Fear and greed, and 2010 and 2014

Is this year going to be more like four years ago than 2012?  The answer is 'probably'.  Think Progress rains on the parade.

Barring another big Democratic wave in November, 2014 is likely to be a bad election year for Democrats. That’s because they are stuck defending the big Senate victories Democrats made in the 2008 wave election, as well as several seats in states that have trended red in recent years. Any year when Senate Democrats need to defend seats in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia is likely to be a difficult time for Team Blue, regardless of how they perform at the polls.

In the fairly likely event that Republicans regain control of the Senate next year, they will suddenly enjoy a power they haven’t held since Senate Democrats invoked the so-called nuclear opinion last November — the power to block every single one of President Obama’s nominees to any Senate-confirmed job. That is, at least, if the Supreme Court gives them this power. (Next) Monday, the justices will hear a case that could effectively shut down the president’s power to make recess appointments, potentially cutting off the primary avenue a president has to push back against a Senate that refuses to confirm anyone to key government jobs.

That article continues in similarly gloomy fashion.  The $64,000 question remains: can Texas -- Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte and Battleground Texas and all the others -- overcome the bad trend lines?  History is unkind.

The Herculean task of registering hundreds of thousands of eligible non-voters (in Texas these reputedly number between 2.5 and 3 million), making certain they have proper ID to vote, and then getting them to actually cast a ballot (Texas registered voters who did not vote in 2012 counted 8 million) -- is still Job One.  It's the linchpin on which everything else hinges.  Unfortunately, no amount of Republican infighting is going to dampen the conservative hatred enthusiasm in November.  Ted Cruz is furiously whipping them into a foaming frenzy, and that will be something you can count on him doing once a week for the next ten months.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has told a conservative conference that President Barack Obama is lawless, providing the right wing rhetoric that makes him so popular in his home state.

The conservative Republican laid out his reasoning for why he thinks the president is “dangerous and terrifying.”

According to the Statesman, Cruz also slammed Obama for what he referred to as a pattern of “lawlessness on a breathtaking scale.”

“We are a nation of laws and not men,” Cruz was additionally quoted as saying by the website. “If we had a system where a president can pick and choose what laws to follow at utter whim … that is seriously dangerous.”

The only thing that's dangerous, as everyone knows, is the inflamed rhetoric Cruz keeps spewing.  He is a demagogue of the highest rank, and he stimulates the worst elements of the far right every time he runs his mouth.  If you can stomach it, check the comments at the links for confirmation.

I don't think Cruz will be satisfied until somebody gets physically hurt, and we all know who that is.  Which sounds more and more like his intent.

But Cruz warned those with that mindset that they ought to contemplate that their “guy ain’t gonna be there forever. If this president has that power so does the next one and the next one and the next one, and my message to all the Democrats and all the liberals is, what do you think about the next president, maybe a Republican, having the power Barack Obama has as a president who is not bound by the law?”

Personally, I don't think there are going to be any more Republican presidents for a long, long, time (and not just because Chris Christie has self-destructed).  There ARE, however, going to be odious pieces of crap like Cruz in the US Senate, terrible fools like Louie Gohmert in the House of Representatives, and homegrown lunatics like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick in Austin for much longer than anyone wants to think about.

That's what Texas Democrats are up against.  Texas Republicans all pattern themselves now after their god, Ted Cruz.  And it worked in 2010 like a charm without him around.

So in my life experience, there are two primary motivators of human behavior: fear and greed.  Greed is well understood and easy to identify; fear is a little more complex. There's fear of loss (of money, status, "values"), fear of the unknown (xenophobia), and a few more like that.  Just this simplest of understanding takes care of explaining the motivations of 80% of all Republican voters (the 80-20 rule).

And, of course, Occam's razor is being used to illustrate it.

This is where it gets complicated.  If you believe, as I do, that Wendy Davis has risen as a leader on the strength of her abilty to inspire others, then her challenge going forward -- against what would probably be the discouragement of her advisers -- is to use (for best results) either fear or greed as a method of inspiration. 

1. That's not what Democrats do (motivate by provoking base instincts). They don't have much successful experience doing it, and when they occasionally resort to it, it they rarely do so effectively.  Democrats like to think of themselves as thinkers, thus the grand policy initiatives like Davis' education proposals, released last week.  Hopeful and inspiring to many, yes, but not so much for those who haven't previously been motivated by the concept of a better educated Texas to register, or just show up and cast a ballot.  The people, in other words, who are key to Texas Democrats winning a statewide election.

2. You must discard 'greed' as a tool to motivate potential Democratic non-voters.  Republicans have already co-opted and framed it against Democrats ("these goddamn Ill Eagles and welfare queens and poverty pimps are lining up for free Obamaphones!").  See also Gohmert's latest.

3. That leaves 'fear'.  And that means harsh language.

"Do you want your kids to grow up in a Texas where everybody works for minimum wage, where there's no hope to get a good education, much less pay for it, where you go to the emergency room to find out your child has asthma, or cancer, because your air and water has been ruined by the oil and gas companies?"

"Do you want to keep buying lottery tickets as your only hope for a better future? As your only retirement investment?"

'Are you going to just sit on your couch and watch TV and say your vote won't matter, when YOUR life and the lives of your children and grandchildren are at stake?  Do you want to see your kids grow up like this... or do you want to do something to help build a better Texas for them, and your neighbors, and their kids?"

And Republicans' greed can be used against them.

"You know who that 500% interest is going to, right?  Greg Abbott and his buddies. You want to keep living like that -- payday to payday?  Never able to dig out, much less get ahead?  While they get rich off keeping you poor?"

"You know things will never get better if you don't change them, right?"

You can't have this kind of blunt conversation with a total stranger -- i.e. someone you want to register to vote, or to come to the poll during election season -- any place but in person.  It must be had at their door, or in front of the Walmart.  Or in front of the payday lending store, where you are registering voters.

It's a dirty-ass job, an Aegean stables-type job, but BGTX has to do it.  They better be doing a lot of it already.  Else 2014 is going to be exactly like 2010.

(How's that for using fear as a motivational tool?)

GOP civil war comes to Houston

Let's just hope they don't start shooting (I'm more worried about them hitting innocent bystanders than I am each other).

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has endorsed Paul Simpson, who is challenging six-term incumbent Jared Woodfill for chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, according to the Austin political website, the Quorum Report.

Reporter Scott Braddock quotes Emmett as saying that he believes the party should be making a greater effort to reach out to young people.

“Ronald Reagan would probably not be welcome in today’s Republican Party,” Braddock quotes Emmett as saying. “I would like to see the base in Harris County to be 400,000, not 150,000.”

The QR link doesn't offer much more unless you're a subscriber.  But Greg "Rhymes With Hate" is all over it, like orange cones on the George Washington Bridge.

No really, you should click over.  It's calm, reasoned, insightful; not at all like the deranged and hyperbolic comments he occasionally leaves here. Here's an example (of the former, not the latter)...

First, the Harris County GOP is the largest local Republican Party in the United States. Any change of direction here indicates the potential for a seismic shift in the state of Texas, with the shock waves rippling out to impact the entire country. And since Emmett is the highest ranking elected official in the county, it indicates that there are powerful people here in the Houston area who are not comfortable with the direction the county party has been headed for some time.

Secondly, it is important to note that the reason for the shift is the recognition by many Republicans that the party needs to move in the direction of greater inclusivity. In recent years the party has been controlled by a social conservative faction that has recently been loathe to include anyone who is not purer than Ivory Soap in terms of their support for every jot and tittle of the Texas GOP platform. It would appear that this is a significant factor in Judge Emmett's decision to throw his support behind Paul Simpson's candidacy -- the willingness of Jared Woodfill and those who back him to leave precinct chair positions vacant rather than fill those slots with someone who Ronald Reagan would have defined as friends and allies rather than traitors to the Republican cause. Judge Emmett openly expressed his concern that men like Reagan and Barry Goldwater, a pair who were once the gold standard for what it meant to be a Republican and a conservative, would no longer be considered acceptable candidates for office (even to be precinct chairs) by the current leadership in Harris County.

The GOP, from DC to Austin to Houston, obviously has tremendous issues.  I have catalogued many permutations of the insidious conservative virus and the damage it has done in over ten-plus years of blogging here, and things have only gotten worse over that time, in direct contrast to the party's stranglehold on state politics.  This movement to push back against their ideological extremists is a noble bid for survival and relevance.  Some of them are smart enough to glimpse the future and are rightly scared about it.

I became a Republican myself in 1974, when I heard Reagan speak at a banquet I worked as a 16-year-old busboy-promoted-to-waiter in Beaumont, TX.  I stayed a Republican until Clayton Williams ran for governor against Ann Richards in 1990 (I lived in Midland at the time, Ground Zero for witnessing the carnage of William's political seppuku).  I haven't been anywhere near the party in the twenty-four years since for easily discernible reasons, among them that they have only coarsened in the years since Claytie's rape joke -- meaner, more obnoxious, more fascist, and more irrelevant to people's daily lives.

Any movement by Republicans to try to pull their party away from the right and back to the center (in other words, to the left) is something I cannot oppose.  So I wish Judge Emmett and Mr. Simpson well in their endeavor and will watch these developments closely.

I have no idea -- and frankly don't care -- if Simpson is who Emmett thinks he is, or if he can accomplish what he says.  That isn't what matters at this point.  He's got to get elected first.

And to that end, this small internecine skirmish in the grand scheme is a little ripple in a big pond.  The overarching point is that America actually benefits from a sane Republican Party, if for no other reason than such a development would force the Democratic Party to keep practicing kaizen by trending left, an encouraging development in and of itself.

So I'll wish them luck because it's an extremely tough task they have ahead.  If they lose, the GOP keeps hurtling down the road to extinction (that's not necessarily bad if you're a Blue-ish-Green partisan like I am today, but "devil-you-know" and all that).  In the meantime -- if you're a conservative that doesn't like one of the two factions of the GOP, be it moderate or extreme -- you might consider going to see Gary Johnson, the 2012 Libertarian presidential nominee, speak in Austin, Houston, or San Antonio next week.

The most influence to be had by voters dissatisfied with the lesser of two options is to help a third voice grow louder.  That is the most effective protest vote a person can cast.

Update: Holly Jolly is a little puffed up over this post, but what's noteworthy is the careful drawing of his toe across the sand between the two conservative factions, who sound ready to go at each others' throats.  First, from Woodfill's e-mail, firing back against Simpson.

‘CONSERVATIVE’ REPUBLICAN COUNTY LEADERS SUPPORT WOODFILL

Judge Robert Eckels, Commissioners Cagle, Morman, and Tax Assessor Mike Sullivan ENDORSE Jared Woodfill

It’s unanimous – conservative county leadership only trusts one man to continue leading the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP) – Jared Woodfill.  Why change what works? Conservative leaders like Woodfill do not come often, and there is a reason he has served longer than any other predecessor – he does the right thing, and he does the right thing effectively.

What is significant here is that Jolly himself has called out Woodfill for his leadership of the party and supported challengers Simpson and Ed Hubbard against Woodfill in the past.  Apparently not this time, though.

For anyone that thinks yesterday’s sloppy release of Ed Emmett’s endorsement of Paul Simpson was a game changer, think again. Communication skills are arguably the biggest part of the Chairs job in the HCRP and Jared Woodfill excels at that portion of the job.

If you are a conservative Republican, and most Harris County Republicans are conservative, which lead do you follow? It was a huge mistake for the Simpson campaign to give talking points to the left media and bloggers in their attempt to oust the chair of the very conservative Harris County Republican Party.

This much I know: cheerleading for Simpson and Emmett from far-left vulgar bloggers isn’t going to help their cause. And advice from moderate Republicans to disavow social issues will, if heeded, result in losing elections and destroy the party. There is a balance that must be maintained between all factions of our coalition – dropping any of the factions is bad advice.

Dave: for the record, nobody who is a Republican -- with the notable exception of Burt Levine -- has ever given me anything but shit, just like you.  (But hey, thanks for the traffic!)

Moderates versus Tea Party.  The country clubbers against the kooks.  It's going to be fun watching them sort themselves out.