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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
No, I think they argued that there is a good way and a bad way to do free trade, and this (arguably) is a bad way. (I don't know the details.)

Your stuff on Ellen Tauscher is very interesting. I think the idea that she's beholden to Pelosi is a little silly, and if she wants to be Senator she knows she needs to worry about business as much as Pelosi.

She is not beholden to Pelosi but the pressure brought about by the Democrat leadership on this bill was intense. Remember the Democrat leadership still dishes out leadership positions on committees and all sorts of other goodies and they put it all on the line for this vote They really did not want Bush to win another one and they knew it was close. The lobbying over CAFTA was as intense as I have seen lobbying over any bill since Bush got elected. Tauscher wanted to be a Senator, and she wrongly thought that the business community, especially the high tech community would not be so obsessed with CAFTA. She screwed up bad. The head of Tech Net said they will never support her now. She didn't realize she was messing with the business community’s litmus test.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As for Pelosi, if it's really true that she called in favors and twisted the arms of pro-business Democrats like Tauscher to oppose this bill even though it's (you say) not that different from NAFTA, then she really screwed the pooch. She lost 15 Democrats and lost the bill by one vote. It would be a huge fuck-up.

It was a huge screw up. There were sixty dems that voted for NAFTA that turned to the other side on this one. They all changed because of intense pressure. And they are all paying the price. Bush's team has excellent counters. One thing that caught them of guard was how the Republicans held ranks on this. When NAFTA passed many Republicans voted against it just because Clinton supported it (the mirror image of what happened with CAFTA). The backlash by the business community against those Republicans was pretty intense. In addition, the almost no Republicans buckled to Labor pressure, even in strong labor states. Very few Republican voted against CAFTA and the ones that did were from the arch conservative side that didn't like CAFTA because it damaged US sovereignty.


[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Maybe for you and certain elements of the business community, but there are many, many supporters of free-trade -- moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans -- who want to lower barriers to trade but who do not want to sacrifice environmental protections and labor laws and other regulation that this country enjoys. Don't get me wrong -- there are certainly troglodytes out there who oppose child-labor laws and who would be happy to use "free trade" as a banner to get rid of them. But that's not free trade per se.

You are dead wrong here. A true free trade agreement does not discuss environmental laws or labor laws. Those should be negotiated under separate treaties. And to mix them with a free trade agreement is just pure political posturing. A free trade agreement should only be about reducing barriers. The other stuff is just to throw bones to people that don't really understand the concept of "comparative advantage". Environmental laws and labor law were not even part of the GATT talks until the Uruguay round, and then everyone knew they were puffy language that was put in to placate labor in the developed economies but the language really had no effect.

As far as "moderate Republicans", the one thing that unites Moderate Republicans is free trade. And I have never met a "moderate Republican" with any influence who feels that labor and environmental standards should be inserted into Free trade agreements. All the moderate Republicans in Congress voted for CAFTA (there may have been one or two exceptions but I can't think of any). As I said, the Republicans that switched sides were the arch conservatives not the moderates. The smart moderate Democrats all supported CAFTA (it was supported by the DLC).

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't think it was Bush. I think it was DeLay's way of running the house, and it certainly makes a lot of sense if your objects are moving the country to the right and raising money for the GOP. If you're a centrist interested in good policy, not so much.

You are not a centrist. I am. And CAFTA was good policy. The moderate Democrats opposed CAFTA not because it was good policy, but for political reasons. And thank God it blew up in their faces.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I have no idea what they're telling you and why. I only know that -- as noted -- I've heard differently.

I was trying to be diplomatic about it but you are just too thick to realize you are speaking out of your derriere. I know the heads of the Business lobby in this country and they are incredibly mad at the Democrats, and the Democrat leadership, for what they did over CAFTA, and they don't trust the Democrats anymore. They are penalizing the Democrats in this election for the CAFTA vote. If someone is telling you different they are either lying or don't know what they are talking about.