The Steep, Steep Price of Thad Cochran's Victory in Mississippi

Today on NRO

ADAM BELLOW: For too long, conservatives have ceded the popular culture to the Left. Let Your Right Brain Run Free.

JOHN FUND: Dinesh D'Souza takes on Obama, Hillary, Saul Alinsky, and Howard Zinn in a single bold film. D'Souza's America.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: Make the Left do their math and show their work. The Profit Police.

BRADLEY A. SMITH: Senator Paul's felon-enfranchisement proposal is a tricky matter, but not clearly unconstitutional. Rand Paul Does Respect the Constitution.

SLIDESHOW: MRAPs on Main Street.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

June 30, 2014

Dear Jolt Aficionados,

Good to be back! A soup-to-nuts roundup today. Around midmorning today, expect the Supreme Court to announce its decision in "Hobby Lobby" case challenging Obamacare's contraception mandate.

The Steep, Steep Price of Thad Cochran's Victory in Mississippi

The Republican Party has to stand for more than "just win, baby."

If you're a Republican who went all out for Thad Cochran's win last week, I hope you're looking at yourself in the mirror and asking yourself whether Cochran's victory was worth it. Because the price looks awfully steep -- i.e., having a Republican candidate denounce the conservative positions of his opponent and a big chunk of the grassroots.

Great, a 76-year-old who wanted to retire is now a favorite to return for a seventh term. Look, I get it, Chris McDaniel had more rough edges than sandpaper origami, and yes, there was always the likelihood that the Democrats would attempt to turn him into the Todd Akin of this cycle. But anytime a Republican tries to beat another Republican by adopting the rhetoric of the Democrats, they're playing with fire.

Was Thad Cochran's victory worth having a Republican explicitly running on the glory of earmarks and the value of large federal spending projects in the state? Why not just hold up a giant flashing neon sign saying "WE DON'T REALLY CARE ABOUT THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT"?

Was it worth running radio ads declaring, "By not voting, you're saying, 'Take away all of my government programs, such as food stamps, early breakfast and lunch programs, millions of dollars to our black universities'"?

Was Cochran's victory worth a flyer like this one, contending that the Tea Party is racist?

jolt

Yes, yes, the Cochran backers will insist they themselves had nothing to do with those radio ads or flyers. They just happened to benefit from messaging that demonized the positions of the grassroots.

Once a Republican candidate is running on those messages . . . how many differences with the Democrats are left? "Hi, I'm the candidate of bringing home the bacon and higher spending, and I think the Tea Party is racist. But I'm completely different from the Democrat, I swear!"

When a candidate campaigns on limited government and other conservative positions, he's making a sales pitch for policy positions and a philosophy that some other candidate can run on in the future. When a candidate campaigns on his spot on the Appropriations Committee, and his seniority, and his long history of bringing back federal funding for state projects, he's making a sales pitch that is completely non-transferrable to any other candidate, now or later. Next time around, some Democrat -- some liberal Democrat! -- will be able to make the plausible case that they'll bring back more pork than the other guy. The arguments of the Cochran campaign helped their man -- and by contending this is the proper criteria for electing senators, they're also helping some populist Democrat in a couple of years.

Is this is the new strategy for Republicans? Abandon any pretense of being the party of limited government in an effort to win over the Democratic base?

Consider Ronny Barrett, a 56-year-old mechanic from Jackson and a black Democrat who voted for Cochran on June 3 and again Tuesday.

"Sen. Cochran has done a lot of things for the black community, and a lot of people in the black community know that," Barrett said at Cochran's victory party. "First time in my life I voted Republican. . . . I think I'll vote Republican again."

Because Mississippi voters don't register by party, it's impossible to know exactly how many Democrats or independents voted for Cochran. But turnout increased by almost 70,000 votes over the June 3 turnout, and Cochran improved his vote totals substantially in several key counties, including about 7,000 additional votes in Hinds, the seat of state government; more than 1,000 in Harrison and more than 1,200 in Jackson, both coastal counties.

The good news is that Ronny Barrett voted Republican and may vote Republican again. The bad news is that it doesn't appear that the Cochran campaign made much of an argument to Barrett and other Democratic-leaning African-American voters other than, "I'll bring home the federal spending that matters to you."

A few Cochran backers are insisting this is a triumph of GOP outreach to minorities. But the methods of Cochran's campaign aren't transferrable to candidates who aren't veteran ~~porkmeister~~ Appropriations Committee members. And what good is this method? Denounce your base and promise to give the other party's base what they want? You might as well switch parties. Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist did.

Now Cochran's new allies expect him to oppose efforts at voter ID:

NAACP Mississippi State President Derrick Johnson said in an interview that they are looking for Cochran's support.

"Two things that we think should come immediately after the election [are] his support of the Voting Rights act . . . free of any provisions that would allow for voter ID and, second, to get the presidents of the black colleges to ask for his offices for help to make sure the mission of those institutions are carried out," he said.

We can find all this frustrating, but not surprising. From the February 11 Morning Jolt:

McDaniel says he's willing to draw a hard line on pork, but that's another issue that seems to be more appealing in the abstract than when actual projects, jobs, and dollars are at stake. Bringing home federal spending hasn't hurt Cochran in any of his previous six Senate campaigns, nor was it much of an issue for, say, former Mississippi senator Trent Lott.

The "Just win, baby" motto is attributed to the late Al Davis, owner of the Oakland (and briefly Los Angeles) Raiders. Davis' approach did work quite well for a while . . . and then from 1990 to 2010, they had seven seasons above .500.

Hillary Just Needs Americans to Forget the Past 25 Years

Ben White of Politico: "After two weeks of verbal gaffes and unflattering headlines, Democratic operatives, political historians and counselors to the nation's wealthy agree that Clinton's current strategy -- acting like she's not incredibly rich and made her money the old-fashioned way -- is not working and needs to change. Fast."

No shinola, Sherlock. The problem for Hillary is that acknowledging the obvious would showcase her as the anti-populist candidate of 2016. She became immensely wealthy because of her political power, which smells a lot like cashing in on one's elected office -- toxic at a time when Americans feel like their elected officials don't listen to them and don't understand their struggles in this persistently lousy economy.

Peggy Noonan, with the line of the weekend: "She's been driven in limousines and official cars almost all her adult life. For more than a quarter-century she has seen America through tinted windows."

Note to self: The Republican candidate of 2016 should ideally have spent as little of his (or her) life as possible in staff-driven cars with tinted windows.

Just Keep Interviewing Until You Find the Right Narrative for the Tide of Children Crossing the Border

I'm not pitching the book again -- well, not yet -- when I remind you that every screw-up on the part of the federal government will subsequently be used as a justification for more funding for the federal government:

The Obama administration, in a dramatic escalation of its border-control strategy, will seek more than $2 billion in emergency funds to help stem an influx of Central American women and children entering the country illegally, as well as new measures to more quickly deport those already here, the White House confirmed Saturday.

The Miami Herald writes that, "While each child might have his or her own reasons for making the perilous journey, immigration attorneys and activists who represent the children say the main reason they are fleeing is intensified gang violence in their home countries as well as abuse and physical violence in their own homes."
There has always been gang violence and there has always been abuse and physical violence within homes. That doesn't explain the number of unattended children jumping from about 7,000 per year to 50,000 in the past nine months.
The Herald writes, "Interviews in Miami last week with half a dozen unaccompanied minors who reached the United States show that escaping gang violence is a prime factor in the exodus."

Oooh, six interviews!

The U.S. Border Patrol's late May interviews of 230 adults and unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala suggests a different answer:

According to the document, the agents interviewed 230 adults and unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala on May 28, 2014. The focus, the document says, was to "obtain a general consensus as to why" the border crossers "are migrating en masse" into the country through the Rio Grande Valley.

The word "amnesty" doesn't appear in the summary of results. Also, the document says in many cases, "the subjects mentioned more than one reason," including gang-related violence, extreme poverty, high unemployment, poor living conditions and subpar educational circumstances -- with many women mentioning domestic abuse.

Still, the document says, the main reason interviewed individuals "chose this particular time to migrate" was to "take advantage of the 'new' U.S. 'law' that grants a 'free pass' or permit (referred to as 'permisos') being issued by the U.S. government to female adult" non-Mexicans "traveling with minors and to" unaccompanied children."

The document says the issue of "permisos" was the "main reason provided by 95% (+/-) of the interviewed subjects."

Meanwhile, in the State Legislatures . . .

The Republican State Leadership Committee -- the national committee that focuses upon electing Republicans to state legislatures, where they can become the bench of potential candidates for other offices -- was a bit frustrated to see one of their rising stars, T.W. Shannon, former Oklahoma House speaker, lose his bid in Oklahoma's GOP Senate primary to Representative James Lankford. But there's good news on other fronts.

Governing magazine offers a quick rundown on the balance of power in state legislatures, and finds that the GOP is well-positioned to score significant gains this fall:

The current partisan breakdown in state legislatures is 58 Republican-held chambers and 40 Democratic-held chambers. That's a slightly smaller margin than the 61 chambers the GOP controlled in 2012.

At this point in the campaign cycle, we find 17 chambers that are vulnerable to a change in control in November. Of the 17 at-risk chambers this year, 11 are currently held by the Democrats and only six are held by the GOP.

Of the 11 chambers at risk for the Democrats, six are rated either a tossup or lean Republican. One Democratic-held chamber already leans Republican: the New Hampshire House, thanks to a GOP-friendly redistricting map. Five other Democratic chambers are rated tossups: the Colorado Senate, the Iowa Senate, the Nevada Senate, the New Mexico House and the West Virginia House.

Update from Book-World

Readers, thank you for indulging the near-daily ~~nagging~~ reminders about the book and where it can be purchased. Apparently nagging the hundreds of thousands of you who receive this e-mail works, and thus my publisher keeps nudging me to continue. As you are no doubt tired of hearing, The Weed Agencyis . . . available on Amazon Prime, Kindle, at Barnes and Noble, Nook, and IndieBound can steer you to an independent bookseller near you. I'm starting to spot it at the "New Fiction" tables in selected Barnes and Noble stores.

Washington area readers, tomorrow night (July 1) I'll be the so-called "celebrity guest" at a Happy Hour organized by Doublethink, a snappy publication featuring a lot of young conservative writers published by the America's Future Foundation. Joel Gehrke -- who you have no doubt been reading at NRO -- edits it. We'll have a bunch of copies of The Weed Agency.

Tuesday, July 1, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Mission, Dupont Circle, 1606 20th St NW
Washington, D.C.

If you're a member of the Union League Club in New York City -- or if you know someone who is! -- I'll be doing a luncheon and book signing there on July 17.

On my calendar, I'm scheduled to speak at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina July 28.

ADDENDA: Over at Commentary, Jonah digests and analyzes Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century so the rest of us don't have to:

How and by whom this money would be collected is kept rather vague, in part because even Piketty concedes that this proposal is "utopian." More interesting, he is not especially concerned about what to do with these revenues. Leveling the gap between the rich and the rest of us is a much larger priority for him than lifting up the poor. "Confiscatory tax rates on incomes deemed to be indecent" are worthwhile in their own right, he says. Such rates, which reached 90 percent in the United States at one point, were an "impressive U.S. innovation of the interwar years." He says this even though he concedes that a high marginal tax rate on extremely high incomes actually "brings in almost nothing" (because the rich would simply stop taking proceeds in taxable form). He does concede in a wonderful understatement at the end of the book that "before we can learn to efficiently organize public financing equivalent to two-thirds to three-quarters of national income" -- what his desired tax rates would amount to -- "it would be good to improve the organization and operation of the existing public sector." There's a useful insight.

. . . President Obama is increasingly open about the fact that he finds Congress to be irrelevant to passing laws and governing:

jolt

. . . An intriguing option, an entertainment-minded show with a bit of conservatism tossed in, The Flipside with Michael Loftus, is apparently reaching a wider audience through syndication starting this September: "Jay-Z complaining about income inequality is like Honey Boo-Boo saying, 'television just isn't what it used to be.'"

. . . The big score from last week: Geraghty boys 3, Alligators 0.

jolt

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