The Ballot Box

Almost everyone, including its supporters, agrees that Amendment 1 offers incomplete property tax relief for Floridians. This was “the best the Legislature could do” — so voters have to take it or leave it.

Is a little bit of tax relief better than none at all? What about concerns that passing the Amendment 1 reforms might make the current system — which few people like — even more screwy? Are you worried that if a modest measure like Amendment 1 passes that it would make it harder down the road to achieve more significant tax reform? Or should we cross that bridge when we come to it, and until then take whatever we can get from Tallahassee?

Hillary Clinton recently stepped in it when she made a point to counter Barack Obama’s rhetoric of hope.  She said that despite the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s paeans to hopes and dreams, it took a president — Lyndon Johnson — to get civil rights legislation passed. Basically, she was saying that talk is cheap, and that it takes an experienced pol to actually get things done.

Critics jumped on her, claiming she was diminishing and demeaning King’s accomplishments. She was accused of being racially insensitive (an unusual position for a liberal Democrat). Clinton countered by playing the victim, saying she her remarks were being mischaracterized and that she was being unfairly attacked. Trying to protect herself from the racial brickbats, she fled into the arms of Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who introduced her at a campaign rally by unflatteringly comparing Obama to the Sidney Poitier character in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” He also made a veiled reference to Obama’s drug use in his youth (which he has written about in his memoirs).

Identity politics have been a staple of the Democratic Party for more than 30 years — but usually as a strategy to be wielded against Republicans. But now it’s become an intraparty issue as its two leading presidential contenders are a white woman and a black man. What’s a Democratic voter to do?

Was Hillary’s King comment out of bounds? Are identity politics now obsolete?

Welcome to The Ballot Box, a new political blog at The News Herald where we can discuss Campaign ‘08 on the local and national levels. Keep in mind this blog is moderated, so please keep your comments on topic and refrain from vulgar language and making libelous claims.

Let’s kick it off with an issue that’s relevant to the Jan. 29 Florida primary (and the very red Panhandle): Is Mike Huckabee a conservative?

Making the case for the former Arkansas governor is blogger Joe Carter, who has worked for Huckabee’s campaign. In a Jan. 3 post titled “The One-Legged Stool: How the Elites Misunderstand ‘Reagan Conservatives’ ,” Carter writes:

Reagan conservatives understand the economy on a personal level, and not as just a series of charts and statistics and abstract theories. For instance, when they hear the so-called fiscal conservatives (e.g., the Club for Growth) bashing Governors like Mike Huckabee for raising state sales taxes a fraction of a cent in order to fix the roads and schools they shake their heads in disgust. They are tired of hearing that a candidate who wants to eliminate the AMT, cut corporate taxes, and provide more tax relief for the middle class is somehow an “economic populist.” Washington insider might be dim enough to convince themselves but Reagan conservatives aren’t so easily fooled.

On the other side is Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the Wall Street Journal. In “The GOP’s Time for Choosing ” he characterizes Huckabee’s politics not as American conservative, but more European Christian democrat:

Christian Democrat parties have always distinguished themselves from liberals and socialists, favoring private property and traditional values while supporting government regulation and taxation to ameliorate what they perceive to be capitalism’s defects. …

Christian Democracy is a different beast than Reagan-era conservatism, which drew upon the traditions of the Founding Fathers — which are extremely suspicious of government power, regulation and redistribution. It is virtually impossible to imagine a Christian Democratic leader inveighing against government intervention in the economy as Ronald Reagan did in his first inaugural address.

So what say you?