A Visit with the (Five) Stooges

I attended a forum with the five GOP candidates for Congress in CD 8 today.

A couple of take-away points:

None of the GOP candidates differ significantly from current GOP orthodoxy; they are all so lost in their own ideological funk, they can’t smell the limburger of voter discontent under their noses. As such, I don’t believe that any of the them can possibly overcome the disaffection within the Repulican Party to prevail in CD 8 despite a 20K voter registration edge. Independent voters will rule this election and will hand it to the Democrats.

The standout of the whole bunch is certainly Steve Huffman. He’s endorsed by Kolbe, which plays as both political capital, and political liability. He’s also the annointed of the GOP money men. Despite a few bright points in Huffman’s performance – such as acknowledging that the growing trend toward ending employer health insurance plans constitutes the major public health policy challenge we face (rather than tort reform and health savings accounts – the panaceas embraced by all the others) – his answers mark him as just as clueless as his fellows on every other issue, though possibly more generally competent.

The most popular of the bunch among the groundlings and the Right wing of the GOP is clearly Randy Graf. His supporters were massively predominant among the 100-150 people who bothered turning out for the event. He remains, rightly, the great white hope of the Democratic party. Hell, I even recommend donating to his campaign to keep him in the game. My opinion was only confirmed by his performance in this forum.

Hellon is dead in the water. Talks like he’s half-asleep. The establishment wants him out, and he’s got no traction with the activist types. He has no original ideas to recommend him to either the money men, or the values voters. His main pitch seems to be that he’ll bring backroom politics into office and that some Independents and Democrats might consider supporting him. And that he won’t live long enough to get cozy with the devils in D.C.

Antenori is a dark horse man of action who may do surprisingly well among security voters, and might eat into Graf’s base. He’s articulate and has a very macho bio, and is a direct answer to vets like Latas and Rodriguez running on the Dem ticket. Seems to support public schools, unlike many of these other goons. He also vows transparency in his stewardship of the office – he will open his meeting schedule to public scrutiny. If the GOP voters had any brains, this is pobably the guy they would choose.

Mike Jenkins is just a loud-mouthed crackpot. Talks about self in third person. Frightens children.

The most interesting part of the forum was certainly sizing up Huffman. On policy matters, like most of these forums, the format almost ensures that the session will be largely policy-free. Occassionally someone says something unequivocal by mistake, however.

All their performances were geared to a red-meat GOP audience, and thus stultifying for me. I recorded the whole session, however, and reviewed it for the more interesting tidbits.

Hellon took a healthy swipe at the wasteful, out-of-control spending of the Republican Congress, carefully exempting all of his cronies in the Arizona delegation from his indictment, of course.

Huffman swore to make Bush tax cuts permanent, under the pretext that to do otherwise would be to raise taxes. So, if Bush’s management of the economy pleases you, vote Huffman. This and tightening earmarks was the total of Huffman’s plan to balance the budget. Considering our current deficit is about 400 billion, and our entire non-defense discretionary budget is about 400 billion, the idea that the problem will be solved by symbolic social welfare and earmark cuts is utter bullshit.

Graf is offering a steak dinner for two for any polling results that show that he cannot win the general election. I’m thinking that some Democratic staffers might be able to dine out on this offer.

Huffman stupidly said he can’t imagine anything worse than Saddam Hussein in power, and Iran with a nuclear program, so he’s glad we took out Saddam. As if they would cooperate? Does Huffman have no knowledge of geo-politics at all? How about our armed forces bogged down in the middle of a sectarian civil war right next to Iran, with Iran having a horse in that race (the Shia faction), and Iran with a nuclear program? Is that somehow better? Because that’s what we have. Huffman’s strategic sense is malfunctioning.

Antenori made some very good points about our military funding priorities and our failure to invest in equipment that would create an independent operations capability in the Iraqi forces. Unfortunately for Antenori, he would soon find that he party has no appetite to actually make Iraqi forces independent and leave Iraq. That’s not the plan, and if Antentori thinks it is, he’s in the wrong party.

They all renewed their alliegence to dying, dead, and unworkable policies, such as staying the course in Iraq, paying lipservice to cutting the deficit while cutting taxes still further, privatizing Social Security and eliminating ‘entitlements’, and claiming that the Democrats have no ideas and just want to put everyone on welfare. The only one who showed even the slimmest acquaintence with reality was Huffman. He might yet make a formidable opponent in the general if the hoi polloi can be distracted from Graf’s race-baiting long enough for Huffman to demonstrate his hard Right mojo to them.

All the candidates securely lashed themselves to Bush’s Iraqi Hindenberg. The claims of unreported success, unrecognized turning points, and massive success in political and military reform flew like tracer bullets. This in itself is probably going to be enough to sink the GOP in the district. Not even a large plurality of Republicans want to hear "stay the course" and what a great job Rumsfeld is doing from their Congresscritter.

One interesting note is that Huffman claims ownership of the RTA. He claims to have been a motivating force behind the plan and seems likely to claim credit for it as an example of his far-sighted leadership should it pass. That in itself is probably good reason to vote against it, if the plan were not already seriously flawed in so many ways (pro-sprawl, pro-development, pro-pollution, etc.).

On what promises to be the hot-button of this election season, immigration policy, there was more daylight between the candidates than I expected. There was a side range of policy options, and the candidates took an a la carte approach: close the border, suspend all human services to illegals, reduce due process in immigration, detention camps, longer sentences, no ‘amnesty’, guestworkers, employment enforcement, path to citizenship, temporary worker visas, and increased border security to interdict real security threats. Graf would have none of the guestworker dish, and rejected the citizenship fodue pot. Hellon and Huffman support a guest-worker program, but Huffman took a dessert of employment enforcement while Hellon prefered expanding the worker visa buffet. Huffman also calls for the Federal government to fully reimburse states for healthcare, education and incarceration costs associated with undocumented aliens, and was the only one to address economic development in Mexico as a critical component of reform. All of them dabbled in the most popular dishes like close the border, security, and cracking down on this and that.

Graf jokingly suggested that the GOP primary be settled on the links. Given that his main claim to professional competence is as a golf pro, I heartily endorse that notion.