The Maine Republican party, having won a sweeping victory in 2010, is a house divided.
Last weekend the party was taken over by Ron Paul supporters. February had featured a very messy caucus process; party leaders said Romney won, even though it was not clear if all towns would have their votes included. But those caucuses were the first step in awarding the delegates to the national convention, with the actual selection at the recent state party convention.
Before the convention, party chair Charlie Webster called Ron Paul supporters “wingnuts,” and named the chair for the convention. However, when attendees selected the chair, the party establishment’s candidate lost. Despite some shenanigans from the Romney camp, captured on video by the blog Dirigo Blue, Ron Paul won almost every delegate to the national convention. Moreover, Ron Paul supporters won a majority of the seats on the state party’s governing committee. They also retained the tea party-oriented 2010 party platform.
This schism may not easily heal. One legislator called Paul supporters “fools” whose “cult of personality worship … reminded [him] of Nuremberg.”
Romney attorney Ben Ginsberg, George W. Bush’s lawyer for the 2000 Florida recount, attended the convention and said Romney would challenge the legitimacy of Paul’s delegates at the national convention. In other words, although Ron Paul’s supporters out-organized Romney’s forces at the state convention, the establishment candidate will ask the national party to turn these delegates aside. It’s hard to imagine that the victorious Ron Paul revolution would quietly let that happen.
Among Maine’s elected Republicans, all is not well between Gov. LePage and his party in the Legislature. While LePage won with 39% of the vote and intends to do his best to fulfill the agenda he promised, Republican legislators have to win majorities and some have some different views than the governor.
Perhaps this is why, after the governor used one of his constitutional tools, the line-item veto, his party’s legislators refused to take a public position. Rather than returning to the Legislature, they took a secret vote to not vote at all.
Not only was the legislators’ negation of their constitutional responsibility clearly not a profile in courage, there were some additional curiosities. While we can only know what happened among Senate Republicans — the House Republicans pointedly did not write down how they voted — some made votes that differed from what they said in public.
Moreover, as columnist Mike Tipping pointed out, “Senate Republican leaders Kevin Raye of Perry, Jon Courtney of Springvale and Debra Plowman of Hampden (all of whom are now candidates for federal office) apparently voted against coming back to consider overturning the governor’s vetoes. They showed no loyalty to a budget they previously had supported and their colleagues across the aisle had agreed to in good faith.” As Raye, Courtney and Plowman are all saying they would work (to some extent) in a bipartisan way in the U.S. Congress, the votes they took behind closed doors make that look like an empty promise.
When the Legislature returns, Republicans will again be pulled in different directions. Should they support LePage, who is popular in the party base and in some localities, but turns off many independents? Certain Maine Republicans, including Gov. LePage, have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge never to increase any tax, while others have not.
Moreover, some separated themselves from the governor’s rhetoric. Recently Rep. Flood and Sen. Katz decried LePage’s characterization of state workers as “corrupt.” Katz also directly repudiated the Republican mantra on public employees by pointing out that they are paid less than they would be in the private sector. Will he face a backlash from some Republicans? What will Republicans do the next time LePage stirs up discord?
2012 features critical state and national elections. Booed at some caucuses, Sen. Snowe declined to run for re-election. Angus King is now the leading candidate for this Senate seat and recently the decidedly less-popular Gov. LePage loosed his sharp words on King. The eventual Republican Senate nominee, if seeking support from unenrolled voters, will have to decide how closely to be linked to the divisive governor.
Whether this house divided will stand is unclear, but it is most surely shaken.
Amy Fried is a professor of political science at the University of Maine. You can follow her on Twitter at ASFried and at her blog, www.pollways.com.
Sometimes it is difficult to determine what is progress versus what is regression. Politics in many countries have been radically disrupted by new methods and new technologies, and in this country as well the types of influences, and their pace, are much more quickly moving.
You need perspective to determine whether something is an advance or a retreat, and that requires time. At the moment of change it is difficult if not impossible to have the distance to tell. This is not a relativistic notion that all changes are equal in value. Instead it is the idea that sometimes what we think is happening in a moment is not, upon further review with the unveiling of events over time, not as it appears later on.
If the Ron Paul supporters are truly standing on principle and are using these tactics to ensure that they are heard in the Republican Party, then I fully support them. I would hope that they continue engaging in the GOP party organization, bringing their energy and idealism with them. The GOP is a big enough tent to allow a broad range of views.
But, if they are set on “Only Ron Paul” then I suggest they find their own Ron Paul Party. The Republican Party is much bigger than one candidate at one point in history.
I don’t think the “big tent” claim is actually true though. The majority of the primary candidates were incredibly polarizing and none of them could garner the full support of the party as a whole. That’s why Romney has ended up as the nominee. What’s funny is that his record shows that truly, he’s actually a centrist and pretty close to Obama on many issues. The difference is that now Romney will say whatever he thinks will work for him to obtain a win. We saw that during the primary with his “extremely conservative” views.” And we’re seeing that now with his statements where he apparently believes the nation has absolutely no short term memory at all.
So again, the big tent claim isn’t true. The party has ended up with a guy who will say whatever needs to be said depending on the situation. Whether that’s asking a bunch of black teens “who let the dogs out” or telling Nascar fans that he has friends who own teams — Romney say what it takes.
Pay attention: The Big Tent has returned. Watch and see it unfold over the next year….
Pay attention to what? There is no evidence of the big tent theory, none at all, as I’ve already outlined in my reply.
The big tent is full. Full of my way or the highway extremist. The Republican Party has been taken over by corporate interests who know how to manipulate the populace using religion, base prejudices, class envy, and most importantly ‘money’.
This country is in trouble.
I was at the convention – the delegates covered the political spectrum. Yes, there was a majority of Paul supporters – young and enthusiastic – that’s the kind of problem Republicans like to have. You liberals cannot feel good about the size and energy of this largest in history Maine GOP convention.
State convention turnout is an insignificant statistic. General election turnout is the only thing that matters. Did you miss the fact that caucus turnout was low and GOP primaries nationwide showed poor turnout. There is an enthusiasm gap that bears paying attention to.
Mostly I think that enthusiasm is low because Romney has zero emotional appeal….zero. Ron Paul supporters are enthusiastic but the day has come and gone for them to make a run for the white house. Paul can disrupt but cannot go any further than Tampa.
Hm. I’m actually feeling pretty good about it. You guys are spending your energy fighting each other in a battle over extremist views. And stats show that the Republican party generally and in Congress certainly is now at a very extreme place in terms of partisanship. Those same stats show that the Dems are quite a bit more centrist, and that there are pretty much no “liberals” left. Keep moving to the right, guys…
Haven’t you yest realize that “right” and “left” are no longer too relevant. Where do you place Ron Paul’s proven convictions that our wars must be ended immediately and that non-violent drug users who are a majority of our highest-in-the-world prison population shall be let go, right or left from Obama’s position? Or maybe you would argue that these issues will be unimportant in general elections?
I place him to the right of the right, further towards anarchy, and just about on a par with the social Darwinism of the rest of the Republican let-them-eat-cake crowd, but not anywhere on the Democratic spectrum, thank you. When have we D’s last had a major candidate who espoused views like Paul’s? Oh, that’s right, never. You want to claim he’s “left?” – he’s not. You can keep the big tent.
Was this a joke? Since when immediate ending of wars and decriminalization of drugs have been “to the right of the right”? You can be serious only if you believe that infinite right and infinite left are the same point — but this only happens in projective geometry, not politics.
Libertarians are the to right of the right. Please don’t try to equate your problems in your party with anything remotely represented by mine. You guys unleashed this nonsense when you became rabidly anti-government, while pretending to lead government. Paul and his bunch are an extreme form of anti-government political philosophy, and occupy precious little common ground with the left. What informs his anti-war and decriminalization stances is completely different from what anti-war and decriminalization lefties believe. He is to the right of the right, and he is your Frankenstein.
Yeaaaaaaaaa T’Baggers one and done. Hopefully we won’t be fooled again.
“the votes they took behind closed doors make that look like an empty promise.”
This is a lie. There were no votes taken “behind closed doors.” You liberals know this but you keep repeating the lie. You’ve seen this kind of tactic work before so you keep using it. Shame on you.
There is nothing more frightful than willful ignorance in action. Step back. Open your eyes.
Stop believing everything the propogandists say. YOU open YOUR eyes.
From Mike Tipping’s article: “Senate Republican leadership, however, wrote down their votes, and the results were later obtained and published by the Bangor Daily News. So, at least those 20 senators can be held responsible for their actions.”The lying is on your part, it appears. Shame on you.
Vote on what? To come in and take a vote? Do you have a clue how many unrecorded votes there are in the caucuses, the House, Senate and committees? There was no “secret vote.” There were telephone calls to see if we wanted to come in – the answer was no, as it was unnecessary and expensive. All of it can be dealt with next week, if the legislature wants to.
Um, yeah, I do have a clue of how the process works, actually, and in this case you guys decided that upholding the votes you cast in public was just not all that important when you could undo them in private. And next week, after hoodwinking the D’s in the last round, you can move in for the kill, offing programs for needy kids while calling out their parents for not working. Just don’t think we’re not paying attention, or that your inability to stand up to the bully won’t count in November. At some point the voters will wake up and see whose bidding you do, and it’s not theirs.
What you say is absurd and just plain wrong. Exageration, hyperbole, misleading people, misinforming and outright lying obviously works for you.
I’m pretty sure that you guys have cornered the market on the misleading people. You brokered a deal with your colleagues, in apparently good faith, then privately decided to prevent any votes from being taken to override the Governor’s vetoes, even though the budget votes themselves were with veto-proof majorities. You either had a deal with LePage to allow this to happen, which would mean you were lying to your Democratic colleagues at the start, or you later decided that your own public votes just didn’t mean much when you could undo them in private – which is cowardly and the equivalent shirking your duty to your constituents.
If I’m wrong, then show me – and the rest of the people who are aware of how collegiality normally work in Augusta – by rejecting the Governor’s radical and completely partisan budget proposals. But wait, I forgot, you guys have already decided not to even bother with the charade of compromise with your colleagues this time, haven’t you? So then we’re back to either lying upfront, or cowardly shirking after the fact. You pick.
No one had a clue what the governor was going to do – a total surprise. Sorry, that’s the truth.
When a legislator votes on a budget – any legislator, any budget, he or she hold their nose. Removing part of it doesn’t change the basic bill. Rank and file legislators don’t make deals with anyone.
Also, there might be changes to what the governor vetoed – so all this hate language from you is misplaced.