Republican governors are all crazy extremists

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Okay, that's an oversimplification -- but it's not far from the truth. As Nate Silver shows, crunching data, there just aren't any moderate Republican governors anymore:

Unlike for the Democrats, there is almost no ideological diversity within the group: essentially all of the current Republican governors are quite conservative, taking moderate positions on at most one or two issues. Also unlike the Democrats, there is no correlation between the ideology of the governors and the ideology of the states. Whether you have a Republican governor in a fairly liberal state like Maine, a moderate state like Ohio, or a conservative one like Idaho, his agenda is likely to be highly conservative.

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This is unusual behavior. Politics 101 would suggest that you need to be at least somewhat responsive to voters in your state. And American political parties in particular are traditionally broad-based coalitions that tolerate a fair amount of intellectual and ideological diversity, especially at the state level. Republicans, of course, are going to try to push policy toward the right and Democrats to the left. But you can go only so far before you get a ticket out of office, so electoral and policy goals remain in some degree of balance.

The new breed of Republican governors run counter to this principle in a way that wasn’t true as recently as a year ago.

The principle no longer really holds for today's Republican Party, which has embraced the far right and seems to be getting more and more extreme all the time, with the extreme now the party's mainstream, a mainstream that, judging by these governors, is deeply unpopular:

So just a year ago, there were plenty of moderate Republican governors — most of them in liberal or moderate states, where they were often quite popular. Now there are almost none...

The unsurprising result is that Republicans now have a group of extremely unpopular governors -- particularly [Rick] Scott of Florida, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, John R. Kasich of Ohio and Paul R. LePage of Maine, all of whom have disapproval ratings exceeding 50 percent. Other Republican governors in crucial swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania also have below-average ratings.

What does it all mean? Well, we'll have to see. Perhaps voters will reject this extremism, and perhaps defeat will bring state Republicans back to the center.

What is clear, though, is that what is happening at the state level is a reflection of what is happening nationally, namely, the right-wing radicalization of the Republican Party.

And it's only getting worse.

Governor Chris Christie should run for President, New Jersey doesn't want him anymore

By Richard K. Barry

I really dislike New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie. There is just something about the smugness of the man that drives me crazy. He's a shill for big business and the wealthy, he has no use for working people and yet he tries hard to put himself across as an "everyman," standing up for the average taxpayer. On top of that, he's a bully. Yeah, quite the guy.

As you might imagine, I was not at all troubled by news today of a poll reported by Bloomberg indicating that:

more than half of New Jersey resident's say they wouldn't back Governor Christie for a second term, disapproving of his choices on a range of policy and personal issues, from killing a commuter tunnel to using a state-police helicopter to attend his son's baseball game.

An absolutely delicious part of the poll was the finding that:

Teachers, whose union Christie has targeted on tenure, pay and benefits, received a far higher favorable rating, 76 percent, than the first term Republican. His favorable rating was 43 percent, according to a Bloomberg New Jersey poll conducted June 20-23.

The poll found that 58 percent of New Jersey residents disagree with Christie's decision not to extend a surcharge on the state's highest earning taxpayers and that 65 percent oppose eduction spending reductions. 68 percent said they believe that Christie stands with the business community compared to 22 percent who said that he sides with "ordinary New Jerseyans."

You get the drift.

As I wrote yesterday in a discussion about the poor approval rating of Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott, the 2012 federal elections aren't just going to be a plebiscite on how well Obama is managing the economy. They will also be a plebiscite on the alternative that Republicans have to offer. Increasingly, it would seem that the newly elected class of GOP governors, with their executive authority, are giving people a pretty good idea of what they could expect from a Republican president, Senate and House. So far, it looks like voters might have concerns about that outcome.

Great to see Christie get a boot in the ass.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Florida Governor Rick Scott's "tough love" not so popular - are we surprised?

By Richard K. Barry

Quick update here on the woeful performance of Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida, at least by the standards of current approval ratings. Yes, the New York Times reported today that Scott has the lowest approval of any governor in the country. What a distinction!

Not surprisingly, when asked about his 29 percent approval rating in a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in May, he said, "I don't think about it." Well, he might want to start.

As the Times reports:

His negative rating has soared from 22 percent in February shortly after he entered office to 57 percent, suggesting that the more Floridians get to know him, the less they like him.

No matter how this may impact him whenever he has to face the voters again, the real issue could be what it does to federal races in Florida in 2012.

The Times story continues:

Mr. Scott's sinking popularity has Republican politicians and some strategists worried that his troubles could hamper their chances of tilting the state's 29 electoral votes back into their column in 2012. President Obama won Florida by 2.8 percentage points in 2008.

Republican Senate and House candidates are also worrying, strategists say, that the governor's rapidly declining popularity will affect their chances of winning election.

Mr. Scott's unpopularity is mostly rooted in his aggressive push for large cuts in the budget and pubic-sector work force, his decision to reject $2.4 billion in federal money for a high speed rail project, and the dismissive and even abrasive way he deals with those who disagree with him or ask a lot of questions.

He also promised to create many jobs, and it has been the mantra of his tenure so far. But the state's unemployment rate, down from a high of 11.9 percent, is still at 10.6 percent.

And, of course, the Republican push at the federal level to "re-tool" Medicare can't help politicians at the local level in a state with so many elderly residents.

Here's the thing. Karl Rove and other GOP spinners want to argue that unless the economy substantially improves by 2012, which now seems unlikely, Obama is toast. But it does seem to me that at the local level (props to Tip O'Neill), the Republican governors who are inflicting all the pain better have a lot to show for it by the time the polls open again, or voters could decide to go with the president and the party that have at least tried to help and haven't been such pricks about it.

Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan are all states with relatively new and precariously perched Republican governors. There are a lot of electoral votes there that could go either way and not a few interesting House and Senate races. We'll see who pays the most for a poor economy in 2012.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Will new Republican governors be a drag on GOP chances in 2012?

By: R.K. Barry

A quick scan of approval ratings for new Republican governors would certainly suggest that they have not come out of the gate strongly. Here are a few headlines that appeared over the past four or five weeks.

• Florida Governor Would Lose Do-over Election, Poll Says
• Can Ohio's John Kasich Win Back Voters?
• Poll: Pennsylvania Voters Regret Choosing Gov. Tom Corbett
• New Poll Finds Michiganders Wishing They Had Voted for Bernero
• Scott Walker's Approval Takes a Hit in Wake of Protest

We all know that polls come and go and it is a long time before the 2012 elections, but if the direction these governors have chosen remains unpopular, it can't help but have an impact on the federal election in a year and half.

As for the presidential election, Florida and Ohio are certainly interesting as they have gone back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in the last three election cycles. Wisconsin was a razor thin win for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 before going big for Obama in 2008. Pennsylvania and Michigan were fairly narrow Democratic wins in 2000 and 2004 before Obama took them by a more comfortable margin. Bottom line is that these are all the kinds of states Republicans would have to look at if they hope to regain the White House.

As for House races, it could make things quite volatile.

As I say, early days, but if this is about direction and the electorate's displeasure with rather dramatic ideological shifts at the state level, a lot of things could happen.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost)