Will the 'Ruling Class Right' Rescue Vulnerable Dems?

Just outside the DC Beltway, in Maryland’s sprawling first congressional district, an electoral battle is underway that exposes unique ideological fault lines beneath America’s political landscape.

The campaign pits freshman “Blue Dog” Democratic congressman Frank Kratovil in a rematch against Republican Dr. Andy Harris. Given the political tilt of the district, coupled with the Tea Party tsunami gathering force this year, one would think that this race should be a slam dunk for Harris.

A tall, affable family man, Harris is an anesthesiologist, Navy veteran, hardcore free-marketer, and constitutional conservative. By contrast, Kratovil, a former attorney, tries to portray himself as an “independent” who distances himself from Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic majority. However, the Washington Post reports that “Frank Kratovil has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 84.6% of the time during the current Congress.” Among his least popular votes since taking office: support for the “cash for clunkers” program, for the near-trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending orgy, and for the hugely expensive “cap-and-trade” energy bill. Plus, of course, his vote to elevate the widely reviled Pelosi to the Speaker’s position.

Yet, despite all that, a recent poll finds Harris holding only a statistically insignificant three-point lead over Kratovil. This, while other GOP candidates are faring much better even in usually “safe” Democratic districts.

What’s going on here?

One of the most infuriating spectacles this election season is supposedly “Republican,” “conservative,” and “pro-business” individuals and groups supporting entrenched liberal incumbents against free-market, limited-government challengers. For many special-interest “insiders,” even on the right, philosophical convictions are far less important than sharing a “seat at the table” with the politically powerful.

With a hat tip to Angelo Codevilla, let me label these fair-weather friends of freedom “the Ruling Class Right.”

Frank Kratovil is one of the undeserving beneficiaries of their favoritism, just as Andy Harris is one of their undeserving victims.

There is history here: We’re witinessing a virtual replay of the Kratovil-Harris race of 2008. Though the Republican-leaning district went handily for John McCain, Kratovil managed to squeak out a plurality of votes to win by less than one percent. Harris’s surprising defeat occurred only because he was betrayed by those who should have been his allies.

Harris had won the GOP nomination by challenging and defeating incumbent Republican congressman Wayne Gilchrest in the primary. Gilchrest — one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress — retaliated against the primary voters’ verdict by endorsing Kratovil over Harris.

Moreover, despite Harris’s long record as an anti-tax, pro-free-market state legislator, a Libertarian Party candidate entered the race, in one of that party’s futile vanity campaigns. But the Libertarian managed to siphon off 8,873 votes, many of which otherwise would have gone to Harris. As a result, Harris lost by only 2,852 votes.

In 2008, establishment Republicans and self-styled “advocates of liberty” turned their backs on a proven legislative champion of freedom. Now, this year — while a Tea Party tidal wave is sweeping even liberal Democratic districts — Andy Harris is being betrayed by “the Ruling Class Right.”

This entrenched elite first threw their endorsements and money behind liberals Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Mike Castle, and Lisa Murkowski, and against the insurgencies by free-marketers, constitutional conservatives, and Tea Partiers fed up with the Beltway’s corrupt old-boy network. Since then, supposedly “conservative” pundits within the Ruling Class Right have joined party apparatchiks to do everything possible to mock and undercut the campaigns of primary victors such as Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Carl Paladino. Having first pronounced them “unelectable,” they now are working to make their assessment a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But the Ruling Class Right is not only centered within the GOP.

For example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce proclaims on its website: “As the voice of business, the Chamber’s core purpose is to fight for free enterprise before Congress, the White House, regulatory agencies, the courts, the court of public opinion, and governments around the world.” Yet, in the face of the most far-reaching assault on our free-enterprise system since the New Deal by the current Democratic Congress, the Chamber has issued endorsements of at least ten Democrats.

And these endorsements include Frank Kratovil. Yes, the same Frank Kratovil who voted for Pelosi, for the “cash for clunkers” clunker, for the pork-packed “stimulus” flop, and for the “cap-and-tax” energy catastrophe. Nonetheless, he received the election endorsement of “the voice of business,” whose “core purpose is to fight for free enterprise before Congress.” And not only did the Chamber bestow its influential blessing upon Kratovil; it also granted him $168,841 to buy advertising to defeat consistent free-marketer Andy Harris. (“The new advertising,” reports the Baltimore Sun, “is part of a national buy of some $2 million by the Chamber on behalf of Blue Dog Democrats like Kratovil.”)

You might think the Chamber is rare in its unprincipled expediency. Guess again:

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), which generally aligns with the GOP, has given its signature “Guardian of Small Business” award to 29 House Democrats in 2010, more than twice as many as it did in 2008. The recipients include some of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, boosting their standing with a politically popular constituency. . . .

Democrats are touting the awards as evidence that counters Republican attacks that the vulnerable incumbents are lapdogs for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Obama administration. The party has similarly trumpeted endorsements for centrist and conservative members from groups like the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that traditionally back Republicans.

One of those “Guardians of Small Business” is — you guessed it — Frank Kratovil. Like the Chamber, the NFIB spurned Andy Harris to back a Democrat incumbent who supported Pelosi’s agenda 85 percent of the time.

It gets still worse.

The National Rifle Association, viewed by millions as a stalwart defender of constitutional principles, has endorsed a whopping 58 Democrat incumbents. Once again: “In Maryland, the NRA has endorsed freshman Rep. Frank M. Kratovil Jr., who will be one of the most vulnerable Democrats in November.” This, even though the group also gave Andy Harris an “A” rating on gun-control issues. However, to keep its “seat at the table” with Washington’s power elites, you see, the NRA prefers to support incumbents over challengers, in cases where they have similar voting records.

But in doing this, they fail to appreciate that the Second Amendment is part of a larger project known as the Bill of Rights, and an even larger one known as the U.S. Constitution. Torn from the context of the broader protections that this venerable document affords us against unlimited government power, the Second Amendment becomes far more endangered. Selling out the rest of the Constitution by supporting its political enemies, is not the path to protecting gun rights: You can’t defend the individual’s right to bear arms if you demolish the entire legal edifice that protects individual rights generally.

But to “pragmatic” lobbyists, this talk of principles is all “abstract theory.” They live down in the “practical” weeds of day-to-day political machinations.

Just as the NRA wears blinders concerning the “single issue” of the Second Amendment, business lobbies suffer from appalling myopia on “single issues” centering around production and trade. Indeed, too many business groups have become completely detached from the free enterprise system. Instead, they are run by and for “crony capitalists”: corporatist schemers who line up at public troughs for taxpayer subsidies and political favors, and who back or buy any politician willing to grant them.

That’s why these congressional mid-terms are such pivotal elections for our nation. This may be the last opportunity we’ll have to roll back “the statist quo.” But to do that, we’ll have to roll over, not just progressive adversaries, but alleged “allies” from the Ruling Class Right. We’ll have to defeat their efforts to keep vulnerable Democrats in power, by supporting truly principled candidates like Dr. Andy Harris.