One of the most interesting stories in politics right now has to be the California Senate race. On the Republican side, Sarah Palin has once again shown her unpredictable streak by endorsing, not the favorite of movement conservatives, California Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, but former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who is tainted in the eyes of many conservatives by her association with John McCain. Gov. Palin’s endorsement surprised and irritated a number of folks on the Right, but she has good reasons for it:
I’d like to tell you about a Commonsense Conservative running for office in California this year. She grew up in a modest home with a school teacher dad, worked her way through several colleges, and then entered an arena where few women had tread. Through a combination of hard work, perseverance, and common sense, she proved the naysayers wrong to reach the top of her field, where she led with distinction—facing hard truths, making tough decisions, and showing real leadership through a rocky transition period. Where others had failed, her company had weathered the storm and settled on a stronger new foundation. . . .
Carly is the Commonsense Conservative that California needs and our country could sure use in these trying times. Most importantly, she’s running for the right reasons. She has an understanding that is sorely lacking in D.C. She’s not a career politician. She’s a businesswoman who has run a major corporation. She knows how to really incentivize job creation. Her fiscal conservatism is rooted in real life experience. She knows that when government grows, the private sector shrinks under the burden of debt and deficits. We can trust Carly to do the right thing for America’s economy and to make the principled decisions she has throughout her professional career.
Part of this is that, at least in Gov. Palin’s view, Fiorina is more conservative than conservatives are giving her credit for; and part of it is the calculation that Fiorina has the best shot against Barbara Boxer. But part of it as well is clearly that Gov. Palin values Fiorina’s business expertise and the fact that she’s not an insider to government (though, having been a high-level CEO, she certainly has some D.C. experience and connections), and on that I think she has a point which other Republicans would do well to consider. (But then, I’ve always thought Fiorina was the best candidate in that primary, even with the demon sheep ad.)
On the Democratic side, meanwhile, we have blogger Mickey Kaus mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Boxer (as a “common sense Democrat,” no less; the Left may bash Gov. Palin, but her language has resonance)—and one of his big issues is the unquestioned and unquestioning commitment of the Democratic Party to Big Labor. As he wrote in the Los Angeles Times,
Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It’s been raised again this year by California’s budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees. I think the answer is no. It’s time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism. . . .
Keep in mind that Detroit’s union, the United Auto Workers, is one of our best. It’s democratic. It’s not corrupt. Its leadership has often been visionary. Yet working within our archaic union system, it still helped bring our greatest industry to its knees. And the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for bailing it out, while UAW members didn’t even take a cut of $1 an hour in their $28-an-hour basic pay. How many Californians would like $27-an-hour manufacturing jobs? Actually, there was a good auto factory in California, the NUMMI plant in Fremont. It got sucked under when GM went broke. Those 4,500 jobs are gone.
Yet the answer of most union leaders to the failure of 1950s unionism has been more 1950s unionism. This isn’t how we’re going to get prosperity back. But it’s the official Democratic Party dogma. No dissent allowed.
Government unions are even more problematic (and as private sector unions have failed in the marketplace, government unions are increasingly dominant). If there are limits on what private unions can demand—when they win too much, as we’ve seen, their employers tend to disappear—there is no such limit on what government unions can demand. They just have to get the politicians to raise your taxes to pay for it, and by funding the Democratic machine they acquire just the politicians they need. . . .
We need nonretired Democrats who tell the unions no. Or else, perhaps after more bankruptcies and bailouts, Republicans will do it for them.
It will be interesting to see if Kaus gets any traction, or if his message actually bears fruit. I tend to think the answer on both counts will be “no,” and that his warning will go unheeded—but you never know.
On a side note, Kaus follows Fred Barnes with an interesting and disturbing comment on the possible consequences of a Republican victory in November:
Fred Barnes raises the possibility of a “mad duck” Congress, in which Democrats lose their majorities and their soon-to-be-ex Congressmen reconvene in December to pass all the most controversial parts of the Democratic agenda, including an immigration bill and a VAT, before they lose power. … It seems implausible and paranoid, but how, exactly, could it be stopped? … The new laws would be hard to repeal while Obama is in office—if they could ever be repealed. (Once you legalize illegal immigrants, can you re-illegalize them again? I doubt it. The change seems irreversible.) … The only sure solution to Mad Duckism that I can see is for the Republicans to not win too big, leaving at least a substantial number of Dems with something left to lose.
That’s a precedent I hope we don’t see set.