Artur Davis

Artur Davis, a Representative from Alabama and a failed gubernatorial candidate has switched to the GOP and moved to Virginia. This is a significant move.

I remember Davis as one who stood against the GOPers who were trying to restrain Fannie Mae.You can find his address about 6:44 into this video (well worth watching in its entirety) :

But I also remember him admitting his error publicly when they proved correct. Maxine Waters, Barnie Frank and others refused to reconcile their defense of Fannie Mae with the disaster that followed.

Seth Mandel writes in Commentary Why Davis Is Leaving the Democrats 5/30/12:

Excerpt:

Davis has nowconfirmed those rumors, and posted on his website a statement of explanation in which he airs his disagreement with the Obama administration (and mainstream Democratic Party) about taxes and healthcare policy as well as the “racial spoils system” the Democrats attempt to exploit each election cycle:

On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again. I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country. You have also seen me write that faith institutions should not be compelled to violate their teachings because faith is a freedom, too. You’ve read that in my view, the law can’t continue to favor one race over another in offering hard-earned slots in colleges: America has changed, and we are now diverse enough that we don’t need to accommodate a racial spoils system. And you know from these pages that I still think the way we have gone about mending the flaws in our healthcare system is the wrong way—it goes further than we need and costs more than we can bear.

Davis isn’t a Tea Partier–and certainly neither is Booker. But they also have been uneasy about the extent to which the Democratic Party uses identity politics as an end in itself. Obviously, both were hoping Obama would change that. Booker has shown support for school choice and defended Bain because he, like Davis, wants inner-city youth to get a better shot at an education and to have job opportunities thereafter. Obama may not be in danger of losing black voters’ support in November, but the party he leads is going to have to grapple with a new generation of centrist black politicians who are clearly bothered by a status quo–and the Democratic Party’s strict adherence to it–that remains woefully inadequate to their constituents.

HKO comments:

The party of change has become the party of the new status-quo. Feminism and civil rights that were hard won in the sixties are the new reality. The old Democrats still presume the dynamics of a battle that has long been won. The leaders such as Davis are no longer fighting a war that is long over. They are facing at a new reality that this administration refuses to acknowledge.

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