Progressive’s Mandate: Do and Do Some More

The Republican’s record setting fundraising for the first quarter of this year has already been mentioned here; however, I think that it needs to be underscored, bolded, and set in all caps: REPUBLICANS RAISED $32.3 MILLION IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THIS YEAR. If, after reading this line, you’re not left with a great sense of urgency and a renewed sense of responsibility, then lemme respectfully suggest that you’re not paying attention and that you need to double your efforts to provide our party with the resources we need to bring the fight to every state and neighborhood in our country.

The AP article that reported on the GOP’s record setting first quarter also included this from Ken Mehlman, the most important item of the entire piece:

“One of my lessons from the 2004 election is that voter registration and grass-roots-building needs to be year-round permanent, which means that in places we’re likely to have competitive races in ’06, we’re now working with state parties to build the grass-roots and to register voters and to make sure we have the grass-roots we need to be successful next year,” Mehlman said in a phone interview from Atlanta, where he was raising money.

Please read that paragraph again.

In 2004 our opponent’s Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort simply kicked our asses — yes, there were voter irregularities, etc., but we cannot count on that explanation alone to justify the results of 2004. And now it appears that the opposition will mount their own permanent round-the-clock GOTV grassroots infrastructure, just like we hope to do with our 50 State Campaign Strategy. In previous elections we had been able to count on one fact, our GOTV — we thought — was better than theirs; in 2004 we finally learned that this was no longer the case.

In a previous entry I posted what I consider to be the short-term tactical mandate for progressives, which boils down to: Do and do some more. Here’s what I wrote in that previous diary:

• If you’re not attending a MeetUp (Democratic Party, DFA, Kossaks, Progressive Majority or any other grassroots group that’s actively working to elect Democrats) on a regular basis, then start now!
• If you’re attending a MeetUp on regular basis, make sure you’re working to grow your group — letters to the editor, providing more organization and creating an infrastructure, etc.
• If you’re already doing both of the above, then considering taking on a greater leadership role within your local group or, better yet, within your local Democratic party.
• And, finally, here’s something we should all be doing on a periodic basis, monthly, quarterly, whatever you can afford: provide resources to the DNC — that’s right, let’s give our party the resources to bring the fight to the opposition.

I’d like to add one more item:

• If you own a blog, website, email account, etc., you should include a link to our party’s campaign contribution page: https://www.democrats.org/support/ and encourage your visitors, friends, colleagues, parents, co-workers, etc., to make a small contribution. Let’s all become DNC resource-raisers. Wouldn’t it be awesome if every progressive blog or website out there had a button to donate to the DNC? Won’t you consider making a small contribution yourself, it’s easy?

I know that there are draw backs to be constantly asking people to open their wallets; however, just like we did during the general election, where people were using innovative ways to encourage friends to donate to the campaign of their choice, I think that we can once again find that level of enthusiasm and innovation to encourage each other to provide our party with much needed resources round the clock. Finally, sorry if this seems a bit preachy, I know that we all do a our bit in this community and, so, I thank you. Now, if you’d like to read more disclaimers on how I know that this community rocks and, too, how I know that we all hate feeling like ATMs, please read my previous post — there you’ll also read some very brief thoughts on the importance of nurturing a sustainable progressive movementt.

We Hate Feeling Like ATM Machines, But…

I know we all hate feeling like mere ATM machines; however, it requires resources to bring the fight to the opposition. Of course, resources are just one of the prerequisite components needed to mount a successful and sustainable fight; the other elements are:

• Ideas: a message that resonates.
• Organization: the various party and grassroots entities that will mobilize us come general elections (or at other necessary time).
• And, again, Resources: bodies and money — yes, money!

Around here this list is plainly obvious, and bears little repeating; however, every now and then — and I think now is that time, at least for me — one needs to be reminded of the following:

• If you’re not attending a MeetUp (Democratic Party, DFA, Kossaks, Progressive Majority or any other grassroots group that’s actively working to elect Democrats) on a regular basis, then start now!
• If you’re attending a MeetUp on regular basis, make sure you’re working to grow your group — letters to the editor, providing more organization and creating an infrastructure, etc.
• If you’re already doing both of the above, then considering taking on a greater leadership role within your local group or, better yet, within your local Democratic party.
• And, finally, here’s something we should all be doing on a periodic basis, monthly, quarterly, whatever you can afford: provide resources to the DNC — that’s right, let’s give our party the resources to bring the fight to the opposition.

You can start by visiting the DNC contribution page at https://www.democrats.org/support/.

Let me share with you what inspired this post, from The Hill [April 12, 2005]:

The 10 most vulnerable House Republicans have raised twice as much as their Democratic counterparts this year, testifying to an enduring GOP fundraising advantage in member-to-member giving and the majority party’s clout among donors on K Street.

The article goes on to fill in the details on how it is that the opposition has managed to out raise us — I’ll spare you the details, which you can read on your own. My sole point here is to reiterate what we all know around here: it is up to us to reclaim our country, and we need to start by doing — at a minimum — the four things listed in the preceding bullet points.

Finally, about a week ago I attended a Camp Wellstone workshop on “citizen activism,” which rejuvenated my profound sense of the rightness of progressive principles and, too, underscored the importance of building the infrastructure that’ll nurture a sustainable progressive movement. If you’ve not attended a Camp Wellstone workshop before look’em up here, you’ll have a great time and learn a lot in the process. Again, as I see it, building a sustainable progressive movement requires resources — money and bodies; accordingly, if you can, make a commitment to yourself to help build our Democratic party by providing the necessary resources to defeat our opponents, give what you: https://www.democrats.org/support/.

DeLay Splits GOP

WASHINGTON – Rep. Christopher Shays said Sunday that fellow Republican Rep. Tom DeLay should step down as House majority leader because his continuing ethics problems are hurting the GOP.

“Tom’s conduct is hurting the Republican Party, is hurting this Republican majority and it is hurting any Republican who is up for re-election,” Shays told The Associated Press on Sunday.

[...]

“My party is going to have to decide whether we are going to continue to make excuses for Tom to the detriment of Republicans seeking election,” Shays said.

AP – Sun Apr 10, 5:01 PM ET

Crawford, Texas (AP) — President Bush considers House Majority Leader Tom DeLay a friend and hopes to keep working with him, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday.

McClellan was asked if Bush was among those who believe the embattled Texas Republican should resign, or at least answer allegations of ethical misconduct.

“Majority Leader DeLay is someone the president considers a friend. And he is someone he has worked closely with to get things done in Washington,” McClellan said.

AP – Monday, April 11, 2005

The Latest Republican Hypocrite

Has there ever been a bigger group of hypocrites than the Republican party and its supporters? Don’t answer, of course there hasn’t been. Around here we’ve known that they’re hypocrites, but of recent it seems that Republicans are finally ready to come out of the closet and show the rest of the country what it is that the Republican party really stands for:

• Big intrusive government (i.e., government intervention in private/personal issues such as end of life decisions.)
• Deficits Run-amok (i.e., record deficits by the Bush administration, even though it inherited record surpluses when it first came into office.)
• War based on hype and lies (i.e., Iraq — enough said.)
• Advocates of institutionalized discrimination against fellow Americans (i.e., the anti-marriage amendment against same-sex couples.)
• Anti-Constitutionalists (i.e., mounting attacks against a co-equal branch and undermining its legitimacy.)

This list could go on and on, but I need to get to what inspired this rant: the latest hypocrisy by a Republican operative. Over the years we’ve seen Republicans use all sorts of social issues to drive wedges between Americans and to agitate the Republican base. In the last election we saw how Republicans used the anti-marriage amendment to get their base out on election night and, in part, to somehow unilaterally claim the mantle of being the party of “moral issues.” Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, far from being the the party of “moral issues,” Republicans are the party of moral opportunism — as illustrated by their crass misuse of the Schiavo tragedy. And now we have another example of the lack of moral integrity that the Republican party and its operatives lack, from the NYT (April 9, 2005):

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Here’s a Republican that, according to the article, has worked for the past 25 years to defeat “Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal,” and yet when it comes to his personal life he rejects his party’s platform and, instead, avails himself of the rights “Massachusetts’ Liberals” have afforded him. What’s more, here’s a Republican that has surprised many of his conservative associates:

[T]hey were startled to learn that this prominent American conservative had married a man, given his history with the party, especially at a time when many Republican leaders, including President Bush, have campaigned against same-sex marriage and proposed amending the Constitution to ban it. Mr. Finkelstein has been allied over the years with Republicans who have fiercely opposed gay rights measures, including former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and has been the subject of attacks by gay rights activists who have accused him of hypocrisy.

And here’s the clincher, this hypocrite rationalizes his lack of moral integrity by, according to an associate, claiming that:

[He] did not view his marriage as a political statement and had specifically decided to have a civil ceremony rather than a religious one. This associate argued that over the past 20 years, Mr. Finkelstein had identified himself as a libertarian and an opponent of big government, distancing himself from social conservatives as they have gained political muscle and dominance in the party.

This Republican’s lack of a moral compass — and the many others like him that exploit base social issues to ride the resultant backlash to power — fostered a climate wherein Republican politicians see the threat of violence against judges as a legitimate political tool and, too, a climate wherein dissent is considered nearly treasonous. And, while I wish the happy couple a long and joyous life together, I sincerely hope that Mr. Finkelstein, and all the other Republican collaborators that deny responsibility for the uglier element residing in the underbelly of their party, soon realize that they’ve violated this old axiom, leave the world a better place than how you found it; and, too, they’ve created an America that has stopped and may, in fact, be taking a few steps back on its long march towards democracy and towards a guaranteed equal protection for all its citizens.

It’s About “Separation of Powers” Stupid

Republicans, drunk with power, aim to remake the entire federal government into a tool serving conservative interests. As we’ve seen, since the conclusion of Mrs. Schiavo’s tragedy, Republicans are mounting an attack on courts, vilifying and even making veiled threats against judges. Tom DeLay, the majority Republican leader, released this statement regarding judges recently: “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.” Of course, we’ve also seen other Republican elected officials following Tom DeLay’s cue, and making similar threats of their own; and, now, it looks like we’re about to see an escalation of the attacks against judges and courts — that is, against the Constitutional principle of Separation of Powers.

According to the Washington Post (article -April 9, 2005), the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration recently organized a panel to discuss “Remedies to Judicial Tyranny” and to explore charges leading to the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy :

This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s parents; Alabama’s “Ten Commandments” judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope’s funeral.

The Schlafly session’s moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a “radical secularist relativist judiciary.” It turned more harsh from there.

I suppose that Dana Milbank, the author of the Washington Post article, was recalling this:

[L]awyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.”

And this:

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his “bottom line” for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. “He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem,’ ” Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don’t recognize it, is “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.”

When he wrote that things “turned more harsh from there.”

Conservatives and their Republican minions are growing tired and desperate at their in inability thus far to fast track the implementation of their socially conservative agenda; and, therefore, their wails and veiled threats against judges are likely to grow louder over the upcoming months. Sure, the base of the socially conservative movement welcomes the attacks on judges, and don’t mind being portrayed as extremists — even radicals — because they believe that they’re doing it all for a good cause. However, moderate Republicans are, I think, beginning to realize that they made a deal with the devil when when they partnered with the fundamentalist faction of their party. So, the question for us is, how do we exploit this? How do we reach out to these so-called moderates, while simultaneous underscoring that while the Republican leadership sides with the extremist base of their party, the issues that we all care about — Iraq, Social Security, etc. — are ignored and pushed off of the Congressional agenda?

As Kos has already pointed out, I believe that our talking point on this issue is the principle of “Separation of Powers,” something we all learned about in high school history and understand from those days. We, Democrats and Progressives, stand in defense of the principle of “Separation of Powers,” while Republicans work to destroy the Constitution with their attacks on Senatorial proceedings (i.e., ending the long history of debate on the Senate floor) and, now, with their frontal attacks against the courts — a co-equal branch of government.

Senator Harry Reid, of course, has already framed the situation along the lines of protecting the principle of “Separation of Powers,” when the Democratic leader announced that Senate Democrats would vigorously defend the system of “checks and balances.” With that in mind, whenever there’s an opportunity the “Separation of Powers/Checks and Balances” meme should be repeated to reinforce Senator Reid’s point; because this is a way of presenting the fight over the judges in a way that people understand and get.