Will a Controversial RNC Presentation Bring Down Michael Steele?

Summary: An internal RNC document - mocking donors and encouraging politics of fear - finds its way on to the internet and embarrases party leaders.

On Wednesday, Politico broke one of the most interesting stories about the RNC of the entire 2010 election cycle. An internal document - a PowerPoint presentation by the RNC finance staff - mocked their donors and explained how to play to their shortcomings for fundraising purposes.

There were some other interesting things in the presentation. For example, it mentions how the RNC plans to fight the FEC over soft money, refers to a fundraiser with the firm formerly known as Blackwater, and complains about all the “regulations” the RNC must abide by - even listing the Defense Department, the Patent Office, and Postal Service of regulating them.

The USPS regulations they refer to probably have to do with the “census” fundraising mailers they’ve been doing.

But the most shocking things were how they characterized the Democrats and their own contributors.

The presentation lists two kinds of contributors: the “reactionary” small donors and “ego-driven” large donors.


The small donors, according to the slideshow, do “visceral giving” based on “fear” and “extreme negative feelings” about the Obama Administration. The large donors do “calculated giving” based on “peer-to-peer pressure”, “networking opportunities” and “access [to politicians].”

Of course, large donors are becoming skeptical of the RNC and the committee’s fundraisers have begun to rely more on small donors. Thus, the document says “What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House or the Senate…? Save the Country from trending toward socialism!”

Finally, one slide includes images of how RNC fundraisers should depict Democrats.


RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and his press staff, have been distancing him from the presentation. Steele even went on Fox News recently to defend himself and his party.



To say a few words in defense of the RNC finance staff, none of what they’re saying is technically untrue. These are well-grounded ways - on both sides of the spectrum - of effectively raising money. Furthermore, the parts of the presentation that have been getting so much attention are a relatively small part of the presentation.

Most of the presentation is pretty boring, and is of little interest to the common person (although it’s loaded with strategic details such as fundraising goals that will be quite useful for the DNC to know).

But this much is true: the RNC finance staff must have been pretty stupid to put such a cynical slant on the game in a document that could be found and posted online, especially one that admits that they’re willing to drive a radical anti-Obama message for the sake of raising money.

This is not the first time we’ve mentioned that the RNC is having problems - including fundraising difficulties - during the 2010 cycle. In fact, despite all the predicted success for the GOP this year, these internal issues are weighing down on their optimism.

I would go a step further than simply acknowledging some problems in the RNC. I would say that the committee has been completely falling apart lately. Furthermore, it all seems to have started when Michael Steele took over as chairman.

This latest scandal is just one more disaster on top of an already dismal position for the Republican National Committee. Steele has not been popular with committee members for some time now, and - depending on their internal rules, which I’ll admit I am unfamiliar with - they may impeach him or at least demand a resignation in due time.

I now have to imagine that he won’t complete his term at the RNC. So here’s the question: just how much longer can Steele last?

Weekend Political Roundup

Summary: This weekend was full of brash comments from politicians--read who's getting into trouble.

This past weekend was somewhat unusual for me insofar as I was not keeping track of the news. Instead I was mostly watching the NFL playoffs, which I’ll briefly talk about later in the post. Needless to say, when I checked the news this morning, I was surprised by just how much happened in the world of campaign politics in the course of two days.

Blago's Back...

First there were the outlandish comments from ousted Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) who said - among other eccentric things - that he was “blacker” than Barack Obama. The more I think about this I can’t help but think Blagojevich might just be a genius.

Let me explain: he knows his political career is over and there’s no way to bring it back. If he can beat the legal charges against him, however (which I’ll admit, is unlikely) he’ll want to maintain a media presence that can land him a job in, say, television or something. What better way to do that than to constantly act like a lunatic?

Massachusetts Senate Race...

Second was an interesting variation in the polls coming out of Massachusetts. In the race for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, it seems that Democrat Martha Coakley could either be ahead of Republican Scott Brown by 15 points, behind by 1 point, or at various intervals in between.

How can this be explained? Nate Silver suggests several reasons but ultimately can’t decide why the polls could be so varied. My guess is it has to do with whether or not the poll included an option for Libertarian Party candidate Joe Kennedy. Silver points out that the polls that do include a third party option are probably inflating what kind of support he’ll see on Election Day. While I agree that would usually be the case, his name is Kennedy, and that could help him out in this election. Thus, I would suggest looking at those polls (from The Boston Globe and Rasmussen) for the best estimates.

Game Change...

Next were a number of reports that came out about the 2008 presidential election. The first story was yet another Palin criticism from McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, who bashed the former Alaska governor on last night’s “60 Minutes”.

From the story in Politico:

“There were numerous instances that she said things that were — that were not accurate that ultimately, the campaign had to deal with,” said Steve Schmidt in an interview broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “And that opened the door to criticism that she was being untruthful and inaccurate. And I think that is something that continues to this day.”

Schmidt cited an ethics report on the then-Alaska governor from her home state on an investigation into whether she had improperly used her government position.

“She went out and said, you know, ‘This report completely exonerates me,’” Schmidt said. “And in fact, it — it didn’t. You know it’s the equivalent of saying down is up and up is down. It was provably, demonstrably untrue.”

Even more interesting reports, however, come from the same book the cites a lot of the Schmidt-Palin feud - Game Change by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann - which examines a great number of unknown (and politically damaging) situations during the race, including a strained Obama-Biden relationship over the course of the campaign. Apparently the Obama staff kept Biden off important conference calls and put him on his own in order to “keep a tight rein on him.”

And Biden, in an off-the-record remark, apparently told reporters that he was more qualified to be president than his running mate.

Other reports from the book are also quite juicy:

–Before the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, party strategists Mark Penn and Mandy Grunwald, both then working for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s presidential candidacy, met secretly with then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and a group of her closest confidantes to consider a last-minute entry into the race – and even polled New Hampshire voters about the idea. Ultimately, though, Chelsea Clinton persuaded her mother to opt out of a run, arguing that voters wouldn’t forgive her for breaking a pledge to serve a full Senate term.

–Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and a group of other senators who would back Hillary Clinton’s candidacy encouraged Obama to run for the White House as early as 2006. The concern over Clinton was that she would be a weak Democratic standard-bearer while Obama could energize the party. In late summer 2007, Schumer – using an Obama ally, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), as a back channel – pushed the candidate to “take a two-by-four to Hillary,” as the authors put it.

–In lobbying the late Sen. Edward Kennedy to endorse his wife, former President Clinton angered the liberal icon by belittling Obama. Telling a friend about the conversation, Kennedy recalled Clinton had said “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” the authors paraphrase. A spokesman for the former president declined to comment on the claim.

–Frustrated over the campaign following her disastrous interview with Katie Couric, Sarah Palin said she regretted accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination. “If I’d known everything I know now, I would not have done this,” she said. McCain’s high command, already worried about her lack of eating and drinking and fearing that she was suffering from post-partum depression, convened a conference call and discussed whether she was mentally unstable.

Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton issued a statement in response to "Game Change" touting the former governor's own insider account.

"The Governor's descriptions of these events are found in her book, 'Going Rogue,'” said Stapleton. “Her descriptions are accurate. She was there. These reporters were not.”

–There were apparently "two Americas" within the marriage between John and Elizabeth Edwards. The former North Carolina senator's wife viewed herself as a worldly intellectual and publicly called her husband "a hick" and his parents "rednecks," according to the authors.

"She was forever letting John know she regarded him as her intellectual inferior," they write, mocking her husband, the presidential hopeful, as somebody who "doesn't read books."

–Before she was tapped as the vice presidential nominee, McCain’s campaign team devoted only five days to vetting Palin and her seventy-four-part questionnaire. But Palin herself only spent a few hours filling it out – an act which had “consumed weeks for other short-listers.” Ultimately, a forty-two-page vetting report of Palin was crashed by McCain’s team in a matter of 40 hours.

–McCain never held a single practice session before the first debate of the general election, in September of 2008. Now-RNC Chairman Michael Steele had spent the entire summer preparing to play Obama in the practice sessions, but McCain wouldn’t spar with Steele out of fear that the sessions would leak and he’d be accused of racial insensitivity.

–Upon finding out that McCain had tapped Palin as his running mate, Vice President Dick Cheney called it a “reckless choice,” believing the Alaska governor was unprepared for high office.

–Members of what the authors call Clinton’s “war room within a war room” became convinced in 2006 that Bill Clinton was having a serious extramarital affair, prompting Hillary Clinton to instruct her aides to be prepared to combat the story.

–After Billy Shaheen, Clinton's New Hew Hampshire campaign chairmen and the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, told the Washington Post that Obama's youthful drug use made him unelectable, Clinton initially cheered him on and encouraged her staff to draw attention to the comment. "Good for him!" she told aides. "Let's push it out." Clinton subsequently personally apologized to Obama over the matter and Shaheen quit the campaign.

–Following the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton was shocked to have been offered the Secretary of State job and decided to reject the offer. She prepared a statement explaining why she would turn the new president down and remain in the Senate. But in an after-midnight call between Clinton and Obama, he persuaded her – only after Clinton expressed concerns about the problems posed by her husband, the former president.

“You know I can’t control him, and at some point he’ll be a problem” the authors paraphrase Clinton as saying. Obama indicated that he was willing to take that risk…

…–Before formally deciding to enter the 2008 presidential race, Obama met secretly with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice-President Al Gore, the latter of whom the authors report had privately consulted with Obama adviser David Axelrod on a potential 2004 presidential run of his own.

Clearly this book doesn’t make anyone look good.

My take is that few people will take any notice of the embarrassing stories in the book except for some Washington insiders who very well might have known a lot of these details anyway.

Well, except for one story…

It was also revealed in the book that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had said that Barack Obama was “light skinned” and lacks “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

That proved to be explosive. Republicans, including the black RNC Chair Michael Steele, have called for Reid to lose his Senate leadership position. Their argument is that there is a double standard for Trent Lott to have lost his GOP leadership position for similar reasons while Reid can keep his.

Democrats, loyal to their leader, defended him vehemently on Sunday with a variety of arguments. Of the good ones: Reid has a record of standing up for civil rights and his comments on Obama were taken out of context. In fact, the book does seem to suggest that Reid was praising Obama’s political skills, albeit in an eyebrow-raising manner.

My guess is this won’t do anything to his role as Majority Leader. However, it will most definitely be a strain to his re-election this year. Reid is already facing bad number in the polls, so he wants as much Democratic turnout as he can get. While many voters who would be especially offended by this may not support a GOP candidate, they may just decide to stay home on Election Day - which is still pretty bad news.

Playoff Season...

Oh, and of course, the NFL playoffs. Now, don’t make too much of this, but I did see an interesting trend this weekend. In the AFC, more-liberal area located teams tended to do better than more-conservative area teams (with New York beating Cincinnati) while in the NFC, the red states beat out the blue ones (Dallas crushing Philadelphia and Arizona edging out Green Bay). A little ironic, perhaps, given that the AFC color is red and the NFC color is blue.

So, if you’re the kind of sports fan who likes to make predictions based on bizarre trends like political tendencies, you might want to put your money on Dallas beating Minnesota, New Orleans clobbering Arizona (Louisiana is much more conservative than the Grand Canyon State), and Baltimore upsetting Indianapolis.

Or you could play it in any number of safer ways, which I would have to suggest.

Historical Revisionism and the GOP

Summary: Has the GOP revised history on their new website for their own political gain with minorities and women? Did they go too far or are we going to see a new GOP?

The Republican National Committee launched their new website last night - www.GOP.com. Politico today reports that the launching was riddled with problems, in part due to unexpected traffic.


But beyond the flashy new tools available to Republican activists - including a variety of New-Media devices - there was one curious page on the new website titled “Republican Accomplishments.”

The page lists 37 accomplishments by the GOP since 1860. Of these, an incredible 23 have to due with the rights and acceptance of women and minorities in the political realm.


Among their claims to fame:

• The first Hispanic Governor was a Republican
• Republicans Freed the Slaves
• The First African-American Senator was a Republican
• Republicans Outlawed the Ku Klux Klan
• A Republican Wrote the 19th Amendment
• First Women Mayors in the United States
• A Republican President Appointed the First Jewish Cabinet Secretary
• Republicans Passed the Indian Citizenship Act
• The First Asian-American Senator was a Republican
• A Republican Wrote the Brown v. Board of Education Decision

In fact, following the Brown decision, President Eisenhower (a Republican) was to have said that his nomination of Chief Justice Earl Warren was the greatest mistake of his presidency. That fact - for obvious reasons - was ignored.

And the “accomplishments” in the Civil Rights Era seem to get even more convoluted. Okay, it might not be outright Revisionism (a term often used to explain Holocaust denial) but the claims are certainly misleading.

For example, they brag about Republican involvement in the 1957 Civil Rights Act as such:

“During the five terms of the FDR and Truman presidencies, the Democrats did not propose any civil rights legislation. President Eisenhower, in contrast, asked his Attorney General to write the first federal civil rights legislation since the Republican Party’s 1875 Civil Rights Act.

Many Democrats in the Senate filibustered the bill, but strong Republican support ensured passage. The new law established a Civil Rights Division within the Justice Department and authorized the Attorney General to request injunctions against any attempt to deny someone’s right to vote. The GOP improved upon this landmark legislation with the 1960 Civil Rights Act.”

Of course, many of the Democrats who opposed the legislation were southerners (or “Dixiecrats”) who were often at odds with their fellow party members in the north and would later leave the Democratic Party for the GOP. The most notable example is Sen. Strom Thurmond, who spoke an astounding 24 hours alone in an effort to filibuster the 1957 bill and became a Republican in 1964.

This picking-and-choosing of facts is not exactly atypical of politics, but the extent to which it is used here seems almost unprecedented.

But the way the GOP is trying to focus on their accomplishments of integration and acceptance of women and minorities is not without reason. This is part of the vision of RNC Chairman Michael Steele (a minority himself) for a “new GOP.”

Ultimately, however, the Republican Party cannot hope for more women and minority support by touting their historical achievements, they must make some today. After all, parties do not get elected, individual candidates do. And can Chris Christie or Bob McDonnell really take credit for freeing the slaves?

Meanwhile, the Republican caucuses in Congress opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act - which would help limit gender discrimination in pay - and almost opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act just a few years ago.

Despite what they think a new website will do to bring in support from the demographics they are not strong with, actions still speak louder than words.

Can Michael Steele’s "New GOP" Really Succeed?

RNC Chairman Michael Steele addressed his committee today, in the wake of a vote to rebrand the Democrats as the “Socialist Democrat Party”.

The speech fell along the lines of an ideas piece he submitted for Politico today - creating a New GOP. He said there would be three important ways for the Republicans to turn the corner.

1) The GOP must be forward-looking

From his speech:

The Republican Party is again going to emerge as the party of new ideas. It will take some time, for sure, but it is beginning now. Our governors are emerging with fresh answers to old problems. Some of our brightest stars in Congress are emerging with new approaches. New groups and new entities are being formed. Republicans are rising once again with the energy, the focus, and the determination to turn our timeless principles into new solutions for the future. The introspection is now over. The corner has been turned.

Simple enough, but as his speech demonstrates later on, a lot of the new ideas sound like more of the same.

2) The GOP must not shy away from opposing Obama policies

The guy who campaigned in favor of bottom-up style of governing is presiding over the most massive top down expansion of government bureaucracy and spending our country has ever seen or even contemplated.

Candidate Obama was very moderate in his views, but President Obama could not possibly be further to the far left. Candidate Obama talked about fiscal responsibility, about government living within its means. But President Obama is saddling our unborn grandchildren with mountains of debt. Candidate Obama boasted about cutting taxes, but President Obama will have to raise taxes to pay for his massive top-down government explosion.

Steele has done his homework. Recent polls show that Americans are very concerned about the size of the deficit this year, and that concern can easily play into the hands of the “tax-and-spend liberal” message of the GOP with some clever maneuvering.

He went on to say that they should not wage personal attacks on Obama. From his piece in Politico:

Let me make one point clear – Republicans will not make our opposition to the president personal. Republicans will challenge policies of the president that we believe are wrong, but our opposition will be done in very sharp contrast to the classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.

Not only is it admirable strategy, but should be an effective one. The reason is simple: Americans will see it as an admirable strategy.

But it may be easier said than done. The far-right (that is essentially the remains) of the Republican Party hate Obama and do not fear demeaning him in “classless” ways. Take some of the demonstrators from the Tea Party protests for example.


But let’s assume that Steele has more influence as RNC Chair than he actually does, and the GOP only uses constructive arguments against Obama’s policies. The GOP will still be short of improvement. The simple reason is that while messaging may be improving within Republican ranks, and economic ideas are brewing, they are still the “Party of No” on issues like health care, the environment, and labor reform.

In his speech, Steele could only address these issues as such:

President Obama now wants to cap and tax every single American into paying higher utility rates. President Obama and his allies in Congress have now put their taxing eyes on soft drinks. President Obama and Democrat leaders want a brand new tax on our health care benefits and are devising a plan to give federal government bureaucrats control of our health care system. President Obama is backing a plan to take away the basic right of every American worker to cast a private ballot.

No real solutions found there.

Yet in his tirade against Obama, Steele did bring up some things that will sound like a reasonable argument - at least in a way that would presumably lead up to the GOP telling America about solutions of their own.

President Obama has for the first time in our history politicized the US Census process by putting political appointees in his White House in charge of it and wanting a corrupt, fraudulent organization to run it. President Obama and his far left allies are flirting with an attempt to squelch the basic freedom of speech of our nation's airwaves. President Obama's Attorney General is trying to use Mexican drug gang wars as a reason to advocate a new gun ban in America.

President Obama's Administration has disparaged our war heroes and veterans by suggesting that they are a threat to our safety, when the truth is they are the cause of our safety. The president, who thinks that every student should be able to go to college, is cutting much needed funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The president, who pledged that he would create millions of jobs through federal public works projects, now requires project labor agreements on such projects which effectively denies small and minority owned businesses access to those jobs because they are not unionized.

And the one the galls me the most: While the president sends his kids to a private school, he is at the very same time taking away opportunity scholarships from poor Hispanic and African-American kids right here in our nation's capital. Those are the facts of the president's first 100 days.

Harsh? Maybe - but if the GOP adopts these points in a standard message it could prove effective.

3) The GOP must seize on the momentum already building up nationally from the grassroots

Is there really such momentum? It’s possible - Steele seems pretty confident that it’s there.

Too bad the chattering classes inside the Beltway are too busy fretting over phony disputes and intra-party intrigue to notice that a change has indeed come to America. But it's not the one the Obama Administration wants aired on the nightly news.

Those of you who live outside of Washington know what I'm talking about. Those of you who actually attend Lincoln Day dinners, and county party events, those of you who toil in the vineyards, spending time in communities, in diners, in barber shops, and in coffee shops where real, every day people can be found. You know it is real. You can see it and feel it.

This change comes in a tea bag!

Of course, this momentum has hardly been seen. Thousands of conservatives protested against Obama’s fiscal policies on Tax Day, but thousands of liberals protested against the Iraq War (on a pretty consistent basis) before the 2004 elections as well.

But as we mentioned last month, it may still be cause for concern if you’re a Democrat.

So will Steele’s “New GOP” succeed?

Steele is beginning to mount an effective message against the Democrats and he properly recognizes the value of conservative grassroots activists to the GOP.

But it is only the beginning of a winning strategy, and he has many kinks to work out.

For example, he complains that Obama is moving the country to the far-left. Yet, polls show that American opinion is largely shifting left. Flat(ter) tax philosophy and individual responsibility are ideas that don’t resonate with Americans as well as they used to. Americans are more concerned with health care and global warming than welfare or crime. The GOP has not been able to produce a cohesive vision on these fronts.

Take the issue of gay marriage. It’s becoming legal in more and more states and could be legalized nationally within the next ten years. Polls find that more and more Americans are supporting this non-traditional arrangement. The shift has left the GOP scrambling to redefine their opposition to it.

Recently, Steele tried to recast this issue as a business issue rather than a values issue.

This is what he said on Saturday, in the shoes of a small-business owner:

Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for…So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.

The obvious flaw in the argument is that straight couples that get married would be bad for business too, and thus bad for America - a big contradiction to Republican ideology. As columnist Matt Bandyk said of the Steele statement, “if this is actually what he meant to argue, the party's leadership is in bigger trouble than has been thought.”

The point is that America is progressing and the Republican Party is finding it difficult to adapt. Despite his pleas for Republicans to stop looking back, Steele invoked the name of Ronald Reagan a countless number of times today.

But that’s just the thing - the GOP needs a new Reagan and they know it. He not only saved them after Watergate, but reinvented conservatism to make it popular. In the aftermath of the Bush Era, they need such a messianic figure again.

Otherwise, the New GOP that Steele envisions will have a lot of trouble in the months and years ahead.

The Return of the Abortion Debate

In recent days, there has been a flurry of stories surrounding the issue of abortion.

Two recent polls find the United States to be moving in a “pro-life” direction and yesterday President Obama gave the commencement address to the new graduates of Notre Dame - a catholic university - which sparked criticism from the pro-life community.

The first poll - released April 30th by the Pew Research Center - found that support for abortion in most or all cases has dropped to 46% while opposition to abortion in most or all cases has gone up to 44% of Americans.


The poll found that support for abortion rights decreased significantly among Republicans - but this may be more attributable to moderates leaving the GOP than changes in their views on abortion. But support for abortion decreased even more so among independents.

In terms of religion, Evangelicals continue to be the most opposed to abortion (with only 23% of them supporting it) while a majority of mainline Protestants were in favor. Yet support for abortion decreased 15% among mainline Protestants since August last year.


A second poll - released on Friday by Gallup - found that for the first time in the history of the poll, a majority of Americans (51%) describe themselves as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice”.


Furthermore, the Gallup poll confirms the Pew poll’s findings on the trend in terms of political ideology.


Is America really more Pro-Life?

Nate Silver and Ed Kilgore at FiveThirtyEight.com were quick to point out that the findings of these polls might be dubious.

Silver combined the two questions (“legal or illegal?” and “pro-life or pro-choice?”) into one graph and found that the general trend in such surveys is that America is simply becoming more opinionated about abortion - not necessarily more opposed to it.


Kilgore, meanwhile, argued that the Gallup poll failed to accurately account for the fact that the GOP is growing smaller and produced an outlier survey - one that is terribly misleading about the actual circumstances of the national opinion.

He also pointed out that most pro-life Americans are not hardliners - they will make exceptions in certain circumstances, such as a risk to the mother’s health.

In particular, GSS shows an exceptionally durable 80%-plus level of support for a "health exception," which happens to be the actual flash-point separating pro-life activists from the rest of the population. In other words, lots of "pro-life" Americans consistently, and over decades, favor an exception that pro-life activists adamantly consider a complete repudiation of the pro-life point of view.

Of course, a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Ross Douthat also points out that many pro-choice Americans are not hardliners either - in fact, two out of three Americans support restrictions on second and third trimester abortions.

Douthat also points out another interesting bit from the Pew poll - “Americans under 35, while more sympathetic to gay marriage than their parents, also tend to be slightly more anti-abortion”.

And he’s right. With the exception of senior citizens, the Millennials are the least supportive generation of abortion, as the Pew table above indicates. As Silver wrote in his post, “There are evidently an increasing number of pro-life, pro-gay marriage Americans…a position it would have been very unusual to encounter just a few years ago.”

In fact, it certainly appears that the entire abortion debate is very different than just a few years ago based on the evidence we’ve seen. The specific views vary widely from individual to individual, often for very different reasons.

But what is the impact of this in Washington?

We’ll definitely see this issue come up again as Obama finds his nominee to replace Justice Souter for the Supreme Court - but there are already palpable changes taking place in the political (rather than policy) sphere.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, DNC Chairman Tim Kaine and RNC Chairman Michael Steele faced off on the controversy surrounding Obama’s visit to Notre Dame.

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No surprises there. The Democratic leader toted the party line of keeping abortions rare, safe, and legal, while the Republican leader toted the party line of the sacredness of life.

Except the interesting thing is that Kaine is pro-life, while Steele (although he describes himself as “pro-life”) said earlier this year that abortion is a woman’s personal choice.

Thus the traditional political lines are being blurred.

And that’s where Obama’s speech at Notre Dame comes in. Speaking to a full auditorium, he said

…when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do - that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.

That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."

Understand - I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it - indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory - the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.

And there in lies some of the President’s greatest attributes - inclusiveness and pragmatism. Since taking office Obama has lived by a creed to make the middle ground the higher ground.

In a complex debate with a diverse range of opinions on a sensitive issue - and arguably more complex, diverse, and sensitive than ever - Obama has touched on the essential principles of a common ground by which all Americans can agree and work together.

Perhaps it is because of a deep-founded conviction, or perhaps it is simply the shifting lines on the issue, but Obama has taken yet another controversy as an opportunity and hit a political home run.

You can watch the full commencement address here.

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Why Did Specter Become a Democrat?

The biggest news story today in the political scene is the party-switch by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. As one of the last moderate Republicans in the Senate, Specter was facing a tough primary from former GOP Congressman Pat Toomey.

From his statement today:

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.

But it goes on…

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

(The emphasis is our own)

Was Specter afraid of losing his primary? Prominent Republican leaders seem to think so.

From a statement by Chairman of the NRSC, Sen. John Cornyn:

"Senator Specter’s decision today represents the height of political self-preservation. While this presents a short-term disappointment, voters next year will have a clear choice to cast their ballots for a potentially unbridled Democrat super-majority versus the system of checks-and-balances that Americans deserve."

And RNC Chairman Michael Steele seemed to agree:

Let’s be honest-Senator Specter didn’t leave the GOP based on principles of any kind. He left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.

Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.

Was this really why Specter changed parties?

Until today, Specter had consistently said it was important for him to remain a Republican. In March, he was quoted by The Hill as saying "I think each of the 41 Republican senators, in a sense — and I don’t want to overstate this — is a national asset because if one was gone, you’d only have 40, the Democrats would have 60, and they would control all of the mechanisms of government."

He was also quoted in Pennsylvania Avenue as saying "And because if we lose my seat they have 60 Democrats, they will pass card check, you will have the Obama tax increases, they will carry out his big spending plans. So the 41st Republican, whose name is Arlen Specter is vital to stopping tax increases, passage of card check, and the Obama big spending plans."

So today’s decision certainly seems peculiar.

A Rasmussen poll from Friday showed Toomey to be leading with a majority of voters.

From Rasmussen’s website:

Incumbent Senator Arlen Specter trails former Congressman Pat Toomey by 21 points in an early look at Pennsylvania’s 2010 Republican Primary. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Republican voters statewide say they’d vote for Toomey while just 30% would support Specter.

Specter is viewed favorably by 42% of Pennsylvania Republicans and unfavorably by 55%, according to a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state. Those are stunningly poor numbers for a long-term incumbent senator. Specter was first elected to the Senate in 1980.

Toomey, who served in the House from 1999 to 2005, earns positive reviews from 66% and negative comments from just 19%.

Specter had already released an ad against Toomey in anticipation for their primary battle, and the two had been telling voters for a while that the other was unelectable.

Recently we commented on how the GOP was purging their more moderate members. A story from Politico on Sunday seems to confirm this phenomenon.

Specter is a moderate Senator who probably was more in line with the Democrats than the Republicans. But it would probably be naïve to say this move was not because of the Toomey challenge.

As a party, the GOP is moving further to the right. This means that some centrist Republicans are leaving the party. In fact, as few as 21% of Americans still consider themselves Republicans according to recent polls. Nate Silver describes this as a Republican Death Spiral.

Specter was on shaky ground with Republicans in Pennsylvania, but he will be a voice for moderate (former) Republicans, Democrats, and independents now that he has switched parties. Now he has a better chance of returning to Washington in 2011.