So the North Iowa Tea Party covered up their Mason City billboard that juxtaposed pictures of Adolf Hitler (“National Socialism”), Barack Obama (“Democrat Socialism”) and Vladimir Lenin (“Marxist Socialism”) over the slogan, “Radical leaders prey on the fearful & naive.” (Here’s a photo.) Activists in statewide tea party circles repudiated the billboard. Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party movement, wants fellow travelers to educate the public about freedom and U.S. history. Rhodes’ problem was the Hitler imagery, not the underlying message that we’re headed toward socialism.

I know I’m supposed to be outraged that right-wingers would compare Obama to Hitler, but I’m too stunned that anyone paying attention to the news could view Obama as “socialist.” I got a window onto the tea party mindset from Bob Johnson, one of the Mason City billboard’s creators. For your weekly dose of unintentional comedy, I recommend Jennifer Jacobs’ interview with Johnson on the Des Moines Register blog. Among his insights:

“It was absolutely not the aim to just create controversy. Nobody’s more surprised about the thing than I am,” Johnson said. “This billboard was misunderstood. I’m not going to say it was a mistake.” […]

“We had some hesitations about it,” Johnson said, “but for those that understand it, it’s just such a powerful billboard, so we said screw it and go ahead with it.” […]

“When we put that Hitler up there, it just totally overwhelmed everything on the billboard,” Johnson said. “That’s the one thing that just destroyed the whole concept we did not realize the power Hitler still has, the emotion.” […]

“When you want to compare the present administration to Hitler, Hitler took over the banks. Gee, what’s this administration doing? Hitler took over the health care. Gee. Hitler took over the transportation and what’s this administration doing? If that wasn’t a direct comparison to socialism, I don’t know what is.”

Let’s consider the so-called government takeover of health care, a major area of concern for the tea partiers. Under socialized medicine (as exists in real socialist countries), the government employs all the doctors and runs all the clinics and hospitals. Under single-payer health care (as exists in Canada), the government pays for medical care, but most doctors and medical institutions are privately operated.

In contrast, Obama had his top aides cut deals with health industry interests, working closely with the most corporate-friendly Congressional  committee drafting a health reform bill. The key staffer charged with writing that committee’s bill, Liz Fowler, came straight from one of the largest health insurance companies. Obama broke many significant campaign promises on health care so as not to tread on corporate interests. As a result, key industries got virtually everything they wanted from the bill that passed. Private health insurance companies are now guaranteed millions of new customers in the coming years, with no new competition from government-run entities. Completing the circle, Fowler is now working for the Obama administration to help implement the health reform law.

Rest assured, no corporate CEO in America is lying awake at night worried about “socialist” health care the way Johnson says he worried people might bomb his house because they didn’t like his billboard.

Most of the Obama administration’s economic team came straight from the Wall Street culture, and the president hasn’t tried to “take over” or even break up major financial institutions.

I have no idea what Johnson is talking about when he suggests the Obama administration has been taking over the transportation sector.

Anyone who has such a skewed view of this corporate-friendly administration could gain perspective from spending a few weeks in a socialist country.

April 1 is the U.S. Census Bureau’s target date for Americans to fill out and return their census forms. Every 1 percent increase in the census mail-back rate saves the U.S. Census Bureau about $85 million. After April 10, the bureau will start sending out census-takers to households that did not return their forms. President Barack Obama filled out his own family’s form and declared today “Census Day”:

The First Ladys mother lives with the family in the White House. Since the census asks for a count of everyone currently living in the household – not just immediate family – the President included his mother-in-law on his census form.

In these difficult economic times its common for extended family and friends to live with another family, yet many households mistakenly leave these individuals off their census forms.

Mr. desmoinesdem and I filled out our family’s form and mailed it back a couple of weeks ago. There are no “long forms” anymore; everyone gets the short survey with just 10 questions.

As of this morning, the national census participation rate was 52 percent; you can click on this interactive map to find participation rates in your area. Today Iowa ranked fifth among the states with a 60 percent participation rate. South Dakota and Wisconsin tied for first place with a 62 percent participation rate, and North Dakota and Nebraska tied for third with 61 percent. Within Iowa, a few towns had participation rates exceeding 80 percent. About 63 percent of households in my corner of the state, Windsor Heights, have returned their census forms so far.

Although some conservatives hyperventilate about the demographic questions on the census form, recording the race and ethnicity of U.S. residents helps the government “execute and monitor laws and programs that are targeted to specific groups.” Like conservative arguments about the legality of health insurance reform, objections to the census questions have no basis in constitutional law:

On numerous occasions, the courts have said the Constitution gives Congress the authority to collect statistics in the census. As early as 1870, the Supreme Court characterized as unquestionable the power of Congress to require both an enumeration and the collection of statistics in the census. The Legal Tender Cases, Tex.1870; 12 Wall., U.S., 457, 536, 20 L.Ed. 287. In 1901, a District Court said the Constitution’s census clause (Art. 1, Sec. 2, Clause 3) is not limited to a headcount of the population and “does not prohibit the gathering of other statistics, if ‘necessary and proper,’ for the intelligent exercise of other powers enumerated in the constitution, and in such case there could be no objection to acquiring this information through the same machinery by which the population is enumerated.” United States v. Moriarity, 106 F. 886, 891 (S.D.N.Y.1901).

The census does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Morales v. Daley, 116 F. Supp. 2d 801, 820 (S.D. Tex. 2000). In concluding that there was no basis for holding Census 2000 unconstitutional, the District Court in Morales ruled that the 2000 Census and the 2000 Census questions did not violate the Fourth Amendment or other constitutional provisions as alleged by plaintiffs. (The Morales court said responses to census questions are not a violation of a citizen’s right to privacy or speech.) […]

These decisions are consistent with the Supreme Court’s recent description of the census as the “linchpin of the federal statistical system … collecting data on the characteristics of individuals, households, and housing units throughout the country.” Dept. of Commerce v. U.S. House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316, 341 (1999).

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Representative Steve King doesn’t come across as the most compassionate guy in the world, bragging about opposing aid for Hurricane Katrina victims and questioning the need to stop deporting undocumented Haitian immigrants after last month’s earthquake.

But if you thought King was incapable of feeling empathy, you’re wrong. Over the weekend he spoke to a panel on immigration at the Conservative Political Action Conference:

During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could “empathize” with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week.

During the question and answer session, the Media Matters staffer asked King to clarify his comment, reminding him of his sworn duty to protect the American people from all sworn enemies, foreign and domestic. In response, said the staffer, King gave a long and convoluted answer about having been personally audited by the IRS, and ended by saying he intended to hold a fundraiser to help people “implode” their local IRS office.

That’s right, King feels empathy for a guy who crashed his plane into a federal building, intending to harm the IRS employees inside. In the process, the man killed a loving family man and longtime federal worker who served two terms in Vietnam.

Following King’s remarks at the CPAC panel, a man with a video camera gave the congressman a chance to clarify his remarks. King dug deeper. (continues after the jump)

The Republican National Committee won’t be imposing the “purity test” proposed by committeeman James Bopp of Indiana. During last week’s meetings in Honolulu, a group of state GOP chairs unanimously voted against requiring Republican candidates to agree with at least eight out of ten conservative policy stands in order to receive RNC support during the 2010 campaign.

Bopp withdrew his motion from the floor on Friday after a compromise had been reached. RNC members then unanimously passed a non-binding resolution that “only ‘urges’ party leaders to support nominees who back the party’s platform,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported.

Republican candidates for U.S. Senate in Illinois and Delaware would have failed Bopp’s purity test and therefore not qualified for RNC support. The resolution that passed does not penalize candidates who disagree with various “core principles” of the GOP. Still, Bopp tried to spin the compromise as a victory:

“You’ve got to determine that the candidate supports all the core principles of the Republican Party before you support them,” he said, explaining the alternate measure.

But when asked whether it was binding, Bopp was cut off by Oregon GOP Chairman Bob Tiernan, who was standing nearby the impromptu press briefing.

“That resolution passed is not binding; it’s a suggestion,” said Tiernan.

As Bopp began to again make his case for the compromise, Tiernan again interjected.

“There’s nothing mandatory or required in there,” the Oregonian noted.

“Can I answer the question, Mr. Chairman?” Bopp shot back.

Continuing, Bopp explained that he thought the RNC’s decision to, for the first time, make it party policy to urge candidates to pledge fealty to the GOP platform represented a significant step.

But Tiernan, standing just over Bopp’s shoulder, again rebutted his committee colleague.

“I’m not going to take that back and make my candidates sign it, that’s ridiculous,” Tiernan said, gesturing toward the compromise resolution in a reporter’s hand. “We don’t have a litmus test and we rejected the litmus test today.”

As Bopp continued, Tiernan again spoke up.

“There’s nothing binding in there,” said the state chairman.

“Can I finish?” a plainly annoyed Bopp asked.

“Read the words,” replied Tiernan.

“Shut up,” Bopp finally said.

Although the RNC papered over this dispute, clearly tensions remain over whether Republican leaders should insist that candidates be conservatives.

Two of Iowa’s RNC members, Steve Scheffler and Kim Lehman, supported Bopp’s purity test. Our state’s third representative on the RNC, Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn, didn’t comment on Bopp’s effort when it first emerged or last week, to my knowledge. I assume he agreed with other state party chairs, who according to various reports strongly opposed the idea. If that is inaccurate, I hope someone will correct me.

So many campaign stories the past few days, so little time.

After the jump you’ll find lots of links about various campaigns for U.S. Senate, House, governor and state treasurer.

Not long ago I noted that Republicans are not even considering a socially moderate candidate to challenge Dave Loebsack in Iowa’s most Democratic-leaning Congressional district.

Now some members of the Republican National Committee have the bright idea of cutting off party support for any candidate, anywhere, who strays too far from conservative dogma.

I knew some conservatives were crazy, but I didn’t know they were that crazy.

State Representative Chris Rants will “debate” former Des Moines School Board member Jonathan Narcisse on various issues during the first half of December. The Iowa Republican blog has the preliminary schedule for the debates in Bettendorf, Ankeny, Council Bluffs, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Waterloo, as well as footage from yesterday’s joint press conference by Rants and Narcisse.

Scheduling the “debates” is a clever move by Rants, who is running the best gubernatorial campaign in the GOP field so far. These events will not be good news for Governor Chet Culver.

Police have determined that the Kentucky census worker whose death became a national news story in September took his own life.

According to the Associated Press, a news release from Kentucky State Police says investigators believe [Bill] Sparkman acted alone in setting the scene. They also say he had recently taken out two life insurance policies.

Because of the way Sparkman’s body was found, I wrongly assumed he had been murdered. Apologies for jumping the gun on that one.

I stand by my view that conservatives should stop making paranoid allegations about the census and avoid the rhetoric of armed rebellion when talking about political opponents.

Approximately 1 million temporary workers will be hired next year to conduct the census. They will be trained to deal calmly with people who express hatred for the government.

Iowa’s second Congressional district is the most Democratic-leaning of our five districts. It has a partisan voting index of D+7, which means that in any given year, we would expect this district to vote about 7 point more Democratic than the country as a whole. In 2008, Dave Loebsack won re-election in IA-02 with about 57 percent of the vote against Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who couldn’t crack 40 percent.

Today Republican blogger Craig Robinson previews the GOP primary to take on Loebsack. His piece is a good reminder of how small the Republican tent has become in a district once represented by Jim Leach.  

We all saw the same election results this week, but we didn’t all hear the same message from the voters.

After the jump I’ve posted some different interpretations of Tuesday’s events, along with my own short take.

Craig Robinson has a post up at The Iowa Republican on efforts by the Scott County GOP to “turn the tide” for Republicans in eastern Iowa and statewide. The problem:

Just over a decade ago, Republicans held eight of the nine legislative seats in Scott County, today Republicans only control three of those seats. […] Currently, Republicans control only five senate seats and sixteen house seats east of Polk County. If you want to understand why Republicans have lost their majorities, one need[s] to look at what has happened to the state of the Republican Party in eastern Iowa.

In January of 2000, there were almost 5,000 more registered Republicans in Scott County than there were registered Democrats. Today, Democrats enjoy a registered voter advantage of 8,622 over Republicans. The 13,000 person swing in registered voters explains why Republicans have struggled to win elections in Scott County, the first congressional district, and statewide.

In the late 1990’s, Republican statewide candidates could win if they were able to perform reasonably well in Polk County. Many times, western Iowa counties as along with eastern Iowa Republican strongholds like Scott County could offset the margin that Democratic candidates could build in Polk and Johnson counties. Unfortunately, those were the glory days of Republican politics. In recent years, the only area of the state in which Republicans can build significant margins over Democrats is in northwest Iowa.

Here’s a name you won’t find in Robinson’s piece: Jim Leach. In the “glory days,” Jim Leach represented Scott County in Congress. But other Republicans attacked Congressional candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks last year because she praised Leach’s work (even though she disagreed with his pro-choice position).  Now Christian Fong, the only gubernatorial candidate from eastern Iowa, assures voters that he is a social conservative and ducked a question about whether he’d ever voted for Leach.

In the “glory days,” most of the statehouse Republicans representing eastern Iowa were moderates. But in the 2006 Republican primary in Iowa Senate district 41, right-wing interest groups helped David Hartsuch oust pro-choice incumbent Republican Maggie Tinsman. Legislators on both sides of the aisle respected Tinsman, which can’t be said of Hartsuch. Getting rid of Tinsman helped social conservatives gain more power in the Iowa GOP, but I doubt it helped the Republican brand in Scott County.

The Republican Party in Iowa and nationally has simply become too conservative to compete in much of eastern Iowa. The same process has turned many longtime Republican districts in Illinois and Wisconsin blue.

Robinson praises Brian Kennedy’s organizing and fundraising work as the finance chair of the Scott County GOP. He argues that rising unemployment in eastern Iowa has created an opening for Republicans in 2010. For that reason, Kennedy wants GOP candidates to focus on “job creation and the economy.” But clearly, there is no room in the GOP for candidates who don’t accept all of the religious right’s positions, whether or not they talk about jobs.

Until the Republican Party makes room in the tent for people who admire Jim Leach, they won’t regain a dominant position in places like Scott County. A weak economy can help the GOP make up some ground next year, and raising more money can improve their grassroots organizing, but that won’t solve their fundamental problem.

Eastern Iowa Bleeding Heartland readers, tell me if I’m right or wrong and why.

Bob Vander Plaats was the clear front-runner in the Republican field of gubernatorial candidates a few months ago. He’s been campaigning for the job longer and more actively than anyone else. He had contacts statewide from his 2006 campaign for lieutenant governor, and from Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. He also had several endorsements from state legislators and a big lead in a Republican poll taken in July.

During the past six months, various potential Republican candidates have ruled out a campaign for governor, including Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey and State Auditor David Vaudt. Efforts to recruit a business leader (like Mary Andringa) failed too. Some Iowa politicos believe that these people backed off not because they thought Governor Chet Culver was unbeatable, but because they couldn’t see a way to defeat Vander Plaats in the Republican primary.

Most people would now agree that Vander Plaats is an underdog. Branstad will have more money, more media coverage and more support from Republican power-brokers. He’ll be able to cite last week’s Research 2000 poll, showing Branstad narrowly ahead of Culver, but Vander Plaats way behind the incumbent.

Vander Plaats won’t give up without a fight, though. He has promised to stay in this race through the June primary, and he has some strong cards to play, as I’ll discuss after the jump.  

The U.S. Constitution requires that the government conduct a census every ten years. Population counts determine federal funding for various programs, as well as the number of Congressional districts allocated to each state, so the public interest in conducting a thorough census is obvious.

The next census will take place in 2010, but some right-wing loudmouths and Republican politicians have unfortunately demonized the effort as an intrusive government plot. Over at Think Progress, Faiz Shakir recaps some of the paranoid chatter from Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-06) and Glenn Beck of Fox News. Shakir also cites radio host Neal Boortz, who told his listeners, “Most of the rest of the [Census] information is designed to help the government steal from you in order to pass off your property to the moochers. They’re looters.”

Not long ago I discussed my worries about the rhetoric of armed resistance coming from the political right, and I’ve been reflecting on this problem since I heard about census-taker Bill Sparkman’s murder. Sparkman was found naked and bound with “fed” written on his chest and his census ID taped to his neck. In rural Kentucky,

Sparkman’s gruesome death has ignited a debate over whether it was a byproduct of harsh anti-government rhetoric on talk shows, blogs and protests. Residents of impoverished Clay County say most people harbor no resentment for agents of the federal government, and they’re baffled by Sparkman’s apparent killing.

Sheriff Kevin Johnson, a native, said most residents feel a measure of gratitude to the federal government.

“We’ve been a poverty-stricken area pretty much all our lives,” he said. “The government’s taking care of 70 percent of people here, through Social Security, SSI, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid.”

None of those programs could function without the demographic data the Census Bureau provides.

If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year. Republicans should condemn the hatemongers and make clear that the census is not only permitted, but required under the Constitution.

Representative Steve “10 Worst” King hasn’t lost his touch for grabbing attention with outlandish statements. Speaking to a conservative radio program, King asserted,

If there’s a push for a socialist society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they have to go to, same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation, they want access to public funds and resources.

The Hill has more ridiculous assertions from the interview, including King’s opinion that “Not only is [same-sex marriage] a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.” Matt Corley at Think Progress posted the full transcript, with an audio clip.

King’s logic eludes me. Perhaps someone can explain how individual rights are supposedly undermined when same-sex couples gain legal rights already available to heterosexual couples. Maybe King just wants to show that he really is as wingnutty as any Iowa Republican on the subject of gay marriage.

Having spent a fair amount of time in the former Communist bloc, I can assure King that the socialist world was extremely homophobic. Same-sex relationships had no legal status in any communist country, and homosexuality was a crime for decades in many of them.

Jed Lewison and John Deeth have further comments on King’s absurdity. Please add your own thoughts in this thread.  

Now that we’re done with the Joe “You Lie” Wilson sideshow, I want to talk about a different kind of Republican disrespect for normal political disagreement.

Having been raised by a Republican of the now-extinct Rockefeller variety, I am often struck by how extreme the GOP has become. Chuck Grassley and Terry Branstad were on the far right in the early 1980s, but many Iowa conservatives now consider them “moderate” or even “liberal.”

Mainstream extremism in the Republican Party is depressing on many levels. It fosters ignorance, as when Iowa Republicans are led to believe that the judiciary is not supposed to interpret the constitution. It encourages politicians to put their theology ahead of civil laws.

Most troubling is when prominent conservatives use language that condones physical violence or “revolution” to resist Democratic policy proposals. I fear that people will get hurt or killed if some mentally unstable person takes these appeals too literally.

More thoughts on this subject are after the jump.

UPDATE: This diary generated a lot of discussion at Daily Kos. Several readers pointed me to Glenn Greenwald’s rebuttal of Podhoretz’s central claim: Jews should vote Republican because of Israel. Leon Wieseltier’s review of Podhoretz’s book for The New York Times is also worth reading.

Norman Podhoretz began his political life on the Trotskyite left but swung sharply to the right and edited the conservative magazine Commentary for more than three decades. His latest book is called “Why Are Jews Liberals?”, and he published a few thoughts on the subject in the Wall Street Journal this week.

All the other ethno-religious groups that, like the Jews, formed part of the coalition forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s have followed the rule that increasing prosperity generally leads to an increasing identification with the Republican Party. But not the Jews. As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: “Jews earn like Episcopalians”-then the most prosperous minority group in America-“and vote like Puerto Ricans,” who were then the poorest.

Jews also remain far more heavily committed to the liberal agenda than any of their old ethno-religious New Deal partners. As the eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer has put it, “whatever the promptings of their economic interests,” Jews have consistently supported “increased government spending, expanded benefits to the poor and lower classes, greater regulations on business, and the power of organized labor.”

As with these old political and economic questions, so with the newer issues being fought out in the culture wars today. On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.

After the jump I’ll offer my thoughts about why many Jews are liberals and, equally important, why many Jews who are not liberals vote for Democrats anyway. Podhoretz is convinced that more American Jews should identify with political conservatives, but today’s Republican Party makes that unlikely.  

Like Spinal Tap’s amp that goes up to 11, Bob Vander Plaats can ratchet up the demagoguery that little bit more than the competition. While other conservatives warn against compromising the Republican Party’s core principles, Vander Plaats says Republican moderates make voters want to throw up, like Jesus when confronted with “lukewarm” followers.

While other conservatives back a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage (which would take years to adopt), Vander Plaats promises to stop gays and lesbians from getting married on his first day as governor of Iowa.

While other conservatives warn against a “government takeover” of health care, Vander Plaats isn’t just against a new public health insurance plan, he wants to protect Iowans from the tyranny of federal-run Medicare and Medicaid.  

to make other people act like idiots.

Consider the fallout from last week’s ad campaign by Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers.

The Republican Party of Iowa is celebrating its “rising stars” tonight at an event featuring Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. Judging by what we’ve heard lately from Iowa GOP leaders, they’re gonna party like it’s 1929.

Case in point: Iowa Senate Minority leader Paul McKinley. The possible gubernatorial candidate’s weekly memos continue to whine about spending and borrowing by Democrats (see also here). Republicans would rather slash government programs and provide “targeted” one-year tax credits.

The lessons of Herbert Hoover’s presidency are still lost on these people. I apologize for repeating myself, but excessive government spending cuts can turn an economic recession into a depression. Since state governments cannot run budget deficits, it makes sense for the federal government to help the states “backfill” their budgets. That was the express purpose of the state transfer funds in the stimulus package.

In addition, it is prudent to spend federal funds on projects with long-term benefits. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was in Des Moines on June 23 to highlight the first installment of what will be $41 million in stimulus funds for renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects in Iowa. Energy efficiency programs in particular will have huge collateral benefits, saving consumers money while helping the environment.

No matter how many times Republicans repeat their misleading talking points about the I-JOBS state bonding initiative Democrats passed this year, it is prudent to borrow money for worthwhile projects when interest rates are low. I don’t hear McKinley or other Republican leaders telling businesses not to borrow money to make capital improvements.

Share any thoughts about Republican ideas, rhetoric, or career lobbyist Haley Barbour in this thread.

The Republican Party opposed President Obama’s economic stimulus bill earlier this year, instead advocating a federal spending freeze in response to the recession. The misguided Republican proposal would have repeated Herbert Hoover’s big mistake, ignoring consensus among economists that deficits help end recessions.

The stimulus bill wasn’t perfect, but it contained some valuable provisions, notably aid to state governments, which can’t run deficits. While Governor Chet Culver imposed two rounds of cuts to fiscal year 2009 spending, federal stimulus funds helped lessen the severity of those cuts and avoid drastic reductions in the 2010 budget.

That’s good, because state budget cuts can further weaken an already weak economy, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained in this review of state fiscal stress across the country:

When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. In all of these circumstances, the companies and organizations that would have received government payments have less money to spend on salaries and supplies, and individuals who would have received salaries or benefits have less money for consumption. This directly removes demand from the economy. […]

Federal assistance can lessen the extent to which states take pro-cyclical actions that can further harm the economy. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act recognizes this fact and includes substantial assistance for states. The amount of funding that will go to states to help them maintain current activities is approximately $135 billion to $140 billion – or about 40 percent of projected state deficits. Most of this money is in the form of increased Medicaid funding and a “Fiscal Stabilization Fund.” This funding will reduce the depth of state budget cuts and moderate state tax and fee increases.

Leave it to the Republicans to miss the point of stimulus aid to state governments, as I’ll discuss after the jump.

Thomas Beaumont wrote about the Republican Party of Iowa’s revamped outreach strategy in Monday’s Des Moines Register. GOP chairman Matt Strawn is working on several fronts to bring the party back to power after three consecutive losses in Iowa gubernatorial elections and four consecutive elections in which Republicans lost seats in the Iowa House and Senate.

Strawn’s strategy consists of:

1) meeting with activists in numerous cities and towns

2) using social networking tools to spread the Republican message

3) building an organization with a more accurate database

After the jump I’ll discuss the strengths of this approach as well as its glaring flaw.

Looking at this graph of party identification by age in the U.S., I was not surprised to find 40-year-olds like me in the best cohort for Republicans. My peers vaguely remember the oil shocks and high inflation of the 1970s, and then came of age during Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America.” In those days, many young people proudly identified with the Republican Party. As they grew older, lots of them continued to vote that way.

Americans who were growing up during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are much more likely to call themselves Democrats or independents than Republicans. They also voted Democratic by large margins in the 2006 and 2008 general elections. If Republicans can’t figure out a way to compete with this group of voters, Democrats will have a built-in advantage for decades.

Fixing this problem won’t be easy for the GOP and may even be impossible, for reasons I discuss after the jump.

Water quality has long been one of Iowa’s biggest environmental problems. Fortunately, the state plans to spend some $455 million cleaning up Iowa rivers and lakes, according to an excellent piece by Perry Beeman in the May 10 edition of the Des Moines Register:

After decades of struggling to address serious pollution problems, the state now has an unprecedented pool of state and federal money to solve some of its worst water-quality problems, said Charles Corell, the water chief of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

One of the biggest impacts: improved sewage treatment and septic systems in the 500 towns and rural subdivisions that don’t have any. […]

Much of the new money for water quality was approved last month by the Iowa Legislature as part of a huge bond package pushed by Gov. Chet Culver. Other money was awarded as part of flood recovery efforts.

Money for lake restorations – including popular spots like Clear Lake in Cerro Gordo County and Carter Lake in Pottawattamie County – will more than quadruple. Many predict the much larger pool will fuel recreation opportunities and improve local economies. […]

“You essentially have untreated or under-treated sewage getting into waterways,” said Corell, who visited Truesdale and Greenville on Thursday to discuss proposed sewer projects. “And it’s all the time, not just when it rains.”

After the jump I have posted details Beeman compiled about the new money that will be used to improve water quality in Iowa. A large sum came from the federal economic stimulus bill, which didn’t get a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives. Another major source is the I-JOBS bonding initiative, which passed the Iowa House and Senate last month with no Republican votes.

Republicans keep bashing the federal stimulus spending and the state-level borrowing, as if no Iowans will benefit from these policies (aside from the few thousand people who will work on the projects). One typical example was the e-mail blast Iowa Senate Republican leader Paul McKinley sent out last week. You won’t find it on the comically awful Iowa Senate Republicans website, which appears not to have been updated since April 16. However, I receive “McKinley’s Memos” via e-mail, and I’ve posted the May 15 edition after the jump to give you a flavor of current Republican ideology.

I addressed most of the points McKinley raises in this post. The Party of No’s indiscriminate stance against borrowing fails to recognize that when interest rates are relatively low, bonding to pay for worthwhile projects is a wise investment. It may be hard to assign a dollar value to reducing water pollution in Iowa, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for human health, biodiversity and local economies.

Hundreds of thousands of Iowans will benefit from the clean water projects discussed in Beeman’s article. If Republicans had their way, the sewer improvements and lake cleanups wouldn’t happen for years, if ever.

Please share your own thoughts about penny-wise and pound-foolish conservative dogma in this thread.

I’m still waiting for some Republican, any Republican, to explain the concept of judicial review to religious conservatives who refuse to accept the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling in Varnum v Brien.

GOP moderates led by Doug Gross have been warning that Republican candidates won’t win in 2010 if gay marriage is their only campaign issue. But I haven’t heard anyone challenge the assertion by many conservatives that the Supreme Court’s decision is just an opinion with no legal force.

Since no Republican has stepped up to the plate, I’m offering a brief lesson on judicial review after the jump.

UPDATE: I had no idea while I was writing this post that Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania had decided to switch to the Democratic Party–yet another sign that moderates have no place in the GOP.

The day the Iowa Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision in Varnum v Brien, noneed4thneed wrote on his Twitter feed,

All chances for moderate Republicans to get elected in Iowa were dashed today. Social conservatives run Republican Party of Iowa now.

Now that the 2009 legislative session has ended with no action to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court, and same-sex marriages are a reality, I am even more convinced that noneed4thneed is right.

A few thoughts on the Republican Party’s internal conflicts are after the jump.

Is there any way to arrange a remedial civics class for prominent Iowa Republicans? Here’s Bob Vander Plaats on Monday:

“If I have the opportunity to serve as your next governor,” Bob Vander Plaats told a crowd of about 350 people at a rally, “and if no leadership has been taken to that point, on my first day of office I will issue an executive order that puts a stay on same-sex marriages until the people of Iowa vote, and when we vote we can affirm and amend the Constitution.”

Another highlight from the same rally:

Co-founder of Everyday America, Bill Salier, told the crowd that state lawmakers need to thank the Supreme Court justices for their opinion but say it’s merely opinion and the law is still on the books.

Salier said: “(Lawmakers) can face down the court and say, ‘We passed DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. You claim that it is stricken. And yet unless some magic eraser came down from the sky, it’s still in code.'”

Then there’s Republican State Representative Chris Rants, who is trying to amend the tax reform bill so that marriage would be defined as between a man and a woman. Rants failed last week to replace a huge health care bill with an amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, Republican State Senator Merlin Bartz is pushing an amendment that would allow county recorders not to issue marriage licenses.

This daughter of a Rockefeller Republican is shaking her head and has a few more things to say after the jump.

A. Only when that member of Congress criticizes government policies that benefit the super-wealthy at the expense of most taxpayers.

See also Missouri blogger Clark on the same subject.

Speaking of hypocrisy, note the conspicuous absence of Republican outrage over $18 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Wall Street bailout being used to pay bonuses to corporate executives.

That figure is larger than the total value of all earmarks Congress approved in 2008.

As Michael Bersin observed, it’s also more than the price tag of the automakers’ bailout that so many Republicans lamented.

It’s easy to complain about “wasteful government spending” in the stimulus bill when you’re in the Congressional minority. Voting against the stimulus may even be a smart political play for Congressional Republicans.

However, Republican governors who have to balance state budgets in this shrinking economy view the prospect of massive federal government spending differently:

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.

Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama’s spending priorities.

The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, planned to meet in Washington this weekend with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other senators to press for her state’s share of the package.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist worked the phones last week with members of his state’s congressional delegation, including House Republicans. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the Republican vice chairman of the National Governors Association, planned to be in Washington on Monday to urge the Senate to approve the plan. […]

This past week the bipartisan National Governors Association called on Congress to quickly pass the plan.

“States are facing fiscal conditions not seen since the Great Depression _ anticipated budget shortfalls are expected in excess of $200 billion,” the NGA statement said. “Governors … support several key elements of the bill critical to states-increased federal support for Medicaid and K-12 and higher education; investment in the nation’s infrastructure; and tax provisions to spur investment.”

Will the GOP base become disenchanted with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin because of her public support for the stimulus? I suspect Markos is right:

It complicates matters for the anti-stimulus ideologues who see starbursts in the presence of Palin.

Then again, Palin had no trouble lying about her support for the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing will stop her from trying to rewrite history three years from now.

Speaking of Palin, I learned from Jeff Angelo that she’s created SarahPAC. Something tells me that a lot of Iowa Republican candidates in will receive generous contributions from this political action committee during the next two election cycles.

Since the election, the quest to find a new leader for the divided Republican Party of Iowa has been a frequent topic for discussion on conservative blogs. No clear front-runner has emerged among the nine people known to be seeking the job. Some observers believe Iowa GOP treasurer Gopal Krishna has the most supporters on the 17-member State Central Committee that will select a new chair, although committee member David Chung handicaps the race differently.

All the candidates have been invited to appear at a public forum this Saturday, January 3, at the Iowa GOP headquarters. Knowing little about most of the people vying for this job, I’ve been intrigued by the comment threads at conservative blogs like “Krusty Konservative.” Attacks against this or that candidate have been nastier than anything I remember reading on Democratic blogs when Howard Dean was running for Democratic National Committee chairman in 2005.

The Republican National Committee also needs a new leader, with no front-runner for that job. A mini-scandal has erupted over one candidate’s decision to give RNC members a CD including a song called “Barack the Magic Negro.”

I’ve been wondering how much these leadership contests matter.

Obviously some people will be better organizers or better fundraisers or better communicators than others, and for all I know some of the declared candidates are truly inept. But let’s assume the Republicans find leaders with all the qualities on a party hack’s wish list. Will they be able to turn things around for the GOP by raising more money and improving their campaign mechanics?

Commenting on plans to create a think tank within the RNC called the “Center for Republican Renewal,” Matthew Yglesias recently observed,

Ambitious people don’t like the idea that their fate is out of their hands. But an opposition political party’s fate is largely out of its hands. The Democratic Party’s recovery from its low ebb in the winter of 2004-2005 had very little to do with Democratic policy innovation and a great deal to do with the fact that the objective situation facing the country got worse. The time for the GOP to improve, policy-wise, was back then. Had the Bush administration been animated by better ideas, Bush might not have led to declining incomes, rising inequality, and catastrophic military adventures. But since he did, the GOP lost. And now the reality is that it’s the Democrats’ turn to govern. If things work out poorly, the GOP will get back in whether or not they have an ideological renewal, and if things work out well the Republicans will stay locked out.

I suspect Yglesias is right. Republican conservatives want to “embrace their core principles and effectively communicate a compelling message of bold-color conservatism”. Moderates want to do away with “litmus tests” and “recapture the broad base.”

But the facts of life are these: in Iowa and at the federal level, voters have given Democrats control of the legislative and executive branches. Whether the Republicans bounce back in 2010 or 2012 will depend more on whether Democrats blow it than whether the RNC or the Iowa State Central Committee chooses the right leader.

What do you think?

If you are old enough to remember the 1980 campaign between Chuck Grassley and John Culver, you know that Grassley came up in politics as a conservative Republican.

Amazingly, the GOP has moved so far to the right, and the real moderate Republicans have fared so poorly during the last few election cycles, that Grassley is now among the least conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

After reading this diary by David Kowalski on how losses and retirements have shifted the GOP Senate caucus to the right, I looked up the Progressive Punch scores for all members of the outgoing Senate. On this scale, the higher the number, the more progressive a senator’s voting record.

It would be inaccurate to call Grassley a moderate, because his scores (16.27 for 2007/2008 and 9.23 for the entirety of his Senate career) are way below those of the real Republican moderates. By way of comparison, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has a 46.90 Progressive Punch number for 2007/2008 and 36.84 lifetime number. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, more of a middle-of-the-road Republican, has scores of 27.61 fr 2007/2008 and 12.64 for his career, higher than Grassley’s.

Still, because of retirements and losses, Grassley has moved from the 13th least conservative Republican senator during the last two years to seventh or eighth, depending on whether Norm Coleman prevails in the Minnesota recount.

It just goes to show how extreme today’s Republican Party has become. For that reason, I expect the minority in the incoming Senate to break the record number of filibusters Republicans set in 2007 and 2008.

I know, that sounds like hyperbole, but it would be hard to top the argument Grover Norquist made yesterday on CNBC. David Sirota, who was also on the program, fills us in:

Grover Norquist is regularly billed as one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative movement – and I think you will agree that the arguments he made in a debate with me over taxes this morning on CNBC highlight not merely the shocking intellectual bankruptcy of the movement he leads, but just how out of touch Republicans in Washington really are.

The debate revolved around President-elect Obama’s potential plans to put off raising taxes on the very wealthy. Norquist begins the debate with the claim – I kid you not – that “the economy is in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006 you knew those tax increases were going to come in 2010.” He insisted that, “The stock market began to collapse as soon as you recognize that those old tax rates were coming back.” Yes, because under “those old tax rates” – ie. Clinton-era tax rates – the economy was so much worse than it is today.

As you’ll see, the CNBC reporters start laughing at Norquist, having trouble taking him seriously. And I must say, I really wasn’t sure he was being serious – but, of course, he was. I went on to make the point that I’ve often made in the past – the point that conservatives simply want everyone to forget: Namely, that President Clinton faced down a recession in 1993 by raising taxes on the wealthy in order to finance an economic stimulus package, and the economy subsequently boomed.

Click here to watch the You Tube. Yes, Norquist would have us believe that the U.S. economy is tanking in late 2008 because when the Democrats took over Congress two years ago, people began to expect that taxes on the wealthy would go up in 2010.

If you’ve heard a more illogical assertion from a Republican talking head lately, I want to hear about it in the comments.

While we’re talking about taxes, who thinks Obama should keep his promise to ask Congress to roll back George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent?

Who thinks Obama should just let those tax cuts expire on schedule in 2010, rather than spend political capital to get Congress to rescind them one year early?

Matt Stoller found this shameful tidbit in the Congressional Record from last Friday. The speaker is Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who is mad that some senators want to find budget cuts to offset disaster aid for Iowa:

So I don’t want anybody telling me that we have to offset a disaster relief package for the Midwest where people are hurting, when we didn’t do it for New Orleans. Why the double standard? Is it because people aren’t on rooftops complaining for helicopters to rescue them, and you see it on television too much? We aren’t doing that in Iowa. We are trying to help ourselves in Iowa. We have a can-do attitude. It doesn’t show up on television like it did in New Orleans for 2 months.

Open Left commenter SpitBall raises an excellent point–a better question is “why federal aid to the flood victims in Iowa should require a budgetary offset, when the invasion [and] occupation of Iraq does not.”

But getting back to Grassley’s comment, it disturbs me that he would denigrate the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Can’t he just praise Iowans without portraying us as better than those no-good complainers in New Orleans?

And suppose the Iowa floods had left thousands of people trapped in their homes, unable to escape on foot or by vehicle. Is he saying Iowans would not stand on their roofs hoping to be rescued? Would we build our own rafts, or what?

The Iowa flooding this summer was unprecedented, but we didn’t have whole neighborhoods of people stranded without food or water the way New Orleans did the first couple of days after Katrina hit.

The unspoken contrast in Grassley’s comment is that (white) Iowans are better people than (black) Katrina victims.

Right-wing blowhard Rush Limbaugh started pushing this meme right away last month. Iowa conservative blogger Emily Geiger picked up the talking point from Rush or some other radio host and ran with it:

Iowans can fix most things ourselves. It’s just a matter of who is going to pay for it all after the fact. This isn’t like New Orleans, where (I heard some relief worker on the radio the other day say that) out-of-state volunteers had to wake up residents at 10 a.m. so that the volunteers could get inside the houses where the residents then sat around and watched the volunteers work.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: when the going gets tough, count on Republicans to make people feel better by reinforcing their racist stereotypes.

Meanwhile, Democratic Representatives Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell did something constructive on Thursday. They jointly wrote to Steve Preston, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, asking for the immediate release of $30 million in Community Development Block Grants to Iowa.

The full text of their letter to the HUD secretary, along with a joint press release explaining some background, is after the jump.

So I was catching up with the blog of a “crunchy conservative” mom I know in Des Moines, and I read this post describing a recent exchange on Dr. Laura’s radio show. (She often listens to right-wing radio while she makes cloth diapers and baby carriers for her home-based business.)

Dad calls in. Son is 3. Likes to play with his train set. Dad is “not into that.” Dad is not sure if he should suck it up and spend time with his son playing trains.

What kind of loser is too selfish to spend a little time playing trains with his three-year-old? Not only that, he seeks permission from an outside authority on whether it’s ok to refuse to play trains with his kid.

What does Dr. Laura advise?

Dr Laura says, he’s the dad. he is the parent. he is the head of his household. the kid does what he says. the kid can do something dad likes.

Great idea! Teach that kid who’s the boss. Except that the lesson the kid will probably learn is that his dad doesn’t enjoy doing things with him and doesn’t care about what’s important to him.

As Mr. desmoinesdem observed, the same dad will probably call Dr. Laura 13 years from now wondering why his sullen teenager never wants to talk to him or hang out with him.

To her credit, crunchy conservative Des Moines mom was as horrified by Dr. Laura’s advice as I was.

But it’s pretty sad when a leading voice of conservative talk radio advocates a power play like that with a young child. Would it kill this father to spend a little time doing something his son loves?

Being a parent doesn’t mean you let your children call the shots, but if your kid is really into trains or Legos or Play-doh or puzzles or whatever, don’t deny him or her the pleasure of sharing that with you.

If anyone is seeking parenting advice, I’d stick with the Sears family or Marguerite Kelly.