Category: Politics

When the Democrats and their like-minded brethren in the new and old media encountered a Republican that credibly challenged a Democrat for Senate in Massachusetts, they quickly promoted a story that Scott Brown was a pornography star. He did, after all, appear in a beefcake spread for Cosmopolitan magazine when he was a 22-year-old college student. After the news came out, one of my social conservative friends expressed disgust with the Republican Party and vowed not to support the party based on the salacious headlines until I soothed him with some context. Based solely on biased and sensational information provided by media whose interests and loyalties do not coincide with his, my friend would have not voted for Scott Brown.

Another year brings another election and another conservative candidate facing off against a Democrat in an eastern state and professionals in the journalism-industrial complex put the special social conservative dog whistle to their lips and blow. Christine O’Donnell, the longshot Tea Party candidate for the Senate from Delaware, admitted on television in 1999 that she participated in witchcraft when she was a child. According to the hopes of his likeminded televisia, the social conservatives will hear this sound and begin barking.

The damning video clip comes from an appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in 1999, wherein O’Donnell claimed to have dabbled in witchcraft, to have hung out with people like that, and to have unwittingly eaten at a Satanic altar. The enthusiastic claim itself presented within the widely circulated clip seems geared to broaden the depth of her experience and to excite the audience. The clip itself does not provide the context of what the panel discussed when she made the claims, but the context might damage the Pavlovian call to disapproval.

Other attempts to portray Ms. O’Donnell as a SINNER! include alleging that, as a young person, Ms. O’Donnell drank alcohol and had premarital sex. Undoubtedly, rumors await creation that she also listened to heavy metal music, played Dungeons and Dragons, wrote poetry lamenting how she was not understood, and/or dressed like a vampire for a costume party. The very things that Democrats look for in a life partner somehow transubstantiate into disqualifiers when they find them in Republican youth. Especially the youth of dangerous Republican political opponents.

Ms. O’Donnell spoke at a Republican picnic this weekend and explained her dalliance with witchcraft took place when she was in high school. Her other pronouncements portray her as solidly Christian. So Christian, in fact, that other gotcha clips portray Ms. Donnell as a particularly strident Christian, but those revelations were meant to incite the less godly, not the more godly. The out-of-context witchcraft quote, though, is designed to control social conservatives and keep them from supporting this candidate with votes, money, and passion.

In the past, this tactic might have proven effective. As the last election cycles have proven, though, staying at home on election day to protest flaws in a candidate closer to your views tacitly works to help elect people whose views oppose yours, often expansively and expensively. These days, though, a concern for smaller government needs to trump other differences to get the country back onto a track that’s not federally funded, underused, but cool-to-the-leaders light rail.

Most importantly, I hope my friend recognizes the greater interest that he shares with fiscal conservatives and limited-government conservatives, regardless of their diverse religious views. The Republican Party should have enough room for the Christians and the pagans to sit together at the table, to quote Dar Williams. When the left comes up with attention-grabbing ways to cast aspersions on conservative candidates, we all need to seek the context and, frankly, the historical nature of the aspersions to determine if they reflect reality or just another trial by ordeal portion of a witch hunt, where the candidate who loses at the polls is innocent and any that survives is still guilty.

(Yeah, I know it’s not timely, but this started out as a real op-ed piece, but I’m so slow when I write them that they’re too old by the time I’m done. Although I don’t bother to send these to the papers, I have no trouble filling a WordPress database with them.)

A professional adolescent, maybe:

A [Wisconsin] state Democratic Party official was kicked out of a speech by Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker Wednesday, after organizers feared he would cause a scene.

Just before Walker addressed about 15 members of the women’s leadership organization TEMPO Milwaukee, Democratic Party spokesman Graeme Zielinski shook the hand of Walker campaign worker Michael Brickman but recoiled halfway through it, saying “Ew.’ He then told a woman Brickman is a racist because of a recent tweet Brickman posted concerning President Barack Obama.

Swell. They really are a party of ill-tempered children, aren’t they? No wonder they want it done for the children!. They mean themselves.

Boots and Sabers had the story and notes that the fellow is a former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

This is breaking news here:

Outside groups supporting Republican candidates in House and Senate races across the country have been swamping their Democratic-leaning counterparts on television since early August as the midterm election season has begun heating up.

Driving the disparity in the ad wars has been an array of Republican-oriented organizations that are set up so they can accept donations of unlimited size from individuals and corporations without having to disclose them. The situation raises the possibility that a relatively small cadre of deep-pocketed donors, unknown to the general public, is shaping the battle for Congress in the early going.

The yawning gap in spending by independent interest groups is alarming some Democratic officials, who argue that it amounts to an effort on the part of very wealthy Republican donors, as well as corporate interests, newly emboldened by regulatory changes, to buy the election.

“While each of our campaigns has the resources they need to be competitive, we now face shadow groups putting their thumbs on the scale with undisclosed, unlimited and unregulated donations,” said Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Attention, inattentive: Senator Menendez is talking to you! Forget about Moveon.org, Code Pink, AFSCME, ACORN and its affiliates, League of Conservation Voters, and any other gothic groups (that is, shadow groups, but Democratic, so they’re all epic, romantic, and cooler) putting money into races. Pay attention to the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy shadow puppets I’m making in the New York Times using the shining light of my intellect and political hack rhetoric!

Election likely to show shift to right:

Two years into the age of Obama, America may be about to change course.

The hope and optimism that President Barack Obama stoked into Democratic control of Washington two years ago has faded.

Great seizer’s ghost!

Correct me if I’m wrong. I realize that two years ago was BAO, Before the Age of Obama, but wasn’t the election sort of close? 7 percent? And of that losing side, weren’t a whole hell of a lot of us somewhat concerned about what the election meant? A couple percent of us, those who sort of listened to Obama’s rhetoric before he toned it down for the gulls, might have suffered from some particularly acute dismay.

But in this “analyst”‘s opinion, it was the dawning of the Age of Hopechangius (Let the Sun Shine In), and that’s fallen off because of factors unrelated to Obamus Magnus.

Time for me to come out of the closet as it were: I am a tax hypocrite.

Not to get too deeply into it, but one of the advantages of government-sanctioned marriage is the tax benefits, or at least the fact we get to only have to pay the accountant for one form. Since I think the government should probably get out of the marriage sanctioning business entirely but I take advantage of the offer, I am a hypocrite!

I don’t think that the government should ladle out tax credits for behavior it likes, such as buying the right air conditioner, buying a house, or buying the correct clothes washing machine, but I sometimes take those tax credits (although I missed out on the washing machine stimulus payola I mentioned due to laziness and, frankly, lack of enthusiasm for the project). Ergo, I am a hypocrite!

On the other hand, I have argued passionately against the government taking tax money to redistribute to individuals for individual benefit even above the lofty arguments that every individual having more (of others’ property) makes a better, more egalitarian nation. However, I still pay my FICA and social security taxes. Because I don’t practice what I preach!

I think there are a lot of Federal government programs that are not just a bad idea, such as the Department of Education or Department of Energy, but some are damn immoral (funding abortions around the world). However, I don’t deduct that percentage from my quarterly taxes because I am a damned hypocrite!

Now that we have my admission out of the way, can we separate the tax code and its thousands of pages of rulings and regulations from a reasoned discussion of principles?

No, of course not. Many of the people I discuss issues with proudly lack principles, and all they have going for them is ad homenims, tu quoques, and day-old bon mots.

Over at The Missouri Record, David Linton argues in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment which allows the direct election of Senators.

I agree, but I think this is going to be a hard sell to the American public which has come to believe that the key to an open government is more and more transparency and direct accountability of officials, where more and more citizen votes means better and better government.  Of course, this more accountable system allows incumbents to go to Washington, vote for government expansion for five years, and return home just before the election to claim they’re independent and fiscally conservative.  Thusly, the ruling class can fool the inattentive, and the whole More Accountability benefit falls by the wayside.  Granted, this failure rests more on the heads of the inattentive citizens than the charlatans they elect, but it circumvents the system our foresighted forefathers put into place.

The state legislators, on the other hand, are professionals (or are at least paying attention) since that is some part of their job, and they know whether the Senators serve the interests of the state or the interests of the Senators or their political party instead.  That was part of the balance the Constitution prepared for us.

But in the 21st Century, the trend is not to balance individual voter whims and trends with the power of the sovereign states.  See also the National Popular Vote movement to end-around the Electoral College.  The current popular will values the popular will, and those who seek to unravel our system of government hold out the entitlement of an uninformed vote to the masses. 

Don’t expect the masses to give it up any time soon.

(Cross-posted at 24th State.com.)

Bungalow Bill, Ann Althouse, and others are talking about the new DNC ad for the 2010 elections. That must be some effective ad, since it’s now marked a private video and is unavailable to normal YouTube viewers like you and I.

Click for full size

This makes a pretty compelling case. For something.

(Cross posted at JTGOP.com.)

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection has the video.

The conservative blogs are spilling some pixels on an operation known, charmingly, as F*ck Tea.

Last summer, Democrats argued that the tea party movement was the AstroTurf creation of corporate groups. Now that the grass-roots conservative resurgence has emerged as a clear force on the right, the left is making a different case: that tea parties are simply the enemy.

To that end, the Agenda Project, a new, progressive group with roots in New York’s fundraising scene and a goal of strengthening the progressive movement, has launched the “F*ck Tea” project, which is aimed, the group’s founder Erica Payne wrote in an e-mail this morning, “to dismiss the tea party and promote the progressive cause.”

“”We will be launching new products in the next several months to help people all over the country F*ck Tea,” Payne told POLITICO. “Products like a Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy (Beck B Scrubbin) and others are perfect holiday gifts or just a great way to say, ‘I love you and our country’ to your spouse, friend or family.”

This is not a political movement. It’s a retail operation aimed at people with a political point of view, like a Harriet Carter for the hipnorats, although probably not as successful.

I find it encouraging for two reasons.

• It’s encouraging to see the leftwingers engaging in some good old-fashioned capitalism.
• It’s becoming obvious that the politically connected on the other side are not going to take the wind out of the sails of the Tea Party movement, but at least they can part some of their peeps from their money.

But I have to hand it to the people behind it. They know how to get the word out to the very people they want to court: trigger the opposition.

(Link seen on Trog. See also Ed Driscoll and Hot Air.)

I spent last evening at an election results watching party for a couple of candidates that ended up on the short side of the count in their respective races down here in Greene County. At the end of the evening, when it became apparent that the number of remaining ballots were fewer than the number of votes needed to take the lead, the closer of the candidates dismissed us with what sounded like a concession speech even though the race was close enough to go to a recount.

In the speech, he thanked everyone there for their support in his campaign, whether in financial donations or in knocking on doors when the temperature hovered in the middle 90s. He said he couldn’t do it without us.

Well, be that as it may, we could not have done it without him.

It takes a lot more to be a candidate than to support a candidate. He had to work his day job and then do the full time job of being a candidate at night and on the weekends. He forewent vacations, private time with his family, and frankly relaxation time that I take for granted and get cranky if I don’t get every night.

He didn’t have to travel far as his district was small, but some do. This year’s Senate primary had a baker’s half dozen candidates, some of whom bothered to travel throughout the state at their own expense sometimes to try to gather support and to get their messages out.

So candidates put their lives on hold for six months, or a year, or sometimes more, with the hopes of having to travel somewhere away from their families to serve in government. They’d trade their current full time job for a fuller time job as an elected official, and although I’m often cynical, I don’t really believe that these guys, on our team at least, go into it to make millions or to become famous. State legislative offices or county government only brings a wealth of headaches if you’re doing it right. Instead, they do it because they feel something akin to a calling, a desire to do it the right way, or at least to do better than the current crop running the country.

No, sir and ma’am, thank you. You took all the risk, all the burden, and sometimes awaken on the first Wednesday in office with nothing but some debt and another day at your regular job to show for it. Supporting a candidate is helpful, but running for office is the hard work.

(Cross-posted at 24thState.com.)

Is Professor Obama kicking General McChrystal’s ass?

TaxProf points out that charitable giving dropped last year:

Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University today announced today that charitable contributions fell 3.6% (3.2% inflation-adjusted) in 2009, to $303.75 billion.

Personally speaking, my charitable contributions have dropped slightly (although not 3.6%, probably) as I have redirected small checks from charitable organizations to Republican candidates and the RNC and its committees.

Because if I’m going to have any to spare for donations in the future, the government is going to have to change.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

California voters approved an open primary system yesterday.

Lots of people are gnashing their teeth about it (see Ace and Bookworm).

I’d gnash a little more if a similar initiative hadn’t already been struck down in California in 2006.

I’m no constitutional scholar, but what I read of the opinion in the settled case–that the blanket primary takes away the parties’ right of association–doesn’t seem solved in the new proposition. I don’t see any comparisons between the two laws, so I could be mistaken. I wish someone would enlighten me how this could pass Constitutional muster.

Or are the proponents hoping that a Supreme Court with a different makeup will rule differently in a couple of years?

Dana Loesch has a long piece about the Tea Party activists and somber reflections the day after several primaries did not swing the Tea Partiers’ way.

Here’s my contribution:

If you really want to change the GOP to reflect smaller government, conservative principles, you had better get over any instant gratification/revolutionary impulse you have. This is politics. Sometimes the votes go your way, sometimes they don’t, but if you give up and go home when things don’t go your way, the entrenched interests within the party won’t take you seriously and won’t listen to you. That old greybeard whose “turn” it is to run? He’s attended meetings, held party office, hosted fundraisers, and contributed to the local party for 30 years. He’ll be here in 2010, 2012, 2014. If you’re only going to be here in spring and summer of 2010, what impact will you make beyond what he has done for a lot of candidates for a long time? You’re a pup, albeit a loud member of a pack of pups.

If you want to change the GOP, you’d better get your arse to the local party meetings, to the local fundraisers, and to the local campaign offices of candidates you support. Politics is work, not a hobby. If you want change, you have to work for it, not just tailgate at a semi-annual protest.