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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable
06.29 Thinking about Climate
06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN
06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare
06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
06.22 Thinking about Recoveries
06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo
06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care
06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform
06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage
06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right
06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity
06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail
06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership
06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"
06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins
06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program
06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black
06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?
06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?
06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory
06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"
07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure
06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq
06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release
06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War
06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future
06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
06.14 Fear Rules
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America
06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean
06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New
06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'
06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil
06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran
06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections
06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters
06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead
POLITICAL COMMENTARY:
Republicans Running as Democrats
Desperate to hold on to Congress amid declining polls, enveloping scandals and the deeply unpopular Iraq war, Republicans are trying a new tactic in 2006.
They are running as Democrats.
Around the U.S., suspiciously recent converts are showing up as Democrats in races for the House and the Senate.
Regardless of where they live, these newcomer Dems tend to share a few arresting characteristics. They switched from Republican to Democrat in 2005, often late in 2005. Their switch was quiet and without fanfare. The switch took place without vocal protest or attack from the national Republican Party. They immediately or soon declared intention of running for office as Democrats. Even in a heated election year, their candidacies have not drawn attacks or accusations of treason, betrayal or other name-calling typically beloved by the great noise machine. Often they have functioned in their respective elections as spoilers of a Democratic candidate or of a Democratic primary, and predictably they have chosen to run in a district or state either predominately Democratic or trending away from the GOP.
Self-funded, Rales is pouring millions into a television ad campaign in which he speaks forcefully although broadly against the Iraq war. Polling at 7 percent, he is given no chance of winning the primary against leading candidates Kweisi Mfume and Ben Cardin.
Rales has, however, received favorable media treatment from the rightwing Washington Times and Wall Street Journal. If he chose to run as a third candidate after losing the primary, he would benefit GOP Senate nominee Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in a state where Democrats hold the advantage in party registration.
Calling a candidate like this Democratic is like calling the wooden horse Trojan.
Attempts to spoil a primary election do not always work. Lawyer and Iraq war veteran Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania District 8 staved off a run by a former Republican Bucks County Commissioner who recently switched parties. But for people with little time to research their candidates, media hype against incumbents in general benefits spoilers as much as it benefits genuine alternative candidates. And sometimes the switchers switch back. In Washington state, Warren E. Hanson, a fisherman who switched to Democrat to run against Senator Patty Murray in 2004, is now running in the 2006 GOP primary. Nor do switchers for local office always enjoy a happy ending. Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, was a longtime Republican who switched to run for mayor in a vacant Democratic position.
Some party switchers, of course, owe their conversion to the Iraq war. Of these, the most famous is Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb, a Vietnam veteran and voice for the Scotch Irish who recently switched parties and defeated Harris Miller in the Democratic primary. Webb has been restrained on the campaign trail, but Republican incumbent Sen. George Allen, son of a famous football coach, is aggressively running against himself anyway.
Florida has had its share of apparent party switchers, rather than genuine converts, in the past. The 2004 election in District 5 was influenced by a ringer. And local can become national in a hurry, when it really matters. Theresa LePore, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach County in 2000, was a Republican who had switched to Democrat, her county majority, only shortly before playing her role in regard to those butterfly ballots.
Caveat emptor. Seeming moderates who repudiate ideology but not corporate cronyism, recent converts who show no sign of ethical conversion, and candidates who have never before supported the causes of their new party should be weighed with caution.
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This story was published on September 3, 2006.
