When Democrat Parker Griffith ran for Congress last year, it was in a district that the GOP wanted badly to win. So the Natioanl Republican Congressional Committee really went to town on him, putting out an attack ad filled with dark images of terror attacks, including 9/11, that ended by quoting Griffith as saying, “We have nothing to fear from radical Islam.”
Griffith won anyway. But on Tuesday, news broke that he plans to switch parties, and will officially announce his decision to become a Republican Tuesday afternoon. Problem was, that ad was apparently still on YouTube.
The NRCC seems to have moved quickly, though. Their official copy of the spot has been removed from the video-sharing site. One other user’s copy still remained as of this post, however. You can view it below.
Update: Not wanting to be left out of the action, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now scrubbing positive statements its people made about Griffith in 2008.
It should have been obvious all along that party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith was heading to defeat in Tuesday’s Alabama GOP primary. (And actually, to many Democrats hoping for Griffith to fall, it was.) Politicians have been getting away with jumping from one side of the aisle to the other for a long time — but 2010 is clearly not the year for it.
Griffith quit the Democratic Party in December, citing healthcare reform — and a generalized dislike for, oh, pretty much everything the party stands for — as his reason. The Republican establishment welcomed him with open arms, trumpeting the leap as another good omen for the GOP’s November 2010. (Mostly open arms, that is, except when they accidentally attacked him in party-funded mailings.) At the time, Griffith seemed to be making the right move — Democrats had stalled in their push for the healthcare bill, President Obama (never particularly popular in Griffith’s district) was watching his approval ratings plunge and elections the month before had mostly gone well for the GOP. But on the ground back home, activists weren’t so quick to get on board. In Madison County, Alabama, the local party endorsed anyone but Griffith in a three-way race. The Tea Party blasted Griffith, calling him a Republican in name only — which was hard to refute, since he’d only been a Republican for a few months.
The fate Griffith met Tuesday night — defeated handily, with main rival Mo Brooks winning more than 50 percent even with a third candidate on the ballot — mirrored what had already happened to Sen. Arlen Specter among Pennsylvania Democrats. Specter switched parties last April, at a moment that seemed as good for Democrats as Griffith’s leap seemed bad. Both candidates admitted part of the reason they jumped was to help themselves win reelection, but Specter was more nakedly calculating; he wasn’t ready, he said, to let Pennsylvania’s conservative GOP primary voters have the final say on whether he would continue to represent the state in the Senate. The conventional wisdom then was that Republican Pat Toomey would have rolled right over Specter in a GOP primary, but that Specter would probably be able to beat him in the general election.
Democrats in the state, though, weren’t as easily persuaded. Rep. Joe Sestak resisted establishment efforts to muscle him out of the race (including, yes, by dangling the prospect of some kind of job) and perservered even though longtime donors were advised by power players in the state that they shouldn’t give his campaign any money. And lo and behold, on a rainy primary day, Specter lost.
Of course, northern Alabama Republicans don’t have that much in common with union activists, liberals and the other die-hard Pennsylvania Democrats who turned out there last month. But what they both do seem to share is an unwillingness to go along with establishment marching orders without question. So far this year, that’s been the overwhelming trend — just ask Charlie Crist or Trey Grayson, chased out or defeated by their party base despite backing from national Republicans, or Sen. Bob Bennett, beaten soundly in Utah’s GOP convention before the primary even came along.
So Griffith’s loss Tuesday might be troubling for both parties. For Republicans, of course, it’s just the latest sign that the Tea Party folks the GOP has been depending on for energy in 2010 might spin farther and farther out of the party establishment’s sphere of influence. (And at some point, if your ground troops refuse to take any orders at all, are you really better off having them on your side?)
But for Democrats, who have been cheering Brooks on in hopes of avenging Griffith’s betrayal, there’s a hidden downside, too. Optimistic strategists in Washington keep saying that the mood in the country isn’t anti-Democratic, it’s anti-incumbent. Griffith’s defeat might prove them right — and they could still wind up having a brutal Nov. 2. After all, there are far more Democratic incumbents trying to hold onto their jobs this year than Republicans. If voters are really in a “throw the bums out” mood, which Tuesday’s result seems to add more evidence is the case, that math adds up to bad news for Democrats down the line.
Alabama’s primary elections are today! The candidates running for various offices include a man who hates foreign languages and sex offenders, a black Democrat who hates Obamacare, a white Democrat who became a Republican, a black Republican who hates Obama, and the guy who installed a giant, granite copy of the Ten Commandments in the state courthouse for attention a couple years ago. All of them have produced or been the subjects of crazy YouTube ads. It is everything wonderful and terrible about this nation in 2010 in one convenient place.
First, the gubernatorial race. Rep. Artur Davis is expected to win the Democratic nomination. Davis’ House district is as safe as can be — Obama won 73% of the vote there — but he has long had his eye on on statwide office. That’s why, according to David Jarman, Davis is “the least liberal member of the Congressional Black Caucus.”
Running as a black Democrat to be governor of Alabama seems impossible in 2010. But Davis figured his best bet was just to just vote and act like a Republican. So he voted against healthcare. He turned on Charlie Rangel. The result: the state’s established civil rights groups have endorsed Davis’ white opponent, Ron Sparks.
Davis is ahead of Sparks in the most recent polls, but behind all the Republicans. The Republican front-runner is Bradley Byrne, notable mostly for the mysterious ad that accused him of believing in the theory of evolution.
This forced Byrne to deny the charges that he is a reasonable man who believes in 100-year-old scientific consensus. Don’t worry, Alabama Republicans: Byrne is a religious nut.
Byrne’s opponents for the Republican nomination are Tim James and Roy Moore. Moore is, of course, the famous Ten Commandments judge who ran for governor and lost four years ago.
Tim James is the guy who wanders around aimlessly saying folksy, down-home, ultra-right-wing cant into cameras:
Elsewhere in Alabama, Rep. Parker Griffith is running for reelection. Griffith was elected as a Democrat, voted as a Republican in order to appease his conservative constituents, and then decided to officially become a Republican, which is actually much more respectable than continuing to pretend to be a Democrat.
Apparently it’s taking a little while for the realization that Rep. Parker Griffith is now a Republican to sink in — with his own staff.
Aides at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee got a FedEx packet Monday morning, from Griffith’s Huntsville, Ala., district office and addressed to one of Griffith’s schedulers, Leigh Pettis — but at 430 South Capitol Street SE, the Democratic National Committee headquarters, instead of at Griffith’s Capitol Hill office. Inside were a bunch of receipts for more than $1,000 of office expenditures. Which almost made it look like Griffith was trying to bill his former party for keeping his office running. (The DCCC and its Republican counterpart don’t reimburse lawmakers for their official business, so it was pretty obviously just a case of writing the wrong address on the package before sending it.)
Take a look at the FedEx envelope here — Salon blacked out the account number and and sender’s name and highlighted the DCCC’s address:
While it was clearly a mistake, DCCC aides couldn’t resist poking a little fun at their former comrade-in-arms. “It’s understandable considering all his flip-flops that his constituents would be confused about what political party Parker Griffith belongs to, but apparently that rule also extends to Parker Griffith’s congressional office,” says DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer.
The DCCC says it will make sure the packet gets to the correct address. Much to the relief of Griffith’s chief of staff, Michael Galloway, who was pretty sure the mixup was inadvertent. “I think that would be operator error,” Galloway told Salon. Of course, it’s not the first mail-related problem since Griffith switched parties; in February, the National Republican Congressional Committee sent out a fundraising letter to Republicans in Griffith’s district, asking for help to defeat “your Democrat in Congress” for “falling in line with Nancy Pelosi’s destructive liberal agenda.”
Republicans are turning to one of their newest colleagues to give a response on Saturday to President Obama’s weekly radio address. Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama — who switched parties late last year, but still has had trouble convincing tea party activists in his district to trust him — will take up the GOP cause on healthcare reform.
Griffith, a doctor, might seem like a natural to speak on the subject. But Republicans haven’t always been so impressed by his medical credentials. A Democratic source reminded Salon that a nasty 2008 attack ad by the National Republican Congressional Committee, during Griffith’s first campaign, went after his career as a physician. “What kind of man is Parker Griffith?” the ad asked. Apparently, the answer is that he’s the kind of man who doesn’t hold a grudge for long against the national GOP.
Watch the ad here:
UPDATE: A spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Ryan Rudominer, sends along this shot at Griffith and the GOP: “If what Republicans said about Parker Griffith’s record as a doctor is any guide, their decision to select him as their health care messenger speaks volumes about what the Republican position on health care means for America.”
Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith is crossing the aisle and becoming a Republican. His staff — or at least the bulk of it — won’t be following along.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just blasted out a release announcing that “nearly every” one of Griffith’s staffers tendered their resignation Monday morning. According to the DCCC, Griffith’s chief of staff was one of those who quit, “along with the entire legislative and communications team.”
In a quote included with the release, Sharon Wheeler, Griffith’s chief of staff, said, “Alabama’s Fifth District has deserved and has benefited from great Democratic conservative leadership since Reconstruction. And until now they had it. But Parker Griffith has abandoned the legacy of conservative leadership provided by Bud Cramer, Ronnie Flippo, Bob Jones, Howell Heflin, Jim Allen, Lister Hill, John Sparkman, Big Jim Folsom, and so many more.”
This isn’t the first defection from Griffith’s camp; his campaign consultants cut ties shortly after the announcement of the congressman’s decision to switch parties. And though the DCCC is trumpeting this, it’s not exactly a huge surprise. It’s one thing when someone like Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., switches parties; he’s had staffers who’ve been with him for years, and at least some of them are more loyal to Specter than to any given party. But Griffith’s a freshman.
When I lost the ability to type 
Pop art, the beaded edition 
The beautiful banality of high school 
The unemployed meet MacArthur’s tanks 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
Whip-it 
My debate with Charles Murray 
