Religious Right Showing Increasing Influence on Tea Party Movement

Initially the tea baggers (at least at times) sounded like they came more from the libertarian wing of the right as opposed to the religious right. Unfortunately it was a populist sort of anti-government viewpoint which lacked understanding of the issues. Such an intellectually weak movement risks being taken over by those who better understand their goal. The American Prospect describes how the religious right is infiltrating the movement:

Next month’s Tea Party National Convention has been making news for the fat fee Sarah Palin is commanding — $100,000, according to many reports. But the gathering, to be held at Nashville’s Opryland Hotel, is interesting for another reason as well: It marks the attempt of the old-school Christian right to take over the tea-party movement. Speakers joining Palin include Rick Scarborough, Roy Moore, and Joseph Farah, men who are radical even by religious-right standards. Their presence shows that the tea-party movement is no longer merely populist, libertarian, or anti-government, if it ever was. It is theocratic. Indeed, after several months in which the religious right seemed lost and dispirited, it has found a way to ride the tea-party express into renewed relevance.

From the beginning, of course, there’s been overlap between the tea parties and the Christian right. Both have their strongholds in the white South, and both arise out of a sense of furious dispossession, a conviction that the country that is rightfully theirs has been usurped by sinister cosmopolitan elites. They have the same favorite politicians — particularly Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is also speaking in Nashville. Glenn Beck, the media figure most associated with the tea-party movement, has a worldview deeply shaped by apocalyptic Mormonism; he is contemptuous of the idea of church-state separation and believes the United States was founded to be a Christian nation…

Naturally, enterprising theocrats would look to the tea parties for salvation. And Scarborough, for one, is nothing if not enterprising. For years, the Baptist minister has been positioning himself as a next-generation Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. In 2002, he left his post as pastor of Pearland First Baptist Church to form Vision America, a group dedicated to organizing “patriot pastors” for political action. That year, Falwell identified him as one of the new leaders of the Christian right. The author of books like In Defense of … Mixing Church and State and the pithier Liberalism Kills Kids, Scarborough spent the Bush years organizing conferences that brought together conservative Republicans with preachers and activists working for the imposition of biblical law.

The fall of Scarborough’s closest political ally, the once-formidable Tom DeLay, eroded Scarborough’s political influence. So did the broader decline of the religious right. “His group has been puttering along with a tiny budget, and he has practically no national presence,” says Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “His goal was to be the next Jerry Fawell, and it has not worked out. The tea-party movement could be the vehicle to give him a much-needed boost.”

How Could The Democrats Do So Poorly In Massachusetts?

Here’s what I don’t understand. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry have tied up the two Massachusetts  Senate seats for years. I would think that there are many highly qualified Democrats in the state who didn’t get a shot at such a spot until now. How did the Democrats wind up with as weak a candidate as Martha Coakley?

Coakley’s campaign sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign based upon inevitability and entitlement. That is not going to work, especially when Scott Brown is running as a moderate Republican. As The Christian Science Monitor points out, Massachusetts is not so Democratic that a moderate Republican can’t bring out the vote, especially with the amount of anti-incumbent sentiment at present:

…Massachusetts voters also gave Republicans the key to the governors’ office for 16 straight years, from 1990 to 2006.

Moreover, Senate races have historically been tight when the Republican candidate is moderate enough to appeal to centrist voters. Sen. John Kerry had close races against Ray Shamie in 1984, Jim Rappaport in 1990, and Bill Weld in 1996 – all of whom earned at least 40 percent of the vote.

Senator Kennedy saw his toughest challenge in 1994 against Mitt Romney, who would later be Massachusetts’ governor and an unsuccessful candidate for president. While Mr. Romney eventually shifted further to the right during his 2008 presidential bid, Massachusetts voters considered him a moderate Republican in his statewide campaigns. In fact, until 1993, Romney was registered as an independent.

For Coakley and Brown, it’s the state’s independents who will likely determine the outcome of the race.

“The majority of registered voters now are independents,” says David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston, which conducted Thursday’s poll. “Despite the fact that they are people who say … they don’t want to be tied to one party, independents have emerged as the political party in Massachusetts now. It’s really about the independent voter.”

Making matters worse, Coakley has committed a number of gaffes. Health care might fall in the Senate because of a dumb baseball comment–Coakley calling former Red Sox pitcher and Brown supporter Curt Schilling a Yankee fan. Even worse, she has resorted to the type of tactics which we see far more from Republicans, but which are not exclusive to them. For some reason Republicans do far better than Democrats in bringing out the vote by distorting the record of their opponent, as Coakley did in a recent ad and flier.

The race will be decided by independents, and Brown has positioned himself much better than Coakley to pick up their votes. He is also better able to run as a moderate as the far right has appeared to have learned their lesson in New York’s special election. In New York the far right condemned Dede Scozzafava as if she was on the far left and allowed the Democrats to win the seat. Even though Brown is more liberal than Scozzafava we are not hearing any complaints that he is a RINO at the moment.

The reason why Republicans are willing to accept a moderate in Massachusetts is that he could be the 41st vote to stop a health care reform bill. If not for these dynamics Republicans from out of state would not be giving Brown so much assistance, and I’m not sure that many Democrats would really mind seeing Coakley going down to defeat.

At the moment the race is too close to call based upon the polls. If Brown does win there are a few possible outcomes with regards to health care reform:

The House could very quickly pass the Senate version unchanged allowing this to be sent to President Obama for his signature without giving the Republicans a chance to filibuster a bill coming out of reconciliation. The problems here are that many House liberals would not accept the Senate bill, and the Senate bill should not be passed as it is.

If the race is close the Democrats might try to delay seating Brown should he win. Think back to Al Franken’s election.

Democrats might try to come up with even more compromises to try to get Olympia Snowe’s vote. This could cost them even more votes from House Democrats.

They might try to pass health care reform with a simple majority by using budget reconciliation, but this would require massive changes to the bill as only items affecting the budget can be passed in this manner.

These choices do not look good, making it very possible that it could be the loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat which  results in the blockage of health care reform.

Opposition To Mandates Uniting Left And Right Against Health Care Reform

Throughout the primary campaign when it was an issue I argued against including an individual mandate in health care reform. It does makes it easier to write a bill eliminating exclusions for pre-existing conditions if there is a mandate to prevent people from gaming the system, but there are many other ways around this problem.

What supporters of the mandate failed to understand is that such government requirements greatly magnifies potential for opposition to health care reform. To be accepted by a majority, any health care reform plan needed to provide assistance to those who desired it without being seen as interfering with others. Even though Republicans initially supported the mandate along with most Congressional Democrats, this has now become an issue which could backfire against the Democrats.

David Weigel believes that Firedoglake, a liberal blog which opposes the bill, is paying for polls to undermine Democrats whose seats are in trouble. Questions include:

Under one proposal, if a person does not carry health insurance from a private insurance company, they would be fined up to 2% of their income. Is this fair, or unfair?

Nate Silver commented more on the polling and Weigel concluded:

The question, raised by Nate Silver and others: Is Firedoglake trying to scare vulnerable Democrats into retirement in order to kill health care reform? All indications point to “yes.” I’m hearing that FDL will conduct more polls in vulnerable Democratic districts, based largely on this chart of the “top 20 Democrats who could lose their seat over health care vote[s]. Snyder was at the top of that list, posted by FDL’s Jane Hamsher on Jan. 6. (One irony: Snyder is a fairly progressive member of Congress, and not a member of the Blue Dogs.)

Tension between FDL and some other progressive sites has increased since the Senate’s health care compromise took shape–Hamsher has campaigned aggressively to “kill the bill.” A month ago she predicted that “left/right populist outrage” would do so, and she hasn’t slowed down since.

Liberals can question Hamsher’s actions. It is certainly possible that killing the bill could lead to even worse results than a flawed bill which might still be improved upon. Nate Silver has a point that, “The survey fails to provide context about the individual mandate, and arguably biases the respondent against it through its choice of question wording and question order.”

Despite this, the fact remains that including an  individual mandate decreases the chances of passing health care reform along with increasing the potential for losing seats in 2010. Democrats need to consider  how this plays into the often distorted picture of them generally painted by Republicans. Independents who rebelled against the policies of the authoritarian right in recent election cycles, and who were willing to accept bigger government involvement to help those who desire help, can only view coercive government mandates as reason to question whether Democrats are any better.

It is rather late in the process but changes can still be made. Obama should go on television and admit he was wrong for changing his position and going along with Congress on the mandate and that he hears the popular objections to the current health care plan. I believe that many of the independents who supported Obama last year would respect such an admission and back him. This might also provide momentum for support of an improved version of the health care plan and deny the Republicans the ability to win by campaigning against much-needed improvements in the health care system.