Scott Spiegel

The congenitally leftist site Media Matters regularly collects “controversial” quotes by conservative personalities and displays them on its website for liberals to gawk at.  It’s supposed to be self-evident to visitors how insane these statements are.

Evidently this soft-sell strategy works, as evidenced by the reams of snarky remarks dumped in the comments section by loyal readers.

Rush Limbaugh is of course a favorite target of Media Matters.  Please join me while I deconstruct a sampling of contentiously worded but eminently sensible recent Rush quotes (thanks to David Swindle for post idea):

“Continued unemployment benefits increases unemployment”

Rush bemoans the fact that recent Republican opposition to extending unemployment benefits has been based, not on the philosophy behind endless benefit extensions, but on the technicality of paying for them.  Rush points out the fact that it’s easier for people to accept a $325 a week check than to look for a job.  Subsidizing something (unemployment) gives you more of it; taxing something (working) gives you less of it.  Contrary to Nancy Pelosi’s claims, unemployment benefits do not increase employment.

Everything Obama has done has been “an attack on the greatness of this country”

Rush cites the following disasters in Obama’s first term: ObamaCare, intrusive financial regulations, a moratorium on drilling, bank and auto company bailouts, and the stimulus bill.  So where does Rush get it wrong?  Is it part of America’s manifest destiny to impose socialized medicine, constrict financial institutions, ban exploration of natural resources, keep bad businesses from failing by punishing good ones, and spend trillions of dollars we don’t have on projects we don’t need?

Requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions “isn’t insurance, it’s welfare”

Eric Cantor recently announced that Republicans would not seek to completely get rid of the health care reform bill; some elements will be kept, such as coverage of preexisting conditions.  Rush argues that forcing insurance companies to accept people with preexisting conditions is welfare.  Insurance companies stay in business by getting many people to pay premiums; if they had to provide coverage to anyone who wanted it, people would simply wait until they suffered catastrophes and then purchase insurance.  Thus, coverage of preexisting conditions = free money = welfare.

“The Constitution is an obstacle to [liberals], it’s a Bible to me”

A caller wants to know how to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives.  Rush tells him that the things the two sides want done are incompatible, and that the left is no longer on the same page as the right.  Rush is willing to compromise on policy details but not on the Constitution.  When you have Democrats being caught admitting they don’t worry about the Constitution, or trying to redefine it as involving more than protecting “negative liberties,” then there’s no room for negotiation.

Obama didn’t lobby for 2022 World Cup because he is a “guaranteed loser … talk to Chicago about that”

Obama failed to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, guarantee carbon emission reduction concessions at Copenhagen, help candidates in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, and get G-20 members to agree to currency inflation.  He is, in every sense of the term, a loser.  Yes, he won the 2008 presidential election—and an electoral victory gives one power, but does not produce actual results.

Past terrorists have been “young male Muslim Arabs,” and now “everybody has to be groped”

Rush addresses dissatisfaction over the Transportation Safety Administration’s decision to use invasive full-body scanners and “enhanced pat downs.”  We know who the enemy is in the war on terror, what they look like, their national origins, their ages.  But for some reason we’re supposed to suspend logic and pretend anyone could be a terrorist.  Police officers profile suspects all the time, and residents of high-crime neighborhoods are grateful they do.  If a suspect is a young, African American male, should police waste time stopping middle-aged white men and Hispanic grandmothers to prove they’re not racist?

Some Republicans are “gun-shy about defending the rich,” but “I, of course, do not have that problem”

Rush discusses a column in which Thomas Sowell expresses concern about the GOP losing the tax extension debate.  Sowell notes that tax cuts for the rich raise revenue and create jobs.  Republicans have that fact on their side, but they have to explain it to the public.  Decades of pounding from the mainstream media have left the GOP queasy about speaking up.  Sowell notes that we just won a landslide and asks, Why are we afraid to speak up?  Rush’s answer: The GOP does need to speak up, but in the meantime, I’m going to do it for them.

“Secondhand smoke is harmless”

A recent study by a Swedish health board claims that secondhand smoke kills more than 600,000 people each year.  Rush notes that the World Health Organization conducted a worldwide study in 2001 that found that secondhand smoke has no impact on health, but suppressed the study, because its findings were politically incorrect.  Rush observes that liberals lie about global warming, DDT, and other supposed health risks in order to control people’s lives, so until there is better evidence about secondhand smoking, we shouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt on this.

To African-Americans: “The Democrat party is the party of keeping you poor and downtrodden”

A caller asks why the media don’t focus on the fact that if the Bush tax cuts are not extended, the lowest tax rate would increase from 10% to 15%, a 50% increase, which would disproportionately affect African Americans.  Rush points out that Democrats are not the party that is best for African Americans but rather the party of segregation, Jim Crow, and the KKK.  Until FDR used electoral strategies to turn African Americans his way, this voting bloc had consistently voted Republican.  LBJ expanded this strategy with his Great Society in the 1960s, and Democratic presidents from Carter to Clinton to Obama continued it, with the result that illegitimacy and dropout rates are now higher in African American communities than in the 1950s.  So remind me: how are Democrats the party that’s best for African Americans?



 Print This Post

Related articles

• Rush Limbaugh Attacks GOP Leadership: “Where Is The Republican Vision?” (mediaite.com)
• Sharpton wants FCC to shut down Limbaugh’s ‘racist talk’ (crooksandliars.com)
• Rush Limbaugh: Adults Solve Obama’s Problem While He Shoots Hoops (mediaite.com)
• Rush Limbaugh: “Keep Your Hands Off My Teabag, Mr. President” (mediaite.com)
• Top Dem warns Obama: ‘We’ve got mutual enemies here’ (thehill.com)

In a NewsRealBlog post last week, I wrote about the top 10 excuses Democrats will make for why they were destroyed in Tuesday’s historic midterm elections.  Apparently I gave Democrats too much credit.  I was assuming they would accept the fact that they had been defeated.

Any self-respecting coach who boasted a season average loss of 65 points would consider letting someone else take charge.  As Michael Tomasky observes of midterm elections, “[Y]ou lose 65 seats, you resign.  Period.  There should not be a question.”  But Congressional Democrats have expressed so little interest in replacing House Majority (soon to be Minority) Leader Nancy Pelosi that you might be forgiven for thinking she were a Republican plant.

(Perhaps liberal columnist Susan Estrich is also a Republican plant; see her hilarious but non-satirical column, “Nancy Pelosi, Superhero.”)

Pelosi plans to celebrate the wild success of the 111^th Congress with a swanky soiree in the Cannon House Office Building.

Let’s catalogue the damage from Tuesday’s elections.  Approximately 40% of incoming House GOP freshmen are affiliated with the Tea Party, and five (six if Joe Miller wins) of the seven Senate pickups are for Tea Party candidates.  This is to say nothing of reelected incumbents who are already Tea Party luminaries, such as Representative Michele Bachmann and Senator Jim DeMint.

Not only did Republicans net more than 60 House seats, 7 Senate seats, 7 governorships, and dozens of state legislatures—which should be a strong enough signal to Democrats that America is sick of their policies—but these candidates are on average more conservative and less likely to vote for Democratic legislation than Republicans in the current Congress.  Reelected incumbent Tea Party Congressmen are also more likely to pick up key chairmanships and leadership posts and exert greater influence over Congress.

But of the incoming GOP freshman class, the website ThinkProgress.com cries, “91% have sworn to never allow an income tax increase on any individual or business… 79% have pledged to permanently repeal the estate tax… 48% are pushing for a balanced budget amendment”—as though the American people weren’t wildly in favor of all of these proposals.

Paul Krugman hasn’t stopped his wailing for more federal stimulus spending and currency manipulation.  His latest diatribe, one week after the election, is indistinguishable from his diatribes from one week or even three months ago.  On Monday he proposed “weakening the dollar” and “leading people to believe that we will have somewhat above-normal inflation over the next few years,” citing as supporters of his crazy policies “many economists, some regional Fed presidents and the International Monetary Fund”—by which he means “discredited Keynesians, the people responsible for the mess we’re in, and the organization that has destroyed economies worldwide from Indonesia to Ireland.”

Apparently liberal commentators don’t just want surviving Congressional Democrats to commit suicide again.  Evidently they’d also like it if our Commander in Chief did so as well.  Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich advises President Obama to dig in like FDR in 1936, rather than move to the center like Clinton in 1994.  Frank Rich recommends that Obama dare Republicans to enact the tax and spending cuts they propose, and suggests that if the GOP does this, the Democratic Party will come roaring back in 2012 like Harry Truman in 1948.

Dan Froomkin of the Huffington Post muses, “[T]he big question will be what lesson Obama takes from Tuesday’s election results.  If he and his advisors are finally ready to acknowledge that the source of voter unhappiness was government ineffectiveness—rather than government overreach… then there’s plenty of room for him to maneuver on his own.”  Wrong lesson!  Try again.

Froomkin continues: “Indeed, progressives are urging him to seize the opportunity to take a more muscular approach with his executive powers…  They also hope Obama will use his regulatory authority, his enforcement powers, and his prerogatives as commander in chief to make decisive moves that can’t be sabotaged by Congressional Republicans.”  Wow—it’s as though Froomkin is directly channeling the collective will of American voters!

DeWayne Wickham of USA Today declares, “Don’t wave a white flag; hoist the battle flag.  That’s what Barack Obama should do…  The lesson to be learned… is not that Democrats should surrender to the right wing.  It is that they should put up a better fight to move their agenda.”  These cute sentiments are almost excusable in the waning weeks and days before an election—who doesn’t like an optimist, a persistent fighter, an underdog—but a week after the Democrats were destroyed?  Reality hasn’t sunk in for these people yet?

Sensible Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph predicts, “Obama is not about to move to the centre…  Nothing in his career indicates he is ready to cut deals with political opponents.  He is sure what he believes is right; if you don’t agree with him, he pities you for being so slow to understand…  Last Tuesday was a setback like nothing else he had experienced in life and it appears to have left his enormous sense of self-assurance undiminished.”

And Wesley Pruden notes, “President Obama thinks nobody is really mad about what he’s done—they just want a little soothing syrup on it.  He promises better speeches to describe the same old soggy dish the dogs won’t touch.”

Please note that all of this Democratic blindness is occurring despite a marked absence of gloating on the part of the GOP, who recognize that the Tea Party threw them a lifeline and that they had better hold onto it tight if they want to survive the next election cycle.  Democrats are arguably no less triumphant about their performance last Tuesday than Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week, “[T]he White House has a choice: they can change course, or they can double down on a vision of government that the American people have roundly rejected.”  Alas, it appears that Democrats are choosing the latter.

To paraphrase an oft-cited definition of insanity: being a Democrat means doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different electoral results.



 Print This Post

Related articles

• 2012 Could Be Worse Than 2010 for Democrats (politics.usnews.com)
• Bad news Democrats _ 2012 could be worse than 2010 (sfgate.com)
• Cantor: If Pelosi stays, then Dems don’t get it (sfgate.com)
• Rachel Maddow Says Fight But Is Pelosi A Fighter? (middle-class-populist.com)
• Nancy Pelosi’s House with no center (sfgate.com)

My, what a difference two years make!

Namely, a 50% jump in the unemployment rate, a tripling of the federal budget, and a tenfold increase in the annual deficit.  But who’s counting?

Behold the 10 most remarkable outcomes from yesterday’s historic midterm elections:

1. Illinois Senate:

This one says it all.  Amidst allegations of corrupt and incompetent business dealings and public program administration, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias couldn’t stave off the GOP tsunami and retain Senator Barack Obama’s former seat.  Fiscally conservative, socially moderate Representative Mark Kirk ran on his votes against the stimulus bill and ObamaCare and eked out the most important symbolic victory of the evening.

2. Florida Senate:

George Hamilton lookalike and lizard descendent Charlie Crist disingenuously switched parties in May to become an Independent, rather than risk facing a primary loss, and after the primaries promised to caucus with Senate Democrats.  Marco Rubio was an early Tea Party darling the mainstream media labeled unelectable; Rubio overcame a last-minute race-baiting dirty trick by Bill Clinton and received nearly as many votes as his Independent and Democratic opponents combined.

3. Kentucky Senate:

Jack Conway stooped almost as low as Florida’s Alan Grayson by cutting last-minute ads implying his opponent wasn’t a true Christian because of a college prank 27 years ago.  Rand Paul unapologetically espoused radically libertarian, small-government positions, wisely endorsed more aggressive and active foreign policy positions than his isolationist father Ron Paul, and was brave enough not to back down from saying government should not interfere with private hiring decisions.

4. Pennsylvania Senate:

Arlen Specter swayed back and forth with the political winds for two years until he was uprooted like a weed and blown into disgraced retirement.  Democrat Joe Sestak not only didn’t hide from his embarrassing support for the lethal Big Three signature Obama policies—the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, and ObamaCare—but argued all should have been bigger and more government-heavy.  In contrast, Club for Growth President Pat Toomey was an unabashed fiscal conservative and Tea Party favorite who won despite an unfavorable blue-state climate.

5. Wisconsin Senate:

Russ Feingold was a long-term incumbent and influential, far-left scourge of conservatives in the Senate, due to his cosponsorship of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act and solitary losing vote in the Senate’s initial 98-1 vote on the PATRIOT Act.  Businessman Ron Johnson was a Tea Party conservative, unapologetic global warming skeptic, and ardent offshore drilling supporter who fought long odds and an opponent with a massive campaign war chest to achieve another important symbolic victory.

6. Ohio Governor:

Six-term former Representative and incumbent two-term governor Ted Strickland couldn’t hold his seat due to his support for Obama policies and his role in Ohio’s miserable economic conditions.  Former Representative and House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich ran on his conservative record in Congress and took over an office that will be crucial in managing campaign finance operations in the 2012 presidential election.

7. Arkansas Senate:

Blanche Lincoln paid for her support for ObamaCare and couldn’t extend her long-term incumbency despite her Blue Dog Democrat status.  John Boozman hammered home his opponent’s ideological similarity to Obama, reiterated his opposition to ObamaCare and cap-and-trade legislation, and destroyed Lincoln by a whopping 20 points.

8. Florida House 22:

Ron Klein defeated Republican Colonel Allen West in 2008 and voted with Democrats 98% of the time in the 111^th Congress.  This year West got his revenge by defending himself against smears about his service in the Iraq War and fearlessly fighting back claims of Uncle Tomism to become the nation’s most prominent black Tea Party elected official.

9. South Carolina Governor:

State Senator Vincent Sheheen tried to hide his liberal record but couldn’t sway South Carolina voters, even after Governor Mark Sanford’s sex scandal.  Nikki Haley came back from last place in the Republican primary, fought disgusting allegations of extramarital affairs, and rode the Sarah Palin/Jim DeMint/Tea Party wave to become the nation’s second Indian American governor.

10. Colorado House 4:

Incumbent Representative Betsy Markey floundered after her support for ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, and the stimulus bill.  “Young Gun” State Representative Cory Gardner defeated Markey due to his vocal support of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan’s radical, fiscally austere Roadmap for America.

As for dear Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Linda McMahon, John Raese, Carly Fiorina, Carl Paladino, Meg Whitman, Charles Baker, and Sean Bielat: Better luck next time!



 Print This Post

Related articles

• Where the Republican Rout Leaves Obama and the Dems (time.com)
• US midterms 2010: download the election results data (guardian.co.uk)
• US midterms leave Democrats bruised and battered – but not beaten (guardian.co.uk)
• Voter anger puts GOP back in charge of the House (capitolhillblue.com)
• Republicans seize control of U.S. House of Representatives (calgaryherald.com)

Amidst the embarras de richesses of House and Senate seat pickups Republicans anticipate this midterm election cycle, one plum reward they shouldn’t forget is their likely aggressive gains in gubernatorial contests across the country.

A record-breaking 37 states are holding governor’s races this November—the same number of seats open in the Senate, which has twice the number of positions as the country has governorships.  Republicans hold 24 out of 50 governorships but will probably have at least 30 after November 2.  RealClearPolitics identifies 9 elections as “Safe GOP” and none as “Safe Dem.”  Republicans beat Democrats in the “Likely” category (5 to 4) and the “Leans” category (7 to 5).

Rasmussen Reports notes, “No states with a Republican governor are considered likely to elect a Democrat in November.  But eight states now headed by Democrats—Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming—are seen as likely GOP pickups.”

The allocation of governorships is important in and of itself, but also has implications for the U.S. House of Representatives, given the role of governors in reapportioning districts for House seats based on the 2010 Census.

GOP prospects aren’t universally rosy.  Forget loose cannon Carl Paladino, who was never going to win blue state New York; or Meg Whitman, a celebri-billionaire like Governor Schwarzenegger who doesn’t fit the profile of what voters are looking for in fickle, atypical California.  But in the rest of the country, the map of governorships is turning blood red.

Massachusetts incumbent Democrat Deval Patrick faces a shockingly close reelection race: the latest Boston Globe poll shows him ahead of Republican Charles Baker only within the statistical margin of error.  Patrick has yet to reach 50% support in the polls—typically the kiss of death for an incumbent.  And all of this is happening in the presence of a third-party candidate, Timothy Cahill, who is drawing more votes from Baker than Patrick.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel reports that Republican and even Democratic candidates are pledging to emulate the modus operandi of recently elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has stood up to powerful unions, slashed spending, and vetoed tax increases.

Rhode Island Democratic candidate Frank Caprio has tried to improve his chances by (1) rudely distancing himself from President Barack Obama, (2) being more conservative than former Republican/current Independent competitor Lincoln Chafee, and (3) meeting with Republican leaders in Washington over the objections of state Democratic groups.

In order to complete their gubernatorial coup d’état, the GOP will of course have to beat back the 30% of the populace who constitute the terminally, willfully, irredeemably ignorant—what Mark Levin calls the “drones.”

In the close Ohio governor’s race, voters who favor Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland demonstrated their firm grasp of the issues and fine deductive powers in a series of interviews with the Toledo Blade.  Resident Heather Elliott, who favors Strickland, babbled, “I kind of like everything that he stands for.  I think he’s going to do what we need, and I just have a good feeling about him…  A lot of the [Strickland] commercials I have seen, maybe fair or unfair, they have swayed me against him.”  Fair or unfair—it’s all the same when it comes to recruiting potential Democratic voters!  That’s in the Democratic National Committee bylaws.

In one breath, would-be voter Elliott displays: (1) vagueness about her reasons for supporting the Democrat, (2) a propensity to vote for the Democrat on the basis of emotion, and (3) an admission that the Democrat’s negative ads are unfair.  Remind me: why are we always encouraging people who have no idea what they’re doing to vote?

Fellow Ohio resident Gwen Frisby favors Strickland, despite Ohio’s miserable financial condition, because “It’s almost more that I don’t like how the Republicans are acting toward him.”  Yes, and Frisby probably supports Obama’s destructive policies because it’s almost more that she doesn’t like how the Republicans are acting toward him.

Genius independent voter Lillian Edmondson gushes that she will support Patrick in Taxachusettstan because “I think he tries hard.  He comes across as a very nice man…”  California voter Paula Bennett muses that she will favor Jerry Brown over Whitman because “I like the little guy; he didn’t have the money behind him like she did.”

Ideologically speaking, one has to wonder: are governorships a more natural fit for Republicans, and Congressional offices a more natural fit for Democrats?  In modern political times, Republicans have done relatively better capturing and retaining governorships, whereas Democrats have done better in Congress.  Is this because governors have more of what we shall call, oh, “actual responsibilities”?  Without diminishing Congress’s duties, it’s a fact that governors have to balance state budgets, can’t order the Federal Reserve to print more money while they run up infinite balance sheets, and must make tough and unpopular unilateral decisions without hiding in a crowd.

Though voter discontent this year seems focused mostly on Washington—thus Democratic Senators and Representatives’ perilous election prospects—Republican governors’ elevated chances around the country shouldn’t be surprising.  Christie and Bob McDonnell’s upset of their opponents in special elections in New Jersey and Virginia foreshadowed this pattern last November, when Obama had been in office only 10 months instead of 22.  And that was before Congress rammed through ObamaCare.

All across America it seems voters this year will be telling Democratic gubernatorial candidates to take their agenda and shove it.



 Print This Post

Related articles

• Ohio governor in tough fight for 2nd term (usatoday.com)
• Election 2010: New Mexico Governor (rasmussenreports.com)
• Election 2010: Georgia Governor (rasmussenreports.com)
• Election 2010: Gubernatorial Scorecard (rasmussenreports.com)
• Governors’ races offer some of sharpest skirmishes (news.yahoo.com)

“I’m particularly offended by these people who want to take the nation back…  If you read the Republican Contract with America, you can see the bigotry in between every line.” – Maida Odom, “One Nation Working Together” rally attendee, October 2, 2010

In a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage their miserable midterm election prospects, Democrats have been tarnishing Republicans and Tea Partiers with the smear of—wait for it… racism!

Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth…

At a recent rally in Philadelphia, President Barack Obama warned the audience, “They’re counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home.”  Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Harold Jackson declared that the Tea Party is the ignorant, Negrophobic reincarnation of the pro-slavery wing of the Know Nothing Party.

Zora Neale Hurston, Ida B. Wells, Roy Innis, Eldridge Cleaver, Samuel B. Fuller…

Actually, Democrats have been crying racism throughout Obama’s whole presidency.  For example, New York Times columnist Frank Rich has been using this trick to try to fool Americans into thinking conservatives oppose ObamaCare because they don’t like black people such as bill architects Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Maureen Dowd proposed that Joe Wilson’s exclamation regarding coverage for illegal Mexican immigrants was… anti-black.  Leftist civil rights leaders sullied their reputations by falsely accusing Tea Party protestors of calling Representative John Lewis the N-word and spitting on Representative Emanuel Cleaver.  Obama supporter Henry Louis Gates, Jr. falsely accused a poor working-class cop in Massachusetts of racial profiling.

Martin Luther King, Sr., Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Alveda King…

Democrats have been playing the race card since even before Obama was elected, as in their ludicrous claim that failure to elect Obama would lead to race riots.  Such efforts have done miracles for Obama’s promised improvement in race relations: Rasmussen recently reported that perceptions about black-white relations have gotten much more pessimistic since Obama took office.

Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, Mychal Massie, Deroy Murdock, John McWhorter, Erik Rush…

To hear Democrats tell it, you would think there were no African American historical figures, civil rights leaders, commentators, politicians, judges, authors, athletes, or celebrities who are Republican, conservative, libertarian, right-leaning, or Tea Party supporters.  Or if there are, that they’re all misguided, brainwashed Uncle Toms.

Armstrong Williams, Lloyd Marcus, Stanley Crouch, Angela McGlowan, Amy Holmes, Sonja Schmidt, Alfonzo Rachel…

You might also be forgiven for thinking that such organizations as the National Black Republican Association and The Alliance of Black Republicans were apocryphal, mere fictional entities.

J. C. Watts, Gary Franks, Alan Keyes, Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell, Rod Paige, Allen West, Star Parker, Tim Scott, Ryan Frazier, Isaac Hayes, Robert Broadus…

Because Democrats view individuals as voting blocs and interest groups to be Balkanized along racial and ethnic lines, they’ve been caught engaging in some appalling acts in recent years.  Since Obama took office, we’ve been treated to the spectacle of the NAACP applauding Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod for reporting that she had once racially discriminated against a white farmer; Barbara Boxer condescendingly lumping ideologically opposed black groups together based on skin color; and Bill Clinton defending Robert Byrd’s Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops positions as necessary for getting elected to public office as a Southern Democrat.

Clarence Thomas, Janice Rogers Brown, Ward Connerly, Colin Powell, Michael Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele…

It’s hard to discern who exactly is supposed to be offended by these smears.  Any thinking black person is surely aware of the black conservative movement, and any unthinking black person is clearly uninterested in the movement and mindlessly committed to the Democratic Party.

Jackie Robinson, Don King, Ernie Banks, Karl Malone, Jerome Bettis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Herschel Walker…

And any thinking non-black person waits for leftists to produce actual evidence of conservative racism and reserves judgment until that time.  Any non-thinking non-black person is happy to accept lies about Republicans spread by race hucksters and reject evidence to the contrary.

James Earl Jones, Jimmie Walker, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, L. L. Cool J, 50 Cent…

When accusations of racism are thrown around often enough, with as little evidence as they typically are, in place of discussion of the issues people really care about, the net effect can only hurt one-trick pony politicians who know that running on their record and their positions will hurt rather than help them.

…and on and on and on and on.

But if Democrats want to spend their dwindling political capital on a charge so old and worn-out even they don’t believe it, hey—I won’t let myself be prejudiced against their strategy.



 Print This Post

Related articles

• Race and the Race (politico.com)
• Black Republicans offer hope after Barack Obama’s failures on race (telegraph.co.uk)
• So much for the ‘post-racial’ president | Lloyd Marcus (guardian.co.uk)
• Lack of new black Dem leaders forces first lady to campaign (thegrio.com)
• “Crying Bigotry: Last Refuge Of The Liberal” and related posts (investors.com)

Once upon a time, there was a fantastic Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware who promised to reduce the size and scope of government and adhere to constitutional limits on its power—and, as a bonus, did not tell Bill Maher that when she was in high school some friends had experimented with “witchcraft,” did not express mixed feelings about masturbation 14 years ago on camera, did not default on her mortgage in the middle of the housing crisis, did not misstate the number of counties she won in her prior run for Senate, and did not take more than four years to graduate from college.

Unfortunately that candidate doesn’t exist.  A candidate who was the real Christine O’Donnell’s primary opponent, however, does exist: he voted for the Democrats’ cap-and-trade legislation, bank bailout, and stimulus bill, and has refused to support repeal of ObamaCare; his name is Mike Castle.  O’Donnell’s general election opponent Chris Coons supports all of the above and more, and is also Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s self-described “pet.”

Similarly there’s a candidate for governor of New York named Carl Paladino who has promised to cut state spending by 10% and taxes by 20%, reduce economically crippling state pension obligations, and cut 60,000 positions held by workers deemed incapable of executing their responsibilities.

You may consider Paladino unfit for office, because he had an extramarital affair and also forwarded some e-mails he had received with offensive jokes in them—until you consider his general election opponent Andrew Cuomo, who as President Bill Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary played a key role in the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the financial collapse of 2008.

Then there’s Sharron Angle, who’s running for the Senate in Nevada: she wants to abolish the bankrupt Social Security program, the meddlesome Federal Reserve, the intrusive Internal Revenue Service, the worthless National Department of Education, unconstitutional gun control restrictions, pointless offshore drilling bans, useless global warming regulations, and the U.S.’s embarrassing membership in the United Nations.  But—detractors have accused her of having ties to celebrity Scientologists Kelly Preston and Jenna Elfman!

Angle ran against primary opponent Bob Bennett, one of two cosponsors of the failed 2008 Healthy Americans Act—precursor to ObamaCare—which likewise would have required all Americans to purchase government-approved health care plans.  Angle’s general election opponent Harry Reid was instrumental in getting ObamaCare passed in the Senate.

Let’s not forget Rand Paul, Senate candidate from Kentucky and self-described constitutional conservative, who opposed the free-speech-limiting McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act, the wasteful bank and car company bailouts, and ObamaCare.  His great flaw is that he was politically incorrect enough to state that, had he been in Congress 50 years ago, he would have supported only 9 of the 10 Civil Rights Act titles, and would have contested the one prohibiting discrimination in private hiring and lending.  Oh—and he was involved in a college prank 27 years ago!

Paul is running against general election opponent Jack Conway, who supported ObamaCare, favors the union “card check” bill, and is open to cap-and-trade legislation.

How about Joe Miller, who’s running for Senate in Alaska?  He favors reclaiming unspent Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to help cut the deficit, repealing ObamaCare, and enacting a balanced budget amendment.  His Achilles’ heel is that he’s never held elective office before.

On the other hand, Miller’s primary opponent Lisa Murkowski has been in office for nearly a decade, and she opposes repealing ObamaCare and bucked the majority of Republicans to vote for the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

And on and on it goes for the Tea Party candidates: South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley had unproven extramarital affairs, Florida House candidate Daniel Webster supports covenant marriage, Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck was rude to birthers at a Tea Party rally.

Regardless of whether these Tea Party candidates are electable—and most of them are—fair-minded independents who seek outsiders to rein in government but are concerned about some of these mavericks’ personal quirks should focus on the big picture.

As The Intellectual Activist’s Robert Tracinski noted, “If you think a Christine O’Donnell has a lot of personal ‘baggage’ and that her personality makes her unelectable, fine—then send us someone better who stands for the same principles.  But our principles are the one thing we’re not going to bend on.”

Here’s a request for the mainstream media: as soon as we’re allowed to focus on Tea Party candidates’ substantive merits and faults relative to their opponents’, rather than whether they played Dungeons & Dragons 30 years ago, please let us know.



 Print This Post

Related articles by Zemanta

• Christine O’Donnell hits the stage at Values Voter Summit (politico.com)
• Has Christine O’Donnell “Grown Up”? (newsrealblog.com)
• 46 Days to Decide: Dem Candidate Coons Comes Under Scrutiny in Delaware Senate Race (foxnews.com)
• Harry Reid’s ‘Pet’ (nationalreview.com)
• Paladino Is Taunting in a Letter to Cuomo (nytimes.com)

President Obama’s strategy for helping fellow Democrats win in the 2010 midterm elections is apparently to campaign against George W. Bush.

At a fundraiser two weeks ago, Obama declared of Republicans’ desire to take back leadership of Congress, “After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back.  No!  You can’t drive.  We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch.  We just got the car out.”

Emory University political science professor Merle Black recently characterized voters’ likely reaction to Obama’s emerging campaign strategy: “If you’re the leader of a large corporation and you’re in power for a year and a half and you start off a meeting with your shareholders by blaming your predecessor, that wouldn’t go over very well.”

Now, why do you suppose Obama wouldn’t have any idea how the leader of a corporation should behave?  Wait—it’s on the tip of my tongue…  I know!  Do community organizers have actual responsibilities?

Perhaps at one point Obama intended to assist other Democrats by trumpeting his own record in office, a gambit that was based on the assumption he would whisk Senators and Representatives into power via the same sweeping electoral coattails he possessed before people saw him actually doing something besides campaigning.

The results over the past six months of Democratic candidates’ riding Obama’s gravy train seem to have dissuaded him of the wisdom of that approach.

In last November’s off-year gubernatorial elections, Obama campaigned vociferously for John Corzine in New Jersey and Creigh Deeds in Virginia, including making multiple appearances with them at campaign rallies, and failed to help either one get elected—and possibly hurt both.

Ditto for The Grim Reaper’s efforts to facilitate the election of Martha Coakley to Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts to save the 60th Senate vote for his signature health care bill.

Three weeks ago, incumbent Republican Senator from Utah Bob Bennett, who voted for the unpopular bank bailout that Bush instituted and Obama supported, failed to win his party’s primary nomination at the state GOP convention.

Two weeks ago, 14-term incumbent Democratic Representative from West Virginia Alan Mollohan, who voted for ObamaCare and was chastised by his Democratic opponent for having done so, lost his party’s primary election.

In contrast to the efforts he made for Corzine, Deeds, and Coakley, Obama tried just tossing his endorsement to Arlen Specter in Specter’s primary bid, and letting grassroots group Organizing for America do the dirty work of campaigning for Specter, but that didn’t help, either.

Pennsylvania Democrat Mark Critz ran for John Murtha’s seat on a platform opposing the following: ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, a national sales tax similar to Obama’s proposed Value Added Tax, gun control, abortion, and efforts to derail Arizona’s immigration law—i.e., what one might term the “Polar Opposite of Obama Platform”—and beat a similarly conservative Republican last week in a district with twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

Last Saturday, Republican Charles Djou won a vacant House seat by running on an explicitly anti-Obama, pro-Tea Party platform in a special election in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District—the district where Obama grew up—thus becoming the first Republican Representative from Hawaii in almost 20 years.

Meanwhile, many Congressmen up for reelection this November seem less than thrilled at the prospect of a visit from Barack “Kiss of Death” Obama.

In a subtly titled article called “Freshmen Run Away From Obama,” CQ Politics cites freshman Pennsylvania Representative Kathy Dahlkemper: “‘You have to be an independent, no matter what…’  Dahlkemper said that while she would be ‘very happy to welcome’ Obama to her district, she didn’t know how much of a help or a hindrance he would be.  ‘I just think we don’t quite know yet where his popularity is…  I’m much less concerned about who’s going to come in and campaign for me.’”

In everyday language, this political-speak translates as, “Obama had better stay the hell away from my district this year.”

CQ Politics also quotes freshman Colorado Representative Betsey Markey as saying that “she didn’t think it would make much difference either way if the president stumped in her district.  ‘It’s always an honor when the president makes an offer to visit.  But this is a Colorado race.’”  In normal people-talk, this means “Please, Obama, I’m begging you—don’t put on your fake cowboy hat and visit the Rocky Mountains this fall.”

Thus, the growing preference among candidates of both parties who actually face voters this fall seems to be to campaign, not against George Bush, but against Barack Obama.

This whole turn of events leads me to the seemingly absurd but actually logical conclusion that Obama’s best hope in 2012 is to find a way to run against… the first term of President Obama.  Why not?  It sort of worked for Clinton in 1996.

At least when Obama throws himself under the bus, he’ll be able to do it gently.

 Print This Post

Related articles by Zemanta

• No, This Isn’t an “Anti-Incumbent” Year (realclearpolitics.com)
• GOP wins House seat in Obama’s Hawaii home district (usatoday.com)
• Obama’s Primary Test (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Is the Tea Party on a roll? | Sasha Abramsky (guardian.co.uk)
• Democrats Weigh Value of an Obama Endorsement (usnews.com)