Scott Brown’s post It is worth a read. My query is – can Scott Brown resurrect the extinct breed once known as “The New England Moderate Republican”?
It would be strange to have two viable parties carrying on an intelligent discussion rather than the current idealogical sniping from the Rigid Right.
Most “Moderate Republicans” have become Democrats in despair over the hijacking of their party by mean-spirited idealogues with fascist leanings. I know quite of few of them; the Democratic party is enriched by these pragmatic good government types and their commitment to the concept of a Commonwealth.
You know, the folk once known in some quarters as “Rockefeller Republicans”?
Please share widely!
From the Boston Globe’s photo gallery of Boston College’s graduation last week…
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p>”No one sitting with me to my Left, no one sitting to my Right…what’s a Rockefeller Republican to do?”
Scotty’s a player. Was back in the Cosmo days with the coeds. Played the teabaggers and the Reds in January. Now he’s playing the rest of us. He knows the teabagger thing won’t do it for him next time so he’s gonna try the “I’m an independent moderate” line. Bout as sincere as “come here often?” was.
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There was a time when Republicans were actually at the forefront of progressive politics – think Teddy Roosevelt, George Norris, Robert LaFollette, Fiorello LaGuardia or John Lindsay. In Massachusetts think of Frank Sargent, Sllvio Conte or Ed Brooke as progressively inclined Republicans before the breed died out.
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p>Rockefeller was a old fashioned conservative in a country club big business type of way – and given his family owned Chase Manhattan, then the biggest bank in the world, hard to see how he wouldn’t have been.
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p>Today’s so-called conservatives are actually radical right-wing populists. Hell, Nixon was a liberal on domestic policy compared to this lot.
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p>Brown is being pragmatic with these votes. Politically he wants to show he is his own man. But, I don’t think he possesses a moderate old-school conservative philosophy in the Rockefeller mold. He is not a Brooke, a Chafee or even a Weld. He’s a social conservative with a harsh Reaganite view of government and its supposed failings. Charlie Baker seems much more close to the type of Republican you’d like to see more of but sadly he too has pandered to the populist right in his race for Governor.
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I think he’s more just trying to walk to tightrope between the moderate to liberal Massachusetts electorate and his far right financial backers. He knows he can’t vote party line every time, so he’s choosing a few key votes that will please moderate voters, while minimizing the amount they will piss off his base.
political philosophy, just a general direction.
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p>He’s a businessman conservative who takes himself seriously enough to convey a sense of gravitas in spite of knowing very, very little.
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p>Brown lacks the gravitas, but he has the good looks and superficial appeal. He know very little too.
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p>Then again, Nixon was a liberal on domestic policy compared to the direction of American politics generally. He helped create the Environmental Protection Agency and even proposed a plan to ensure a guaranteed minimum income for poor Americans. Both would be impossible to create today due to the dramatic shift to the right in the Republican Party.
The Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. They have plenty of power to do whatever they want — abolish the filibuster, for example, and pass a dramatic legislative program by majorities of one in the House and 50-50 splits in the Senate tie-broken by Biden.
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p>The problem is as much lack of Democratic leadership as it is the “dramatic shift to the right in the Republican Party.” In fact, insofar as that shift helped produce the Republican collapse in 2008, it may even have helped, rather than hurt, the potential, if not the actual, ability of the Democrats to enact sweeping legislation like that you discuss.
Not so sure about that. Remember it’s easier to herd sheep than cats. Certainly the GOP has been more willing to adopt top-down lock-step legislative strategies, but its also true that it is easier to keep a GOP person loyal to the leadership policies than a Dem. For Dems to achieve the same, we’d have to enact some loyalty policies that are actually anathema to our core ideas of responsible liberal democracy. We may reach a point where the pragmatic needs will force us to hold our nose and do it, but while I celebrate the accomplishments that would get achieved in such a context, I’ll also lament.
I’m not sure what type of leadership could keep someone like Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson on side every vote.
… these people insist on driving popular left policy toward a less-popular middle or right. But we’d also not mind as much if the right moved less in lock-step as well. I think Obama’s campaign largely failed to deliver all it’s aspirations largely because it depending on inspiring GOP into caring more about accomplishments than caring about the natural incentives typical of the out-of-power party which is to make sure things don’t get accomplished and then sell yourself as the alternative to what didn’t work. The fact that the GOP are so used to acting in lock-step makes this type of strategy all the more difficult.
…as the arcane Senate rules which allow them to hold the balance of power. Plus the President needs to use the bully pulpit better to, for example, pound his fist every day for the public option rather than caving at the first sign of trouble. Lord knows he has the rhetorical gifts to pull it off.