A turncoat's baggage
Another incumbent politician bites the dust
A turncoat's baggage
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Once again, the voters have signaled that 2010 is likely to be a bad year for incumbents - especially for those who are perceived as turncoats.
Last night, in Alabama, congressman Parker Griffith got the Arlen Specter treatment. In other words, he was fired by an electorate that didn't buy his recent party switch and instead decided that he was just a rank opportunist trying to keep his job.
Griffith was actually Specter's mirror image; last December, he split from the Democrats and donned the GOP label, figuring that he had a better chance to win re-election as a Deep South Republican. He gave himself five months to convince Republican primary voters that he was one of them. But last night he managed to convince only 33 percent. The majority chose a county commissioner, Mo Brooks, who insisted that he was the true Republican in the race. Brooks fatally tagged Griffith as a "flip-flopper," and drew strong support from the tea-party crowd.
The broad parallels to the Specter saga are striking. Just as the Democratic establishment had rallied to Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, the Republican establishment quickly embraced Griffith when he switched parties. House GOP leader John Boehner headlined a Griffith fundraiser, and various Boehner colleagues opened their checkbooks for Griffith, who vastly outspent Brooks and a third candidate. The party establishment assumed that Griffith would be welcomed, especially since previous Alabama Democrats had seamlessly switched to the GOP (for instance, Senator Richard Shelby) without suffering any local voter backlash.
Also last winter, GOP chairman Michael Steele hailed Griffith as a guy whose "principles and values" were "right for America" - which was actually quite hilarious, given the fact that, in the 2008 House campaign, the Republican establishment had assailed Griffith as soft on terrorists and therefore "wrong for Alabama," and in TV ads it had slimed his medical credentials (he's an oncologist) by claiming that he had been "under-dosing" his cancer patients.
Yet, all of a sudden, in the spring GOP primary, here was the GOP establishment touting Griffith as a certified Republican loyalist. The problem was, too many Alabama Republican voters still remembered how the GOP leaders had beaten up on Griffith a mere 19 months ago. So last night the voters dismissed the leaders' revisionism as a phony exercise - just as Pennsylvania's Democratic voters spurned their party establishment's strategic embrace of former foe Specter.
Clearly, the leaders of both parties are on notice: Voters this year have little tolerance for political insiders who appear to be practicing politics as usual. And party-switchers who seek only to maximize their re-election prospects are seen as the worst offenders.
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The sole proprietor of this blog is on the road for the month of June. Virtually all June posts will be briefer than the norm, except on those rare occasions when posts won't show up at all. Apologies in advance for this disturbance in the force. The standard verbosity will return on Monday, June 28.
You may say that pj, but that is whom you are echoing. And where are your statistics that 3/4 of subprime were Fannie and Freddie underwritten. That is just false. They could not, by law, make those loans. Subprime means jumbo, over 80% LTV, no-doc, interest only, non-amortizing, etc. It does not mean a $24,000 loan to Mrs. Jones in North Philly for her $30,000 house. The "subprime" loans overwhelmingly came out of the Sunbelt in overheated markets---Southern Cal, Arizona, Nevada, Florida. These were the wholesale lending regions---Countrywide, Greenpoint, Taylor Bean. These were not Fannie and Freddie loans.— Palestra Jon- You may say that pj, but that is whom you are echoing. And where are your statistics that 3/4 of subprime were Fannie and Freddie underwritten. That is just false. They could not, by law, make those loans. Subprime means jumbo, over 80% LTV, no-doc, interest only, non-amortizing, etc. It does not mean a $24,000 loan to Mrs. Jones in North Philly for her $30,000 house. The "subprime" loans overwhelmingly came out of the Sunbelt in overheated markets---Southern Cal, Arizona, Nevada, Florida. These were the wholesale lending regions---Countrywide, Greenpoint, Taylor Bean. These were not Fannie and Freddie loans.— Palestra Jon
- "I think anymore that's why I'm for open primaries, allowing anyone to vote in a given party's primary." All that accomplishes is to drive people to the polls to vote for the opposing party's worst candidate, leaving us with a choice of dumb and dumber. No thanks, I watched that system for years when I lived in Virginia.— Fascinated
- Palestra Jon, I don't know what percentage of the subprime loans were held by the FMs, but your interpretation of their participation in that marketplace is clearly a figment of someone's imagination. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802111.html— Fascinated
- Jon and Mike P - While there are may reason for the financial melt down a big part of it was federal policies (CRA) along with HUD mandating that 25% of Freddie and Fannie's subprime and adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers who bought houses with less than 10% down. They also purchased hundreds of billions of subprime securities for their own portfolios to make money and to help satisfy HUD affordable housing goals. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122298982558700341.html— Mike Welbourn
- More on Fannie and Freddie: http://huffpostfund.org/stories/2010/03/why-fannie-and-freddie-continue-cost-taxpayers-billions— PhillyTru
- Mike Welbourn : the article you linked to doesn't back up your statement " along with HUD mandating that 25% of Freddie and Fannie's subprime and adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers who bought houses with less than 10% down"... that aside, the whole tone of that article is "look how the government helped create the mess", why downplaying the actual borrowers and investors. The author raises some very valid points, but glosses over the fact that all of the big institutions that failed were not covered by the CRA. And statements like " Greedy investors obviously played a part, but investors have always been greedy, and some inevitably overreach and destroy themselves. Why did they take so many down with them this time?" kinda summarizes the author's entire bent.— still_independent
- still - My first 5 words should have been "while there are many reasons". Mostly I was trying to show Jon and Mike P that Freddie and Fannie were involved with the whole mess. While I do agree with you that the greedy borrowers and invester were also at fault. I think the government and the Federal Reserve helped to light the fire under them. What do you think would have happened if everybody who wanted to buy a house had to put 20% down and pay 1 or 2% more of an interest rate.— Mike Welbourn
- Rabe56, your socialized medicine is working so well that in Greece they were loaned money from the IMF under the condition they privatize their healthcare, and in case you misssed the headlines, Canada is revamping their entire system due to cost overruns being out of control. Even in Massachusetts cost are out of control and insurance companies now must write policies at a loss since their rate increases were denied. Most of the insurance companies in MA are non-profits, but many have left the individual market due to mounting losses and costs. Yep, great models for the US to follow.— tom - wilmington, de
- @bill.atkin Sestak does the hands while P Murphy (8th) does the rest. Pelosi enjoys both very well. (LOL) What losers all three are. They keep together and keep steal from us and the American way.— Fisher
- Mike Welbourn: the article seemed to be more blaming the goverment for enacting policies that helped to artifically drive up home prices (which I don't disagree with). What no one's been able to dig up, myself included, are what sort of mortgages have been defaulting. If we're talking subprimes where someone puts no money down on a $150,000 home, then yes, things like CRA can come into the mix. If, however, we're talking subprimes where someone put $20k down on a $500,000 home, then that whole argument gets thrown out the window.— still_independent
Comment removed.- tom/Phil/et. all: came across this article on factcheck regarding the Sestak matter. I, regrettably, hadn't actually read the statute (18 USC 600). Apparently, IF what was offered was an unpaid presidential advisory position, there is no way it was a crime (at least under this statute). The important part that seems to get left out of the discussion is the following (salient part in caps)"Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, PROVIDED FOR OR MADE POSSIBLE IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY ANY ACT OF CONGRESS, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity ..." The presidential advisory roles are not created by any act of congress. ... http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/sunday-replay-6/— still_independent
- Perhaps some of you commenting on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should actually visit their website. For example, Freddie Mac states as its mission concerning Affordable Housing as "Created by Congress, Freddie Mac's job is to ensure a reliable supply of funds to mortgage lenders in support of homeownership and rental housing. We attract capital from around the world to finance housing in America, and we constantly innovate to deliver it as effectively as possible. As a result, mortgage rates are lower, 30-year fixed-rate financing is plentiful, and borrowers get loan approvals in minutes." One of their mortgage products is called "Home Possible 97", which requires a 3% down payment for a risk class of "Accept", and a 5% down payment for manually underwritten mortgages. They also still have on their website their goal to increase home ownership among the poor and minorities. Didn't Barney Frank say he was willing to "roll the dice" with Fannie and Freddie? Didn't Maxine Waters laud their role in increasing minority and poor home ownership under the "great leadership" of Franklin Raines, thanks to new mortgage underwriting guidelines and products? True, you do not get your mortgage from Fannie or Freddie. BUT, they guarantee the mortgage, or they purchase the mortgage. So a mortgage from BOA is written based on guidelines from F&F. Just as you purchase flood insurance from State Farm, but it is underwritten and paid by the National Flood Insurance Program. As to the 80% LTV rule, that was in the original charter, but it has long since been revised.— tom - wilmington, de
- still_independent, good point about Sestak. Lost in the whole matter is that the two advisory boards to which Sestak was reportedly offered an appointment would have required him to leave Congress, since the members must all be from "outside of government". The memo from the White House said the advisory board appointments would have allowed Sestak to remain in Congress. The "facts" of this entire situation are becoming much too obscure. If the Reps regain the House in November, expect to see Issa chairing a hearing on this entire matter, which would be even more interesting if Sestak beats Toomey in the general.— tom - wilmington, de
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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