I put Nightwister’s poston the frontpage for a reason — Dan Maes needs to disappear.
If he is considering it, I want to publicly encourage him.
I met Dan Maes. When I was in Colorado earlier this year, Maes wanted to meet and asked for mine and RedState’s support. Very few of my friends in Colorado — the same people supporting Buck by and large — thought that would be wise.
We see why. Maes was not ready for prime time. He’s a genuinely nice guy. I liked him immediately. But the Maes campaign is amateur hour. There is a lot riding on strong GOP turnout in November in Colorado. We have a chance to shift that state back toward us.
But Maes is not the guy to lead that shift. His remaining at the top of the ballot jeopardizes the GOP down ballot. His remaining on the ballot jeopardizes turnout for Ken Buck.
Through the Colorado Senate primary I heard over and over from Buck supporters how much they wished Jane Norton were running for Governor. As a former Lt. Governor in the state, she has great executive experience. I’d gladly support her for the job.
It is my hope and prayer that Dan Maes recognizes reality and leaves the race. We can win Colorado. But not with Dan Maes.
When the first major post-primary pollcame out for the Washington Senate race, some questioned whether it was skewed toward Republican Dino Rossi over Democrat Patty Murray, or if it was simply an outlier.
But now we have confirmationthat Rossi does appear to have a lead at this point, though perhaps not as large as SurveyUSA showed.
Not that Rossi and Washington Republicans are going to be disappointed with a 50-47 lead (MoE 4). Even if Murray shows a 36% chance of being ahead in this poll, as I calculate, a 64% chance to unseat the incumbent is something Dino Rossi should be pleased with at this point in time.
Seats like this I believe are the kind that turn a modestly good year for Republicans into a rout. Public Policy Polling’s Twitter feed suggested that this year could turn so bad for Democrats that Washington, Wisconsin, and California become the battleground. If that’s the case then a Republican Senate majority might not be probable yet, but it will at least be possible.
The two men came to like each other, so comfortable in each other’s presence that, years later at a G-8 summit, Bush turned to Blair during a statement by one of the leaders in attendance and said, “Who is that guy?”
“He is the prime minister of Belgium,” Blair replied.
When Bush grumbled that Belgium is not part of the G-8, Blair explained that the man was the president of Europe. ” ‘You got the Belgians running Europe?’ He shook his head, now aghast at our stupidity,” Blair writes.
Karen Crummy at the Denver Postreports that former CO Senate President John Andrews has withdrawn his endorsement of Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes. Andrews met with Maes to encourage him to drop out of the race so the Party can choose another candidate with a chance to beat the democratic candidate John Hickenlooper in November. Andrews, who as late as yesterday said Maes had his unwavering support, told the Post today,
As a conscientious Republican who earlier voted for Dan, I cannot support a manifestly unfit nominee. He has flunked his job interview with the people of Colorado in the weeks since Scott McInnis faded. The party should cut Maes loose if he does not resign the nomination.
He also stated that he would write in Jane Norton on his ballot. Jane would certainly be a front runner for the nomination should Maes drop out as would former candidate Tom Wiens.
Other Colorado politicians to call on Maes to exit the race include former Congressman Bob Beauprez (CO-07) and former Senator Hank Brown. What is still unknown is whether Tom Tancredo would keep his promise to drop out if Maes did. If he didn’t, Hickenlooper would still be pretty much assured he would be elected.
From the diaries by the Directors. Information is the most powerful weapon in the fight against the pro-abortion regime, which is supported by nothing but false promises and lies. Based on this trailer, this film has the potential to be a landmark moment in this battle.
Imagine if you couldn’t speak for yourself, and there was no one to tell your story for you. Well, now there is.
Yesterday the chairman of Obama’s sublimely misnamed Council of Economic Advisers got the hell out of Dodge. In an earlier, more genteel day a cosmic failure like Christina Romer would have packed her Prius after dark and been hours out of town before the light of day. This, however, is the Age of Testimony and Validation. So Romer left after a luncheon at the National Press Club. I’ll let Dana Milbank pick up the narrative:
Lunch at the National Press Club on Wednesday caused some serious indigestion.
It wasn’t the food; it was the entertainment. Christina Romer, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, was giving what was billed as her “valedictory” before she returns to teach at Berkeley, and she used the swan song to establish four points, each more unnerving than the last:
She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn’t understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn’t have much of an idea about how to fix things.
What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: “Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare.”
I suppose we should give Romer points for candor. It takes a really big person to walk away from what should be the culminating role of a career, scratching their backside and muttering. And to do it in front of the national press corps. It is also a fitting end to the Summer of Recovery.
Unfortunately, it also shows the White House is, as pilots say, out of altitude, out of airspeed, and out of ideas. Philosophically they will neither cut taxes nor spending nor roll back business killing regulations. Politically they will not be able to convince the Democrat caucus in the House and Senate to fund a new round of stimulus spending. So as the world’s largest economy circles the bowl enroute to subsidizing a green job somewhere, Obama’s chief economic adviser shrugs her shoulders and essentially quotes Otter of “Animal House”on the way out.
A few months ago, Congressman Phil Hare (D-IL) was an obscure backbench Democrat in a safe House seat, in the president’s home state. With each passing day, however, it becomes clearer and clearer that his big government voting record and apathy toward the Constitution has led to a real race.
“The collusion between Bobby Schilling and ‘Veterans for the Constitution’ is not only unethical, it’s illegal,” Moody said in a statement…
In the news release announcing the complaint, [Rep.] Hare said Schilling should “emerge from the shadows and demonstrate the courage to challenge me directly.”
Schilling and the veterans group denied wrongdoing.
Bill Albracht, treasurer of Veterans for the Constitution, said the complaint is a sign it’s having an effect.
“We have taken the fight to Hare, and I see this as retaliation and intimidation,” he said.
Furthermore, I’m told by a source on the ground that Congressman Hare’s supporters have prodded the City of Canton, Illinois, to try to force Schilling’s supporters to remove a legal billboard that highlights the importance of the Constitution - Hare’s statements notwithstanding. Hare is apparently nervous enough about his race to resort to attacking groups whose resources are so limited -a few thousand dollars here, a billboard there - that they have negligible influence. At least, they hadnegligible influence - until Congressman Hare elevated them.
As Jim Geraghty has pointed out, at least one poll shows Hare trailing his Republican challenger by a margin of 45%-32%. Hare’s panicky reactions to these small groups suggests that poll may be right. After all, a confident incumbent would have shrugged off this opposition. Instead, Hare has given them more attention than they ever could have gotten for their $6,000, and he’s done so in a way that makes him appear vindictive and petty.
Yesterday, James Jay Lee died, shot by police. Lee walked into the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Springs, Maryland, armed and seemingly strapped with a bomb. Though most of the building was evacuated safely, Lee managed to take three people hostage. The stand-off lasted several hours, and ended when Maryland police had no choice but deadly force to finally ensure the safety of the hostages.
During long stand-off, people across the airwaves and internet discovered and discussed volumes of information on the gunman. His motives were dissected, his family was interviewed, his disturbing list of demands parsed. When something like this happens, this search is inevitable and understandable. Everyone, politically motivated or otherwise, has the same question.
Ken Buck you say? Sharron Angle? Mike Lee? Pat Toomey? Marco Rubio? Joe Miller? Rand Paul? Nikki Haley?
Here, pay attention: they are all candidates.
Yes, yes — we won primaries. Contrary to popular opinion that conservatives wanted a purge of party, we instead played smartly — playing where we could win. We gave Roy Blunt a pass in Missouri. We were largely disunified and unorganized in Illinois, letting it go to Mark Kirk. I personally insisted no one beat him up on the front page here, given the near inevitability of the primary. There was no point. We stayed out of Connecticut. We went with Rob Portman in Ohio. We lost California and Indiana.
It’s this one, from the never-to-be-sufficiently-hated-by-the-Left Rasmussen: and on its face it’s innocuous enough. It’s the partisan identification poll, and it currently lists Democrats at 35%, Republicans at 33.8%, and Neither at 31.1%. Unsurprising, based on recent events, right? - Also, it’s a poll of adults, so this probably means a Republican advantage among likely voters, as that’s the usual rule of thumb for these things. So, nothing really unusual here, right?
Wrong. If this poll is accurate, it’s a harbinger of DOOM for the Democrats.
Funny, several friends and I were joking earlier today that pretty soon the elites and their media friends would take a new angle on Ken Buck, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Sharron Angle, etc.
Instead of calling them fringe, which is getting harder and harder to do given their successes, the media would instead contrast them to Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, alleging that these people are far to the right of Coburn and DeMint. In effect, DeMint and Coburn would be centrists relatively speaking.
It didn’t take 24 hours. The elites are so predictable.
Good evening. I’ve been hung up today and unfortunately could not do my usually full range of reading for tonight, but I have a few Net Neutrality points to make tonight, so here we go.
“The principle sounds fantastic, but the principle is not the problem,” Fiorina said in an interview at the Technology Policy Institute’s conference in Aspen, Colo. “The problem is how companies and regulatory bodies are trying to translate that principle into policy, which would have a bad effect.”
Meanhile Boxer is too afraid to comment, calling it ‘premature’ to do so. The whole FCC is running scared, now having delayed further action until after the election, which has all the socialist groups like Free Press furious. They know the longer it takes, the stronger the opposition will get, and most importantly, Republican gains in November will hurt their cause even further (not that all House Democrats back them anyway, far from it).
Today, James Jay Lee died, shot by police. Lee walked into the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Springs, Maryland, armed and seemingly strapped with a bomb. Though most of the building was evacuated safely, Lee managed to take three people hostage. The stand-off lasted several hours, and ended when Maryland police had no choice but deadly force to finally ensure the safety of the hostages.
During the long stand-off, people across the airwaves and internet discovered and discussed volumes of information on the gunman. His motives were dissected, his family was interviewed, his disturbing list of demands parsed. When something like this happens, this search is inevitable and understandable. Everyone, politically motivated or otherwise, has the same question.
Why?
The simplest answer is generally the correct one: these people are crazy. In the case of James Jay Lee, witness his bizarre list of eco-demands. He wants to undo civilization because human beings are filth. He believes man is destroying the earth, that it is happening rapidly, that development, consumption, and overpopulation are the root causes, and that only swift, drastic, unilateral action can save the planet.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
Lee was the very picture of instability. His radical environmental views were at their most extreme in his list of demands for programming changes at The Discovery Channel. He wanted them to stop “encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants.” He stated that humans “are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.” Notice the detached language. He uses “human” as an accusation, not a description. This was a man who had rejected humanity whole cloth. The entire manifesto oozes with contempt and rage. Humans are the bad guys, at war with the only true good: nature.
Stop me, please, if you’ve heard this before.
One might expect, with all of this information being uncovered about this man as he held three “filthy” humans at gunpoint and under threat of a possible bomb, in service to nature against man, that it would be pretty generally well-accepted that his radical environmental views were his motivation. Not least because, well, he said so.
5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)
All alone on the page, I’m sure the reader saw “anchor baby filth” and believed the author had a point. But that’s the beauty of selective excerpting, isn’t it? Viewed in full, he truth is more obvious. Why wouldn’the call anchor babies filth? He has already explained that ALL human babies are filth. All humansare filth. He’s not complaining about immigration because he doesn’t like furners. He’s complaining about over-population. This item on the list is no different than any other. It’s about earth vs. humans, as anyone can plainly see.
But that didn’t stop the blogger from ominously linking him to supposed “anti-immigration” groups.
Lee’s immigration screed bears a troubling resemblance to views and policies espoused by anti-immigrant groups such as NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Progressives for Immigration Reform, and others.
The “and others” is my favorite part. No doubt referring to a “certain portion” of the population. Such blatant attempts to pin the gunman on right-wing sentiment are de rigeuramong the online left in the wake of tragedy these days. But James Jay Lee’s screed was so obviously green in nature that this round of pin the tail on the righty was doomed. There was just no chance it would fly.
Now, what do you think happens when this sort of violence can’t be pinned on the right? Is it pinned on the left? If DailyKos and Media Matters and Think Progress can’t somehow paint Lee’s tree-hugging on Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh, do you think they’ll have to accept that this time, their name the blame game points at their own houses?
Of course not.
That tweet about not trying to score political points on a tragedy takes you to a Media Matters post where they try to score political points on a tragedy, by the way.
Now, let me tell you something that may sound crazy. Media Matters has a point. Minus the link, I think Media Matters has a decent point, albeit accidentally and hypocritically. James Jay Lee was a criminal. And more than that, he was unhinged. Neil Cavuto interviewed Lee’s brother-in-law, Thomas Leonard, close to the end of the stand-off. Leonard describes Lee as “unstable” and “disagreeable”, and paints a picture of the downward spiral of a disturbed soul. When Cavuto asked Leonard whether he thought his brother-in-law was capable of murder, he replied “absolutely.”
Lee acted irrationally. His environmental extremism was likely a function of his derangement, rather than the source of it. He latched on. He took it to the extreme, to say the least. Lee was not, by any measure that I would choose, a sane man. The story told by his brother-in-law - one of temper, erratic behavior, and irrational views - recalls Jerry Kane.
Jerry Kane, and his son Joe, killed two police officers and were killed themselves, in a shoot-out precipitated by a simple traffic stop. Jerry Kane, too, was an unstable man. His hometown mayor said of him that “You were always looking over your shoulder to make sure he wasn’t there. You never knew what he was going to do. I always thought he was an unstable individual.” Like Lee, the aftermath anecdotes painted a picture of paranoia and fear. But that didn’t stop liberal sites like Crooks and Liarsfrom laying him at the feet of the conservative movement. Or Joseph Stack. Or Richard Poplawski. Or Byron Williams. It didn’t stop them from suggesting that Erick was responsible for a census worker slaying.
In fact, every time someone is shot in a lone gunman scenario, the right, and the tea parties and talk radio in particular, are virtually instantaneously blamed by the left at large for “violent” rhetoric and instigation.
Stop me, again, if you’ve heard THAT one before.
We never stop hearing from the MSNBC left how the Fox News right is stirring up violence. But when someone clearly basing his murderous intent on the idea that humans are going to destroy the world, and soon, acts on the dire prophecies of Al Gore … well suddenly you can’t blame rhetoric for crazy people.
I do think the increasingly apocalyptic green movement scares people. They intendto scare people. And when you are blasting doomsday from every bully pulpit on earth, some crazy is bound to take that to heart, possibly even act on it. But …
Crazies will always find something to take to heart. Could be global warming apocalypse rhetoric. Could be taxes. Could be a birth certificate. Could even be Jodie Foster. By all currently available evidence, James Jay Lee was one of those crazies. Media Matters was right about that. What they, and virtually all the other liberal blogs are wrong about, is their absolute hypocrisy in laying every horrific crime at the feet of the right, while crying for circumspection when crazies cite the rhetoric of the left.
“Progressives” say calling President Obama’s socialist policies socialist is inviting assassination. How much more so, I wonder, to say that Republicans want you to die quickly? Or that the world will literally end in a spectacular cataclysm if capitalism isn’t halted and reversed? If indeed we are to ascribe violence to rhetoric, can anyone say with a straight face that tea partiers opposing government spending represent a greater risk than Democrats telling you Republicans are trying to kill you and bring about the end of human civilization?
James Jay Lee was a disturbed, lone actor. His twisted mind latched on to the green movement and he took a horrifying step from there. It has happened before for other reasons. Sadly, it will happen again. And while we must certainly be vigilant in guarding against rhetoric designedto incite such a result, we must be equally careful that we do not attribute to mainstream political dissent the actions of the unwell. And those of us on the right must be especially vigilant in calling out those on the left when they do. As they do routinely.
Oh by the way, one more thing about that Media Matters tweet about not scoring points. In the linked blog entry? They reiterate the ridiculous Think Progresstalking point about immigration. Point scoring indeed.
Funny, several friends and I were joking earlier today that pretty soon the elites and their media friends would take a new angle on Ken Buck, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Sharron Angle, etc.
Instead of calling them fringe, which is getting harder and harder to do given their successes, the media would instead contrast them to Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, alleging that these people are far to the right of Coburn and DeMint. In effect, DeMint and Coburn would be centrists relatively speaking.
With a Senate designed for comity, it isn’t clear whether such outsider tactics would simply change business-as-usual or destroy the institution, said Ross Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University who specializes in Senate rules. Since the beginning of the republic, the Senate has required unanimous consent to end discussions on one bill and move to another. Unanimous consent is also needed to allow staff members on the floor to initiate a vote or limit the time spent on a bill.
Such traditions are already strained by conservatives such as Mr. DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who have increasingly objected to consent agreements in an effort to shine a light on spending bills that once passed without debate. But, Mr. Baker asserted, “compared to people like [Colorado candidate] Ken Buck…Tom Coburn is Daniel Webster.“
Good grief.
Of course, don’t worry. After November, Coburn and DeMint will again be portrayed as extremist.
In a Times-Picayuneopinion piece, columnist James Gill introduces us to State Rep. Cedric Richmond, the Democratic nominee in Louisiana’s Second Congressional District. Richmond will square off against freshman incumbent Rep. Joseph Cao (R) in November.
LA-02 is a gerrymandered black-majority district, comprised of Orleans Parish (minus the mostly white enclaves of Uptown and Lakeview) and select precincts of neighboring Jefferson Parish. LA-02 was Bill (In His Freezer!)Jefferson’s fiefdom for 20 years, and Richmond was at one time a Jefferson protege. As one of the bluest districts in the country, Democrats regard this seat as a gimme.
While Cao’s votes have confounded conservative Republicans at times, he has represented what he sees as the interests of his constituents, and he had done so with an unimpeachable air of integrity and dignity. According to Mr. Gill, it appears that in Cedric Richmond the voters have a clear alternative to Mr. Cao’s positive character qualities.
It’s this one, from the never-to-be-sufficiently-hated-by-the-Left Rasmussen: and on its face it’s innocuous enough. It’s the partisan identification poll, and it currently lists Democrats at 35%, Republicans at 33.8%, and Neither at 31.1%. Unsurprising, based on recent events, right? - Also, it’s a poll of adults, so this probably means a Republican advantage among likely voters, as that’s the usual rule of thumb for these things. So, nothing really unusual here, right?
Wrong. If this poll is accurate, it’s a harbinger of DOOM for the Democrats.
I don’t pretend to be a professional pollster, but I’ve been dealing with polls on a regular basis since 2003, so I at least know the basics. And I know that - once you get past the pure technical details about whether or not a poll has gotten a true random sample, or whether there’s deliberate bias in the questions - the two major questions that have to be addressed about an election poll both touch on how well it snapshots the actual electorate.
For example: experience shows that a poll that samples 1,000 adults will have a result that is significantly different than one that samples 1,000 likely voters*. The trick is determining what a ‘likely voter’ is, which is why many pollsters at least try to work with the more quantifiable ‘registered voters:’ it doesn’t give you as good results, but it at least screens out the people who can’tvote. It’s also why pollsters try to find out who is enthusiastic about voting, and who isn’t. But that’s only half of the problem; the other half is determining whether or not the current partisan mix of voters has shifted since the last benchmark. That benchmark is usually an election; it’s a truism that, generally, Republicans vote for Republicans and Democrats vote for Democrats. So pollsters look at reliable exit polls, and they look at election results, and every so often they do new partisan identification polls.
And that’s what makes this such a problematic poll of Rasmussen’s for the Democrats. As the pollster noted, historically speaking:
In August 2004, the Democrats had a 2.6 percentage point advantage. In August 2006, they enjoyed a 5.4 percentage point advantage. In August 2008, the gap was 5.7 percentage points. See the History of Party Trends from January 2004 to the present.
…and if you look at the results for those years, you’ll notice that they trended between August and November in all three years towards the party that ended up ‘winning’ those particular election cycles. Which implies that the breakdown is going to be even worse for the Democrats in November. It might even be close to equal.
Why this matters is that a perennial complaint this election cycle is that pollsters keep using partisan breakdowns that assume no major changes between the fundamental makeup of the 2008 electorate and today’s. Yes, pollsters will address the enthusiasm gap - but there is a difference between a politician being down five points because of one party not being motivated to get out the vote and a politician being down five points because there are less members of that party to draw votes from. If Rasmussen is right - and there are a lot of people out there in this business who have a vested professional interest in getting Rasmussen perceived as being wrong - then the problems for the Democratic party will not be addressed in better appeals to their base; they’ll be addressed by changing the policies that are apparently driving voters into the Republican camp**.
And if they don’t, they will simply not be prepared for the psychic shock of Election Night.
Moe Lane
*Conventional wisdom is that the resulting shift from adult to likely will generally favor Republicans, which is about as true. Generally, the rule of thumb is to assume that anything that gives Democrats +2 or +3 is actually tied; this is admittedly-imprecise and not really explicable, but it more or less works anyway. If this level of imprecision bugs you, trust me: don’t get deeper into the arcana of polling. You’ll just hate it.
**It will be now that we will hear the traditional cries of “people just hate the Democrats more than they do the Republicans” and “don’t get cocky.” To which I reply, in order:
If they hate us less than they do Democrats, then people need to be on their best behavior when greeting the new arrivals to our side of the political divide. Which includes not doing the political equivalent of making scary faces at them, rubbing dung in their hair, and/or telling them to Assume the Position.
It’s only two monthsbefore the election. Also, the Democrats are in their mess right now themselves because they’re using political maps that are horrifically out of date. I’m willing to be receptive to the argument that we shouldn’t yet be changing our own maps and tactics to reflect the new environment; but when can we start doing that?
The Iraq War did not just fade away. It ended witha qualitative result: a spectacular victory for America in the face of long oddsand complete vindication for the leaders who decided to stick it outinstead of tuck tail and run when Democrats wanted to.
Americans have largely forgotten about Iraq and have long since tired of hearing about it. That is in large part a reflection of our troops’ success in reducing the violence and producing a stable enough situation for a government to stand up, albeit slowly.
For this reason, Obama’s speech marking the end of combat operations in Iraq will play well with the public. In truth the speech was not so much a wrap up of the war in Iraq as it was a “Like-you-I-am-tired-of-hearing-about-Iraq-so-let’s-just-declare-it-over-and-move-on-to-things-I-care-much-more-about” speech. That much is evidenced by what the speech did notcontain.
• Context: Neither the name Saddam Hussein nor any reference to his history of brutality toward his people and his neighbors was mentioned, let alone his coddling of terrorists and his history of making threats aimed at the United States.
• Accomplishments: This was a speech devoid of statistics. Did US troops build any schools? Fix any roads? Treat any Iraqi children? Restore any power? Do anything other than get wounded and die? One wouldn’t know it from the president’s text.
People who don’t generally pay too much attention to politics at this time of the year will hear about this speech (Iraq war over!), breathe a sigh of relief, remember that it was Obama who ended it, and move on with their lives. Ultimately, that will not redound much to Democrats’ benefit in November, because this election is not about national security. On the contrary, Democrats will not be made to answer for their feckless political opportunism on Iraq unless something else happens.
That is why a Republican push for a declaration of Victory in Iraq and an accompanying national celebration is so important.
A united Republican push to celebrate America’s unquestionable victory in Iraq would counter the narrative that the war just faded away. Rather, it ended with a qualitative result: a spectacular victory for America in the face of long odds and complete vindication for the leaders who decided to stick it out instead of tuck tail and run when Democrats wanted to.
It would also force the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats to put some action behind their platitudes on the war. Obama can say that the troops performed magnificently and wax eloquent about their sacrifice if he knows he won’t have to actually do anything to honor them. Similarly, Democrats can bask in the glow of ending the war they all opposed if they don’t have to face a choice about what that end means, victory or disgrace.
Calling on Obama and the Democrats to put some meaning behind their words by supporting a victory parade or some such national celebration (for which monies have been authorized in at least one of the Iraq War supplementals) will force every Democrat to either admit President George W. Bush and Republicans were right all along about invading Iraq and sticking it out there, or diminish the troops’ achievement and their sacrifice.
Democrats will choose the latter, and was evident in Obama’s speech. He simply could not talk about the war without mentioning our standing in the world allegedly suffering and our unity as a people allegedly coming under strain.
These are the arguments Democrats will make if Republicans force them to come out from behind their rhetorical defenses. And that will hurt them in November. Because as much as Americans may have tired of Iraq, they won’t want to vote for politicians who won’t take a victory when it’s handed to them, choosing instead to run down America and her brave and selfless troops.
All the talk in your typical Senate analysis this year has assumed Republican Mike Castle will beat Democrat Chris Coons in the Delaware Senate race, but the fact is there’s still a GOP primary in progress.
It’s forgivable to forget about that primary when polling of the primary is scarce, and PPPand Rasmussenhold Coons under 40, but let’s extrapolate from the PPP poll to the primary.
Some would question the handicapping of a Republican primary with of a poll from PPP (a firm aligned with Democrats) and commissioned by Daily Kos, which is fair, but we can keep their biases in mind for the worst case. And if you want Chris Coons to win, what do you want to see? You want a difficult primary. You want money spent, allegations hurled, and feelings hurt. Any bias here is going to be against the frontrunner and for the underdog challenger.
That challenger is, of course, Christine O’Donnell. Top lines involving her have been mixed: some say she can beat Chris Coons, others say she can’t. That’s not what I’m looking for today though. I’m looking at how Republicansare evaluating her candidacy, and for that I’m going to delve into the PPP crosstabs.
First we look at overall approval figures. Delaware registered Republicans (this is not a likely voter poll) favor Castle 60/25 for +35, but only favor O’Donnell 34-29 +5. Nearly a majority of Delaware Conservatives favor Castle 46/39 for +5, while those conservatives favor O’Donnell 37/23 for +14. And for one more split: McCain voters favor Castle 54/31 or +23, while they favor O’Donnell only 32/29 or +3. It seems to me that O’Donnell is only better liked than Castle if only conservatives vote in the primary, while the rest of the GOP stays home.
“Ah!” the O’Donnell supporters will cry, “But Mike Castle is out of step with the Republican Party!” though he pretty much had to be, given that his House district tilts so far left that most analysts gave it up for the Democrats as soon as he announced he was moving on to the Senate. “He won’t excite the base in the general!” Well, let’s look at how O’Donnell does in the general. In the general among conservatives, Castle beats Coons 67-13, while O’Donnell beats Coons 69-13. Among McCain voters, Castle wins 75-10 and O’Donnell wins 71-13. Among Republicans, Castle wins 75-12 and O’Donnell wins 67-17.
I just see no evidence that Castle is disliked enough by Delaware Republicans, Conservatives, and McCain voters for an O’Donnell candidacy to catch on like those of Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, or Pat Toomey. Christine O’Donnell’s core challenge is to give Delaware Republicans who like Mike Castle a reason to vote against him anyway.
Yesterday, President Obama provided the country with a speech on Iraq that was distinctly… unedifying. Underwhelming. The sort of speech that you track down the text online, read it, and wait to see if the speaker at least makes an embarrassing verbal gaffe or two. Still, Bill Kristol gave it good marks, for a given value of “good marks:”
President Obama opposed the war in Iraq. He still thinks it was a mistake. It’s therefore unrealistic for supporters of the war to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given, or to expect President Obama to put the war in the context we would put it in. He simply doesn’t believe the war in Iraq was a necessary part of a broader effort to fight terror, to change the Middle East, etc. Given that (erroneous) view of his, I thought his speech was on the whole commendable, and even at times impressive.
I happen to largely agree with Bill Kristol about the war in Iraq. But he’s wrong here to (as Hot Air put it) grade the President on the curve accordingly.
First off, and most importantly: this President has spent his entire political careerbeing graded on the curve. As a state legislator and as a US Senator, he was a mediocrity, famously voting ‘Present‘ on the issues of the day and fond of insinuating himself in for the credit for splashy initiatives. As a candidate, he benefited from a media that challenged his opponents for him at every turn, and challenged him not at all. As a President, he oversaw the ‘process’ by which both a supposed economic recovery package and a supposed health reform package were instead turned into almost-literally malignant pieces of legislative evil that none have read, none can understand, and none want on their own merits. All of these things occurred, and were permitted to occur, because at no time was Barack Obama expected to stand or fall on his own. There was always someone who needed to make excuses for Obama for his or her own reasons, or who needed Obama to further his or her own agenda, or even someone who could simply not bear the thought of Obama failing at something. And after a while, it became an artificial ‘New Normal.’
And that leads to the second point: it is not “unrealistic for supporters of the war to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given, or to expect President Obama to put the war in the context we would put it in.” We were right. The President was wrong. And he knows that he was wrong. He is counting on defense hawks to shrug and give Obama a pass on this, just like everybody always gives Obama a pass, because apparently it violates the laws of physics themselves to expect a Democratic President of the United States to be held accountable to the consequences of his own actions and rhetoric. [Except that it's not, so let's stop doing that.] If the President does not like it, then he can marshal the powers of his roughly-125-IQ-but-never-properly-exercised brain* and learn to shut upwhen he’s about to say stupid things that will hurt him later.
In short: this is the United States of America, not junior high; and Barack Obama is the President, not a God-King. It is far past time that we stopped giving the man a pass that he doesn’t particularly deserve.
Moe Lane
*At a guess. And I suspect it’s one that will infuriate his followers more than if I had suggested that the guy had less than a triple-digit IQ.
Ken Buck you say? Sharron Angle? Mike Lee? Pat Toomey? Marco Rubio? Joe Miller? Rand Paul? Nikki Haley?
Here, pay attention: they are all candidates.
Yes, yes — we won primaries. Contrary to popular opinion that conservatives wanted a purge of party, we instead played smartly — playing where we could win. We gave Roy Blunt a pass in Missouri. We were largely disunified and unorganized in Illinois, letting it go to Mark Kirk. I personally insisted no one beat him up on the front page here, given the near inevitability of the primary. There was no point. We stayed out of Connecticut. We went with Rob Portman in Ohio. We lost California and Indiana.
We won Colorado.
We won Nevada.
We won Alaska.
We won Kentucky.
We won Utah.
We won Florida.
We won South Carolina.
Except we really haven’t. There is a huge difference between winning a primary and winning an actually election. One gives you the name “nominee.” The other gives you the name Senator, Congressman, and Governor. It is the latter that is important.
A lot of conservatives want to go pounding their fists on their chests, declare themselves Tarzan of the Jungle, and pronounce their great victories. But we have, ultimately, won nothing.
Nothing, that is, yet.There are feuds breaking out. There are some conservatives who have decided to sit on the sidelines because their candidate did not win. There are some moderates who have decided to sit on the sidelines because their candidate did not win.
As I have said from Day One of my arrival at RedState, here we are conservative in the primary and Republican in the general election. Now is the time to mobilize and fight to take back the country from the Democrats. There is only one vehicle by which we can do that — the Republican Party.
Don’t get cocky. Don’t get overconfident. Don’t decide you’ve done all you need or want to do. Victory is ours, but we must fight for it all the way to November.
Murkowski did not endorse Joe Miller. This is getting to be a trend among beaten Republicans that they don’t endorse their more conservative challengers. See e.g. Bill McCollum.
Sources in Alaska confirm Murkowski is in talks with the Libertarians, though the LIbertarians are saying she won’t get on the ballot for them.
By the way, it is worth noting that Big Government beat everybodyon the news that Murkowski would be conceding.
My first political act was attending a Ronald Reagan rally back in 1980.
Since then I’ve watched with great disappointment the ability of the GOP to turn opportunities into wasted piles of crap and to push soft Republicans and weary independents into the arms of the Democrats or those who don’t vote.
Such moves have led to this kind of apathy among even people who would love to be dedicated Republicans: “Unfortunately neither party, once in power appears to be terribly concerned with limiting their own power” and “The only people I see truly dedicated to limiting government are the Tea Party, but I’m not so sure they can get enough broad support to make it happen” (both real quotes from friends of mine in response to a note I posted on facebook).
Let me ask you this question: If you were to survey ten of your closest friends who you considered soft Republicans (they either voted for Obama or considered it), what would they say the number one issue for the Republicans should be after they win in November?
I’m betting you either said “cut government spending” or “get rid of healthcare” or “make government smaller.”
Now ask them a different question. “Where did the GOP go wrong in the 1990s and the early 2000s when they had control?”
They will probably say one of two things “they spent too much” or “they wasted all their time investigating Clinton.”
At least that has been my experience in talking to my “soft” Republican and independent friends who lean conservative in their ideals.
Rolling to victory in November
The Republicans are rolling to victory in November. I think they will be slightly short when it comes to the Senate but they should be able to make a big enough dent that we can ignore the moderates most of the time and still pull a fillibuster out of the hat.
And why are we going to win? Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It is not that the GOP suddenly has a fabulous message (although they are at least back on message) as it is that they are terrified of what Barak Obama is doing to the country and so they are planning to hamstring Barak as much as possible.
Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely some people out there who would love to come back to the GOP for good and the momentum is ours for the taking.
I’m happy and I think we are adding some great conservative voices to the Congress.
So why the doom and gloom headline?
Because we’ve been here before — 2002 — It should’ve been great. Control of congress, GOP President and all we got is bigger government and a lot of pissed off independents and soft Republicans.
Will we never learn?
So what do our leaders have in store for the new congress?
Republican staffers say there won’t be any self-destructive witch hunts, but they clearly are relishing the prospect of extracting information from an administration that touts transparency.
And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Lamar Smith, R-Texas — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.
Fabulous! Because everywhere I go in America, I hear people saying “Hey, let’s take over congress so we can probe the White House.” That’s right, people want to probe the White House because that’s so important to them.
No, it’s not. It’s important to congressmen and professional politicians who want to take some scalps.
We, out here, would like some jobs and some lower taxes and maybe divesting the country of Fannie, Freddie, and GM.
Really? Because that has worked out so well for both the country and the GOP as a whole.
Compare Eric Cantor’s attitude on earmarks here:
“Republicans may roll back their ban on earmarks, as long as the spending items have ‘merit.’”
with Reagan’s approach to earmarks by not only vetoeing bills that had them but by trying to actually use a legal constitutional argument to ignore them (since they were not in the law themselves but were in the report language and not the bill itself).
President James Madison vetoed the bill as unconstitutional. He explains his reasoning to Congress in his veto message:
Having considered the bill … I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling this bill with the Constitution of the United States. … The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified … in the … Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers. …
And regarding the General Welfare Clause, Madison responds:
Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms ‘common defense and general welfare’ embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust.
What I wouldn’t give to get every member of congress on record on their views on that! Talk about made for political ad fodder.
3) The continued love affair with offshoring jobs and H-1B visas
The final issue (and I admit that I don’t have any sure fire way to fix this issue) is the GOP’s obsession with making it easier to offshore jobs and increase H-1B visas.
This may be one of the reasons (along with abortion) that Carly Fiorina lags behind Meg Whitman in California. Carly was the great outsourcer at HP and one of the most vocal supporters of giving away American jobs to cheaper foreigners (sorry folks, with layoffs and the recession, there are no more than a handful of jobs that we couldn’t find a displaced American IT worker to fill quite ablely).
While in its infancy, this may have been a great way to give the top 1% of smart people from around the world a pathway to America, it has become about pandering to the big companies that provide the GOP with campaign money and undercutting workers salaries.
How To Prevent the Problem
Is there a way to prevent a return to the wilderness? There is although it’s hard for me to believe that our congressional leaders are smart enough to listen to us when we tell them what it is.
Congress should be ruled by three principles:
1) With regards to the use of their time (i.e. to investigate or not to investigate), congress critters should ask themselves “Is this the best use of my time to alleviate the problems of the American people?” or “Am I solving one of the top five problems that affects the American people?”
We don’t need endless news cycles about subpoenas and and who told who what if we want to stay in the business of ruling the country. If you want to take political scalps, resign from congress and go home and join the local homeowner’s association.
How about taking your time on the government oversight committee to check for wasteful spending and try to find one hundred regulations to cut during the first hundred days you are in congress?
How about spending your committee time asking questions about why all of the positions in a given department need to be filled?
How about spending your time asking department secretaries which programs could be combined so that the American people could save some money?
2) With regards to the use of our money, congress should ask, “How can I reduce the size of government?” and “Is this a critical need to help the American people?” and “Would I donate my own money for a project like this?”
Selling off Fannie, Freddie, GM, etc would quickly reduce the size of government.
Earmarks are never going to be the answer in a case like this. Do you know what the polls for 2012 would look like if the House of Representatives passed an earmark free appropriations bill in the coming year? I guarentee that we could push it through the Senate as well simply by shaming people into voting for it (especially Dem’s up for election in 2012)?
This simple act would lead to a huge movement from independents into the GOP tent on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.
3) With regards to taxes, tariffs, visas, illegal immigration enforcement, congressmen should ask themselves this question: “What policies can I enact that will create the most private sector jobs for America for the next year, ten years, and forty years?”
Realisitically looking at a big reduction in federal regulations, lowering taxes down to level of 20% of GDP, shuttering businesses that hire illegal aliens, and increased border security will all open up opportunities for Americans displaced either through overregulation or through the taking of jobs by illegals.
Finally, we need to pick our 2012 presidential nominee with care
Finally, when November is done, we need to pick our GOP nominee carefully.
I know we all have our favorites (I have mine as well ), but we ALL (myself included) will need to take a hard look at our nominees and find someone who will and HAS fought for smaller government not just talked about it.
The last thing we need to do is to turnover a GOP leaning (or hopefully completely owned) congress to a “big government conservative” (scare quotes intended to be REALLY scary) in 2012.
Or even worse nominate an unelectable Bob Dole type (I know it’s your turn, but this isn’t the local deli counter!).
There should be at least two or three ELECTABLE, CONSERVATIVE choices out there.
Conclusion
For now, push those Republicans through to November and then be ready to hold their feet to the fire!
Politicians seem to have a gene in their system that turns them from conservatives into trough suckers once they get to Washington.
We need to remind them who is boss and push them to choose conservative leaders like Jim DeMint and Paul Ryan and ignore the Mitch McConnells and Eric Cantors of the world.
Remember that if we don’t push our congressmen on a regular basis on how to govern then we will be right back in the wilderness in 2014.
Barack Obama again waited for Rush Limbaugh to go on vacation before addressing the public from the Oval Office. Like the last speech, this speech was, for three-quarters of it, dry and monotone — President Spock addressing the nation without emotion.
Finally, at the end, Spockobama gave into emotion and showed some talking about the troops.
Throughout though, the speech was a rather pathetic speech. Not since February of 2009 has Barack Obama talked in detail about Iraq and his Oval Office speech tonight indicates this may be the last we ever hear of Iraq from him. He couldn’t wait to move on to topics more to his liking.
He praised George W. Bush — but curiously set up his praise in a way to make himself look better. He then turned almost as quickly to the economy and blamed George Bush for the economic picture. At least tonight, however, he was kind enough not to use Bush’s name directly.
Lisa Murkowski is conceding the senate primary in Alaska to RedState and Sarah Palin endorsed Joe Miller.
This news is bigger than Lisa Murkowski. While Establishment Republicans will bristle at it, this is a near total kneecapping of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, not to mention another rejection of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Consider this inside baseball fact: McConnell has chosen as his loyal lieutenants at the leadership table Robert Bennett (R-UT), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).
Judd Gregg is retiring and McConnell sought to replace him with Trey Grayson of Kentucky. Grayson, however, lost to Rand Paul in the Kentucky GOP Primary.
Conservatives threw Bob Bennett out at the Utah GOP convention, replacing him with firebrand conservative Mike Lee.
Now Lisa Murkowski is defeated, like Bob Bennett, by conservative activists concerned by the fiscal drift of the Republican Party and the overall direction of the American republic.
Consider another fact: Conservatives, led by Jim DeMint and Sarah Palin, are potentially creating the most conservative Senate Republican Conference in the last thirty or so years: Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Mike Lee, Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey will be joining Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, and David Vitter.
Yeah, sure, using that term will save at-risk Democrats in swing seats and states.
Now, it’s important to note here that HHS Secretary Sebelius was being inarticulate and stupidly insensitive here, not threatening. She didn’t mean to evoke the Cold War era specter of Communist concentration camps where enemies of the State were systematically tortured into reflexively supporting whatever Dear Leader was in power that year, or Soviet-era ‘mental hospitals’ where dissidence was ‘treated’ as a medical disease.
From Public Policy Polling, the official pollster of DailyKos:
“We’ll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there’s one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.”
If you ever want to see how liberal pundits try to gin up division within conservative ranks, look no further than this bit of beclowning.
Sean Hannity did not talk about Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on Sean Hannity’s show.
Really.
Apparently, because other Fox hosts did, Sean Hannity is supposed to do it too. I didn’t realize that Glenn and Sean had editorial control over each other’s shows.
Sean Hannity is no more required to cover the Restoring Honor event than Glenn Beck is required to cover Hannity’s Freedom Concerts. This is ludicrous and trying to start controversy where there isn’t any.
