Mark French and the myth of the crossover voter

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Jul 09, 2010 at 17:21:07 PM MST

For starters, it's pretty narcissistic to begin with when you claim you're the candidate who'd legislate according to Biblical principles - that is, you speak for God - so it isn't much of a surprise that French blames everyone but himself for his defeat: voter fraud, crossover votes, liberal conspiracies, etc & company. I guess God was busy on election day.

Whatever.

Still, this isn't the first time I saw crossover mentioned as a cause for Republican primary election results. I'm not sure what the basis for the accusation is - the only factual or statistical evidence supporting it is that the number of voters participating in the Democratic primary shrank in 2010 compared to 2008, and the number participating in the GOP primary rose. For example, in Yellowstone county, 19,218 votes for Democratic House candidates were cast in 2008 (pdf) as opposed to 8,925 in 2010; in contrast, 11,071 Yellowstone county votes were counted in the 2008 GOP House primary compared to 22,510 in 2010.

Of course, it was the Democratic primary that had all the pull in 2008, as the Democratic presidential nomination was still in play when Montanans headed to the polls that day. Which suggests that independents and Republicans crossed over to vote in the '08 Democratic primary - despite French's assertions that no "moral conservative" would so such a thing. And in 2010, voter enthusiasm greatly favored Republicans, which probably explains the reversed numbers in primaries this year. State voter turnout numbers support that theory, too, as conservative counties generally had higher turnout than liberal counties. Missoula - after posting very high turnout numbers in the 2006 and 2008 primary and general elections - posted an anemic and state-low 20.59 percent voter turnout.

And even if crossover accounted for the swinging election numbers, it probably didn't have any effect. It was Hillary Clinton, you remember, who Rush Limbaugh urged Republican voters to vote for in Democratic primaries...yet Obama won easily in Montana in the 2008 primary. And while John Driscoll won the Democratic nomination for House over Jim Hunt - an actual real, live candidate - Bob Kelleher's equally baffling victory for the GOP Senate nomination in a primary election no self-respecting Democratic voter would have participated in suggests there was something else at play other than malicious crossover voting.

The fact is that most people take their votes seriously. If they cross over, it's because they feel strongly about a particular race, and they do their best to fill in their ballots responsibly. The absolute and final proof of voters' good nature is Mark French himself. After all, if liberal voters crossed over to the Republican primary to maliciously wreak havoc in the Republican camp, it's the self-aggrandizing buffoon and extremist candidate they would have voted for as the much weaker opponent in the general election. If mean-spirited liberals had voted en masse in the Republican primary, Mark French would have won his party's nomination for Congress.

Centrism, Pragmatism, and Honest Public Service, oh my!

by: Jay Stevens

Fri May 28, 2010 at 07:44:15 AM MST

"Depth," indeed. The party expends 478 words reassuring the party faithful that it's working to ensure that the group does not "implicate" the Montana GOP, and tracing the ads and a related PAC to Republican state senator, Jon Brueggeman.

You may ask, what's so loathsome about the group that Montana Republicans are working so hard to distance themselves from its message?

Well, according to retired House member, Amory Houghton, Mainstreet Advocacy stands for "honest public service." Congressman Tom Davis says Mainstreet Advocacy is "committed to a centrist and pragmatic agenda for the 21st century....Instead of focusing on divisive social issues, Mainstreet advocacy focuses on finding real-world solutions to the complex challenges facing our nation today." On the group's "About" page, its values are "fiscal responsibility, limited government, individual liberties and a belief in the power of free markets and free people," and its mission is "to reach out to independents, disaffected Democrats, centrists, suburbanites and young voters. To do so we must offer pragmatic, common sense solutions to the complex challenges facing our country today."

You know, brrrrrrr! Terrifying!

All this, of course, reminds me of AJ Otjen's candidacy for US House. From the Great Falls Tribune summary of the Republican candidates:

She said she believes there are many moderate Republicans who are fed up with the divisive rhetoric that has permeated the party in recent years. She said she is running in hope of returning the party to its practical, fiscally responsible roots, as opposed to focusing on divisive social issues.

"I think I'm a real Republican because I'm practical," Otjen said. "I would like to think Republicans are practical, and I'm trying to have a look toward the future and how to come up with solutions to get us to where we all want to be. We've got to have two reasonable parties working together for good government."

Compare that to, say, Mark French - obviously a big fan of Glenn Beck - who sees "socialism coming at us like a freight train," and who wants us "to look in the eyes of our dead veterans" to tell them "you're not going to do anything about what's coming at us..." Yeah! Like the GI Bill or VA hospitals...er...wait a minute...

Or the state's incumbent gentleman goat farmer, Dennis Rehberg, who's biggest accomplishment so far in the House was the exuberance with which he put his Rubber Stamp to work for the Bush administration's worst excesses - runaway spending, economy-busting deregulation, war, torture. (No wonder he's raised the most money of any House candidate in the state. Rubber Stamps don't come cheap.)

While there's plenty of sniping on the Democratic side of the ticket this year, as the four candidates jostle and jockey for your vote, what's at stake, really, in that race? That race is about who you think would stand the best chance in November, and who you think would make the best representative. It isn't a clash of ideas, really. And certainly not a battle for the future of the party.

But that's exactly what we're seeing in the Republican primary. It's a three-way tug-of-war for the soul of Montana's conservative movement, between Mark French's Bible and Glenn Beck, a do-nothing corporate partisan, and AJ Otjen's promise of pragmatic fiscal conservatism and social libertarianism.

Yes, I hope for the latter. And, yes, it's because I like a lot of what Otjen has to say. Yes, I want someone to work with in Washington DC. Yes, we share some values. But most importantly is that she - unlike her opponents - acknowledges the problems that afflict our country. I don't care how we address climate change, say, as long as we do it. That's why I support cap-and-trade, and I'd support it still, even if paranoid progressives' fears of Wall Street creating a new derivatives market out of pollution permits were true. I don't care if some people make a bajillion dollars from saving the Earth, as long as the Earth is saved.

And that's unlike French, who's obviously living in a fantasy world. He'd use his Congressional seat to proselytize his particular form of Christianity and advance delusional conspiracy theories. Or Rehberg - who's an intelligent man and a decent political player, and who should obviously know climate change is real and that we have a healthcare and jobs crisis in the country, but who still obstructs any meaningful work on those issues purely for political gain.

It's sad, isnt' it? But only in 2010 would Otjen be considered an outsider candidate.

We'll see soon what Montana's Republicans are thinking.

Update: As JC pointed out, Mainstreet Advocacy has pulled funding for ad campaigns in the state, for fear of violating campaign disclosure laws.

Anti-Incumbent Sentiment Hits Home - Rehberg opponent says votes made him an "Enemy of the State"

by: Montana Cowgirl

Thu May 20, 2010 at 05:22:19 AM MST

In Montana, we need look no further for an answer than to the members of Rehberg's own party.  It looks like Republicans are finally catching on to Reherg's duplicity, and they are mad.

Speaking on a Tea Party community television interview, Rehberg opponent Mark French says:

"The incumbent has embraced socialized medicine programs and these types of unconstitutional bills and its killin' us.  If you are going to swear an oath of office you can't be voting for these types of things or you make yourself an enemy of the state."

The comment came after the Tea Party interviewer asked French if we could "role back the budgets to pre-Bush."

It appears that this leading tea-bagger has realized that Rehberg may have voted against the Obama spending, but he voted for every single budget that George Bush put forward. These budgets spent more money than in any eight year period in the history of Congress--creating trillions of dollars of debt. George W. Bush may have been many things, but he was not a fiscal conservative and he and Denny Rehberg spent money like drunken sailors. Rehberg is no conservative. He ran up five trillion dollars worth of deficit.

French also criticizes the Patriot Act and Rehberg's vote in favor of it.  What he doesn't mention in the show, but does appear in his campaign literature, is that Rehberg "the incumbent" voted for the greatest attempt at invasion of privacy the Federal Government has ever made, the Real ID Act, the law which allowed the Federal Government to track americans using a federal ID card that we'd all have to carry.   The State Legislature, including every single Republican, had to step in and pass a law forbidding the state from complying with what their top officeholder, Denny Rehberg, had voted for. (HR 1268, became law 2005.)

The curious case of AJ Otjen

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Apr 28, 2010 at 07:41:49 AM MST

Otjen is a Republican who doesn't talk about tax cuts. In fact, she said tax cuts don't work to jump-start the economy and increase revenues in the long term.

"We've got the data that proves that," she said.

She doesn't talk about abortion, except to say she doesn't think it should be illegal. She thinks the words like "faith and family" that many Republicans use to describe themselves ignore the fact that Democrats love their families, too, and they go to church.

She is running to give voice to those traditional Republicans who do not define themselves by wedge social issues, which might rally the party base but, she says, do little to take on the nation's larger problems.

"I would like to go back to the days when social issues did not dominate the Republican Party," she said.

Likewise on Otjen's website (subtitled, "A Teddy Roosevelt Republican"), her issues page demonstrates how she's different than your typical contemporary Montana Republican: Pro-education. An opponent of "the War on Terror." A fierce advocate of privacy, from the bedroom to boardroom. Against across-the-board tax cuts. A supporter of a Green Economy, but through tax credits and incentives. She supports a tax on high fructose corn syrup. And so on.

A Republican friend noted on Facebook the other day that "Otjen diverges from the GOP on more than social issues - she's for higher taxes, she voted for Obama (and is still a supporter) and supports the recent healthcare bill that passed."

But that's ignoring Otjen's real conservative values. She's a true deficit hawk - you can't erase a deficit by cutting taxes. She favors market solutions to problems - tax incentives and credits to businesses who embrace green tech and reduce carbon, as opposed to a carbon tax. On social issues, it's more accurate to classify her as libertarian than liberal. And supporting the recent health care bill hardly makes you a liberal - the bill, after all, was pretty much written by the Heritage Foundation. Open the insurance market to competition and provide subsidies to those that can't afford premiums. Even the individual mandate is a conservative invention. And if you've been reading this blog and its comments for any length of time, you'll know that supporting Obama doesn't necessarily tarnish your conservative credentials.

In short, Otjen's is what a Republican would look like if a Republican laid aside partisanship and applied pragmatic, conservative values to the very real problems afflicting the nation. The opposite of, say, Dennis Rehberg, who's achieved next to nothing in Congress other than riding along on the wave of GOP support for the worst excesses of the Bush administration: deficit, economic collapse, war, torture.

Otjen is a moderate. And if you think there really is such a thing as the "radical center" just waiting to burst out and shuck off the manacles of party politics, then she should be the leading candidate in this race. But that she's an afterthought in this race, no more highly regarded than, say, Mark French (who wants the US government to run on "Biblical principles" as defined by Mark French), tells us a lot about the current state of Republican politics, which not only lacks for real solutions to global warming, joblessness, and the health care crisis, but fails to even acknowledge those problems exist.

The Republican party has devolved from a political party with policy goals to a group of people clinging onto echo-chamber sound bites, like Titanic survivors to a life raft. And Otjen, who doesn't kow-tow to the rhetoric, will be tossed off into the sea.