Hatch Finds ’76 Tactics Now Used Against Him

Now overlay that image with plaid leisure suits and shaggy sideburns, and a different firebrand emerges in a much different time: Senator Orrin G. Hatch.

In 1976, in his first Senate race, Mr. Hatch led a one-man conservative uprising in Utah and helped shape the very idea of the insurgent candidacy in modern politics. Now he is the latest Washington veteran hoping to fend off the fate that took down Senator Richard G. Lugar in a Tea Party challenge in Indiana this month, and upended the Senate race in Nebraska with Deb Fischer’s Tea Party-tinctured victory over the Republicans’ handpicked candidate.

That Mr. Hatch finds himself in this position at all makes for a strange — others might say just — plot twist of history. Mr. Hatch, now 78, was a complete unknown six months before his first election. Then in a bolt of energy and rhetorical swordsmanship against his opponents, he wrested the United States Senate nomination from his own party’s establishment candidate and went on to beat a well-financed three-term Democratic incumbent.

Even at the time, his rise was seen as a signal flare of something completely new. In the American West, Democrats, who had been electable in significant numbers through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, even in Utah, were heading for a generation in the dustbin. With Mr. Hatch — and only a few years later, to even greater effect, Ronald Reagan — leaping from the trenches, Democrats here still have not fully recovered.

Now Mr. Hatch is facing his first primary challenge since that pivotal first election 36 years ago, and a little-known conservative former state senator, Dan Liljenquist, is studying everything Mr. Hatch did and said back then, trying to use Mr. Hatch’s own ’70s show against him in next month’s party vote.

The result is a closely watched, and for many Republicans here, deeply emotional contest that is raising profound questions about whether Mr. Hatch is still the man they have loved long and well, or whether he was right back then when he said voters should throw out the bums if they hang on too long.

“I’m torn,” said Richard McMillan, 73, a retired high school history teacher who said he had voted loyally for Mr. Hatch every six years and now is not sure what to do. “I don’t dislike Hatch, but I kind of wish he’d go away gracefully and we could all applaud.”

Mr. Hatch, for his part, in asking Utahns for what he has said would be a final, seventh term, denies that anything now feels remotely like 1976. “It’s quite a bit different,” he said in an interview. “I ran against a Democrat,” he added. “I would never run against another Republican.”

But in getting to the November election and the Republican nomination in 1976, Mr. Hatch did vanquish a Republican primary opponent who was better known and widely favored to win, and Mr. Liljenquist, 37, in facing what he admits are uphill odds, said that that is the race to study. In heavily Republican Utah, the party’s nomination, decided by primary voters, is the crucial contest since Democrats are so deeply outnumbered.

Mr. Liljenquist (pronounced LILian-quist) said in an interview: “When we look at 1976, there are a lot of parallels. You have a country that was reeling from threats around the world. That’s the same case now, and the economy, too, wasn’t going particularly well.”

A surge of electricity was pouring into conservative ranks as well in 1976, he added — not unlike the Tea Party movement today — partly in reaction to the liberal post-Watergate end-zone dance by the Democrats, whose fortunes rose after President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in 1974. This year, a Tea Party-affiliated group called Freedom Works has backed Mr. Liljenquist.

“Senator Hatch rode a wave of discontent with the establishment people — people who had been there years and years and were part of the system, and then after 36 years he has become the system,” said Mr. Liljenquist, who was in diapers when Mr. Hatch took office.

But to many Utahns, even some Democrats and independents who said they would never vote for him, Mr. Hatch is almost an institution. Through his seniority, longevity and impact on the state — and the campaign’s message that if Republicans take control of the Senate, he will become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee — Mr. Hatch has become, in a way, bigger than party or ideology.

“A vote for Hatch is a vote for Utah,” said Matt Tyler, 45, a bank asset liability officer in Salt Lake City, who was on his lunch hour on a recent afternoon. Mr. Tyler said he leaned more toward the Democrats and would probably not vote for either Mr. Hatch or Mr. Liljenquist in November. But since a Republican is almost certain to win the Senate seat, he said, it should be Mr. Hatch because of his clout.

Mr. Hatch has also refused to be a sitting duck. Through months of intensive groundwork before last month’s state party convention, his campaign staff groomed and recruited party delegates, and back-bench supporters of those delegates, aiming to head off the challenge he knew was coming. The effort, though not successful enough to avoid a primary, created a bank of about 70,000 likely Hatch votes, said the campaign’s manager, Dave Hansen. That number, Mr. Hansen said, is about half the total, from a standing start on the day after the convention, needed to win based on assumptions of likely turnout.

The Hatch campaign has also agreed to only one debate before the June 26 primary, on a local radio talk show, a fact that Mr. Liljenquist is using in a new television ad to argue that Mr. Hatch is hiding in plain sight.

What was wrought in the ’70s in Utah — now seen by historians as one of the first breaking waves in what became the Republican tide of the Reagan era — is now simply the background of political life in Utah, unquestioned because so many residents have never known anything else.

But it was Mr. Hatch and his imitators, historians say, who helped forge that system. In the State Legislature, Democrats who controlled the House and Senate in the mid-’70s have now been in the minority since the era of hip-hugging disco pants. The last Democrat to represent Utah in the Senate was the man Mr. Hatch defeated, Frank Moss.

Mr. Hatch’s fight this year, facing a threat in a primary rather than the general election in November, is a measure of how much the state has become a de facto one-party system, historians say, with the spoils of power fought over not between Democrats and Republicans, but between Republicans of varying conservative stripe.

“That’s how far to the right Utah has turned,” said W. Paul Reeve, an associate professor of history at the University of Utah.

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Obama on the High Wire

Is the Democratic party the tribune of the underdog or the slave of special interests?

For much of his first three years in office, President Obama has struggled to maintain the loyalty of the liberal wing of his party. Suddenly, in 2012, he has put on a full court press.

The president’s policy shift in favor of same-sex marriage, for example, has allowed him to win back the hearts, minds and wallets of the gay rights community, a crucial source of Democratic support.

On another front, no week goes by without one or more events designed to secure and deepen Obama’s advantage among women. On May 14, he pointedly gave the graduation address at Barnard, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia (his alma mater), informing graduates:

After decades of slow, steady, extraordinary progress, you are now poised to make this the century where women shape not only their own destiny but the destiny of this nation and of this world.

From Barnard in upper Manhattan, Obama traveled downtown to ABC and an appearance on “The View,” to tell Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, “I like hanging out with women.”

In an effort to revive the strong margin of support he received from young voters in 2008, Obama has stressed his support for legislation keeping the student loan interest rate at 3.4 percent, instead of allowing the scheduled increase to 6.8 percent. Loan burdens, especially on recent graduates struggling to find work, are a major issue for voters under the age of 30 – voters Obama must mobilize this year.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats are also taking up similar themes. The Senate passed what would normally be routine legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but with added provisions to protect those in same-sex relationships from abuse — a pro-gay rights amendment anathema to House Republicans.

Individually, these and other steps taken by the administration and Democratic legislators to build support among diverse constituencies have varying degrees of popular support. In and of themselves, they would not create political problems.

Democrats have paid a higher price for policies favoring their constituencies, especially the poor and minorities, than Republicans have paid for doing the same thing on behalf of the rich.

The difficulty for the Democratic Party and its candidates arises when voters perceive that elected officials are granting special, non-universal privileges or preferences for political gain. With some regularity over the past four and a half decades, many voters — moderates and conservatives in particular — have demonstrated an aversion to contemporary liberal public policy that provides benefits and protections to groups defined by race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

The volatility of this issue can be seen in the current controversy in Massachusetts over the Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s past description of herself as of indigenous American descent, which prompted opponents to accuse her of using that status to gain special consideration in hiring and promotion decisions.

“For years, Harvard has claimed special minority status for Professor Elizabeth Warren as a member of a Native American tribe and their first minority hire,” declared Jim Barnett, who is managing Senator Scott Brown’s re-election campaign.

That Warren allowed Harvard to hold her up as an example of their commitment to diversity in the hiring of historically disadvantaged communities is an insult to all Americans who have suffered real discrimination and mistreatment, and Warren should apologize for participating in this hypocritical sham.

Some evidence that Obama must walk a fine line as he seeks majority backing can be found in the May 15 CBS News/New York Times poll, which showed that 67 percent of respondents said Obama came out for same-sex marriage “mostly for political reasons,” while just 24 percent said he made the decision “mostly because he thinks it is right.”

These numbers do not mean that two thirds of the public oppose same-sex marriage; in fact, the public is fairly evenly split. What the numbers do reveal is that a majority of the electorate believes that political calculation, rather than moral principle, drove the president’s decision.

In an equally troublesome finding for Obama, the Times poll recorded a dramatic drop in the level of support for Obama among women, with Romney actually pulling ahead, 46-44. Obama’s support among female voters has fallen from 49 to 44 percent over the past two months, while Romney’s rose three points.

Stephanie Cutter, deputy manager of the Obama campaign, has challenged the accuracy of the Times poll, arguing that the methodology – calling people who have been previously surveyed,  known as a “panel back” — resulted in “a biased sample.”

But even if the poll findings can be reasonably disputed, they still suggest that Obama’s aggressive bid to strengthen his support among women may be backfiring. Separate polling by Marquette Law School in Wisconsin shows Obama holding a strong, but declining advantage among women voters. In February, Obama had a 21 percentage point lead among women, 56-35; by mid-May, his margin among women had fallen to 9 points, 49-40.

The roots of Democratic Party vulnerability on affirmative action and other forms of group-based “preferences” lie in the social, cultural and moral revolutions of the 1960s and 70s – revolutions that have been the source of contemporary liberalism’s strengths and liabilities.

This is perhaps best illustrated in the following chart, created by two political scientists, Christopher Ellis of Bucknell and James Stimson of the University of North Carolina.

Courtesy of James Stimson

The chart tracks the percentage of the electorate that identifies itself as liberal. There is an abrupt and steep drop in self-identified liberals in the mid-1960s, which coincided with the emergence of the rights revolution – including civil rights, women’s rights, and the right to sexual privacy – as well as the  anti-war movement. The Democratic Party and liberalism were increasingly identified with these movements.

Ellis and Stimson write that from 1963 to 1967, “the ranks of self-identified liberals fell by 10.5 points – about one fourth – and never recovered.” They argue that the shift resulted from “the new clientele of liberalism”:

The New Deal had for clients the working people of America. In one phrase it was “the common man.” Thus liberalism was conjoined with pictures of workers, often unionized, hard-working people, playing by the rules, and trying to get ahead…. With the coming of the Great Society there was a new clientele of liberalism, the poor – and the nonwhite. The focus of Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty was the underclass of people whose usual defining characteristic was that they did not work. And although there were – and are – more poor white people than black people, the image of poverty from the very beginning was black.

Successful Democratic presidential candidates – especially Bill Clinton and Obama – have been acutely aware of these liabilities.

Many of the strategies undergirding the campaigns of 1992, 1996 and 2008 were explicitly designed to mute or eliminate perceived liberal vulnerabilities. Clinton famously promised to “end welfare as we know it,” to reward those “who work hard and play by the rules.” He also went out of his way to demonstrate his support for the death penalty as Arkansas Governor by rejecting clemency for convicted killer Ricky Ray Rector, who was executed in Arkansas during the 1992 campaign despite serious brain damage resulting from a self-inflicted wound.

In 2008, Obama confounded liberal supporters when he praised a Supreme Court ruling overturning a Washington, D.C. ban on handguns, endorsed a proposed wiretap law and spoke favorably about applying the death penalty to those convicted of raping a child.

One of the interesting phenomena demonstrated in the Ellis-Stimson chart above is the ebb and flow of liberal self-identification after the drop in the mid-1960s. While never rising to previous levels, liberal self-identification increases during Republican administrations (Nixon-Ford-Reagan-Bush) and decreases when Democrats take over the presidency (Carter-Clinton). The sole exception is the increase in liberal self-identification in the latter years of the Clinton administration, likely a negative response to the Republican take-over of the House and Senate in 1995, the ascendance of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican attempt to impeach Clinton in 1998.

A second interesting political development in recent decades is that Democrats have paid a higher price for policies favoring their constituencies, especially the poor and minorities, than Republicans have paid for doing the same thing on behalf of the rich.

Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush won approval, soon after winning election, of tax policies decisively favoring the affluent, and both went on to win re-election.

The relative invulnerability of the Republican Party in recent years to backlash after pushing through regressive tax policies is even more surprising because a plurality of the public, 46 percent, believes the rich are rich as a result of their connections, not their hard work, according to Pew surveys. In other words, while voters are hostile to policies benefiting those seen as the “undeserving” poor, they are more tolerant of policies benefiting the undeserving rich:

Part of this difference is rooted in the power of race in American politics. Some of the most controversial policies supported by Democrats, including civil rights generally, affirmative action and busing, have alienated a portion of white voters, especially those in the South and in northern working-class communities.

At the same time, part of the tolerance of policies that favor the rich comes from the fact that voters place a much higher value on increasing opportunity than they do on decreasing inequality.

Gallup reported in December that 70 percent of survey respondents said it was “extremely” (29 percent) or “very” important to increase the equality of opportunity for people to get ahead,” while 46 percent said it was “extremely” (17 percent) or “very” (29 percent) important to “reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor.”

In the same survey, Gallup found that 52 percent described “the fact that some people in the United States are rich and others are poor” as acceptable, while 45 percent said it is “a problem that needs to be fixed.” The percentage answering “acceptable” actually grew seven points, up from 45 percent in 1998, despite the efforts of the Obama administration and the Occupy Wall Street movement to make inequality a more salient issue.

Perhaps most fascinatingly, a majority of Americans, 58 percent, identify themselves as “haves” while 34 percent say they are “have nots,” according to Gallup. A person identifying him or herself as a have is more likely to see a threat to their own assets in redistributive government policies.

As the 2012 election progresses, there is every sign that Republicans will seek to strengthen the perception of the Obama administration as dependent on constituencies that are often disadvantaged or that have been previously marginalized. They will gleefully label their advocates “special interests.”

The conservative columnist Jay Cost wrote last week:

You, me, and almost everybody else in this country wants to talk about jobs, the deficit, national security, but the Democratic party simply does not listen to us. It is not responsive to what we want, but rather only to the special interests that now dominate it. Organized labor, the environmentalist left, the feminists, big city machine politicos, and all the rest – they hum the tune to which the party dances. If you are lucky enough to be in one of those groups, then the Democrats will be happy to hear what you have to say. If you aren’t, then you’ll be lucky if they don’t hang up on you!

The campaign will require Obama to reinvigorate support among core constituencies – minorities, single women, the young, “knowledge workers” and “creatives”– without antagonizing moderates. It will not be easy.

There is one factor helping Obama to negotiate this political minefield on the path to Nov. 6: the taint of racial or anti-gay prejudice that clings to some Republican initiatives. It can all happen very quickly. The disclosure by the Times of a plan under consideration by a conservative super PAC to run tough, racially-freighted ads using the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to attack Obama, forced the super PAC to back away from the proposal.

Republicans and Democrats are aware that attack ads can prove highly counterproductive if voters see them as divisive and intolerant. Both parties and their candidates run the risk of putting a foot wrong and slipping off the tightrope.

Thomas B. Edsall, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of the book “The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics,” which was published earlier this year.

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G.O.P. Nightmare Charts

Poll time!

I love this moment in the political season because the polls pour in and invariably something tucked in among the questions catches my eye but doesn’t grab the headlines.

I have selected two that get us away from the presidential race, both of which highlight just how much trouble the Republican brand continues to find itself in despite the party’s many legislative and statehouse victories in 2010. Public sentiment is slowly drifting away from the Republicans in a way that must be giving the party’s long-range strategists sleepless nights.

The first question comes from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey released on Tuesday (it’s question number 27). It read:

When it comes to (READ ITEM), which party do you feel is most attuned and sensitive to issues that affect this group.

Here is the list of items the poll-takers read and the way people answered:

The New York Times

The chart illustrates just how narrow Republican support is. Respondents viewed Republicans as more sensitive to religious conservatives, people in the military and small business owners. That’s not enough for a winning coalition. For everyone else — including the middle class, young adults and Hispanics — Democrats won out. Democrats even scored higher than Republicans among some groups that conventional wisdom associates with supporting Republicans, like retirees and stay-at-home moms. (I wish that the pollsters had also asked about men and racial groups, but unfortunately they did not.)

The second question comes from a Gallup morality poll that was also released on Tuesday. The question read:

Next, I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong.

Here are the issues and how people responded:

The New York Times

Of the 18 moral issues, Democrats were more permissive than Republicans on 14. No surprise there. But what was a bit surprising was that on seven issues, independents eked out a small margin of permissiveness over Democrats. (This may be due in part to the fact that some devout Democrats like blacks are rather conservative, socially speaking.)

Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals — the death penalty, buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals. Interpret that as you will.

Independents were closer to Democrats than to Republicans on 13 of the 18 issues outlined. The only exceptions were medical research using embryonic stem cells, the death penalty, suicide and human cloning. (On cloning animals, Democrats and Republicans were both less permissive than independents, and in equal measure).

When people are asked to identify themselves by political ideology, Americans may appear to be center-right, but independents look more like Democrats than Republicans on moral issues.

This does not bode well for Republicans as the composition and conscience of the country continues to change. We are slowly becoming less religious, more diverse and increasingly open-minded.

That is completely at odds with today’s Republican Party.

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After Paul Falters, Backers Push Agenda in Party and Other Races

More than $560,000 later, Mr. Ramsey’s chosen standard-bearer, Thomas H. Massie, a Republican, cruised to victory Tuesday in the race to select a successor to Representative Geoff Davis, a Republican who is retiring.

The saturation advertising campaign waged by Mr. Ramsey’s “super PAC,” Liberty for All, may be the most visible manifestation of a phenomenon catching the attention of Republicans from Maine to Nevada.

With their favorite having lost the nomination for president, Mr. Paul’s dedicated band of youthful supporters is looking down-ballot and swarming lightly guarded Republican redoubts like state party conventions in an attempt to infiltrate the top echelons of the party.

“Karl Rove’s fear-and-smear-style Republicans are going to wake up at the end of the year and realize we are now in control of the Republican Party,” said Preston Bates, a Democrat-turned-Paulite who is running Liberty for All for Mr. Ramsey.

In Minnesota, Paulites stormed the Republican gathering in St. Cloud last weekend, bumping aside two conventional Republican candidates to choose one of their own, Kurt P. Bills, a high school economics teacher, to challenge Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, this fall.

Backers of Mr. Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas, crashed Republican conventions in Iowa, Maine, Minnesota and Nevada in recent weeks, snatching up the lion’s share of delegate slots for the Republican National Convention in Tampa this August, a potential headache for the national party and its presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney.

And Paulite candidates for Congress are sprouting up from Florida to Virginia to Colorado, challenging sitting Republicans and preaching the gospel of radically smaller government, an end to the Federal Reserve, restraints on Bush-era antiterrorism laws and a pullback from foreign military adventures.

“I’d call it a strict constitutional approach,” said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and Ron Paul’s son. “And I think it’s spreading.”

Republican Party officials say they are in daily contact with Representative Paul, in a delicate effort to harness the energy around him without inciting his supporters. “We have had open dialogue with Dr. Paul and his campaign to ensure we are all focused on winning in November,” said Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director.

Mr. Ramsey said that other Paul supporters had brought the Kentucky race to his attention and that he would spend whatever it takes “to get this country moving in a freer direction.” “How much money would you spend for freedom?” he asked Tuesday, after buying airtime from Lexington to Louisville with money he inherited from his grandfather in 2010 as he was being pulled into the libertarian orbit of Mr. Paul.

He met Mr. Bates on the Paul campaign, and in March they incorporated Liberty for All with nearly $1 million of Mr. Ramsey’s money. More than half of it went into Kentucky’s Fourth District in a whoosh of advertising. The impact has been significant.

Mr. Massie, the Lewis County judge executive and an engineer trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he opened the seven-way Republican primary with a lead. But he lost it after Mr. Davis and former Senator Jim Bunning backed one of his rivals, Alecia Webb-Edgington. Then small advertising buys from two other candidates pummeled him with negative accusations.

The sprawling Fourth District of Kentucky presents competitors with a challenge. To reach all its voters, a candidate must advertise in four media markets in Kentucky and Ohio. Mr. Massie acknowledged that he could not do that, but that Liberty for All could. Soon, the advertising for his rivals was drowned out by attacks on his behalf.

“They owned the airwaves, everything from the Food Channel to Court TV,” he said of the PAC.

The Ramsey money does not have a clear path from Kentucky, but Liberty for All appears to have a taste for the obscure. Its next candidate is Michael D. Cargill, a gay, black gun store owner running for constable in Travis County, Tex.

But the political action committee will have money to spend. Mr. Ramsey said that between his wallet and a fund-raising push, the PAC expected to have $10 million this summer.

As they were nominating Mr. Bills at the Minnesota Republican Convention, the Paul forces also seized 12 of the state’s 13 Republican National Convention delegate slots. In Maine, they took 21 of the 24 slots. In Nevada, they grabbed 22 of the 28.

The strategy of crashing state conventions has secured Mr. Paul large slates of delegates in Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana and Missouri, as well.

Such delegates are not considered a threat to the Romney nomination. But they could be vocal advocates for Mr. Paul’s libertarian views on issues like the war in Afghanistan, the Patriot Act and terrorist detainee policies, which overlap some with Tea Party views but do not mirror them.

And lightly regarded Paulites running for Congress could become forces with the right amount of money. Tisha Casida, an independent in Colorado, is running against Representative Scott Tipton. Calen Fretts is chipping away at Representative Jeff Miller in Florida’s Panhandle, and Karen Kwiatkowski is challenging Representative Robert W. Goodlatte in Virginia.

“I think there’s a great movement going on in this country,” said Ms. Casida, who said she was pulled into politics by Mr. Paul’s message and the red tape she faced trying to open a local farmer’s market.

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Would Romney Be Another Bill Clinton or Another George W. Bush?

Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He is the author of “The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform – Why We Need It and What It Will Take.”

Mitt Romney has lately been praising Bill Clinton’s economic policy, The New York Times has reported.

Perspectives from expert contributors.

This is a bit surprising, as Mr. Clinton is a Democrat who was widely loathed by Republicans like Mr. Romney when he was in office. Moreover, Mr. Romney seldom mentions the last president of his own party, George W. Bush, often referring to him merely as Barack Obama’s “predecessor.”

From a nonpartisan point of view, this is not surprising. Mr. Clinton consistently governed as a fiscal conservative and Mr. Bush as a liberal. However, Mr. Clinton was not a conservative by today’s standards, but rather by those of an earlier generation.

That is to say, he actually cared about the budget deficit and was willing to raise taxes to reduce it – as Ronald Reagan did 11 times, and George H.W. Bush courageously did even though he knew it would probably cost him re-election.

Today’s conservatives oppose tax increases so strenuously that many were willing to default on the nation’s debt last summer rather than raise taxes by a single penny.

They overwhelmingly believe in a nonsensical theory called “starve the beast,” which asserts that tax cuts automatically reduce spending and tax increases never reduce the deficit because they invariably lead to spending increases.

The Clinton and Bush 43 administrations are almost perfect tests of starve-the-beast theory; the former raised taxes in 1993, while the latter signed into law seven different major tax cuts, according to a Treasury study. If there were any truth whatsoever to starving the beast, we should have seen a rise in spending during the Clinton years and a fall in spending during the Bush years. In fact, we had exactly the opposite results.

Congressional Budget Office

Spending fell 3.2 percent of the gross domestic product under Mr. Clinton and increased 2.4 percent under Mr. Bush, even though taxes rose 3.1 percent of G.D.P. under the former and fell 2 percent under the latter. As a consequence, the national debt fell almost 15 percent of G.D.P. under Mr. Clinton and rose almost 8 percent under Mr. Bush.

But what about the economy? Republicans almost obsessively refer to all tax increases as job-killers. They commonly assert that tax increases would crush the economy and investment. Conversely, they assert that tax cuts are always what the economy needs to raise growth and create jobs.

This is why Mr. Romney; Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee; and every other Republican leader say that we must cut taxes, especially for the rich, even as spending for the poor is slashed in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But the record does not support the idea that tax cuts necessarily foster jobs or growth. (I think the Reagan tax cuts worked, because economic conditions were far different than today.)

Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics

As one can see, contrary to Republican dogma, tax increases did not kill jobs during the Clinton administration. In fact, 23 million jobs were created, compared with one-fourth that number under Mr. Bush. The key reason for this is that real G.D.P. grew twice as fast during the Clinton years as it did during the Bush years: 3.9 percent per year on average compared with 2 percent.

A major factor powering the higher real growth is that nonresidential investment rose sharply during the Clinton presidency but was flat throughout the Bush presidency.

I think Americans are more aware of these facts than Republicans believe. That is why they have consistently blamed Mr. Bush far more than President Obama for the poor state of the economy, as documented in these New York Times/CBS News polls.

Who do you think is mostly to blame for the current state of the nation’s economy?

1. The Bush administration
2. The Obama administration
3. Wall Street and financial institutions
4. Congress
5. Someone else

The New York Times/CBS News polls

Even more surprising is that three-fourths of the way through President Obama’s administration, three times as many people primarily blame Mr. Bush as blame Mr. Obama for the budget deficit, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll.

Who do you think is mostly to blame for most of the current federal budget deficit?

1. The Bush administration
2. The Obama administration
3. Congress
4. Someone else

The New York Times/CBS News polls

No wonder Mr. Romney would rather identify himself with Mr. Clinton than the last president of his own party.

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Romney, RNC take in $40 million in April

Mitt Romney and the Republican Party raised a combined $40.1 million in April, a figure that nearly matches the Democratic haul last month and shows the Republican Party coalescing around its presumptive nominee.

By Edward Linsmier, Getty Images

Mitt Romney campaigns in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Wednesday.

By Edward Linsmier, Getty Images

Mitt Romney campaigns in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Wednesday.

By comparison, President Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $43.6 million in April. Both candidates share their fundraising with the national party and state committees.

"Voters are tired of President Obama's broken promises," Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement released by the Romney campaign. "Mitt Romney has the record and plan to turn our country around - that is why he is receiving such enthusiastic support from voters across the country."

The campaign says there is $61.4 million in the bank. Nearly all — 95% — of the contributions last month came in chunks of $250 or less.

"We are pleased with the strong support we have received from Americans across the country who are looking for new leadership in the White House," Romney Victory National Finance Chairman Spencer Zwick said in a statement. "Along with the hard work of the Republican National Committee, we will continue to raise the funds necessary to defeat President Obama in November."

Romney began jointly raising money for the fall campaign with the RNC and various state party committees only last month when it became clear he would become the Republican presidential nominee. Their goal is to raise $800 million for the general election.

How much was raised by each entity will be clearer this weekend. Candidates must file financial reports to the Federal Election Commission by midnight Sunday.

Romney spent $78.6 million during the primary, more than double his nearest competitor on the Republican side.

The Romney campaign's fundraising has increased steadily the closer he has inched to the nomination. In January, the campaign raised $6.4 million. By February, that number was $11.6 million, followed by $12.7 million more in March.

Those numbers do not include the tens of millions of dollars raised and spent by pro-Romney super PACs during the primary campaign.

One group, Restore Our Future, launched several blistering attacks on the former Massachusetts governor's rivals during critical early contests, drawing loud complaints from those candidates on the receiving end.

Other outside groups have pledged to raise millions to help Republicans win the White House. Crossroad GPS, a super PAC affiliated with Republican strategist Karl Rove, announced this week it was starting a $25 million ad campaign against Obama in key states.

Crossroads GPS said it will first spend $8 million to air an ad titled "Obama's Promise" in 10 battleground states. The ad started airing Thursday and will run through May 31.

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Bennett flooded with comments on request

Constituents and out-of-state residents flooded the Arizona Secretary of State's Office with comments over the weekend after Ken Bennett waded into the "birther" controversy by asking Hawaiian officials to verify President Barack Obama's birth information.

Bennett's office, which oversees state elections, received more than 1,000 e-mails and phone calls with people both applauding and condemning the agency for its request.

Bennett, a Republican, called the reaction to his request overblown. And he defended his role as co-chairman for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Arizona campaign.

"This year … I am, in my personal life, I am going to endorse Mitt Romney," Bennett said. "And in my professional life as secretary of state, we're going to do everything we can to run the election as fair as we can."

Bennett's involvement in Romney's campaign is a reversal of the stance he took while running for the office.

During a televised debate with his Democratic opponent in 2010, Bennett told the audience it was improper for elections officials to weigh in on partisan issues.

"I do not feel it's appropriate that I take a position on either the propositions that the voters will be voting on, or endorsing candidates in elections," Bennett said at the time.

"And Chris (Deschene) has done the same as far as not endorsing candidates, and I think we both feel that it's not appropriate for election officials to be taking positions on either the propositions or candidates when we're going to have to conduct the election."

Bennett said he changed his position because detractors would still criticize him based on endorsements he made years ago.

Political observers and a spokeswoman with the National Association of Secretaries of State said it is common for elected or appointed secretaries of state to participate in some kind of support role at the national or state level during election years.

However, critics blasted Bennett for his request, saying his actions amount to political pandering.

On Monday, the Obama campaign called on Romney to stand up to those in the Republican Party who give credence to the birther theory.

"With Mitt Romney's hand-picked co-chairman now promoting a conspiracy theory in blatant and brazen political fashion, why is Romney remaining silent? It's time for Mitt Romney to stop pandering to the far-right and denounce the extreme voices in his own party and within his own campaign," it said.

Romney's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Bennett reiterated that he is not a birther and that he is simply trying to verify information about Obama's birth at the request of a constituent.

He said he wanted to ensure Obama can appear on Arizona's Nov.6 ballot.

Meanwhile, a Hawaiian government official told The Arizona Republic on Monday that the state's Department of Health already has released extensive information about Obama's birth certificate, including a certified copy of his "long form" birth certificate.

A copy of that certificate is on the White House's website, and documentation affirming that Hawaii health officials have personally viewed the birth certificate is available online.

Joshua Wisch, special assistant to Hawaii's attorney general, said officials have been in contact with Bennett since March on the matter, but that Bennett has failed to provide adequate legal authority that he is eligible to receive verification of Obama's birth, in lieu of a birth certificate.

On May17, Bennett wrote to a Hawaii deputy attorney general, imploring officials to provide that verification, which is essentially an official assertion that the certificate is valid.

In the e-mail, Bennett said his office has "strictly and expressly" complied with all Hawaii statutes necessary to receive the information.

Bennett must show his request is for "a legitimate government purpose."

Hawaii officials also asked him to confirm that the request is a normal procedure to update all entries on a list, "rather than just targeting one name."

Bennett's office has received at least one request to look into Romney's background.

Jeannie Guerrero, a registered Republican, asked Bennett to document Romney's U.S. citizenship status, saying candidates should be treated equally.

Romney was born in Michigan.

Bennett said he has not seen the request but said he would follow up on any legitimate requests to look into Romney's background if Michigan law allows.

A Michigan spokeswoman said the state's Department of Community Health will provide verification of a candidate's birth certificate to anyone through an application process.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Technical-career push is a boon for state

(PNI) Joe Klein recently wrote in Time magazine about Arizona's vocational-education efforts. The article was timely and right on the mark.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal, teacher Clyde McBride, the career and technical education (CTE) agricultural-sciences teacher on the Navajo Reservation in Kayenta, and Sally Downey, superintendent of the spectacular East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa should all be commended for thinking outside the box.

Actions like these are an important step toward substantially increasing the quality of instruction, improving student achievement and ensuring all high-school graduates are college- and career-ready.

Huppenthal hit the nail on the head when he told Klein, "I really believe that some form of CTE is essential for a world-class education. … Every surgeon needs to know how to sew, saw and drill."

--Micky A. Gutier, Phoenix

Liberal writers ignoring the truth

Republic columnist Laurie Roberts apparently thinks it is tomfoolery to seek the truth about Barack Obama.

There are enough inconsistencies on the birth certificate that was supposedly supplied by the White House from the president and enough questions as to where our current president was born to seek out once and for all his true birthplace.

It's not hard to tell which direction the political pendulum swings for your columnist and others at The Arizona Republic.

The truth will set you and our country free.

--Gary Carlston, Glendale

Don't deny payment for care at ER

People who believe they are having emergencies should go to the emergency room without fear that their health plans won't cover the visits.

That is the position of the nation's emergency physicians, a position backed by more than three-quarters of Americans who believe health insurance should pay for every ER visit.

Yet private health plans and Medicaid increasingly want to cut back on coverage for ER visits if those visits turn out to be non-emergencies.

The Prudent Layperson Standard protects people from exactly this kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking, since the average person cannot distinguish between excruciating pain that won't kill them and excruciating pain that will.

A recent poll shows that 85 percent of Americans who have been to the ER felt they could not have waited to see their regular doctors.

Apart from being bad medicine, denying payment for emergency care is short-sighted and unlikely to save much.

Emergency care represents just 2 percent of all health-care spending in the United States.

--Dr. Nicholas Vasquez, Chandler,

The writer is past president of the Arizona College of Emergency Physicians.

Bush backer needs to check further

Regarding "Don't blame Bush for bad economy" (Letters, Saturday):

The letter writer wants to blame President Bill Clinton for the housing bust. If she had checked, in 2003, George W. Bush wanted to appoint an overseer to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In 2003, there were 229 Republicans and 204 Democrats in the House; in the Senate, there were 51 Republicans and 48 Democrats. The measure failed.

Fannie and Freddie later hired Newt Gingrich to lobby the Republicans in their interest.

--Barbara Anderson, Mesa

Church-led values are solid values

Regarding a recent comment in letters about not forcing church-minded values on others: Values like honoring your mother and father, paying taxes, respecting something as fundamental as marriage?

Shouldn't stealing, perjury, adultery, also be left open to private interpretation? Stealing is just borrowing, isn't it?

Face facts: Church-minded values liberate everyone from chaotic, destructive behaviors. Good fences make good neighbors.

Meanwhile, mind if someone else "borrows" your car/wife indefinitely?

--Greg DiMichel, Peoria

Ken Bennett's self-inflicted wound

I am a solid Democrat. However, I have admired Ken Bennett for what I believed to be his honesty, level-headedness and desire to do what he saw as the best for Arizona. I have voted for him and had planned to consider voting for him for governor.

Imagine my shock when reading that he is promoting the "birther" cause, an action that is hard to see in any light other than an attempt to pander to the fantasies of an ever-shrinking segment of the Republican Party.

The only positive I see in the secretary of state's ill-advised, lamely explained decision is that its desperation in beating a dead horse lends credence to the growing number of voices proclaiming Arizona an in- play state for President Barack Obama.

--Ron Woerner, Prescott

Referendum would help end graft

People bemoan the fact that our elected representatives in state government have done little or nothing to stop the flood of gifts from influence peddlers.

Why would anyone expect the people receiving free anything to draft a law to halt the flow? If you wish to stop the practice, use the ballot referendum process.

I will sign the petition without hesitation if the law has teeth in it. Such a law should apply to all levels of Arizona government to elected and per diem persons alike.

--Michael Wright, Phoenix

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Blaming Republicans — for everything

Those in the "tea party" movement frequently assert that the country's "establishment elites" are out of touch with mainstream voters.

This is, in part, a delusion common in American politics. Political activists of all stripes tend to believe that they stand at the center point of the political spectrum and measure others accordingly. In reality, the American political mainstream is very broad and includes most of those accused, by one side or the other, of standing outside of it.

However, to the extent tea partyers have a point, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have volunteered to serve as Exhibit A.

If there is an establishment elite, Mann of the Brookings Institution and Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute serve as senior theorists. They have a new book which they synopsized in a recent essay in the Washington Post.

Mann and Ornstein have concluded that the reason for misgovernance in the United States can be summarized in one word: Republicans.

According to them, the Republican Party has become "an insurgent outlier in American politics." It is "ideologically extreme" and "far from the mainstream."

Mann and Ornstein's own delusion about the center point of American politics is revealed by their description of the Democrats under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as being "a status-quo party."

That's a fair description of Clinton's presidency after the spanking of the 1994 congressional elections. But how can any sentient political scientist describe Obama's presidency as status quo?

Like it or loathe it, "Obamacare" shook the health-care status quo, a sixth of the U.S. economy, from rafters to basement. Under Obama, federal spending hit 25 percent of GDP. Under Clinton, it never got much above 21 percent. In today's economy, that's $600 billion in additional spending. Under Obama, the federal deficit exceeded 10 percent of GDP. The previous post-World War II high was 6 percent.

Astonishingly, Mann and Ornstein cite Republican opposition to the unprecedented spending and deficits under Obama as part of what makes the party far from the mainstream. "In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression," they intone, "the party's leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth ?"

As a matter of economics, it is inaccurate to describe either enthusiasm for or skepticism about Keynesian stimulus spending as outside the mainstream. There are a large number of highly credentialed economists on either side.

As a matter of politics, describing opposition to Keynesian stimulus spending as outside the mainstream is palpable rubbish. When Obama's stimulus was passed, a CNN poll showed a narrow majority approving, 54 percent. A year later, public sentiment had reversed and the stimulus was opposed by 56 percent of the electorate. Public opinion remains net negative today.

In the 2010 election, Republicans were transparent about intentions. They didn't say they were going to work with Obama to solve the country's problems. They said they were going to put an end to his big-spending ways and his big-government proposals.

They got a majority of the votes cast for the House of Representatives nationally. They captured 56 percent of the independent vote.

How can a party that gets a majority of the votes and then does what it said it would do be described as a political outlier?

Mann and Ornstein believe that Republican intransigence on taxes is irresponsible. Fair enough. But even if all of Obama's tax increases were enacted, the country would still have accumulated debt in excess of 100 percent of GDP. House Republicans are passing budgets to do something about that. Senate Democrats are not.

Mitt Romney has given some specifics on what he would do to lower the trajectory of entitlement spending. Obama has not.

If blame for failing to address the country's problems is being apportioned, how can virtually all of it fall on the party that's trying and almost none on the party that isn't?

Reach Robb at robert.robb@arizonarepublic.com.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Column: Where are the doctors?

Women's reproductive rights were hard-won decades ago, and while there have been encroachments and threats to them over the years, they have generally been supported by the law. And women have availed themselves of those rights in large numbers.

By Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images

Abortion legislation: Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, though studies have not found any such link.

By Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images

Abortion legislation: Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, though studies have not found any such link.

Columns

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

Since the choice to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, almost one in three women have had abortions. The legality of contraception was established even earlier, in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, and tens of millions of women use some form of artificial contraception.

But there is now an unprecedented and sweeping legal assault on women's reproductive rights. New legislation is being introduced, and sometimes passed, in state after state that would roll back access to abortion and contraception, mainly by intruding on the relationship between doctor and patient.

Women have reacted strongly, as evidenced by a growing disaffection among female voters with the Republican Party and its candidates; there is now a double-digit "gender gap." But where are the doctors? They have been strangely silent about this legal assault, even though it directly interferes with medical practice.

A lengthening list

Consider some of the new laws:

•Nine states require doctors to perform ultrasound examinations on women seeking an abortion, and to encourage women to view the images. (This requirement was justified by Alabama Sen. Clay Scofield in his deeply patronizing comment, "This bill just allows them to see the child inside of them, so it's not just out of sight, out of mind.") Three of these states also require women to listen to a description of the fetus.

•Counseling is now mandated in 35 states to dissuade women from having abortions.

•Five states require doctors to tell women that a link might exist between abortion and breast cancer, despite the fact that careful studies have not found any such link.

•Similarly, eight states require doctors to tell women that abortion could cause psychological problems, despite evidence to the contrary.

•Arizona is considering a bill that would hold doctors harmless from lawsuits if they intentionally withhold information from a woman, such as the presence of major fetal abnormalities, because they believe the information might cause the woman to seek an abortion.

In short, legislatures are ordering doctors to lie about the medical evidence, the patient's condition and their own medical judgment.

Even more regressive than obstructing the right to abortion is the recent effort to block access to contraception. The current attempt to turn the clock back nearly a half-century is cloaked in high-flown rhetoric about the rights of employers and insurers to deny coverage for contraception if it violates their conscience (it also saves them money).

But employers and insurers are not doctors, and should not be permitted to decline to pay for a category of medical services that they disapprove of. Appealing to conscience does not change the fact that employers and insurers, regardless of their own beliefs, do not belong in decisions about what constitutes good medical care.

Legislators vs. physicians

The unspoken assumption by state legislators seems to be that doctors will, of course, acquiesce with these new laws, that they are simply neutral agents who will comply with whatever the state orders. Physicians, however, have ethical commitments to patients that they cannot and should not be required by state law to set aside.

Prominent among them is the responsibility to place the welfare of their patients above all other considerations. In light of this, requiring doctors to perform procedures that are not medically indicated, or to provide false information about medical evidence, doesn't just violate women's rights. It also leaves doctors with an untenable dilemma: Violate state law, or betray their professional obligations to patients.

Physicians, both as individuals and as a profession, should stand with their patients. They should make it clear that they will not perform procedures, such as ultrasound examinations, unless they are medically indicated and desired by their patients. And they should refuse to provide inaccurate information about the consequences of abortion, or to follow any other prepared script in counseling their patients, particularly when it involves treating women like children.

Such acts of civil disobedience by individual doctors should be only the starting point. The profession as a whole, as represented by its professional organizations, needs to become involved, so that physicians are not left to fend for themselves.

It is time for the American Medical Association and, particularly, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to take a public position on behalf of the patients they are pledged to serve, and to support their members in doing so.

Marcia Angell, MD, is senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and a former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. Michael Greene, MD, is professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and chief of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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We need to be firm on deportation

(PNI) Your editorial in Wednesday's edition about "Flaws in immigration strategy" asks if we want to live in a country where civil liberties would be left in the dust if law enforcement is ratcheted up to a level few Americans would tolerate. The answer is an emphatic "Yes!" I want to live in a country where our immigration laws are enforced so that those who want to come to America will do so legally.

Just as punishment for a crime is a deterrent to committing a crime, deportation of anyone who has entered our country without the knowledge and permission of our immigration authorities should be the rule, regardless of how long they have stolen their place in America from another immigrant who is following the rules of the immigration process.

Those who circumvent the process by entering the U.S. illegally are relegated to live in the shadows and can never participate fully in pursuing the American dream the way that legal immigrants can. That is cruel to them.

--John Cassidy Jr., Scottsdale

Proud of Obama for taking a stand

I am so proud of President Obama. Even though it may hurt him politically, he did the right thing by announcing his personal support of gay marriage.

--Kathy Mutch, Tempe

Obama on gay marriage: 2004 vs. '12

In 2004, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama cited his religion in framing his views on same-sex marriage: "I'm a Christian. I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."

Is it safe to say that Obama is no longer a Christian based on his 2004 statement?

--Tim Kane, Glendale

Republicans are scary to many of us

Charles Krauthammer cracks me up ("Obama's new campaign tactic: Fear," Opinions, Tuesday)! I don't remember Krauthammer writing about fear when Vice President Dick Cheney told a campaign-trail audience that the U.S. would be attacked again if President Bush wasn't given a second term.

Krauthammer says the president is pandering to one group after another and identifies Blacks, Hispanics, women and young people. In other words, the president is pandering to about 80 percent of voters. The audacity!

The problem is Krauthammer and his Republican Party do not see themselves as scary. Living in Arizona and watching close up the damage the new breed of Republicans can do to the lives of average Americans, I disagree.

Without a more progressive executive branch to help tamp down some of the craziness coming out of the House of Representatives, I am deathly afraid of what this country might become. So yes, Mr. Krauthammer, I am afraid; but not because the president tells me to be. I have a brain. I read and watch the news. The president is right to draw a stark line between the parties.

--Dan Peel, Scottsdale

ASU's academic integrity takes a hit

Regarding "ASU history professor at center of plagiarism debate" (Republic, Monday):

How disappointing to hear about the controversy at Arizona State University regarding the prestigious professor, Matthew Whitaker.

As a recent graduate, and having studied his book "Race Work" for an Arizona history course, I read about his passion for equality, civil rights and racial tolerance. Frankly, I expected more from Whitaker in this incident.

When accused of "borrowing" others' work in several instances, no responsibility is taken; instead, it is the freelance writer's fault. He was just caught up in the moment when giving a speech. And, of course, his accusers: They are, he says, "out to get me," most likely because he is successful and Black.

Really? Playing the race card is hypocritical to his own teaching of equity.

More troublesome is the message this sends to students. If you are caught plagiarizing, which he apparently was, don't take responsibility. Blame someone else, deny it, or if your back is against the wall, play the race card.

This sets a new precedent and definition of academic integrity at ASU.

--Marcy Ortiz, Peoria

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Ethics Inquiry Casts Harsh Light on Vern Buchanan

The ethics investigators found that Mr. Buchanan, one of the richest members of Congress, tried to get his ex-partner to sign a legal affidavit that he knew to be false before he would agree to pay the partner a $2.9 million settlement in a business dispute. The affidavit wrongly asserted that Mr. Buchanan knew nothing of illegal contributions made to his campaign in 2006, the investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics found.

The board overseeing the Office of Congressional Ethics, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing by House members, found in the newly released report that there was “substantial reason to believe” that Mr. Buchanan violated federal law and Congressional rules by attempting to influence the testimony of a witness in a federal inquiry.

In releasing the report of its investigative arm, the House ethics committee’s Republican and Democratic leaders said the committee would continue to examine the allegations against Mr. Buchanan — just months after the committee announced it was examining a separate set of allegations involving his incomplete financial disclosure statements.

Mr. Buchanan refused to cooperate in the ethics office’s investigation, but his lawyers said in a letter that it was “fundamentally flawed” and relied on the testimony of unreliable witnesses in concluding that the congressman tried to buy the testimony. The lawyers said that the investigators’ conclusions were “nothing short of bizarre.”

Max Goodman, a spokesman for Mr. Buchanan’s congressional office, called the report “a disgrace” in a separate statement and said he was confident the ethics committee would ultimately dismiss what he called “old, recycled accusations.” He cited an earlier investigation by the Federal Election Commission, which dismissed the case against Mr. Buchanan but only after investigators there initially found that he knowingly accepted illegal campaign contributions.

The release of the investigation and the ethics committee’s decision to continue examining the allegations escalate the political pressure on Mr. Buchanan and House Republicans.

Mr. Buchanan serves as a fund-raising leader for House candidates nationwide at the National Republican Congressional Committee. As Mr. Buchanan has made recent fund-raising appearances with Republican leaders like Speaker John A. Boehner, Democrats have sought to seize on the allegations against him in attacking him and the party.

The ethics committee has been the battleground for numerous political clashes in the last year — most of them involving Democrats. The leaders of the committee — Jo Bonner, Republican of Alabama, and Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California — could have decided to drop the investigation into Mr. Buchanan, or they could have moved forward with a full investigation and possible disciplinary action against him. Instead, they took a middle ground that the committee has used in a number of recent cases by simply extending the inquiry.

Mr. Buchanan is also facing ongoing investigations by the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. involving allegations of financial wrongdoing in his private business dealings and his campaign finances.

The congressman built his fortune in part on a string of auto dealerships he owns in Florida and elsewhere. The evidence cited in Wednesday’s report centers on his relationship with Sam Kazran, his former partner in a Hyundai dealership in North Jacksonville, Fla.

The two men had a bitter falling out over a number of business disputes and were negotiating a financial settlement in the fall of 2008 that would have paid Mr. Kazran $2.9 million. But Mr. Buchanan and his lawyer made the settlement contingent on Mr. Kazran’s signing a seven-page affidavit that said the congressman did not know of and was not involved in the improper reimbursement of contributions to his campaign made in the name of executives and employees at the Hyundai dealership.

At the time, the Federal Election Commission was investigating allegations that the contributions were illegally laundered.

Mr. Kazran said he refused to sign the affidavit because it was not true. He asserted that, in fact, Mr. Buchanan had personally directed the dealership’s reimbursement of contributions to his campaign totaling about $100,000. Mr. Kazran said he began personally asking some employees for contributions in late 2005 and then reimbursed them from corporate funds at Mr. Buchanan’s explicit direction.

The ethics office found that e-mails and voice mails between Mr. Kazran, Mr. Buchanan, and a top executive at Mr. Buchanan’s company indicated that the congressman knew of the laundered contributions — and knew that the affidavit exonerating him was false — at the time he asked his ex-partner to sign it.

The ethics investigators said Mr. Buchanan personally pressured his ex-partner to sign the document. In one voice mail, Mr. Buchanan warned his ex-partner not to make good on threats to sue him, saying that “you got more liability than you know if you start telling people that you reimbursed people, because technically you have the liability,” according to the 184-page report.

The ethics office did not directly address the question of whether Mr. Buchanan had improperly taken part in the illegal reimbursement of contributions to his campaign. Those contributions came before the House voted to create the ethics office in March 2008, and so were considered outside its scope.

But the efforts to get Mr. Kazran to sign the affidavit effectively exonerating Mr. Buchanan of any wrongdoing came in October 2008 and thus fell within the investigators’ scope.

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Richard Nixon's Model Campaign

Associated PressRichard Nixon in February 1968.

Before tacking left for the general election, Mitt Romney has to reconcile with a right flank that has never much liked him. Peace talks kicked off May 2 when Romney met with dozens of right-wing journalists and bloggers – off the record – at a private club on Capitol Hill.

Well, technically off the record. Throw a presidential candidate in a room with that many reporters and word quickly gets out. By the end of the day, The Huffington Post had the story. One of several loose-lipped attendees reported that Romney had extended “sort of an olive branch to conservative media.” A much-needed olive branch, if the primary season is any indication. During the battle for the nomination, the right dedicated a staggering amount of airtime, bandwidth and column space to thwarting Romney’s presidential aspirations.

In the fall, Rush Limbaugh made the point plainly. “Romney is no conservative,” he told his audience. “You can argue with me all day long on that, but he isn’t.” Erick Erickson, the editor of Redstate.com, piled on with a post titled “Mitt Romney as the Nominee: Conservatism Dies and Barack Obama Wins.” And at Right Wing News, John Hawkins savaged Romney as “a pampered, prissy, fake, spiteful son of a governor being served the G.O.P. nomination on a silver platter because he kissed the right establishment behinds, benefitted from an enormous media double standard, and has more money than everyone else.” Little wonder the Romney camp decided outreach was in order.

The meeting was a start, but for Romney to win in November, he has to find a way to woo, but not wed, conservative media. And there’s no better example to follow than Richard Nixon in 1968. The only president ever to resign, Nixon usually serves as a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide. But like Romney, Nixon faced a skeptical right-wing media that lambasted him as a “political weathervane” and a “dedicated phony.” Tough words, but Nixon couldn’t simply write off the conservative broadcasters who said them. As his speechwriter Pat Buchanan explained, Nixon understood that to win in 1968 “he had to make his peace with the Goldwater wing of the party.”

Unlike the “Massachusetts moderate,” Mitt Romney, Nixon should have been a shoo-in for conservative affection. As a first-term congressman and aspiring “Red-hunter,” Nixon won over the right with his service on the House Un-American Activities Committee. There he broke the Alger Hiss spy case, siding with the frumpy former Communist Whittaker Chambers to expose Hiss, a State Department employee who was later convicted of perjury for lying about his involvement in a Soviet spy ring.

But maintaining ideological purity while navigating party politics proved an impossible task. In 1952 Nixon joined Dwight D. Eisenhower on the Republican ticket. The problem? Conservatives considered Ike at best a Democrat and at worst (according to the founder of the John Birch Society) “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”

By the time he ran for president in 1960, the once-popular Nixon found right-wing media particularly hostile terrain. At National Review, William F. Buckley Jr. was persuaded Nixon would prove “an unreliable auxiliary of the right.” Clarence Manion, host of the “The Manion Forum” radio program, agreed. “Like you,” he wrote Buckley, “my first 1960 objective is to beat Nixon. He is an unpredictable, supremely self-interested trimmer and has never been anything else.”

The only president ever to resign, Nixon usually serves as a cautionary tale, not a how-to guide.

So solid was the resistance to a Nixon candidacy that in 1960, no conservative media outlet endorsed the vice-president either in the primaries or in the general election. Instead, they threw their energies into last-minute long-shot candidates and third-party alternatives. Manion began organizing a Draft Goldwater movement on behalf of “the courageous leader of conscientious American conservatism.” The editors of The Independent American went a step further with their (ultimately aborted) New Party Rally.

Nixon lost but didn’t learn. In 1962 he ran for governor of California, taking out the conservative Joe Shell in the primary and alienating the state’s substantial right-wing voting bloc. Conservatives stayed home, and he lost again. The morning after his humiliating defeat, a bleary-eyed Nixon famously growled at reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” His retirement from politics didn’t stick, but the lesson about the conservatives and their media finally did. Having cast out the mainstream press, Nixon concentrated his attention on conservative alternatives.

Nixon began courting right-wing journalists and writers in August 1966, when he held his own off-the-record meeting with members of conservative media and organizations at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Like the Romney meeting, the secret rendezvous quickly went public. A front-page story in The Washington Post divulged all the details, including Nixon’s prediction that conservatism would be “politically respectable” by the next election. And while Nixon didn’t spell out his intentions for 1968, one attendee told the paper: “Lines of communication were opened that should be helpful later on.”

Having made his intentions known, Nixon dialed up the charm. In January 1967 he invited Buckley, Bill Rusher (publisher of National Review), and other members of the conservative media to his sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment. There he exhibited his virtuosic command of foreign and domestic policy. Rusher remained unmoved — Rusher would always remain unmoved when it came to Nixon — but Buckley? There was no surer way to Buckley’s heart than a vigorous display of intellect and insight. As Neal Freeman, Buckley’s personal aide, recalled: “I knew when we went down the elevator, early in the evening, that Bill Buckley was going to find some reason to support Richard Nixon.” True, Nixon was no conservative, but the heart wants what it wants. And a smart, experienced, electable Republican was exactly what Buckley wanted in a 1968 candidate. More than a year before the election, he was recommending Nixon as the “wisest Republican choice.”

Not everyone was so enamored. Rusher and a small contingent of fellow writers did everything in their power to forestall a Nixon endorsement at National Review. Devin Garrity, the owner of right-wing publishing house Devin-Adair, threw in for Reagan. Reagan himself had plans to swoop in and steal away the nomination, banking on Nixon’s unlikability to create an opportunity (a safe bet most of the time). Eyeing the 1968 race, Reagan dismissed Nixon as “the fellow who doesn’t get the girl.” After all, Reagan had already succeeded where Nixon failed. In 1966 he won the California governorship against Pat Brown, who had defeated Nixon four years earlier. But Reagan underestimated how much his own inexperience diminished his standing as a would-be suitor. Though he had many fans on the right, most agreed the former actor wasn’t ready for prime-time.

Eventually, conservative media lined up for Nixon. Once he clenched the nomination, endorsements sprouted up everywhere: the newsweekly Human Events, National Review, The Manchester Union-Leader. True, the editors of National Review admitted, Nixon was far from the ideal candidate. But they urged readers to keep the faith, “faith that when he gets the votes he needs, and no longer has to submit to that frightful wooing ritual mass democracy imposes on its leaders, he will speak with a clearer, firmer, less neutrally balanced voice.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. And it got worse. They noted that Nixon was hardly “as passionate a believer in the ingenuity of the free marketplace as, for instance, Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan.” And as president, “there will undoubtedly be plenty to criticize in his administration of the nation’s affairs.” Yet with all the ways Nixon was likely to disappoint, the editors encouraged conservatives to cast their ballots for him. At the very least he could give America “the impulse it needs on the way back to sobriety.” Nixon couldn’t take the nation to the Promised Land, but he could at least help them survive the wilderness.

In 1968, members of right-wing media fell in line, if not in love, hoping to make a go of pragmatic politics. Just as his failed campaigns taught Nixon to move right, Goldwater’s catastrophic 1964 loss persuaded conservatives they would have to move left. “No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest,” Buckley said in 1967 before clarifying: “I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.”

Associated PressRichard Nixon at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Fla. on Aug. 8, 1968.

But in making Nixon “their president,” right-wing media swung too far in the other direction. Tom Huston, a conservative White House aide, begged National Review to come down hard on “the disastrous series of liberal appointments” following the inauguration. But the resulting editorial shrugged off Huston’s concerns, calling the appointments “mostly of non-ideological types.” The editors instead counseled conservatives to wait for a major foreign crisis to test the president’s mettle. “Then we shall see what stuff Nixon is made of,” they held, “then and not before.”

It would be one thing if they were Republican partisans, but these messengers of the right were keepers of a different faith. Their calls for patience, both during Nixon’s campaign and his presidency, cost conservative media their readers, their reputations and ultimately their leadership role in the movement. In its inaugural issue in November 1955, National Review had declared itself a “vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion.” Could it still make that claim when backing Nixon, a president who supported a guaranteed annual income, extensive environmental regulations and détente?

It turned out there was, briefly, a limit to how far they would follow “their president.” After he announced his plans to open relations with Communist China, the leaders of right-wing periodicals and publishing houses broke with Nixon. Rusher and Tom Winter of Human Events even spearheaded the search for another leading man, recruiting Ohio Congressman John Ashbrook to challenge Nixon in the 1972 primaries.

But just as they were reclaiming their oppositional voices, conservative media relinquished them again. When the Ashbrook candidacy failed to take off, National Review endorsed the Nixon-Agnew ticket. The editors chided their readers: “Now is not the time to be churlish.” Their advice went unheeded. The magazine had traded ideological purity for a seat at the table, and readers began to slip away. By 1973, National Review’s circulation lagged 20 percent behind its pre-Nixon heights. As Rusher explained in a memo to the editors: since National Review had failed to provide real opposition to the Nixon administration, “the conservative troops increasingly march off to tunes drummed out by latecomers.”

With this year’s nomination battle winding down, conservative media are making the same pivot toward Romney. As the nominee, he is their only chance to beat President Obama. And they are his only chance to keep the base on board while he Etch A Sketches his way to the center during the general election. Aware that full-throated conservatism won’t win over those crucial swing voters come November, some members of the right-wing media are willing to provide cover for Romney. National Review, which half-heartedly came out in support of Romney last December, has now thrown itself fully behind him. As the magazine’s editor Rich Lowry declared to Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast: “If I have to manufacture enthusiasm, I’ll happily do so.”

Not everyone shares Lowry’s conviction. Erick Erickson claims that many on the right still “think Romney is not really a whole lot better than Obama.” He criticizes the Romney campaign for not reaching out to evangelicals, a group already hesitant to fully back a Mormon candidate. “Romney just expects their vote,” Erickson argued in a recent post. “He may get it, but not their passion or energy.” How much to stir up that passion and energy is a critical question facing conservative media. If Romney’s moderate turn toward the general election is actually a permanent return to his technocratic, nonideological roots, how far will conservative media follow him down that path?

Yet the partner most at risk in this relationship isn’t the media; it’s Mitt Romney. There’s an important difference between 1968 and 2012, one Romney must heed if he wants to successfully navigate the general election. In 1968, conservative media lost their identity as they compromised in favor of pragmatic politics. But today’s conservative media are far more powerful than their predecessors, and politicians far more likely to play second-fiddle to them.

The danger in 2012 is not that pragmatism will blunt conservative media. Rather, if these media insist on ideological purity, they could cost Romney both conservatives and moderates. His history of flip-flopping ensures he’ll never persuade conservatives that he shares their core values. And any attempt to prove he’s “severely conservative” will drive away independents wary of extremes.

Nothing highlights this danger more than the coming debate over same-sex marriage. When Obama declared his support for marriage equality on Wednesday, he forced Romney into a precarious position. If he fails to take a strong enough stand in opposition, Romney risks losing evangelicals’ already-soft support. If he fails to distance himself enough from same-sex marriage’s more provocative opponents, he risks losing swing voters with little appetite for cultural crusades.

Here Nixon is again a valuable guide. Richard Nixon never claimed to be a movement conservative, just someone who would attend to the right’s political desires. Like Nixon, Romney is a pragmatist who changes his views to match the political mood. From the perspective of the right, what Romney must now demonstrate is his belief that the current mood is fundamentally conservative, and that he will do what he must to keep the right on board. True, it’s not particularly inspiring. It’s practical and calculating, just like Nixon — who, remember, won a close election in 1968, won re-election in a historic landslide and built a coalition that sustained the Republican Party for 40 years.

Nicole Hemmer is a postdoctoral fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

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Partisanship Is Not a Bipartisan Problem

Swikar Patel/The Journal-Gazette, via Associated PressIndiana G.O.P. U.S. Senate nominee Richard E. Mourdock on Wednesday, May 9, 2012.

In my post yesterday on Tuesday’s voting, I mentioned that Richard Lugar lost the Indiana Senate primary to Richard Mourdock, a radical right-winger. I didn’t have time to write at length about his thoughtful farewell letter, but it’s worth revisiting as a sort of treatise on the state of politics.

Mr. Lugar has built himself a reputation as a moderate, at least when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Generally speaking he was not a rebel in the Republican caucus on domestic issues, though he did vote for the auto industry bailout and for Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagen.

Mr. Mourdock, for his part, described bipartisanship as follows: “I have a mind-set that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.”

It’s impossible to say for sure why primary voters favored Mr. Mourdock over Mr. Lugar. In his letter, Mr. Lugar suggested that the primary was a repudiation of bipartisanship and common sense. That seems less likely than the possibility that voters were simply tired of their current senator, who has served in Washington longer than many of them have been alive.

But Mr. Lugar was right that in his place, voters picked a radical who aims to remove any vestiges of moderation from the Republican Party. Mr. Mourdock recently compared the debate over tax reform to the divisions that led to Southern secession and the Civil War.

Mr. Lugar said Mr. Mourdock stood for “reflexive votes or a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.”

That’s a chillingly accurate description of modern-day Republicans. The party has been moving steadily rightward for decades, and has managed to silence or drive out Republican members of Congress who show the slightest tendency toward centrism – like Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who is not running for re-election.

I take issue, however, with the fact that Mr. Lugar laid the blame for dysfunction in Washington equally on the Democrats and the Republicans. “Partisans at both ends of the political spectrum are dominating the political debate in our country,” Mr. Lugar said.

There is plenty wrong with the Democratic Party, but monolithic adherence to liberal orthodoxy is not one of them. On the contrary the old Will Rogers joke “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat,” still resonates. Just for example, thirty-four House Democrats voted against the Democratic president’s signature health care legislation. The far left is not dominating the political debate in the slightest; it hardly has a voice at all. What passes as American liberalism today is awfully similar to the Republican platform of the Eisenhower area (something Rachel Maddow has noted.)

As Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in a much-discussed Op-Ed for the Washington Post, “the Republicans are the problem.” Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, famously said his party’s “number one goal” was to keep Mr. Obama from winning a second term.  Yet Mr. Mann and Mr. Ornstein trace the roots of blind partisanship much farther back – to Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

Mr. Gingrich had a single-minded devotion to attaining a Republican majority in the House by “convincing voters that the institution was so corrupt that anyone would be better than the incumbents, especially those in the Democratic majority.” Mr. Norquist created the “no-tax pledge,” which precludes any sane discussion of how to achieve deficit reduction, and which has inspired copy-cat pledges “on issues such as climate change, that create additional litmus tests that box in moderates and make cross-party coalitions nearly impossible.”

For a vivid illustration of what Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Norquist have wrought, one need look no farther than this year’s Republican presidential primaries. Voters jumped from one wild-eyed right winger after another, until they settled on Mitt Romney, who has abandoned his career as a moderate to remake himself in his party’s image.

This blog post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 10, 2012

This post originally stated that Mr. Lugar voted for the stimulus. Actually, he voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. But he did vote for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

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Senate Primary Over, New Battle Begins in Indiana

Democrats were casting the general election fight as a referendum on whether moderates should still have a place in Washington, while Tea Party organizers said it would be seen as a national test of the movement’s enduring strength.

Democratic leaders, who had doubted their odds against Mr. Lugar, a Republican so moderate that even the leaders admitted that plenty of Democrats liked him, sounded giddy about their November opponent: Richard E. Mourdock, a Tea Party-supported Republican who seized a remarkable 61 percent of the vote in part by denouncing bipartisanship and pledging to an unwavering conservative approach.

“Democratic donors across the country are going to see this as a prime pickup opportunity,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who added that the Indiana seat would fall among five top Republican-held seats being targeted in the fight for control of the Senate.

Labor leaders, too, said they saw an opportunity now in Indiana. “We’re all ramping up our plans as we speak,” said Nancy J. Guyott, president of the Indiana A.F.L.-C.I.O.

National conservative groups, some of which had poured more than $3 million to benefit Mr. Mourdock in the primary, were poised to send still more if needed. The number of such outside groups also appeared likely to grow if the contest here, against Representative Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, appears truly competitive — a notion some conservative leaders remained skeptical about, given Indiana’s Republican leanings.

“It’s a big race because a lot hinges on our success,” said Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns at FreedomWorks, which trains Tea Party members and which spent about $850,000 in Mr. Mourdock’s victory and plans to be similarly involved in the general election.

“If Mourdock were not to win,” Mr. Steinhauser said, the gloating would come not just from Democrats but establishment Republicans, pointing to the Tea Party. “They would want to blame that on us — ‘See, we told you so,’ ” he said.

By Wednesday, the outlines of a new political battle were emerging, with Democrats trying to paint Mr. Mourdock as a far-right candidate with little appeal for independents or moderate Republicans, and conservatives portraying Mr. Donnelly as a typical Democrat.

The Club for Growth, which had spent money on television and radio commercials against Mr. Lugar in the primary and said it would contribute more, if needed, in the general election, said Mr. Donnelly was “an economic liberal who votes in lock-step” with Democratic leaders.

Mr. Donnelly, who was elected in 2006 to represent a northern Indiana district, described himself as among the most conservative Democrats in the House in a moment when, he said, voters are looking for something different than they were in 2010. “Right now, it’s not about fire and brimstone,” he said. “It’s about jobs and the opportunity for your family to succeed.”

Although President Obama won Indiana in 2008, the state has long been a place where Republicans do well, and Mr. Obama is considered unlikely to win here again. None of it would seem to be fertile ground for a Democratic Senate bid, and some conservative leaders said they remained unconvinced that Mr. Mourdock would have any trouble in November.

But Dan Parker, the chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party, described Mr. Mourdock as an “extreme Tea Party candidate,” who would not appeal to a general election audience. “Dick Lugar was the mainstream Republican,” he said. “Indiana is not crazy conservative.”

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat, who rose from nowhere to be elected in 2010 after Republicans there rejected a popular moderate and nominated Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell, said he reached out to Mr. Donnelly Tuesday night after Mr. Lugar’s defeat.

“I think there’s a very good chance he could be the Chris Coons of 2012,” the senator said.

State Republican leaders, calling on Wednesday for party unity following Mr. Lugar’s loss, stood beside Mr. Mourdock on a stage here and seemed eager to play down his Tea Party ties and emphasize his traditional Republican credentials. Complicating the efforts, Mr. Lugar, who was not in attendance at the gathering, issued a sharp statement condemning what he suggested was a rising trend of rejecting political independence and bipartisan conversation.  

“He comes right out of the heart, right out of mainstream of our party, and I think that was really, among many, his longest single suit in the huge win that he had yesterday,” said Gov. Mitch Daniels, the governor, who had endorsed Mr. Lugar and had previously said he viewed Mr. Mourdock as a friend.

Indeed, Mr. Mourdock is in his second term as state treasurer, and he has been known for appearing at local Republican events and county dinners for years; when he announced his bid for the senate, he had a surprising majority of endorsements from the party’s county chairmen and chairwomen around the state.

“The first label they’re going to try to put on me is that Mourdock is this wild-eyed Tea Party guy,” Mr. Mourdock said. “But as the governor said, I’ve been swimming in the pool of Republican politics a long time,” he said, growing choked up as he described his love for the party.

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting from Washington, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

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