Obama Talks Bipartisan Unity As Republicans Prepare To Bash And Obstruct

Updated December 23, 2008 at 10:00 AM

As incoming President Barack Obama talks bipartisan unity and works to staff his White House and assemble his Cabinet, Republicans are preparing a toolbox of minority tricks and tuning up the vast right wing noise machine so they are ready to obstruct Democrats at every turn.

Today, the New York Times had an article about how right-wing talk radio is gearing up to aggressively go after President Obama over the next four years. The eight years of Clinton-bashing during the Clinton administration years may seem tame by comparison. Rush Limbaugh demonstrated his commitment to this Obama-bashing crusade today on his radio show by blaming Democrats for the current economic crisis. This theory is quickly becoming a right-wing favorite. Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly also recently claimed that the economic crisis was deliberately manufactured — not by Democrats but by journalists who wanted to help elect Obama.

After years of habitually resisting and belittling attempts to use a key House committee as a mechanism to investigate and hold the White House accountable, Republicans are saying they now want to get into the White House oversight game.

Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), who will become the ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is making clear President Obama will be firmly in his sights.

A day after he was formally selected as ranking member last week, Issa ousted 14 of 39 Republican committee staffers, including many senior aides. Outgoing staffers said they were told the panel's minority will shift its focus away from legislation toward oversight of federal agencies.

By bringing in aides with investigative backgrounds, committee Republicans believe they can increase their capacity to conduct independent investigations, despite lacking the majority's subpoena power.

To be sure, Republicans plan to push the talking point that President Barack Obama should be as subjected to Congressional scrutiny as any of his predecessors, and Republicans will press an adversarial relationship in every legislative-executive branch interaction in the 111th congressional session.

Of course, a look at Issa's past performance he'll hardly be interested in an even-handed approach to good governance as he will be in using his committee perch for partisan grandstanding.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, has said he will attempt to slow down the process of confirming Eric Holder as Obama's attorney general, citing lingering "concerns" about the nominee’s role in various areas while part of the Clinton Administraion. Specter's "concerns" are bogus as it has come to light that this is nothing more than a Republican obstructionist strategy being driven by Karl Rove. Ceci Connolly, national staff writer for the Washington Post, said as much on Sunday, passed on a bit of hill gossip the Sunday edition of "The Chris Matthews Show." Connolly said, "Word on the street is that Karl Rove is going to be helping lead the fight against Obama's nominations as part of the Republican Party's strategy.

Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster Obama's appointments if those nominees were not to acceptable to conservatives. (I'll add, by the way, that Kyl was one of the conservative Republicans who, in 2005, supported the "nuclear option," against Democrats which would have eliminated filibustering from congressional rules leaving Democrats with no voice in the Senate, period. That, of course, was when Republicans controlled congress.) Senators from South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas and Kentucky, have also vowed to obstruct Obama's agenda by filibustering Obama's nominations and legislative proposals.

Remember when the Republican party was accusing Democrats of being obstructionists for just mentioning the word "filibuster" as the Republicans push a very partisan congressional agenda, particularly the confirmation of extreme right-wing judges, when Republicans controlled congress? Republicans were singing a different tune after they became the minority party in the 110th Congress. The number of cloture votes forced by Senate minority Republicans skyrocketed in the 110th Congress following the Democratic takeover of the Senate and Harry Reid's assumption of the majority leader position.

The Senate voted on 112 cloture vote motions in the 110th congress controlled by Democrats, exactly double the number (56) of cloture votes in the 109th Congress, when Democrats were in the minority and Republicans were in control. The 110th congress cloture motions were two-and-a-half times as many as the average number of cloture votes (44) over the previous nine Congresses. Of these cloture motions, 51 were rejected (meaning that Republicans succeeded in Filibustering an up-or-down vote) and 61 were passed....
With the Republican minority numbers slipping to just 41 Senators for the 111th Congress (assuming Al Franken wins in MN) Republicans seem prepared to use the threat of filibuster (cloture vote motions) to stall Obama from quickly forming a functioning administration and to kill all legislation they deem too progressive. Gee, if Republicans can make it look like Democrats can't govern by obstructing government, then maybe Republicans will have an issue to run on in 2010 to pick up a few House and Senate seats.

And then there is that old Republican "lawsuit" strategy to harass the Democrats and distract the media. Republican politicians like to campaign against "lawsuit abuse," the idea that trial lawyers are clogging the judicial system with pointless lawsuits. None-the-less right-wing groups like Judicial Watch, which as Politico notes existed almost solely for the purpose of harassing the Clinton administration, are gearing up to go after the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton announced his group was considering filing suit to prevent Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State, based on the Ineligibility Clause of the Constitution. This [lawsuit] saber-rattling over the secretary of state appointment calls to mind the tactics of the Larry Klayman era. [Klayman was the founder and former Chairman of Judicial Watch.]

As the group ponders its latest legal action, it still awaits a pending FEC complaint it filed back in April against the junior New York senator over a fund raising event where Elton John performed. The complaint alleged that John wasn’t permitted to help Clinton raise money because he is not a citizen of the United States.

Also, last week a Judicial Watch investigator went down to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., to comb through papers that had been released on account of a Freedom of Information suit. The group is looking for information to use against Hillary Clinton and other Obama appointments that were associated with the President Clinton's administration.

Jake Siewert, who served as Bill Clinton’s White House press secretary, tells Politico that they "initially underestimated the amount of damage that Judicial Watch could do through the press and nuisance lawsuits." The incoming White House will not only have to deal with Judicial Watch's lawsuits, but seemingly an avalanche of lawsuits from the conspiracy theorists who still refuse to accept that Barack Obama is qualified to become the next president.

As Alan Keyes' running mate, Wiley Drake, tells the OC Weekly, that they intend to make this issue dog the Obama administration "much like the White Water and then Monica Lewinsky controversies dogged Clinton’s presidency":

...it will be even more so than the Lewinsky thing. I think it will dog Obama because one of our attorneys, Gary Kreep [of the United Justice Foundation] said we will do everything we can to fight this battle. If we win this case, we will keep him out of the White House. If we lose, Gary and his committee of lawyers, and many of us are supportive of this, if Mr. Obama is indeed inaugurated, we will file a lawsuit against the inauguration for being illegal and against the chief justice of the Supreme Court for swearing in a usurper. And then, typically on the first day of office, the president signs a bunch of bills. Every bill or document he signs, we will file a separate lawsuit. For every decision he makes, it’s gonna to be tied up in court.

Related Links:

• Republicans Struggling To Figure Out How To Criticize Obama
• Joe Conason writes that the wingnuts are starting the same old crap that they used on the Clintons

Bush Admin Hamstrung by Conservative "Trickle-Down" Ideology

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Barney Frank and other Congressional Democrats are drafting legislation to target the remain $350 billion allocation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to reduce home foreclosures. "Absolutely nothing has been done to respect that part of the TARP legislation," Pelosi told reporters as she discussed Congress's agenda in coming weeks.

Secretary of Treasury Paulson argues the Conservative Ideology perspective that TARP funds should be used to generally prime the banking system pump to have loan availability back into the economy rather than to use TARP to target home foreclosures directly. Paulson says that Banks are expected to increase their loans because of the TARP federal aid. Paulson says, "It may be slow, but as funds for lending "trickle-down" through the market, more homeowners will resolve their foreclosure problems." Conservatives are still trying to make that old "trickle-down" economics thing work - will they never learn any new tricks?

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that Congress will need to release the last half of the $700 billion rescue fund because the first $350 billion has been committed. Paulson said he intends to allocate the second installment of $350 billion to financial system much as he allocated the first installment of $350 billion. Paulson, a former Wall Street market executive, pumped $250 billion of the first TARP installment, in market fashion, to buy stock in hundreds of banks as a way to bolster their balance sheets and get them to resume more normal lending.

Key Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, complain that the Treasury's $700 Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has done little to help struggling homeowners as it pumped the first $350 billion into the balance sheets of banks and other financial firms with little visible benefit. She and Frank are preparing "legislation that specifically requires that provisions of the TARP legislation [to target the foreclosure problem] be honored, when congress releases the additional funds," Pelosi said.

After receiving $350 billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the TARP money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers. The answers, or more accurately the lack of answers, highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Congress intended for the banks to lend the money to resolve the home foreclosure meltdown - not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no regulatory oversight or even a review process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who misuse the money. After all, Republicans, and in particular George Bush, are not ones to let facts and experience get in the way of ideology, particularly on something as abhorrent as government oversight and regulation of business.

Perhaps one reason banks are mum about how they are using TARP funds is, according to an AP study, that after banks received the taxpayer money top executives rewarded themselves with cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management. The AP Study found that the total amount of bonus money given to nearly 600 bank executives would cover bailout costs for many of the 116 banks that have so far accepted tax dollars to boost their bottom lines.

Even though neither the Banks nor Treasury Secretary Paulson can specifically outline how the banks have used TARP bailout funds or how the funds are being used to address the home foreclosure problem, Paulson is insisting that congress release the second TARP installment of $350 billion directly to banks.

Legislation demanding that the second installment of $350 billion be targeted for home foreclosure mitigation will be ready within the next couple of weeks, said Steven Adamske, an aide to Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

Most Democrats -- in Congress and on President-elect Barack Obama's team -- favor pressing lenders to renegotiate troubled mortgages. That is the tack of the Streamlined Modification Program, championed by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair. The SMP is aimed at trimming foreclosures and ending fire sales by offering a guarantee to lenders that modify a mortgage so payments are trimmed to 31% of a home owner's gross income.

If banks cut interest rates or stretch out the life of a loan, Washington would cover part of the lender's losses should a homeowner re-default. Bair says the plan would save 1.5 million homeowners at a cost of $24.4 billion. When Bair first suggested pushing lenders harder to modify iffy mortgages last spring, it was dismissed by the Bush Administration. Since then Bair has very successfully instituted many of her ideas at IndyMac, the failed thrift the FDIC took over in July. Secretary Paulson argues that Bair's plan is inappropriate for the Treasury's $700 billion rescue, because it would be an expenditure rather than an investment that would earn a return.

Congress may delay releasing the second installment of $350 billion to President Bush's Secretary Paulson and wait to release the funds to Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, who supports directly targeting the money for foreclosure mitigation. Senate Republicans have threatened to filibuster legislation to directly use TARP funds for foreclosure mitigation.

If the previous year of record foreclosure rates, falling home values, a declining stock market, and continuing inflation have seemed like too much catastrophe for the US economy to bear, just wait. A second (Tsunami Size) wave of foreclosures are set to begin in the spring of 2009. This is when another round of Option ARMs mortgages will begin to reset making monthly mortgage payments instantly unmanageable for millions of additional home owners. This will be the first major test for the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats.

Option ARMs mortgages were sold, at the height of the mortgage bubble, to homeowners eager to cash in on rising property values and keep their mortgage payments as low as possible. What makes the coming option ARM resets most worrying is who they were marketed to and what the "option" part of the mortgage really means. These borrowers had relatively good credit ratings when they took the loans, but many people taking these loans did not fully understanding how they worked and why their "apparent" interest rate and monthly payments were so low.

Since congress repealed the 1968 Truth In Lending Act in 1994, mortgage brokers selling the option arms mortgages were not compelled to fully explain how the mortgages worked. To the contrary, the language of these mortgages was often convoluted and opaque, explicitly designed to mislead the borrower.

Option ARMs mortgages allowed homeowners to pay only a small portion of the interest on their loan every month for the first two or three years. The larger portion of the interest payment was added back into the total mortgage amount over that two or three year period until the "reset" date. In other words, borrowers keep making monthly payments only to find out that their loan amount got bigger every month. When the payments reset, based on the prevailing interest rates and interest inflated loan total, which is now far greater than the property's value due to all that accrued interest, the monthly mortgage payments become instantly unmanageable for many homeowners.

The steep declines in real estate markets over the past year due to the foreclosure crisis is helping to fuel a self-sustaining cycle of foreclosures, followed by property value decrease, followed by more foreclosures. This helps to accelerate how quickly and how deeply homeowners find themselves "underwater" in a house they can't sell for the amount of their interest inflated mortgage. And few homeowners feel good about sending in a higher mortgage payment every month when they realize their equity has been completely eliminated by the interest inflated loan amount and the collapsing U.S. housing market. So, in 2009, banks are facing a second wave of mortgage holders who will have no other option than to just walk away from their house when their payments reset.

Related Postings:

• Tim Geithner, Obama's Secretary of Saving the World
  
• AP Study Finds TARP Funds Given To Banks Went To Bank Execs As Bonuses
  
• Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret
• GOP Blind Faith In Unregulated Markets Stoked Economic Crisis
  
• Federal Data Disproves Conservative Spin Democratic Sponsored Minority Lending Cause Of Mortgage Meltdown
• Conservative "Hooverism"
• Reassessing Reagan's "Government Is The Problem" Proclamation
• Republicans Borrow and Spend to Massive Debit

Post Script:

Secretary of Saving the World
Tim Geithner's daunting to-do list at the Treasury Department.
Slate.com

Timothy Geithner, the New York Fed chief, was tapped by President-elect Obama to serve as Treasury Secretary. In the last year, the United States has effectively nationalized the financial sector. Thanks to Secretary Paulson's and Secretary Bernanke's occasionally frantic efforts to fend off systemic collapse, the government now largely owns AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and chunks of several banks as well as oodles of dodgy assets pledged as collateral for loans. Paulson and Bernanke have spent, promised, loaned, guaranteed, or assumed in liabilities amounts that are now approaching $14 trillion.

Secretary Geithner will have to function partly as a money manager to decide what to do with the portfolio of shares Treasury now holds in big banks like Citi. Like a private-equity magnate, he'll have to decide the appropriate capital structure and ultimate disposition of companies, like AIG, that have become wards of the state. And with the remaining $350 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, he'll be the investment banker in chief, deciding who might be bailout-worthy.

AP: $1.6B Went To Bailed-Out Bank Execs

Newsweek
By Associated Press Writers FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH
Dec 21, 2008

On the verge of failure, bank executives collected financial bonanzas, AP study finds.

Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.

The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue.

Read the rest of the story in Newsweek.

Bush White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire

GOP Blind Faith In Unregulated Markets Stoked Economic Crisis
A MUST READ!

The New York Times
By JO BECKER, SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and STEPHEN LABATON
Published: December 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — The global financial system was teetering on the edge of collapse when President Bush and his economics team huddled in the Roosevelt Room of the White House for a briefing that, in the words of one participant, “scared the hell out of everybody.”

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group.

The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money.

Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history.

Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.

“How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

From his earliest days in office, Mr. Bush paired his belief that Americans do best when they own their own home with his conviction that markets do best when let alone.

He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards.

Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants. The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. And the regulator Mr. Bush chose to oversee them — an old prep school buddy — pronounced the companies sound even as they headed toward insolvency.

As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn; as recently as February, for example, Mr. Bush was still calling it a “rough patch.”

The result was a series of piecemeal policy prescriptions that lagged behind the escalating crisis.

“There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems,” said Al Hubbard, Mr. Bush’s former chief economics adviser, who left the White House in December 2007. “Had we, we would have attacked them.”

Looking back, Keith B. Hennessey, Mr. Bush’s current chief economics adviser, says he and his colleagues did the best they could “with the information we had at the time.” But Mr. Hennessey did say he regretted that the administration did not pay more heed to the dangers of easy lending practices. And both Mr. Paulson and his predecessor, John W. Snow, say the housing push went too far.

“The Bush administration took a lot of pride that homeownership had reached historic highs,” Mr. Snow said in an interview. “But what we forgot in the process was that it has to be done in the context of people being able to afford their house. We now realize there was a high cost.”

For much of the Bush presidency, the White House was preoccupied by terrorism and war; on the economic front, its pressing concerns were cutting taxes and privatizing Social Security. The housing market was a bright spot: ever-rising home values kept the economy humming, as owners drew down on their equity to buy consumer goods and pack their children off to college.

Lawrence B. Lindsay, Mr. Bush’s first chief economics adviser, said there was little impetus to raise alarms about the proliferation of easy credit that was helping Mr. Bush meet housing goals.

“No one wanted to stop that bubble,” Mr. Lindsay said. “It would have conflicted with the president’s own policies.”

Read the rest of the story in The New York Times

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Related Postings:

• Federal Data Disproves Conservative Spin Democratic Sponsored Minority Lending Cause Of Mortgage Meltdown
• Conservative "Hooverism"
• Reassessing Reagan's "Government Is The Problem" Proclamation
• Republicans Borrow and Spend to Massive Debit

TX Senate Dems Making Deal With Dewhurst On Voter ID?

Capitol Annex

Via the Houston Chronicle, word comes that some Senate Democrats may be ready to cut a deal with the Devil on the issue of voter identification.

Why Democratic senators, with at one extra Democratic voice in the chamber this session, would want to allow any voter identification measure to pass the chamber is beyond comprehension.

Dewhurst plans to try again and already has been talking to several Democratic senators about making a deal. One thing he is offering is an exemption for senior citizens from the ID requirement or, at least, exempting seniors from having to pay a fee for their IDs.

Several details, including the cutoff age, apparently have yet to be worked out.

Exemption for seniors

The bill approved by the House in 2007 would have exempted voters 80 and older from the ID requirement, but that provision was stripped out by the Senate State Affairs Committee.

Sen. Mario Gallegos of Houston, who joined his Democratic colleagues in killing the ID bill two years ago, despite a difficult recovery from a liver transplant, said Dewhurst has approached him about reviving the senior exemption provision.

Gallegos said he is willing to talk some more but isn’t ready to drop his opposition to the bill yet, particularly since he hasn’t seen the proposal in writing.

“The seniors’ provision is a good idea, but I have concerns that the bill would still discriminate against other people,” he said, including immigrants who have recently become citizens.

Any Democratic senators who are seriously considering making a deal with Dewhurst over this should consider the potential political consequences, including losing their seats to primary challengers.

Democrats wanting to “negotiate” with Dewhurst over Voter Identification is equivelant to Sam Houston winning the Battle of San Jacinto, going out and recruiting more troops, and then coming back and telling Santa Anna, “oops, my bad! Let’s forget all about the Alamo and Goliad, and help you save face so you can get re-elected.”

Not to put too strong a point on it, it is bullshit.

Read

Gov. Perry Making Abortion A Centerpiece Of 2010 Primary Campaign

Capitol Annex

By proclaiming his unwavering support for “Choose Life” license plates–an issue that has failed to pass the Legislature five times in the last five sessions–Texas Governor Rick Perry has sent the clear signal that he intends to make abortion a centerpiece of his 2010 primary race against U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who does not as strongly hold the pro-life position.

In announcing his support for the legislation to create the plates, he sent a clear message to the Texas GOP primary voters–a massive number of which are evangelical Christians

[Read more...]

GOTV Consideration - Young Democrats Use Cell Phones Only

The portion of homes with cell phones but no landlines has grown to 18 percent, led by adults living with unrelated roommates, renters and young people, according to federal figures released Wednesday. The figures, covering the first half of 2008, underscore how consumers have been steadily abandoning traditional landline phones in favor of cells. The 18 percent in cell-only households compares with 16 percent in the second half of 2007, and just 7 percent in the first half of 2005.

Leading the way are households comprised of unrelated adults, such as roommates or unmarried couples. Sixty-three percent of such households only have cell phones. About one-third of renters and about the same number of people under age 30 live in homes with only cells. About a quarter of low-income people also have only wireless phones, nearly double the proportion of higher-earning people.

The demographic segments with the highest cell phone only response are the same demographic segments that are most likely to be Democratic voters:

• Nearly two-thirds of all adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (63.1%) were in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
• One-third of adults renting their home (33.6%) had only wireless telephones. Adults renting their home were more likely than adults owning their home (9.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Men (18.0%) were more likely than women (14.4%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in poverty (26.0%) and adults living near poverty (22.6%) were more likely than higher income adults (14.2%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in the South (19.6%) and Midwest (17.8%) were more likely than adults living in the Northeast (9.8%) or West (13.7%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Non-Hispanic white adults (14.6%) were less likely than Hispanic adults (21.6%) or non-Hispanic black adults (18.5%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults with college degrees (17.1%) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were high school graduates (12.5%) or adults with less education (10.0%).
• Adults living with children (18.1%) were more likely than adults living alone (10.1%) or with only adult relatives (12.8%) to be living in wireless-mostly households.
• Adults living in poverty (10.8%) and adults living near poverty (10.3%) were less likely than higher income adults (17.1%) to be living in wireless-mostly households.
• Adults living in metropolitan areas (15.0%) were more likely to be living in wireless-mostly households than were adults living in more rural areas (12.1%).
  
• More than one in three adults aged 25-29 years (35.7%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. Approximately 31% of adults aged 18-24 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• As age increased from 30 years, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 19.1% for adults aged 30-44 years; 9.2% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 2.8% for adults aged 65 years and over.

The findings have major implications for Democratic candidates and political organizations who will organize Get Out The Vote programs in future election cycles. Traditionally, Get Out The Vote programs use landline phone numbers to contact and motivate voters. In recent months researchers have concluded that people who have only cell phones have more prgressive political views than those who do not. Growing numbers of political pollsters now include cell-only users in their samples, which is more expensive in part due to legal restraints against using computers to call them.

The cell phone only adoption curve is steep and continuing at pace. Cell phone only households will likely exceed 20% during the 2010 election cycle.
The most progressive segments of the electorate will continue have the highest cell phone only adoption rate. Future Democratic GOTV phone banking operations must find ways to reach this segment of potential voters via cell phone numbers rather than landline phone numbers. Future phone banking operations should also consider leveraging this demographic evolution by including "text messaging" as part of the GOTV program.

Can Texas Go Blue Like Colorado?

The survey, conducted by David Hill, who operates the Houston-based Republican Hill Research firm, raises questions about whether the Republican Party might be in trouble in Texas after a decade of political dominance. Hill's survey states, in no uncertain terms, that for GOP candidates to succeed in Texas they must look beyond the party's base voters and wrap up 80 percent of independent voters that he calls the Critical Middle.

A well executed Get Out The Vote program to get just the members of your own party out to the polling places on election day is only part of what it takes to win elections with today's electorate. The other part of winning is planning and executing a Get Out The Vote program to identify, contact and motivate the "independents" that may be persuaded by your party's or candidate's message.

In Colorado the Republican GOTV effort got more Republicans to the polls on election day than did the Democratic GOTV effort - it was the independent voters that switched Colorado's color from red to blue in the 2008 election.

Democrats can win in Collin County, as well as other Republican "dominated" counties of Texas, by extending our GOTV effort to identify, contact and motivate the "independents" living in our counties.

The map at left shows the U.S. Congressional districts carried by Democratic candidates in the 2008 election. This shows that Democrats can win in large sections of the state and with the help of independents more counties can turn blue.

Who are the independents in Collin County? On election day 2008 there were 424,821 register voters in Collin County. Of that number 56,968 registered voters were in "suspend" status leaving 367,853 active voters. 298,647 people voted in the 2008 election in Collin County which means that 69,206 active voters did not vote. (Collin County elections data)

County level Democratic party organizations in each county that have not yet turned their county blue should start identifying the independents. Democratic organizations in Collin County should immediately start preparing for the 2010 election by answering a few basic questions: Who are the 56,968 registered voters in "suspend" status and what will it take to make them not only active voters again, but active Democrats? Who are the 69,206 active voters did not vote this year and why didn't they vote? Are they disaffected Republicans? How many might be persuaded to vote for the "right" Democratic candidate? It is among these numbers that Democrats will find the votes to turn Collin County blue.

Consider these excerpts from an article in The Denver Post.

Colorado Election Turned Out Surprises
The Denver Post
By John Ingold

More Republicans than Democrats voted in Colorado, but unaffiliateds helped color the state's big races blue.

According to new numbers from the Colorado secretary of state's office, Republicans in November voted in greater numbers than Democrats and — even more surprising — also turned out in higher percentages when compared with the parties' numbers of registered voters. In a state at the heart of the Democrats' Western strategy, Republicans still accounted for the largest voting bloc and yet lost in all of the highest-profile races.

That brain-twister, say political pundits, underscores the challenges both parties face moving toward what are expected to be equally contentious 2010 races for governor and U.S. Senate in a state that is now of decidedly mixed political leanings.

About 15,600 more Republicans voted in the election than Democrats, out of a record 2.4 million total voters statewide. In terms of turnout, slightly more than 80 percent of all registered Republicans voted this year, compared with about 79 percent of registered Democrats.

Statewide, Republicans still outpace Democrats in terms of total registered voters — though the numbers are closing and Democrats now count more active voters among their ranks than Republicans.

Independents, who make up the largest group of registered voters, trailed Republicans and Democrats in turnout this year. About 100,000 fewer unaffiliated voters cast ballots than did Republicans or Democrats. About 67 percent of registered independents voted in the election.

The key to the election, though, was how those unaffiliated people voted, said David Flaherty, chief executive of voter tracking firm Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies, which works with Republican candidates.

"The Republican get-out-the-vote effort executed very well," Flaherty said. "But at the end of the day, doing all those things right, it's about appealing to unaffiliated voters."

Home Owner's Insurance Reform In 2009 TX Legislative Session

Texans are paying the highest rates for homeowners insurance in the nation -- six years after an insurance crisis led Gov. Rick Perry and numerous state leaders to promise lower rates that never came. Meanwhile, insurance companies have enjoyed record profits.

With Democrats winning more seats in the Texas State Legislature in the 2008 election, homeowners will have an all-too-rare chance at genuine reform when the Legislature once again debates homeowners insurance in the 2009 state legislative session.

In the two legislative sessions since 2003, Speaker Craddick (R) made sure that few reform bills escaped the House Insurance Committee to come up for votes in the full House.

But next year the dynamic will change for two reasons. The House is more closely divided between Democrats and Republican, meaning Craddick, an opponent to reform, may not be speaker. Craddick can't win speaker's chair again for the 2009 legislative session without a block of support from Democrats, and neither can any other Republican. It would be very surprising if many, or any, Democrat(s) back Craddick for the speaker's chair.

More important, the Insurance Department is undergoing sunset review, the regular process by which the Legislature examines state agencies. That ensures that an insurance bill will move through the Legislature. Many Democrats and Republicans, having heard from angry homeowners in their districts, are pushing for more stringent regulation.

With foreclosures on the rise in Texas, many lawmakers realize that reducing consumers’ insurance bills may allow more folks to keep their homes. Also, Republicans may be more anxious to make a show of "supporting the average Texan" after the Houston-based Republican Hill Research firm, raised such serious questions about whether the Republican Party might be in trouble in Texas after a decade of political dominance. Continued Republican opposition or foot dragging on meaningful Home Owner's Insurance Reform in the 2009 legislative session will give Democratic candidates a giant hammer to swing at their Republican opponents during the 2010 election cycle.

• Read more about Home Owner's Insurance Reform in the 2009 legislative session in the Texas Observer
• Read more about Craddick and the 2009 legislative session Speaker's race at burntorangereport.com
• Read more about closely divided legislature at Fort Worth Star Telegram

Ron Kirk To Be U.S. Trade Representative In Obama Cabinet

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
By Maria Recio

WASHINGTON — Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, initially a front-runner for transportation secretary, has opted to be U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration, sources said.

The announcement of the Cabinet-level position could come as soon as today in Chicago, where President-elect Barack Obama has scheduled a morning news conference.

The prestigious position, which comes with the title of ambassador

Read the full story at star-telegram.com

Those born in Texas, generally stay in Texas

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
By Anna M. Tinsley

There really is no place like home for true Texans.

For now, 75.8 percent of adults born in the Lone Star State still live here — the highest percentage of any state keeping its native residents — making Texas the nation’s "stickiest" state, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data released Wednesday.

But it's not just sentiment keeping nearly 24 million people in Texas, where "y'all" and "howdy" are as much fixtures as the deep-rooted cowboy traditions, love of football and pride in the fact that nearly everything is bigger.

"It's jobs, jobs, jobs," said Karl Eschbach, the state demographer at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "With the job creation in the state of Texas, you don't need to leave the state for employment.

"Why would anybody want to leave Texas?" Eschbach asked. "Texans love their state."

Others do, too.

Between 2005 and 2007, nearly 1.7 million new people moved to Texas, but only 1.3 million moved out, which means Texas is keeping more people than it's losing, said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center who co-authored the study.

Read the full story at star-telegram.com

Another Republican Running For Hutchison's Senate Seat

Michael Williams, the Republican Chairman of the Texas Railroad Commission, who was re-elected in the November 2008 election, and one of the most prominent African-American Republicans in the nation, released a statement announcing his candidacy for Senator Hutchison's Senate seat.

Houston Mayor Bill White To Run For Hutchison’s Seat

TheHill.com
By Reid Wilson
Posted: 12/16/08

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has scored its first recruiting victory in Houston Mayor Bill White, perhaps the highest-profile Democrat in Texas. White decided over the weekend to run for Hutchison’s seat. Hutchison has filed the committee paperwork for a 2010 gubernatorial run. The filing does not commit her to the race and her Senate seat is not up until 2012, and Texas law does not require her to resign from the Senate while running for governor.

Todd Olsen, a spokesman for Hutchison’s Austin-based gubernatorial committee, told The Hill in December if Hutchison did resign from the Senate early, she would ask Gov. Rick Perry (R) to hold a special election to fill the seat. Perry also has the option of appointing an interim senator.

White’s entry gives Democrats a decent shot in one of the reddest states in the country two years after the party’s under-funded challenger to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) clocked in at 43 percent of the vote.

Video: Mayor Bill White announces he will run for Senator Hutchison's Senate seat.


Bill White's Campaign Website
Bill White hits the Rio Grand Valley in preparation for his Senate run

Republican Party Looses As Democratic Party Gains

Motivated by deep religious convictions, GOP religious conservatives believe that the true "family values" moral code for society can be found only in religion and that "true moral code" should be enforced by the law of the land. This explains their unyielding efforts to encode in laws and constitutional amendments, at the state and federal levels, government mandates of their particular interpretation of "family values." As religious conservatives have increasingly dominated the Republican party they have forced out almost all moderate and "traditional Republican" elements of the party. Politically moderate white Christians are not necessarily motivated by "family values" issues and liberal white Christians outright reject the concept of encoding "family values" moral code in laws and constitutional amendments.

The modern Republican Party has moved far from the conservative principals defined by the legendary Conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who said:

"By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars... Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland, or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state? "The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives."

Goldwater also said: "I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.... There is no place in this country for practicing religion in politics."

Lincoln Chafee quit the Republican Party and has become an Independent -- and many Republicans -- such as former Republican Congressman Jim Leach and Republican philanthropist and international lawyer Rita Hauser among others -- have not officially left the Republican party, but did organize behind Obama. Christine Todd Whitman and long term Colin Powell aide Lawrence Wilkerson want their party back. Sarah Palin helped push the Republican Party farther to the right this election – a polarization which could lead to the downfall of the party, insists Colin Powell.

"I think that in the latter months of the campaign, the party moved further to the right. Governor Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right. And I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about small-town values are good."

President Eisenhower's granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, a realist/strategist, Eisenhower-style Republican has quit her grandfather's party. -- really a "wow" moment-- Read her entire statement issued on National Interest Online, a publication affiliated with the Nixon Center, but here is a clip of her statement:

I have decided I can no longer be a registered Republican.

For the first time in my life I announced my support for a Democratic candidate for the presidency, in February of this year. This was not an endorsement of the Democratic platform, nor was it a slap in the face to the Republican Party. It was an expression of support specifically for Senator Barack Obama.

I had always intended to go back to party ranks after the election and work with my many dedicated friends and colleagues to help reshape the GOP, especially in the foreign-policy arena. But I now know I will be more effective focusing on our national and international problems than I will be in trying to reinvigorate a political organization that has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn."

And now, as the party threatens to trivialize what promised to be a serious debate on our future direction, it will alienate many young people who might have come into party ranks.

My decision came at the end of last week when it was demonstrated to the nation that McCain and this Bush White House have learned little in the last five years.

They mishandled what became a crisis in the Caucuses, and this has undermined U.S. national security. At the same time, the McCain camp appears to be comfortable with running an unworthy Karl Rove-style political campaign. Will the McCain operation, and its sponsors, do anything to win?

Even as people have become disenfranchised from the Republican Party and shift party party allegiances, the share of Americans who self-describe their political views as liberal, conservative or moderate has remained stable over the years. Only about one-in-five Americans currently call themselves liberal (21%), while 38% say they are conservative and 36% describe themselves as moderate. This is virtually unchanged from recent years; when George W. Bush was first elected president, 18% of Americans said they were liberal, 36% were conservative and 38% considered themselves moderate according to a November 2008 Pew Research Center Report.

While the relative proportion of liberals, conservatives and moderates has little changed the proportion of voters identifying with the Democratic Party has grown significantly since the 2004 election, and the shift has been particularly dramatic among younger voters. Fully 61% of voters ages 18 to 29 identify or lean Democratic and a comparable percentage supports Barack Obama. But Democratic gains in party affiliation among older voters since 2004 have been much more modest. Moreover, support for Obama among voters ages 50 and older is slightly lower than the share of this cohort that identifies with the Democratic Party.

In Pew surveys conducted since August of this year, 51% of all voters say they think of themselves as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, up five points from 46% during the same period in 2004. Meanwhile, the number identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party has fallen from 45% to 41%. In this cycle, the Democratic Party enjoys a 10-point advantage in party identification, compared with a one-point edge in the fall of 2004.

The greatest gains for the Democratic Party have come among younger voters. The percentage of voters ages 18 to 29 identifying with the Democratic Party has increased from 48% in the fall of 2004 to 61% currently. Democrats now outnumber Republicans by a margin of nearly two-to-one (61% to 32%) in this age group, up from only a seven-point advantage in 2004.

Voters ages 30 to 49, a group that includes the more conservative "Generation X, "also have shifted considerably since 2004. Nearly half (49%) of voters in this age group identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, up from 43% in 2004. Democrats currently have a six-point advantage over Republicans among voters in this age group.

Overall, more whites continue to identify as Republicans than as Democrats (48% vs. 44%); this is narrower than the 52%-to-40% advantage the GOP held in 2004. Since then, Democratic Party identification has increased four points (from 40% to 44%) among white voters. (see The Incredible Shrinking Republican Base)

Notably, the balance of party identification among younger white voters has reversed, from an 11-point advantage for the GOP in 2004 to an 11-point advantage for the Democrats today.

NYT:

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas. ... The Republicans, meanwhile, have “become a Southernized party,” said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist who teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They have completely marginalized themselves to a mostly regional party,” he said, pointing out that nearly half of the current Republican House delegation is now Southern... Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally.

Teaching Creationism Has Evolved

Forty years ago, in Epperson v. Arkansas, the US Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional an Arkansas law that banned the teaching of evolution. “The [Arkansas] law’s effort was confined to an attempt to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the Biblical account, literally read,” the court wrote in its decision.

The ruling was the first major judicial blow to creationists, who had largely silenced evolutionary education in many states across the country—ever since John Scopes was convicted in 1925 of the crime of teaching evolution in Tennessee’s infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.

Since Charles Darwin first put forth his idea of natural selection, the scientific community has viewed evolutionary theory as the unifying principle of biology. Among scientists, there is virtually no debate over its validity. And despite what religious fundamentalists insist, there is no credible scientific evidence backing up young earth creationism.

But instead of ending the cultural battle between religion and science, the Epperson case ignited what has been a four-decade fight to keep God out of science class. Since the Epperson v. Arkansas ruling anti-evolution laws morphed with each constitutional defeat into “equal time” laws and now “academic freedom” laws. Creationism, in trying to pass judicial muster, shape shifted into “creation science,” then into “intelligent design,” and now “strength-and-weakness” requirements.

George W. Bush's recent statement that he believes the Bible is "probably not" literally true has apparently left many Christian conservatives reeling in shock. Bush made the controversial statement during a interview on ABC's Nightline. Bush further stated in the interview, "I think that God created the Earth ... and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution."

Now this nation will soon be led by a president who firmly embraces evolution theory—and the eight years of a Bush administration hostile to science are almost over. President-elect Barack Obama has expressed firm support for eliminating Bush administration practices of censoring government agency scientific papers, promised to lead a green technological revolution and has pledged to return the United States to its vaunted position as a leader of scientific innovation.

While an Obama presidency may spell good news for science, the truth is that he is unlikely to have much of an impact on the teaching of evolutionary theory on the ground. The Texas state Board of Education is reviewing its science standards in preparation for approval next year.

The results of the board’s decision will undoubtedly have wide repercussions. The review of the standards is to establish guidelines for textbook publishers, who are watching the process closely.

In September, writing teams had removed a requirement that had had been inserted years earlier that said students must learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories like evolution. But earlier this month, three new reviewers with strong intelligent-design connections, including Stephen Meyer, vice president of the pro-ID Discovery Institute, were appointed by the creationist-friendly board members to look at the standards. In a new draft submitted last week, students would be required to learn “strengths and limitations” in three courses.

In addition, the new draft calls on middle school students to “discuss possible alternative explanations” for scientific concepts, opening the door for supernatural explanations like creationism.

Republican Domination of U.S. Appellate Courts

The Washington Post reports that George W. Bush has been enormously successful at placing his picks on federal appeals courts and that has led to Republican domination of most of the nation's judicial circuits. The article begins by focusing on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Michigan, noting a particular case where the full panel of judges overruled a ruling by a smaller appeals court panel:

Prosecutors appealed to all of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. And the full court, dominated by appointees of President Bush and other Republican presidents, reversed the initial appellate ruling, saying the evidence presented by prosecutors was sufficient to merit Arnold's conviction.

Other criminal defendants, including some on death row, remain in federal prisons for the same reason: After initial appellate verdicts that their convictions or sentences were unjust, the last word came from Bush's judicial picks on the 6th Circuit. Acting in cooperation with other Republican appointees on the court, they have repeatedly organized full-court rehearings to overturn rulings by panels dominated by Democratic appointees.

When the full slate of judges in a judicial circuit agree to hear a case and possibly overturn the ruling handed down by the normal panel of three judges that hear such appeals, this is called an en banc rehearing. The numbers that demonstrate just how solidly Bush has packed the courts with Republican judges are pretty compelling:

After Bush's eight years in office, Republican-appointed majorities firmly control the outcomes in 10 of these courts, compared with seven after President Bill Clinton's tenure. They also now share equal representation with Democratic appointees on two additional courts.

That's out of a total of 13 judicial circuits (12 regular regional circuits plus the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears special national cases). In 2001, the political breakdown of the nation's appeals court was about even, with 77 judges appointed by Democrats, 74 by Republicans and 27 vacancies. The current breakdown is 66 Democrats, 102 Republicans and 11 vacancies.

A WaPo investigation showed that over the last five years, out of 28 cases where an en banc appeal of a ruling handed down by a primarily Democratic panel of judges was granted, the right leaning 6th circuit, reversed 17 of those rulings.

The Incredible Shrinking Republican Base

The survey, conducted by David Hill, (PDF) who operates the Houston-based Republican Hill Research firm, raises questions about whether the Republican Party might be in trouble in Texas after a decade of political dominance. Hill's survey states, in no uncertain terms, that for GOP candidates to succeed in Texas they must look beyond the party's base voters and wrap up 80 percent of independent voters that he calls the Critical Middle. Mr. Hill concludes that the party needs to move away from a hard-line focus on social conservatism and refocus on a “clear and consistent” fiscal conservatism pocketbook issues that were at the forefront of voter concerns in this year’s election – health care, jobs creation, the banking system and the economy in general and energy.

Hill warns in no uncertain terms that for Texas GOP candidates to succeed they must put primary focus on core conservative pocketbook issues to attract 80% of the "Critical Middle" independents to party candidates. Mr. Hill concludes, “This isn’t ‘optional’ - anything less means Republicans lose.”

GOP candidates need "Critical Middle" independents because well before election day 2008, a partisan shift was under way around the U.S. For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all.

In other words the demographic that current defines most of the Republican base is shrinking. Some areas of Texas, such as Collin County, lags this partisan shift trend, but Mr. Hill's research shows that Texas is as susceptible to this partisan shift as was Colorado, which turned into a blue state this election year.

As America, and many areas of Texas, becomes more diverse, the percentage of the population that makes up the Republican base has nosedived. (Source: NES Cumulative File)

Where married white Christians made up nearly 80% of the adult U.S. population in the 1950s, married white Christians now make up less than half of all voters in the United States and less than one fifth of voters under the age of 30. The Census Bureau issued a press release in the summer of 2008 that projects that by 2042, the United States will no longer be a White majority nation.

Meanwhile, the demographics of the GOP have gone in the opposite direction. (Source: NES Cumulative File)

In the 1950s, married white Christians made up just over 40% of the Republican Party -- today they make up about 90% of the party with the majority now more narrowly defining themselves as Social Conservative Christians.

Between the 1970s and the first decade of the 21st century, Republican identification among conservative married white Christians increased by 26 points, going from 64 percent to 90 percent.

During the same time period, Republican identification among moderate married white Christians increased by only five points, going from 38 percent to 43 percent and Republican identification among liberal married white Christians actually declined by 10 points, falling from 23 percent to 13 percent. Implicit in Mr. Hill's research findings is the fact that there are no more untapped Conservative married white Christians to attract into the party. As Mr. Hill suggests, the GOP must increase its support among "Critical Middle" moderate-to-liberal married white Christians who are motivated by concerns other than the standard conservative "family values" hot-button issues.

Republicans need to come to terms with the fact that shifting demographics over the last four years has caused the GOP to lose control of every level of government across the U.S.

• After the 2004 election Republicans had a 232-202 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. After the 2008 election Democrats have a 257-178 lead. In the Senate, Republicans had a 55-45 majority after the 2004 election, which flipped to Democratic advantage of 58-42 (or maybe 59-41) after the 2008 election.
• After the 2004 election, Republicans held 28 governorships compared with 22 for the Democrats. After the 2008 election, Democrats now hold 29 governorships compared with just 21 for the Republicans.
• After the 2004 election, Republicans controlled the state legislature in 20 states compared with 19 Democratic-controlled states. Now, Democrats control the state legislatures of 27 states, with the Republicans controlling only 14 states.
• And there are now over 800 more Democratic state legislators than Republicans in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures Web site. Just four years ago, Democrats had a mere 10-seat edge out of more than 7,000 nationwide.

GOP dominance in the 2008 presidential election diminished to a strip of red states, primarily across the southern bible belt, as shown by this MyDD map, distorted to show electoral votes and thus population.
Hill's suggestion that the GOP should move away from a hard-line focus on social conservatism and refocus on core fiscal conservatism pocketbook issues in Texas will likely be a hard sell. Religious conservatives, which dominates the Texas GOP, become defensive at any suggestion that they or their Social Conservative "family values" agenda has had anything to do with the GOP's erosion. Indeed, religious conservatives are saying the Republican Party must refocus on a social conservatism agenda for the 2010 and 2012 elections. Both camps of conservatives seem to be saying the party is losing because it is not conservative enough, but each point to their own brand of conservatism.

The immediate future will be a bloody brawl for the soul and direction of the GOP. Will the GOP leadership define "return to core conservative beliefs" as a refocus to be a small government party of tax-cutting free-market deregulators at a time of an enormous government deficits, massive bailouts and economic crisis brought on in part by these same policies? Or, will it define "return to core religious conservative beliefs" as a refocus on a social conservatism agenda with Sarah Palin at the head of the party.

White evangelical Protestants are the most conservative Republicans: 79% describe their political views as conservative, compared with 17% who say they are moderate and just 2% who call themselves liberal. Republican white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics also are largely conservative (63% and 66%, respectively), but about three-in-ten in each group say their views are moderate (31% among white mainline Protestants and 30% among white Catholics).

Just consider these numbers from a post 2008 election WSJ/NBC poll: among Republicans only, the most popular person tested in the poll is the dues-paid-in-full member of the Evangelical right Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with a whopping 73%-13% favorable-unfavorable rating. On the other hand conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who received piles of hate mail during the Presidential campaign for questioning Sarah Palin's credentials, wrote a column for the Washington Post, entitled, "Giving Up on God," makes a sustained argument that the GOP's courting of the religious vote above all has led the party dangerously astray. In that WSJ/NBC poll Palin's polling score among all groups was a net negative approval-disapproval of 35%-45% -- which means she fares poorly among both Democrats and Independents.

Texas Democrats are starting to look toward toward future campaigns and some Democrats have settled on a rallying cry, "Texas is next."

It sounds improbable for the Republican bastion that produced President Bush and served as an early laboratory for Karl Rove's hard-nosed tactics. But Texas is one of several reliably red states that are now in Democrats' sights as party strategists analyze 2008 election results that they believe show the contours of a new progressive movement that could grow and prove long-lasting.

A multi-ethnic bloc of Latinos, blacks, young people and suburban whites helped to broaden the party's reach in 2008. That new formulation of voters was evident in state exit polls and county-level election results (see map) showing that Democrats scored gains from a voting base that is growing progressively less white-married-christian than the population that helped forge Republican advantages in past elections.

Both Republican and Democratic strategists believe the large and growing Latino population in Texas remains untapped, along with a large black electorate, which could make Texas competitive with a major investment of time and money from an Obama-led Democratic Party.

The map at left shows the U.S. Congressional districts carried by Democratic candidates in the 2008 election. This shows that Democrats can win in large sections of the state.

Cuauhtemoc "Temo" Figueroa, Obama's top Latino outreach official, has commented that Texas could be taken seriously as a presidential battleground if Democrats could win statewide races there in 2010. "I don't know if it's four years or eight years off, but down the road, Texas will be a presidential battleground," Figueroa said.

Some Republican strategists like Mr. Hill warn that their party faces demographic challenges with the Latino vote growing and moving toward Democrats. Most Texas Republicans dismiss the warning that the GOP needs to worry about a long-term GOP deficit in the state. After all, Obama carried only 28 of the 254 Texas counties, only narrowly winning critical Harris county, and the McCain/Palin ticket easily carry critical Terrant, Denton and Collin counties.

County By County Presidential Voting Results

Republican Brand Growing Weak In Texas

The Republican Party heads into the New Year with its brand tattered by the election after decisive losses in the 2008 presidential and congressional races. Such a defeat inevitably leads to introspection in party circles about its message going forward.

Actually, the Republican Party's brand image was in decline well before the 2008 election cycle. In December 2005, the Republicans and the Democrats were rated about equally nationally, with just under half of Americans viewing each party favorably. Shortly thereafter, the Republicans' favorable rating fell to 36%, and has since remained in that territory. The Democrats' favorable rating gradually improved during 2006, and has not fallen below 51% since the spring of that year.

The full results of a much-anticipated Republican Party of Texas introspection survey by the Houston-based Republican firm Hill Research were officially released on Monday. This survey of Texas voters yields much the same message as other surveys conducted around the U.S. during November 2008.

According to a November 2008 Gallup poll the Republican Party's image has gone from bad to worse over the past month, as only 34% of Americans say they have a favorable view of the party, down from 40% in mid-October. The 61% unfavorable view of the GOP is the highest unfavorable reading Gallup has recorded for that party since the measure was established in 1992.



The only thing surprising about a 61% unfavorable view of the GOP is, perhaps, that the unfavorable number is not higher considering 87% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction the Republican philosophy of governance has take the county according to the Gallup's weekly survey question, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?"

Survey Date	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	Unsure
11/13-16/08	11	87	2
11/7-9/08	13	84	3
10/31-11/2/08	13	85	2

Texans are not as dissatisfied with GOP as Americans in general, but they are also unhappy - as Hill Research's statewide poll of 636 active Texas voters voters shows:

Texas voters increasingly unhappy with GOP - The Dallas Morning News
Poll's shocking SOS for Texas GOP - The Dallas Morning News

The survey, conducted by David Hill, raises questions about whether the Republican Party might be in trouble after a decade of political dominance in Texas.

"The poll results challenge the conventional wisdom that Texas is a solidly red state," said Mr. Hill. "This shows that the Republican Party's image, even among Anglos and conservatives and self-professed Republicans, is often not what we would like it to be."

Texas voters don't think the GOP is delivering government that is low-cost, in-touch or devoted to the common good, the poll shows.

Mr. Hill said he found that perceptions of Republicans as arrogant, corrupt, angry and unwelcoming jeopardize the party's dominance. The GOP currently holds every statewide office and controls the Legislature.

Half the voters polled believe the state is on the wrong track; only 37 percent believe Texas is headed in the right direction.

Only 32% of those surveyed Mr. Hill believe that Republican candidates "deserves" to be elected to office. While 45% say they approve of the way Republicans run government in Texas only 15% say they strongly approve. This compares to 35% who say they strongly disapprove of Republican performance and another 15% who somewhat disapprove for a total disapproval rating of 50%.



In Gallup's November poll more than half of Americans, 55%, currently hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party and only 39% an unfavorable view, highly typical of views toward the Democrats through all of 2008. In Mr. Hill's survey 54% of Texans say give Democrats a chance, a number that seems to match up with Gallup's reading that 55% of Americans currently hold a favorable view of the Democratic Party.



In a head-to-head match up today between a generic Democratic candidate for governor and a generic Republican, the Democrat starts out with a 13 percent advantage. In a state representative race, the Democratic advantage is 14 percent.



The next slide from the survey data details what voters don’t like, generically, about Republicans. Voters think the Republicans are arrogant, racist, corrupt and angry. While they think Democrats are smart, innovative, reformers, fair, thoughtful and, perhaps most importantly, the party of the future. As Hill Research notes, long-term, this is simply an untenable position for a political party that hopes to maintain its dominate position.



Neither party can win majority power in State or Federal elections without attracting substantial support from political independents. Hill Research slices the voting population into five distinct segments that includes the independent "Critical Middle" block of voters. It is the Critical Middle - those “not in either camp solidly - that Republicans must hold to win elections in Texas. This group is heavily male, under age 50, self-described moderate and/or independent and focused on fiscal rather than social "morality" issues.



Hill warns in no uncertain terms that for GOP campaigns to succeed they must wrap up 80 percent of the Critical Middle. “This isn’t ‘optional’ - anything less means Republicans lose.”

The Texas Republican Party, controlled in large part by religious conservatives, is going to have to make some serious changes to accommodate the Critical Middle voters. This group is not much swayed by the GOP's mainstay “traditional morality values” augments. At the state level, few voters care much about abortion, school prayer and other staunch social conservatism hot-button issues. What they do rate as important are cutting property taxes, child health care, job security, the economy and paying for their children's education.

The Democratic Party is enjoying an extended stretch of popularity with Americans that started in 2006, and is likely to continue as long as its new party leader, President-elect Barack Obama, continues to inspire high confidence ratings -- and eventually job approval ratings -- from the American people.

Since the Democratic Party is already closely identified as supporting health care, job security and education issues, a popular President Obama could help convince the Critical Middle to vote for Democratic candidates in 2010 and 2012.

The initial impulse of rank and file Republicans is to tack to the right -- returning to core "conservative" principles, as many Republican thought leaders are currently advocating. Given only about a third of independents want the party to be more conservative, it is unclear how much that approach might help to expand the Republican base.

Since most rank-and-file (largely religious conservatives) Republicans (59%) want to see the party move in a more conservative direction the party will likely field 2010 candidates that tend to be more rather than less conservative. The Hill Research Survey report concludes with some recommendations that indicates that isn't the way to attract "Critical Middle" voters.