Elections and Other Stuff...

I don't have much for today, but just a little about my assessment of recent elections. I am not sure that the Liberals really grasp how badly they lost in 2014. Not only did they lose the Senate badly, but, according to National Conference of State Legislatures, "Republicans gained 300-350 seats in state government and control over 4,100 of the nation’s 7,383 legislative seats." The last time this happened was in the 1920's.

That's great, but here is why I think they are even more clueless. Earlier this year, Obama's crackerjack election team went to Israel to help and advise Isaac Herzog on how to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Herzog and his party lost badly.

David Axelrod, key election adviser to Obama along with our dear New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio traveled to England to advise Ed Millibrand and his Labour Party on how to defeat David Cameron and his Conservative Party. Millibrand and Labour lost badly.

They just don't get that the people are just not buying what they are selling.

Now, here is where it gets really fun. NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio is travelling the US to sell his version of the Liberal "Contract With America" that will be revealed soon. He is convinced that the Democrats can win in 2016 if they can just move sharply left. Now, Bill has never really understood that he won by only 18% of vote of NYC registered voters despite that the fact that he swears he has a "mandate from the people". This is his now-famous quote from his recent Rolling Stone Magazine interview:

"A lot of people outside New York City understand what happened in the first year of New York City better than people in New York City. But I´m convinced something very special happened here."

Yeah, real special - murder is up 20% including three dead cops and we just don't "get" his brilliance. [Full disclosure: I have not read his RS interview because I just don't want to.] Though he has already announced that he will run again in 2017, I predict that he most certainly he will not win. He is that unpopular.

Anyway, let's hope the Dems keep up their present election track record.

Oh, did I forget to tell you that yet another New York State elected official has been indicted for wrong-doing? Remember earlier this year, I told you about long-time Democrat Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's arrest. This time it is the Republican State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos who was arrested on federal corruption charges and after much wrangling, he finally stepped down today. I don't know the details and it almost doesn't even matter anymore. But at this rate, we may have to ask for volunteers to fill our state legislature simply because no one will be left who isn't already in jail.

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Democrat versus Democrat

As we near the end of a President’s reign, especially an unpopular one, the members of the President’s party start to go their own way. This can range from simply talking about new issues that had been de-prioritized by the current administration to actively attacking the lame duck President. The Democrats are in the middle of that at the moment, and it’s going to cause them serious problems. Observe...

Here are some big examples of recent attacks by Democrats on Obama:

(1) Sen. Chuck “Chuckles” Schumer came out and basically blasted the Democratic obsession with Obamacare. He noted that this was not what was concerning the public at the time and he suggested that putting their eggs in this basket made the Democrats seem out of touch. He also suggested other problems with the law and he blamed it for destroying the Democrats in the midterm elections. Chuck seems to be setting himself up as a “prominent critic” of Obamacare... the only possibly positive legacy Obama has.

(2) Sen. “Dingy” Harry Reid is apparently on the verge of cutting a deal with Republicans to put in place $400 billion (over 10 years) in tax breaks. The White House has had no input into this and actually rallied liberals to kill the bill... after a veto threat. Think about that: a veto threat aimed at something Harry Reid is trying to pass!

(3) Sen. Robert “Illegal Fundraiser” Menendez has been working with Republicans to shape a new sanctions bill against Iran, despite Obama trying to play the “carrot only” game with Iran... and despite Obama claiming that GOP fears about Iran are paranoia.

(4) Obama wants to enact trade deals with Europe and the Pacific Rim countries to lower trade barriers. The Democrats are freaking out about this and are attacking the proposals as bad for American workers.

(5) Harry Reid’s aide David Krone has publicly blamed Team Obama for their losses in November... and aides never speak publicly without permission.

(6) Mary Landrieu attacked Obama over the Keystone Pipeline and arranged a vote to try to pass it over his objections. She fell only one vote short in the Senate. After her 12 point loss last week, she and others blamed Obama for failing to support her.

(7) Several Democrats, especially talking heads, have been positively freaking out about Obama’s immigration order. Others on the left are angered that he didn’t go any further. No one is happy and no one is staying silent.

(8) Lots of leftists and black race baiters are attacking Obama for not doing/saying more about Ferguson... or New York.

All of this is typical and means the Democrats are engaged in at least a low grade civil war. That’s rarely good. What makes this even worse though, is that this was isn’t about ideas, it’s about finger pointing, i.e. they all want to blame someone else for the party’s recent failures. At least in ideological battles like the GOP just fought, you have the chance to fix the things that went wrong rather than just whine that it was everyone else’s fault. Here the goal is basically just to pass the blame.

That said, there is an ideological component brewing in this fight and it’s one that is potentially highly destructive....

I wrote about the decimation of their princelings recently and in that discussion I noted that the Democrats seem to be making a mistake embracing those people in the first place. Specifically, by elevating a bunch of women, blacks, Hispanics and gays to the leadership positions to replace the boring looking/sounding white males who currently are “the face of the party,” the Democrats appear to be sacrificing their ability to pretend that they still are the party of mostly-conservative white working class males. Right now, with soft-spoken old white guys like Harry Reid (who claims to be a devoutly religious farmer who loves hunting) as the face of the party, the Democrats are able to sell the idea that they are not as urban, not as ethnic, not as anti-traditional values as they really are. But by swapping urban blacks, women, gays and Hispanics for the likes of Harry Reid, they are losing the carefully staged images they need to push this lie. In my opinion, that will cost them in rural America.

Anyways, adding to this, I am now seeing lots of articles being written by leftists who are arguing that the Democrats can no longer claim to have any real support among “working class whites,” and that they should accept this and openly embrace an agenda that better fits their new core, i.e. feminists, race baiters, gays and minorities.

I cannot tell you how much I hope they buy into this advice and change the image of their party. If they do, they will lose another 10% of the white vote, plus they will struggle with Hispanics and Asians (the fastest growing group of immigrants), who very much want the American dream... not the welfare dependency substitute.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays out, particularly as all the old “moderate” Democrats fade away after being destroyed by Pelosi’s banzai charges and then Obamacare, and the face of the party becoming increasingly urban-ideological. If they also embrace a far-left urban agenda, they could well destroy themselves.

Thoughts?

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Lost Generation of Democrats

There have been a lot of articles lately about the Democrats suffering long-term damage from the recent election. I find this interesting, though I don't think things are that simple. I also think this problem actually began back in 2008 because of Obama.

The Democrats expected to do a good deal better in the mid-term elections than they did. In particular, they were shocked to do so poorly in state races for things like governor and attorney general. Even more shocking, these losses occurred in reliably blue and purple states. Even worse, the Democrats saw the people who lost as their rising stars, i.e. their future leaders. These individuals included people like Michelle Nunn in Georgia, the daughter of the respected Sen. Sam Nunn, Alison Grimes in Kentucky, who would be seen as a giant-killer for unseating Mitch McConnell, Mike Michaud in Maine, who would have been the first openly gay governor, Anthony Brown in Maryland, the country's only black governor, etc. But a funny thing happened... each of these candidates lost, as did many more supposed future stars.

As a result of these losses, the Democrats are now fretting about having lost everyone they saw as their future leaders. And the loss of these people is making many Democrats think they are now handicapped in national elections for maybe as much as a decade. Others think these people can run again in 2016, win, and restore the farm-team. But even those people agree that this has hurt the party.

I find this interesting on several levels. First, I agree that this has hurt them. No matter how promising a candidate may be, having a big loss on the resume can be a killer. At the very least, this has delayed these people's careers for another election cycle. Secondly, I note that these people are all minorities -- women, blacks, gays. Up to now, the Democrats have remained competitive by running white males who then pretend to be more conservative than they really are, see e.g. Harry Reid. This group of candidates would represent a real shift in strategy, a shift which may send whites and males to the GOP in even greater numbers as it become harder for the Democrats to pretend to be conservative and to pretend not to be a party in the service of minorities.

Third, I think the real problem actually began with Obama's victory in 2008. It is often true that a president will harm their own party through things like protest votes registered at the mid-terms which wipe out candidates unexpectedly and by pulling strong candidates onto different career paths as federal agencies, where they effectively vanish into the federal black hole. But Obama has been worse. Obama's instincts seem to be to rid himself of potential competitors. Thus, he wiped out any possible challengers he could face by pulling them into the cabinet or ostracizing them. The result has been that the only Democrats who have appeared on the national stage since he took office have been either irrelevant to the future (e.g. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi), treated like outcasts (e.g. Hillary Clinton), or kept at a distance far away from relevance (e.g. Andrew Cuomo). The most obvious proof of this is the utter lack of alternatives to Hillary Clinton. Are they seriously talking about Joe Biden as a contender? Wow.

All in all, the Democrats definitely have a problem. They have no viable alternatives to Hillary Clinton, who is not very popular with their base or the public. They also have few heavy-hitters left who can anoint someone after Obama's "purges" and the debacle of Obamacare leading to mass retirements. And they have no viable set of princelings after the midterms who can step up and replace the likes of Reid, Pelosi and Obama. Moreover, they have lost so many governor's mansions and legislatures that they have no realistic way to show off their ideas to build their brand.

Interesting times.

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Wake Me Up Before You Vote Vote

I saw an odd headline the other day about Michelle Obama. According to the headline, she was encouraging “women and minorities” to “wake up,” like some sort of call to arms. This struck me as an interesting appeal, especially given Obama’s track record with both groups. But it turns out that wasn’t what she meant. She literally meant to wake up and not to sleep through voting day. Good grief.

To start with, let me laugh at Michelle Obama having to tell her supporters to get their lazy butts out of bed. That really adds to the stereotype of her followers being lazy and useless, and it explains why they aren’t more successful. Seriously, what normal person needs to be told to get out of bed by their leaders? The pathologically lazy is about all who come to mind.

She did try to expand the point a bit to include those who simply aren’t paying attention, but that hardly makes it better. Basically, she wants her supporters to go grab their sleep nephews or college dorm mates, their indifferent aunts and neighbors, and the rest of their lazy families “who are like, no, I ain’t going to vote, or I couldn’t wake up.” So I guess laziness runs in families. Anyway, nice grammar, lady.

But let's look at the bigger picture, shall we? Let us assume Madame O actually meant “wake up and realize what is happening to you.” This is a rather ridiculous thing for her to say. Do you know why? Well, consider her behavior and her husband's record and you'll see.

First, Madame O has spent her time suckling off the taxpayers. Five star hotels. Shopping in the most expensive shops around the world. Taking Air Force One to restaurants. This woman has lived like Marie Antoinette on steroids. For her to claim that somehow these poor, supposedly-oppressed women and minorities should support her is borderline insane. Imagine if Warren Buffett made the same appeal! Not to mention, they already support her! Every penny of the social security they collect from the few who work and every dollar of the benefits the rest get that gets taxed goes to pay Michelle's lavish lifestyle. So her appeal to wake up really should be met with, "What the hell are you doing with my hard-earned money?"... and maybe a guillotine.

Then there’s her husband. He has presided over a collapse in minority employment, minority household incomes, and minority net worth. They took the brunt of the housing bubble because they owned the subprime homes and nothing was done to bail them out. They were tricked by liberals into getting worthless degrees in African American or Gender Studies which left them unemployable and with vast debt. Liberals run the schools that seem to specialize in not teaching minority kids to read and write or do math. And Obama has done nothing to shake any of this up, even as middle class white parents are pushing their kids into charter and private schools at amazing rates. To the contrary, he's tried to block the door to save his teachers union buddies. He didn't fix the housing issue either, preferring instead to send trillions to the nation's largest banks. He's done nothing to help small (minority) businesses get credit either.

From the ranks of identity politics, he’s presided over the collapse of the black Congressional district under the Civil Rights Act with nary a genuine peep. He’s watched helplessly as voter ID laws quickly spread around the country. He’s whined, but done nothing else, as Affirmative Action basically has been strangled by the Supreme Court. He did appoint a black guy as Attorney General and an Hispanic chick to the Supreme Court, but neither is all that competent and won't make anyone proud. Beyond that, his minority appointments have been few and far between, and the White House continues to pay women far less than it pays men, not to mention it fought the extension of benefits to gays for as long as Obama thought he could. And look at Hispanics. He’s made all kinds of false promises to them!

So what exactly has Obama done to help minorities? We know what he’s done to crush them, but what has he done to help? The answer is nothing.

You know, Michelle is right, it is time for minorities to wake up and to see that Obama and the democrats are not their friends. So yeah... wake up. Oh, and get out of bed and get a job.

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Seeing Red In Colorado

I’m always wary of speaking too soon, but it seems that a lesson is being taught in Colorado right now, and the result will be a strong showing for the GOP. That lesson? Drop “the culture war.”

For years now, Colorado has been drifting further and further into Democratic ranks. Frankly, it’s become a blue state. The reason for this is a combination of an influx of Californians who are morons and vote for the moron party and the fact the GOP excels at turning off voters. How has the GOP done this? By turning into a cult.

Look, when I grew up out here, Colorado was very conservative in the sense that Reagan was conservative. Coloradans believed in small government, limited regulation and a right to be left alone. But at the same time, they favored strong defense and law and order. In terms of values, they liked traditional values but with a live and let live flavor which meant you didn’t impose them on others. Essentially, we wanted to be left alone so long as we didn’t bother other people or cause problems. We wanted to be safe, but free. We trusted business, but we also trusted a small, focused government to regulate them. And we didn’t want to control our neighbors. This was the atmosphere in Colorado.

In the 1990s, things began to change. For whatever reason, we suddenly got an influx of Religious Right groups, like Focus on the Family who still have headquarters here. These people quickly took over the GOP and changed it. Suddenly, the live and let live attitude was replaced with a paranoia that wanted the government to make sure nothing untoward was happening in the neighbor’s bedroom. Economics vanished from the Colorado GOP agenda. People fled the party in droves. Even in Colorado Springs, which sits in the most conservative county in the country, Democrats suddenly became competitive for city council because people couldn’t stomach the obsession with gays and abortion and forcing prayer on public schools. They were worried instead about little things like roads and taxes.

In addition to this problem, the GOP also managed to pick up some fringers like Tom Tancredo whose only issue was his visceral hatred of Mexicans... and Republicans who disagreed with him.

The result was a GOP that became irrelevant and was becoming less relevant every year.

Suddenly, however, it looks like the GOP will win a Senate seat again as Cory Gardner appears ready to defeat Democratic marshmallow Mark Udall. The Denver Post even endorsed Gardener this last weekend. The GOP looks set to win the governorship too. And it looks like they will hold onto a House seat the Democrats had targeted; the Democrats announced this weekend they are cancelling $1 million in ads to help former state House speaker Mark Romanov try to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman. That is a sure sign they think the race can no longer be won.

So what happened? Well, each of these Republicans has abandoned the whole insane culture war stuff. Both Coffman and Gardner have endorsed allowing over-the-counter sales of birth control, i.e. “the pill.” The reasons for this are twofold. First, as a policy matter, easier access to birth control has demonstrated that it will lead to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions. So this really can be seen as a way to reduce abortions. Secondly, this immunizes the GOP candidate from attacks that he wants to ban birth control. In fact, the reason the Post endorsed Gardner was that Udall has been blasting him with only one issue: CORY GARDNER WANTS TO BAN BIRTH CONTROL!!, and the Post called this dishonest. And with Gardner not talking about abortion at all, his campaign has resonated.

Similarly, Coffman has embraced the idea of allowing the pill to be sold over the counter (this is a GOP idea which is spreading fast even as it brings out calls of “RINO” as Bobby Jindal discovered when he became the first to try it) and he’s renounced his former support of the “personhood” amendment, which would ban abortion and do some very bad things.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, has run as a moderate while pounding away on Democratic Governor Hickenlooper’s signing of extremist anti-gun rights bills and some anti-capital punishment stuff. Hickenlooper is generally a moderate, but he stuck his neck out on those issues and now he’s paying for it. And Beauprez can capitalize on this because he’s focused on that rather than ridding the state of gays and abortion doctors.

This is an amazing turn around for the moribund Colorado GOP. And the message is clear: the public will support GOP candidates when they come across as normal and not fringey. And fringey doesn’t even mean moderate, it just means not being obsessed and showing priorities that align with those of the public. Indeed, neither Gardner nor Coffman is pro-abortion. They just don’t talk about the issue. And they don’t lump it in with birth control as Rick Santorum does, and they don’t foam at the mouth about how evil it is and they don’t cry about it in debates.

So the moral is that you can have religious conservative values or libertarian conservative values or whatever conservative values, just so long as you don’t foam at the mouth about them and so long as you don’t oppose things the public will never surrender (like a right to birth control). Win the public on the public’s terms and save the fringy stuff for later once you’ve won the public’s trust to see more of your agenda put into place.

That is what has saved Colorado from being a totally blue state this cycle. That can help the GOP fix a lot of its problems nationwide.

Thoughts?

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Odds Improve For Republicans In Senate

Things are looking up for the Republicans in the Senate at the moment. Indeed, the chances of the Republicans taking over the Senate now appear to be very high. Observe.

To win the Senate, the Republicans need to win a net six seats. This was never an easy task, but the Republicans have been helped by several factors. For one thing, many more Democrats are up for re-election than Republicans. Moreover, many of those Democrats are running in states where Republicans dominate and where Obama imploded. Not to mention that mid-term elections tend to favor the out-of-power party in any event.

Much more importantly, however, the Republicans are finally getting it right while the Democrats are imploding. Specifically, the Republicans have crushed their fringe in fight after fight and they don’t have a single crazy running in any of the key races. That’s a huge deal. Moreover, the Republicans who are running tend to be well-liked incumbents like Lamar Alexander in Tennessee or the well-liked Cory Gardener in Colorado, who managed to avoid an ugly primary fight for the first time in living Colorado Republican memory.

At the same time, the Democrats are imploding with candidates who are awash in scandals, with retirements, and now with a resignation in Montana which has shifted that seat from “most likely Republican” to “all but certainly Republican.” Even beyond that, the Democrats are in the horrible position of needing to defend the debacle that is Obamacare (something the public hates more and more every day), needing to defend the aloof and incompetent Obama, needing to defend the kiddie invasion of the border, needing to defend the jobless economy, needing to defend Obama’s assault on oil and coal (which are vital industries in many of the states at play), and in places like Colorado, needing to defend an ill-advised assault on gun rights. The result is a truly ugly playing field for these people.

So here is the score:

States Republicans Should Win

Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia

States Republicans Are Likely To Win

Arkansas, Louisiana

50/50 Chance of Republican Pick Up

Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia

Sucker States Where GOP Will Spend Money and Lose

Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon

Possible Republican Losses

Georgia, Kentucky

That means the Republicans are likely to pick up five, with a good shot at four more. They only need six. Against this, the Republicans may lose Georgia and Kentucky, but I doubt it. In Georgia, the Republicans picked the best of a bunch of weirdoes as their candidate, and he’s not horrible. The problem is the Democrats are running the daughter of the very popular Sam Nunn. Still, Georgia leans strongly to the right. In Kentucky, the problem is that the talk-radio-right has decided to prove to the world that Mitch McConnell “can’t win” by throwing a major tantrum and trying to make him lose. Ultimately, though, Kentucky too leans strongly to the right.

I suspect that both states’ natural strong conservative leanings will lead to Republican victories despite the hurdles. But even if that isn’t the case, right now it appears the Republicans will win just enough other seats to take the Senate even if they lost both of those... especially if the focus remains on the Democrats and their stupidity. It’s hard to defend stupid.

And in that regard, we seem to have hit a lucky wave. For one thing, the Tea Party groups now appear to be turning on each other for “not supporting” each other, and there don’t seem to be any issues right now where the talk-radio-right has the chance to make things about themselves. Obama too seems to be in lash-out mode, which won’t help him or the Democrats. Plus, as we near the election, talk of Obamacare and re-enrollment (and fines) will grow. I also suspect that come November, the fringe-left will be in psychotic mode over Iraq, unless that somehow solves itself suddenly, which is unlikely. So that will dog the Democrats too. So all told, the stars may be aligning for this one.

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Chris Christie... No.

By the time you read this, Chris Christie will have won re-election by a massive margin in New Jersey. No doubt there will also be a ton of articles this morning screaming that he shows the Republicans how they can prevail in the modern world. Ug. That is simply wrong.

Christie is what passes for self-described moderates in the Republican Party. What he really is, is the third Mexican in the Mexican standoff we spoke about the other day. He maintains his “moderate” image by repeatedly slandering every Republican in sight. He has attacked most national Republican figures and the party in the abstract. And every time he wants applause, he further denigrates conservatism, Republicanism and everything in between. Moreover, despite claiming to be different, he's actually just an empty suit. To my knowledge, he has introducing nothing by way of an agenda except signing whatever the Democrats send him -- he'll veto one now and then, but so does Jerry Brown in California. Even his bombastic youtube moments which made him a conservative star ever so briefly are just for show and don’t match his policies. Further, he routinely appoints Democrats to key executive and judicial positions. All told, I can’t think of a single way in which he’s made New Jersey more conservative.

This is not what we need. This is true RINOism -- Democrat-lite combined with disloyalty. I would call him John McCain in a fatsuit, except that McCain actually does advocate conservative ideas and has at times come up with an original agenda... plus, McCain has limits on how nasty he gets about his own party. (And no, this is not to excuse McCain.)

This is why Christie is the wrong direction.

As I keep saying, we need a new way. We need a new agenda, one that appeals to the American public. A lot of people wrongly hear that as “go moderate,” but that is not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that we need to start offering the public solutions to their concerns on education, healthcare, retirement, jobs, protecting the environment, protecting consumers, protecting small business and protecting people from predators, be they criminals, terrorists, abusive business practices or abusive government invasion of privacy or destruction of fundamental rights. We need to think of ways to bring our conservative free market, traditional values solutions to those issues. Chris Christie is not offering any of that. All Christie offers is the same infighting that is already going on, he just represents a different Mexican.

A lot of you may be asked about Christie by other conservatives. When they ask you, don't just call him a RINO, tell them that the problem with Christie is that he claims to stand for moderate ideas, but he really stands for nothing... he has no agenda, and he maintains his support through disloyalty. We don't need that.

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Mexican Standoff In Virginia

Tuesday’s election in Virginia highlights the problem with the GOP at the moment. You have a generally conservative, but not fringe state, that is packed with people who want low taxes and small government generally, but are big into military spending. It is, in essence, Reagan Country. But things aren’t going well... not at all.

Consider this. The Democrats are running a guy, Terry McAuliffe, who is a scandal-plagued Washington-insider who ran Hillary Clinton’s crappy 2008 campaign and oversaw the Democratic Party from 2001 to 2005. He’s deep in dirty business deals and shouldn’t play well in Virginia at all. Moreover, Virginia has a great chance here to register a protest vote against Obamacare. Our most important national figures are all coming to help the Republican and the Republican Governor’s Association even spent $8 million to helpout. Yet, reliable polls have McAuliffe consistently 7% ahead.

Why? Well, therein lies the problem for the GOP. As the Virginia election shows, the current GOP coalition is untenable.

The first thing you need to understand is the nature of Virginia itself. Virginia is an old Democratic state which began to trend red under Reagan, but didn’t end up in the GOP column until the 1990s. Indeed, George Allen in 1993 became the first Republican to take over the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction. He did it with a GOP that consisted mainly of Reagan-conservatives (smaller government, lower taxes, lower regulation, strong military), defense contractors, and military, plus some leftover “country club” Republicans who really are genuine RINOs right down to being disloyal to the party.

In the 1990s, the population of Northern Virginia surged. These people are more moderate than the rest of the state, but are still generally conservative compared to anything north of the border. They are also a mix of rich, poor and middle class, black, white, Asian and Hispanic... lots of Hispanics. I would say in all honesty that these people are largely Reagan Democrats and should be easy for the GOP to win. And since they have come to dominate the state mathematically, that’s a good thing... or at least, it should have been.

See, there’s a problem. The GOP is no longer the party of Reagan. After the Republicans took over the Congress in 1994, the Religious Right took over the Virginia GOP. Their issues were (1) legalizing home schooling, (2) removing gay books from libraries, (3) banning abortion, and (4) banning pornography... issues that did not appeal to the public. Economics did not matter to them, they had no interest in tech companies (which line I-66), and they had no interest in the military or defense contractors who employ most of the state. The result was that they lost the growing suburbanite population of Northern Virginia... who now decide Virginia elections, and the rightward movement of Virginia stopped and began to reverse quickly.

This led to a schism between the Religious Right and the rest of the GOP, and what you had was that one group would not support the other. Take your pick on who is to blame, the truth is that it doesn’t matter.

Even worse, conservatism nationally started embracing the ideas of Pat Buchanan over Ronald Reagan: culture wars, xenophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-free trade, isolationist, all mixed in with a paranoid mentality. This is a guaranteed loser in a state that is growing richer, more high-tech, and more diverse.

Enter the Tea Party. The Tea Party started well, but quickly went whack-a-doodle and now consists of extreme quasi-libertarians who are awash in conspiracy theories and won’t support anyone who isn’t a clone of themselves. They are the insane love child of Pat Buchanan and Mark Levine, and as I’ve warned you all before, it is impossible for the GOP to placate these people.

Into all of this steps the GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli, the state Attorney General. In Virginia, being the Attorney General generally leads to being governor, but something has gone very wrong here. First, Cuccinelli is hard-core Religious Right. His issue is abortion. He has even had Rick Santorum campaign for him. The result has been the usual schism between Religious Right and non-Religious Right. This time, several non-Religious Right donors have wrongly refused to contribute. At the same time, Cuccinelli’s attempts to reduce the amount of time he talks about abortion has led to various Religious Right groups wrongly attacking him.

In the middle of all of this, the Tea Party people have abandoned him because of his Religious Right views and his lack of purity... an ironic result for the first AG to file suit against Obamacare. They have fled to the libertarian candidate, who is polling anywhere from 10% to 12%. To fix this, Cuccinelli has brought in Ron and Rand Paul, but that’s only upset the Religious Right more.

This is a circus. What you have here is this:

(1) You have an establishment that won’t support Religious Right or Tea Party candidates... call it the John McCain wing.

(2) You have Religious Right types who don’t turn out unless the candidate not only is Religious Right, but shows the required level of obsession to suit them.

(3) You have Tea Party types who won’t support a Religious Right candidate or an establishment candidate... they only do crazy... and I’m not even sure they’re actually registered to vote.

(4) And each group disavows their own guy when he fails so they can tell themselves that their ideas weren’t what was rejected.

This is untenable. This means it is impossible for the GOP to field a candidate who will win except under truly unusual circumstances because no matter what, two of these three groups will always oppose their own team.

Who is to blame? All three.

How do we fix this? My agenda. Seriously.

Here’s the thing. The entire fringe, Religious Right and Tea Party, is about 20% of the Republican Party (about 6% of the public). How they divide doesn’t matter, what matters is that without the rest of the GOP, they are nothing. To them, the GOP is a vehicle to relevance. Ditto on the RINOs who probably count only a few hundred people and who see the GOP as a lobbying tool primarily.

These tails are trying to wag the 80% dog. It’s time for the 80% to do the smart thing. They’ve been told they can’t win without the Religious Right and the Tea Party and the Establishment’s connections. But that’s false: the truth is they can’t win as long as they are relying on these people. When parties are as evenly matched as the Democrats and Republicans, you can’t win if a chunk of your “base” (a self-serving and inaccurate word) decides to stay home in each election. When that happens, there is only one logical alternative: grow the party in a direction that lets you replace the disloyal groups.

How do you grow the Republican Party? How about moving the party back to where it was when it was most popular: Reaganism. The GOP needs to reach out to the public and win them over. That means shifting to a new agenda that addresses the things the public wants and dropping the things that drive the public away. Follow Reagan’s agenda of free market solutions to real problems to improve America for everyone and embrace all of America. Will the fringe be upset? Sure, because they have nowhere else to go and because once the party does this, none of them will have the power to hold the party hostage anymore. That’s why the party needs to do this. 42% of the voting public no longer votes. That’s 92 million eligible voters to win over. Go win them back and stop relying on people who have created a Mexican standoff.

When your present path affords no opportunity of success, change directions.

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Better Than The Alternatives

Where American politics are concerned, few things come in for more criticism than our two-party system. Just look at all the third-party movements we've seen over the years. And it's understandable that a lot of conservatives, for example, would want to leave or replace the Republican Party. But is it a good idea? Not really.

For the past few years, there has been on-and-off talk among conservatives about bolting the Republican Party, forming a new Tea Party or Conservative Party, and running against the established two. People like Scott Rasmussen and Michael Barone have discussed this, as have a lot of bloggers and grassroots organizers. Much of the talk has run to replacing both the Democrats and the Republicans with explicit Liberal and Conservative Parties; which makes a lot of sense on the surface. Both parties would be very clear about what they stand for, it might take care of some of the overlap within the two parties, etc.; on our side, conservatives could theoretically have a lot more control over the GOP's successor. Seems logical enough, right?

Well, that's why we shouldn't enact stuff just because it "seems logical."

A basic fact of U.S. politics has to be kept in mind before criticizing how our political parties operate. In a system with strict separation between the executive and the legislature, and with party strength dependent on winning a majority or at least plurality of votes in a given territory, the number of parties naturally reduces itself to two. Not one, because there always has to be an opposition, and not three or more, because that would divide the pie too many ways.

Now, keep in mind I'm talking about mainstream political parties. Of course there are lots of parties today--the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Rent Is Too Darn High Party, etc. But there's a reason only the Dems and GOPers are actively contesting the Presidency and 99 percent of Congressional seats. It's not a law of politics, but it's the next closest thing. Only large, national parties can effectively compete, and collective self-interest dictates that there be as few of them as possible and that they each encompass a broad range of groups. This has been the way throughout American history. Sure, you can point to a few instances where national elections saw a three-way race, but those were isolated and unstable anomalies, which had completely disappeared by the time of the next big contest. What this means is, a Conservative Party, like a Liberal Party, could not coexist with the Republican Party for very long. One would have to absorb the other, and the longer this takes, the longer the non-leftist vote will be split and ineffective.

But let's say this happens, and we get a Conservative Party replacing the GOP and things quickly settle down. Would the ensuing situation be more desirable for us? Well, probably not. Consider who's traditionally supported such an idea.

Creating liberal and conservative parties is not actually a new idea; it goes back to the New Deal era and was proposed by a lot of academics, especially political scientists. In fact, many of the most famous representatives of the liberal intelligentsia, such as Harold Laski and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., supported it, arguing the formation of an actual conservative party as a way to raise the moral content of political debate. BUT, they weren't exactly being genuine about this. These New Deal liberals believed in what you might call "Sherpa conservatism," in which the Right would be just as committed to long-term progress and change as the Left, only offering quiet critiques here and there: a kind of minor "course correction," if you will. Plus, they figured this would be a good way to expel the conservative wing of the Democratic Party and make it a fully leftist organization. Having a balance between liberals and conservatives in politics was never part of the plan.

But forget the academics. How bad could the consequences of such a change be, after all? Well, just know up front that we won't get rid of the McCain-Graham brand of RINOs. For whatever reasons, these people have chosen to camp within the GOP's tent; the complex of political and economic factors involved in sustaining a national political party suggests that a lot of these people would find their way into this hypothetical new party as well. So we'd be left with a party that, in practice, is not that much different from what we left.

Also, keep in mind that this hypothetical Conservative Party, by being so explicitly tied to conservatism, might well end up discrediting the movement. Think about all the scandals and disgraces the GOP suffered through in the past decade or so. If that repeats itself at some point--as seems likely, given the conditions under which it will probably operate--those debacles are happening in conservatism's name, as it were. There's a reason Left and Right hide within parties which aren't explicitly identified with them; if the goal is the maintenance of the political ideology, it's better not to be tied to a particular party.

Fighting within the framework of the existing parties can be very frustrating. Having worked for the GOP in the past, I know that all too well. But short-term costs have to be weighed against long-term benefits, and in this case, it would appear to working to change the Republican Party from the inside continues to be a better option than breaking off to form a third option or a replacement. But you may disagree. Opinions?

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Nationalizing Our Elections! Oh My!

I wasn’t going to write about this because I don’t want to be accused of picking on Mark Levin, but then it got mentioned, so what the heck. Levin is “outraged” that Obama is trying to “nationalize the country’s elections!” Yep. And he’s right! To the bunkers! ...... Ok, for those of you still here, let’s talk about this because Obama did something interesting and we should think about this logically.

Here’s what happened. Two weeks ago, Obama signed an Executive Order establishing a Presidential Commission to deal with “election administration.” According to the Order, the Commission “shall identify best practices and otherwise make recommendations to promote the efficient administration of elections.” The commission will look at how to train and recruit poll workers, how to manage voter rolls, voting machines, ballot simplicity, English proficiency and absentee ballots.

Levin reacted angrily saying Obama used “falsehoods” about long lines “to nationalize elections” in a power grab to “further weaken our voting system at the state level.” Some election law expert even called this “a solution in search of a problem.” Are they right?

No. A commission like this has zero power. Presidents cannot make law and election laws cannot be overridden or amended by a commission like this. It takes an act of Congress to change election law and even their power is limited by various Supreme Court rulings. Thus, Obama’s commission is basically a “for entertainment purposes only” gimmick. . . like most of his agenda. So forget Levin because he doesn’t understand how our government works.

And what about this idea that this is a solution in search of a problem? Well, that’s wrong too. For one thing, this is not a solution since it’s powerless to do anything. Secondly, there is a problem here. Think back on the whining about voter fraud since 2000. The left squealed that Bush stole the election. The feds responded by giving money for electronic voting machines, which the left claimed were pre-programmed to vote for Bush. Starting around 2006, the right decided that the same voting machines were spitting out votes for Democrats. At the same time, the right became obsessed with illegal aliens and criminals stealing elections, black people voting without IDs, Black Panthers blocking polls, and so on. Blacks whine that they are kept from voting. Absentee ballots get delivered late. Etc. etc. For the past 13 years, we’ve all be screaming that we’re worse than a Banana Republic. So saying there is no problem when election integrity is vital to a democracy is pretty stupid.

Still, we should fight this, right, because Obama proposed it?

Well, let’s think about this. Right now, our election laws are about as rigged as they can possible get for the left. There are no requirements to vote. You can register anyone. You don’t need to show an ID. Liberals are constantly getting caught talking about voting multiple times and never get punished. Liberals are big on “finding” ballots to win elections, cutting off elections to stop conservatives from voting, keeping military ballots from counting, and getting recounts in liberal strongholds. What more could they possibly do to make things worse?

Moreover, when conservatives try to fix this, realize two things. First, the only states where they can fix things are states they already win, so the effort is pointless. Secondly, because those states are basically Southern states with a racist past and because conservative rhetoric has focused on “illegals stealing elections” and blacks committing voter fraud, the Democrats have been able to sell the idea that this is just conservatives trying to suppress minority votes.

Now imagine if rather than just attacking Obama’s commission, what if conservatives embraced a commission like this and forced their way onto it. Not only could they move election laws and administration to the right – since they can’t really go further left – but we could get things like Voter ID laws endorsed nationwide through the Congress without having to go state by state. That means we can reach the states we couldn’t normally touch because we aren’t even close to competitive in those states, and it means we can make this very rational change without facing the constant drumbeat that this is an attempt by Southern whites to control minority populations.

This is one of those things where conservatives need to stop thinking with their knees and work through whether or not this makes sense. It might not. I admit that. It could be there are some hidden dangers I don’t see. But from what I see right now, embracing this and joining it could only be very good for us.

Thoughts?

Oh, and obey the Hypno-toad.

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Republicans Can Win The Senate? Uh, No

Fair warning: I’m going to crap on an article that’s all unicorns and happy dust about the Republicans winning the Senate in 2014. So if you want to believe that all is well, then ignore this article. But if you’re interested in getting a real sense of what is going wrong for our side right now, then read on. The article in question comes from Breitbart, but I’m seeing similar analysis all over the place. And this article highlights how blind the conservative pundit establishment really is at the moment.

The article starts by suggesting that the Republicans have an advantage in terms of taking the Senate in 2014 because 20 of the 32 Senators up for re-election are Democrats. Sounds great, right? Moreover, we only need to win 6 seats and 12 of those 20 Democrats are in “a state that is red or swing.” Gee, that sounds really great! What are those red/swing state? Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia.

Uh. . . no.

Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota and West Virgina are reliable blue states. So scratch them off the list. Moreover, states like Virginia and North Carolina are trending blue. And don't forget, we lost red states North Dakota and Montana in the last Senate election cycle, and we lost Alaska before that. In fact, reaching back, we lost both Montana seats, both Virginia seats, both West Virginia seats, both Colorado seats, and both Minnesota seats in the past few years. Not to mention the Democrats in Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and South Dakota are long-time incumbents, and the Democrats are very good at picking people who play well in those states. So what we're really looking at is maybe two vulnerable seats. Hence, forget winning.

But wait! This article also assures us the issues are on our side. Which issues? Well, Obama’s gun control push will force Democrats either to “back the President’s gun control agenda or risk handing their GOP opponents an effective talking point.” Really? What if the Democrats just do what they always do. . . they go home and talk about the need to save us from guns while simultaneously swearing they will protect the Second Amendment. Then they watch the House kill Obama’s proposal and the issue dies without them ever taking a stand. Huh, didn't see that one coming.

Wait, there's more!

“If the Republicans play their cards right,” the debt-ceiling debate is another “edge” the Republicans hold. Ha ha ha ha! Ok, first, the Republicans never play their cards right. Secondly, there is no right play here.

(1) You can’t play chicken with someone who wants you to hit their car, which is what the Democrats are. They want the Republicans to appear to wreck the government and the economy. . . it gives them cover.

(2) Do you really think anyone cares if the debt ceiling is $14 or $15 trillion? No. This is not an issue that you die for. And die it will be because the Republicans will be tarred with claims that (i) Social security will stop making payments, (ii) Medicare will stop paying doctors, (iii) soldiers won’t get paid, (iv) unemployment benefits will stop coming. . . all because the Republicans are trying to score political points to extract some worthless, meaningless promise of cuts that will never happen.

But more fundamentally, do you notice anything missing here? Yeah, the actual goal. This is Underwear Gnome Theory again: STEP ONE, hold country hostage... STEP TWO, _____... STEP THREE, profit. Seriously, this person is telling you the fiscal cliff holdup will win the day for us and they don't even realize there's no actual demand, there's just the holdup and the assumption of victory.

And they aren't done. Apparently, the evil Democrats in the Senate have “refused to pass a budget for the last four years. (Why aren’t we hearing more about this !?1?!)”. Good grief. We aren’t hearing more about this because it's technocratic bullship. Taxes get collected. Agencies get their share. Money gets spent. Programs continue. There is no substance to this argument, it's all procedure.

So look at what you're being sold here. You're being told there is the promise of a takeover of the Senate because 12 of 20 Democratic seats are vulnerable. The reality is we're talking about two. You're being told the Democrats will be forced to admit they want to round up guns, which won't happen. You're being told the public will magically fall in love with us if we disrupt the government for some goal to be named later. And you're being told the public will suddenly love us if we make the Democrats fill out Form A instead of Form B. This is delusional. Please do not believe this crap.

But even putting this aside, do you see the real problem? Ask yourself, what is our agenda? What are we offering the public? The answer which this pundit thinks is so wonderful is: (1) Stop Obama from doing something about guns. (2) Stop Obama from spending more money. Translation: vote for us so nothing changes!

If the Republicans ever want to win again, they need some actual ideas. They need to tell people how they will make the job market grow. How they will fix the housing market. How they will fix the student loan problem. How they will make the country safer. How they will make kids smarter and less ugly. “Vote for me and I’ll make sure nothing changes,” simply doesn’t work, and we need to stop accepting it.

Here are three names that are at least making moves in the right direction. Bobby Jindal is trying to eliminate the income tax in Louisiana. The same thing needs to be brought to the national level. Marco Rubio is talking about immigration reform. Again, we need to stop the bleeding on this issue and admit the inevitable. Rand Paul is talking about a foreign policy that involves a strong military, but dropping the idea that we should bomb everyone on the planet.

These ideas are a good start. They barely scratch the surface of what we need, but they at least are something more than “Vote for me and I’ll make sure nothing changes.” The truth is, we need an agenda that will create jobs, that will make people more secure financially and protect them from ill-health and old age, an agenda that helps people get out from under their debts, send their kids to college, and provides genuine protection from bad guys. And we need an agenda that promises personal freedom. I'm hoping to start unveiling such an agenda in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, start thinking about conservative solutions to problems people actually care about. Until we do that, more and more states will turn blue.

In the meantime, don't believe this garbage that everything is going great.

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It’s About Fargin Time!!

My greatest frustration with the GOP, among a list of many, is that the GOP completely lacks the ability to engage in strategic thinking. If these guys fought a war, they would try to coordinate battle plans with the enemy. Well surprise, surprise, the GOP is trying to do something strategic. Shocking.

One of the favorite tricks of the left is to tinker with the electoral system to try to win elections. Here are some examples:

● Liberal states are trying to switch to a national popular vote plan which would benefit liberals by letting all the extra liberals in California outvote people in the smaller states.

● Liberals in California switched to a system that allows the top two vote getters to run against each other, regardless of party. The idea was to wipe out the GOP by keeping GOP candidates from even qualifying.

● Liberals in several red states, most recently Colorado, tried and failed to get those states to apportion their electoral votes rather than go winner-take all. They abandoned this when Colorado turned blue.

Here is the list of things the GOP has tried at the same time:

● Jack
● Sh*t

So imagine my surprise when the GOP in several blue states where the GOP somehow holds all the power at the state level announced plans to try to change their system to apportion their votes proportionally. In other words, when the Democrat wins 52% to 48%, the Democrat would only get 5 or 6 of the state’s 10 electoral votes and the rest would go to the Republican. The states in question include Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with Ohio, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina also possibly joining the list.

How could liberals object to this, right? They tried to do this in several red states, and they would never object to something they tried to impose on other states, would they? Moreover, this is consistent with the Democrats’ supposed love for Democracy and the popular vote. So they should love this, right?

Ha.

The Democrats are outraged that their own tactics could be used against them:

● “This is nothing more than election-rigging,” wailed Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer.

● “It is difficult to find the words to describe just how evil this plan is. It is an obscene scheme to cheat by rigging the elections,” cried Democratic Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach.

● “We can't sit silently by as they try to manipulate the democratic process for political advantage. We can't let them attack the very democratic institutions and rights that others have sacrificed so much to gain — just because they don't believe they can win in a fair election fight,” whined Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

This is awesome. I feel their pain and it makes me whole. :)

Seriously, does everyone see how bizarrely hypocritical this is that they are smearing something they invented? How about the fact that they are smearing the very principle of the popular vote and direct democracy they claim to love? Man, I love the smell of napalmed donkey in the morning.

Sadly, before anyone gets too excited, this is the GOP we are talking about and the weak links are already coming out of the woodwork. For example, Louisiana GOP Chairman and national party vice chairman Roger Villere, stupidly says, “The Electoral College has served the country quite well. This is a system that has worked. That doesn't mean we can't talk about changes, but we have to be very careful about any actions we might take.” No doubt other brain-dead eunuch will follow.

I hope the GOP follows through with this. Point out that the Democrats have tried to push this crap on red states. Point out how its “more fair” that “the people” get to have their electoral votes go where they want them. Use liberal arguments against them... and in the process, change the electoral map in our favor in a big way. Just don’t do this in red states.

Come on GOP... you’ve stumbled upon something smart, now grow a pair and follow through.

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How To Run A Modern Campaign

Dick Morris had an interesting observation this weekend. He noted that despite a billion dollars spent on television advertising, neither side managed to change anybody’s mind. He concludes from this that television ads lack the ability to sway voters. He’s wrong. Anyway, here are some thoughts on how to run a modern campaign.

● The Effectiveness of Television: Morris notes that despite 80% of advertising dollars being spent in the swing states, they only registered a 0.3% change from 2008. From this, he concludes that television ads don’t work. What he’s missing, however, is 2010. Had this election occurred in 2010, Romney would have blown Obama away in those same swing states. What changed between 2010 and 2012 was that in 2011, Obama began running negative ads against Romney in those swing states. This was before Romney had even won the primary. The result of this was that Romney’s negatives were 10% higher in targeted states like Ohio, than they were in demographically similar states like Pennsylvania. In other words, Obama’s negative spending was able to wipe out the gains of 2010. That’s effective.

Where Morris IS correct is that neither side was able to move themselves forward with their own ads. . . they were only able to tear the other guy down. But rather than buying into Morris’ sweeping declaration, let me suggest that the problem was the ads, not the idea of the ads. Here’s why they failed:

● Negativity. Colorado was awash in ads. I saw them all. And only one ad truly struck me as something that made me hopeful for a candidate, and that was an ad Obama ran in the last 3-4 days. Before that, neither candidate gave me any reason to support them. Compare that to corporate America. They invest millions to come up with great ways to make you want their products. They rarely tear down a competitor, because that doesn’t make you want their product, and if they do, it’s just to compare themselves... “we’re faster.” Neither Romney nor Obama did that. There were almost no positive ads, and none of the negative ads offered you a positive alternative. It was basically Coke running ad after ad claiming that Pepsi is made from yak urine. How does that sell Coke?

● Oversaturation. Even the best ads become grating when you see them 500 times and turn people off. If you’re going to spend the money, make a lot more ads.

● Untargeted ads. Advertising is very carefully done to reach specific target audiences. New adapters are told a product is edgy and daring. The sheep who think they’re wolves are told they need the product to separate themselves from the herd. And the rest of the sheep are told they better get with it or the herd will leave them behind. Romney and Obama ran ads with zero targeting. They both simply recited “facts” in either happy or menacing ways. This made them useless because they “spoke” to no one.

This is why the television ads didn’t work. The next candidate needs to learn to see himself as a product and sell himself like he would a new electronic device or new car. Target consumers. Use a complete, creative campaign. And sell yourself, don’t waste your time tearing down the other guy... let the PACs do that.

● Outreach: A decade ago, the NFL realized it had a problem. Kids weren’t watching the NFL and their market share was slipping. They set out to change that. They created a campaign to encourage kids to exercise, which just happened to use sports stars who pimped the NFL in the process. They paid for equipment for youths. They teamed with celebrities and they advertised. Their rating soared. The Republicans need to learn from this lesson. They need to start offering reasons for people to look to them as a positive force in their lives and not just as a political party. Let me suggest the following:

● GOP Health. Every organization I know offers a group health plan. AARP does it. State Bar’s do it. Colleges do it. There is power in pooling. Why doesn’t the GOP do this for its 80 million members? They should have more than enough clout to get great rates, which will (1) give people a reason to join the party, (2) afford the GOP constant/free advertising as people get fliers or whatnot under the program, and (3) give people a reason to see the GOP as a force for good in their lives. This will help immensely when it comes time to vote, especially with small businesses and young workers with lousy jobs.

● GOP Education. There are banks that will set up education savings accounts which let you put money in pre-tax accounts to be used for tuition. Again, the GOP should partner with banks to offer such plans to its members. This does the exact same thing as above and it shows the GOP’s concern with reducing the cost of college. This will help parents and young people.

It is time to think about how to attract people year round and to give them a reason to stick with the party long term. The above would do an effective job in terms of outreach, generating good will, and ensuring constant positive advertising.

● Get Out The Vote: This election proved that both sides were horrible at getting out the vote. Once again, the Democrats appear better at handling election day, but neither party really scored because they basically relied on millions of annoying cold calls. This needs to be re-thought. I propose this:

● Technology. Invest in computers to ensure better targeting. (Proven technology, not secretive ad hoc crap like Romney tried.) There is no reason I should have received 10 calls a night, and certainly not after I voted. Party workers should know who is registered and who isn’t, who has been contacted and who hasn’t, and what their demographics are.

● Registration. Here’s the real key. Rather than waste money on phone calls and television advertising, the party needs to send volunteers house to house to every unregistered voter in center-right neighborhoods across the country and ask them in person to register. WHEN THEY DO, sign them up immediately to vote by mail. The ballots will come to them automatically. You can then call these people (who are now in your computer) a few days after the ballots get mailed out and ask them to vote. The return on investment on this will be huge! Why? Because (1) it happens before the “real” campaign starts, so it’s easier to influence them, (2) you have made face to face contact and you can provide them with information they need to be won over, (3) they are much more likely to mail in a ballot than take the time to go vote, and (4) the ballots will keep coming for each election thereafter. This is the real no-brainer which the Republicans need to focus on. Forty percent of the nation doesn’t turn out to vote, this can address that. Stop thinking of elections in 1950s terms... embrace change and exploit it.

● Switch to Mail from Phone Contact. You seed to send fliers, not make phone calls if you want to reach people. Fliers don’t annoy people like phone calls. They also let people choose their own time to think about the race. BUT... make sure these fliers are unique, like a puzzle game or mystery or contest, to get people to read them. Be creative! Moreover, target your voters – first time voters, swing voters, reliable voters, old people, married people, single people, minorities.... they should all receive different campaigns. Companies do it because it works. We should too.

● Election Day. Finally, this is when you do the things campaigns normally do, like helping old people get to the polls, calling people to remind them to vote and asking people to bring their friends. And if you've done the registration part right, you will have a lot more time to do this right because 50%+ of your voters will already have voted.

This is how modern billion-dollar campaigns need to be run. Join the modern world GOP. Learn from corporate America. They know how to sell. . . you don’t. Learn that a campaign needs to be run year round, every year, not just once every four years. Get professional guidance from corporate marketing specialists, not political hacks. And never forget, there is a science to all of this. . . it’s not an art.

Anything I missed?

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Supreme Courtin' It

There’s a lot of buzz suddenly about the Supreme Court possibly changing the course of the election. The thinking is that with the Supremes about to hear several controversial cases right before the election, that could excite one side or the other to turn out. Uh... no. Few people connect the Court to the election. Moreover, the Court won’t be issuing rulings until after the election. Still, there are some interesting cases coming up.

● Case No. 1: Affirmative Action. Fisher v. U. of Texas is an affirmative action case arising out of the admissions program at the University of Texas. Texas uses race as a consideration in its admissions to ensure educational diversity. Nine years ago, in Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court said this was acceptable, but the Court has since moved to the right.

When it was originally created, affirmative action was approved by the Court on the basis that it would involve discrimination in favor of certain groups to address “prior wrongs.” This meant, it could be used only where there had been prior discrimination. This was meant to justify discriminating against people who never discriminated themselves because supposedly their racial/gender group had benefited even if they hadn’t. Over time, however, it spread to virtually everywhere, and it got the point that it applied to more than 60% of the public including people who had just arrived in America. That’s when the Court began reining it back in.

In this case, Fisher, who is white, claims that she would have been admitted to the school if she had been any other race. Texas counters that diversity is important to them. Obama’s Justice Department has backed the University.

It’s not clear what the Court will do, though Justice Roberts has attacked affirmative action in the past as being “a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas all opposed the Grutter case allowing race to be used at all, and Alito likely sides with them. So it’s possible the Court will end the use of race in admissions and hiring, or at least require proof of direct discrimination. That said, they could also rule much more narrowly by saying that race may not be used where a goal like diversity can be achieved through some race-neutral means (like taking the top X% of high school graduates within the state or looking at family income). Or they could just affirm the present order.

● Case No. 2: Gay Marriage. The Supreme Court is likely to take on two gay marriage cases. The first involves the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA defines marriage federally as between a man and a woman and denies around 1,000 federal benefits (tax breaks, social security benefits, burial services, etc.) to gay couples who have been legally married in their home states. Obama’s Justice Department has refused to defend the law and several lower courts have already ruled it unconstitutional. How the Supreme Court will rule is unclear, but I suspect they will strike DOMA down.

In the past, the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly struck down laws which denied gays the same rights and protections afforded to heterosexuals. In Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, the Court struck down a law making gay sex illegal. In Romer v. Evans in 1996, the Court struck down a Colorado amendment which banned the passage of gay rights laws. It’s likely that the Court will conclude that DOMA illegally discriminates between lawfully married couples and will strike it down.

The Court may also take on the more significant Hollingsworth’s case, which involves California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. Prop 8 was struck down by the Ninth Circuit on narrow grounds rather than on the basis of some right for gays to be married, but the practical effect of that ruling would be to allow California to go forward with gay marriage.

The Supreme Court could refuse to hear the case (deny cert) in which event the law would remain struck down. Or it could affirm the decision or overturn it. If I had to guess, I would say the Court avoids deciding whether or not there is a right for gays to marry and will instead find some technical reason to affirm or overturn the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. My guess is that ultimately (in some later ruling), the Supreme Court will affirm the right of the states to make up their own minds on the issue of gay marriage, and in anticipation of that ruling, it will stick very closely to making sure that each side complied with California’s legal process in this case. Thus, whichever side should have won under California’s election/legislative process will prevail. . . but the issue won’t be decided under the United States Constitution. But you never know.

● Case No. 3: Voting Rights Act. In 2006, the Congress extended the portion of the Voting Rights Act which requires state and local governments “with a history of discrimination” to get advance approval from the Justice Department before they can change their voting rules. Congress extended this law 25 more years and Bush signed it. It applies to Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, as well as some counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota, Michigan and New Hampshire.

When the Court reviewed this provision in 2009, it expressed significant skepticism, but did not rule on its validity at the time. Said Justice Roberts:

“We are now a very different nation [than the one that first enacted the Voting Rights Act]. Whether conditions continue to justify such legislation is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today.”

With Congress renewing the law but without making any changes, and with these states arguing that any discrimination was in the distant past, it’s likely that if the Court hears this case that it will strike down or significantly narrow this provision. The practical implications of this can be seen in things like the recent Voter ID laws, which essentially need Justice Department approval or need to be litigated in advance. Without this provision, states would be much more free to pass these law and would no longer be presumed to have discriminatory intent.

Thoughts?

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Obama v. Welfare Reform: Destroying What Works

A poll this month by The Hill found that while two-thirds of Americans believe Obama has indeed transformed America, 56% of those voters believe Obama changed the country in a negative way. Only 35% believe he changed the country for the better. And if you want an example of the types of things Obama has done to generate this kind of animosity, consider what he’s doing to welfare reform.

For decades, the Republicans pushed the idea of welfare reform. Specifically, they wanted to encourage people to get off welfare and start working. The Democrats, however, flat out refused to allow any attempt to make such a change. Indeed, any time the issue came up, they would whine that the Republicans were looking to throw single mothers and their children out into the streets to starve.

In 1994, the Republicans finally got control over the Congress for the first time since 1952. Along with a Republican Senate and a weakened and unprincipled Bill Clinton in the White House, they set out to change America. One area they targeted was welfare reform. To that end, in 1996, they passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This fundamentally changed the way welfare works in America by:

● Ending welfare as an entitlement,
● Placing a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid from federal funds,
● Requiring recipients to begin working after two years of benefits,
● Encouraging two-parent families, and
● Enhancing enforcement of child support.

This bill also gave the states vast discretion in how to achieve these rules. Clinton signed this bill after vetoing the first two attempts. And while liberals hated the reform at the time, it’s now been recognized as a significant success, having cut the number of welfare cases by 53% and reversing an unabated upward trend which began in the 1960. Clinton even claims it as one of his biggest achievements.

So guess what Obama wants to do now? Obama has started handing out waivers to states to eliminate the work requirements contained in the bill. Unbelievable. He is attacking a bill which everyone except the extreme left admits worked magnificently. And in a perverse bit of reasoning, Team Obama claims this change is intended to help parents “successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment.” So by eliminating the requirement that people find work, we are helping them prepare to find work. Huh?

Fortunately, the Republicans aren’t sitting still for this. Romney said on Friday:

“The success of bipartisan welfare reform, passed under President Clinton, has rested on the obligation of work. The president’s action is completely misdirected. Work is a dignified endeavor, and the linkage of work and welfare is essential to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life.”

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan charged that, “President Obama will make it harder for Americans to escape poverty. He is hurting the very people he claims to help.” Others are calling this “a blatant violation of the law.” Rep. Dave Camp called this move “a brazen and unwarranted unraveling” of the law that “ends welfare reform as we know it.” And Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina said,

“You don’t improve people’s lives with handouts, you improve people’s lives by showing them, as I learned growing up in the inner city in a single parent household, that you can think and work your way out of poverty.”

It’s amazing how Obama keeps trying to refight the battles the left lost in the past and how he doesn’t care that history has proven his side wrong. It’s even more amazing how ready he is to trap a whole new generation on welfare. But keep in mind, there is method here. As we’ve discussed before, almost 50% of Americans now draw their living from government benefits in some form. These people are much more likely to vote Democratic because that is the party who promises to keep the spigot flowing. This weakening of welfare reform is nothing more than an attempt by Obama to add more people to the government dole, much like Obamacare was an attempt to increase the number of people on Medicaid and to hook the middle class on health care subsidies. Obama is trying to snare people into government dependence.

This needs to end.

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It’s Because You’re Stupid

The MSM has finally found a narrative they can all get behind: criticism of Obama by conservatives is racist. Forget that they’ve leveled plenty of their own criticism, because hypocrisy doesn’t matter to them. Any conservative who criticizes Obama is a racist.

The line that criticism of Obama is racist goes way back. Jimmy Carter whined in 2009 that the entire birther movement was racist. Then he claimed Republican Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” during Obama’s campaign speech to Congress showed that there is “an inherent feeling in American that a black man should not be President.” In September 2011, MSNBC claimed that all criticism of Obama was because of “the color of his skin.”

Calling Obama “cool” was declared racist the other day. Before that the words “cocky”, “flippant” and “arrogant” were declared racist “code words.” Last month, Team Obama themselves said that trying to link Obama to Jeremiah Wright was racist and hate-filled.

Now we have Neil Munro, a reporter for the Daily Caller, interrupting Obama during his latest campaign speech from the White House where he tried to buy Hispanic votes by proposing amnesty for young illegal aliens. The MSM was immediately outraged, and quickly decided this was racist. Said MSNBC:

“I think it's a very important question because I think this is the first African-American president. We've never had a white president been told by the opposing party to shut up in the middle of a major address to the Congress. We've never had a president like this heckled so disrespectfully. We've never had this otherness afforded to any other president and I think the right wing has some explaining to do because to me it's patently obvious.”

Well, actually, that’s not true. Indeed, as the Daily Caller immediately pointed out, Sam Donaldson used to do this to Ronald Reagan all the time, and yet the MSM never accused him of even bad manners.

Naturally, the MSM went to Sam Donaldson and asked him if this was true. Guess what he said? He lied about doing this to Reagan. Indeed, he said, he “never once interrupt[ed] a president in any way while he was making a formal statement, a speech, honoring awardees or in any other way holding the floor.” Of course, that’s a lie, but no MSM reporter can be bothered to go find the dozens of example disproving this.

Then Donaldson said exactly what you would expect from a leftist hack. He charged racism:

“Let’s face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American!”

This is pathetic. Do I think Munro should have interrupted Obama? No. It pissed me off when Donaldson and the rest did it to Reagan and I don’t think anyone should be doing it to Obama either. But it pisses me off even more that the MSM is pushing this crap about this being the result of racism.

People criticize President "Downgrade" Obama because he’s incompetent. They criticize him because he’s an arrogant ass. They criticize Obama because he’s ruining the country and trying to destroy large parts of our economy. It doesn’t matter what color he is, the man is a menace to our nation.

Moreover, the real racists are on the left and within the MSM. It’s the leftist media which sees the world through the prism of race, not the rest of us. The rest of us have moved beyond race. We now judge men and women by the content of their characters and the competence and quality of their actions, and in that test people like Obama fail miserably. Race doesn't factor into it for us, that only matters to the race-obsessed MSM.

So in the spirit of providing proof, give us your Top Three Biggest gripes with Obama without mentioning his race?


OT, For those who regularly visit Patti's site, she's talking about my book today and there's a Q&A! Check it out! LINK

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Liberalism Is Sick

Totalitarianism and privilege runs in the blood of liberals. They want to control everyone else, but place themselves above the law. We’ve just had some classic examples of this. Observe the vile petulance of the left. . .

● S.W.A.T.ing: For some time now, prominent conservatives (including bloggers like Erick Erickson of RedState) have experienced the joys of finding the SWAT team showing up at their homes. Why? Because some liberal group has learned how to hack into the phone system and call 911 pretending to be the conservative. These calls go something like this: “I am Erick Erickson and I just shot my wife.”

Obviously, this is a crime. It is also despicable. Think about the kind of pathetic, abusive mindset someone would need to send the police screaming to someone’s house on a false murder claim? That’s Nazi-tactics. What happens when the cops show up and shoot someone by mistake? What about the emotional toll on these people’s children? Think of the people who might get killed because the police are distracted? Think of the waste of resources and the effect on the 911 system when police start doubting the veracity of calls.

But this has become the modern liberal mindset. They are abusive little Nazis who seek to instill terror in their enemies and they don’t care about the damage they do in the process. To them, it’s all legitimate -- calling out the cops, death threats by phone, mail or twitter, bomb threats to events they don’t like, property damage, arson. We have reached a point where liberals are becoming a menace to society. And something will need to be done about them. . . perhaps the old liberal favorite of re-education?

● Uncontrollable Rage: Wisconsin once again exposed the twisted emotional wreckage that is liberalism as liberals everywhere devolved into whiny rage about the election results. One guy told a camera he hopes Lt. Kleefisch dies of colon cancer. Another liberal idiot was so incapable of handling rejection that they actually slapped Dem. Candidate Tom Barrett right after he gave his concession speech. Apparently, it was Barrett’s fault the public didn’t hate Walker. . . or this liberal wanted Walker to cling to the “slim” hopes of overturning a 6.9% defeat. So much for losing with grace. Another liberal sobbed “this is the end of democracy.” How idiotic. Just because the public doesn’t agree with your view, somehow that’s the end of democracy? Someone needs a civics class. Then we have the violent Twits. They posted things like this:

KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER! Ole Bitch Ass Pig Ass Nigga!!!!

Somebody need to Abe Lincoln Scott Walker cave frog lookin ass.

I wanna kill scott walker so fucking baddd!!!!! & the racist dumb assholes that voted for him #nbs

Please somebody kill Scott Walker.

You couldn’t find a less intelligent, less hateful set of morons if you tried. And note the obvious racism. Yet liberals like to think they’re smarter? Ha. These fools can barely speak and certainly can’t think. Heck, if you want to proof of evolution, this is it -- liberals are the missing link. . . not quite human yet.

Again, frankly, it’s getting to the point that liberals need to be medicated or locked up for everyone’s good. They prove time and again that they are violent, racist creatures of hate who seek to instill terror when they don’t get their own ways. That’s called psychosis, and psychotics should be locked up for everyone’s protection.

● Heil Moochelle: Madame O has jumped on the food Nazi bandwagon once again and is expressing support for the idiotic idea of banning large drinks in New York City. This is laughable nonsense. For one thing, as with all other liberal ideas, this is unworkable. How, pray tell, do you stop someone from buying two 16 oz. drinks? Whoops, I just found the hole in the security net.

This is more evidence that liberals really are Nazis. They want to control every aspect of your life right down to how much cola you can put into a single container at a time. Think how petty that is! In fact, calling them Nazis is a bit unfair to the Nazis because they weren’t nearly the control freaks liberals are. And why am I not surprised that the people with the least grip on reality (see above) are the people most inclined to tell everyone else how to live? Pathetic.

● I Am Above The Law: Amanda Bynes (who?) is pathetic. She’s apparently an actress, though you wouldn’t know it by me, and she’s a drunk, a fool, a liar and a fascist. Two days ago she got caught DUI. Did she quietly pay her ticket like everyone else who gets caught? Heck no, she’s a liberal celebrity! Laws aren’t meant for people like her!! So first she refused to blow into the breathalyzer (which is a stupid move, especially for someone who claims they weren’t drunk). Then she took to Twitter, where all morons go to display their moronism, and she tweeted this:

“Hey @BarackObama, I don’t drink. Please fire the cop who arrested me.”

Well, honey, that’s not how the world works even for you. For one thing, your lord and master has ZERO power to fire a local police officer. You would know that if you weren’t liberal and stupid (but that is redundant). Secondly, they don’t fire people for doing their jobs just because some celebrity turd doesn’t like how they do it. But this is how liberals think: laws are meant for the little people and if you dare to apply the same law to them, well, then you need to be fired because you failed to recognize the superiority of the person you so ruthlessly treated like everyone else. What a vile little creature she is, I hope the cop sues her for something. By the way, appealing to the President to save your butt from a DUI is pretty much the definition of narcissism, another standard liberal trait.

● Who Cares About Human Life?: Patti Smith, a singer, just made a fascinating statement. For decades, liberals have whined about how any death is a tragedy and how we should go to any extent (including wrapping kids in bubblewrap) to prevent any death. But we know their willingness to take any step is selective and depends on who gets hurt and by whom. Enter Patti Smith, who is upset with Obama for continuing the war on terrorism. Why? I’ll let the callous dipsh*t explain it herself:

“[Terrorism is] not the most important issue in the world. When you think about how many people the terrorists have killed, its nothing. It’s not as many as die on a bicycle in America probably in a year or something.”

In other words, who cares, it’s only a couple people. And to make her point clear, she added this:

“I’ve said this over and over, but I’ll say it a million more times — I’m concerned more about the death of a bee than I am about terrorism. Because we’re losing hives and bees by the millions because of such strong pesticides. We can live with terrorism. We can’t live without the bee.”

Nice huh? Not only does she write off the deaths from terrorism (cost of business, I guess), but she’s more concerned about bees than the people who died. Wanna bet she believes products which might kill someone should be banned?

● Misplaced Tolerance: Finally, we have this little bit of intense hypocrisy. Janice Roberts, a 63-year old Masshole “anti-war” activist, has refused to rent an apartment to Sgt. Joel Morgan because he’s a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. So much for tolerance and so much for the lie that “we’re against war, not soldiers.”

What’s more, at the same time, over in New Mexico, the state’s Court of Appeals has ruled that a private photo studio cannot refuse service to people based on sexual orientation. The studio owner had argued that this violated his religious and moral beliefs but the court didn’t really care. This is so typical of liberal tolerance. Tolerate those whose causes you like and use the force of law to crush those whose causes you don’t.

Is it just me or does liberalism seem increasingly sick to you?

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