I was surprised by a phone message yesterday morning from Senate candidate and former Congressman Ed Case. He wanted to respond to my post here on February 13 concerning the endorsement of Case by the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly.
His response follows. Case also provided a copy of a letter addressed to Hawaii Democrats from his campaign coordinators presenting their summary of his record.
I ask that you share these comments and related information with your readers.
(1) UHPA’s endorsement process and the reasons for its decision are laid out at its public website, www.facultyvotes.org. Included there is a video of my responses to some of UHPA’s questions.
(2) You refer to me as a “conservative” and a “much more conservative Democrat than Hirono and at odds with the party mainstream”. My record does not bear any of that out.
(3) Specifically, please see the attached letter to fellow Hawaii Democrats and summary of my Congressional record as a Democrat. My record was rated at or close to 100% on key litmus test issues and constituencies of the Democratic Party and overall well within the mainstream of U. S. House Democrats.
(4) It is correct to say that, on balance, Mazie is more “liberal” than am I, especially on economic and budget issues. Progressive Punch, which ranks all Members of Congress against each other on how liberal their record is, currently ranks her as the 6th most liberal member of the U. S. House out of 435 total members (http://www.progressivepunch.org/members.htm?search=selectName&members=HI2&member=HI2&chamber=Senate&zip=). I do not have my own archived Progressive Punch rating from my own service, but recall it was similar to my National Journal rating at about 38% (0% being “most liberal” and 100% being “most conservative”). I believe this begs the question as to which of us actually represents our Democratic Party’s mainstream and, of course, for general election voters, the mainstream of all Hawaii voters.
(5) Interestingly, Sen. Inouye is ranked by Progressive Punch as the 36th most liberal out of 100 U. S. Senators, so just about at the same place ideologically among Senate members and Democrats as was I in the U. S. House. Would you similarly refer to him as “conservative” or “at odds with the party mainstream”?
(6) With respect to the polls you cited, your link to an “earlier March poll” which you stated showed Mazie with a significant lead in the primary was actually to an October 2011 PPP poll showing her up among Democrats only 45-40%, within the margin of error. (The March 2011 poll from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser showed me leading among then-potential Democratic candidates.) And, while you cited Hirono’s own poll, you did not cite mine also from last year and showing us with an equivalent lead over Hirono, nor did you cite the January 2012 Civil Beat polls showing us 41% to Hirono’s 39% in a Democratic primary (http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/01/30/14720-civil-beat-poll-case-hirono-neck-and-neck-for-us-senate-nomination/) and 13 points over Lingle in the general 46% to 33% vs. Hirono’s 7 points 46% to 39% (http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/01/31/14721-civil-beat-poll-lingle-trails-both-democratic-us-senate-candidates/).
The remaining information you cited on specific votes is a straight download from the Hirono oppo research on my 2,000-plus votes in Congress, and reflects standard DC campaign strategy to throw as much as possible against the wall and see what might stick. The bottom line is that, on balance, my overall past record and current positions do not reflect that of a “conservative”, and is in line with not only my party’s mainstream but the mainstream of Hawaii voters today.
Mahalo,
Ed Case
Note: Case has extended an invitation to sit down and talk about these issues, so stay tuned.
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given the rambling of various definitions in these comments, I’ll put my opinion another way: I don’t a toot whether Case is “conservative” so long as he actually has an open mind, actively challenges the status quo and can handle change …… unlike the many oh-so-“liberal” Hawaii democrats.
Let’s look at the origin of the term “conservative”. Here’s the wikipedia etymology in the article on the term “reactionary”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary#Usage_and_history
So the term ‘conservative’ relates in its original form to one’s political orientation to historical change, specifically, a desire to maintain the status quo. This in turn relates to an attitude toward traditional authority and hence equality. The assumption of the French Revolution, inspired in part by the American Revolution, is that societies lose their caste system as they modernize, which leads to political equality. This emergence of political equality (and greater cultural homogeneity), while historically validated as a modern tendency, was complicated by industrialization in the 19th century and the subsequent rise of extremes of wealth in the economic sphere. (In the 21st century, with de-industrialization, the middle class is disappearing, making it even worse.) In a country like India, one still finds a caste system; in the US, one finds the ultimate class system, with extremes in wealth matched with a cultural egalitarianism, a paradox made possible by high levels of social mobility, both upward and downward (or at least the appearance of mobility).
Here the distinction emerges between cultural versus economic conservatives. In the United States, Democrats tend to be socially progressive — that is, in favor culture and social liberation — and economically in favor of greater regulation. Republicans are for greater social and cultural regulation, but desire economic liberalization. Libertarians desire liberalization in both the economic and social spheres.
Europe is quite different. The largest modern political party in Europe has always been the conservative Christian Democrats. Where conservatives in the US desire a laissez faire economic policy, conservatives in Europe have always seen capitalism as a threat to the tradition, the family, community and the church. This is sort of the exact inverse of libertarian philosophy. When Americans look at Europe, they imagine it to be a bastion of socialism and leftism. Not exactly. Perhaps the closest Americans come to this European version of conservatism — culturally conservative, economically restrictive — are American Roman Catholics. Also, Barack Obama’s political orientation is very similar to this kind of Tory conservatism (which may contribute to the sense by many on the right in the US that there is something alien or un-American about him, that he must be socialistic or Muslim or something).
Another connotation of conservatism is that it relates to ‘realism’. If someone is progressive, they are pursuing policies they associate with the future — on the assumption that the future is better, specifically, more egalitarian or “fairer”. This is idealism. The conservative rejoinder to this idealistic future-orientation is that it is naive and unrealistic, even hubristic, because we can never know the future, and that big schemes have a way of failing because one cannot simply impose one’s will on a society. The conservative attitude would be that society is fundamentally mysterious, that we cannot really know how it works or how it is ultimately evolving. In practical terms, this realism could translate during elections into an astonishingly brutal ruthlessness. (One of Obama’s earliest supporters has been the New York Time’s conservative columnist David Brooks, who has described Obama as a “man without ideals” and “the most ruthless man in Washington, DC.” Brooks says this with some approval.)
One’s political orientation toward realism or idealism relates to one’s temperament. One can be temperamentally conservative based on one’s life experience, but there is also a biological aspect of risk aversion. One would expect seasoned military officers like Colin Powell to have a very skeptical, pessimistic, realistic worldview that would be suspicious of grand adventures of liberating countries.
Nevertheless, one’s temperament does not always match up with one’s political affiliation. One can be a man of the left (especially when it comes to economic regulation) yet have a cautious, conservative temperament. Think of Al Gore, and especially of his environmentalism, or of Canadians in general. In these two cases, political leftism is a manifestation of personal conservatism.
In fact, one of the accusations made by the neo-conservative movement is that “big government” has become the status quo in the US since the New Deal, and the moderate left has become conservative in temperament, much like the communist bureaucrats in the Soviet Union. Alternately, one can be a man of the right and lack a cautious attitude, for example, George W. Bush and the neo-conservative movement. The neo-cons are a kind of hybrid, former leftists who co-opted the goals of liberalism but rejected liberal methods (e.g., democratizing countries by invading them); their temperament seems to be neither cautious nor idealistic, merely the machismo of men who are actually insecure.
Ed Case seems to describe himself in different ways. Sometimes he calls himself a moderate. Other times he refers to himself as an independent. I once heard him describe himself as socially left-of-center and economically right-of-center. This would make him a moderate libertarian. Now, from what Kolea seems to be saying, Case’s foreign policy seems to be closer to the neo-conservative agenda. Interesting.
But more than anything, he seems to be a politician just like the rest of them.
Now, if Hawaii has a consensus-based political culture, there would be a kind of underlying claustrophobia. When you live in a society of team players, there would be this repressed desire to just break free from it all and have just one example of a politician who represents independence, a breath of fresh air. Frank Fasi built his career on that illusion, that Frank was his own man, the Frank Sinatra of Hawaii politics. (One could see Mufi Hannemann trying to channel that kind of flamboyant pose with all that singing.) Lingle also postures as an “alternative”, albeit without the pretense of being a maverick.
It’s a smoke and mirrors.
I’d suggest that ideology is a secondary motivation for a politician, although they might not know it. It’s primarily about power and ambition. Obama gave a speech to some high school students in Hawaii (at Punahou), and afterward one of the students approached Obama and asked him for what advice he would give to the students. I thought Obama would advise to “Give your life for your country” or “Live for public service”. I was wrong. Obama’s advice was “Be as ambitious as possible.”
But there is another motive more powerful than ambition. That’s the excitement of the chase. Running for public office releases a whole lot of dopamine. Why do people rob banks? Money? No, they become addicted to it. Butch Cassidy made a fortune robbing banks, but he spent almost all of it on get-away horses. He moved to South America and supposedly bought a ranch, but got back into bank robbing because he was addicted to it. Same is true with John Dillinger, who supposedly spent most of his loot on get-away cars. There was a NOVA special on PBS in 1996 on counterfeiting (“Secrets of Making Money”), that showed how counterfeiters initially get into the business for the money but stay in the racket because they become addicted to the obsession of being master craftsmen engaged in a transgressive behavior. You know the saying, “A good war justifies every cause”? People get addicted to the game of politics (and to the perks of power) and then make up stories for themselves about how it’s for a greater good. They actually come to believe these stories.
I talked to Ed Case in his office when the UH Faculty were on strike. He was opposed to us getting any pay increase and his solutions sounded just like Ronald Reagan. I cannot understand how UHPA could forget this and endorse him now. He is most definitely a republican in his beliefs, he will not represent ordinary people at all. He certainly will not get my vote