Steve Flowers: Significance of Donald Trump endorsements in Alabama races
Former President Donald Trump was a very-popular president with Alabama Republican voters. Trump was a proven conservative president. He walked the walk. He did not just talk the talk. He has a legacy as president, especially in changing the philosophical tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court. He remains popular with GOP primary voters in the Heart of Dixie. Trump continues to stay in the spotlight. He almost feels compelled to endorse candidates for senate and governor in very conservative, southern, and Midwest Republican states like Alabama, where he still remains popular. Trump has indeed endorsed Congressman Mo Brooks in his quest to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Senator Richard Shelby. Brooks is basing his entire campaign on Trump’s endorsement. Gubernatorial candidate Lindy Blanchard, who has been a stalwart Trump supporter, is hoping for Trump’s blessing in her quest to unseat Governor Kay Ivey. Trump’s endorsement in this race would indeed be important in Ms. Blanchard’s mission. In the senate race, polling by two reputable and independent polling firms indicates that Mo Brooks and Katie Britt are in a dead heat contest, each with about 25%, with Mike Durant at 18%. Their numbers are not rock solid. Britt has more favorable numbers than Brooks on likeability. The poll indicates that if President Trump continues to be for Brooks, it will help him immensely. If Trump becomes disenchanted with Brooks, he can kiss this race goodbye. Brook’s campaign would simply vanish and sail away. Therefore, the prevailing question is what is the significance of Trump’s endorsement in the senate race and also if Trump endorses the governor’s race? My observation of Alabama politics over the last 60 years is that Alabamians, more than any other state, have a pronounced proclivity of not voting for a candidate that someone endorses; they will actually vote against them for that reason. Alabamians are independent and like to make their own choices for individual candidates. It has happened over and over again in my lifetime as though they are saying to a governor, in this case a former president, we elected you to your office, and you ought to be thankful for that and not be presumptuous or try to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Stick to your own knitting. George Wallace, in his heyday, when he was very popular, more popular than Trump in Alabama, would endorse candidates, and they would universally, invariably lose even if they were favored. It was as though his endorsement was the kiss of death. He gave up and quit endorsing. Trump has already had a dose of this Alabama anti-endorsing elixir. He made two endorsements in the 2017 special senate elections. Trump endorsed Luther Strange, and he lost. Trump then endorsed Roy Moore, and he lost. Other southern states have illustrated this anti-endorsing history. During the Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency, which lasted four terms throughout the Great Depression and New Deal, FDR was beloved and revered throughout the South. He was especially loved in Georgia, where he would spend a good amount of time at his home in Warm Springs. FDR had become like a king. He was immensely popular. However, he was having problems with the conservative establishment-oriented aging U.S. Supreme Court. Roosevelt responded with a bold, audacious move to pack the court with six new members whom he could select and move the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 justices. FDR wanted to control the Supreme Court. A good many U.S. Senators, who had been loyal to Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda could not go along with this brazen power play. Georgia’s venerable Walter George was one of those who opposed the FDR Court-packing plan. Senator George was running for reelection, and there was a tremendous ceremonial event of a water dam that Senator George had secured for Georgia. The ceremony was less than a month before the election. FDR came to the event and lambasted Walter George and openly asked Georgians to vote against him for reelection. When it came time for Senator Walter George to speak, he calmly and gentlemanly went to the podium and said in a dignified voice, “Mr. President, we Georgians appreciate you, we love you and admire you, but Mr. President, Georgians will elect their U.S. Senator.” Walter George was reelected overwhelmingly a few weeks later. See you next week. Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.
Joe Biden signs $1T infrastructure deal with bipartisan crowd
President Joe Biden signed his hard-fought $1 trillion infrastructure deal into law Monday before a bipartisan, celebratory crowd on the White House lawn, declaring that the new infusion of cash for roads, bridges, ports, and more is going to make life “change for the better” for the American people. But prospects are tougher for further bipartisanship ahead of the 2022 midterm elections as Biden pivots back to more difficult negotiations over his broader $1.85 trillion social spending package. The president hopes to use the infrastructure law to build back his popularity, which has taken a hit amid rising inflation and the inability to fully shake the public health and economic risks from COVID-19. “My message to the American people is this: America is moving again and your life is going to change for the better,” he said. With the bipartisan deal, the president had to choose between his promise of fostering national unity and a commitment to transformative change. The final measure whittled down much of his initial vision for infrastructure. Yet the administration hopes to sell the new law as a success that bridged partisan divides and will elevate the country with clean drinking water, high-speed internet, and a shift away from fossil fuels. “Folks, too often in Washington, the reason we didn’t get things done is because we insisted on getting everything we want. Everything,” Biden said. “With this law, we focused on getting things done. I ran for president because the only way to move our country forward in my view was through compromise and consensus.” Biden will get outside Washington to sell the plan more broadly in the coming days. He intends to go to New Hampshire on Tuesday to visit a bridge on the state’s “red list” for repair, and he will go to Detroit on Wednesday for a stop at General Motors’ electric vehicle assembly plant, while other officials also fan out across the country. The president went to the Port of Baltimore last week to highlight how the supply chain investments from the law could limit inflation and strengthen supply chains, a key concern of voters who are dealing with higher prices. “We see this as is an opportunity because we know that the president’s agenda is quite popular,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday before the signing. The outreach to voters can move “beyond the legislative process to talk about how this is going to help them. And we’re hoping that’s going to have an impact.” Biden held off on signing the hard-fought infrastructure deal after it passed on Nov. 5 until legislators would be back from a congressional recess and could join in a splashy bipartisan event. On Sunday night before the signing, the White House announced Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, would help manage and coordinate the implementation of the infrastructure spending. The gathering Monday on the White House lawn was uniquely upbeat with a brass band and peppy speeches, a contrast to the drama and tensions when the fate of the package was in doubt for several months. The speakers lauded the measure for creating jobs, combating inflation, and responding to the needs of voters. Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who helped negotiate the package, celebrated Biden’s willingness to jettison much of his initial proposal to help bring GOP lawmakers on board. Portman even credited former President Donald Trump for raising awareness about infrastructure, even though the loser of the 2020 election voiced intense opposition to the ultimate agreement. “This bipartisan support for this bill comes because it makes sense for our constituents, but the approach from the center out should be the norm, not the exception,” Portman said. The signing included governors and mayors of both parties and labor and business leaders. In addition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the guest list included Republicans such as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, New York Rep. Tom Reed, Alaska Rep. Don Young, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. In order to achieve a bipartisan deal, the president had to cut back his initial ambition to spend $2.3 trillion on infrastructure by more than half. The bill that becomes law on Monday in reality includes about $550 billion in new spending over 10 years, since some of the expenditures in the package were already planned. The agreement ultimately got support from 19 Senate Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Thirteen House Republicans also voted for the infrastructure bill. An angry Trump issued a statement attacking “Old Crow” McConnell and other Republicans for cooperating on “a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan.” McConnell said the country “desperately needs” the new infrastructure money, but he skipped Monday’s signing ceremony, telling WHAS radio in Louisville, Kentucky, that he had “other things” to do. Historians, economists, and engineers interviewed by The Associated Press welcomed Biden’s efforts. But they stressed that $1 trillion was not nearly enough to overcome the government’s failure for decades to maintain and upgrade the country’s infrastructure. The politics essentially forced a trade-off in terms of potential impact not just on the climate but on the ability to outpace the rest of the world this century and remain the dominant economic power. “We’ve got to be sober here about what our infrastructure gap is in terms of a level of investment and go into this eyes wide open, that this is not going to solve our infrastructure problems across the nation,” said David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Biden also tried unsuccessfully to tie the infrastructure package to the passage of a broader package of $1.85 trillion in proposed spending on families, health care, and a shift to renewable energy that could help address climate change. That measure has yet to gain sufficient support from the narrow Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Biden continues to work to appease Democratic skeptics of the broader package such as
Joe Biden vows to unify and save country; Donald Trump hits Midwest
Joe Biden traveled Tuesday to the hot springs town where Franklin Delano Roosevelt coped with polio to declare the U.S. is not too politically diseased to overcome its health and economic crises, pledging to be the unifying force who can “restore our soul and save this country.” The Democratic presidential nominee offered his closing argument with Election Day just one week away while attempting to go on the political offensive in Georgia, which hasn’t backed a Democrat for the White House since 1992. He promised to be a president for all Americans regardless of party, even as he said that “anger and suspicion is growing and our wounds are getting deeper.” “Has the heart of this nation turned to stone? I don’t think so,” Biden said. “I refuse to believe it.” While Biden worked to expand the electoral map in the South, President Donald Trump focused on the Democrats’ “blue wall” states that he flipped in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and maintained a far busier travel schedule taking him to much more of the country. At a cold, rain-soaked rally in the Michigan capital of Lansing, Trump said Biden supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, both of which he said hurt the auto industry and other manufacturing in the state. “This election is a matter of economic survival for Michigan,” the president said, arguing that the state’s economy was strong before the coronavirus pandemic hit. “Look what I’ve done.” Trump also cheered Senate candidate John James — who may ultimately have a better chance of winning the state than the president — while attacking Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for moving aggressively to shut down much of the state’s economy to slow the virus’ spread. He even seemed to cast doubt on federal authorities breaking up what they said was a plot to kidnap her, which Whitmer has argued Trump’s “violent rhetoric” helped spark. “It was our people that helped her out with her problem. And we’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right?” Trump said. “People are entitled to say ‘maybe it was a problem. Maybe it wasn’t.’” Biden, even as he predicted the country could rise above politics, went after his election rival, accusing Trump anew of bungling the federal response to the pandemic that has seen new cases surging in many areas, and failing to manage the economic fallout or combat institutional racism and police brutality that have sparked widespread demonstrations. “The tragic truth of our time is that COVID has left a deep and lasting wound in this country,” Biden said, scoffing at Trump’s pronouncements that the nation is turning a corner on the virus. He charged that the president has “shrugged. He’s swaggered. And he’s surrendered.” Venturing into Georgia was a sign of confidence by the Biden team, which is trying to stretch the electoral map and open up more paths to the needed 270 Electoral College votes. The former vice president plans to travel to Iowa, which Trump took by 10 points in 2016, later in the week. And his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, is hitting Arizona and deep red Texas. Besides Lansing, Trump traveled to West Salem, Wisconsin. First lady Melania Trump was on the road, too, making her first solo campaign trip of the year in Pennsylvania. And Vice President Mike Pence was in South Carolina, maintaining his campaign schedule despite several close aides testing positive for the coronavirus last weekend. There, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is in a potentially tight reelection race. Hillary Clinton flirted with GOP territory in 2016, only to lose traditional Democratic Midwestern strongholds. But a top Biden adviser rejected the notion that the campaign is spreading itself too thin, noting that the former vice president’s visit follows weeks of paid advertising in Georgia and visits by Harris and the candidate’s wife, Jill Biden. In the coming days, Biden will also visit Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida, where former President Barack Obama gave a speech in Orlando on Tuesday, blistering Trump with the theory that he was only worrying about the virus because it was dominating news coverage. “He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage,” Obama said. “If he had been focused on COVID from the beginning, cases wouldn’t be reaching new record highs across the country this week.” Trump expressed his displeasure that Fox News carried his Democratic predecessor’s speech live, complaining to reporters about it and tweeting the network was “playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden.” In Atglen, Pennsylvania, Melania Trump said she was feeling “so much better now,” just weeks after being diagnosed with the virus. She slammed Biden’s “socialist agenda,” praised her husband as “a fighter” and commented on his use of social media. “I don’t always agree the way he says things,” she said, drawing laughter from the crowd, “but it is important to him that he speaks directly to the people he serves.” The Trumps left for their campaign trips at the same time, and the president gave the first lady a quick peck on the cheek before they boarded separate planes. The president also visited Omaha, Nebraska, after a Sunday stop in Maine. That anticipates a razor-thin Electoral College margin since both areas offer one electoral vote by congressional district. “We have to win both Nebraskas,” Trump told the big crowd that gathered at the city’s Eppley Airfield, presumably referring to Omaha and the state’s more rural districts. While Biden rarely travels to more than one state per day, the Republican president has maintained a whirlwind schedule, focusing on his argument that he built a booming economy before the coronavirus pandemic upended it. Trump is planning a dizzying 11 rallies in the final 48 hours before polls close. His latest swing is also something of a victory lap after the Senate on Monday approved the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to give conservatives a commanding 6-3 advantage on the Supreme Court. Trump has sought to use the vacancy created by the
Inside the Statehouse: The story of the Dixiecrats and 1948 Truman election as President
Steve Flowers tells the story behind the 1948 Presidential election, which resulted in a historic upset by Harry Truman.
Inside the Statehouse: U.S. Senate race decided in runoff
Steve Flowers discusses the dynamics underlying the Republican runoff for US Senate.
Lawrence W. Reed: A poverty program that worked
We’ve become accustomed to think of fighting poverty as a 20th Century undertaking, with the federal government leading the way. For that reason, this quotation from an American president might come as a surprise: “The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America.” Those words came from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address on Jan. 4, 1935. A moment later, he declared, “The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.” As we know, it didn’t. Indeed, 30 years later Lyndon Johnson would take “this business of relief” to new and expensive heights in an official “War on Poverty.” Another 30 years and more than $5 trillion in welfare spending later, a Democratic president signed a bill that replaced the federal entitlement to welfare and allowed states to implement work requirements, time limits, and other measures to encourage personal responsibility. As Ronald Reagan observed, “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.” We paid an awful price in lives and treasure to learn some things the vast majority of Americans of the 19th century — and the chief executives they elected — could have plainly told us: Government welfare programs encouraged idleness, broke up families, produced intergenerational dependency and hopelessness, cost taxpayers a fortune, and yielded harmful cultural trends that may still take generations to cure. Washington, Adams, and their successors in the 1800s DID fight a war on poverty — the most comprehensive and effective ever mounted by any central government anywhere. It was, in a word, LIBERTY, which meant things like self-reliance, hard work, entrepreneurship, the institutions of civil society, a strong and free economy, and government confined to its constitutional role as protector of liberty by keeping the peace. And what a poverty program liberty proved to be! In spite of a horrendous civil war, half a dozen economic downturns and wave after wave of impoverished immigrants, America progressed from near-universal poverty at the start of the century to within reach of the world’s highest per-capita income at the end of the century. The poverty that remained stood out like the proverbial sore thumb because it was now the exception, no longer the rule. Our free and self-reliant citizenry spawned so many private, distress-relieving initiatives that American generosity became one of the marvels of the world. U.S. population in 1900, at 76 million, was 14 times its 1800 level, yet per capita GDP had quadrupled. That explosion in production and creativity translated into a gigantic leap for average personal income and a steep plunge in the portion of Americans living in abject poverty. In a speech in the U.S. House of Representatives years before he became our fourth president, James Madison declared, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” Like the three presidents before him and the next 20 or so after him, Madison knew that if liberty were not preserved, poverty would be the least of our troubles. Meanwhile, the poor of virtually every other nation on the planet were poor because of what governments were doing TO them, often in the name of doing something FOR them: taxing and regulating them into penury; seizing their property and businesses; persecuting them for their faith; torturing and killing them because they held views different from those in power; and squandering their resources on official luxury, mindless warfare, and wasteful boondoggles. Americans of all colors pulled themselves out of poverty in the 19th century by ending slavery and creating wealth through invention and enterprise. Then they generously gave much of their income — along with their time and personal attention — to the aid of their neighbors and communities. Government assistance often displaces what private people and groups would do better and more cost-effectively if government stayed home. Politicians are not more compassionate than the population that elects them. And politicians rarely spend other people’s money more effectively than those people to whom it belongs in the first place. Based on time-honored values and Constitutional limits, Americans got the poverty issue right for more than a hundred years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in the last century, as we increasingly abandoned what worked and put government in the poverty business, the problem has become as chronic and intractable as the expensive bureaucracy erected to eradicate it. ••• Lawrence W. Reed is president of the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta, Georgia and author of the new book, Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction. This essay is adapted from his chapter in the 2015 anthology, For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty.
