Heres why Im voting for Lee Terry for Congress. Let me start by saying that I really like and admire Dan Frei. He ran a heck of a race with few resources in the GOP primary. If he had won, I would have enthusiastically supported Dan. Moreover, I thought the mailers that tried to compare Dan to Obama were offensive and beneath Lee, and I told him so. Since then, I think most are aware that there has been a change in the leadership of Lees campaign (while in no way meaning to imply that I was responsible for this.) But Lee won the primary. And its a mighty unusual situation in which I dont support the winner of the Republican primary. Now let me address the arguments that have been made -- either explicitly or implicitly -- for either voting for Ashford or not voting (or casting a protest vote for a third-party candidate). A primary one is that Lee is a RINO. I dont get this one. Yes, Lee has cast some votes that I dont agree with (and he may well wish he had them back). But he has a 100% rating from the right-to-life groups and a high rating from various economic freedom groups. (I noted yesterday that I dont delegate my evaluation of a candidate to third parties, but I looked at the votes that they rated and they are significant votes.) He votes with the GOP about 95% of the time. There certainly are more conservative and more libertarian Representatives, but my guess is that most of them dont represent districts that Obama carried in 2008. At the bottom, I posted a graph of how Lee grades out. The notion that theres no significant ideological difference between Lee and Ashford does not withstand serious scrutiny. Im actually on quite cordial terms with Brad. Hes thoughtful and bright, but has a terrible habit of trying to straddle issues. A classic is his response on the Affordable Care Act. He supports it but wouldnt have voted for it because it wasnt bi-partisan, but would like to fix it by getting rid of the mandates. Thats essentially what he told the Omaha World-Herald and repeated in the debates. First of all, you either would have voted for it or you wouldnt, and the notion that if Brad had been in Congress in 2009 -- with the Democrats controlling the House -- that he would have told Nancy Pelosi sorry, Im not in unless you can round up some Republicans is pretty laughable. Moreover, the mandates are the chewing gum that hold the thing together. The only way to make people buy something at vastly more than they should pay for it is with a gun to their head (or with a threat of having their legs broken -- a tactic loan sharks have long employed). The implicit argument runs sort of like this. We can do better than Lee, so if we put in Brad for one term well get him out and replace him with a better Republican. First, its far from guaranteed that an incumbent Ashford would get beat in 2016. Presidential election years are generally kinder to Democrats because of the enhanced turnout. Moreover, there will likely be a spirited primary on the GOP side, which will likely give plenty of fodder to an incumbent Ashford. Back of this its better to have one term of Ashford argument is an assumption that the GOP will retain the House, so -- whats the difference? Well heres the difference. Republican House members from swing-ish districts will likely vote with the Democrats more than usual in anticipation of a blockbuster Presidential election (where neither party will have an incumbent). Moreover, every seat ceded to the Democrats in 2014 increases the chances of the Democrats taking the House in 2016. This is exactly what played out in 2008, and the result was the Affordable Care Act. Think hard. ballotpedia.org/File:S010_090.gif
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 18:50:46 +0000
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