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.