Tag Archives: GOP

Those Big, Bad, Trial Lawyers

Richard Mourdock and Mike Pence have been having some problems the past couple of days trying to downplay their enthusiastic participation in the GOP’s War on Women–explaining that they really, truly love female incubators…er, women. (We just need to remember why their God put us on this earth…)

So it may be timely to remind ourselves that the War on Women (and its attendant dishonesty) isn’t limited to matters of reproduction.

For example, I see where the Romney/Ryan ticket is explaining its lack of support for the Lilly Ledbetter Act by claiming the legislation isn’t really about equal pay for equal work. No sireee. It’s just an effort to enrich those awful, terrible, liberal trial lawyers.

A couple of days ago, on ABC, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a leading Romney surrogate, argued, “[J]ust because they call a piece of legislation an equal pay bill doesn’t make it so. In fact, much of this legislation is, in many respects, nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers collect their fees and file lawsuits, which may not contribute at all whatsoever to increasing pay equity in the workplace.”

Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, said something very similar last week, criticizing the proposal as being little more than “opening up the lawsuits and statute of limitations.”

Romney allies have justified their opposition to the Lilly Ledbetter Act on these grounds for months. Pete Hoekstra, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay law “a nuisance.” Another Romney surrogate said the law is little more than “a handout to trial lawyers.” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) agrees–of course, he approved and signed legislation repealing Wisconsin’s equal pay law, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

There’s just one little problem with this effort to pretend that their problem isn’t with women getting treated equally. As it happens, trial lawyers–no matter how clever–cannot collect a fee unless and until they win the case.

Let me put this in language even non-lawyers will understand. Trial lawyers generally take cases on contingency. That means that unless they win the case, neither they nor the client will see a penny. Contingent fee arrangements, whatever their defects, give people access to the justice system who could not otherwise afford a lawyer. Contingent fee arrangements also provide a powerful incentive to lawyers to take only “meritorious” cases–no lawyer in his right mind wants to spend months or years on a case that’s a likely loser and won’t pay a dime. (Even when the lawyer thinks a case is very solid, there is always a substantial risk of losing. As I used to tell my clients, going to trial is always a crap shoot, no matter how strong a case you think you have.)

So–if we follow the argument being made by the Romney camp, they oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Act because lawyers who win cases–by proving that their clients were denied equal pay for equal work–will make money.

But they aren’t against equal pay for women. No siree. If you want to give all your employees who are doing the same work the same pay, why that’s fine. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t have to worry that the big bad trial lawyer will come after you.

They aren’t against equal pay for us girls. They’re just against providing a remedy to those of us who get shafted.

Just like they aren’t for rape. They’re just against allowing a woman who gets pregnant as a result do anything about it.

They may not be humane (or even human), but you have to give them credit: in this, at least, they’re consistent!

Comments

Projecting the Vote

There’s so much fabrication floating around the internet, it’s hard to trust anything you read–especially as the election draws closer. So when a Facebook friend posted an article from a source I didn’t recognize, my first inclination was to categorize it with the various paranoid fantasies of “dirty deeds” and “voter fraud” that have grown thicker than ragweed this election cycle. The article claimed that Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, and other members of the Romney family, are part owners of Ohio’s voting machines–specifically, those supplied by Hart Intercivic.

A search of Snopes turned up nothing, pro or con. Google, however, was more accommodating, as were a few Facebook friends. The story was corroborated by several sources, among them Politifact and that noted left-wing publication, Forbes. Forbes reported that Hart Intercivic is largely owned by H.I.G. Capital, that H.I.G. Capital employees hold two of the five board seats–and both of them have made direct contributions to Romney’s campaign. Tony Tamer, the firm’s founder, is a major bundler for Romney, as are three other directors of H.I.G. In fact, H.I.G. is Romney’s 11th largest contributor. And to top it all off, H.I.G. has shared business interests with Solamere Capital, owned by…Tagg Romney.

Election experts have long warned that electronic voting machines are vulnerable to hacking; that’s one reason many jurisdictions have begun insisting on a paper trail. (I’m told some European countries have recently gone back to paper ballots in order to reassure voters of the legitimacy of election results.) There are all sorts of reasons why this latest bit of news is disquieting: the centrality of Ohio in our electoral vote system, the persistent accusations of irregularities in that state’s vote in 2004, and the increasingly brazen efforts by Republicans to suppress minority votes.

It began with so-called “Voter ID” laws, purportedly aimed at in-person voter fraud, a largely imaginary problem. As some unguarded comments by GOP operatives have confirmed, the real aim of such laws is to suppress the votes of elderly, poor and minority Americans–those most likely to lack the documentation, transportation and/or resources needed to obtain the necessary ID.

The Voter ID efforts have been accompanied by persistent measures to restrict voting–to limit early voting periods, and refuse to authorize satellite voting sites, and generally to make exercising ones franchise as inconvenient as possible, again on the theory that such measures would be most likely to discourage lower-income voters who tend to skew Democratic.

In the past week or so, there have been reports from swing states of other shenanigans: in Florida, Republican operatives were caught trashing registrations; in several other localities, robo-calls have been made to minority voters “reminding” them to vote–on November 8th. (The election, of course, will take place on November 6th.) Then there were the billboards in minority neighborhoods, featuring a judge’s gavel and the text “Voter Fraud is a felony—up to 3 1/2 years and a $10,000 fine.” Those appeared in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee. (Clear Channel has now responded to community outrage and begun taking them down; however, much of the harm has been done.)

I’m sure there must be places where the Democrats are engaging in similar tactics, and they certainly have done so in the past, but reports of Democratic chicanery  haven’t surfaced in this election cycle. My sense is that these are the sort of tactics used by folks who smell defeat–who realize that winning will require a bit of “fudging” here and there, and for whom winning is more important than playing fair and square. This year, despite the close national polls, that best describes the Romney/Ryan team.

Their faux concerns about voter fraud are an example of what psychologists call “projection.”

Comments

In Defense of Apostasy

A good friend of mine, one of those thoughtful Republicans from a former era, has decided–after internal struggle–that he will cast his vote for Richard Mourdock–despite his obvious distaste for the man and his positions. His justification is that Mourdock will cast his first vote for leadership of the Senate. My friend, a long-time Republican who has held elective office, is a “team player.” He cites the old adage: “he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”

I understand the reasoning. If you truly believe that your “team” has better ideas, will do better by the country, you can justify swallowing hard and supporting dubious team members.

But what if your whole team is playing dirty? What if the mean-spirited and intellectually limited guy you are holding your nose and voting for is more typical than you want to admit? What if your team has abandoned the ideas and positions that drew you to join in the first place? Where should your loyalties lie–to the team, or the sport? To your party, or the country?

People join political parties for many reasons. Mom and Dad were Democrats or Republicans. You want to get ahead, and you live in one of the increasingly common areas where one party dominates. You identify as union, or management, and that identification trumps other concerns. Or you develop a political philosophy and choose the party with the platform that is most consistent with that ideology. Whatever the reason for that original choice, political scientists tell us that few of us rethink it. Instead, we continue to root for our first “team,” much as sports fans do.

In my own case (being a teenager who read a lot and didn’t date much), I became a Republican because I had formed pretty firm political positions; I was a social liberal and a fiscal conservative (still am), and in the early 1960s, the Democrats were much farther to the left than I was (or than Democrats are today). I was drawn to the libertarian wing of the Republican party, which came closest to my own beliefs. In the years since, both the Democrats and GOP have moved further and further to the right, and I became less and less comfortable with my “team.” George W. Bush was the final straw, and I left the party. I became an apostate. Many of my former political friends understood; others became very chilly, and some very critical opinions of my apostasy have gotten back to me. Fair enough.

But here’s the thing. Politics isn’t football, where who wins and loses doesn’t ultimately make a difference in the lives of real people. Many of my Republican friends from the “old days” recognize how much the party has changed, but they can’t bring themselves to sever the bond. They tell themselves that the Mourdocks and the Pences and Akins and Wests and Bachmanns and Brouns and so many others are just outliers, that the Democrats also have whack jobs (true enough, just not nearly as many and not currently in control of the party). So they justify continuing to support the very people who are destroying the once-respectable Republican brand.

No intellectually honest person will agree with any political party 100% of the time–or even 90%. We all fit imperfectly into those political boxes. But when the party you vote for holds positions you know to be deeply damaging to the body politic, when too many of the people you are nominating are uninformed bloviators and  worse, it’s time to consider apostasy.

If we all became “swing voters,” willing to abandon either party when it loses its way–if neither party could depend upon a base of knee-jerk support from people who are cheering for a team rather than voting their policy preferences–I think we’d get better parties.

Comments

Out of the Mouths of Pundits

Peggy Noonan had a column a day or so ago in the Wall Street Journal in which she methodically detailed the ineptitude of the Romney campaign, and mused about what it might take to get that effort back on track. Much of what she had to say was familiar, conventional campaign wisdom to those of us who’ve spent lots of time in and around political contests, but it was her next-to-last paragraph that really struck me. Noonan wrote:

A campaign is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: victory.

That is demonstrably true–and not just true about political campaigns, but about the country’s political and social life. That said, it is a truth that has become, more or less explicitly, the hotly contested framework of this Presidential race.

Although the GOP took the President’s “you didn’t build that” remark out of context, Romney and the Republicans have made disagreement with what he actually did say the central theme of their message.

The President (and Elizabeth Warren, and others running for office this cycle) insist that “we are all in this together,” that citizens depend upon each other and our common institutions in myriad ways, large and small. The businessperson who succeeds deserves respect and admiration for his diligence and enterprise, but we also need to recognize the enabling role played by government: Mr. Successful ships his goods on roads provided by the taxpayer; he depends for security on police and firefighters supported by our taxes; he hires workers trained in our public schools. Ms. Businessperson sells those goods in markets that would not exist but for a legal and economic infrastructure that creates the rules and stability without  which people do not have the confidence–or often the wherewithal–to consume. (People in third world countries are not inherently less entrepreneurial, but even if they create a better mousetrap, there are few people able to buy it.)

Recognizing the importance of social infrastructure does not diminish the value of success or hard work, as the Romney campaign has charged. To the contrary, it is the refusal to recognize our essential interconnectedness and interdependence that is not only arrogant, but dangerous and short-sighted.

The GOP’s chosen message has been “it’s all about us, the job creators. There are makers and takers, and we are the makers. And we did it all by ourselves.”

The Democratic message this cycle (with apologies to Ms. Noonan) has been “A country is a communal exercise. It isn’t about individual entrepreneurs. It’s people pitching in together, aiming their high talents at one single objective: a fair shake for everyone.”

As the President said at the Democratic Convention, it’s about citizenship.

Comments

The Long Game

I rarely watch daytime or weekend television, but I caught a really thought-provoking discussion earlier this morning. “Up with Chris Hayes” had a panel discussing–what else?–the recent conventions. This discussion was a bit different, however; it began with Hayes’ observation about a shift in the tone of Americans’ interminable “culture war.”

Hayes noted something that had struck me as well: whereas in previous election cycles, the Republicans had been the “aggressors” on culture war issues and the Democrats had largely been defensive, this year the roles were reversed. Whatever their message to the rabid base, in public Republicans ran away from the rhetoric of folks like Scott Akin, pooh-poohed the notion that they were anti-contraception (personhood amendment? what personhood amendment?), barely mentioned same-sex marriage, and tried to obscure their position on immigration by highlighting their most prominent Latino, Marco Rubio.

The Democrats, on the other hand, mounted a pretty full-throated defense of reproductive rights, trumpeted their platform’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, and even featured a young speaker who personally benefitted from the President’s “Dream Act Lite” Executive Order.

The turnaround, when you think about it, was pretty extraordinary.

It would be nice to think that Democrats’ willingness to champion these issues was evidence that the party has grown a spine, but let’s get real. I can guarantee that each of these decisions was based upon extensive polling and focus group results–just as the GOP’s decision to soft-pedal and obscure their own views undoubtedly was. These decisions reflected profound changes in public opinion, as Stan Greenberg, the Democratic pollster on the panel, confirmed. The Democrats have pretty much won the culture wars. (When my generation dies off, the victory will be complete.)

This discussion elicited a really interesting observation from one of the panelists, who described the Democratic strategy as long-term, and the GOPs as short-term. The Republicans are arguing that their candidate is more competent to manage the economy. Even if they are able to win this election with that argument, their next candidate may be viewed as competent or not–it’s an argument that will have to be made “from scratch.” The Democrats are arguing that they are the party better able to manage America–the party that will better reflect the economic and social needs and beliefs of women, immigrants, GLBT folks and the middle class. If they maintain that image, it is an identity will serve the party into the future.

They are playing the demographic long game.

Republicans know the demographics are against them–at least, against what the once Grand Old Party has become.

If this is, as many pundits insist, a “base” election, the election of 2012 will come down to turnout, and the Democratic base is already much larger than the Republican base. Hence the almost frantic efforts to disenfranchise poor and minority voters and constrict voting hours. Hence the gazillions of dollars being poured into the Presidential and Congressional campaigns. Those tactics might work this time, although I’m increasingly inclined to think they won’t, but   the culture is moving fast and in a direction that makes future victories unlikely in the absence of a move back toward the political center.

Of course, a Romney reprise of the George W. Bush Administration can do a lot of damage in the short term.

Comments