Parker Griffith is switching parties:
While the timing of his announcement was unexpected, Griffith’s party switch will not come as a surprise to those familiar with his voting record, which is one of the most conservative among Democrats.
He has bucked the Democratic leadership on nearly all of its major domestic initiatives, including the stimulus package, health care legislation, the cap-and trade energy bill and financial regulatory reform.
He’ll stand a lot better chance of reelection now. He could read the handwriting on the wall. How many others will follow him before the blowout next November?
Of course, he’s from Alabama, which is currently one of the reddest states in the Union. And also home to another ex-democrat senator who we all “know and love”.
~Jon
More specifically, he’s the representative from Huntsville. But that seat had been Democrat since Reconstruction.
Interesting. Note that the northern Alabama district he represents includes Huntsville. The anti-Dem trend in that district he’s responding to, and now also his defection to the Reps are likely among factors in the current White House’s decisions regarding NASA in-house booster development at Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
The story you point to notes that this district went 61% for McCain in ’08, that the district has already taken a federal jobs hit with the decision not to put ground-based missile interceptors (whose development is based in Huntsville) in eastern europe, and that Griffith has already voted against the Dem health bill in the House.
“Among factors”, I emphasize. The final White House Ares I kill-or-continue decision will no doubt be based on a lot of factors. Nobody can know what weight different factors get who’s not in the room when the decision gets made. That said, I’d give Ares I a whole lot better odds of surviving if it was being developed in Boston or San Francisco.
I speculate that Griffith’s move may in fact be a response to the recent White House hints that NASA MSFC will lose Ares I, with a consolation prize of accelerated development of an eventual heavy lift booster. Griffith likely has a pretty good idea how serious the hints are, and he may now be calculating that there’s not much more the Dem establishment can do to him anyway.
Interesting times…
“And also home to another ex-democrat senator who we all “know and love”.”
Don’t be too hard on Shelby’s recent mother-defending-her-ugly-baby impression, Jon. Fighting for federal jobs in his state is part of his job, and he like the rest of Congress has few structural incentives to look at the larger good. Which is another, longer letter about among other things the perverse effect of campaign “reform” laws…
It’ll be interesting to see how he responds once it’s clear Ares I is gone anway. Might even be worth educating him about the alternatives (and on how Alabama might benefit, of course.)
Great! I guess this means the Republican Party can count on one more vote on their side of the aisle. No wait, they already had his vote.
No wait, they already had his vote.
Not for leadership. Now he’s actually caucusing with them, and brings them one step closer to ending Pelosi’s reign of error.
While this switch is good for the Republicans, I think the GOP is putting too much faith in grabbing hold of Congress in November. Even if they DO win control of both houses (the Democrats figure they’ll have 11 months to change people’s minds or make them forget about this thing) the Republicans will be unable to undo socialized medicine. All the Dems will need is 41 senators to permanently block any attempts to undo the damage inflicted by this particular Congress, and failing that, they will have the added insurance of the presidential veto.
If the GOP controls the House, they can de-fund it.
If the response to changing sides is We can pick this guy off and get a real Republican in that seat I wouldn’t expect many people to change sides.
In case you haven’t noticed, Griffith didn’t join the Erick Erickson party. That would be remarkably stupid given that Erickson does things like muse aloud about backstabbing incoming party members based on an obsolete voting record while in somebody else’s party. Instead, Griffith joined the Republican party, which apparently has a bit more nuance and flexibility than the Democrats or Mr. Erickson.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on the history of party defections in the US? Is the current defection rate unusually high?
Karl Hallowell – apparently the Club for Growth’s gunning for Griffith too. Aren’t these the same people that caused the fiasco in New York?
Every once in a while you find people like Erickson who won’t take “yes” for an answer.
I think Reagan said something along the lines that if a guy votes against you 20 % of the time, he is voting with you 80% of the time, and that makes him an ally, not an enemy.
If Griffith helps the Republicans take control of the House, and allows the party to send more substantial resources to other, more iffy races, then he should be welcomed, not attacked.
Regarding the chances of removing bad laws after the 2010 elections, the short answer is, don’t count on it. Doug and Mike have covered the basics, but it’s worth restating in more detail:
If the Republicans retake the House, they can refuse to fund specific federal activities, since Constitutionally all funding bills must originate in the House. This gives them some power, but not as much as it may seem – look at how the Gingrich-Clinton funding confrontation on “shutting down the government” ended up being successfully spun against Gingrich by the MSM. A Republican House can also prevent new laws being passed without their consent, but so can a (presumably still Democrat-controlled) Senate. So, some damage control, but no major repairs.
If the Republicans retake both House and Senate (but presumably still well short of 60 Senate seats) they can pass laws, but only ones that less than 40 Democrat Senators object to enough to filibuster. Even then, any new law they pass can be vetoed by the current President, and they’d need a 2/3rds majority in both House and Senate to override that.
Bottom line, a Republican House after 2010 could do some damage control, but it’ll take the White House as well plus a 60-seat Senate majority to undo any major bad laws passed under the current regime. Anyone counting on that had better be ready for a lot of years of hard work first. There are no quick fixes.
Yes and no, Henry. What you’re overlooking is that if the Democratic Party gets really thoroughly rogered next November, there are definitely going to be a whole lot of Democrats who got re-elected but are now looking over their shoulder, wondering if they’re next, in 2012 or 2014. Particularly as the fangs of Obamacare continue to sink deeper into the neck of the country.
Under such circumstances, you might well find that the votes for repeal exist on the Democratic side. It’s not necessary for the Republicans to reach 60 in the Senate. 55 or so, with 5 moderate Lieberman Democrats will do just fine.
It’s worth remembering this horrow show has been brought to us by the Democratic leadership, by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Barack Obama, all of whom are far more left-wing than rank-and-file Democrats, either in the country as a whole or even in Congress. (Tom Bevan had a nice article on this at RCP, noting that because of the way Democrats run their caucus, their leadership tends to be far more left-wing than their rank and file, unlike the Republicans.)
So what’s much more likely than any kind of hard swing to complete Republican power (and I shudder to think about that anyway) is a sufficiently hard swing and sufficiently crappy numbers for Obama — i.e. it becomes increasingly clear he’s a one-term showboat loser, like Carter, only probably worse because he’s got a bigger head — which leads to a revolt among rank-and-file Democrats. The Democrats toss Pelosi and Obama under the bus, and start to hammer out agreements with moderate Republicans to undo the folly of the past two years.
Aren’t these the same people that caused the fiasco in New York?
No. The local Republican leadership caused that fiasco.
Every once in a while you find people like Erickson who won’t take “yes” for an answer.
Doug makes an excellent point. Chris, I have no idea why you think that just because there is an Erickson lurking in the Republican party, that somehow the entire party is composed of Ericksons. There are Ericksons in the Democrat party as well.
Carl – one tactical problem with your scenario is that the moderate “Joe Lieberman” Democrats you posit joining in repealing various bad laws are the ones most likely to be knocked off by the Republicans in a swing election. But that’s minor.
The major strategic problem here is the basis for Mark Steyn’s view that the Democrats are thinking long-term strategy while the Reps focus on short-term tactics. His view is that the Dems may have already discounted losing lots of seats next year, on the grounds that it’s really really HARD (as in, has almost never been done) to repeal new entitlements once in place. Once a whole bunch of new people are benefiting at others’ expense, well, old principles can become just a bit less important come the next election.
I don’t rule your scenario out, mind. But I think it would be a huge mistake to do less than everything possible to defeat Obamacare *now* on the assumption it would be so widely reviled once in place that it would be easy to repeal. My guess is that it’d find enough supporters once in place that it’ll be amazingly hard to kill. Far better to keep the ratchet from advancing that next “click” in the first place.
I agree with Henry. It is better to drive a stake through this thing’s heart now, because it will be damned hard to kill if it gets passed.
RE trying to drive a stake through this thing’s heart now, I’m a bit surprised we’re not seeing more quick publicity for excesses in Reid’s amended Senate version. With 400 or so pages of rammed-through amendment, I’d be amazed if there aren’t some real monsters in there. It may be a long shot, but all a publicity blitz right now needs to do is get one Dem Senator to crack in the next day and this thing is toast.
The next line of defense is fighting against Pelosi lining up 218 House votes to pass the Senate version as-is. The House being what it is, one might assume 218 votes for “the Other Body’s” signature collection of payoffs isn’t likely. The stakes and the Dems being what they are, the Reps had better fight with all they’ve got in the House, now.
If the bill goes to conference, or starts ping-ponging back and forth in successive House and Senate versions, then odds of defeating it finally start to look good again. But the Reps aren’t there yet.