and others will look at the results and get on the team.”
So, this has been a long time coming. Moderate New England Republicans have been put in an untenable position by their own party, which favors parliamentary-style, iron-clad discipline. The so-called moderates have not hung together on fiscal discipline and wise use of taxpayer dollars; on the environment; on a sane foreign policy; and on and on. In other words, they have not been sufficiently moderate. The country would be in a different place had they had the courage to consistently buck their own party on these issues. 2006 has to be the year of accounting for that.
That’s why we need a regional strategy: Consolidating the Northeast as the rock-ribbed Democratic stronghold, just as the South is solidly Republican. It’s not just a numbers game for taking back Congress; it’s about challenging and removing ostensibly moderate enablers for right-wing extremism. When the Republican Party as a whole decides to step back from the brink, then we can talk about comity and compromise. But first they need to get their asses kicked — collectively.
in CT, VT, NH, and ME.
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CT has 3 GOP reps out of 5 and a GOP gov. The Dems simply need to get better at GOTV, and at getting more Dems elected selectmen, city councilmen, mayors, etc. Maintain the bench that the GOP lacks right now, and they’ll grow their way to more success.
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ME has 2, count ’em, 2 GOP senators. Susan Collins is retiring in 2009, so the 2008 election has a good chance of putting a Dem in that seat. Dems sit in both House seats, and so just like CT, ME has to do a good job of getting more Dems in the pipeline and keep building strong GOTV efforts statewide.
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VT is solidly blue, or is it? They’ve got an independent streak, and while VTers tend to be liberal the Dem party doesn’t seem to be really good at GOTV due to so many indies.
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NH — it’s trending blue. Slowly. Maybe. The Dems have to keep working here to try and keep picking up the 4 EVs: otherwise, in terms of Congress, money is much better spent in CT, ME, and VT (in that order I believe).
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So called liberal New England has an even 6-6 split on Senators, and 16-5-1 split D-R-I in the House. If the Dems can pick up Chaffee’s RI-S seat this time around and Collins’ ME-S seat in 08, then it will have really shifted at the Congressional level. Of course, increasing its House lead would be an added perk.
. . .by making it the northeast (and our allies, the californians) vs. the rest of america?
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if so, i’ve got a great slogan for our campaign;
“you’re either with us, or you’re against us.”
kinda rolls off of the tongue doesn’t it?
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as a proud liberal red-stater, i think i would rather try to influence my neighbors back home back into the fold, rather than tell them to eat s***.
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regional strategies create floridas. and ohios. and fractured countries. and a war 150 years ago.
… but again, my point is that the national Republican Party has moved so far to the — gosh, is it really the right? More like “down” — that they’ve left no room for the New England moderates to be moderate. And so the mods need to adapt and fight back against the DeLay/Bush/Cheney wing of their own party, or lose.
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As recently quoted at Kos, Simon Rosenberg puts it this way:
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In a different time, it would be a great benefit to have Shays, Johnson, Simmons and Chafee on the other side of the aisle to work with. But they’ve been yanked too far to the right on too many things — most importantly their votes for caucus leadership.
i really think that there is a growing schism between the moderate poppy bush/powell kind of republicans and the scary movement types. and it’s the northeastern pols that are probably caught most in the middle.
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and pragmatically speaking the divide and conquer tactics that we should be pursuing are not between voters nationwide and regionally , but by driving a wedge between the two ends of republicans. there are a lot of republican voters coast to coast when presented a choice between a susan collins type and a kool-aid sam brownback, would feel far more comfortable with the moderate than the crusader.
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therefore, the driving out of moderates in the gop should only benefit the left. because democrats can go to moderate voters and say; we may have disagreements on certain issues, but we can work with you ala mccain, specter, snowe, whereas the idealogues that have taken control of your party don’t care what you think because they’re on a one-way crusade.
we’ll see if this plays out in michigan.
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and on the flip side, leiberman will try this tack to save his career, and it will be interesting to see how well it plays in ct. (but one notable difference is that within his party, joe-mo is the not the mean average moderate)
…check out the Free State Project!
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Nationwide, Libertarians are buying property and moving to New Hampshire, and intend to secede in a decade or so!
in Killington, Vermo..er, New Hampshire
The Libertarians will take New Hampshire probably around the same time South Carolina secedes again.
Are you suggesting that libertarians are more likely to support Republicans than Democrats right now? Is that because they are expanding the government, restricting liberties, increasing the debt load (which is the future tax burden), and trying to force everyone to follow their religious beliefs? I don’t see how any libertarian could support the Republicans right now. This doesn’t necessarily mean they will support Democrats, but in the short-term, Democrats seem to be far friendlier to libertarian interests. The first priority should be making sure that we maintain basic civil liberties. If those are taken away it will be hard to get them back. Once the war on terror stops being used as an excuse to strip Americans of their freedoms, than I can understand the libertarians voting based on welfare, public goods, and taxes again.
This is like saying all Jews are Democrats!
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What I WAS pointing out to Charley is that a solid blue Northeast may not be on the horizon.
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Visit http://www.freestateproject.org and read for yourself.
Even if there were truly “moderate” Republicans – who didn’t get boxed in their party to vote against their constituents, they still enable other Republicans. Even if they don’t vote for guys like Alito, by being a Republican they give Repubs the committee chairs and power to focus the conversation. And, typically, they’ll vote for cloture just like Chafee did on Alito – allowing fringe right justices on the bench for decades.