Robert Goodman wrote:
But that wasn't my point. Even in contested areas, people who are liberals
pose as conservative >>Republicans, sometimes for decades. Then, when they
no longer are running for anything, "out" >>themselves as liberals.
But there are sometimes other ways to game the system. Michael Bloomberg,
a rich guy, changed enrollment to Republican to run for mayor of NYC. That
was so he could avoid a Democratic primary and put his money directly to
use with the same message all the way thru the general election. (He got
the GOP nomination uncontested.) He's running for re-election as nominee
of the Republican and Independence parties, and in addition got a Liberal
ballot label via petition. (The Liberals were for a half century an
official party, but now it's an independent label.) This time he faces the
very weak winner of the Democratic primary, Ferrer, who is being enormously
outspent and trailing about 2-1 in the polls.
Bloomberg's gaming of the system is the reverse of the usual practice, to be
sure, joining the minority party. It has been done before. In fact in
Harrisburg, there's a City Councilman running for re-election who decided to
switch to the GOP. I suspect it's because he didn't think he could get
through a Dem primary. This way, he presumably figures, he'll get whatever
GOP votes there are in Harrisburg plus the people who vote for him
personally (or ethnically as he is apparently Hispanic despite having the
last name Banks). I'll let you know if it works for him.
See the pattern? The top of the ticket goes a highly disproportionate
amount of the time to the opposite party, even in cases where they don't
have Bloomberg's bucks. The NYC council is almost exclusively Democratic,
but the last 2 mayors have been enrolled Republicans. In Massachusetts the
GOP has crumbled to almost nothing (from a position that was very weak to
begin with) while holding the governorship, basically because the governors
have run away from the party.
I don't think you could describe Mitt Romney as running away from the party.
Maybe the state party, but he certainly has run as a conservative.
I'll bet that's the case in Hawaii too. It was probably a situation
wherein someone got the GOP nomination easily, albeit without grass roots
support within that party, bypassing a competitive Democratic primary and
thus having a relatively easy path to victory.
It wasn't. Linda Lingle had very narrowly lost for governor the preceding
time; she had a lot of grassroots support within the GOP. The Dems did have
a nasty primary, so that helped, but she was beating both Dems in polls
before the Dem primary, FWIW.
>But 10 years from now, when [elected officials] retire, will
>they suddenly decide they're
>liberals after all? Maybe not since even here no one will care what they
>think once they're out of office, but look at how many nationally known
>politicians spend whole careers as tax cutters, spending hawks, etc. only
to
>switch sides after retiring. My point is that it seems that nearly all
>politicians are really liberals, only some of them pose as conservatives
or
>libertarians to win.
Interesting. I haven't seen that much evidence for it because I (like most
people, I guess) don't pay much att'n to retired pols. Around here,
sometimes they retire first to jail!
Here too. They very conveniently put Camp Hill State Prison right by the
state Capitol so our legislators don't have far to travel when they leave
office.
Maybe you could supply some examples we'd be likely to know of.
I heard of a whole bunch a couple of months ago. The only name I can think
of offhand is William Milliken, former governor of Michigan. I'll try to
remember the others, but there were a few governors and senators.
Doug Friedman
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