Tag Archives: Mike Pence

Money Matters

When the Supreme Court decided Buckley v. Valeo and declared, in essence, that money equaled speech, I agreed. I have always been a free-speech purist, and it seemed reasonable to me that the freedom to express my opinion should include my freedom to spend my money supporting issues and candidates with whom I agreed.

I was wrong. The Court was wrong. Money is not speech, and corporations are not “people.”

Citizens United should have been a predictable consequence of Buckley. Recent experience teaches us that reasonable restrictions on political spending and insistence on full disclosure are absolutely essential to the democratic process.

I do not make the argument that the candidate with the most money will always win an election. There are plenty of examples to the contrary, and lots of reasons besides financial ones why elections are won or lost. That said, in order to be viable, candidates need enough money to compete, to get their message out. Money more often than not makes the crucial difference.

Here in central Indiana, the airwaves are already full of gauzy, saccharine 30-second spots introducing us to a new and improved version of Mike Pence. The real Pence polls high negatives. He has a legislative record that is–to  be kind about it–undistinguished, and a hard-right self-righteousness that is off-putting. He is also clearly favored to win the gubernatorial race, for two reasons: he will have lots and lots of money, courtesy of many of the same plutocrats who supported Scott Walker; and his opponent, who has shown an unfortunate propensity for unforced political errors, has thus far not raised nearly enough.

If Gregg continues his lackluster fundraising, Pence will continue to dominate the airwaves, airbrushing his own persona and redefining Gregg’s. By the time November rolls around, voters will choose between two caricatures bearing very little resemblance to the flesh-and-blood individuals upon whom they are based.

This situation is not unique to Indiana. Thanks to our conflation of a right to spend unlimited sums of money with a right to freedom of expression, we have turned campaigns into arms races, where a candidate’s ability to ingratiate himself with big-money donors outweighs any other strengths he may bring to the table. Even good candidates find themselves compelled to spend untold hours fundraising, at the expense of the sorts of “retail” politics in which voters have unmediated contact with candidates for office.

Given enough money and a really good media operation, Lady Gaga could run for office as a clone of Mother Teresa. It wouldn’t be any more of a stretch than Mike Pence pretending to be someone who cares more about jobs and the economy than about demonizing gays and de-funding Planned Parenthood.

Houston, we have a problem.

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Only in Indiana

Over at the Daily Beast, Andrew Sullivan has posted a memo he somehow obtained from a Republican pollster–the same guy who did polling for George W. Bush.   The advice he gives GOP candidates–based upon his reading of recent poll results–is pretty astonishing; he bluntly warns that continuing its anti-gay positions and rhetoric will “marginalize the party for a generation,” because public opinion about gay equality is shifting so quickly.

According to his data, even a majority of Republicans favor basic civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, and the rate of acceptance is accelerating.

Now, I understand that Republicans in states like New York and Massachussetts are more likely to endorse equal treatment for LBGT folks than Republicans–and Democrats–in considerably less progressive Indiana. But even here, most of my own Republican friends react to anti-gay rhetoric with distaste. A not-inconsiderable number of them favor same-sex marriage. My students–Republican and Democrat alike–are almost unanimous in their support, and bewildered by the opposition.

What was that Dylan song? Something about it not taking a weathervane to see where the wind is blowing?

This change in public opinion is hardly a secret; especially since the President’s “evolution” on the issue, it has pretty much been front-page news. So why on earth would John Gregg reiterate not only his opposition to same-sex marriage, but his support for a constitutional amendment banning it?

The Gregg campaign has made several missteps already. Most of them, however, have involved the sort of in-party squabbling that hobbles a candidate organizationally, but not necessarily publicly. This, however, is one of those “unforced errors” that makes savvy political folks wince.

All John Gregg has to do in order to get progressive voters to support him is to not be Mike Pence. How hard is that?

Wrong side of history, wrong side of morality, wrong side of logic.

Rupert must be so pleased.

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Mike Pence–running on retrograde

The IBJ reports that Mike Pence is coming back to Indiana  “to fight Washington, D.C.”  The paper noted that Pence was light on specifics, but did promise to fight health care reform and federal climate change legislation.

In what alternate universe do candidates who’ve spent  a major part of the past decades as part of the Washington, D.C. establishment run on a platform to fight Washington? On what planet do candidates ask for votes on the basis that they’re against healthcare and the environment?  (Vote for me! I’m in the pocket of the insurance lobby and I’m a climate-change denier!)

You have to give him credit for consistency, though–he’s AGAINST abortion, AGAINST same-sex marriage, AGAINST providing healthcare to those who can’t afford it or who’ve been denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, AGAINST stem-cell research, and AGAINST efforts to stop environmental degradation.  Perhaps his slogan should be “Mike Pence: against progress and the people of Indiana.”

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The “God Squad” Returns

Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the (political) water….

The New York Times, American Constitution Society and other media have recently highlighted David Barton, a character I encountered back in my days at the ACLU. Barton has spent decades providing phony “historical” ammunition to the “Christian Nation” folks, the ones who populate Fox News and the 700 Club insisting that there really isn’t such a thing as separation of church and state. When it looked like the culture warriors were fading, I assumed he and the other historical revisionists had retreated into whatever strange places they inhabit; apparently, that was wishful thinking. According to the Times, Barton is the “favorite historian” of several of the current GOP Presidential aspirants.

Something tells me Barton and his ilk also have the ear of our would-be Governor, Mike Pence–a man who has never experienced humility or doubt, nor let inconvenient historical evidence shake his serenely theocratic worldview.  Pence was the lawmaker who–when he wanted to strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over some of his favorite culture war issues–explained that Marbury v. Madison had been wrongly decided. (For those of you hazy on your history, that was the case that established the right of the Supreme Court to have the last word on whether an act of Congress was consistent with the constitution. And I won’t say it’s been established law for a long time, but the “Madison” of the caption was James Madison). Take that, all you smarty-pants law professors and judges!

With Pious Mike as Governor, Indiana can complete that trip back to the Dark Ages we just began with the most recent legislative session.

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Ideology and Evidence Redux

Many years ago, when I first starting taking policy arguments seriously, I was persuaded by the logic of tax relief for the wealthy. That argument had two parts: first, if tax rates are confiscatory, people will have less incentive to work and invest; second, if the rich have “extra” money, they will invest it, and those investments will be used by entrepreneurs to create jobs.

I still oppose confiscatory taxes, but it has been a very long time since the days of the 90% marginal rate. And–although the argument about lower taxes generating job creation made sense–all available evidence suggests it doesn’t work that way in the real world.

As one pundit recently noted, “The Mad Men who once ran campaigns featuring doctors extolling the health benefits of smoking are now busy marketing the dogma that tax cuts mean broad prosperity, no matter what the facts show.”

What happens when a firmly-held belief hits evidence contradicting it?

What should happen, I submit, is that–after careful consideration of the credibility of the evidence and a determination that it is sound–we relinquish the unsupported belief. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. It’s hard, for one thing. Most of us resist admitting that we have been wrong about something, and the more devoutly we believed (in religion, ideology, our own righteousness), the more difficult it is to change. So many of us go looking for alternative evidence to support our original ideology. In a recent column, David Cay Johnson lists 9 “facts” about taxes that are widely believed, but demonstrably untrue, from “poor Americans don’t pay taxes” to “the wealthy are carrying the burden” to “corporate tax breaks create jobs.”

There’s a lot of hand-wringing and bemoaning about the loss of bipartisanship in our politics. But bipartisanship requires that people on both sides of the aisle go into political life determined to respect evidence. Such a determination won’t turn free-market capitalists into socialists, or vice-versa, and it won’t eliminate good-faith arguments over what the evidence shows. But we would be spared the spectacle of watching 36 GOP members of the House Energy Committee vote that global warming doesn’t exist, among other things.

I don’t know whether Representatives like Mike Pence and Michelle Bachmann are “true believers” or simply pandering to the true believers in their base, and at the end of the day, it probably doesn’t matter. When you elevate religious and ideological fervor over reason and evidence, you end up with the Dark Ages.

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