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In search of the “vanishing Republican”

By selliott | Sunday, September 7, 2008, 01:50 PM

In this week’s New York Times Sunday magazine, President Bush’s former speechwriter David Frum explains his theory of why polls are showing more people identifying themselves as Democrats and fewer as Republicans, even in what were once reliably Republican parts of the country.

His answer? As America has become more economically unequal it has trended more Democratic. Frum’s piece is a call to arms for action from Republicans to address the inequality crisis and especially the driving force, as he sees it, behind the crisis — skyrocketing health care costs.

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Strickland in WSJ: ‘Look under Ohio’s hood’

By Ellen Belcher | Sunday, September 7, 2008, 12:29 PM

Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher responded to former Daytonian Chester “Checker” Finn’s trashing earlier this summer of Ohio in Saturday, Sept. 6’s Wall Street Journal.

“Responded” isn’t exactly the right word because, according to the lieutenant governor’s office, the WSJ doesn’t allow victims of commentary pieces to write direct rebuttals in their effort to set the record straight. You have to dress up your rejoinder as something else, pretend like you’re not aggrieved and asking for equal time.

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Community Organizing Better than Small-town Mayoring

By Martin Gottlieb | Friday, September 5, 2008, 04:37 PM

At the Republican convention, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin disparaged Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer. They might now say that they didn’t mean to disparage the work itself, but to disparage it as a qualification for president, compared to being mayor of a small town. But it came off as sheer scorn, mockery, and it was widely reported that way. And the delegates seemed to eat it up, though sometimes what one sees and hears on television in the way of crowd responses can be misleading.

In truth, Barack Obama’s decision, upon finishing Harvard Law School, to be a community organizer, rather than take up life in a Republican law firm, was nothing in the world but admirable. He was putting his use of the law to work in behalf of a community on the south side of Chicago that had been hit by the closing of steel mills and that had had plenty of problems before that.

If you know that certain people hold such work in contempt, you have an insight into their political souls.

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Definitely don’t miss the Peace Prize event

By Ellen Belcher | Friday, September 5, 2008, 01:22 PM

On Aug. 28, NPR’s Morning Edition had a fascinating report on Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was given 45 years ago that day.

Taylor Branch, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning “America in the King Years” trilogy and the winner of this year’s Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award, was interviewed. Recalling all the things that people got wrong that day — the expectation was that blacks would riot — Branch noted that “many newspapers, including The Washington Post, didn’t even mention his (King’s) speech in their coverage the next day.”

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Dumbest Moment at Either Convention?

By Martin Gottlieb | Friday, September 5, 2008, 11:41 AM

What was the dumbest moment at either convention? The competition is steep.

Here’s one nomination:

Mitt Romney’s fantastical speech about how Washington is now under liberal control. He was absolutely not talking about the Congress in the wake of the 2006 election. He talked about the Supreme Court being liberal. (Really. He did.)

He said the whole place is liberal. He said the country needs change “from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.” And let’s “throw out the liberal government in Washington and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

Wow.

(Among the odd things here is that he is suggesting that John McCain is more conservative — that is, a more orthodox Republican — than George W. Bush.)

Other nominations for the dumbest moment being accepted.

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Conventional Observations

By Martin Gottlieb | Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 06:07 PM

You’re in good company:

Know where John McCain and Barack Obama were during the Republican convention, at least at first? Right: In Ohio.

Not your average Joe:

I’ve always liked Joe Lieberman. Thoughtful, independent, skeptical of the dogma enforcers among the Democrats, usually pretty close to right. For my money, he lived up to this billing for much of his pro-McCain speech at the convention.

Moreover, his denunciation of mindless, hard-core partisanship was more creditable, more meaningful than most, because he was risking his Senate committee chairmanship by ticking off the Democrats.

He was OK until he got to the subject of the vice presidency.

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Paid sick days — can we compromise?

By Ellen Belcher | Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 04:10 PM

Gov. Ted Strickland is trying to broker a compromise between unions and businesses that are arguing about whether Ohio should require employers to give seven days of paid sick leave each year.

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