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Lincoln Chafee: Supporting Him is a Fool's Errand for Progressive Advocacy Groups

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 8:54am.

August 15, 2006

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

A short time ago, BuzzFlash posted an editorial about how suicidal it is for progressive advocacy groups to insist on self-righteously supporting faux Republican "moderates" like Lincoln Chafee.

As we pointed out, Chafee is not really a moderate because his presence in the Senate enables a Republican majority that ensures the goals of the progressive advocacy groups who support him will not be achieved.

The latest poll in Rhode Island shows that Chafee has lost 12 points against his likely Democratic opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse. The dimwitted Rhode Island GOP Senator has gone from being six points ahead of the Democrat to being six points behind him in one of the latest polls. In short, rather than endorsing a Democrat who might win and pick up a seat to help the Democrats take control of the Senate, some progressive advocacy groups are sticking with the Potemkin "moderate" Republican Chafee.

What’s more, Chafee may yet get knocked out of the race by a challenge from a radical authoritarian Republican in the late Rhode Island September 12th primary. (Whitehouse – what a name! – has only nominal opposition on the Democratic primary side.) And Chafee has been pandering to the right wing of the party in Rhode Island in order to squeeze through the primary!

So why are groups like the Sierra Club and Naral continuing to support Chafee, a Republican pawn of the Busheviks in the most Democratic of states?

We’d suggest follow the money.

Advocacy groups need contributions from wealthy "moderate" Republicans, so they need to show that they will support a Republican now and then, even if is counterproductive to achieving the mission of the groups.

It's not a question of abandoning their "bi-partisan principles" if they were to oppose Chafee. To the contrary, they are abandoning their principles BY supporting him. They are just using a fig leaf of "bi-partisanship" to justify appealing to Republican "moderates," mostly women, who give money to the organizations.

Let’s offer a bit of an example here:

Let’s say that I am a "moderate" Republican Senator. I could vote for every woman to have a right to an abortion, but then if my party appoints judges and attorney generals whose histories and common sense say are going to overrule laws allowing abortion, then I don’t deserve the support of pro-choice groups, because I am just putting on the appearance of supporting choice, while helping the Republican Party dismantle Roe v. Wade through the judicial system.

What's more, if the national pro-choice organization knew that my party vigorously opposed abortion, that pro-choice legislation would never get passed as long as my party was in power, and that -- as we noted -- my party puts judges on the bench who will strike down pro-choice legislation, don’t YOU think that the pro-choice organizations should support the guy from the other party, the one who actually and really supports pro-choice and whose party will appoint pro-choice judges?

Isn’t that just common sense if you want to be true to your mission, which is why your members send you contributions to support your pro-choice advocacy?

Let's put it another way. All things considered, does supporting Chafee or supporting the likely Democratic candidate from Rhode Island advance the interests of the Sierra Club and Naral as far as deliverables for their missions?

Anyone who answers Chafee is deluded.

So if they are not making endorsements based on advancing their missions, why even make endorsements? Why not just take the money from all sides and stop pretending that they are really interested in advancing their policy interests?

We’ll close with an e-mail we received from one of our readers:

The sentiments expressed in the Krugman column "Centrism is for Suckers" and the BuzzFlash Editorial on the subject, match what I have been saying for years to Elizabeth Gehl, the national political director of one of my organizations, the Business and Professional Women.

Year after year, I have screamed bloody murder when they have endorsed the likes of Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Lincoln Chafee, as well as numerous Republican candidates for the House. When I objected to these endorsements, the response was, "They support legislation that we support."

I pointed out that this legislation would never get to the floor for a vote as long as the Republicans held a majority in the House and Senate, to which I never get a reply. I also pointed out that the Senate Republicans whom BPW were endorsing voted for the confirmation of each and every rightwing Neanderthal partisan hack extremist judicial nominee for LIFETIME appointments to the federal judiciary and Supreme Court, and that BPW, along with every other major women's organization, had fought those confirmations, so why were they endorsing those Republicans?

Again, no response.

I sent her the Krugman column today, and told her to substitute "BPW" for the Sierra Club and Naral.

Joann Olbrich

We’ll let Joann have the last word.

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

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Supporting Chafee...

Submitted by Fishpro on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 11:51pm.
These groups can get away from endorsing specific candidates by giving them a profile rating. Use their policy positions and voting history and translate to a numerical score. Chafee... 8.5 on a scale of 10. Sheldon Whitehouse... 9.7. This way they can have both sides of the bread buttered, but highlight in a fair and effective way, who is better for their membership. Granted, a challenger may not have an extensive voting record, but these things can be weighed, perhaps with a survey form to each candidate. It is absolutley true that the DEMs need to control the agenda, but that is not the mission of these advocacy groups. It may advantage them to think strategically in the long run. Numerical ranking may be the way toward that. "neo-conservative...sounds so much better than neo-nazi"
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Out of Curiosity

Submitted by Curmudgette on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 1:06pm.

Is today's about face on the E.J. Dionne column possibly because Buzzflash realized that it was contradicting itself? This morning he was an idiot who knew nothing about the political scene. Now this same column is "good advice" on how to avoid the problem of fiefdoms. Buzzflash's earlier link commentary has sadly gone down the memory hole, but I could not help noticing the disconnect this morning when I read Dionne's column about building a unified party. Of course the difference is that he's talking about reinvigorating a nationwide, ground-up apparatus. The Buzzflash editorial is simply about scolding non-partisan organizations for not being partisan enough.

"If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
The Blogging Curmudgeon

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Earth to Sierra Club, MCFLY, MCFLY

Submitted by bigdavefromqueens on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 12:59pm.
Don't these morons realize that the only way they are going to get legislation to help their causes is to have at least 51 pro environment Democratic Senators. For if you have 49 Democrats and 51 republicans, the repubican leadership will not allow the bill to come to the floor. So in essence a vote for Lincoln Chafee is a vote against one's own endorsement.
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Chafee

Submitted by Bushflusher on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 12:40pm.
Let these "moderates" eat cake. They'll never be with you on critical votes. Taking a page from the neo-cons - you're either liberal and with us, or you're against us. Period.
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It's not so much advocacy as business

Submitted by ETS on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 10:53am.

Couldn't have said it better, BuzzFlash. It's become apparent over the years that, besides not wishing to offend wealthy conservative donors, many advocacy groups do not, in fact, want a real and fundamental change in the status quo. I might add, as a card-carrying member of the ACLU, I am very disapointed in their position on political campaign finance. As you recall the ACLU advocated for the petitioners, a rogues gallery of Republicans, in the resent Supreme Court ruling in Randall v. Sorrell, which struck down key spending limit provisions of Vermont's Act 64.

If the kind of society that the above named advocacy groups supposedly are working toward is ever acheived they would soon be out of business. If there were no more threats to abortion rights, the environment or The Constitution the need for NARL, the Sierra Club, etc., would not exist.

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Sometimes you just got to wonder

Submitted by chrisdogma on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 10:40am.
I would think that preaching to the choir would by now be history (but I guess not), time I would think should be spent on wining and not appeasement to the other side The article by Ms. Olbrich is not only right to the point, but easy to understand. Until we as a progressive movement go out and make every effort to win and make change, we will be in the same situation that we are in today. What do we really stand for? Chris
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Centrists

Submitted by libertylover on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 10:14am.
Liberty lover says: We are truly at war, in a battle for representative Democracy. The money and the hackable voting machines are in the hands of the Enemy, but we have greater numbers and the Common Good on our side. As Howard Zinn says: "You can't stand still on a moving train". You can no longer play the middle ground, because the middle has been moved too far to the reactionary right. In occupied France during WWII, there were French citizens who worked with the NAZIs, and they were known as COLLABORATORS. Stop the BS and get off the fence. Are you for Government of by and for the PEOPLE, or are you supporting Government of by and for the corporate interests? Choose now and explain this simple truth to all you meet: the NASCAR Dads, the Security Moms, conservatives, liberals, independents, libertarians. Those who are truly Patriots will get it, and those who are looking to see on which side their bread is buttered will be left behind. We need to overwhelm the polls, so that all the dirty tricks and election fraud will be swept away in a landslide of change. Collaborators, move over, Democracy is back!
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Single Issue Integrity

Submitted by stevehigh on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 9:37am.

I think single-issue groups, such as NARAL, need to reward their friends and punish their enemies regardless of party. Fear of loss is the only way to stiffen ideological commitment within the parties. In the long run, it is good for liberal Democrats when liberal interest groups endorse liberal Republicans.

If Democrats felt that NARAL would never support a Republican, they would vote how they pleased on abortion. And if Republicans felt they would never get a dime's worth of support, they would never support NARAL--on anything. Chafee's record is fair-to-middling odious and cowardly but no worse and in some respects better than some Democrats whose victories we light candles for.

In today's environment, the GOP leadership has such a stranglehold on its members that the so-called moderates aren't worth much to be sure. But it would be valuable to NARAL--indeed perhaps essential--to weaken or break that stranglehold even if the Democrats win a narrow majority in one or both hosues of Congress.

I agree that, in a sense, the only vote that matters today is the vote in caucus; the only thing that matters is who is speaker of the house, who is majority leader. But for a single-issue group to accept this philosophy is to fold up its tents, give up, and move into the party headquarters. Then, when the party decides it's expedient to abandon abortion rights (or the union shop, or oil drilling in Alaska, or handgun control or affirmative action, or, or, or...), the single-issue group is well and truly screwed and so are the liberals in the Democratic Party who advocated this merger of ideology and party.

The interests of NARAL and the Democrats are nearly, but not exactly, identical. Indeed, part of the jigsaw puzzle that would create a Senate majority includes victories for anti-choice Democrats in LA and PA and pro-choice Republicans in RI and elsewhere in the northeast.

I am dying to see Chafee lose--for the sake of abortion rights and a host of other issues. But it is prudent and reasonable for NARAL to provide at least token support for him not only because he might win but also because they do not need a reputation for stabbing people in the back who give them the votes they ask for.

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speaking of single issues . . .

Submitted by wastedspace.com on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 9:54pm.
until the integrity of our electoral system is secured, it is folly to support any party, on any issue, that is hacking the vote.
wastedspace.com
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Precisely

Submitted by Curmudgette on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 10:45am.

And well said.

I hate seeing the parroting of Kos's and Armstrong's wrongheadedness proliferating throughout the blogosphere and into a Paul Krugman column. It's shortsighted, poor strategy. Single issue groups are just that. They are about issues not parties. Anyone who thinks that having NARAL and the Sierra Club in the hip pocket of the Democratic Party will encourage the Democrats, if they ever do regain any power, to push for those issues is TRULY on a fool's errand. With Hillary bending over backwards to please pro-lifers and the party machine backing the likes of Casey in PA, it should be clear that the party needs pressure from pro-life organizations they cannot control. This "Democratic Party good, Republican Party" bad ideology does nothing for the American people who are struggling to heard by either party.

"If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
The Blogging Curmudgeon

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Oh?

Submitted by ETS on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 11:06am.

Then if is merely about the "issue" and not the party, give me one example of a religously conservative group, say a Focus On The Family, supporting a liberal Democrat on any issue.

What you, and people like you, don't seem to understand is that there is was I call a "cold-civil war" on, right now. The right has understood this for many, many years, I think the term they use is "culture wars." And the religious right has captured control of the Republican Party because their advocacy groups support, and only support, Republican candidates.

Liberal advocacy groups supporting only Democratic candidates may not be the best strategy in the long run, but it's the only stategy there is for the short run, now.

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Sure

Submitted by Curmudgette on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 12:54pm.

I know Focus On The Family is an organization I'd want to emulate. Dangerous ideologues make the best role models.

"If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
The Blogging Curmudgeon

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True, but I wasn't talking about the Religiously Insane

Submitted by stevehigh on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 11:27am.
GOP-leaning single issue groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Organized Medicine, Big Pharma, Big Ag, etc. often support Dems who support them. NARAL is the reasonable side of the issue--pro-choice, not blindly pro-abortion. NARAL does not support mandatory abortion as the other side supports mandatory pregnancy. My point was a somewhat narrow and philosophical one, perhaps not terribly appropriate just weeks before the November election. We are at war, and it's never been more important to win, in RI, in OH, in TN, in VA and, as Dean correctly says, in all 50 states. NARAL is a good friend and key ally almost everywhere. Steve
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Kidding Ourselves

Submitted by kenoshaMarge on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 9:08am.
Any Progressive who thinks that even the "moderate" Republicans who seem to have some integrity will not jump right back in line once the whip is cracked are only kidding themselves. Chaffee may be a nice guy, irrelevant, he may be a moderate, irrelevant, but he is one thing that can not, must not ever be ignored by progressives. HE IS A REPUBLICAN!! That is all that counts and that is all that is important. Democrats can look around for bipartisianship once they have a majority. Until then ALL Republicans are to be beaten at all cost.
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Some valid points by all but.....

Submitted by bigdavefromqueens on Tue, 08/15/2006 - 5:49pm.
Indeed, I think every writer here wishes we lived in a world where we had two sane parties and the vote was a choice between a good party and a better party. But that is not the world we live in. As long as Chafee caucuses with Republicans who will NOT allow this issue to be brought to the Senate floor, he must be voted out with them. If Chafee were to form a 3rd party and not caucus with the republicans, then I would understand the Sierra Club's endorsement. But today's republican party has been hijacked by radical insurgents who are trying to destroy our government. Supporting Chafee only enables these neocons.
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