Dave Schuler will co-host with me tonight. We’ll have as our special guest Stephen Bainbridge, a UCLA business law professor, expert on corporate governance, and proprietor of the Professor Bainbridge Punditry blog. Steve Verdon also hopes to call in. We’ll be talking about the mess in the financial markets, the various bailout plans, and related matters.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

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This is reasonable enough, I think, even though we disagree at least somewhat in our assessment. (Certainly, I think McCain’s at least as smart as, say, Thompson.) At some point, style and personality matter just as much as issues. As I’ve noted before, I’d much sooner vote for Barack Obama — or, heck, Chris Dodd or Joe Biden — than Hillary Clinton, despite being closer on the issues to Clinton. We can’t always explain our visceral instincts but we generally trust them.

Regardless, Bainbridge backs off a bit on his threat to sit out the election to teach the Republican Party a lesson:

Having said all that, I must admit that I find McCain the least objectionable of the remaining 4 major candidates. I can’t see myself voting for any of these guys on Feb 5 in the California primary. If we end up with a McCain-Clinton race in November, however, I’ll reconsider my plan to sit out the 2008 general election.

Which doesn’t really surprise me. We’re all disappointed when our favorite candidate loses (I preferred Phil Gramm in 20001996, for example, until his quick exit) but those of us who truly care about politics almost always choose among the available options. I’ve been truly excited to vote twice* — for Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 2000 — but have managed to nonetheless drag myself out to participate in all the other elections in between and since.

_________________

*Electile Dysfunction, indeed.

Tonight, we welcome UCLA lawprof Stephen Bainbridge to the show, along with regulars Dave Schuler and Alex Knapp.

We’ll be talking about several hot issues:

• The 2008 primaries, including Fred Thompson’s withdrawal from the race and what it means for the Republican Party and the bitter infighting between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

• The state of the economy, including whether government stimulus packages are sound policy.

• The seemingly unending debate over whether the Bush Administration lied to get us into the Iraq War.

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

Background Reading:

• South Carolina and Nevada Post-Mortem (Joyner)

• None of the Above? The Case For Sitting Out 2008 (Bainbridge)

• Fred Thompson Loss Ends Republican Party

• Does Losing Focus the Attention? (Joyner)

• Rush Limbaugh Not Supporting Republican Nominee? (Joyner)

• The Great Identity Politics War (Schuler)

• Dow Plunges then Recovers; Fed Lowers Rates; The Case Against Fiscal Stimulus (Bainbridge)

• Bush Favoring Larger Stimulus Package (Steve Verdon)

• What is the Fed Thinking? (Schuler)

• Stopping the Downturn (Schuler)

• Bush’s Iraq War Lies Were Untrue (Joyner)

• The Leadup to the Iraq War (Schuler)

These pessimists, however, didn’t count on Nancy Pelosi. Sure, she’s an arch-liberal from the kookiest city in the US world, but she’s also dependent on Silicon Valley campaign cash. Hence, it came as no surprise to some of us that Bloomberg reported today that:

For Silicon Valley venture capitalists eager to weaken the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance law, it may pay to have friends in high places. The speaker’s rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives, for instance.

Nancy Pelosi, the leader of newly empowered House Democrats, received more campaign money this year from partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm that helped launch Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., than she got from Democrats’ traditional friend, the AFL-CIO labor federation. She in turn has already identified revising the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law as a top priority when she becomes House speaker in January.

This is great news for the economy. As I pointed out in a TCS column:

Since SOX became law, our economy and capital markets have suffered from higher compliance costs in several ways:

>The number of companies going private (so-called “going dark”) has increased dramatically, with many firms citing SOX compliance costs as a principal reason for choosing to do so

>A growing number of firms choosing to rely on retained earnings or private equity rather than raising money by going public via an IPO

>Pre-SOX, 9 out of the ten largest IPOs had a US component; in the last year, 9 out of the 10 largest were entirely foreign

>Fewer acquisitions and ADR offerings by foreign issuers

The bottom line? SOX is costing our economy the proverbial bundle and the SEC’s response [has been] little more than whistling past the graveyard.

For more on the costs SOX has imposed on the economy and the need for reform, see my essay Sarbanes-Oxley: Legislating in Haste, Repenting in Leisure.

… the poll for the House vote in the East showed that the 25 percent of the electorate making over $100,000 went big for Democrats overall, 57-42, compared with a 49-48 margin in 2004. In 2006, those making between $150,000 and $200,000 voted for Democratic candidates by a whopping 63-37 majority, and those making more than $200,000 went Democratic by a slim 50-48 margin. That’s a huge shift from 2004, when Republicans took the $150,000 to $200,000 demographic 50-48 and rang up a huge victory among the over $200,000 set: 56-40. In 2006, Democratic candidates racked up big wins among college graduates—63-35, compared with 55-42 in 2004—and among those with postgraduate degrees—68-31, compared with 58-38 in 2004. …

On a nationwide basis, the wealthy still vote Republican. But not by much. According to the 2006 exit poll, on a nationwide basis, of all homes making more than $100,000, Republican House candidates received a 51-47 majority, and among those making more than $200,000, Republicans racked up a 53-46 majority.

Are these voters behaving irrationally? Gross opines:

As the number and relative weight of the wealthy grow, their incomes rising in part because Republicans have cut taxes on their incomes and capital gains, they’re proving themselves less likely to vote their economic interests.

Actually, I suspect that the blue-shifted voters figured they could have their cake and eat it too. With Bush in the White House to veto any tax increases and the Democrats having promised AMT reform, these voters’ economic interests were safe. (To be sure, there’s a modest risk that the Democrats will allow the Bush tax cuts to expire when the sunset provisions begin kicking in a few years down the road, but voters probably gambled that the Democrats will renew most of the key cuts.) With their economic interests secure, they were free to vote based on the war or stem cells or what have you.

The more interesting test will be in 2008, when there will be a real prospect of unified Democrat government, which could more significantly threaten the economic interests of upper middle and upper class voters. If they shift back to the red at the Presidential level, we’ll know that they are economically rational after all.

Why aren’t corporations run using direct democracy—putting all major corporate decisions, including the choice of a new CEO, to a shareholder vote? Or by absolute corporate monarchy—allowing management to make all the decisions without oversight?

Dinner tonight was slow cooked pork chops. I soaked a couple of inch-and-a-half thick bone-in pork chops overnight in a store bought brine mix. Around 1 PM this afternoon, I pulled the chops out of the brine, rinsed and dried them. I sauteed the chops in a bit of olive oil until well-browned on both sides (about 5 minutes per side over medium high heat). The chops then went into my small slow cooker. Three ounces of unsulphured dried apple slices were loosely placed on top of the chops. Meanwhile, I julienned one half of a yellow onion and then sauteed the onion in the same pan in which the chops had cooked. There was still plenty of fat in the pan, but I added a bit of butter anyway. The onions got a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper while they were cooking. Once they were translucent and starting to brown at edges, I added them to the slow cooker. I wiped the excess fat from the saute pan with a paper towel and then deglazed the pan with 1-and-a-half cups of organic, low sodium chicken stock. The stock went into the slow cooker, along with a teaspoon of dried thyme and a lot (~a tablespoon) of freshly ground black pepper. One hour in the slow cooker at high, followed by 5 hours at low. Discard the bone and serve with steamed baby yellow potatoes. Yum.

A lot of wines would have worked with this dinner. A lightly oaked Chardonnay, for example, would have offered apple and stone fruit flavors that would have worked well. In my book, however, a Pinot Noir rose offered a more interesting match. The Etude is fully dry, with just enough acidity to slice through the rich stew. The bright strawberry, cherry, and rose petal flavors and aromas made a piquant summery contrast with the warm fall dinner. It was a nice example of how using contrast in wine and food matching can work just as well as complements.

Steven Taylor’s post below on the “quotes from Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh which appear to promote the notion that they both were cheerleaders for the GOP prior to the election loss to the point that they defended Republicans who didn’t deserve defending, but did so anyway to promote a Republican victory,” is a must read. Regular readers of my blog will recall that Hugh and I went after each other hammer and tongs over Harriet Miers’ nomination to the SCOTUS. Hugh’s admission that he “had to defend the Congressional gang that couldn’t shoot straight” raises the question of whether he really thought Miers was qualified to be a Supreme Court justice or whether he “had” to defend Miers. (Since I still like Hugh, I should note Joe Gandelman‘s observation that perhaps “Hewitt was simply saying ‘Thank God we don’t have to defend such a politically inept Congress!’”)

Why would successful talk radio hosts feel that they “had” to defend the indefensible? Limbaugh offers this explanation:

Now, you might say, “Well, why have you been doing it?” Because the stakes are high. Even though the Republican Party let us down, to me they represent a far better future for my beliefs and therefore the country’s than the Democrat Party and liberalism does.

Maybe. In which case, we can write off Limbaugh and his ilk as mere party propagandists, no better than the Democrat-leaning MSM. But I don’t buy it. After all, the GOP needs high profile propagandists now more than ever. So why is Limbaugh liberated?

I wonder whether there’s another explanation; namely, access. The currency of talk radio is access to insider info and high profile guests. Did Limbaugh et al feel they had to carry the GOP’s water in order to ensure a steady flow of tips from and interviews of GOP bigwigs? When the GOP politicos thought Karl Rove had created a permanent Republican majority, maybe Limbaugh et al needed the politicos more than the latter needed Limbaugh. If so, perhaps Limbaugh figures the GOP minority now needs him so badly that he no longer needs to carry their water.

Maybe there are other explanations. As a quasi-economist, however, I’m happiest with explanations that follow the money. So, OTB readers, what’s your theory?