Bill Quick wrote this today:
The reason Republicans have problems in maintaining a hold on power - the kind of hold the Democrats maintained for decades - is that if the public must be bribed with pork in order to keep re-electing them, then they will end up annoying a significant chunk of their own base, which doesn't like pork, and that chunk will eventually desert their party in disgust for an election cycle or two.
No such impediment holds back Democrats, because a primary identifier of the Democratic base is that it loves pork, the more, the better.
He then makes clear in a comment that "too many Republicans think [that] is true. I'm not absolutely sure that it is, though."
Is it true? Is it politically necessary for Republicans to "pay off" at least some of their voters in order to retain power?
I know this much: Ernest Hollings held a Democratic Senate seat in my state from 09 Nov 1966 to 03 Jan 2005—38 straight years—despite unceasing efforts to unseat him, particularly since SC began to go solidly Republican in the 80s. It would be easy to argue that, had he not retired last year at the age of 81, he'd still be there, in spite of being in the pockets of interests such as the RIAA and MPAA as badly as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Prostitute) ever was, and showing public disdain on a regular basis for the voters who gave him his job.
He often said things like:
Some time ago, Eastman Kodak brought a case against Fuji for dumping photographic paper in the United States--at 360 percent below cost! As a result, we will soon dedicate a $200 million Fuji facility in Greenwood, S.C. Protectionism not only saves jobs, it creates new ones.
...and few voters held him accountable, certainly too few to add him to SC's unemployment rolls. He said—and did—some really outrageous things that I, conveniently, now can't remember the details of. I was so incensed at him at times that I was sure he would be turned out of office next time around, but he, like Robert Byrd (D-Exalted Cyclops) of W.Va., always managed re-election, and for one primary reason: he brought home the bacon, and did so by the truckload.
Even as Bob Inglis soundly defeated incumbent Democrat Liz Patterson for SC's 4th district House seat in 1992 by promising to accept no PAC money and fight all pork spending, even when said spending would benefit his own district, Hollings slid to re-election on rails he greased slithery with pork fat.
Now, maybe there were other factors involved. Maybe, after a Senate career spanning five decades, he was such an institution, kind of like senior Republican Senator Strom Thurmond (R-Precambrian), that people just seemed to think he deserved to be returned to Washington despite his performance. I mean, ol' Strom just wanted to make it to age 100 in the Senate, knowing that his record might just stand forever, and there were a lot of people who loved him enough to ignore the abundant signs that he was simply no longer nearly capable of doing the job justice and give him that, as a gift. Maybe that was part of the equation that kept Hollings in office as well. But plain, simple, old-fashioned pork was the biggest reason he stayed in office—pretty much for as long as he wanted to stay, it seemed.
Dave Gamble, who recently retired (temporarily, I hope) from blogging, was quoted on Instapundit today, and emailing him about that is how I came to know that he recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Columbus (OH) Dispatch that went thusly:
On October 21st, the U.S. Senate voted on an amendment introduced by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma that would have amended the Highway Funding Bill to re-direct more than $400 million dollars from building a pair of bridges in Alaska, one of which is commonly referred to as “The Bridge to Nowhere” because it leads to an island having all of 50 inhabitants, to help in the enormously expensive proposition to re-build the Gulf Coast.
Ohio has two Senators, one of whom likes to trumpet his belief in governmental fiscal responsibility. This Senator “feels the pain” of the people to the degree that he was literally brought to tears over the idea of sending John Bolton to the UN as America’s ambassador. This Senator apparently doesn’t feel enough of our pain, however, to vote in favor of rescinding over $400 million of wasteful spending in favor of re-building the devastated Gulf Coast.
This Senator has a web site, where one can find the following quote:
“Throughout his distinguished career in service to the people of Ohio, U.S. Senator George Voinovich has strived to make government work harder and smarter and do more with less."
Senator George Voinovich, you are a fraud.
Amen. But the thing is that Ernest Hollings didn't attempt to portray himself as an opponent of wasteful spending. He rather seemed to celebrate it, to wear it as a badge of honor. He reveled in the fact that he could return more to SC citizens than they paid in taxes. To be sure, no one but his opponents ever called it "pork," but he and everyone else knew that's exactly what it was, and it was just fine with them. Perhaps he couldn't have won a House seat in the more-conservative Upstate, but he had ample votes in the Low Country (region of the state) to make up for any he lost over silly "principles" like cutting wasteful spending.
My point is that principle never won out over self-interest when it came to Ernest Hollings' Senate career, and although national attitudes might be changing somewhat, I fear that creeping Socialism is here to stay. Pork is just a manifestation of Socialism, and let's face it—people like Socialism. They like getting cool stuff that other people had to pay for, as long as they can rationalize to themselves that they deserve it.
And there will forever be an endless supply of politicians willing to tell them just that.
I'm starting to understand a little better why people like Dave gave up.
(Thanks to Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette for the Open Post.)
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