Junior college candidate attacks Tea Party

The Unablogger

In the non-partisan contest for Trustee of the Junior College District for St. Louis Community College (City and County of St. Louis),  subdistrict 3, one candidate, Allison Stenger, has attacked her opponent, incumbent Trustee Joan McGivney, for being (gasp!) a friend of the Tea Party. In a glossy, full-color mailing, Stenger says she will “stand up to Joan McGivney and her Tea Party friends.”

Apparently Stenger regards the Tea Party to be so negative, so repulsive, that she can win votes by tying her opponent to it, even worth fabricating such a connection. I have never seen McGivney at a Tea Party function. Of course, Stenger merely implied, without actually saying, that McGivney is a Tea Partier; the reference was to McGivney “and her Tea Party friends.” So, Stenger must think it’s evil merely to befriend a Tea Partier!

McGivney, Stenger’s opponent, has been a college trustee for just under a year, having won a special election for an unexpired term last year, when she defeated former Claire McCaskill campaign aide (now State Rep.) Bob Burns (D-Lemay). McGivney has 23 years of real-world work experience, including her own small business and 17 years as a Southwestern Bell executive. According to the Webster-Kirkwood Times, her resume is loaded with dedicated public service, having served on her local city council and school board, as a volunteer tutor at OASIS, and as a mentor at St. Louis City public schools. The Times notes that she was Webster Groves Citizen of the Year in 2002.

In contrast, Stenger’s qualifications are pretty slim. She doesn’t even have a campaign web site or Facebook page, probably because there’s nothing to say. Just turned 26, she has been out of school for less than a year. She is a personal injury attorney with the firm for whom she clerked during law school. During that clerkship she married one of the firm’s partners, St. Louis County Councilman Steve Stenger (D-Affton), 41, whose name and photograph appear prominently in her campaign materials. So, she filled in the gaps in her resume by cheap-shotting the Tea Party.

Stenger’s other “qualification” is her willingness to be the pawn of teachers unions, who want to oust the college’s chancellor. Teachers unions oppose McGivney because she acts independently of special interests, including the teachers unions, and bases her decisions on facts. McGivney also acts as a guardian of taxpayers interests, which are often at odds with those of the unions.

From the standpoint of good government, it makes sense that the management of the Junior College District’s multimillion dollar budget is better entrusted to a thoughtful, experienced taxpayer advocate than someone just a year out of school who would owe her election to unions representing the district’s employees.

And from the standpoint of the Tea Party, now it’s personal. Just like the Starbucks CEO’s recent declaration that opponents of same sex marriage are no longer welcome at his stores, Stenger’s pledge to “stand up to Joan McGivney and her Tea Party friends” makes it clear that Stenger does not want Tea Party votes. And McGivney’s taxpayer advocacy and independence from special interests also make her attractive to Tea Party supporters, even if she isn’t actually a member.

Jr. College candidate attacks Tea Party

The Unablogger

In the non-partisan contest for Trustee of the Junior College District for St. Louis Community College (City and County of St. Louis),  subdistrict 3, one candidate, Allison Stenger, has attacked her opponent, incumbent Trustee Joan McGivney, for being (gasp!) a friend of the Tea Party. In a glossy, full-color mailing, Stenger says she will “stand up to Joan McGivney and her Tea Party friends.”

Apparently Stenger regards the Tea Party to be so negative, so repulsive, that she can win votes by tying her opponent to it, even worth fabricating such a connection. I have never seen McGivney at a Tea Party function. Of course, Stenger merely implied, without actually saying, that McGivney is a Tea Partier; the reference was to McGivney “and her Tea Party friends.” So, Stenger must think it’s evil merely to befriend a Tea Partier!

McGivney, Stenger’s opponent, has been a college trustee for just under a year, having won a special election for an unexpired term last year, when she defeated former Claire McCaskill campaign aide (now State Rep.) Bob Burns (D-Lemay). McGivney has 23 years of real-world work experience, including her own small business and 17 years as a Southwestern Bell executive. According to the Webster-Kirkwood Times, her resume is loaded with dedicated public service, having served on her local city council and school board, as a volunteer tutor at OASIS, and as a mentor at St. Louis City public schools. The Times notes that she was Webster Groves Citizen of the Year in 2002.

In contrast, Stenger’s qualifications are pretty slim. She doesn’t even have a campaign web site or Facebook page, probably because there’s nothing to say. Just turned 26, she has been out of school for less than a year. She is a personal injury attorney with the firm for whom she clerked during law school. During that clerkship she married one of the firm’s partners, St. Louis County Councilman Steve Stenger (D-Affton), 41, whose name and photograph appear prominently in her campaign materials. So, she filled in the gaps in her resume by cheap-shotting the Tea Party.

Stenger’s other “qualification” is her willingness to be the pawn of teachers unions, who want to oust the college’s chancellor. Teachers unions oppose McGivney because she acts independently of special interests, including the teachers unions, and bases her decisions on facts. McGivney also acts as a guardian of taxpayers interests, which are often at odds with those of the unions.

From the standpoint of good government, it makes sense that the management of the Junior College District’s multimillion dollar budget is better entrusted to a thoughtful, experienced taxpayer advocate than someone just a year out of school who would owe her election to unions representing the district’s employees.

And from the standpoint of the Tea Party, now it’s personal. Just like the Starbucks CEO’s recent declaration that opponents of same sex marriage are no longer welcome at his stores, Stenger’s pledge to “stand up to Joan McGivney and her Tea Party friends” makes it clear that Stenger does not want Tea Party votes. And McGivney’s taxpayer advocacy and independence from special interests also make her attractive to Tea Party supporters, even if she isn’t actually a member.

Sabato’s partisan rant re: electoral college reform

The Unablogger

I like Larry Sabato, his Crystal Ball column and the fine work of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. But his post criticizing a proposal to reform the Electoral College falls well short of the standards ordinarily maintained by him and his organization. His thesis is easily unraveled, and it seems to be transparently based on concern that the change could hurt Democrats.

The proposal at issue would change the Electoral College by awarding one electoral vote to the winner of each individual congressional district and the state’s remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner, the way Maine and Nebraska already award their electoral votes. The other 48 states and District of Columbia currently award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.

Crystal Ball‘s hyperbolic headline screams that the plan would “undermine democracy.” Sabato’s personal comment called the proposal “truly rotten” and claimed that it would “fix and game the Electoral College” to benefit Republicans.

Really?

The main analysis, penned by Senior Columnist Prof. Alan Abramowitz, claims the such a plan would have changed the result of the 2012 election because of gerrymandered congressional districts, specifically citing Republican-drawn plans in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, all states that Obama carried last year. But those states’ plans weren’t particularly gerrymandered or even unfair. Abramowitz failed to mention the most blatant gerrymanders, by Republicans in North Carolina, by Democrats in Illinois, and by a nominally non-partisan board in California. Since Romney won North Carolina statewide, the proposed plan would actually have given Obama some electors from that state that he did not receive under the current system. The reverse would have been true in Illinois and California.

Whining about gerrymandering ignores the fact that who benefits from gerrymandering changes over time. In Missouri, for example, the current Republican-drawn map, which caused the state’s loss of a seat from decennial reapportionment to come at the Democrats’ expense, represented the first time Republicans had drawn the state’s map since 1920. The liberally oriented main stream academics and media rarely objected when unfair redistricting favored Democrats.

The real reason that the proposed plan would have given the Republican nominee an electoral majority in 2012 even though the Democrat won the national popular vote by several million votes (and why Republicans control the House of Representatives even though Democratic congressional candidates outpolled Republican candidates nationally) is because of housing patterns. People who vote Democratic tend to congregate in metropolitan areas filled with people who think and vote like themselves, while people who vote Republican are more geographically dispersed. In the McKinley/Teddy Roosevelt era, the politics were exactly reversed, with Republicans dominating most cities and Democrats dominating most rural areas. (The red/blue state map of McKinley’s 1896 election is virtually a mirror image of the 2000 election, except for five states not then admitted to the Union.)

The rationale for the Electoral College is to give relevance to a broader geographical range of voters. When George W. Bush was criticized that he had won unfairly and against the will of the people in 2000, he explained that he would have campaigned differently if the popular vote had determined the outcome, but he campaigned according to the rules in place. Barack Obama did exactly the same thing, surgically concentrating on just ten “swing” states. Electing the president by the popular vote would put a premium on appealing to geographically concentrated voters who could be reached most economically, to the detriment of everyone else. That would shift attention away from most “swing” states, mostly to the benefit of single-party machine areas. Since Democrats are geographically concentrated, that plan would favor Democrats. And that bias would presumably be just fine for liberal academics.

Balkanizing presidential election returns into separate, independent elections (51 current jurisdictions, 486 under the proposal) insulates the election from fraud (whether by multiple or ineligible voting, voter suppression, or logistical problems with overseas and military ballots) by isolating its impact to a single area that is already likely to vote for the party that would benefit from the fraud. A few political machines (either urban Democrat or rural Republican) are in a better position to steal a national election in a larger election than in 51 or 486 smaller ones. For example, under the current system, the Chicago Democratic machine allegedly changed the outcome of the razor-thin 1960 election by swinging Illinois’ electoral votes to Kennedy with late reporting votes. (Democrats may prefer confused butterfly ballot voting in Florida in 2000 as an election-changing example.) Under a popular vote system, a few like-minded machines could manufacture millions of phony votes and steal an election that wasn’t close. Under the district vote proposal, they could have only affected congressional districts that they were going to win anyway, plus the two statewide votes.

The proposed reform would bring the election results closer to the people by giving relevance to their individual district, while still giving some attention to statewide results. The voices (and votes) of urban Democrats in Missouri and Texas and rural Republicans in Illinois and California would actually matter. Overall, that would currently favor Republicans. At other times (e.g., 1945-1980) it would favor Democrats. And the system that’s in place now isn’t really all that bad.

Democrats bork themselves

The Unablogger

The passing of Judge Robert Bork is a sad day for conservatives and all of America. The country will forever suffer the lost opportunity to have had his intellect and principled guidance on our highest court. Democrats rewrote the rule book to deny him his rightful place on the Supreme Court.

The Senate’s refusal to confirm President Reagan’s nomination of Bork to the high court caused Reagan to settle for a less principled choice, Anthony Kennedy, a moderate who would become the court’s “swing vote” for over twenty years.

But now, Bork’s passing has its own ironic revenge. Had he been on the court, his death would have created a vacancy from the conservative wing during the presidency of a liberal Democrat with a liberal Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. It would have given President Obama the ability to turn the court’s majority over to the liberal wing, something statists and other liberals have craved ever since President Nixon changed the court’s course by naming Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren as chief justice. It would have marked a Democrat President’s first opportunity to replace a conservative justice with a liberal since 1967, when Lyndon Johnson named Thurgood Marshall to succeed Tom Clark. Conservatives would retake that seat in 1990, when Marshall was succeeded by Clarence Thomas.

But that liberal opportunity is not to be, at least not just now, and it isn’t to be because liberal Democrats refused to do the right thing in 1987. If they had followed time-honored precedent, the impeccable legal credentials of Bork would have required them to confirm, in spite of the senators’ philosophic and political differences with the judge, just as senators of both parties had done repeatedly in the past. But no, liberal Democrats, led by a young prospective presidential contender named Joe Biden, played politics and changed the unwritten rules to deny Bork the position he deserved.

What the Democrats and the nation got instead was Kennedy, who besides being more moderate was also nine years younger than Bork. Kennedy remains very much alive and still on the court. And thanks to another wrongful Democratic act, Kennedy isn’t even a swing vote any more. That second act was President Obama’s attempt to bully the court into submission to his agenda. He singled the court out for criticism in his 2010 State of the Union speech, which hardened the resolve of the court’s conservative wing. It especially angered Kennedy, who has been a more reliable conservative vote ever since.

What goes around comes around. Yes, America misses the well-reasoned conservative decisions that a Justice Bork would have rendered for some 25 years. He is gone now, and he is missed. But the guy we had to “settle” for lives on, stronger than ever.  Obama and Biden inadvertently did their parts, some 22 years apart, to preserve the conservative edge on the Supreme Court today.

Silver linings around the dark 2012 cloud

Amid rumblings in the gleeful lamestream media about how the demographics of the evolving electorate doom Republicans to permanent minority status, there are a few glimmers of hope for conservatives in the exit polls, especially when compared to prior elections.

The Unablogger

Perhaps most important, voters are growing more conservative with respect to the appropriate role of government. Voter attitude flipped from thinking, 51% to 43%, that the government should do more to solve the nation’s problems in 2008 to believing (by the same margin) in 2012 that the government is already doing too much. The conservative attitude in 2012 even surpassed the 49-46 margin by which voters had opposed more government involvement when Bush won reelection in 2004. So how did these voters reelect Obama? Because the “takers” are lining up better than the “makers.” Obama won reelection because he carried more of the voters who shared his governmental vision (81-17) than Romney did among the voters who shared his (74-24). The table is set for an articulate advocate for smaller government.

Rays of hope also appear for conservatives among the President’s strongest supporters. Even though Obama carried voters under 30 by a solid 60-37 margin in 2012, that deficit was a big improvement over 2008. Young whites moved dramatically, from favoring Obama over McCain, 51-44, to backing Romney by 10 points, 54-44. Even as older minority voters were moving even more toward Obama, young minority voters moved a few points toward Romney. When it comes to the youth vote, Democrats may be premature in hanging the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

While African Americans were Obama’s most devoted supporters, their support actually receded 2 points this year. Black defection was most notable among young blacks (4 points) and black men (7 points). Perhaps greater improvement is possible once a black president is no longer on the ticket or in office.

Obama’s hostility towards Israel took its toll. His 69-30 margin among Jewish voters obscured the fact that Jews trended more Republican in 2012 than any other religious group. While most religious groups of voters (including atheists) moved about 3 points from Obama in 2008 to Romney in 2012, Jewish voters made the same move by 9 points. While the 2012 Republican rebound failed to bounce all the way back to Bush’s levels for Catholics and Protestants in 2004 and improved over Bush’s 2000 performance by a single point, the Republican Jewish vote improved 5 points over 2004 and 11 points over 2000. Whether the shift is sui generis to 2012 or persists like the Democrat gains among “other religions” in 2004 and atheists in 2008 remains to be seen.

Obama’s support among other key parts of his base may have been overstated. With all the racket from labor unions, you’d think union families would have been nearly unanimous for the President. But Romney won 40% of them. And that’s not really new. George W. Bush also won 40% of the vote from union families in 2004, and even John McCain won a substantially similar 39% in 2008.

Similarly, while gay, lesbian and bisexual voters gave Obama a 76-22 majority in 2012, that was no different than their support for Kerry when Bush won reelection in 2004. (McCain had actually run 6 points better among those voters, but Obama’s position switch on gay marriage won them back.) At least this election didn’t break any new ground with this group. Since gays tend to have relatively high disposable income, Republicans have the potential to fare better with them when economic issues become more important.

Finally, Obama’s 2008 success in rallying both the upper and lower classes against the middle was not repeated this year. His campaign’s appeals to classic FDR-era class warfare backfired. Voters with family incomes over $200,000 flipped from 52-46 for Obama in 2008 to 54-45 for Romney. Obama’s specific targeting of incomes exceeding $250,000 was not well received by voters earning that much, as Romney carried them by 13 points, 55-42. Obama had expected to offset those losses with big gains among voters with family income under $50,000, but their support remained flat.

Conservatives have their work cut out for them in the near future, but prospects aren’t as gloomy as they appeared on election night.

Obama won by winning the selfish

While the lamestream media perpetuates the stereotype that Republicans are selfish because we oppose allowing the government to redistribute our wealth to others, the 2012 national exit poll showed that those who cared most about themselves voted for Obama, while Romney carried voters with a more national interest in mind.

Exit pollsters asked voters this question, and respondents provided these answers:

Sample: 10798 respondents

Which ONE of these four candidate qualities mattered most in deciding how you voted for president? (CHECK ONLY ONE)	Total	Obama	Romney
Shares my values	27%	42%	55%
Is a strong leader	18%	38%	61%
Cares about people like me	21%	81%	18%
Has a vision for the future	29%	45%	54%

Two of those choices (“is a strong leader” and “has a vision for the future”) typify a voter that is concerned most about what is best for the country. Those thoughtful voters went for Romney by a combined total of 57% to 42%.

The other two choices (“shares my values” and “cares about people like me“) typify a voter that is concerned most about what is best for himself or herself. Those selfish voters went for Obama by 20 points, 59% to 39%.

An obvious revenue compromise

The Unablogger

The lame-duck Congress and just plain lame President are leading the nation towards the Fiscal Cliff created by last year’s budget compromise. Republicans want to make the necessary spending cuts, while Democrats seek to redistribute wealth by taxing the rich. In particular, Democrats seek to force Republicans who pledged not to raise taxes to do so, to damage them politically with their base. Democrats recall their 1990 success in chiding then-President George H. W. Bush into breaking his famous “read my lips” pledge and then hammering him relentlessly for doing what they prodded him to do, leading to Bush’s resounding defeat for reelection.

Beyond that political reason, Republicans also resist tax increases because they understand (and Democrats don’t) that rate increases do not necessarily result in revenue increases, because higher taxes reduce consumer spending and cost jobs. Republicans particularly appreciate the negative impact of tax-increases on “the wealthy” on small-business job creators.

Unfortunately, Republicans control only the House of Representatives, and action to avert the Fiscal Cliff requires the cooperation of an uncooperative Democrat president and an uncooperative Democrat majority in the Senate. Averting the fiscal cliff (and the destructive military cuts that would ensue) regrettably but necessarily requires compromising on “revenue.” The key is to identify and utilize revenue sources that either don’t or only minimally hinder job creation. I identified some sources in an earlier post, but some sort of rate increase will also be necessary in order to feed the egos of Democrats who are willing to drive the country over the cliff in order to force tax rate increases down the throats of their hated Republican rivals. The Associated Press reports* that some Democrats, led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), even advocate doing nothing to avert the cliff, for the purely political motive of gaining bargaining leverage.

Here’s an obvious idea. Go ahead and raise the rates for income exceeding $250,000 back to Clinton-era rates, but exempt small business income from the increases. Income from wages, salaries and “passive income” from dividends, interest, royalties and the like which exceed $250,000 in the aggregate would be subject to the higher rates, but the job creators would continue to be subject to their current rates. And make these permanent (as permanent as any Congress is empowered to do), to relieve the job creators of the uncertainty that has hindered them throughout the recession.

Computing business income separately from non-exempt income is easy enough to do. Just use the same method currently used for the separate computation of the tax on qualified dividends and capital gains.

No, this isn’t a perfect plan. Taxpayers subject to the higher rates may not be making hiring decisions, but they are still likely to reduce their consumer spending, which will reduce the amount of tax revenue expected to be generated by the increases. This is reminiscent of the 1990s, when Democrats decided to soak those evil, selfish rich people by enacting an excise tax on yacht purchases, which caused yacht purchases to plummet, which put lots of union boat-builders out of work. Duh! The public outcry forced the then-Democratic Congress to retreat with their tails between their legs and repeal their crown jewel of wealth redistribution. The current proposed rate increase won’t be as targeted as the yacht tax, but private discretionary spending will go down with fewer and/or less expensive vacations and the like, and the lowest-income people will again bear the brunt of the policy.  But that’s the bed the Democrats make, and we should make them sleep in it.

But if we can avoid the draconian cuts to our national security without hamstringing the job creators, let’s do it. It’s the best we can hope for in this divided government.

*The St. Louis Post Dispatch printed part of the AP story (without naming any names), buried on page A15 of its November 14, 2012 issue, but had scrubbed the story from its web site by the time this post was written.