February
19, 2006
The GOP's Harbinger
By George
Will
COLUMBUS, Ohio --
Maryland borders Pennsylvania, which borders Ohio, which borders
Michigan. In that swath of America, extending 950 miles from the
shores of the Chesapeake Bay to the shores of Lake Superior, this
year's politics could produce a remarkable quartet of Republican
victories -- black U.S. senators from Maryland (Michael Steele,
who now is lieutenant governor) and Michigan (Keith Butler, a
former Detroit city councilman, currently pastor of a suburban
church with a congregation of 21,000), and black governors in
Pennsylvania (Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steeler) and Ohio
(Ken Blackwell, currently secretary of state).
Blackwell is particularly
noteworthy because he has had the most varied political career
-- a city councilman at 29, mayor at 31, national chairman of
Steve Forbes' 2000 presidential campaign. And because he is the
most conservative.
Polls suggest that
Blackwell, 57, can win the Republican primary May 2. National
party leaders think that only he can keep the governorship Republican,
because the state GOP establishment has been hostile to him, and
Ohio voters are now robustly hostile to it.
He annoys the establishment
because he, unlike it, believes things. He believes that the establishment
is proof of a conservative axiom: Any political group or institution
that is not ideologically conservative will become, over time,
liberal. That is so because, in the absence of a principled adherence
to limited government, careerism -- the political idea of the
unthoughtful -- will cause incumbents to use public spending to
purchase job security.
In 1998,
party elders pressured Blackwell into stepping aside to clear
the path to the governorship for Bob Taft -- great-great-grandson
of a U.S. attorney general, great-grandson of a president, grandson
and son of U.S. senators. Today, Taft's job approval has plunged
to 18 percent among Republican voters. The rest of the
electorate is more hostile. Republicans hold 12 of 18 U.S. House
seats and both Senate seats. Unfortunately for Ohio Republicans,
they also control both elected branches of the state government
and their record of scandals and un-Republican governance -- substantial
tax and spending increases -- have Blackwell, a 6-foot-5, 255-pound
former college football player (Xavier University in Cincinnati),
running against his party's record.
Ohio's state and
local tax burden, which was among the nation's lowest in the 1970s,
is now the nation's seventh heaviest ($3,906 per capita). Blackwell
blames taxes, lawsuit abuse and regulatory confusion for Ohio's
ranking 47th in job creation, with a rate last year less than
one-seventh of the national rate. Since January 1999, the beginning
of the Taft years, Ohio has lost 210,000 manufacturing jobs. ``We
have become," Blackwell says, ``one of the leading re-populators
of other states." One in particular: He says that every 24
hours 65 Ohioans become Floridians.
He appeals to small-government
conservatives by proposing a constitutional cap on state spending,
and even leasing the Ohio Turnpike to private investors. His cultural
conservatism has won him such intense support from many church
leaders, some liberals are contemplating recourse to an American
sacrament -- a lawsuit. It would threaten the tax-exempt status
of churches deemed too supportive of Blackwell.
He appeals to blacks
by being black, and because many blacks are cultural conservatives:
George W. Bush won 16 percent of Ohio's black vote in 2004. In
Blackwell's three statewide races, he has received between 30
percent and 40 percent of the black vote. If in November he duplicates
that, he will win, and Democrats in many blue states will blanch
because if their share of the black vote falls to 75 percent,
their states could turn red.
His opponent, Congressman
Ted Strickland, is evidence that Democrats have been educated
by electoral disappointments. Strickland represents a culturally
conservative district that extends from the Ohio River almost
to Youngstown, a district Bush carried by just two points in 2000
and 2004. The son -- one of nine children -- of a steelworker,
Strickland is reliably liberal on most matters but also has the
NRA's A rating and voted to ban partial-birth abortions.
Control of the U.S
Senate in 2007 could turn on whether Mike DeWine, a second-term
Republican, is re-elected. He does not thrill conservatives, so
he needs Blackwell on the ballot to arouse the party's base. Furthermore,
the next presidential election, like the previous one, might turn
on a close contest for Ohio's 20 electoral votes, a contest in
which the governor, whoever he is, might make the difference.
Which is why Ohio's gubernatorial election may be the most consequential
this year.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
