First of all just to respond to a couple of points that former Representative Ron Paul made about public education in America. As far as the U.S. Department of Education being unconstitutional. The Federal courts have already ruled on this and guess what the U.S.D.E still exists and is in place since 1979. And I'm not a fan of it and don't believe we need it. And would rather see a White House Office on Education and make to part of the Domestic Affairs Council or something. But it is constitutional under the commerce and welfare clauses as the courts have already ruled. Maybe the commerce and welfare clauses should be what you focus on and whether U.S.D.E should be in place on policy grounds instead of constitutional grounds. That would be a better avenue to go.
As far as homeschooling, I'm not a fan of it, but if parents who are qualified to teach in America decide to do that for their kids, more power to them. The real focus here should be on public schools because parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools will continue to do that especially if they feel those schools are better than what the public schools have to offer. But for everyone else the overwhelming ninety-percent of us public schools are going to be the avenue for them. So you want public schools working better and the means no longer sending kids to schools based on where they live especially if they live in a bad school district which a lot of low-income students do. And instead letting their parents decide where they go to school instead.
Stop funding schools based on where they are located. And instead fund schools based on what they need to do a good job in a fiscally responsible manner. That means changing how schools are funded and moving away from the regressive property tax.
Stop paying educators based on how long they've been teaching. And instead pay them based on how well their kids are learning.
As far as students loans and student debt instead lets just make college affordability universal. Free college for the qualified for college students who go to an instate public university. If you go out of state and college financing plan that would be paid for by a combination of students, parents, employers and even government chipping in over a twenty year period to finance the students college education.
Instead of making education in America what is best for the private school industry, or make it what is best for teacher unions we instead should make it what is best for the students themselves. And that means choice within the public school system. Paying teachers based on how well their students are learning. Funding schools base on need and not location. And making college affordable for all qualified students.
The USFL was already in trouble by 1984 financially with most if not all of their clubs losing money. And this really didn't have anything to do with fan support. The fans were there for this league to still be in business as a spring/summer league today. But the league simply grew too fast with eighteen clubs by 1985. And most of these clubs being in established NFL markets. Like Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Tampa, Dallas, Houston, Denver and Los Angeles.
I'm not sure the old USFL could've been saved at this point, but moving their games to the fall which was the plan for 1986 was probably the thing that killed the league. Going up against the NFL in their markets in their territory the same time the NFL is playing. Perhaps the only thing that would've saved the old USFL at this point was going back to the old spring/fall schedule. And contraction or relocation of USFL clubs that were in NFL markets.
I have a real hard time listening to people who claim to be against big government and essentially say that "big government is essentially bad except when we are in favor of big government". So they say basically "go ahead and make all the money you want and well and go spend that money any way you want just as long as we approve". And we they are confronted on that they say "well we don't allow people to murder or rape or hurt innocent people in any other way". As if that is what the issue is when it is not.
The whole notion of personal freedom is exactly that. It is personal and as long as you aren't hurting innocent people with your personal choices and invading some innocent person's personal freedom and space and living up to your responsibilities that come with your personal choices, we are still talking about personal freedom. So when so-called Conservatives say they believe in freedom and against big government and then of course are talking about all of these economic policies I question them about how they feel about personal choice and social issues. To see how much they really are against big government, or do they just say they are against big government when it is convenient for them.
Economic freedom is not worth much without personal freedom. Because without personal freedom we won't have the freedom to be able to make personal decisions with our own money. Because big government Right or Left or in between will always be they're saying "no we don't approve of those personal choices and we must stop you". What you need for a society to be free is to have both economic and personal freedom because they go hand in hand. Source:Liberty Pen
The Right to be Left Alone is not an anti-government viewpoint. But this belief that free adults or free Americans are exactly that. That we own ourselves, our bodies and our minds. What we do with our own lives is exactly that. Our own lives and that we and only we should be held accountable for our own decisions. And where government comes in when it comes to personal and economic behavior as far as regulating is when we hurt innocent people. Whether we hurt them intentionally or unintentionally.
And as a country really since the Great Depression have moved away from that, or even go back to the Progressive Era of the early 1900s when Progressives believed that government needed to do more than that. That it couldn't just be there to protect our freedom. But to protect the general welfare of the country even if that meant restricting or even contracting individual freedom both personal and economic. So you get alcohol prohibition of the 1930s which inspired the Neoconservative War on Drugs in the 1970s. To today with big government paternalists believing government should prohibit what we can eat and drink and even smoke. Or what we can do in the privacy of our own homes.
When it comes to government in this fringe belief that government needs to protect people from themselves. And there are factions on both the Right and Left who believe in this, but believe government should protect us for different reasons. Paternalists on the Left so-called today's Progressives want to stop us from junk food and soft drinks. Paternalists on the Right want to tell us who we can marry, sleep with, when we can have sex and who we can marry.
Big government gone wild on both wings, but there are a growing number of Americans on both the Left and Right who believe big government is too much and are finally fighting back especially as it relates to privacy. Source:Liberty Pen
"From founded the Democratic Leadership Council in 1984. In the twenty-five years he served as its CEO, he achieved his goal of bringing the Democratic Party back to power. In this political memoir he recounts the development of the centrist philosophy that continues to be instrumental to the Democrats' success."
I agree with most of what Paul Starr said in his piece about New Democrats which I'm one philosophically and what part of the Democratic Party I'm from and how New Democrats have effected the Democratic Party. My only differences would be I don't know how new we are since we've really been around at least going back to the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s with Jack Kennedy who would definitely be a New Democrat today. And then came back to power in the White House with the Carter-Mondale Administration in the late 1970s with Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. And of course Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the early 1990s.
And my only other difference being with Paul Starr and here is where I'll make my argument about the New Democrats has to do with this notion that New Democrats are "moderate or center-right". No we are not, we put center-left back in the Democratic Party with a liberal flavor. Pre-1993 or so Democrats "were seen as tax and spend, soft on crime, soft on defense, anti-personal responsibility, Uncle Sam big federal government know best all the time. Americans are too stupid and can't be trusted with their own lives". We looked like European social democrats or Socialists even putting all of our faith in the state over the individual to create a fair society.
Democrats until the early 1990s whether this was fair or not and I believe a lot of it was fair were seen as big government statists even in a democratic sense. The way the far-left of the party actually is in reality then and today. The New Democrats led by the Democratic Leadership Council and others started changing that right after the Mondale landslide presidential loss in 1984 and started working on an agenda that would counter the Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s. That moved us ahead of the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society of the 1960s.
This New Democratic agenda wasn't anti-government, but moved us away from big government and into an era that saw government as one tool that could be used to empower people who needed it to get the tools that they needed to live in freedom and live a self-sufficient life and off of public assistance. By focusing on education, job training, vocational training, infrastructure especially in underdeveloped areas. Empowering the non-profits to help people in need and looking for the states and localities and getting their input to empower people who are in poverty or struggling working class.
When Bill Clinton becomes President in 1993 Democrats were seen as the "tax and spend fiscally irresponsible soft on defense and crime party". As well as being "soft on welfare". To twenty years later we now especially the New Democrats are beating Republicans on all of those issues. To the point that the George McGovern or MSNBC/The Nation social democratic wing of the party badly dislikes if not hates the New Democrats for taking over the party and badly want to reclaim the Democratic Party and take us back to the late 1960s and 1970s where Democrats used to carry all of those stereotypes.
"Pershing, who went on from Roll Call to The Washington Post, where he covers politics, does a great job showing how leadership battles shaped the futures of Gerald Ford, Edward M. Kennedy, Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich, among others.
Here’s Pershing’s 2005 piece in its entirety:
When it comes to Congressional leadership races, they just don’t make ’em like they used to.
While there has been plenty of drama on Capitol Hill over the last few years, there have been few knock-down, drag-out contests for House or Senate leadership posts.
True, the current Republican leaders of the House and Senate both rose to power under dramatic circumstances. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) won his post after Trent Lott (R-Miss.) stepped down under fire for comments he’d made about the segregationist past of then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). And in the House, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) ascended to the Speakership following two dramatic resignations, first Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and then Speaker-designate Bob Livingston (R-La.).
Despite the drama, Frist and Hastert won their posts with the broad acclamation of their parties. And on the Democratic side, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) won the post of Senate Minority Leader without significant challenge, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was elected party leader easily after having previously won a somewhat closer contest for Minority Whip against Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
But if the past few years have generally featured snoozers for leadership contests, the last 50 as a whole certainly did not. Since Roll Call sprung to life in 1955, there have been enough coups, multi-ballot marathons and one-vote nailbiters to fill plenty of newsprint.
Here, then, are the 10 best leadership races of the last 50 years in chronological order.
1959: Senate Minority Leader
When Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) was elected Minority Whip in 1957, his close relationship with President Dwight Eisenhower made him the de facto leader of his party in the chamber, ahead of Minority Leader William Knowland (R-Calif.).
In 1958, Knowland left the Senate, leaving Dirksen with a chance to win the top job. According to an introduction written by Frank Mackaman in Dirksen’s own memoir, Dirksen faced “considerable opposition from the moderate Republicans” in his Minority Leader campaign against Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.).
But Dirksen was able to use his close relationship with Eisenhower to his advantage, and he also mollified various Republican constituencies by handing out committee posts and lower-level leadership titles.
In the end, Dirksen prevailed over Cooper by a 20-to-14 vote. He ended up holding the Minority Leader title for 10 years, making a name for himself as one of the Senate’s most effective leaders. He is now immortalized in the name of one of the Senate’s three office buildings.
1959: House Minority Leader
By 1954, Rep. Charles Halleck (R-Ind.) had already served two brief stints as Majority Leader under Speaker Joseph Martin (R-Mass.) when his party lost power in the House.
Halleck then spent five years as the deputy to Martin, all the while plotting a challenge against his longtime senior partner. In 1959 he pulled the trigger, launching a campaign against Martin for Minority Leader.
Halleck, more energetic and 16 years younger than Martin, was able to convince his colleagues that he could do a better job leading the GOP again in the wake of Democratic gains in the 1958 election.
Halleck ended up beating Martin, 74 to 70. Martin later blamed his loss on plotting by Halleck and Vice President Richard Nixon.
1965: House Minority Leader
After six years in power, Halleck got a taste of his own medicine in the form of a challenge from Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.).
In 1963, Ford had won a somewhat unexpected victory for Conference Chairman against an older candidate, then plotted a similar victory in 1965 against Halleck after another disappointing election for Republicans.
Drawing from the old Halleck playbook, Ford presented himself as more youthful and energetic than his opponent, and he was able to gather the support of enough impatient fellow Republicans — including a young Illinois Congressman named Donald Rumsfeld — to topple Halleck.
Halleck retired three years later. Ford went on to become vice president and then president.
1971: Senate Majority Whip
This contest between two Senate titans, Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), was partially decided by the deathbed vote of a third legend of the chamber.
In 1969, Kennedy had scored something of an upset by ousting Sen. Russell Long (D-La.) from the post of Whip. Two years later, with his eye on a possible presidential bid, Kennedy was himself blindsided by Byrd.
The West Virginian, whom Roll Call speculated at the time “must be one heck of a poker player,” went into the contest thinking it might be decided by the proxy vote of Sen. Richard Russell (D), who was in the hospital suffering from lung disease.
When the dust settled, Byrd emerged victorious, 31 to 24. Russell’s proxy vote for Byrd may have been his last political act, as he died soon after on the opening day of the 92nd Congress.
1976: House Majority Leader
On Dec. 9, 1976, Roll Call ran a story across its front page with the headline: “Survey Shows Burton Ahead in House Majority Leader Race.”
The story asserted that Rep. Phil Burton (D-Calif.) had a “commanding lead” in the Majority Leader race over Reps. Jim Wright (D-Texas), Richard Bolling (D-Mo.) and John McFall (D-Calif.).
Roll Call was right. Sort of.
On the first ballot, Burton garnered 106 votes, Bolling 81, Wright 77 and McFall 31. McFall dropped out and threw his backers to Wright, allowing the Texan to edge Bolling for second place on the next ballot by two votes.
With the momentum swinging his way and a coalition of moderates and conservatives behind him, Wright edged out the liberal Burton on the third ballot, 148 to 147.
The victory paved the way for Wright to eventually succeed Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.). In 1989, the Texan was brought down by allegations of impropriety pushed by a cadre of aggressive young conservatives led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), himself a future Speaker later toppled in part due to ethics concerns.
1984: Senate Majority Leader
Before Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) could make a name for himself as a Senate leader and, eventually, the 1996 GOP presidential nominee, he first had to navigate a hard-fought, five-way race for the chamber’s top job.
With Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) retiring, the race to replace him included GOP Sens. Pete Domenici (N.M.), Dick Lugar (Ind.), James McClure (Idaho), Ted Stevens (Alaska) and Dole.
McClure, a stalwart conservative, was eliminated on the first ballot. Next to go was Domenici, followed by Lugar. On the final vote, Dole was able to outmaneuver Stevens, 28 to 25.
In addition to installing Dole as leader, the race also set off a chain reaction in the committees. The Kansan was succeeded as Finance Committee chairman by Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), while Lugar took over the gavel of Foreign Relations, postponing the ascension to that post of Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).
Stevens, who had been Majority Whip before losing to Dole, never ran for leadership again and instead devoted his full attention to committee assignments, including an eventual stint as Appropriations chairman.
1989: House Minority Whip
This race essentially marked the end of one promising leadership career and the launch of another. The victory of Gingrich over Rep. Ed Madigan (R-Ill.) exposed fissures among House Republicans, driving old-school moderates apart from a new breed of conservative lawmakers.
The Whip position opened up when Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyo.) was chosen to be Defense secretary by the first Bush administration after the White House’s original choice, John Tower, went down in flames.
Cheney’s departure prompted an unexpected March leadership race between Madigan, who had the support of Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.), and Gingrich, who had bolstered his standing among conservatives by consistently attacking Wright. As Roll Call put it in a March 16, 1989, headline, “‘Schizophrenic’ GOP Forced to Choose Between Polar Opposites for New Whip.”
Ultimately, in a rebuke to Michel’s moderate approach, Gingrich beat Madigan by two votes, 87 to 85. Madigan lost despite the fact that his campaign was run by two budding expert vote-counters, future Speaker Hastert and future Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
In a notable understatement, after Gingrich’s win, Michel predicted, “It’ll be a more aggressive style on our side, I’m sure.”
1992: House Republican Conference Chairman
While the Conference chairman post was at the time only the third-ranking GOP leadership post, this hard-fought contest between Reps. Dick Armey (R-Texas) and Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) was another omen of things to come.
Armey beat Lewis 88 to 84 with the ample assistance of a largely united Texas Republican delegation. In a statement after his loss, Lewis said the result made clear that “Texans stick together and Californians do not. Texas’ solid backing and a divided California delegation were the difference in this race.”
Armey’s victory marked yet another blow for conservatives against the moderate wing of the party represented by Michel. On the same day Armey won, the conservative DeLay was also elected Conference Secretary over centrist Rep. Nancy Johnson (Conn.).
Like Stevens following his loss to Byrd, Lewis decided never to run for leadership again. Instead, he, like Stevens, concentrated on moving up the Appropriations Committee ladder, ultimately becoming chairman earlier this year.
1994: Senate Majority Whip
Just as the House Republican leadership got younger and more conservative in the early 1990s, so too did the Senate GOP in the bellwether Whip contest between Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.) and Alan Simpson (Wyo.).
Simpson was the incumbent Whip and a 26-year Senate veteran, facing a challenger who was just completing his first term in the chamber after having held the Republican Whip post in the House.
Lott prevailed on a 27-to-26 vote, despite the fact that Dole and many senior Senate Republicans backed Simpson. The victory paved the way for Lott to become Majority Leader when Dole left the chamber to run for president in 1996.
1994: Senate Minority Leader
On the same day that Lott edged Simpson, Democrats held their own tough leadership fight between Sens. Tom Daschle (S.D.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.).
Daschle began campaigning for the job in early 1994, expecting to face Sen. Jim Sasser (Tenn.). But Sasser lost his re-election bid in November to a young Republican surgeon from Tennessee named Bill Frist, and Democrats lost the majority. So instead of running for Majority Leader against Sasser, Daschle ran for Minority Leader against Dodd.
Both Sen. Wendell Ford (Ky.), the Democratic Whip, and Byrd had backed Sasser and then shifted their allegiance to Dodd. But it wasn’t enough to beat Daschle, who eked out a 24-to-23 victory.
Daschle went on to lead his party in the Senate for 10 years before losing his own re-election battle to former Rep. John Thune (R-S.D.) in 2004. Dodd soothed his wounds by becoming chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Corrected, 3:08 p.m.: An earlier version of this post misidentified the position involved in the leadership race in 1971. It was a Senate whip election."
The New Democrat
Those are some good Congressional leadership races from both the House and Senate that David Eldridge wrote for Roll Call back in 2005. I'll start with 2005 because that is one I personally remember and lived through it especially as a Democrat. Because it had happened about a month after President Bush is reelected in November, 2004 and defeated Senator John Kerry the same Secretary of State John Kerry.
But something else happened that night when John Thune defeated the then Senate Democratic Leader the Minority Leader Tom Daschle in the North Dakota Senate race. The number one ranking Democratic member of Congress goes down that night a great night for Congressional Republicans in both the House and Senate and of course for President George W. Bush. And because of the Dashcle loss Senate Democrats who were in the minority facing the fact they would be entering the next Congress still as the minority party, but with four fewer members down from 49-45 seats. Going up against a Republican Senate, a Republican House and a Republican President and having to elect a new Minority Leader.
2005 and in the 107th Congress as Senate Minority Leader is where Harry Reid becomes a big name and one of the most powerful Democrats in the United States. He united the Senate Democratic Caucus behind him and against any partisan legislation that the Republican House Senate over that the Republican Senate wanted to pass. Social Security reform/privatization being a perfect example of that. To go along with the House passed border control only immigration reform bill. Both went down to defeat because Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid were able to block them. Minority Leader Reid becomes Senate Leader Reid in the next Congress when Democrats won back Congress. And Leader Reid has had that title ever since.
Other leadership races that stand out for me are Gerry Ford in 1964 just after LBJ is elected in a landslide as President. With Democrats adding to their huge Democratic majorities in Congress. And Gerry Ford becoming House Minority Leader in the 1965-66 Congress with smaller numbers than the previous Congress. But being able to unite the House Republican Conference to go along with right-wing Southern Democrats in the House and Senate against the Democratic Leadership in the House and Senate and President Johnson when they tried to pass their own partisan agenda.
Bob Dole becoming Senate Leader in 1985 replacing Howard Backer which put Leader Dole in a position he would hold for eleven years as Senate Republican Leader both Leader and as Minority Leader. And a strong presidential contender as a national Republican leader. And 1989 with Newt Gingrich taking over for Dick Cheney as House Minority Whip the second ranking House Republican. And had Newt not obtained that position probably doesn't become Speaker of the House at least not by 1995 when he got the job.
All of these Congressional leadership races are very interesting at least to me as political junky and a political history junky. And they all deserve blogs and perhaps books written about each one. So trying to cover all of them justly in one blog is difficult. But something that deserves to be written about in deep detail.
I’ve been reading going on for about five years or so now since I started blogging about what is called Laissez-Fair capitalism. Which means government out of the economy.
Well lets think about that for a minute to examine what that actually means. Gone would be a public welfare state or safety net. Gone would be government regulations. Gone would be taxpayer funded government subsidies to business’s. Gone would be anti-union and union-busting laws. Because again government would be out of the economy. Remember Libertarians are supposed to be anti-union, but want government out of the economy. Yet they support anti-union union-busting laws. They are trying to have it both ways.
Instead of the “individual versus the state” how about we have the individual working with the state. The state there to protect people from predators. Which is really is what government regulations are supposed to be about. With the individual having complete control over their own personal and economic affairs as long as they aren’t hurting innocent people either personally or economically. And yes that is where government comes to deal with predators. As well as have government there to see that all individuals have the opportunity to succeed in life. Whether they are currently kids in school, or low-skilled adults working or not.
What I’m talking about is liberal capitalism which is different from both social democracy which is built around the central government being there to take care of everyone. Or Laissez-Fair capitalism that gets the government completely out of the economy and lets nature take its course so to speak.
Its liberal capitalism and what Americans have done to take advantage of those opportunities that has built America. Not social democracy that is built around one big central government to take care of everyone. Or Laissez-Fair capitalism with government doing nothing.
I agree that America needs a return to what I at least call real liberalism or probably what is more known as classical liberalism. And call people who are known as ‘modern liberals’ what they really are. Which are leftist collectivists or democratic statists even. People who believe in democracy and tend to be democratic, but where the central or federal state is a lot bigger so it can take care of people regardless of income level for them. Where we would really have a superstate or welfare state to manage a lot of the affairs of Americans. But not just as it relates to the economy, but also what we would be allowed to eat, drink and even how we talk to each other. Where certain political speech they these statists disagree with would not be tolerated.
For the record liberalism is not MSNBC talk, The Nation, the AlterNet, Salon or the more socialist oriented think tanks like the Roosevelt Institute to use as examples. They believe in the things that I just laid out in the first paragraph. Liberals believe in freedom that all people are entitled to it until they do something like hurting innocent people where they no longer deserve their individual freedom economic or personal. Liberals don’t believe in government or business. That is not what our ideology is centered around. We believe in the individual that if the individual is educated they’ll have the tools they need to live in freedom and live a productive life managing their own affairs.
What separates Liberals or classical Liberals even (as long as you aren’t talking about Libertarians) is that Liberals aren’t anti-government. We are anti-big government. That is government that tries to do too much. Trying to do things for the people that they can do for themselves. We believe government can and should and play a role in helping people at the bottom get the tools they need to move up in society and live in freedom as well. Not take care of mentally and physically able body people indefinitely. But support them in the short-term as they are preparing themselves to be self-sufficient.
Libertarians at least today are essentially anti-government and do not have much of if any role for government at all federal or at any level. Liberals truly believe in limited government and limiting to doing what we need it to do. Which is mostly about protecting our freedom. Not running our lives for us and supporting people in the short-term who need it. As they are working their way up to self-sufficiency.
