Elections

Murkowski = The Face of the Combine

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I have seen a lot of people writing about Lisa Murkowski’s decision to wage a spoiler write-in campaign, to try to prevent a Tea Party-backed GOP candidate from winning the general election.

Most of the writers look at it, incorrectly, in terms of Sen. Murkowski’s personal psychology. For example, they say she feels miffed about losing a seat that is supposed to be hers by right of inheritance. This motive may exist, but it is trivial.

In Illinois, there has long been an expression which describes the relationship between the two political parties: The Combine. Chicago Tribune writer John Kass seems to have originated this expression. See, for example, this article: In Combine, cash is king, corruption is bipartisan. Kass quoted former Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald: “In the final analysis, The Combine’s allegiance is not to a party, but to their pocketbooks. They’re about making money off the taxpayers,” Fitzgerald said. Kass went on: “He should know. He fought The Combine and lost, and the empty suits running the Republican Party encourage their friendly scribes to blame the social conservatives for the disaster of the state GOP.”

Sound familiar?

America, welcome to Illinois.

The way it works is this. The Democrat party is the senior member of the Combine. The GOP is the junior member of the Combine. The game is exactly the same, and whoever is up, or whoever is down, based on the random behavior of those rubes, the voters, does not matter. The game is always exactly the same, and the people who are in on the game, from either party, have a shared stake in defending the game.

The Combine is a term that should be more widely used in Illinois. It is also a word that should be more widely used in the USA in general.

Lisa Murkowski’s family, and her career, exist because of the Combine. Her interest is in preserving the existing game. She is preserving her stake and her family’s stake in a game they have benefitted from. There is no mystery about this at all. There is no need for psychiatry to understand why she is trying to stop Joe Miller. He threatens the game. It has nothing to do with the label “Republican.”

UPDATE: The GOP Senate leadership is respecting the primary result. Good. Mitch McConnell is reported as saying: “I informed her that by choosing to run a campaign against the Republican nominee, she no longer has my support for serving in any leadership roles, and I have accepted her letter of resignation from Senate leadership.” CORRECTION: I had previously, incorrectly said Murkowski was being from her committee positions. Big difference. My error.

More on Palin and Elite Status Anxiety

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This is an addendum to Shannon’s post.

It occurs to me that the whole Obama phenomenon and the vitriolic attack on Gov. Palin are two sides of the same status anxiety.

Globalization, as it got started, hammered wages in the USA in manufacturing, by exposure to low wage competitors in China and in Mexico, as well as moving the Mexican workforce here. This made white collar workers relatively more wealthy, it gave them domestic servants, it held down inflation so their wages stayed steady while new and better products were coming online, and it did not initially subject them to competition, and they did not initially face job insecurity anything like what blue collar workers faced. As a result they were able to engage in all kinds of luxury purchasing and status posturing. Stylish domestic decor, a refined taste in imported wine, and other SWPL, for example, were noted and status ranking assigned with exquisite care. David Brooks is very good on this status signalling, in his book Bobos in Paradise. This was all flattering to white collar workers, many of whom had non-quantitative degrees, especially law degrees. They had money in their pockets and they had nice stuff in their homes, and foreign-born domestic help. Life looked pretty good. Looking down on the majority of their fellow citizens was a big part of their identity. But then, all of a sudden, they began to feel the winds of change blowing, too. Their jobs became insecure, or disappeared. They began to see that their university educations did not mean a one way ticket to affluence. This terrifying prospect has opened up and getting worse at the same time that blue collar America has had a chance to adjust, and may even be better positioned to handle the ongoing globalization, and other technological changes that are coming along at an accelerating rate.

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Excellent analysis of Chicago Mayor’s race

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This piece is from Greg Hinz, from Crain’s Chicago Business, who is usually good. Kinz lays out the potential candidates to replace Da Mayor. His blog has several good posts about the mayoral race. I will be checking it out from time to time.

I tend to agree with the commenters on the post I linked to. The Chicago business community is looking disaster in the face here.

My WAG: The money is going to rally to someone early, probably Rahm, who can promise stability.

Things are very bad. The recession is hitting hard here, on top of a very unfriendly, uncertain and even punitive climate for business in Chicago, Cook County and Illinois.

The business guys I know (small and medium-sized) all say they would leave if they could, and would never move here if they weren’t here already.

So, the people who have large investments here, who are committed to the place due to real estate holdings and other fixed investments, and cannot uproot themselves, need to fend off an exodus that a weak or worse, anti-business mayor, would cause. That means they need someone in there who will be up to the job and not just get rolled.

Then, long term, they need to stop the bleeding and make it worth doing business here. That will not be easy. It may not be possible.

One of the jokes circulating among my friends is that Blago should run. My response was, what is Lee Kwan Yew doing these days? We could use him there.

My wife’s first reaction: “We should have sold our house when we had the chance. Now we are going to turn into Detroit.”

A lot of people have to be thinking this way.

[See also The Last Boss, from Zenpundit.]

Others’ Shoes

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[I first posted this at my home blog, Phronesisaical. It’s a response to Lexington Green’s now famous Glenn Beck post. I’m reposting it here at Lex’s request. And forgive me if I seem slow to respond to comments; mine are frequently rejected by this system.]

Perhaps I’m taking on too much at once. I’m listening to Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and reading some Russian history to get a feeling for before the Revolution. I’m re-reading Daniel Martin to get a better feeling for what La Vida Es Sueño is about. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum today sent me an invitation to visualize O’Keeffe’s creative process.

And I’d really, really like to understand what is going on with the admirers of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, the Tea Partiers.

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The Deeper Meaning of the CBz Beck-O-Lanche

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[This was an update to a previous post, but I decided it should stand on its own. There are some inspiring lessons here.]

Great thanks to Glenn Beck for the mighty call-out on his TV show. He quotes this post here starting at 12:10, and continuing here. The transcript of the show is here.

This has been an interesting couple of days.

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