A Reasonable Conservative Populist: Dockery is Deadly Politics if Republicans are Smart Enough to Bite

You’ve probably all heard that Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, plans to run for governor and will challenge that former Clinton impeachment prosecutor and generally reptilian-looking fellow Bill McCollum in the Republican primary. Frankly, her announcement leaves me conflicted, for a number of reasons.

On one hand, I’m thrilled. I know of no other elected official – national, state, or local – who has, within the last decade, openly challenged the dominant economic establishment within her sphere of influence and won. It’s a remarkable accomplishment for principle and good government, even it proves temporary. Go ahead, name me another politician anywhere with a record to match it.

I’m also worried. I’ll probably vote for Dockery over Alex Sink if it comes to that: I prefer a reasonable populist to a reasonable corporatist. And I fear that Dockery, as a result, will honestly, but relentlessly, move Florida government to the right, particularly on funding issues. And I fear that she’ll help Republicans in Florida seize the mantle of good, transparent government from Democrats and further build their state house majority.

At a time when our traditional words for describing political inclinations are losing all relationship to the way politics actually functions on the ground, Dockery has carved out an original and powerful niche, if Republican voters are smart enough to seize it: She’s a reasonable populist.

Here’s what I mean. Think back to the bailout of U.S. banks. If you remember, the first vote failed because the grassroots and principled wings of both parties revolted. The “left” objected because it saw the deal as class warfare, with the wealthy and powerful hoovering up the resources in the middle class to sustain a system that wasn’t working for most of America even when it functioned. The “right” couldn’t stand the idea of spending $700 billion on banks should be allowed to fail. Too much government intervention in the private sector. Moral hazard and all of that. It was the corporately-funded “center” of both parties that eventually sowed enough terror of financial Armageddon to snag the few votes it needed. We’ll never know if everything would have collapsed; but we do know that the bipartisan vote has proved an incredibly sweet deal for the banking-industrial complex. In this, as in most cases, the “reasonable center” kept the populist wings of both parties from getting what they want, and large economic and corporate interests were served first. We’ll see if that proves to be the right long-term policy.

Contrast this to Dockery’s role in the CSX deal, which bears striking resemblance to the bailout, albeit on a much smaller scale. Opposition on the left sees it a union-busting, liability-transferring, massive taxpayer subsidy of CSX, a powerful and rapacious corporation, brokered by Gov. Bubble himself, Jeb Bush. Opposition on the right sees it as the same thing, minus the concern for the union-busting. They also just hate government spending on transit or other public interest projects. The fact that the CSX deal uses a crappy transit project to camouflage the near monopolization of Florida’s shipping economy by CSX and a few key landowners doesn’t change the principled Tea Party-type opposition to government investment.

But unlike the bailout, in the CSX deal, a “mainstream” politician actually saw the legitimacy of the grassroots arguments of both left and right and relentlessly argued them and organized on behalf of them. Dockery united the activists on both sides for the public good. There is nothing the bipartisan architects of our unfair and corrupt economic structure fear more than that. (I happen to think that the Republican grassroots is completely oblivious to the consequences for themselves of what they think they believe, but that’s a different matter.)

Typically, the establishment “center” pits the grassroots of both parties against one another for the benefit of big economic interests. And the people who claim to represent them generally go along. (By the way, if you think Marco Rubio is a conservative, ask him if he supports the CSX giveaway. Believe me, anybody endorsed by Gov. Jeb Bubble, R-Lehman Brothers, believes conservatism means giving your money to large economic interests so they can do whatever the hell they want with it. Charlie’s no better, of course. But if Rubio’s a conservative, I’m a penguin.)

Dockery doesn’t go along, nor does she believe her political role is to suppress the legitimate interests and concerns of the grassroots, or to harness them for cynical benefit. Wonder or wonders, she’s capable of actually looking at a piece of legislation, deciding for herself if it’s beneficial or a swindle, and acting accordingly. That reasonable assessment of fact, driven by fiscal prudence and jealous protection of tax dollars, is what conservatism claims to be, but really isn’t. I’ve joked that I would like conservatives if any existed. Well, one does. To that end, expect Dockery to push for a major overhaul of the Florida Department of Transportation, an government organization that has evolved largely into a taxpayer-funded, interest-free private investment bank for big development and business interests. That’s the kind of reform that doesn’t fit neatly into political shout-fests on television, but it would strike a real blow against the capture of state government by private interests. The grassroots on the right and left would high five gleefully over that.

I have little doubt that Dockery would beat Alex Sink if she won the Republican primary. I have much greater doubt that the roiling Republican electorate in Florida is capable of realizing the power that a reasonable conservative populist could wield in the service of what they claim to be their beliefs. We’ll see. If Dockery can’t convince the Republican base of the value of reasonable populism, maybe someone on the left can. Dockery has left a beautiful blueprint.