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Thursday, 19 August 2010 21:19 |
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by Brian Howey
KOKOMO - It had been an intriguing 72 hours before Gov. Mitch Daniels took the stage at the Highland Park band shell here on a steamy Wednesday night. With a Newsweek reporter in tow, Daniels was on the stump for his first political priority: electing a Republican Indiana House.
With him stood Kokomo Councilman Mike Karickhoff, one of about 25 challengers Daniels recruited in order to overcome a 52-48 Democratic majority in the House that had stomped most of the governor's reform agenda.
"A reporter asked me what keeps me up at night," Daniels told a crowd of about 250 people. "I sleep very well," he said, “but instead of counting sheep, I just count all of the states I'm not governor."
On Sunday, Daniels appeared on Fox News Sunday and told host Chris Wallace that he is "open to the idea" of a presidential run. But, he said, "My attention is entirely fixed on the challenges -- and I think opportunities -- facing Indiana." Asked about what conditions might prompt him into the race, Daniels said, "Chris, you live in a world of secret agendas and code words, but not all of us operate that way." Republicans like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Mike Huckabee must effectively address the nation's fiscal health, with the economy now careening toward that dreaded "W" recession. "I’m hoping we will have people step forward and really hit those things head-on," he said. "Maybe I’ll be one of them, but there are a lot of ways to contribute to that debate."
Daniels also took a shot at the Obama administration when he was asked if he supported the stimulus. Daniels responded, "Really don’t. It amounts at this point in time to asking the citizens of responsible states like ours to subsidize those places who have been more reckless. It’s probably not going to help the economy. It’s this notion of a sort of a trickle-down government. You pour a few more bajillion dollars in the top of the funnel and maybe a little demand and a few private-sector jobs will fall out the bottom. It’s really not the way to do it."
In the ensuing 48 hours, Daniels found himself in an uncharacteristic brush fire, as Indiana reporters dusted off a letter from last February when Daniels joined 46 other governors asking Congress to extend enhanced federal Medicaid match rates. His staff said he signed the letter as a "team player." He told a reporter, "I have made the same point over and over, that borrowing money from the Chinese and spending it on government is not effective. My clear recollection is saying I'd only sign a letter that says don't add to the debt, and I thought that letter made it plain."
Democrats cried foul, saying he flip-flopped, noting that the $1.2 billion in stimulus funding had propped up the Indiana budget on Medicaid and education funding. "He used the stimulus money to prop up the budget, so it’s basically political doublespeak,” State Rep. Phil GiaQuinta told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. "If his heart isn’t into it then maybe he shouldn’t take the money."
Another twist came when Anne Murphy, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, sent a letter to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services saying that the governor's Healthy Indiana Plan should be incorporated into the health care reforms. It contrasted with Daniels emphatic criticism of the health reforms, prompting him to freeze enrollment into HIP shortly after President Obama signed the reforms into law.
What became clear is that presidential politics - with a potential candidate playing to a national audience - can complicate the task of governing back home.
The governor continues to send mixed signals. On Wednesday he met with about 400 people in Muncie, did a ribbon cutting on a Major Moves funded road in Fort Wayne, heralded 350 new jobs in Huntington from an Ohio company moving in, met with Hoosier Conservation Corps workers, and then attended a graduation of inmates in a faith-based program at the Miami Correctional Facility.
He told the Kokomo audience that the day amplifies what "sets Indiana apart. I think we've gained on these goals."
But then he added, "There is so much to do when I'm back in private life."
So this is a presidential flirtation. And it's a three-legged stool. The first leg is to help candidates like Karickhoff defeat Democrats to retake a majority and form a new nucleus of reform-minded Republicans in the House. Howey Politics Indiana has 12 seats either projected as a Republican takeover or are in tossup up, and 11 are held by Democrats. To achieve these goals, "We really have to have people with new ideas,” Daniels said. “That's why I asked Mike Karickhoff to run."
The second step begins in January if Daniels achieves his majority. He is then poised to push for education and local government reforms. It will come during an excruciatingly tough budget year as the state's reserves drain away.
And lastly, next Spring after the legislature goes home, if the jobs are still sparse, the economy drifts and no Republican reaches the cone of inevitability, a presidential campaign would be built.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey KOKOMO - It had been an intriguing 72 hours before Gov. Mitch Daniels took the stage at the Highland Park band shell here on a steamy Wednesday night. With a Newsweek reporter in tow, Daniels was on the stump for his first political priority: electing a Republican Indiana House.
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Thursday, 12 August 2010 15:59 |
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by Brian Howey
TERRE HAUTE – I’ve traveled to more than 25 Indiana cities and towns this summer, from Angola to Rising Sun, from Michigan City to Peru and the one thing that is on everybody’s mind is jobs. Or as the 1992 Clinton campaign so succinctly summed it up, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
As we enter the dog days of August in this blistering summer of discontent, the Indiana and U.S. jobs pictures are strikingly familiar. Unemployment has hovered around 10 percent for months and the tentacles of the Great Recession of 2009-10 have ensnarled thousands of families. Dozens of my friends and acquaintances have been impacted economically in many ways.
With the homestretch of the 2010 campaign that starts on Labor Day just over the horizon, a new poll by Bellwether Research statistically backs up what I’ve been hearing: the jobs buck stops with President Obama and not Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. The fascinating aspect of this is that these two politicians – so similar in so many ways beyond party and ideology – may be intertwined as we close in on 2012.
Bellwether – which polls for Daniels – was in the field in Indiana on July 20-25 and interviewed 800 likely voters, calling both landlines and cell phones. It shows the national right/wrong track numbers at 30/57 percent, while the Indiana numbers were nearly inversed at 49/32 percent. President Obama's approve/disapprove numbers stood at 44/50 percent (identical to many national polls), compared to 65/28 percent Daniels.
"Voters are making a clear distinction between President Obama and the federal government and Gov. Daniels," said pollster Christine L. Matthews, who is a Kokomo native.
As for interest in the November election, 47 percent rated it "10" on a 1 to 10 scale. Among those affiliated with the Tea Party movement, 65 percent rated it a "10" as well as 61 percent of 2008 voters for presidential candidate John McCain. Ominously for Democrats, only 36 percent of 2008 Obama voters rated it a "10" posing the same dilemma the party faced in 1994 when it lost Congress for the first time in 40 years. Base vote suppression is a very real dilemma for Democrats.
That dynamic is in play on a generic Indiana General Assembly question. Republicans held a 45-31 percent lead over Democrats – which control the Indiana House 52-48 - but among likeliest to vote (those participating in three out of the last four elections) the gap stood at 54-26 percent, and it was 35-24 percent favoring Republicans among independent voters. Among Tea Party affiliates, it stood at 72-8 percent favoring Republicans.
Daniels’ support stands out in several aspects. His approve/disapprove numbers among African-American voters stood at 69/18 percent, among Obama voters at 56/36 percent and among independents at 63/28 percent. "There isn't a Republican in a state or in Congress who has those kinds of numbers among African-Americans," said Matthews. It is that reason that Daniels is the center of presidential speculation, though a decision on that front won’t come until after the 2011 Indiana General Assembly.
A Daniels’ challenge to Obama would be fascinating. Both are excellent orators with vivid retail politics skills. They write their own speeches and TV ads and both have broken political molds within their respective parties. But they approach government from opposite ends of the spectrum (except for education reform), as their stances on health reforms and the auto bailouts revealed.
The Bellwether poll hits at a time when President Obama is aggressively pushing back. The BP oil spill crisis has ended. Obama is reminding voters that the economic woes, the Wall Street and auto bailouts began with President George W. Bush, along with a legacy $1.2 trillion deficit. He’s been in Michigan and Chicago touting the auto recovery, which has seen the Big 3 begin to turn profits. Obama said in Detroit last week that his new administration was backed into a corner “with very few choices.”
“If we had done nothing, not only were your jobs gone, but supplier jobs were gone, and dealership jobs were gone and communities that depend on them would have been wiped out,” Obama said to Chrysler workers. "You are proving the naysayers wrong, all of you. They thought it would be impossible for your company to make the kind of changes necessary to restore fiscal discipline and move towards viability. Today, for the first time since 2004, all three U.S. automakers are operating at a profit; first time in six years."
Obama’s political wing – Organizing for America – has a strategy for getting back in the game. OFA has identified 333,000 first-time Indiana voters who came out in 2008. There are eight staffers in Indiana Democratic headquarters who are working to reengage them in congressional races involving Brad Ellsworth, Baron Hill, Joe Donnelly, Tom Hayhurst and Trent Van Haaften.
The lesson from 1994 is that base suppression can kill a majority in Congress and the Indiana House. And that the buck stops with the president and not the governor. by Brian Howey TERRE HAUTE – I’ve traveled to more than 25 Indiana cities and towns this summer, from Angola to Rising Sun, from Michigan City to Peru and the one thing that is on everybody’s mind is jobs. Or as the 1992 Clinton campaign so succinctly summed it up, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
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Wednesday, 04 August 2010 21:25 |
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by Brian Howey
NASHVILLE, Ind. - So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
There are a handful of politicians who in the mid to late span of their careers achieve what we call “statesman” status. Doc Bowen and Lee Hamilton were examples of this here in Indiana. A statesman establishes a political cred to the point where he stands above normal political activity. When Lugar won his sixth term in 2006, he was unopposed by the Democrats - something that rarely happens above the Mason-Dixon line. “Let’s be honest,” said Indiana Democratic Chairman Dan Parker in 2006. “Richard Lugar is beloved not only by Republicans, but by Independents and Democrats.”
A statesman achieves such status not simply by winning elections with landslide margins, but by achievement. In the case of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, an Indiana senator achieved at the head-of-state level. For the first time in history of mankind, an arch rival is scrapping the arsenal - in this case nuclear, chemical and biological weapons - of another. The WMD of the Soviet Union was the most sinister in humanity.
And this work is not done.
Just last month, the Nunn-Lugar Act was responsible for six strategic nuclear warheads deactivated, two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) destroyed, six ICBM mobile launchers destroyed, four nuclear weapons transport train shipments secured, and 48 metric tons of Russian chemical weapons agent neutralized.
The WMD stockpiles have been eliminated from countries like Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Albania.
There remain cesspools of other odious threats that if delivered into the hands of terrorists could wipe out a city or a stadium, something Lugar articulated back in 1995. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet may be because of the work of Sen. Lugar. And on this count alone - along with his work on hunger or keeping democracy viable after corrupt Philippine elections 30 years ago - a seventh term for Sen. Lugar, even at age 78, makes sense.
Particularly to someone like me, who traveled with Lugar to five countries and as far out as Siberia three years ago. Despite having 25 years on me, the guy was indefatigable. I was exhausted by the 4 a.m. wake-up calls, 19-hour days and late dinners. The day after Lugar returned, he was presiding over Foreign Relations Committee meetings with top generals flying in from Iraq.
The Republican ankle biters from the right were indignant when Lugar announced he would vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. They were also upset that he voted for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
State Sen. Mike Delph, who may be looking to challenge Lugar in the 2012 primary, chided “Sen. O’bama” (sic) on his support of Kagan. “Some have suggested that Senator Lugar’s support of Elena Kagan is an act of statesmanship,” Delph wrote on Facebook. “And that those of us expressing concern are partisan and lack an understanding of Separation of Powers and harbor sour grapes being on the losing side of a Presidential election. If that is true, then why didn’t the media criticize Sen. Bayh or then Sen. O’Bama for voting against Chief Justice John Roberts or Associate Justice Alito?”
Delph told the Indianapolis Star, “Elena Kagan, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, are all very liberal. None of these individuals is worthy of Hoosier support as they are all out of step with Main Street Indiana. He needs to be mindful of how people in Indiana view these nominees.”
Lugar pointed to his Sept. 12, 2005, statement during the Roberts confirmation: “The Founders were at pains to emphasize the difference between the political branches - the Executive and the Legislature - and the Judiciary. Their concern about the potential dangers of passionate, interest-driven political divisions, which Madison famously called the ‘mischiefs of faction,’ influenced their design of our entire governmental structure. But they were especially concerned that such mischiefs not permeate those who would sit on the bench. Otherwise, they warned, ‘the pestilential breath of faction may poison the fountains of justice,’ and ‘would stifle the voice both of law and of equity.’
“I believe that each of us in the Senate bears a special responsibility to prevent that from occurring,” Lugar said.
As Lugar dusted off that statement, WIBC conservative talk radio show host Greg Garrison was blasting him for having the audacity to vote for Kagan, whom he sophomorically described as a “communist.”
So Lugar might well be confronted with the “mischiefs” of politics in 2012.
Some on the right call him a “RINO” - Republican In Name Only. This comes in a year after which Lugar opposed President Obama’s stimulus package, the health reforms, the Wall Street bailout, and was skeptical of the handling of the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies. This has brought disappointment from the center and left who hoped Lugar would be the GOP bridge to Obama.
Lugar has - as a true internationalist - backed Obama’s efforts in reaching out to Islam, particularly after the President’s 2009 Cairo speech, and the START Treaty. The START treaty was a major whipping boy in the recent Republican Senate primary as the field tripped over themselves to appeal to the other wing of traditional Hoosier politics - isolationist right - as opposed to internationalists like Lugar, Hamilton and Ambassador Tim Roemer.
Spencer Ackerman observed, “Lugar’s brand of moderate internationalism is a dying one in an increasingly bellicose Senate GOP caucus. Take a look at the 2003 vote on the last nuclear reduction treaty with Moscow. Enough GOPers who voted for it are still in the Senate to provide for ratification — John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Pat Roberts (R-Kans.), I could go on — but Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), now the Senate GOP leader, didn’t even vote on a Bush administration priority. And enough of the newer, smaller class of GOP senators are either further to the right or disinterested in bipartisan foreign policy when cobbled together by a Democratic president as to raise questions about to who goes along with Lugar’s exhortations.”
He added, “Lugar’s backing will get the treaty out of the Foreign Relations Committee, something that was hardly certain as recently as last month. The administration also has the lever of Ronald Reagan’s fulsome quotes about seeking a nuke-free world to use against recalcitrant GOP senators. 'My central arms control objective has been to reduce substantially, and ultimately to eliminate, nuclear weapons and rid the world of the nuclear threat' (Reagan, 1988) is just one example among many."
“If not,” Ackerman continues, “it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen. It’ll be a statement about the collapse of what used to be a bipartisan international priority, most fervently advocated by the most sainted GOP president of all.”
Can Lugar be defeated in the Republican primary?
This would be a fool’s errand or a narcissistic plot to gin up statewide name ID for a future run.
Any challenger would come up against the Lugar political machine that pioneered voter lists, and an incumbent with a 60 to 70 percent approval. The Lugar apparatus has so many legions of loyal allies - Gov. Mitch Daniels the most influential – that any challenge would have to be viewed as almost comical.
One challenge from the right would virtually guarantee another, and the two or three will hack at each other for that 25 percent (perhaps much less) of the John Price/Eric Miller wing of the party.
Thus is life in the factions of mischief.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey NASHVILLE, Ind. - So, there are some Republicans on the fringe who are talking about taking on Sen. Dick Lugar in 2012. This would be akin to a Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts back in the day. Or Robert Byrd in West Virginia.
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Sunday, 01 August 2010 21:51 |
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by Brian Howey
RISING SUN, Ind. – The news out of Kokomo was the sign of the times. As Senate Republicans filibustered an extension of jobless benefits this past week, there were 300 new Chrysler job openings in the City of Firsts. And there were 3,000 applicants.
On the day the events in Kokomo played out, Indiana announced that its jobless rate had increased a tenth of a percentage to 10.1 percent. In Kokomo, 14.2 percent are now out of work and June was the third month in a row the rate increased. If there was a silver lining in all of this, it was that Fayette County replaced Elkhart County as leader of the unemployed, signaling that the RV industry is beginning to make a comeback. The RV industry is usually the first one to plunge into a recession and the first to come out.
It seemed almost cruel to the 2.2 million Americans and tens of thousands of Hoosiers to not extend the jobless benefits during this hot, steamy summer when few jobs exist. Visit just about any Workforce Development office and you’ll hear the same story: folks have pounded the pavement looking for jobs and not many can be found. You might know some of these folks.
The Republicans have made a simple political calculus: the worse the economy is, the better they will do in the November mid-terms. They see President Obama with a 43 percent approval rating in Indiana and nationally during the Great Recession of 2009-10. If the story sounds familiar, it is. During the summer of 1982, President Reagan’s approval stood at 42 percent.
Republicans are couching their opposition to the $4 billion jobless extension in terms of the deficits, which stands at about 10.6 of the gross domestic product. When President George W. Bush came into office in 2001, it was -1.25 of GDP and it rose to 9.91 percent of GDP in 2009 when he left, or $1.2 trillion.
"We've repeatedly voted for similar bills in the past. And we are ready to support one now," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "What we do not support - and we make no apologies for - is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control."
Thus, we find our most conspicuous born-again deficit hawk. McConnell wasn’t so concerned about deficits during the Bush ramp up.
And there is U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House. "This election is going to be a referendum on the borrowing, spending, bailouts and takeovers of this liberal Democratic Congress and administration," Pence said on Monday. "But it's also going to be about a competing view of the future. Before this election, you can be assured the Republicans are going to produce a bold and compelling agenda for the American people that will be in stark contrast to the big government agenda of this Congress and this administration."
Pence declined to outline the policy plan. "Stay tuned," he said.
But he was forthright in pushing back against Obama and Democrats who are accusing Republicans of being indifferent to the struggles of the jobless by opposing an unemployment bill. "The American people are tired of deficits, debt and runaway federal spending in Washington," Pence said. "Democrats in Washington and this administration just don't get it. Democrats in Congress are about to get a much deserved lesson in the consent of the governed."
The problem with this statement is that the Republican born-again deficit hawks had no problem waging two wars that were kept off the books, passing the Bush tax cuts that were never paid for, and making the biggest entitlement expansion since the Great Society with the Medicare prescription drug plan that was passed on the eve of Bush’s 2004 reelection. Pence did oppose that for deficit reasons, but most Republicans were willing participants in the scheme.
So the Republicans have come out against the jobless extension. But they hem and haw when they blast Obama for planning to end the Bush tax cuts next year.
Ask a Republican how extending the Bush tax cuts will be paid for and how it won’t contribute to the deficits and clear answers are elusive.
President Obama has called the budget deficits and the $13.2 trillion national debt as “unsustainable” this week. He forged the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform last April.
His political problem this fall is that the stimulus package he won shortly after stumping for it in Elkhart was too small, even at $800 billion. While the administration says it saved between two and three million jobs, the jobless rate stands at 10 percent both here in Indiana and nationally.
That’s why Hoosiers are likely to vote against incumbents this November. Some are worried about the deficits.
But it really, really is the economy, stupid. It really comes down to jobs. Deep down, even born again deficit hawks know this.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey RISING SUN, Ind. – The news out of Kokomo was the sign of the times. As Senate Republicans filibustered an extension of jobless benefits this past week, there were 300 new Chrysler job openings in the City of Firsts. And there were 3,000 applicants.
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Thursday, 22 July 2010 14:39 |
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by Brian Howey
ZIONSVILLE – Think back a century. After Elwood Haynes had rolled his horseless carriage out into the dusty streets of Kokomo, American society was transformed. But it came with a cost.
America would spend trillions of dollars to retool wagon and bicycle shops to build these carriages or "cars." We would pave our streets, put up stoplights, create interstates in the ensuing six decades. Life changed in dramatic ways just as the skyline along Interstate 65 and State Road 43 has changed over the past year in Northwest Indiana as hundreds of wind turbines have popped up.
That’s what we are facing today as the U.S. Senate takes up landmark energy legislation. There is an extremely narrow window - the next two weeks - that provides the dramatic scenario for the best chance of a landmark energy bill to emerge from the U.S. Senate. It is an opportunity that may not present itself again for years if not decades.
But multiple Senate, utility and environmental groups tell me that bills by U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman are unlikely to pass. Any bill debated will likely not include the carbon cap President Obama sought.
“The number of votes for Cap-and-Trade are slipping,” said John Goss, who heads the Indiana office of the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s nowhere near the 60 votes,” particularly after the death of U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va.
“This is our best chance in a decade,” Goss said.
Andy Fisher, spokesman for Sen. Lugar was skeptical anything will pass. He said that if Majority Leader Harry Reid gets a bill to the floor, “There will be debate and some consensus. But I just don’t see how the process will get 60 votes. I don’t think this is in Reid’s agenda due to a number of factors, including Reid’s own reelection.”
Fisher agrees that “change is going to happen in every part of the energy spectrum.” He added that there is more chance of a bipartisan bill next year. “I think there is actually strong bipartisan interest in an energy bill. There is not bipartisan interest in a climate bill.”
Beyond the Senate, Fisher said there would be a huge gap between anything the Senate passes and the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House. “Just given the political climate right now, a conference with Waxman-Markey would not be popular in the House. Most don’t want that vote to come up.”
What happens in the Senate (or doesn’t) could have an impact on the way Indiana powers itself as well as what consumers (industry and homeowners) pay for power.
One utility source told me that consumers could easily face energy cost increases in the 25 to 40 percent range due to the legislation. The source, however, acknowledges that it already faces increasing demand and the need to refit or rebuild most of its generation stations. NiSource, for instance, counts its newest generation plant at 25 years old. Before the days of Obama, industry sources were saying that Hoosier consumers were facing daunting rate increases.
Indiana utilities warn of the costs associated with transforming the state’s aging power generation plants into clean coal technologies, scrubbers, or conversion from coal to natural gas. The state and investors have already anted up for ethanol and wind power, neither of which would exist without heavy government subsidy and have the reliability of coal. Utility sources say that studies have shown wind power to have about an eight percent reliability standard, compared to 85 percent for a coal fired plant.
What Indiana does have is a lot of biomass - particularly hog and cow manure that could represent what was once deemed waste turning into brown gold.
Gov. Mitch Daniels has been critical of Cap-and-Trade, saying that capping carbon wouldn’t “lower the thermometer by a half a degree in 50 years.” He has said the cost of businesses like high-energy-using steel plants and foundries could put them out of business or force them to move.
Goss says that is shortsighted and cites “overwhelming scientific evidence” that Indiana and the rest of the world are facing climate change dilemmas. He said that cold water fish such as trout and salmon may be gone from lakes and rivers over the next 30 years in Northern Indiana and Southern Michigan if current climate trends continue. The Audubon Society is reporting “dozens of species of birds new to areas north of the Ohio River.” Gardening, planting and frost tables are changing, with seed companies placing Indiana in southern climates.
With wrenching change comes opportunity. An electric utility that may be forced to spend hundreds of millions to switch from coal to natural gas fired plants or clean coal could also find hundreds of thousands of new consumers with thousands of cars and trucks that will be plugged in at night instead of visiting a gas station once or twice a week.
If Congress doesn’t act, the EPA will. Change in energy is inevitable.
(The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com) by Brian Howey ZIONSVILLE – Think back a century. After Elwood Haynes had rolled his horseless carriage out into the dusty streets of Kokomo, American society was transformed. But it came with a cost.
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