Tea Party and Social Conservatives

The Democracy in America blog highlights some controversy about social conservatism in the US, with particular reference to libertarian Ron Paul, and to the Tea Party movement.

Essentially like all political groups there are differences of opinion, and abortion in the US is a key area of controvery. Social conservatives are not simply identifiable by their support for pro-life policies, but acceptance of this idea is an important test of whether they will get the following they need. "[While] I wouldn't use the terms interchangeably, I think a staunch pro-life stance makes a candidate eligible for the social conservative vote."

The tea-party movement is pretty fractious, and many of them are pro-life and all the rest of it, but the core principles of the movement are: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Not exactly the Moral Majority.

Further information about the Tea Party movement can be found here at their web-site.

George Osbourne's emergency budget

I'm a bit wary about posting too much about the emergency budget, especially given that for G&P students taking AS, the autumn spending review will have happened by the time the exam season rolls around in 2011. I think the graph below (from the BBC) summarises the problem for the Government quite nicely, in that it shows the scale of the spending-cut and tax rises needed in the coming parliamentary session to reduce the budget deficit:

In short, as indicated here in a BBC article, the cuts announced by the coalition government are huge, but aim to balance the government books by 2016 (i.e. after the next projected election). There is much uncertainty, especially given that the coalition will face extraordinary pressure, and there is the possibility the government won't survive the next 5 years intact. More thorough business analysis here from Robert Peston and an economic view here from Stephanie Flanders, and here from the Economist magazine. The Think-Tank the Institute for Fiscal studies has a page here of useful links.

The interesting stuff for G&P students is contained here in an article by Bagehot in the Economist: that this budget challenges the dominant political orthodoxy of the past 12 years, that government spending has to increase:

Mr Osborne’s statement shattered and reversed the orthodoxy, which took hold in the last decade, that public spending must grow eternally. It has revised the relationship between the state and its employees, and signalled a reconfiguring of welfare support, which is set to be more generous to some of the very poor and stingier for many others. It was the start of a bid to create a new balance in the British economy: between the public and private sectors, and among industries and regions. This was the most painful budget in living memory, and one of the riskiest.

In short, the government deficit has encouraged the Coalition to think radically about certain areas of public policy, like removing income-tax for the less well-off, and public pension reform which previous governments have been wary of tackling. Nick Robinson highlights some of the impact the Lib Dems on the budget here. Don't forget, that Lib Dem Danny Alexander is the Chancellor's right-hand man as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Labour has not yet found a way of attacking the government policy except to decry it as a return to Thatcherist cutting of public spending; Polly Toynbee in the Guardian puts it this way:

There was nothing "unavoidable" about adding £40bn to Labour's already eye-watering pledge to halve the deficit in four years. There was no necessity to create a surplus in six years, returning to depression economics with mortal risk of sinking the country into second recession or slump. This was the budget to fulfil old Tory yearnings: it promises to shrink the state below 40%, which Mrs Thatcher never achieved.

There are, and will continue to be, complex arguments about the economics of all this which are not within the scope of this blog. We'll all see soon enough what the effects of these policies are; growth, or a disastrous double-dip recession.

Progressive Conservatism

Interesting political movements afoot in the coalition goverment with Ken Clarke, former Home Secretary and Chancellor in the previous Conservative administration of the 1990s, coming up with a policy on prisons which sounds more like a LIb Dem policy and is likely to give grassroot blue-rinse Conservative supporters the vapours (as indicated here in a Daily Mail article).

In sum, the credit and fiscal crunch has led government to look for cutbacks in most government depts of 25%, more of which will become evident in the spending review due to happen in the autumn. Clarke's argument is that increasing the cost of prisons by banging up people for longer is more expensive in the long-run than rehabilitating those prisoners who can be persuaded not to offend again.

It is a startling contrast to a previous Conservative policy promoted by former Conservativve leader Michael Howard in the 2005 election and in the 1990s: "Prison works"

The new Labour policy in this area was to lock-up increasing numbers of prisoners until serious overcrowding occurred and then prisoners had to be released early, as described here in this BBC article from 2009. Former Labour Justice Secretary Jack Straw even defends his record in this piece in the Daily Mail in reaction to Clarke's new policy.

Useful stuff for G&P students contemplating the policy differences of new Labour with old, Conservative Thatcherism vs Cameronism and the impact of Lib Dems on the coalition government policy.

I haven't taken a look at George Osbourne's emergency budget yet; I'll do a separate post about it.

Gerrymandering and elections

While I am in the mode, this has just cropped up - I've mentioned primary elections already, and the tendency for parties to get out their base, and for successful candidates to have to pander to the most blue-or-red-blooded members of their party to get nomination. This is especially noticeable with Republicans and the Tea Party movement.

Lost of graphs to gawp at in this article, but the main point is that the primaries are the real contest in the vast majority of safe seats in both the House and the Senate; the actual public "general" election merely rubber-stamps the choice by the party in the safe seat.

Without the party primaries, rational choice among voters, even in gerrymandered districts, would produce more centrist winners. But in the vast majority of utterly safe districts, only one party's primary winner matters in the general. The primary is thus the real election, and a contest only to see who can turn out more of their red- or blue-faced partisan faithful.

The Senate produces figures who are not only closer to the centre but who have the security of a six-year term. Thus many of us can name senators known for crossing party lines, and thus name bills with sponsors from both sides of the aisle: McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, Kerry-Graham-Lieberman... Few of us can name comparable independent House members or truly bipartisan bills. Strict party-line votes have always been rarer in the Senate than in the House.

The re-election rates, especially in the House, are extraordinary and make politicians risk-averse. Useful for G&P students contemplating any question asking about the effectiveness of Congress

Sarah Palin on the oil leak

As is Obama doesn't have enough problems Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Movement's favourite, is attacking him for not trying hard enough to stop the leak.

Good analysis from Andrew Sullivan here. It's from Fox news and generally they give her an easy ride. She looks all at sea, especially at around 3:00:



Not as funny though as this classic from 2008:

Obama and climate change legislation

President Obama has just spoken to the nation in his first address from the Oval office on the perils of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and has, according to this article in the Washington Independentdisappointed many (including one of the writers of the "Democracy in America" blog in their the live-streamed comments about the speech) by not calling for the passing of radical legislation to tackle climate change and polluting big-business in one fell swoop.

One can see the attraction of claiming the moral high ground in this area, but there is a significant problem as noted in this interesting article by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post - Presidents' involvement in policy polarises opinion (there's even a graph!):

To test this, Lee looked at "nonideological" issues -- that is to say, issues where the two sides didn't have clear positions. In the Senate, only 39 percent of those issues ended in party-line votes. But if the president took a position on the issue, that jumped to 56 percent. In other words, if the president proposed the "More Puppies Act," the minority is likely to suddenly discover it holds fervently pro-cat beliefs.

In other words for a climate bill to be passed by the Senate (the House passed one in June of last year) it has to have Republican support to get over the 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. That support from a few Republicans would be unlikely to happen if Obama decides to actively call for a bill to be passed. The Tea Party movement would probably consider any Senator a RINO.

Republicans and the Tea Party

As noted in a previous post, the Tea Party movement is having an effect on Republican nominees and their policies; they are lurching to the right. Specifically Meg Whitman the billionaire former boss of eBay has become the GOP nominee for the governor's race in California, and the multi-millionaire former boss of HP Carly Fiorina has become the GOP nominee for the California Senate seat.

In addition, the Nevada Republican Senate candidate, Sharron Angle, is the Tea Party movement's favourite, and defeated the moderate candidate to be the challenger for the seat belonging to Harry Reid, the incumbent Democrat and Senate majority leader. As noted in this article here (one which also briefly covers a successful Democrat in Arkansas) the Sharron Angle is the Obama team's favoured Republican candidate too as it will make Harry Reid's chance of keeping his seat higher:

Ms Angle’s controversial policies include privatising Social Security (pensions) and closing the federal departments of energy and education, among others.

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The key problem, as noted here in the "Democracy in America" blog is that they have moved to the right to avoid being outflanked by other candidates in the race and to get the support from the Tea Party movement types of the Republican party. California is generally a "Blue" state, and is more liberal than most places in the US. It'll be interesting to see how they fare in this year's mid-terms, and particularly whether they can move back to the middle to get the independent voters and at the same time avoid being called a "Republican in Name Only" or RINO.

In other US-related news, Congress is likely yet again not to be able to pass a bill to take action on climate change. Scathing stuff from another post from Democracy in America, especially since over two-thirds of US citizens support action (although they don't want to increase taxes, just spending). In other analysis here, Senator Graham who originally helped write the bill he is now objecting to is now saying that there is not enough provision for further off-shore drilling (of the kind which is spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico).

More significantly for G&P students is the analysis of the Grist article linked to above which says that the Republican party has moved away from anything which smacks of limiting big-business (actually they say it much less kindly than that). In their analysis and in the this article here Senator Graham has been trying to find a way out of supporting the bill, and has finally found it.

Whether the Republican party and the actions of politicians will continue to be driven by the Tea Party movement away from anything resembling the centre ground will be interesting to see, especially in the impact on the mid-terms in November.

It is also a useful illustration of how Congress does (or doesn't) work as a key part of the legislative process. A bi-partisan approach to some of the key issues in American politics today (health-care reform, climate change) is just not possible it would seem.

UK - Labour and Conservative healthcare contrast

The new government has been unveiling some of its policies, but largely remained coy about revealing information about spending plans, as Nick Robinson says here. An interesting revelation about health-care policy from Andrew Lansley the new Health Secretary of State in a recent speech; essentially the new government will be scrapping some of the new Labour targets (specifically the 4-hour waiting-time target at A&E, which is supposed to have some severe negative impacts).

Useful for anyone contemplating some of the key differences between new Labour and the Lib-Con government.

When there is something more concrete about the measures to cut the deficit, I'll post, but suffice to say this piece by Robert Peston about the international lessons for the UK, and this one by Stephanie Flanders about how bad news on the economy has played into the government's hands have much for us to ponder upon. Whether any party has done enough in the run up to the election to spell out how severe the cuts will have to be, is anybody's guess. Does the coalition government have enough of a mandate to pursue its policy in this area? We'll see. Check out my previous post about the deficit-mandate-manifesto issue and George Osborne here.

In addition to the above, the Labour Party leadership battle rumbles on. I'm not convinced that there has been enough debate to enable the Labour party to move on after the Blair-Brown years, or that enough profound lessons have been learned. Is the next leader of the Labour party the next William Hague or Michael Foot? Let's watch out for those debates.