More Moonlighting

Note: a form of this also appeared at West Michigan Rising.

Joe Crawford is out moonlighting again.

The spirit of, if not the actual words of Joe Crawford is alive tonite at The Grand Rapids Press and its sterling endorsement of Justice Cliff Taylor. I suppose it’s only right, after all the other Republicans are out recycling the greatest smears of yesteryear.

The sheer vacuity of the Press is on breath taking display. Rational argument has evidently deserted 155 Michigan. They take Justice Taylor’s words at face value, that his path is as he defined it (my emphasis) one of “restraint.” Yet surely, this is a classic form of New Speak, for in what reality does judicial restraint become its opposite, now defined as altering landmark legislation and overturning long-standing precedents?

So what actions  justify treating change of tradition as restraint?  Apparently it’s his sharpened pencil

(He) has brought a cost-consciousness to his job of overseeing all of Michigan’s courts, one of his important roles as chief justice. Last year, as the state faced an impending budget crisis, Mr. Taylor led the way in fiscal discipline by giving up his taxpayer-provided car,

That is touching. Why the next thing they’ll tell us is that he likes puppies. The notion that this fiscal prudence supplies sufficient warrant for re-election turns trivial once the scope of the problem is known — as even Press allowed:

the Taylor court has altered landmark legislation and overturned long-standing precedents. Some of these individual decisions lead to legitimate concerns that the court’s attempts to correct years of judicial activism have swung too far in the direction of protecting certain classes — guarding, for instance, business interests and insurance companies against the rights of ordinary citizens.

Hmm fiscal prudence or my rights as a citizen? They seem so alike.

The paper tries to camouflage its view as something rational, even normal. Justice Taylor articulates “a sound judicial philosophy”, as if the presence of a philosophy were reason enough. This completely evades the fundamental question: is this a philosophy — however “sound” — that ought to determine whether grieving mothers get their redress, or communities get the right to protect their environment? Whether city contracts and promises to the public be honored? or whether crime victims get their day in court?

The Supreme’s assault on the citizens of Michigan is increasingly well known.

It may be true that this is a sound philosophy of a sort at work here, but given the grim fruit such philosophy has borne it really belongs to the Press to explain that philosophy. It is not at all evident that being “sound” is an unquestioned virtue. What is sound (or not sound) is the content of the philosophy — the results that flow from its implementation. In endorsing the over-stepping of this radical court, the Press has again shown what its true philosophy is. Sadly.

Filed under: Elections, Michigan, Grand Rapids Press

What Has He Done?

That was the petulant cry of Jack Hoogendyk the other night in his debate with Sen. Carl Levin. And it didn’t get any better at the Detroit Economic Club. As the release of the Levin ad today demonstrates, Levin has done plenty.

But that’s not the point.

Hoogendyk represents the low state of the GOP in Michigan, and its theology (is there any other word for this?) of low-tax-cuts-will-cure-everything. It is not their budget choices, but their all too apparent lack of vision for anything like a coherent future which is their astonishing burden. And the one thing we need in Lansing (and Washington) is vision.

Faced with a recession and the erosion of Michigan’s economy, the Hoogendyks of our State offer policies that are deaf to the realities on the ground. A $25 billion bailout? Rejected. It’s good when companies fail. There is no sense here how such policies integrate into anything others would consider reality. And its not just Hoogendyk.  There are plenty more in West Michigan beginning with ring leader David Agema, who frame their approach in the same set of economic fundamentalisms. In their view, our problem is that we are insufficiently conservative.  We have failed their ideology.  And their ideology has failed them, as well,  hiding from them  the consequences of their action.

In taking this path, the GOP has turned its back on its more pragmatic heritage of conservatism in Michigan. What we miss is an economics harnessed for some greater, broader good.

By participating in this economic turn, the social conservatives empty theircapacity to affect change. Call this the Voorhees trap. Social conservative positions that might merit consideration now get linked with an economic stance that proves doubly alienating for moderate voters. The economics gets rejected and the social positions — the heart of the social conservative program — become tarnished.

Opportunity for Democrats

The lack of compelling vision from the Right, opens a door for Democrats to shape the future of our State and its politics, less by policy, than by the practice of a pragmatic politics. The problems before our State are utterly real. We too, will need to shun our orthodoxies if we are to lead our state to a kind of escape from the grim recession that still grips us.

Rather than surrender to our orthodoxies we should give ourselves to the vision of what we want our city, our region, our state to be.

Filed under: Elections, Michigan, Republican Party

Counting the Cost

Courtesy Michigan Messanger

If the pictures over at Michigan Messenger are to be believed, it’s over. But what does this mean for local contests?

Well for one, there’s a fair amount of grief, even denial. Like Saul Anuzis said,

“This move leaves a tremendous hole in our ground campaign that we must now fill…I won’t sugar coat it; the McCain Campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan is a tough blow. But we cannot let it deter us.”

Strategically we can see some immediate impact

The ground game goes local.
Without a strong national race, this means that recruitment for GOP activities will devolve back to the local party structures. If they have them. Where there are no active races (e.g. SH-72, where Justin Amash won the primary), responsibility would fall to the county party, with its necessary limits of time, budget and volunteers.

For local state house races, this move puts more pressure on the individual campaign. Jim Blanchard correctly notes, loyalists don’t switch, they stay home.

Negativity goes up.
Without institutional support from the national campaign, local parties will miss one of the key motivators for turnout — all the more, given the sleepy senate race. (Could Hoogendyke be more invisible?) So the plea to vote becomes more an anti-Obama vote than a positive one — any marketer will tell you that: fear and uncertainty sell. This downside of this approach is that such a negative strategy for generating interest only further corrupts the branding of the Republicans

But what about the competitive seats?.

Filed under: Elections, Michigan, Republican Party

How Convenient

There’s a good reason why the Attorney General appointed a special prosecutor this past Monday. After all, even the Department of Justice report on what happened with the firing of Margaret Chiara is confused.

As Ken Kolker in the Press makes clear, the nominal reason of a disrupted office hid a more complicated, and in ways, more normal story.

The dysfunctional West Michigan District was an open invitation for mischief. And it had been that way for at least a decade: civil servants at war with their political appointee bosses. Say this about the conflict it was non-partisan. Neither the Democrat Michael Dettmer nor the Republican Chiara escaped unscathed.

So when Kyle Sampson at DOJ stated asking for replacements, the West Michigan District was a natural.

As the church lady used to say, “how con-vee-nient.”

Convenient indeed.

Officially, the report concludes that Chiara was dismissed legitimately for administrative reasons. But the actual timeline gives pause to this easy conclusion.

The key date in all this is March 5, 2005, the date on which David Margolis puts Chiara’s name on the list of possible DAs to be replaced. Once on, she never left. Indeed, there is little evidence that Chiara’s mismanagement had risen to the actionable status by this date.

As the report details, the situation in the local office did get progressively out of control, but virtually all of it after the March 5 date. Chiara’s neck is on the block long before the conflict comes to its head. Indeed, the report investigates and dismisses the allegations. The very disruption made by these allegations thus becomes the rationale for the DoJ dismissal.

Were that all there is, the dismissal would be only a case of politically convenience. But there is one other item to consider.

Why did they think it would work?

The striking, all-too-obvious aspect of the entire affair is the assumption made by the internal accusers that news of Chiara’s sexual orientation would be actionable in Washington. In the bureaucratic knife fight, they acted on a view of who already staffed DOJ.

They believed that DOJ already had an operating (and impermissible) screen, a screen that corrupts the neutrality of the Attorney’s office necessary to its function, and to a civil society. And that’s the scandal, the one that does need clearing up by the special prosecutor.

Filed under: Michigan, Washington

Pouring on the Happy Juice

Nick, over at RightMichigan has his share of optimism, especially when it comes to the 75th State House District (Robert Dean):

This traditionally Republican seat is located entirely inside the city of Grand Rapids but has a growing urban population that’s trended it blue the last several cycles. Still, the political pros consider it a Lean-GOP district with a Republican base somewhere in the neighborhood of 54 percent.

Well that’s one view.

Filed under: Elections, Education Policy, Fair Tax