Where are the moderates … in either party?

In the Providence Journal, there was a column, dated today, by Froma Harrop, which she entitled “We All Need Moderate Republicans,” but which was indexed by Real Clear Politics as “Where Are the Moderate Republicans?” But it's not just in the Republican Party that moderates seem to have vanished. I can't name a moderate in the Democratic Party in the Senate, with the exception of Joe Manchin. So the better question is “Where are the moderates in either party?”

Perhaps I have the answer. There is no more segregation in the South. With the end of Jim Crow, Southern Democrats, who formed a party of their own within the Democratic Party, mostly became Republicans. Their conservatism moderated the Democratic Party when they called themselves Democrats, but it has pulled the Republican Party rightward. And the northeastern Republicans, no longer able to play off northern and southern Democrats against each other in Congress, lost power.

Partially, too, it represents the decline of the rural areas (whilch were largely Republican) in the North. In a state like New York, the Republicans could win statewide office because New York City, which was 60-70% Democratic, had about 50% of the vote, while the rest of the state was 60-70% Republican, and also had about 50% of the vote. The suburbs used to be part of that 60-70% Republican “rest of the state,” but it seems that when a lot of urbanites moved out to the suburbs, many retained their Democratic allegiance. New York State is now reliably “blue.” I can't speak for other Northeastern states, but I suspect something similar happened, with cities like Boston and Philadelphia sending Democratic voters to formerly reliable Republican suburban and even rural areas.

So that's the probable answer. The end of segregation in the South, and the combination of rural areas turning into suburbs with “white flight” into those suburbs by urban Democrats who continued to vote Democratic, killed moderation in both parties. How do we revive it? Beats me!

Was the New York Congressional vote a referendum on Obama?

Some people are claiming that the election Tuesday which elected Republican Bob Turner to Congress was not a referendum on President Obama's administration. Well, listen to the comments of 61-year-old Linda Goldberg after she cast her ballot in New York City's borough of Queens: “I am a registered Democrat, I have always been a registered Democrat, I come from a family of Democrats — and I hate to say this, I voted Republican. I need to send a message to the president that he’s not doing a very good job. Our economy is horrible. People are scared.” Anyone who would say she “hate[d] to say” that she voted for a Republican is a pretty firm Democrat. When people like Linda Goldberg vote as she did — and say that the President is “not doing a very good job,” that is a pretty bad sign for the President.

In this election, even a Democratic colleague of losing candidate David Weprin's in the New York assembly, Dov Hikind, endorsed Turner. When fellow partisans in office back your opponent, that says something. Assemblyman Hikind suggested that the deciding factor in the race was the economy. “People want to go back to work,” he said. “They're sick and tired of speeches.”

The arrogance of… Barack Obama

Some years ago, now-President Barack Obama wrote a book entitled "The Audacity of Hope." Well, I don't know about how much audacity hope may possess, but President Obama's audacity is so great as to be better described as arrogance, to a seemingly unbounded degree.

The President submitted a request to Congress during the debt ceiling debates to raise certain taxes. (Robin-Hood-like, he seemed to think that taxing "rich people" more would get support from the American people.) The Republicans, quite naturally, balked. They also were very unhappy with the "stimulus that didn't stimulate," which Obama pushed through when the Congress was in Democratic hands. So what did the President propose for his "jobs" plan? A rehash of the "stimulus," to be paid for by the very tax increases which he could not get the GOP members of Congress to sign on to. And he has the gall — the audacity — to accuse the Republicans of excess partisanship, and beseech them to cooperate!

If he wants a less partisan response from Republicans in Congress, it is up to him to come up with a less partisan program — no repeat of the "stimulus that didn't stimulate," no more "robbing from the 'rich' to give to the poor," and at least some concession to Republican ideas like lowering business taxes and deregulating those businesses.