KyKurmudgeon

Today’s column:

This and that, the Derby hangover edition:

During his last bid for re-election, Democrats turned Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning’s propensity for odd comments and behavior into an issue that evoked questions about his health.

But none of his 2004 words or deeds pegged the weird-meter the way he did last week when he encouraged his friend and protege, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, to form an exploratory committee for the 2010 Senate election while continuing to insist that he is in that same race to stay.

Several observers in Washington and back here in Kentucky took it as a signal that the Hall of Fame pitcher recognizes the time to bring in a reliever has arrived and that he would hand the ball over to Grayson at some point, probably in the near future.

That may well be the case, because the only other explanation that comes to mind assumes a level of crafty deception he has never displayed in the past. But what the heck. Let’s roll it out there anyway, just in case an old dog has learned a new trick or two.

Bunning knows Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans don’t think he can win in 2010. He knows they think Grayson gives the party its best hope for retaining his Senate seat. He knows they know Grayson won’t run against him, so they will keep looking for someone to take him on in the primary if he doesn’t show signs of handing the ball to Grayson.

Is Bunning sly enough to get Grayson warming up in the bullpen just to keep other potential candidates out of the primary for now, or perhaps even until after the filing deadline?

Who knows? We are talking about Jim Bunning. So, maybe neither explanation works. He isn’t planning to leave the game, and he isn’t trying to outfox McConnell. Maybe he’s just being Jim Bunning, who sometimes does odd things.

                                                  * * *

Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat last week made it even more critical for McConnell to keep Bunning’s seat in the R column.

With McConnell as their leader, Senate Republicans went through a disastrous election cycle in 2008. Sure, much of the blame belongs to former President George W. Bush and his now-rejected policies. But McConnell kept Senate R’s joined at the hip with the worst president in memory to the end.

Now, with Specter’s defection and a win by Al Franken, who still leads in that disputed Minnesota race, Democrats can achieve a filibuster-proof majority on most issues, thus greatly diminishing McConnell’s ability to influence legislation or stall judicial confirmation proceedings.

If he can’t deliver in his own state by holding on to Bunning’s seat, it will be seen as a further sign of political weakness on his part. And leaders who are perceived as weak don’t remain leaders very long.

                                                   * * *

“This is not a national story,” McConnell said after Specter’s switch. “This is a Pennsylvania story about his inability to be renominated by the Republican Party or be elected as an independent.”
McConnell also said, “I do not accept that we are going to be a regional party.”

But it is a national story because it reflects a political reality that suggests the Republican Party is in danger of becoming a regional party.

Recent polls indicate that less than a quarter of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, and the brand of the party of Lincoln no long plays all that well outside the South.

That can happen to a party that practices the politics of exclusion.

Today’s column:

FRANKFORT — You know it’s coming, just as surely as you know where to look for sunrise in the morning and sunset in the evening.

If you’ve spent much time around General Assembly sessions in recent years, you feel a sense of inevitability as the days dwindle down toward that precious moment of adjournment sine die.

At times, when the Babel-esque cacophony of a session’s final days fades to a level no greater than the roar of a jet engine five feet from your ear, you may even hear a warning sound.

Ticking. The clatter of two sets of wheels approaching each other on one set of tracks. Whatever atmospheric disturbance a giant meteor might make just before colliding with our world.

Yes, you know the bomb will go off, the trains will wreck and the worlds of the Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic-controlled House will collide in a way that produces a hostage-taking, bill-killing standoff. You just don’t know when or over what.

The preliminaries have begun. Tuesday, for instance, House Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark threatened to kill his one of his own bill if a Senate committee voted to approve a substitute version that he found objectionable.

That incident came just moments after Rep. Reginald Meeks said in a House committee meeting that one of his bills was being held hostage in an attempt to influence his vote on an “informed consent” abortion measure. Meeks’ vote against the bill produced an 8-8 tie that kept the measure from getting out of committee.

“I was told action in one committee would depend on action in the other committee,” Meeks said later. “And I am not going to have my vote held hostage.”

Asked how he would have voted if he had not felt pressured, Meeks replied, “We will not know, will we?”

But those minor eruptions barely charted on the legislative seismograph, which has grown accustomed to having its needle pegged almost annually by end-of-session explosions.

And truth be told, even those of us who would love to see a harmonious, We Are the World session that produces real tax reform, a serious commitment to education from pre-school to post-secondary, an economic development policy that creates jobs rather than renting them on a temporary basis, an end to the scourge of mountaintop removal mining, an energy policy that reduces the state’s carbon footprint instead of increasing it and, oh yeah, at least three foolproof cures for the common cold will be at least slightly disappointed if the tradition doesn’t continue this year.

After all, these stare-downs do have a certain entertainment value for observers.

To be sure, it may be sick entertainment. But then, sick entertainment seems appropriate because, over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the adage comparing lawmaking to sausage-making gives sausage an exceptionally bum rap.

For all its unhealthful effects on our bodies, the end result of the sausage-making process taste goods. Too often, the end result of the lawmaking process leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

So far, this session has been long on bipartisan cooperation and short on confrontation. And it could end that way.

But with time running out and significant issues still unresolved, you won’t find many who would bet the sweetness continues.

One potentially explosive issue is education assessment. The fact that it was designated Senate Bill 1 reflects its importance to Republican leaders of that chamber.

But Senate efforts to change the assessment process have been resisted by House Democrats in past years. While the House seems more receptive to the idea this year, the two chambers could still clash over the details.

Whatever the cause, though, you know it’s coming. It almost always does.

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On Monday, President Barack Obama ended limits on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research and welcomed science back to the White House after an eight-year forced exile.

While stem-cell research has the potential for producing cures for a multitude of diseases and injuries, my personal hope is that it one day may find a way to keep our senior moments from becoming the Alzheimer’s that stripped my mother of her dignity in her final years.

1. For the past two years, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell used the threat of filibuster based on the 49 votes in his caucus to great advantage. Those votes gave him considerable power to influence any and all legislation passing through Congress. But passage of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package late last week was a clear indication that the next two years will not be nearly as much fun for McConnell. Now, that Republicans occupy just 41 Senate seats, all it takes for Democrats to get the 60 votes they need to cut off a filibuster is to lure a few moderate Republicans over to their side on any given issue. It happened on the stimulus package, and it will happen again. As University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato told McClatchy’s Halimah Abdullah, “McConnell is in a terrible position. The Democrats have a hand full of aces. He has a bunch of twos.” That must be more painful to McConnell than having fellow Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning ignore the pressure to not seek re-election.

2. With Democrat Mike Reynolds’ defeat of Republican J. Michael Hughes in the 32nd District last week, Senate President David Williams is now tied 1-1 with Gov. Steve Beshear in seeing hand-picked candidates lose special state Senate elections. Maybe they both ought to let their respective party’s candidate selection process work without interference in the future.

3. Tuesday’s Save the Mountains rally, which drew about 800 opponents of mountaintop removal mining to the steps of the state Capitol, featured several creative signs such as “Hey King Coal Hold the Toxins I Take My Water Plain” and “470 Mountains Missing in Action.” My favorite, though, was “Topless Mountains Are Obscene.”

Noting that her Eastern Kentucky roots go back at least eight generations, featured speaker Ashley Judd told the crowd, “I’m very proud to be a hillbilly.” The activist actress also called the mountains “my spiritual home” and said it was the love of that home that “brings us to this place of power where we shall speak truth to power.”

“I screwed up.” - President Barack Obama.

Someone sure screwed up in vetting the appointments of former Sen. Tom Daschle as health and human services secretary and Nancy Killefer for the new post of chief performance officer. Embarrassing tax issues were missed in both instances. And since the buck stops at the top, Obama accepted responsibility for the screw up in a series of interviews Tuesday.

It was a refreshing admission by a chief executive, particularly coming as it did after an eight-year presidency in which the occupant of the Oval Office seemed incapable of stringing those three little words together. And with the Daschle and Killefer nominations withdrawn, Obama’s acknowledgement of his mistake may quiet the controversy over tax gaffes and allow his administration to move forward.

But one troubling fact remains. Someone among Obama’s folks screwed up in vetting Timothy Geithner’s tax situation, too. But he got confirmed as treasury secretary anyway, which makes me wonder if about 60 members of the Senate should step forward and join Obama in saying, “I screwed up” on that one, too.

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Leftovers from a transformational national election that bypassed Kentucky:

After Bruce Lunsford gave Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a scare in the closing days of the fall campaign, some Democrats may be playing the “what if” game.

As in: What if U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler or state Auditor Crit Luallen had been the party’s candidate instead of the baggage-laden multimillionaire Louisville businessman?

But Democrats who let their minds wander in that direction ignore several important points.

At the time Chandler and Luallen opted out of the race last year, McConnell appeared farstronger than the vulnerable incumbent he became down the stretch.

And even though both Chandler and Luallen could have expected considerable help from national Democrats, it’s questionable they could have raised the kind of money Lunsford pulled out of his pockets and invested in his own campaign. It was that investment up front that put Lunsford in position to be competitive when the collapse of the financial markets put McConnell at greatest risk.

Of course, if this year’s events could have been foreseen, national Democratic organizations likely would have made sure either Chandler or Luallen had the kind of big bucks Lunsford spent on his own.

And under those circumstances, either of the two would have had a better shot at taking McConnell down because each feels far more love from the Democratic base than Lunsford does.

But absent that foresight, Chandler or Luallen might not have been able to make the kind of up-front investment necessary to be in position to take advantage when McConnell became vulnerable.

                                                         * * *

All of that said, if Lunsford had won, it would have been in spite of the campaign he ran rather than because of it.

From the outset, his was a campaign of blown opportunities, starting with his failure to make Issue No. 1 of his pitch to the public McConnell’s joined-at-the-hip relationship with the most unpopular American president in the history of polling.

Lunsford should have pounded that issue on the stump and in his ads every day from Day One. He didn’t do a good job of that.

Then, when the financial markets tanked, McConnell’s vote for a $700 million bailout should have become Issue No. 2, again pounded into the public’s consciousness on a daily basis.

Even McConnell acknowledged, in a post-election media conference call, “It was the biggest issue in the country, but it was not the biggest issue in (Kentucky) people making up their minds.”

Of course, it wasn’t — because Lunsford never exploited it. Instead, he hemmed and hawed for weeks before taking a semi-firm position on the bailout.

Finally, when McConnell’s buddy Sen. Ted Stevens was convicted on seven felony counts, Issue No. 3  pounded on a daily basis should have been the numerous summer vacations McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao spent visiting Stevens in Alaska.

Lunsford’s response consisted of about three e-mail statements to the media. If a single ad aired on the McConnell-Stevens connection, I didn’t see it.

Three easily exploitable issues became three big-time blown opportunities.

In a wrap-up of Sen. Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaign, Sharon Cohen of the Associated Press described the scene in the middle of the September financial collapse when Obama staffers heard Sen. John McCain utter words he must certainly now regret: “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

Campaign manager David Plouffe and communications director Dan Pfeiffer knew immediately what they had, and the ad folks were at work within an hour on a spot that aired the next day depicting McCain as out of touch.

That’s the difference between winning campaigns and losing ones. Winners have instant “Aha!” moments. Losers never have them at all.

                                                        * * *

One of the bigger losers in Tuesday’s election wasn’t even on the ballot.

Kentucky Democrats underperformed at all levels, while the state’s Republicans defended well in a year when their national counterparts were taking their lumps. Nowhere was that more evident than in state legislative races.

In the federal races, a Democratic win would have been considered an upset. But the Democrats expected to pick up one Senate seat and had an outside chance at another. And they expected to add a handful of seats to their House majority.

Instead, the Senate numbers didn’t change at all. And House Democrats had a net pickup of one.

Since Gov. Steve Beshear’s party was unable to budge the numbers at all in an uncooperative Republican-controlled Senate, he has to be considered one of Tuesday’s losers.

                                                         * * *

Carroll Hubbard, the former U.S. representative who was convicted on several felony counts and sentenced to three years in prison in the 1990s, needs to give up his quest for political redemption. It ain’t gonna happen.

Exit polls showed a substantial majority of voters thought Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is unqualified to be president, while a larger majority felt Sen. Joe Biden is qualified. Instead of helping Sen. John McCain, she proved to be a drag on his campaign. He made a rash choice in the selection of his running mate, and it cost him.

This public recognition that Palin isn’t up to the nation’s top job should give pause to those Republicans who have begun suffering from the delusion that she is the future of their party.

A majority of Americans voted for change Tuesday, but not a majority of Kentuckians. Voters in Kentucky voted for more of the same. They voted more of the same in the presidential race by backing John McCain. They voted for more of the same in the U.S. House and Senate, and more of the same in the state House and Senate. Sure, a couple of state House seats flipped parties and the Democrats added one vote to its majority. But that still amounts to more of the same.

As a result, Kentuckians will get more of the same from the folks they sent to Washington and Frankfort. In Washington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ability to obstruct progress may be tempered a bit by increased Democratic majority. But the lack of change in Frankfort suggests continued dysfunction in the General Assembly. Who can be happy about that?

After taking Wednesday morning to go over the results of the election and try to figure out what those results mean, I’ll be posting some thoughts on the outcome between 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m Wednesday. I’ll also be monitoring any comments that come in and responding to those comments. If you have a chance to visit the KyKurmudgeon blog during that period, please share your thoughts as well.

If you have voted already, I applaud you. If you haven’t voted already, stop reading blogs and go take advantage of the great privilege you have as an American. Help choose your next president, your U.S. senator, your U.S. representative, your state House and Senate members, your judges and other local officials. The blogs will be here when you return. For now, though, GO VOTE!!!!

Sunday’s column:

FRANKFORT — Lately, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s main argument for re-election to a fifth term has gone something like this:

“I have seniority. As minority floor leader, I have a place at the table when the decisions are made and the clout to bring home the bacon. Don’t trade all of that away for a rookie.”

OK, McConnell would never utter “minority” in front of “floor leader.” That would remind him he didn’t achieve his dream (and maybe never will) of becoming “majority” floor leader. But the rest of those words represent his basic pitch to Kentucky voters in recent weeks.

However, even if he survives Democrat Bruce Lunsford’s challenge Tuesday, McConnell may well find his clout has been greatly diminished when he returns to Washington in January. And his presence at the table, if he still has a place there, could be ignored when the serious discussions occur.

This election shapes up as a real downer for Republicans. Even before Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens got convicted on seven felony counts, Democrats were talking about winning a filibuster- and veto-proof majority in the Senate. The conviction of Stevens, a good buddy of McConnell’s, improves that possibility.

Republican prospects look so grim the party’s national committee recently secured a $5 million line of credit to help several embattled Republican incumbents, including McConnell.

If the Democrats succeed in attaining 60 votes (with the help of a couple of independents),  McConnell’s relevance takes a huge hit. Even if the Democrats (aided by those independents) get a majority in the high 50s, they may be able to get most anything they want done by picking up a vote or two from moderate Republicans.

Despite his seniority and his position of leadership, McConnell might not fare as well as a rookie would under these two scenarios, particularly a rookie who helps put the Democrats in that position.

Exhibits A and B for that argument are U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and John Yarmuth, who both had more influence with their party leaders than normal for freshmen because they flipped Republican seats and helped retake the House for Democrats.

If Lunsford succeeds in doing a Tom Daschle number on McConnell, he can expect Democratic Senate leaders to greet his arrival in Washington like the return of the prodigal son.

McConnell’s argument also rests on the assumption that his fellow Republicans retain him as their leader. But it was on his watch that  Republican fortunes declined so much that he and several of his colleagues are now at risk.

When the head lemming takes the pack over the cliff and into the rough seas Republican senators expect to experience Tuesday, some of the survivors might start thinking about new leadership — understandably so.

Should that happen, McConnell would become one of the more irrelevant members of Congress, a rejected former leader sent to the back benches by members of his own minority party.

Senority? Minority leadership status that earns him a place at the table? Clout to bring home the bacon?

Desperate arguments by an incumbent whose 24 years in Washington have been totally devoted to the accumulation of personal power and who now faces the prospect of seeing some or all of that power slip away even if he wins on Tuesday.