Will shutdown cast pall over Summit GOP event?

Are you ready for the government shutdown that the experts are now conceding? No, still not necessary to start storing extra food and water in the basement.  But we are still facing a mess dumped on us by the weird collection of  anarchists on Capitol Hill who insist they only want to do what's best for the American people, imaginary or otherwise.

Easy for them to say.   While a sea of Americans will lose paychecks  and other government services, the laws are so devised that the Capitol Hill gang of Tea Party lawmakers will still get paid, even if their employes will not. To the topside goes the spoils.

And it took not John Boehner but another Ohioan to put the anarchists' self-styled  noble   work in context.    That would be Rep. Jim Jordan, from somewhere down in  central Ohio, a  hard right Republican (!) who believes it's all a matter of "basic civics" to do what has to be done for the people.

"Sometimes I go back to basic civics.  We're the House of Representatives.  We're the body that's supposed to be closer to the people," he said.  "That's why the founders gave a chance for the people to throw us out every two years."

From  his rural Republican-pure district?  He's kidding, of course.

He also s didn't mention that a majority of his colleagues in the People's House would disagree with his sophomoric  civics lesson.

Meantime, a shutdown might cast a pall over  the annual  Summit County GOP finance committee dinner Tuesday night at the Akron-Fairlawn Hilton.  For $300 a plate (or more) the guests will get to hear yet another boast from Gov. John (Ohio Miracle) Kasich.  A big honor for Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, I might add, inasmuch as he's paid $10,000 a month to be the University of Akron's guy to lobby...John Kasich. 

Once again at these annual moneyfests, Alex will get his chance to slam every  titled Democratic leader with scandalous behavior that would even force the late Ray Bliss to blush.  Whatever's going wrong, he will tell them, is the fault of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and such without once mentioning chief Republican/Tea Party anarchist Ted Cruz.

Long ago I chose the wrong line of work to make a good living.

P.S. I would provide you with an on-site report of the event as I did for many years when Bliss was chair. But a couple of years ago Alex  closed the doors to me, thus doing himself and me  a  favor.  

Yes, bipartisanship created the Cuyahoga Valley National Park

REP. STEVE LATOURETTE'S decision to not seek reelection was a reminder of an earlier day  when non-partisan cooperation created one of Northern  Ohio's prized public amenities - now called the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  It's a stretch of pristine beauty reaching border to border from Akron to Cleveland that is drawing more than 3 million visitors each year.

LaTourette indicated he was fed up with the stalemate in Congress,  much of it generated by the arrival of the Tea Party hordes that descended on Capitol Hill from the  2010 elections.But there was a time when good things could come our way from a collegial attempt to serve the public good.  So it was in December 1974 when the federal parkland was set aside by Congress and signed into law by President Ford.

Even then, it was a close call - but it did end on a positive note.(Yes, it can happen!)   The three Northern Ohio congressmen who sought the protected acreage were John Seiberling of Akron, a liberal Democrat, and Ralph Regula, a centrist Republican from Navarre in Stark County.  They got a helping hand from another Democratic representative, Charles Vanik of Cleveland.

But as it began to appear that resistance was growing in Congress that would allow the law to die without Ford's signature, 11th hour calls were exchanged among the congressmen, Sens. Robert A. Taft (R)  and Howard Metzenbaum (D that led to a clinching call from Akron's Ray Bliss , the former Republican chairman,  to Ford, who was vacationing in Vail, Col., over the Christmas holiday.  "Get it done," Bliss told the president, or you'll lose the election in 1976. Pure political pragmatism. the sort of influence that made Bliss a towering figure in his party with a lot of folks except Nixon.

It was a textbook example of how government can work for the common good.  Unfortunately, LaTourette doesn't think it is working now.  And we can understand why.

(For my dissection of the resulting political scramble  from LaTourette's impending departure, you might read my overview column in Plunderbund.com.)

Here we go again, from abortion to RTW

AS THE SULLEN SUPPORTERS of the anti-union Senate Bill 5 continue to reach for noble platitudes to launder their loss in the spin cycle, we learn that 2012 will bring us further mischief from the political and religious Right. Oh, my.

Shall we begin with a fellow named Patrick Johnston, a Tea Partying Ohio doctor with strong pulpiteering tendencies? He's leading a movement to put his version of the anti-abortion Personhood amendment on the Ohio ballot next year. He says he's not concerned in the least that Mississippi voters convincingly rejected it in Tuesday's election. Undismayed - zealots always are - Johnston says: "We have science and divine law on our side. With God's help we will win through."

(Historical note: the early Romans also believed that "no enterprise could be undertaken without divine sanction", and look what's happening to Italy today. )

Let's move on. There's the right-to-work thing. It is called the "Workplace Freedom Amendment" that would be added to the Ohio Constitution if approved by the voters next year. You wouldn't be shocked to learn that it is operating as the Liberty Council (!), a Tea Party Affiliate. One of the movement's organizers is Bryan Williams, one of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff's favorites from the party's practice squad who was vanquished by Mayor Plusquellic several elections ago. Williams, a lobbyist for builders and contractors, was quoted in the Beacon Journal as saying the RTW amendment would "unleash an economic engine".

Or, on the other hand, the same union juggernaut that crushed Senate Bill 5 as it did RTW in 1958. Not only RTW but, as the late Ray Bliss had warned his party at the time, the statewide Republican ticket. I wonder if Arshinkoff, Bliss's alleged apostle, has reminded Williams of the scary odds against the GOP in 2012 with the avatar of RTW hanging around. No one , however, would appreciate another arousal of the Democratic/Labor folks more than President Obama.

I was working for the old Columbus Citizen when the right-to-workers went to the ballot in 1958 and were thrashed. The Scripps-Howard newspapers had strongly endorsed it. You should have seen the editors' faces the morning after. The first order of damage control from the editor: Start looking for positive feature stories about the city's labor leaders.

Jeez. The more I see of the GOP's political tactics, the less I understand, and it looks like we're going to have another awful year to figure them out.

For the Summit GOP: Look who's coming to dinner

SUMMIT COUNTY REPUBLICAN Chief Alex Arshinkoff has never been known for moderation, whether in political hype or personal habit. He can now add to that dubious reputation his latest jewel for his crown: He will have as the main speaker for the party's annual finance dinner on October 19, which will be studded with dollar signs, the guy known as the most conservative congressman on Capitol Hill: Rep. Jim Jordan, who lives on a farm near Urbana, Oh.

Thus Arshinkoff, straining to become a national player, will push the once-moderate Republican County Party entirely over the cliff into the dark soul-less fringe that has taken over the GOP today.

Let me tell you about Jordan. He is a Tea Party evangelical whose rise to prominence, among others, was boosted by FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's right-wing cash machine. Jordan is now chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, and don't let that group's modest title mislead you into thinking it is a group of intellectuals sitting around and parsing Shakespearean verses. No way. He told the Plain Dealer last May that his job as the HRSC chairman will be to "help Republicans act like Republicans." - which, we all can see today, they aren't doing by the late Ray Bliss' standards.

In the same interview with the PD, Jordan, 47, listed as one of his hobbies "cutting weeds and firewood". And another: watching sports on television. He was, after all, a national wrestling champion. He tried the weed- cutting stuff with his sharp opposition to House Speaker John Boehner 's moves on possibly raising the debt ceiling, and angered the Republican forces around Boehner. Some peeved Ohio Republicans told the Columbus Dispatch that Jordan's behavior in the matter was "boneheaded." Fitting the profile, Jordan also is vibrantly against same-sex marriage and abortion.

Come to think of it: Why am I telling you all of this stuff? The people sitting at the $2.500 tables for 10 will hear it in the most glowing terms from Arshinkoff, who once wanted you to believe that he was a moderate Republican himself.

P.S. If the lights in your home dim briefly on the big night, it will tell you that Alex has just begun his rapturous introduction of his weed-cutting pal.

Is the Ohio right-to-work debacle only old news?

MORE THAN a half century ago, the anti-union establishment in Ohio (do I have to name it?) decided it was time to end closed union shops by adding a right-to-work amendment to the state constitution. With an arrogant dismissal of organized labor's bread-and-butter proprietary claim to guard its membership rolls, the pro-right-to-work team propelled the issue to the November ballot.

The result was - or should have been - a defining moment in labor relations in Ohio. The proposed amendment was swamped by more than a million votes (63-37) in what was described by the Plain Dealer at the time as the widest margin of defeat that any ballot issue had ever suffered in Ohio.

The consequences were even more severe for leading Republican officeholders. Among the losers on the November ballot were the governor, Bill O'Neill, who actively supported the amendment; and presumed unbeatable conservative icon, Sen. John Bricker, who opposed it as political suicide. That, too, describes the late Ray Bliss, then-Ohio Republican chairman who saw it as a death warrant for the GOP ticket. (Such political wisdom is absent today in the governor's office as well as at the county level, where the party is managed by alleged Bliss disciple Alex Arshinkoff, a Kasich soldier to the core.)

The defeat of right-to-work was one of the GOP's darkest days in Ohio's political history.

That was 1958. I was a young reporter for the Columbus Citizen and as the results came in there were worried glances among the paper's top editors, and then shock over the overwhelming size of the issue's defeat. Within a day or so, Jack Keller, the managing editor, sent a memo to the city desk calling for greater coverage of the city's unions, from hard news to features. It was a damage-control concession that the paper had been less than attentive to the voice of labor. Other than occasional reports that union membership has shrunk, the media remain indifferent to the workaday world of a unionist on the national TV news panels and the local business pages. (Have I overlooked evidence to prove me in error?)

Well, here we are in 2011 and if the polls are wildly correct, Kasich & Co. - even with enormous resources ready to be tapped from anti-union treasuries from across the land (think, the Koch

brothers) - can expect to lose a rousing battle. The governor is counting on his two favorite newspapers, the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, to orchestrate the narrative in the coming months in which we will be frequently reminded that it's hurtful to the state to go forward with the Senate Bill 5 repeal campaign after the governor offered a compromise. Lost in the dire warnings is the simple truth that it was the Kasich union-busting culture that created the whole mess in the first place. Whatever else it might have been, it was bad politics. What could he and his legislative buddies have been thinking?

Really, folks - would a brash and self-centered cowboy like the governor be talking about a compromise if he expected the repeal to be a loser in November? It's possible, of course, that he never really expected the leaders of the public-union repeal to the public at large. Or so it might be argued. But, as expected, it's the repeal advocates who are now being accused of playing politics. Please.

A long time ago, a savvy Ray Bliss had it right and his warnings went unheeded. Is there nobody in the governor's office today who comes close to having it right?

Gene Waddell's handoff to Alex Arshinkoff

THE PASSING of Gene Waddell recalls the controversy over the changing of the guard when he resigned as Summit County Republican Chairman in 1978. He had called me a few days before the regularly scheduled (and usually news-less) party's executive committee meeting to alert me that he would be announcing his resignation. I was the Beacon Journal's political editor at the time and he wanted to explain that 13 years as the party's chairman was long enough.

As I sat down later at the committee's afternoon meeting , Dick Slusser, a Summit County commissioner, seemed puzzled. "What are you doing here?" he asked, innocently. "Nothing ever happens at these meetings."

"Just stay awake, Dick," I said. "I think something will happen today to liven things up."

Waddell presided over the routine business until he'd run through the regular agenda. Then came his startling notice that he was giving up his job and recommending the party's loyal young gadabout, Alex Arshinkoff, to replace him. (Arshinkoff's name had been passed down by Ray Bliss, who was trying to pump some young blood into the operation at headquarters.)

Some of the local achievers, including Mayor John Ballard, at the meeting were outraged by Waddell's summary call for an endorsement of Arshinkoff and demanded a postponement until they could find a candidate more to their liking. They even sent emissaries to Arshinkoff to persuade him to step aside when a new meeting to elect Waddell's successor was scheduled. Fat chance. (No pun intended!) After weeks of delay, Arshinkoff won the job.

What a change, at least in style points: Waddell was largely a soft-spoken, avoid-the-limelight lawyer who carefully avoided controversy at all costs by not going out of the lines. Arshinkoff moved into the role like a thousand cossacks, never more than a day or two free of controversy.

The rest is history.

Lee Fisher should thank the GOP for its help

THE GOP'S sexually overripe attack ad on Ohio Democratic senatorial candidate Lee Fisher has hardly helped its effort to beat him. The internet ad, which shows him bare-chested and ecstatically weaving with one hand under the table was a clear message that he was ...eh... enjoying an auto-erotic moment or two and has drawn an avalanche of national coverage and comment (except in my hometown newspaper). Considering the number of denials posted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it obviously is has become circle-the-wagons time within the GOP precincts. Even Fisher's Republican opponent, Rob Portman, has distanced himself from the ad's content, saying it was in bad taste.

The denials will have little effect on the story. There's a constant in political campaigns that once a negative becomes firmly implanted in the public mind, it will never die. The ad lasciviously taunts the viewer "Dare to see more?" It concludes, "People are more focused on results than ever before." In this instance, I couldn't agree more.

Let's see: First the Medina Republican Party wants to send U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton back to the kitchen, and now this. Ray Bliss, the Hall of Fame Republican guru, must be turning in his grave.

CEO Limbaugh's party of lemmings

AFTER BARRY GOLDWATER'S  crushing defeat in 1964, some respected national pundits, including Walter Lippmann, argued that it might take 25 years for the Republican Party to return to the White House.  But the party turned to the steady hand of Ray Bliss for its leadership, whose wisdom and taciturn manner reversed the GOP fortunes in four years.  But even his success was not enough to convince Richard Nixon to retain him as the chairman. He was summarily forced out by the moody president.  Still, the Bliss record - high on winning strategy and low on hard-core ideology - after Goldwater's dismal showing  speaks for itself.

So what do we have today? An angstfest!   As the Republican National Committee meets this week to choose a chairman, the buzz from the experts is that the RNC will  choose a man with the strongest conservative credentials.   They say the odds favor Ken Blackwell, a conservative's conservative who is preaching the same thing that led him to landslide  defeat in Ohio's gubernatorial race in 20o6. But his  peculiar ways have  won him endorsements from many right-wing groups for the RNC job.  These days, it figures.  

Still,  even the RNC might be confined to the wings by  the party's new CEO:   You guessed, Rush, the supreme  leader.    MSNBC's David Shuster and analyst Larry O'Donnell now are referring to him as the party's "de facto leader". ( I'll stick with CEO.)  Although it would be nice if we could stop inflating Rush's ego and isolate him in his broadcast bunker,  he can't be ignored for his grip on the Republican Party.   Consider this:  In the past few days a Republican congressman from Georgia, Phil Gingrey, slavishly apologized to Limbaugh for having asked the CEO to cool down a bit about Obama.   "I regret and apologize that my comments offended and upset my fellow conservatives," Gingrey said in a phone call to Limbaugh that sounded more like a plea for mercy  to the Inquisition.  That must be a first in congressional humility at the throne of a broadcaster!  And shameful!

Not to be outdone, Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 man in the Republican ranks,  proudly appeared on  Limbaugh's program to wish him well and thank him , gushing:  "Thank goodness,  You're there to help get this (anti-stimulus) message out."  Cantor has even sent out pleas to his own constituents in his Richmond, Va., upscale district, to support Limbaugh and refused to criticize Limbaugh's hopes that Obama will fail.  There will be more of this toxic  nonsense in the days  ahead as the GOP reduces itself to Limbaugh's party of lemmings - and worse.  It will have the opposite effect of the Bliss influence that succeeded without fanfare.    Is there a Republican on Capitol Hill who would openly disagree?