Sam Adams Alliance

By Alan Pell Crawford

Two new academic studies profess to explain something about our political attitudes. The first, to be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, argues that conservatism may “have a self-esteem enhancing function,” but it might also “relate to a contingent type of self-esteem, which, in turn, relates to ill-being.”

‘The Physiological and the Political’

The second, from Great Britain’s esteemed Royal Society, finds that “greater orientation to adverse stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations.” These conclusions, if you can figure out what they are, “are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions.” They make it possible, moreover, “to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political.”

By Alan Pell Crawford

 For a certain flavor of Republican, signs of an improving economy—well-grounded or not—are terrible news. The better things get, the worse their prospects in November seem to be.

There are at least three good reasons emphasizing issues that divide Americans in this way is so discouraging.

By Rachel Stewart

Death, as Helen Williams knows all too well, is an expensive proposition. Since 2006,when a grandson’s friend was killed in a drive-by shooting, she has helped more than 1,000 families in her low-income neighborhood of Minneapolis provide dignified funerals for their loved ones. Death by violence is not uncommon here, and many of these families do not carry life insurance. So Williams has pitched in wherever she can, arranging, for example, for donated caskets and burial plots.

She’s a newcomer to courtrooms and legislative chambers, though that is where her work now leads her. She is a plaintiff with Verlin Stoll, a local undertaker, in a suit challenging a Minnesota law that requires all new funeral homes to be equipped with embalming rooms.

By Alan Pell Crawford

Dick Lugar has been around the U.S. Senate so long no one would be surprised, some fine morning, to find he has quietly taken his place among the colossi in Statuary Hall. Reports that greenish age spots have already begun to appear on Lugar’s bronze toga are to be dismissed as good-natured fun, though some observers insist such oxidation is real. After six terms of dutiful service, Lugar has become the kind of senior statesmen the public rarely hears from because he offers his sage counsel “behind the scenes.” He believes in and supports the Senate, like a truss.

You Can’t Please Everybody

This is all very admirable, though institutional fealty has its drawbacks. You really can’t please all of the people all of the time, nor can you serve it, the Administration and the special interests, too. Eventually somebody or other gets mad, and when that happens, a lot can change. Lugar is learning this now. Having offended the banking industry by voting against a measure involving “swipe fees,” he finds himself facing a primary challenge. This is especially troubling to party officials because Lugar’s seat is considered a safe one.

By Alan Pell Crawford

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have come out of Florida with their reputations somewhat damaged, for which they can thank each other and themselves. The same cannot be said for Saul Alinsky, whose name was not even on the ballot. It would have been surprising if it were, his not being a Republican and all, as well as being dead. Dead people sometimes vote in a democracy like ours but rarely run for office, though they do appear as write-ins. (These are known as protest votes; no one expects the deceased to actually serve.)

The estates of those who have passed, however can profit from their books, and for all the abuse their author has taken, Alinsky’s works have been selling far better in recent days that those of any candidate still in the race. This must be embarrassing. Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals this week was #129 on Amazon’s best-seller list, with Paul’s Liberty Defined at #2,582 and Gingrich’s A Nation Like No Other at #15,679. Panting along well behind the leaders was Santorum’s It Takes A Family at #23,008 and Romney’s No Apology: Believe in America eating even Santorum’s dust at #29,036.

By Rachel Stewart

For Ken Vaughn and virtually any other private citizen not named Romney, Kerry, Roosevelt, Kennedy or Bush, running for Congress is a costly proposition. Of course, it’s costly even if you have pots of money. But for most of us, seeking public office at the national level comes at life-altering financial sacrifice. (Even a Kennedy, as Romney likes to remind us, sometimes has to mortgage one of his houses to remain competitive.)

Vaughn is a traffic engineer and small business-owner, but he is prepared to make such a sacrifice. He wants to unseat Rep. Gerald Connolly, a seemingly well-entrenched two-term Democrat from Virginia’s 11^th congressional district. To that end, Vaughn has spent at least $100,000 of his retirement fund just to get into the race.

CC courtesy of Gage Skidmore

By Alan Pell Crawford

That 100 Tea Party activists have come together to endorse Newt Gingrich for the Republican presidential nomination is good news for Gingrich, who won the South Carolina primary and might well win in Florida.

But this endorsement does not necessarily portend well  for other tea partiers. This assessment, mind you, has little to do with Gingrich himself, his opinions or his character. It has a lot to do, however, with the building of a political insurgency, which, after all, is what tea partiers say they want to achieve.

A few weeks ago, in a New York Magazine report on the Occupy Wall Street protestors, John Heilemann warned against writing them off just because cold weather has driven them back inside.

CC courtesy of Maryland General Assembly

By Rachel Stewart

Howard Gorrell has an admirably low tolerance for foolishness. Born deaf, he rejects the term “hearing-impaired” as too p.c., and does not allow this handicap to limit his activities—or his activism.

Gorrell’s most recent cause: redistricting in his native Maryland. Over six weeks this past fall, he attended not one, not two, but all 12 redistricting hearings across the state, determined to end partisan gerrymandering. In fact, the self-styled “deafie” was the first speaker at the hearings to use the word “gerrymander,” but hardly the first to think it.

Congressional districts, Gorrell testified, should be based on population, natural geographic boundaries and good sense. Counties, for example should be kept intact. Districts should have reasonable shapes.

By Alan Pell Crawford

With the number of “independents” in this country rising, the political class is in a tizzy about how to respond. The President’s advisors, for example, are painfully aware that one in five Democrats have left the party since his election and that his approval rating among independents has plummeted. But Republicans are also worried about independents. This is why party leaders want them to nominate Mitt Romney who they believe will do better with this favored constituency than will more ideological conservatives.

But what makes these party leaders so sure? A Pew Research Center study suggests that the conventional wisdom by which political professionals live and die is flat wrong. The conventional wisdom holds that independents are “moderates” who reject the “extremes” of right and left.  There’s scant evidence at all that independents are, as the Daily Kos puts it, “a sort of walking army of Midwestern Lutheran insurance actuaries.”

By Alan Pell Crawford

Linda Chavez in The New York Times says primary elections aren’t helping the Republicans, who would benefit from “a greater role for elected officials in selecting the [presidential] nominee.”

Both parties, the former Reagan administration official writes, “suffer from primary electorates that differ significantly from the parties’ general election voters. Why should a sliver of the electorate in states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have such a prominent role in picking the party’s standard bearer?”