Kentucky: Will Dems' Bandwagon Roll Over McConnell?

Mitch McConnell is the architect of the modern Kentucky Republican Party, which went from political afterthought to dominant power in the state between 1984 and 2004. (Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

At the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza writes:

Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher's (R) lopsided defeat at the hands of former Lt. Gov. Steve Beshear (D) last night already has the political community -- both here and in the Bluegrass State -- buzzing about what it all means for the '08 reelection chances of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell's decision to begin running TV ads late this week is sure to fuel talk that he is nervous and getting more so after Fletcher's loss. McConnell is spending roughly $117,000 on the 60-second ad, which The Fix has yet to see. That cost includes 500 gross ratings points (meaning the average viewer will see the ad five times in a week) in the Louisville media market and 600 points in the Lexington market.

As we have noted before, Democrats believe that McConnell's job in Washington is complicating his reelection chances at home, as he is forced to defend policies -- the war in Iraq, immigration reform -- that are non-starters for voters in his home state.

Republicans have retorted that McConnell remains largely in step with his conservative-minded state and, even if that wasn't the case, Democrats don't have a serious recruit on the horizon.

Let's unpack each of those assumptions in light of Beshear's victory yesterday.

On the federal level, Kentucky has favored Republicans -- albeit it narrowly at times -- over the last several elections.

President Bush won the Commonwealth with 56.5 percent in 2000 and increased that margin to 59.5 percent four years later. Former President Bill Clinton did carry Kentucky in 1992 and 1996, but neither time with more than 46 percent of the vote. The three previous presidential elections -- 1988, 1984 and 1980 -- saw the Republican nominee win with 55.5 percent, 60 percent and 49.1 percent, respectively.

Similarly, the last time a Democrat won a Senate race in Kentucky was in 1992, when Sen. Wendell Ford was reelected with 63 percent. In the open-seat race to replace Ford in 1998, Reps. Jim Bunning (R) and Scotty Baesler (D) squared off; after the dust cleared, Bunning had won by just 6,766 votes. Democrats fell short again in 2004 when state Sen. Dan Mongiardo (D) took 49.3 percent of the vote against Bunning.

McConnell, however, has not faced a serious challenge since 1990; he won reelection with 65 percent in 2002, 55 percent in 1996, and 52 percent in 1990.

In the House, however, Democrats have had far more luck so far this decade -- claiming Fletcher's seat in a 2004 special election and defeating Rep. Anne Northup (R) last year.

And on the state level, it is Democrats who have been dominant. Until Fletcher won in 2003, Democrats had held the governor's mansion since 1967 and could well be at the start of another extended run with Beshear's victory last night.

The truth is that Kentucky isn't a swing state, but it's also not a state that is a stone cold lock for the Republican Party either. Fletcher's loss and the narrow wins of Bunning in 1998 and 2004 are better viewed as isolated incidents of candidates inflicting considerable damage on themselves than some sort of broader trend. But Democrats have run competitive races in the past few cycles, and the state's roots are strongly Democratic (until the 1994 GOP sweep, Democrats held four of the state's six House seats).

So does the just-concluded governor's race matter -- if at all -- when it comes to assessing McConnell's chances?

Beshear's win will almost certainly energize the Democratic political establishment and the activist base in the state, and could also provide encouragement for candidates considering the race.

At the top of that list is state Auditor Crit Luallen, who was reelected overwhelmingly to a second term last night, with 59 percent. Luallen visited with officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee earlier this year to talk about a race, and the DSCC has commissioned two polls in the state -- perhaps in an attempt to convince Luallen to take the plunge.

Democratic strategists like Luallen for several reasons, including a compelling personal story -- she has twice battled cancer in recent years -- and believe her tenure in her current post gives her a nice launching pad from which to challenge McConnell. (A recent poll by Research 2000 for the Lexington Herald-Leader showed Luallen trailing McConnell by a 45 percent to 40 percent margin.) One potential hiccup in that plan, however, is that Luallen served as executive secretary in the administration of disgraced Gov. Paul Patton (D) -- a connection Republicans would be sure to make if she decided to challenge McConnell.

Although Luallen appears to be Democrats' first choice, there is also serious talk about a candidacy by Greg Fischer, the CEO of Dant Clayton, which, judging from their Web site -- stadiumbleachers.com, appears to specialize in "stadium and bleacher solutions." Fischer is a political novice but is apparently quite wealthy and might be willing to spend significant funds on a race against McConnell.

State Attorney General Greg Stumbo, wealthy businessman Charlie Owen and Andrew Horne, an Iraq war vet and unsuccessful congressional candidate in 2006, are also in the mix for Democrats, but not as highly regarded as Luallen or Fischer.

There are three other X-factors worth considering when discussing McConnell's vulnerability -- two that favor Democrats and one that favors the GOP.

First, the Kentucky governorship is a very powerful office, so if Beshear wanted he could well make life very uncomfortable for McConnell in the coming months. The question is whether the newly minted governor really wants to put his political capital on the line so quickly and against the unquestioned godfather of Kentucky politics.

Second, don't underestimate the symbolic importance of knocking off the leader of the opposition party. Back in 2004, George Allen, then the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told anyone who would listen that beating Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) would be the equivalent of winning three Senate seats. Democrats -- especially those in Washington and national donors who pay attention to national politics -- are sure to feel the same way about McConnell. That could well mean millions in donations to the Democratic nominee and, more importantly, an extended onslaught against McConnell by independent progressive groups.

Third, if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is the Democratic presidential nominee and Luallen is the Democratic Senate nominee, you can almost write the Republican ads yourself. "Crit Luallen: Kentucky's own Hillary Clinton." Cue the eerie music and grainy pictures.

There are too many balls in the air in the state to draw firm conclusions about what Fletcher's loss means to McConnell's future. At best for McConnell, yesterday's results are a non-factor; at worst, it serves as a spur to Democrats to topple the figure who has stood astride Bluegrass State politics for the last two decades.

House Falling Short on SCHIP Override

The Washington Post reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reversed her stance from a week earlier, appearing resigned Sunday that Democrats would not convince enough Republicans to pass an expansion of a children's health insurance program over President Bush's veto.

"Isn't that sad for America's children?" she asked on ABC's "This Week." Her second appearance on a Sunday talk show in as many weeks came days before the House is expected to vote again on the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Last week, Pelosi was far more optimistic about the chances of overriding Bush's veto, saying on "Fox News Sunday" that the Democrats needed "about 14 Republican votes" to reach the required two-thirds majority.

This week, it was Pelosi's Republican counterpart, House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), who was facing questions on Fox, and he said he was confident that "we will have the votes to sustain the president's veto."

The White House has signaled it wants to find a compromise with Democrats over the program, but any agreement seemed distant today.

Pelosi said she has never heard from Bush about the program and she reiterated a point she made last week, that she is unwilling to support legislation that would cover fewer children than the current bill's 10 million.

The Senate already has a sufficient majority to override the veto, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted on ABC that the White House and congressional Democrats would strike a deal.

"Neither side is going to leave these kids uninsured. It's become kind of a political football, which is really unfortunate. But the coverage is going to be provided in some way," McConnell said.

Senate Tied In Knots By Filibusters

McClatchy reports:

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

The trend has been evolving for 30 years. The reasons behind it are too complex to pin on one party. But it has been especially pronounced since the Democrats' razor-thin win in last year's election, giving them effectively a 51-49 Senate majority, and the Republicans' exile to the minority.

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who's served in Congress since 1973, complained that "the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I've been here a long time. All modicum of courtesy is going out the window."

But many Republicans say the Senate's very design as a more deliberative body than the House of Representatives is meant to encourage supermajority deal-making. If Democrats worked harder to seek bipartisan deals, Republicans say, there wouldn't be so many cloture votes.

"You can't say that all we're going to do around here in the United States Senate is have us govern by 51 votes — otherwise we might as well be unicameral, because then we would have the Senate and the House exactly the same," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

To which Reid responds: "The problem we have is that we don't have many moderate Republicans. I don't know what we can do to create less cloture votes other than not file them, just walk away and say, 'We're not going to do anything.' That's the only alternative we have."

Some Republicans say that Reid forces cloture votes just so he complain that they're obstructing him.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called the all-nighter on Iraq "meaningless, insulting" and "an indignity." "There is no doubt that there are not 67 votes present to override a veto. There is little doubt that there are not 60 votes present to bring the issue to a vote."

Republicans also say that Democrats are forgetting how routinely they threatened filibusters only a few years ago when they were the minority, especially to block many of President Bush's judicial nominees. Back then, Republicans were so mad that they considered trying to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters — but didn't.

"The suggestion that it's somehow unusual in the Senate to have controversial matters decided by 60 votes is absurd on its face," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Although this year's Congress is taking it to a new level, the frequency of cloture votes has been climbing for decades — the result of more polarized politics in Congress and also evolving Senate rules and practices.

Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that since the nation's start, dissident senators have prolonged debate to try to kill or modify legislation. The word "filibuster" — a translation of the Dutch word for "free-booter" or pirate — appears in the record of an 1840s Senate dispute about a patronage job.

From Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was largely a tool used by segregationists to fight civil rights legislation. Even so, filibusters were employed only rarely; there were only three during the 88th Congress, which passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 after two months of filibustering.

Filibusters were infrequent partly because the Senate custom of civility prompted consideration of minority views — and partly because they were so hard to overcome that compromises were struck. In 1917 cloture rules for ending filibusters were put in place, but required a two-thirds vote — so high it was rarely tested.

Post-Watergate, in 1975, the bar was lowered to three-fifths, or 60 votes, and leaders began to try it more often.

By the early 1990s, tensions between then-Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas upped the ante, and the filibuster-cloture spiral has soared ever since as more partisan politics prevailed. The use of filibusters became "basically a tool of the minority party," Ritchie said.

The current Senate has two other complications: the 51-49 Democratic majority, which includes a pro-war independent and an absent Democrat recuperating from brain surgery, makes it harder to find 60 votes. And the presidency and Congress are controlled by opposing parties, which increases confrontation.

The Senate "has always been a cumbersome and frustrating and slow body because that's what the Constitution wanted," Ritchie said. The new majority's decisions are: "How often are you willing to lose on these issues? Would you rather campaign on the other side being obstructionists? What's a tolerable compromise? They're still working these things out."

Republican Senate leader McConnell said Friday in a news conference that when he became minority leader, "it was not my goal to see us do nothing. I mean, you can always use the next election as a rationale for not doing anything. But as you all know, we've had a regularly scheduled election every two years since 1788, so there's always an election right around the corner."

"A divided government has frequently done important things: Social Security in the Reagan period, when (Democrat) Tip O'Neill was speaker; welfare reform when Bill Clinton was in the White House when there was a Republican Congress. There's no particular reason why divided government can't do important things. We haven't yet, but it's not too late.

"And I think clearly the way to accomplish things is in the political middle, and I would challenge our friends on the other side of the aisle to step up and take a chance on something big and important for our country."

Of course, Democrats say similar things — but then neither side often compromises.

Senate Strikes Deal To Revive Immigration Bill

The LAT reports:

Senate leaders reached a deal Thursday night to revive stalled immigration legislation after days of intense talks and a rare presidential salvage mission to the Capitol.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a brief joint statement, saying they had met with key lawmakers and the bill would return to the Senate floor.

The Senate could resume debate next week, as soon as it finishes an energy bill, and would aim to complete it before the end of the month.

The bill kicked up fierce objections among conservatives across the country who derided it as amnesty for illegal immigrants, emboldening Senate opponents who thwarted attempts to debate the bill.

Senate leaders agreed Thursday to a list of amendments to be considered, clearing the way for debate to resume. The decision followed President Bush's announcement that he supports a move to immediately set aside more than $4 billion to beef up enforcement of immigration laws.

The two actions significantly improve the chances that the Senate will pass the comprehensive bill, which would provide a path to citizenship for many of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. "We believe that there are enough votes," White House spokesman Tony Snow said Thursday.

A senior Democratic aide said that Senate leaders agreed to specific amendments, with 11 for each side, but did not describe them.

One will certainly be the amendment drafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to guarantee that the federal government spends billions of dollars to improve border security and crack down on businesses that hire illegal workers. The measure is intended as an answer to conservatives who doubt the administration's commitment to enforcement.

The president made his announcement two days after he urged Senate Republicans at their weekly policy lunch to pass the bill, his first such visit to the Capitol in nearly six years.

"I understand Americans are skeptical about immigration reform," Bush said in a speech to a construction trade association, recalling the last time large-scale immigration legislation was passed in 1986. "There's a lot of people saying, 'Well, there's just no possible way that they can achieve important objectives. After all, they tried in '86 and they failed.' "

The president insisted his administration was already doing a better job of catching illegal border-crossers, but said he would support the Graham amendment as a way to ensure that there was adequate funding to improve even more. "We're going to show the American people that the promises in this bill will be kept," Bush said.

Under the proposal, the U.S. Treasury would immediately set aside $4.4 billion to step up border security and workplace enforcement. The funds would be repaid from the fines collected over two years from illegal immigrants who go through the legalization process.

"The moment the presidential signing pen meets the paper these funds will be available," Graham said in a statement.

"The funds will be ready to use in our efforts to construct miles of new fencing, miles of new vehicle barriers, utilize new cutting-edge technology at the border, build surveillance towers, institute an [employer verification system] to ensure workers are legal, and other enforcement measures."

The president's announcement appeared to sideline a move to put together a separate funding measure for the same purpose. Conservative opponents of the bill had asked for an emergency budget bill — similar to those used to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — to show the administration's resolve.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a key opponent of the legislation, described Bush's support as a "welcome development," noting that he had proposed a similar plan as part of a defense spending bill last year.

"I do think it's the right position, but it may be too late to revive this bill," Cornyn said in a conference call with reporters. "Whether this is enough to satisfy members of the Senate, we'll have to see."

Snow suggested that the president and other backers of the bill wanted the funding to be a part of the immigration package, not a separate measure.

"All the pieces have to work together," he said. "If you disaggregate, things fall apart."

Reid pulled the bill from the floor last week in a dispute with Republicans over how many amendments he would permit to be debated and voted on. Opponents had offered more than 300 amendments, a common tactic designed to indefinitely prolong debate on a bill.

A bipartisan group of a dozen senators met for months with two Cabinet secretaries to craft the complex bill, defying deep opposition from within their own parties. Those same senators had met almost daily since the bill's collapse to rescue it, saying the immigration crisis is too dire to abandon the bill.

Most observers believe the approach of the 2008 election means it could be years before the right climate exists again to tackle the emotional issue.

Calling immigration "one of the most pressing national security issues facing our nation," Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) said Thursday in a statement: "Failure is not an option. And those who are using this opportunity to divide us instead of bringing real solutions to the table will be to blame if comprehensive immigration reform is not accomplished."

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the main opponents, dismissed the move to set aside billions of dollars for enforcement, saying: "It will do little to change the fundamental flaws of this legislation."

"I can't fathom why they seem so obsessed to ram through this flawed bill that the American people overwhelming reject," he said in a statement.

The administration has insisted that an immigration overhaul be comprehensive and include programs that would address the country's immigration problems.

Those elements include enhanced enforcement, a system to verify that employees are legal, a guest worker program, provisional legalization for illegal workers already in the country and a path to citizenship for those immigrants who wish to pursue it.

It would also restructure future immigration criteria to give more weight to language and job skills and less weight to family ties.

Illegal immigrants who want to become citizens would have to pay back taxes, learn English and meet other requirements. The process would be expected to take eight years or more.

The legislation would require improvements in border security and work-site enforcement to be in place before the legalization process could begin.

"By moving forward with this bill in the Senate, we will make our border more secure," Bush said. "In other words, if you're worried about border security, you ought to be supporting this bill."