I Now Pronounce You Mr. and Mrs. Neocon

I Now Pronounce You Mr. and Mrs. NeoCon

Will GOP Peg Future on Shotgun Wedding of Ken Blackwell and Sarah Palin?

Republicans On Leadership Ledge Find Democrats Shouting Jump

with John Michael Spinelli

Op-Editude

Columbus, Ohio: The news that J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's former two-time secretary of state roundly criticized for his partisan administration of the 2004 election that gave the state and the White House to George W. Bush, is a leading contender among GOP neocons to become the next leader of the Republican National Committee (RNC) warms the hearts of Democrats.

Instead of fearing what a wealthy, Evangelical African-American who lost a race for Ohio governor to Democrat Ted Strickland by historic margins in 2006 can do to resuscitate a party many now believe is a regional party because it only reflects the voters in mostly southern states, some Democrats are encouraging the GOP to peg its future on Blackwell and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, two polarizing politicians who embraced social-wedge issues against gay rights and stood for guns, melding the Bible with government and fiscal conservatism that delivered big losses for each of them in successive election cycles.

Two dozen conservative luminaries are poised to announce their support for Blackwell for Republican Nation Committee chairman, according to Politico reporter Ben Smith. A group backing Blackwell that "mixes leading economic conservatives, including Steve Forbes and Pat Toomey, and leading social conservatives, including James Dobson and Tony Perkins" has agreed to endorse and campaign together for a candidate based on a questionnaire assembled by veteran GOP neocon activist.

"The conservative endorsers noted that there were other good candidates, but all agreed that Ken Blackwell is the best choice. They intend to contact grassroots conservatives across the country and ask them to urge the three RNC members from each state and U.S. territory to vote for Ken Blackwell for RNC chairman." [Ben Smith of Politico]

Smith says Blackwell appears to have the public support of 12 RNC members now, but the winner will be whom ever can garner a majority of the RNC's 168 members. Among his other post-election positions, Blackwell is now the Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council and the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow for Public Policy at the Buckeye Institute in Ohio's capital city Columbus.

Blackwell, a Xavier University football player who once tried out with the Dallas Cowboys, will compete with southern state contenders like current RNC Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan of Kentucky, South Carolina Chairman Katon Dawson and former Tennessee chairman Chip Saltsman. The physically imposing Blackwell, who hails from conservative southwest Ohio, joins former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele as the only two black candidates. The last RNC hopeful is Saul Anuzis, the Michigan GOP chairman. One of these candidates will be selected to lead the GOP back from the brink on Jan. 28.

Sarah Palin, the GOP 2008 candidate for vice president who energized the GOP base with her feisty, small-town style of stump politics that tried to replay a hand of divide and conquer that worked so well for the GOP over a generation but came up craps in a staggering loss to President-elect Barack Obama, is the focus of many pundits and media types who think her good looks, aggressive opportunism and taste for the kill will put her ahead of the tired old white guys who lost to one of their own, Arizona Sen. John McCain, but who are now jockeying four years out for another run at being top of the ticket.

If the marriage of two unabashed, unrepentant neocons like Blackwell and Palin is what the GOP thinks is their turnaround ticket to the post-election alignment of the nation to Democrats and a socially progressive agenda, they will indeed have headed the call of progressives and Democrats to "jump" from the narrow political ledge the GOP finds its self on, made possible by stunning gains by Democrats at all levels of government in states like Indian, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada that Republicans thought they had in their back pocket.

It would truly be a contemporary exercise in Double Think and Double Speak -- concepts at the center of 1984, George Orwell's tale of a dystopian world -- to believe that two ultra social and fiscal conservatives like Blackwell and Palin can be true to their agendas when the nation has chosen to another road, one more open to a progressive agenda that embraces values so anathema to the GOP's shrinking base now mostly isolated to Deep South states. Moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Neocon were front and center in support of President Bush, whose presidency ended with sky-high disapproval ratings and whose political party is now being characterized as a "party of whiners."

Ohio, a state now facing historic budget problems in part due to the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last eight years, was run stem to stern by Republicans like Blackwell from the halcyon days of the "Contract with America" in the mid-90s to 2006, when Buckeyes, tired of Republican scandals and pay-to-play politics, gave Democrats a turn at bat.

If President Obama and a new, expanded Democratic Congress can pull America out of the steep economic dive Bush and company has put it in, the challenge of Blackwell and Palin, already daunting, will become an exercise in futility as whites, their voting base, become a minority and as progressive programs show that working together rather than pitting one group against another is the smarter, humane course to pursue.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional, business and travel writer and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com