Author: Matt Gunterman

[Crossposted @ DitchMitchKY.com]

When the Washington Times is running stories about Senator Mitch McConnell‘s extreme vulnerabilities in Kentucky, you know the buzz on him is not good inside the Beltway.

Take a look at the comments in this article by Larry Forgy, a Lexington lawyer and former Republican gubernatorial candidate who came within a hair of being elected governor in 1995.  He’s adopting a very Pat Buchanan-esque populist Republican message.  I think he’s taking the possibility of a run against McConnell very seriously.  What does he have to lose?  The McConnell branch of the Kentucky GOP already hates him, and the Fletcher and Nunn branches of the party would rally around him (and thus Forgy would have a ready and energized base).  He’d humiliate McConnell in the process by at least taking 30 percent of the votes (hell, you’d better believe I’d switch my registration to Republican to vote against McConnell in a primary), and in a perfect storm the little bugger might actually win that primary.

McConnell’s unspectacular performance under the national spotlight shone on him in his capacity as Senate Minority Leader has only brought Washington elites to question whether McConnell’s deficiencies aren’t also largely to blame for the severe problems now rocking the Kentucky GOP that he fathered.

McConnell’s sort of a Senate equivalent of Karl Rove: mostly blow and very little substance.  For the better part of a decade now, there’s been a cult around McConnell in Republican circles in Kentucky and Washington.  He’s revered for his supposed tactical mastery of procedure and narrative, ruthless partisanship, and money-grubbing ability.

Yet, once the Kentucky GOP that Mitch built became pretty much the only show in town, McConnell’s mean and massive machine started to sputter, fast and hard.  It all fell apart in scandal, amateurishness, and incompetence. 

McConnell quickly cast the blame on the nascent Fletcher wing of the party, but it was McConnell who handpicked his minions. 

I’ve said it many times before: even if Mitch McConnell somehow survives reelection in 2008, he will nevertheless inherit the legacy that he rightly deserves (and that’s not a good thing for McConnell).  History will record that he was feckless and ineffective as a leader, that he was instrumental in bringing the corrupting culture of money-grubbing and influence-mongering to our nation’s capital, and that he cultivated the hyper-partisan atmosphere there that has totally paralyzed our institutions of government at a time when the American people most need them to be providing answers and solutions.

McConnell’s base of support erodes

August 20, 2007

By Ralph Z. Hallow – Sen. Mitch McConnell’s close backing of President Bush on immigration and the Iraq war is costing him support among Kentucky Republicans, and, according to some party members, hurting his chances for re-election next year.

He even could face a primary challenge from former Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Forgy, who contends that Mr. McConnell’s in-state problems are compounded by job losses to producers beyond America’s borders.

“The average Kentuckian feels we are giving away this country with both hands – jobs are going, essentially the primacy of the people who made this country great is going, and Mitch McConnell is lumped with the Washington types on this,” Mr. Forgy said.

“And the war in Iraq is less troublesome in Kentucky than in many other places, but it is not popular here, and Republican voters see Mitch’s views as too close to the president’s on the war,” said Mr. Forgy, a Lexington lawyer.

It’s a troublesome assessment for Mr. McConnell, who as minority leader has found himself having to defend unpopular Bush administration policies.

“The immigration issue is trouble for everyone in central Kentucky,” Republican state Sen. Tom Buford said. “The Iraq war is always difficult for all incumbents, even if they support pulling the troops out. It is a no-win situation when elections are at risk.”

Mr. McConnell registered a 48 percent approval rating last month in a SurveyUSA poll.

A county party chairman who supports Mr. McConnell but asked not to be identified said Mr. McConnell’s re-election next year is uncertain – despite the Capitol Hill clout he brings Kentucky – unless he shows the folks back home he understands their distrust of Washington on enforcing immigration laws.

The chairman said he has tried to tell Mr. McConnell that he needs to assure the party’s base that he opposes Mr. Bush’s immigration bill.

The Kentucky Republican Party, torn by the immigration issue, was further fractured when critics claimed Mr. McConnell had acted behind the scenes to back an ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge by former Rep. Anne Northup against Gov. Ernie Fletcher earlier this year. The Fletcher faction of the state Republican Party is backing the “draft Forgy” campaign.

Despite his role as Republican leader in the Senate, Mr. McConnell withdrew himself from much of the fight among fellow Republican senators over the Bush-backed immigration bill supported by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and Arizona’s Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, among others. Besides border-enforcement provisions, the bill provided a path to citizenship for illegal aliens and a new worker program for foreign workers.

Constituent pressure began to peel other Senate Republicans from their support of the bill, and Mr. McConnell wound up voting against it, though he voted for a similar bill last year.

“His vote against the bill at the end showed his thinking and that he knew the bill was not going to be good policy for Kentucky or the country,” said Fred Karem, a Lexington businessman who went to law school with Mr. McConnell.

Mr. Karem said it’s impossible for him to imagine Mr. McConnell facing re-election difficulty. “Shortly into his new term after he is re-elected next year, Mitch will be the longest-serving U.S. senator in Kentucky history. He has been the heart and soul and leader of the Republican Party in this state,” he said.

Republican leaders in the state agree that immigration is a big issue with the party’s core voters, but some say it won’t hurt Mr. McConnell.

“I don’t know anyone who is more in touch with his constituency than Mitch McConnell,” said Jack Richardson of Louisville, party chairman in Jefferson County, the state’s most populous county and home to Mr. McConnell.

Mr. McConnell recently acknowledged grass-roots discontent over immigration.

“During the immigration debate, and ever since, countless well-informed Americans spoke up about the need to enforce our borders and our laws,” he said. “Their voice was heard in the Capitol and the White House. The billions we’ve added to the homeland security funding bill for border security and interior enforcement, and the administration’s enhanced commitment to cracking down on illegal immigration are necessary steps toward securing our nation – and living up to the expectations of our constituents.”

Another McConnell supporter, Bourbon County Chairman Andre Regard, said, “I would be surprised if McConnell faces a challenge because of immigration. I think we should give everyone amnesty and start over.”

Other party leaders in the state privately made it clear that supporting Mr. McConnell is important because of the benefits he brings Kentucky through his seniority – he is completing his fourth term – and as the Republican leader in the Senate.

Ballard County party Chairman Charley Martin said: “I know immigration is a very emotional issue with Republicans, but it’s not the fundamental issue. The party wants to continue the conservative views of Senator McConnell – the views he stood for through the years.”

[Crossposted @ DitchMitchKY.com]

With all the tragedy as of late in our nation’s coalmines and with Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell and his wife Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao at the center of a web of money-grubbing and influence-mongering in Washington that has left these many coalmines the deathtraps that they are for the sake of the almighty campaign contribution and a few ticks on the profit margin, I think the analogy of Kentucky’s gubernatorial election this year being the GOP’s canary in a coalmine is a fitting one.

Watch this latest video from Jim Pence of DitchMitchKY and the HillbillyReport.  What’s going on in the video with security personnel at the Kentucky State Fair trying to end an anti-war protest (until they’re set straight by the State Police) is fascinating enough, but what’s even more fascinating is what’s going on in the background: all those cars honking in support of the protest.

Recall that thirteen years ago in 1994, on the cusp of the so-called Republican Revolution, Kentucky served the Democrats in a similar capacity.  Then the death in March of that year of Democratic Congressman William H. Natcher (KY-02)-who had represented the district since 1953 and who continues to hold the all-time record for consecutive votes in Congress at 18,401-set up a special election for the seat.

I was only 17 years old at the time, but I had been politically aware since the 1988 presidential campaign, when a longtime Democratic activist in my church started hauling me to rallies, the biggest of those being Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen‘s appearance at the Big Tobacco warehouse in Owensboro, today the largest city in the Second District.  I don’t remember anything about the substance of what was said there, but I remember the energy, the pomp, and the confidence among the Democrats gathered.

Yet, a mere six years later the entire region of the Second District was seething against the political establishment and its status quo, its distance, and indifference.  That establishment was Democratic. 

Perhaps that environment is best encapsulated in a scene that has now been immortalized in Michael Moore‘s latest film SiCKO.  On August 29, 1994, at a rally in Owensboro, “Tobacco Rights Activists” burned an effigy of then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in protest of President Bill Clinton‘s health care plan.  With a bluegrass band playing the back ground, Stan Arachikavitz, president of the Kentucky Association of Tobacco Supporters, chanted “burn, baby, burn,” as the effigy was doused in gasoline and two women set it ablaze.  When asked for comment by a reporter, Arachikavitz replied, “Hillary didn’t last as long as my Marlboro.”  The nation was outraged, but there was a quiet satisfaction among many across western Kentucky.

At that rally was Ron Lewis, the Second District’s newly elected Republican congressman.  In what had been a shock to Kentucky’s political establishment-if no-one else-Lewis had defeated longtime Kentucky State Senator Joe Prather in the May special election to succeed Natcher.  Lewis had won with 55 percent of the vote on a turnout of less than 20 percent.  A fundamentalist Christian, Baptist minister, and religious bookstore owner, Lewis had been recruited to the race by Senator Mitch McConnell, who had been narrowly elected to his own seat ten years earlier in 1984 on the coattails of Ronald Reagan. 

You may recalled that Lewis’s campaign commercials in the special election had famously morphed Prather’s head into that of Bill Clinton, who was then near the height of his unpopularity.  The national GOP considered the technique a success and went on to use it widely in the general election that year.  Meanwhile, rumors had circulated in the district that Joe Prather was in Washington to look for a house.  Perhaps it was just a rumor spread by the McConnell machine, but it might as well have been true, such was the arrogance and sense of entitlement of Kentucky Democrats of the day.

McConnell went on to recruit Republican Ed Whitfield-who had just as much personal dynamism as Lewis-to run in the First Congressional District in the fall.  Both Lewis and Whitfield won; Whitfield became the first Republican ever elected to the First District.

My point with all this is that the political establishment in Kentucky at that time-conservative Southern Democrats-was a bloated and opaque bubble.  Its bloated-ness allowed the good old boys to make room for more of their own inside and its opaqueness kept their less-than-altruistic dealings hidden from the masses, but those very same qualities kept the good old boys from witnessing the trouble that was brewing for them on the outside–in the real world. 

Mitch McConnell burst their bubble.

Unfortunately, the Kentucky Republican Party that Mitch McConnell replaced the good old boy Democrats with was a political machine that set about inflaming the ugliest elements of Kentucky’s own culture: its racism, its bigotry, its sexism, its churlishness, its phobias, and its anti-intellectualism. 

The thing to remember about Mitch McConnell (and this is something that his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate are discovering now about him in his capacity as Minority Leader) is that McConnell always has McConnell’s interests first.  He’s not at all concerned about the long-term consequences of his tactics and actions on the people of Kentucky.  What he’s counting on is that Kentuckians and the state’s chattering class will never fully digest the disaster that was McConnell’s Senate career so long as there’s plenty of pork named after him spread around the state.

Mitch McConnell took Kentucky, a state already at the bottom of the cultural and economic barrel of the nation, and he exacerbated the very social qualities of the place that had kept true progress (making gains on its peers, rather than playing catch up) out of reach for so long.  McConnell’s strategy was to spear his political legacy with a wicked trident of slash-and-burn partisan politics, redneck populism, and moneyed corporate interests.

McConnell’s Kentucky GOP is today the political establishment in the state, and you can see what sort of establishment it is by the criminal behavior and incompetence of the administration of Governor Ernie Fletcher (R). 

As I write, that Republican establishment is bunkering itself deep beneath the political reality on the ground in Kentucky.  While Ernie Fletcher and his minions ratchet up their language of fear on expanded gaming and hate against sexual minorities and while Mitch McConnell continues to cultivate the corrupt environment of campaign finance in Washington that he fathered and stands steadfast behind the reckless presidency of George W. Bush, neither Fletcher or McConnell is making headway among Kentuckians. 

Both are indeed consolidating support among their conservative base, but that base is shrinking.  Kentuckians are waking up to the reality of what Fletcher, McConnell, and conservatives truly are.

The people of Kentucky are once again seething against their political establishment, but this time there is an energized and organized progressive Democratic party waiting in the wings.  Whereas last time when Kentuckians cleaned political house they replaced bad with worse, this time the alternative to entrenched Republican corruption is a Democratic party that offers the hope of change and a better future for us all.

[Crossposted @ DitchMitchKY.com]

The sparkling wine bottles will be popping at Fletcher/Rudolph 2007 HQ today! 

The August Survey USA approval/disapproval tracking numbers are out for Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (R), and they show that the scandal-plagued Republican’s approval has topped 40 percent for the first time in over two years (the tracking graph only records back to May 2005).

Why are approval numbers that would scream nothing but political doom anywhere else in the nation sweet music to the politically tone-deaf ears of Ernie Fletcher?  Well, after all, it was only a year ago this month that Fletcher’s approval bottomed out at 24 percent.  [Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side!  Anybody got a broom for pedagogically challenged running mate Robbie Rudolph to use as a prop?]

Of course, this month’s upward movement was a statistically insignificant one point (Aug:40/57; Jul:39/57), but all statistics are insignificant to the Fletcher camp, whether they’re the ones showing Kentucky’s sorry state of health, education, or business climate.  [Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side!]

Where’s Fletcher’s big gain coming from?  Among Republicans and conservatives.

In the last month, Fletcher’s approval/disapproval went from 58/39 among Republicans to 62/35.  In March of this year, Fletcher was at 46/50 with that group.  So, he’s consolidating his party base, but he’ll need significantly more than 70 percent support from Republicans at the ballot box, especially considering that Republican turnout is likely to be somewhat suppressed, to pull off a November win.  Republicans accounted for 34 percent of the latest survey.

Fletcher’s popularity this month among conservatives rebounded to 57/39 from 52/46 after plummeting between June and July.  Conservatives were 33 percent of this survey.

There was no significant movement among males, females, Democrats, independents, moderates, or liberals.

By region, there was no significant change in western Kentucky, Louisville, or eastern Kentucky. 

There was, however, a statistically significant jump in Fletcher’s approval in northern Kentucky, where the governor went from 37/57 to 45/53.