Bachmann, Reich Agree: Time to Nationalize BP

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the Kristi Noem of Minnesota (or is it Gordon Howie?), demonstrates how bashing President Obama trumps any philosophical coherence in the Republican Party. Trying to turn the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico into political hay, anti-government crusader Bachmann amplifies our Senator Thune and rails against the President for not executing a government takeover of BP:

BACHMANN: The administration, they were hands off. They didn’t do anything. Where were the boats that could have been commandeered by the government to be sent into this region to deal with that oil plume as it was coming up in the water and destroying marine life? Nowhere to be found. Why? The administration was hands off on this policy [Rep. Michele Bachmann, House of Representatives, 2010.05.28, quoted on Think Progress, 2010.06.01].

Wow. You'd think Bachmann had traded in her tea bags to become a card-carrying Chavez socialist.

Or maybe she's been hanging out with one of my favorite leftist intellectuals, former Labor Secretary and current Berkeley prof Robert Reich, who argues we should put BP in receivership. Likening the oil blowout to a nuclear meltdown, Reich says it's madness to leave fixing such an enormous disaster in the hands of a private corporation, which is ultimately answerable not to the public good it is wrecking but strictly to its shareholders. Reich says temporary receivership leaves all the expertise and equipment in place but guarantees that we can get the truth about what's happening and act in the public interest.

Reich backs his argument with analysis from an oil engineer who says (in Reich's words) "BP is doing the minimum to clean up the oil and everything it can to protect its bottom line." The engineer says BP should stop using dispersants (they just add more poison to the ecosystem), restart work on a second relief well, and send every tanker they have to slurp up oil from the gusher rather than continuing their profit-making runs from other stable wells.

Conservatives are realizing they can only take their Grover-Norquist act so far. As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recognizes, "We need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis."

When teabaggers and the rational Dr. Reich can agree, maybe it is time to act. Nationalize BP, at least for as long as it takes to plug the well and clean up the Gulf.

Herseth Sandlin GOP Switch Next?

Those news guys got me reading Public Policy Polling's blog. PPP looks at Democratic dissension in the context of Alabama freshman Congressman Parker Griffith's switch from D to R today... and gives me reason to wonder if a Herseth Sandlin defection to the GOP might be more likely than I thought.

PPP's coverage suggests that Dems may suffer more from conservative dissatisfaction within their party than from liberal dissatisfaction. The problem is an interesting mirror image of the trouble the Republicans have experienced by driving moderates away... although I would contend that Dems have hardly turned as hard left, even with control of the White House and Congress, as the GOP has turned hard right.

PPP then suggests we'll see more Dems exit stage right for personal political survival... and that such defections might actually help the party:

That said, I don't think Griffith had any shot at reelection as a Democrat given the highly conservative nature of his district and it's probably better for the party to just lose his seat now instead of losing it after blowing a million dollars on it a year from now. I hate to be a defeatist but depending on initial numbers I'm not sure I'd spend a lot of money defending Bobby Bright, Walt Minnick, or Frank Kratovil either. The odds are very much stacked against them for reelection anyway and if they're not going to be reliable votes for core Democratic initiatives it might be better to spend that money elsewhere [Tom Jensen, "Democratic Dissension," Public Policy Polling, 2009.12.22]

I can imagine the national party taking the same view of SHS's re-election bid. If she's going to vote against health care and other Democratic priorities, only to face the same GOP attacks at home and some of her worst poll numbers yet against a couple of ill-known GOP challengers, what's the point in throwing lots of resources into a re-election bid that, even if successful, doesn't strengthen the party? The home crowd partisans aren't excited about her, the national party has little reason to back her... yeesh! That's a recipe for empty campaign coffers.

SHS might be looking across the border to Minnesota, where another Congresswoman who voted nay on health care and climate change legislation has much better polling numbers against her challengers. Rep Michelle Bachman gets to say much nuttier things (see also here and here) than anything SHS so craftfully recites, and she's still a safer bet for returning to Washington in 2011 than our gal Stephanie.

So if I'm a political animal, and I want to stay in office in South Dakota, what do I do? Do I stick with a party which I haven't backed very hard this year and which might return the favor next year? Or do I give up even the lukewarm fight, switch to the GOP, and gamble on becoming a new darling adopted daughter in a second Gingrich revolution?

Or do I say "Wait a minute—Heidelberger and Franken are right!" pin my Obama button back on, and fight like hell for South Dakota and the Democratic Party?

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Update 2009.12.23 07:40 CST: David Montgomery from the Pierre Capital Journal takes the sensible position that Herseth Sandlin will not hit the eject button. She's not the "apocalyptic partisan" attack dog the Republicans want right now. Montgomery even speculates that, in the unlikely event SHS did switch parties and the GOP establishment moved mild-mannered Chris Nelson aside to make way for her at the top of the ticket, she'd still lose to outsider R. Blake Curd in the GOP primary. (And now that Curd has learned to strain his face into a smile, he might have a chance.)