A More Conservative Union

The Message of Massachusetts

2010-01-19T00:44:00.002-04:00

A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit.

Whether or not Republican Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts, the special Senate election has already shaken up American politics. The close race to replace Ted Kennedy, liberalism's patron saint, shows that voters are rebelling even in the bluest of states against the last year's unbridled pursuit of partisan liberal governance.
Tomorrow marks the anniversary of President Obama's Inaugural, and it's worth recalling the extraordinary political opportunity he had a year ago. An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities and faced a dispirited, unpopular GOP. With monetary policy stimulus already flowing, Democrats were poised to get the political credit for the inevitable economic recovery.
Twelve months later, Mr. Obama's approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President's, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government, and a Republican could pick up a Senate seat in a state with no GOP Members of Congress and that Mr. Obama carried by 26 points.
What explains this precipitous political fall? Democrats and their media allies attribute it to GOP obstructionism, though Republicans lack the votes to stop anything by themselves. Or they blame their own Blue Dogs, who haven't stopped or even significantly modified any legislation of consequence.
Or they blame an economic agenda that wasn't populist or liberal enough because it didn't nationalize banks and spend even more on "stimulus." It takes a special kind of delusion to believe, amid a popular revolt against too much government spending and debt, that another $1 trillion would have made all the difference. But that's the latest left-wing theme.
The real message of Massachusetts is that Democrats have committed the classic political mistake of ideological overreach. Mr. Obama won the White House in part on his personal style and cool confidence amid a recession and an unpopular war. Yet liberals in Congress interpreted their victory as a mandate to repeal more or less the entire post-1980 policy era and to fulfill, at last, their dream of turning the U.S. into a cradle-to-grave entitlement state.
We had been encouraged a year ago by Mr. Obama's selection of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff because we thought he would have learned from the Clinton failure of 1993-1994 and knew enough to stand up to the Congressional left. How wrong we were. Mr. Emanuel and his boss have instead deferred to Congress's liberal barons on every major domestic policy.

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All images: Associated Press

Barney Frank; Ed Markey

These committee chairmen are all creatures of the Great Society and what was called the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. They have spent their lives in government and know almost nothing about the private sector or how to grow an economy. They view the Reagan era as an historical aberration, and they have stayed in Washington for decades precisely in wait of this moment to realize 40-years of pent-up policy ambition. They believe this is their 1965, or 1933.

While Mr. Obama campaigned as a young postpartisan Democrat who wanted a new era of comity in Washington, his victory has instead empowered these ancient left-wing warriors. These are the men who have run Washington this past year, and they are Mr. Obama's de facto cabinet. The nearby photos show some of the most powerful, clockwise from the top right:

Associated Press

George Miller; David Obey

• Ed Markey of Massachusetts, first elected in 1976, helped to ram the cap-and-tax bill through the House and has pushed relentlessly for the EPA to declare carbon a pollutant under the Clean Air Act that didn't mention carbon.
• Wisconsin's David Obey, elected in 1969, is the House Appropriations chairman who steered the $787 billion stimulus to focus on Medicaid expansion and other transfer payments that have done nothing for economic growth.
• Henry Waxman, first elected in the Watergate class of 1974, deposed John Dingell in 2008 as too moderate to run the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Hollywood liberal is co-author of the cap-and-tax vote that will cost numerous Blue Dogs their seats.

Associated Press

Pete Stark; Henry Waxman

• Pete Stark, class of 1972, runs the health subcommittee on Ways and Means and has written most of the House health reform that has forced moderates to walk the plank on the "public option."
• George Miller, class of 1974 and chief enforcer for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has pushed to nationalize the college student loan market. Like Mr. Stark, he's from California.
• Barney Frank of Massachusetts, class of 1980 and chief protector of Fannie Mae, wrote the financial reform that would make too-big-to-fail the law for the largest banks. He has also pushed the mortgage foreclosure programs that have extended the housing recession by preventing home prices from finding a bottom.
It is the combination of all of these and other policies that has ignited the political revolt we are now seeing in Massachusetts, and first saw last November in Virginia and New Jersey. Had Democrats modified their agenda to nurture a fragile economy and financial system, they could now claim their policies worked and build on them later.
Instead, their frenetic agenda has frightened voters and businesses about the vast expansion of government power and enormous tax increases to come. The resulting uncertainty and the anticipation of higher costs for labor, taxes and energy have undermined what ought to be a more robust pace of job creation and overall recovery.
The lesson of Mr. Obama's lost first year is that an economic crisis is a terrible thing to exploit. As they have each time in the last 40 years that they have had total control of Washington, Democrats are proving again that America can't be successfully governed from the left. If that is the lesson Mr. Obama learns from Massachusetts, he might still salvage his Presidency.

Martha Coakley's Convictions

2010-01-15T00:37:00.002-04:00

The role played by the U.S. Senate candidate in a notorious sex case raises questions about her judgment.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

The story of the Amiraults of Massachusetts, and of the prosecution that had turned the lives of this thriving American family to dust, was well known to the world by the year 2001. It was well known, especially, to District Attorney Martha Coakley, who had by then arrived to take a final, conspicuous, role in a case so notorious as to assure that the Amiraults' name would be known around the globe.
The Amiraults were a busy, confident trio, grateful in the way of people who have found success after a life of hardship. Violet had reared her son Gerald and daughter Cheryl with help from welfare, and then set out to educate herself. The result was the triumph of her life—the Fells Acres school—whose every detail Violet scrutinized relentlessly. Not for nothing was the pre-school deemed by far the best in the area, with a long waiting list for admission.
All of it would end in 1984, with accusations of sexual assault and an ever-growing list of parents signing their children on to the case. Newspaper and television reports blared a sensational story about a female school principal, in her 60s, who had daily terrorized and sexually assaulted the pupils in her care, using sharp objects as her weapon. So too had Violet's daughter Cheryl, a 28-year old teacher at the school.
But from the beginning, prosecutors cast Gerald as chief predator—his gender qualifying him, in their view, as the best choice for the role. It was that role, the man in the family, that would determine his sentence, his treatment, and, to the end, his prosecution-inspired image as a pervert too dangerous to go free.
The accusations against the Amiraults might well rank as the most astounding ever to be credited in an American courtroom, but for the fact that roughly the same charges were brought by eager prosecutors chasing a similar headline—making cases all across the country in the 1980s. Those which the Amiraults' prosecutors brought had nevertheless, unforgettable features: so much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled and led by tireless interrogators.

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Associated Press

Martha Coakley, attorney general of Massachusetts, at a campaign stop, Jan. 13.

Gerald, it was alleged, had plunged a wide-blade butcher knife into the rectum of a 4-year-old boy, which he then had trouble removing. When a teacher in the school saw him in action with the knife, she asked him what he was doing, and then told him not to do it again, a child said. On this testimony, Gerald was convicted of a rape which had, miraculously, left no mark or other injury. Violet had tied a boy to a tree in front of the school one bright afternoon, in full view of everyone, and had assaulted him anally with a stick, and then with "a magic wand." She would be convicted of these charges. Cheryl had cut the leg off a squirrel.

Other than such testimony, the prosecutors had no shred of physical or other proof that could remotely pass as evidence of abuse. But they did have the power of their challenge to jurors: Convict the Amiraults to make sure the battle against child abuse went forward. Convict, so as not to reject the children who had bravely come forward with charges.
Gerald was sent to prison for 30 to 40 years, his mother and sister sentenced to eight to 20 years. The prosecutors celebrated what they called, at the time "a model, multidisciplinary prosecution." Gerald's wife, Patricia, and their three children—the family unfailingly devoted to him—went on with their lives. They spoke to him nightly and cherished such hope as they could find, that he would be restored to them.
Hope arrived in 1995, when Judge Robert Barton ordered a new trial for the women. Violet, now 72, and Cheryl had been imprisoned eight years. This toughest of judges, appalled as he came to know the facts of the case, ordered the women released at once. Judge Barton—known as Black Bart for the long sentences he gave criminals—did not thereafter trouble to conceal his contempt for the prosecutors. They would, he warned, do all in their power to hold on to Gerald, a prediction to prove altogether accurate.
No less outraged, Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein presided over a widely publicized hearings into the case resulting in findings that all the children's testimony was tainted. He said that "Every trick in the book had been used to get the children to say what the investigators wanted." The Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly—which had never in its 27 year history taken an editorial position on a case—published a scathing one directed at the prosecutors "who seemed unwilling to admit they might have sent innocent people to jail for crimes that had never occurred."
It was clear, when Martha Coakley took over as the new Middlesex County district attorney in 1999, that public opinion was running sharply against the prosecutors in the case. Violet Amirault was now gone. Ill and penniless after her release, she had been hounded to the end by prosecutors who succeeded in getting the Supreme Judicial Court to void the women's reversals of conviction. She lay waiting all the last days of her life, suitcase packed, for the expected court order to send her back to prison. Violet would die of cancer before any order came in September 1997.
That left Cheryl alone, facing rearrest. In the face of the increasing furor surrounding the case, Ms. Coakley agreed to revise and revoke her sentence to time served—but certain things had to be clear, she told the press. Cheryl's case, and that of Gerald, she explained, had nothing to do with one another—a startling proposition given the horrific abuse charges, identical in nature, of which all three of the Amiraults had been convicted.
No matter: When women were involved in such cases, the district attorney explained, it was usually because of the presence of "a primary male offender." According to Ms. Coakley's scenario, it was Gerald who had dragged his mother and sister along. Every statement she made now about Gerald reflected the same view, and the determination that he never go free. No one better exemplified the mindset and will of the prosecutors who originally had brought this case.
Before agreeing to revise Cheryl's sentence to time served, Ms. Coakley asked the Amiraults' attorney, James Sultan, to pledge—in exchange—that he would stop representing Gerald and undertake no further legal action on his behalf. She had evidently concluded that with Sultan gone—Sultan, whose mastery of the case was complete—any further effort by Gerald to win freedom would be doomed. Mr. Sultan, of course, refused.
In 2000, the Massachusetts Governor's Board of Pardons and Paroles met to consider a commutation of Gerald's sentence. After nine months of investigation, the board, reputed to be the toughest in the country, voted 5-0, with one abstention, to commute his sentence. Still more newsworthy was an added statement, signed by a majority of the board, which pointed to the lack of evidence against the Amiraults, and the "extraordinary if not bizarre allegations" on which they had been convicted.
Editorials in every major and minor paper in the state applauded the Board's findings. District Attorney Coakley was not idle either, and quickly set about organizing the parents and children in the case, bringing them to meetings with Acting Gov. Jane Swift, to persuade her to reject the board's ruling. Ms. Coakley also worked the press, setting up a special interview so that the now adult accusers could tell reporters, once more, of the tortures they had suffered at the hands of the Amiraults, and of their panic at the prospect of Gerald going free.
On Feb. 20, 2002, six months after the Board of Pardons issued its findings, the governor denied Gerald's commutation.
Gerald Amirault spent nearly two years more in prison before being granted parole in 2004. He would be released, with conditions not quite approximating that of a free man. He was declared a level three sex offender—among the consequences of his refusal, like that of his mother and sister, to "take responsibility" by confessing his crimes. He is required to wear, at all times, an electronic tracking device; to report, in a notebook, each time he leaves the house and returns; to obey a curfew confining him to his home between 11:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. He may not travel at all through certain areas (presumably those where his alleged victims live). He can, under these circumstances, find no regular employment.
The Amirault family is nonetheless grateful that they are together again.
Attorney General Martha Coakley—who had proven so dedicated a representative of the system that had brought the Amirault family to ruin, and who had fought so relentlessly to preserve their case—has recently expressed her view of this episode. Questioned about the Amiraults in the course of her current race for the U.S. Senate, she told reporters of her firm belief that the evidence against the Amiraults was "formidable" and that she was entirely convinced "those children were abused at day care center by the three defendants."
What does this say about her candidacy? (Ms. Coakley declined to be interviewed.) If the current attorney general of Massachusetts actually believes, as no serious citizen does, the preposterous charges that caused the Amiraults to be thrown into prison—the butcher knife rape with no blood, the public tree-tying episode, the mutilated squirrel and the rest—that is powerful testimony to the mind and capacities of this aspirant to a Senate seat. It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo—her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence.
If the sound of ghostly laughter is heard in Massachusetts these days as this campaign rolls on, with Martha Coakley self-portrayed as the guardian of justice and civil liberties, there is good reason.
Ms. Rabinowitz, a member of the Journal's editorial board, is the author of "No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusations, False Witness And Other Terrors Our Times" (Free Press, 2003).

Lessons of '66 and '94 Loom Over Democrats: Part 1

2010-01-13T01:03:00.000-04:00

by Thomas Del Beccaro
Midterm elections can present a considerable risk for a new President. Often viewed as a referendum on a President’s policies, the last 45 years featured such huge party losses as 54 House seats under Clinton, 48 seats under Ford, and 47 seats under Johnson. While Ford’s fate was not entirely his own, the fates of Johnson and Clinton present foreboding scenarios for Democrats in 2010.

Johnson and Clinton: Unpopular Policies Lead to Midterm Losses.
In 1964, the Democrats were sitting atop the political world. They held 68 Senate seats and gained 36 House seats for an overwhelming margin of 295 to 140 – not to mention winning the White House. Just two years later, however, they lost 48 seats. Why? A series of policies that were unpopular including a “credibility gap” on the Vietnam War and what one Democrat Governor said was “Frustration over Vietnam; too much federal spending and… taxation; no great public support for your Great Society programs; and … public disenchantment with the civil rights programs.” Despite the economy growing 6% because of the Kennedy/Johnson tax cuts, the divide between Johnson’s policies and public opinion produced a 49% approval rating for Johnson and resulted in historic losses for the President and his party in 1966.

In 1994, the Democrats lost a stunning 54 seats and control of the House for the first time in over 40 years. Bill Clinton was elected because Bush 41 broke his “no new tax” pledge, the economy was weak, the deficit was high and Ross Perot siphoned votes – all of which gave the young Clinton, promising middle class tax cuts, a plurality victory. Clinton then overestimated his victory, got off to a rocky start and raised taxes instead of cutting them. The divide between Clinton and voters over policy played out in his first midterm election when Republicans picked up 54 seats amidst an approval rating of 46% for Clinton – despite a recovering economy.

Obama’s Growing Divide.
Barack Obama won the Presidency in large part because of a weak economy.  Although he gave the voters only a vague sense of what Change would really mean, the damage Republicans did to themselves between 2005 and 2008, along with the economy, was enough for Obama to win – along with Media help and the dynamic of an historic first chance to elect a black President.  It is important to note that Obama won only 52.9% of the vote – a victory but not an overwhelming victory.
Today, Obama’s approval rating is in the mid to high 40s – an historic drop for a first year President.  Democrats rightly point out that the economy Obama inherited hurts his ratings.  It is his policies, however, that are increasingly more at odds with Americans and are truly the cause for his plummeting ratings.
Keep in mind that Obama approval rating in April was in the 60% range despite the bad economy.  Yes the continuing bad economy has a corrosive effect on Obama’s popularity; his divisive policies, however, have had a worse effect.
The so-called “stimulus” spending and resultant higher deficits are unpopular and hardly working. The Health Care bill is strongly opposed; the cap and trade/global warming policies are unpopular as are the coming tax hikes.  Those divisive policies have played a central role in quickly driving down Obama’s ratings.
2010 – No Room for a Turnaround.
Given lagging job growth and high deficits, and policies that many know will hurt, not help, the economy, the economic situation will not be the Democrats friend in 2010.  The unpopular Health Care bill will dominate the 1^st quarter of 2010 as the reconciliation process takes center stage – along with cap and trade, a record federal deficit, along with tax hikes, and an immigration battle that may scare and anger many voters.
Obama’s mounting policy divide with Americans, combined with a weak economy should leave Obama’s approval ratings in the low 40s by the summer and through the fall.
All of that is bad news for Democrats House candidates next fall.  Over the last 40 years, the average loss, in House seats, for the Presidents party when his approval rating is below 50% was 41 seats.  Recalling that even in a recovering economy that Clinton lost 54 seats and Johnson 47, unless Obama can bridge the growing policy divide he has with Americans or the economy roars back, unlikely scenarios both, Obama may well suffer the same fate as Johnson and Clinton with losses that exceed 40 seats – enough for the Republicans to retake the House.

Upset In The Making? Brown Leads Coakley In MA Sen Poll

2010-01-10T01:57:00.000-04:00

Posted by Mike Memoli | Email This | Permalink | Email Author

Democrats have been playing a careful game as the Massachusetts Senate contest winds down, raising the stakes in an effort to keep supporters engaged, but unwilling to admit any real concern. But this survey out late Saturday from Public Policy Polling (D) (744 LVs, 1/7-9, MoE +/- 3.6%) is sure to have Democrats across the country in a more obvious panic.
Special Election Matchup
Brown (R) 48
Coakley (D) 47
Und 6
Brown, who has had the airwaves largely to himself since the December primary election, has strong net +32 rating, while Coakley is just +7. And that is helping him with indies. From PPP:

Brown leads 63-31 with independents and is winning 17% of the Democratic vote while Coakley receives only 6% support from GOP voters. Both candidates are relatively popular, with 57% viewing Brown favorably to only 25% unfavorable and 50% with a positive opinion of Coakley to 42% negative.

Brown has run on the idea that he would be the "41st vote" in the Senate to oppose health care, and it seems those who are more likely to vote on January 19 would favor that decision: 47 percent oppose the Democratic plan, while 41 percent support it. President Obama's approval rating among these likely voters is a slim 44 percent, to 43 percent who disapprove.
It seems unlikely a final health care vote will happen in the Senate until after this special election, which certainly raises the stakes for Democrats here. The Coakley camp has announced that President Clinton will campaign with the attorney general this Friday. Perhaps now you'll see some sort of direct appeal from the White House. And Democrats will certainly have to try and raise Brown's negatives and tie him to the national GOP if they are to right the ship.
Though he's been clear he'd side with his party on the key issues like health care, Brown called himself as an independent in an interview with RCP this week who wouldn't be beholden to anyone if he was elected. You can read more from that interview here.

McCain vs. Obama's 'Left-wing crusade'

2010-01-09T00:51:00.002-04:00

by Mark Silva
John McCain has run against Barack Obama before.
He's running against him again.
With campaign radio ads billing the five-term Republican senator as "Arizona's last line of defense,'' the GOP's nominee for president in 2008 is attempting to bolster his 2010 campaign for reelection to the Senate with a slam at the president.
"President Obama is leading an extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America,'' McCain says in one of the radio ads his campaign is airing.

"I stand in his way every day,'' McCain says. "If I get a bruise or two knocking some sense into heads in Washington, so be it.''

McCain got his own head-knocking in the 2008 presidential election, and now he could be facing a party primary contest from a former Republican congressman, J.D. Hayworth, who is an outspoken critic of immigration reform -- an issue which McCain has championed in the Senate, and an issue on which McCain, Obama and some of the Senate's leading Democrats happen to agree. They support a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
But on the radio, McCain and Obama could not be further apart.
"He's lived through a battle or two, vanquished many a foe,'' a narrator says of the retired Navy pilot and admiral's son who spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. "But perhaps no battle in our lifetime is more vital than the one John McCain fights now... a battle to save America, save our jobs...
"John McCain leads the charge to slash government spending, bloated bureaucracies and ridiculously unaffordable ideas like government run health care.''
In another ad playing on a battle-tested McCain campaign tactic of invoking his days as a POW - reminding voters in Arizona that he could have come home to the U.S. earlier from that prison camp than he did (though Arizona was not home at the time) - the narrator says:
"John McCain is leading the fight against President Obama every day.''
It could get interesting when they get to that immigration bill.
(Sen. John McCain is pictured above after a meeting between President Barack Obama and the Democratic Caucus to push the health care reform plan at the Capitol in December, in a photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images. And McCain is pictured above with President Barack Obama, meeting with members of Congress to discuss immigration in June at the White House in a photo by Haraz N. Ghanbari / AP)

Young Guns II

2010-01-08T00:14:00.002-04:00

Some of the GOP's heavy hitters are giving thought to the party's future.

Through the tall trees of northern Wisconsin, Republican Sean Duffy is stalking a giant. The 38-year-old district attorney is talking fiscal responsibility, job creation, entitlement reform. He's scoring Washington for higher taxes, and for a health-care takeover. He's Facebooking and Twittering. He comes across as a serious yet positive reformer, a combo that has caught the public's eye.
He'll need that eye, and more, since his Goliath is one David Obey, Democratic head of the Appropriations Committee, the liberal bull who has occupied Wisconsin's Democratic-leaning 7th congressional seat since before Mr. Duffy was . . . born. That the Republican is getting some traction says something about how bitter voters are with the Democratic agenda. It says something equally important about a nascent GOP effort to rebrand the party.
Meet the new Young Guns.
The recent wave of Democratic retirements bodes well for Republicans. Yet they are still largely winning by default. The public doesn't like the Democratic agenda, but it hasn't forgotten the GOP's own corruption and loss of principle. And crafting a new image is a tough haul for a minority that is stuck responding to events, and that is still populated by many of the same, entrenched faces.
What is happening instead is a real (if underreported) effort to reshape the party from the bottom up—to, in effect, repopulate it with a crop of reformist candidates in the midterm. Behind the effort are three congressmen—Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, Virginia's Eric Cantor and California's Kevin McCarthy.

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Melissa Maund Rasmussen

Republican Sean Duffy on the campaign trail.

In 2007, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard profiled this trio as the "Young Guns" of the GOP. Hailing from different parts of the country, from different perspectives, what the three shared was a core belief in fiscal conservatism, a wonkish interest in tackling systemic government failures (budget, entitlements), and an ability to connect to younger voters.

At a recent interview, Rep. McCarthy remembers that not long after the article, the three sat down and vented frustration that party leaders seemed more interested in protecting old faces than investing in new talent. Inspired by Mr. Barnes's label, they began the Young Guns program, to recruit and bring along a new generation of House Republicans.
In the 2008 election, the program singled out 24 conservative candidates, providing them money and help. Seven went on to win in the GOP wipeout. Several of the victors—Texas's Pete Olson, Florida's Tom Rooney—are already proving to be aggressive new voices. Pete Sessions, who took over the National Republican Congressional Committee, was impressed enough to bring the program within the committee structure and expand it.
Participation in Young Guns today is more challenging. Candidates must hit benchmarks to qualify for the title, money and support; 47 candidates are working to qualify. And what exactly is a prospective Young Gun? It isn't as mapped out as Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. Yet it also isn't Rahm Emanuel's famous Red-to-Blue program, which simply ran candidates—regardless of ideology—who could win.
Mr. McCarthy says Young Guns tend to "fit their district." What they have in common is "that they are all fiscal conservatives" who believe in entrepreneurship and limited government. Many were already unhappy with Republican earmarking and spending, and the bailouts and deficits have provided a new focus on cleaning up government and tackling crony capitalism.
Most are running bread-and-butter economic campaigns, similar to Virginia Gov. Elect Bob McDonnell's. They are folks like Stephen Fincher, a farmer running for retiring Democratic Rep. John Tanner's Tennessee seat, or Frank Guinta, mayor of Manchester, challenging New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter. Mr. McCarthy is quick to note these are not backroom-anointed candidates, a la Dede Scozzafava in New York. In some districts, more than one prospective Young Gun is running in a primary.
Wisconsin's Mr. Duffy describes it this way: "I'm running because this is the fight of my generation. The prior one fought the Cold War, before that it was World War II. But our fight is becoming one for the principles of free markets and against creeping socialism." He's targeting Mr. Obey for writing the $787 billion stimulus, highlighting Democrats' failed economic program. The DA (who is also a professional lumberjack athlete) is crisscrossing the district to warn about rampant spending, Medicare cuts, higher taxes and overregulation.
But he's also aware that Republicans can only shake a tarnished reputation by embracing a modern, reform agenda. He's been laying out conservative alternatives to government-run health care. He's honest about the coming entitlement bomb. He's proposing a flatter, smarter tax code. In his first fund-raising quarter, he raised $140,000—a record for the district.
Young Guns is no panacea. Party leaders are still searching for a clear message. The NRCC is struggling to raise money to support its recruits. Voters remain skeptical of the GOP, and the environment may improve for Democrats as the year goes on.
Yet what the program does suggest is some of the GOP's heavy hitters are giving thought to the party's future. Given the Republicans' recent years of wandering, that's a start.
Write to kim@wsj.com

Exit Stage Left

2010-01-07T00:45:00.002-04:00

Chris Dodd retires ahead of the voter posse.

Something odd is happening to the permanent progressive majority that the U.S. was supposed to have elected 14 months ago: Its Members are announcing plans to leave Congress even before the voters get a chance to pass judgment on their liberal governance.
"This is my moment to step aside," Christopher Dodd said yesterday in front of the East Haddam, Connecticut home that he once financed with the help of Countrywide Financial. The 65-year-old, five-term Senator said his decision not to seek re-election was his own, but there's little doubt he was heading toward a well-earned defeat this fall amid personal scandal and an angry electorate unsettled by the Obama-Pelosi agenda.
A day earlier, North Dakota's 67-year-old Byron Dorgan announced he also won't seek re-election. Though a left-winger in a conservative state, Mr. Dorgan's brand of prairie populism has sold well enough to keep him in Washington for 30 years, and the Senate for three terms. Mr. Dorgan has not had a truly close election since Barack Obama was in grade school, but this year he might have faced popular GOP Governor John Hoeven in a state where 64% of those polled in December by Rasmussen Reports opposed ObamaCare. Mr. Hoeven, if he runs, or some other Republican will likely win the seat, assuming the GOP is remotely competent.
The Dodd retirement means that his seat is also up for grabs. We wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Dodd, so far down in the polls, was told by fellow Democrats that he needed to clear the field for someone with a chance to win in the bluish state. Democrats think that man is the seemingly eternal state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, but the national environment favors Republicans.
As the state's highest-ranking law-enforcement official, Mr. Blumenthal rejected any suggestion of investigating the state's senior Senator for his participation in Countrywide's VIP program. This may make voters rightly skeptical of his potential to be an agent of change. Mr. Blumenthal certainly offers nothing new on policy for those voters grown weary of Mr. Dodd's agenda.
The potential for GOP gains in these states, and others, underscores how much the Democrats' 60-seat Senate majority is a fleeting historical accident. Alaska Republican Ted Stevens barely lost even after he was convicted of a crime that was overturned after the election. Trailing after election night in 2008, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken surged to victory during a "recount" distinguished by more ballots than voters in 25 precincts and preposterous inconsistency in the enforcement of rules by the state's Canvassing Board. Pennsylvanian Arlen Specter switched parties last year after his vote for the Obama stimulus became so unpopular that he concluded he could never win again as a Republican.
The looming collapse of the Democrats' momentarily filibuster-proof majority is reason enough not to ram through a health-care bill on a partisan vote. The brute political force will only look more willful and dismissive of public opinion.
The other immediate policy implication is that Republicans now have a much stronger hand to reject Mr. Dodd's blueprint for financial reform. Combining a safety net for too-big-to-fail behemoths with expensive consumer regulation that would fall on small community banks, his proposal has a limited constituency outside Goldman Sachs.
Republicans should resist the collegial urge to bestow a taxpayer-funded capstone on Mr. Dodd's Congressional career. They are likely to be in a much stronger position in 2011.

Dorgan says he will not seek re-election in 2010

2010-01-06T00:37:00.002-04:00

Sat Dec 12, 1:10 PM ET

By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Ken Thomas, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 5, 6:32 pm ET

WASHINGTON – North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan says he will not seek re-election to the Senate in 2010, a surprise announcement that could give Republicans an opportunity to pick up a seat from the Republican-leaning state.
Dorgan, who was first elected to the Senate in 1992 after serving a dozen years in the U.S. House, said he reached the decision after discussing his future with family over the holidays.
The moderate Democrat said he has other interests he wants to pursue.
Republican Gov. John Hoeven has been mulling a possible challenge to Dorgan and the veteran lawmaker's retirement could clear the path for the popular governor. Democratic Rep. Earl Pomeroy could be interested in seeking the seat.

2006 Flashback: Pelosi Says Dems Will Have Most Honest & Ethical Congress in History

2010-01-06T00:32:00.003-04:00

Watch Out for GOP Populism

2010-01-06T00:28:00.000-04:00

Rep. Paul Ryan an enemy of business?

It's easy to underestimate conservatism's chances in these dark days. Over the last year, the Republican Party has appeared to be either a gang of obstructionists or a confused relic of some prehistoric past; its thinkers seemed to do little more than repeat catch-phrases you've heard dozens of times before; even its most earnest activists sometimes appeared to be the pawns of lobbying organizations.
But the movement might stage a comeback yet. According to the demented logic of American politics, the world began anew with the Obama presidency, and so it is the Democrats who will have to go before the public this fall and defend the bailout of Wall Street. Similarly, it might be the Republicans who seize the opportunity to capture public outrage this time around, denouncing concentrated economic power, insisting on holding big business accountable, and promising to settle scores with the nation's erstwhile financial rulers.
Given the GOP's doings over the past 30 years, such a reversal may strike you as implausible, if not downright ridiculous. But it can be done. The first step in what could become a movement in that direction is the essay by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that appeared in Forbes magazine in December. Its title: "Down With Big Business."
Now, Mr. Ryan seems at first like no more of a radical than do the editors of Forbes. The "philosophy of governing" spelled out on his campaign Web site rails against the New Deal, "class envy economics," and a federal "regulatory leviathan."
Mr. Ryan's fund raising also follows an unremarkable conservative pattern. According to the Web site maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics, many of his donations come from people or Political Action Committees associated with insurance, banking and a certain private equity firm that invests in banks and insurance companies.

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Rep. Paul Ryan

But the tone Mr. Ryan takes in his Forbes article makes him sound like the Jacobin of Janesville.

He savages "crony capitalism," pausing to note the "resentment" it is inspiring. He depicts the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP, as a well-intentioned measure that has become "an ad hoc, opaque slush fund for large institutions that are able to influence the Treasury Department's investment decisions behind-the-scenes." He complains about lobbying, offers the obligatory denunciation of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and bemoans the economic disasters befalling small companies while the rescued banks enjoy "record profits."
Had he stopped there, Mr. Ryan might have become my favorite Republican since William Allen White.
But the problem seems not to be that government made poor decisions over the past year; it's that government made any decisions at all. Government, in Mr. Ryan's view, is alternately the tool and the terror of big business, doing one firm's bidding as it crushes another one. The solution is to get government out of the game altogether, and Mr. Ryan fondly recalls the great deregulatory campaigns of the past (leaving out the embarrassing story of how he and his colleagues overturned Glass-Steagall and then watched the banking industry explode in a fireball of freedom).
This was once a familiar line of criticism: Big business's sin was that it wasn't entrepreneurial enough. If given the opportunity, business would use government to form cartels and suppress competition. Free markets must thus be protected from the grasp of the corporate monster. The way to bring big business down is by deregulating even more.
If this sounds twisted and counter-intuitive, that's because it is. This is an argument that might have sounded good in 1979 but for it to make sense today one has to disregard the wreckage all around us courtesy of three decades of regulatory rollback.
Still, for a large part of the Republican base all this will no doubt ring true: the problem with big business is big government.
For millions of disaffected independent voters, meanwhile, the tail-chasing logic behind the "down with big business" rhetoric probably won't make any difference. All that will matter will be the sincerity of the emotion, and if Mr. Ryan's essay is any indication, this is a job Republicans can do as well as any Code Pink activist.
That's why we may be heading for the greatest burst of fake populism since those TV commercials 10 years ago that showed a mob breaking down the doors of a stock exchange—not because the revolution was on but because they wanted to trade like the pros, which the sponsor promised to let them do.
Democrats, for their part, will find it difficult to respond in kind, especially after having spent their first year delivering regal gifts to the insurance industry and dithering over the urgent matter of new financial regulation. Their friends in the labor movement, meanwhile, got a lump of coal.
Oh well, many Democrats probably figure. Those people have nowhere else to go.
We shall see.
Write to thomas@wsj.com.

Obama's last year

2010-01-04T01:17:00.002-04:00

A Republican win would rob him of power — and make him a better president

Welcome to 2010: The final year of the Obama administration.
Not literally. For all I know, by 2012 the economy will be hotter than a terrorist’s underpants, Afghanistan will be no more unruly than Indianapolis Colts fans after their coach decided to throw away a perfect season and President Obama will resoundingly win re-election after Diane Sawyer gets Republican nominee Sarah Palin to confess she thought going rogue meant adding some pink makeup to her cheeks.
But a Democrat strategist told Bryon York of the Washington Examiner that House empress Nancy Pelosi was comfortable with losing “20 to 40” seats in the lower chamber as the price for getting health care “reform” passed. A loss of 40 seats would mean flipping the House to GOP hands, and instead of crossing swords with bogeymen like radio talk show hosts or unemployed former governors, the president would for the first time have to deal with a Republican who wields real power. The prospect of Obama trying to wheedle and cajole John Boehner the way Ronald Reagan wooed Tip O’Neill should brighten every conservative’s outlook.

REUTERS

A Republican Congress improved Clinton's presidency - the same could happen to Obama.

If even Pelosi is writing off up to 40 seats, it should be a bright year for Republican House candidates. Assuming incoming Speaker of the House Boehner or another Republican leader is able to keep his troops united — and lately the Republicans have displayed the harmony of an Olympics-caliber synchronized swimming team — that means an end to the glory days for Team Obama.
The liberal path to our national salvation is about to get itself a nice concrete roadblock.
Tick, tick.
So how much can the Obamatrons get accomplished in the next 12 months? Twelve months, it turns out, isn’t even enough to accomplish something Obama thought he could do with a stroke of a pen — close Guantanamo Bay. Administration officials are now saying that won’t happen until at least 2011.
Tick, tick.
With 60 seats in the Senate and a huge majority in the House, Democrats still needed the entire year to pass their health care bill — and that project isn’t even finished. Lately reports out of the Hill have been saying that the final push to reconcile the House and Senate bills won’t take place until February. If the rejiggered bill loses even three votes in the House, it fails. Pro-life Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) has said he can’t support a bill that is as friendly toward federal abortion funding as the Senate version, and he says he there are 10 other Dems who voted for the House version who feel the same way.
Tick, tick.
Finalizing passage of the health care bill is practically the easiest item on the Obama agenda. If they complete the health care marathon, dazed and gasping and dodging tomatoes thrown by their own constituents, how much regulatory mojo are lefty lawmakers going to have remaining to dive into cap-and-trade?
Politico reports “at least a half-dozen Democrats” in the Senate have told the White House to drop cap-and-trade. Recessions are notoriously harsh on the sales of luxury goods, and the nation is in no mood to spend hundreds of billions of lost economic output in order to buy a magical amulet to ward off global warming. Suggested compromise: Mr. President, why not deal with global warming with a nice interfaith prayer summit? You can invite every imam and Buddhist monk you know — don’t forget the pagans! — to hold hands and ask for a solution from whatever all-inclusive, nonpatriarchal supreme force might be inclined to listen. It’ll have the same effect on global warming as walloping everybody who uses carbon-based energy with a huge tax.
Remember how ambitious the Clinton administration was in its first two years? All that changed when Sheriff Gingrich arrived at the party and took away the keg. Suddenly it was Gingrich who was dictating the agenda — his capital gains tax cuts and welfare reform were the major policy accomplishments of the last six years of Clinton’s presidency.
Ultimately, though, Obama should be grateful if the Republicans do retake the House this year. Poll after poll shows that people like him personally more than they like his policies. If Republicans take away his ability to ram through any more of his ill-advised ideas, the appeal of Obama’s personality might regain precedence in citizens’ minds. He can blame the Republicans for saying no to everything, since that is indeed the party’s primary job, and the American voter can return to the pose he finds most comfortable: Simultaneously castigating the Washington forces that oppose change and enjoying the bounty that comes from stability.
By defeating Obama-ism in 2010, Republicans might find themselves repaid with an Obama victory in 2012.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

Why Regular Americans Are Turning Away From Democrats

2009-12-30T01:06:00.000-04:00

By Carol Platt Liebau

Certainly, 2009 is not ending on the note that Obama supporters - or the President himself - expected. Iran develops a nuclear arsenal unchecked, spitting in the eyes of the United States and the rest of the world. As evidenced on Christmas Day, Al Qaeda adherents still plot to murder innocent Americans. Notwithstanding his campaign pledge to slow the rise of the oceans, President Obama will find it difficult to execute at home the climate-change promises he made abroad.

And that's just foreign policy. At home, the "stimulus" rushed through Congress with the promise of a quick economic recovery and more jobs has shown no results - except trillions in new deficits, high unemployment and a continuing story of payoffs to key Democrat constituencies. Health care "reform" - intended as the apotheosis of liberal, big-government do-gooderism - has degenerated into a political disaster for the Democrats, with significant majorities of Republicans and independents opposing new congressional legislation so misbegotten that even its supporters characterize it as "flawed."

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Yet even as Obama's partisans have been surprised, perhaps his political adversaries have been astonished, as well. Given the uncritical coverage of the new President by the media during last year's campaign - and the warm embrace extended to him by the overwhelming majority of Americans last January - the magnitude of the burgeoning, spirited (but non-violent) repudiation of his brand of big-government liberalism has been heartening, and amazing.

Too often over the years, all the political passion (and public demonstrations of it) has seemed to come from groups on the left seeking an ever-larger role for government in American life. Students, unions, actors, community organizers and such have made most of the noise, not coincidentally because they've been the ones with the time and the inclination to do it. Those on the other side - small business people, the self-employed, stay-at-home moms and the like - have traditionally worked to succeed within the status quo, rather than constantly trying to change it. Often they've been so busy, in fact, that they've failed to notice when little bits of their liberty have been incrementally chipped away.

It took the shock of a year of unchecked Democrat rule to change all of that. Suddenly, regular Americans - the ones usually too busy or too complacent to protest - have come to realize that, like Frankenstein's monster, big government has taken on a life of its own. The federal government (led by a man who never held a private-sector business job) has taken over Chrysler and General Motors. Government appointees decree how much (and how) certain businesses can pay their own employees. And through environmental taxation and regulations, bureaucrats are seeking to seize control of virtually the entire private sector.

Suddenly, the liberty and free enterprise most of us have taken for granted seem to be in the greatest jeopardy of our lifetime. Worse yet, Democrat politicians have ignored the public outcry, ramming through unpopular legislation that would put one-sixth of the economy (and every American's health care!) under government control. Regular Americans - the ones more inclined to watch sports or go shopping than to organize protests - have taken notice. They've also taken umbrage.

By overreaching and arrogantly ignoring the widespread public discontent with them and their policies, Democrats from the President on down have succeeded in awakening a sleeping giant - regular Americans. They are people who may often take their freedom for granted, but who don't intend ever to let it be taken away.

They are the male and female heirs to the Sons of Liberty of Revolutionary times, the people who understand the danger of a government leviathan, and who insisted on "No taxation without representation." After watching the politicians they voted into power last year ignore the common good, instead seeking only power and political advantage for themselves, they're appalled - and perhaps even a little frightened.

Certainly, 2009 was a dark and disheartening year for lovers of economic and individual liberty. But if next year shapes up in accordance with current trends, the tide is about to change. With a growing recognition of the preciousness (and fragility) of liberty and a renewed appreciation of our founding principles, America is poised for a rebirth of freedom. Hail 2010: The Year of the Citizen.

Carol Platt Liebau is an attorney, political commentator and guest radio talk show host based near Los Angeles.

A Democrat Defects

2009-12-23T01:06:00.002-04:00

News from the Obama re-alignment watch: Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith announced yesterday that he plans to switch parties and become a Republican. At a press conference, the oncologist-turned-politician said he could not continue to align himself with a Democratic Party pushing a health-care bill that is "bad for our doctors . . . bad for our patients, and . . . bad for the young men and women who are considering going into the health-care field."

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Other than that, how do you like the bill?
Party switching often happens after a big election, as lawmakers try to retain legislative clout or join a new majority (Arlen Specter). A small boatload of moderate Democrats flipped to the Republican party after the Gingrich Revolution in 1994, including such Democrats as Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and Southern Congressmen Billy Tauzin, Nathan Deal and Mike Parker.
Far rarer is a mid-Congress conversion such as Mr. Griffith's, which comes a year before an election and from a party that has a 41-seat majority. It's true that Mr. Griffith is from Alabama, and only 38% of his district voted for President Obama. Mr. Griffith also voted against the stimulus and cap and trade, and this summer he said he wouldn't vote again for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker because she is "divisive and polarizing."
On the other hand, Republicans haven't held the seat since Reconstruction. And if last year's Democratic sweep truly signaled a sharp national swing to the left and a new majority that is likely to be lasting, then Mr. Griffith would have every incentive to stay a Democrat.
Our own view is that Mr. Griffith is the first Blue Dog casualty of this year's hard-left Democratic policy turn, but he decided to switch rather than fight next year. Many other Blue Dogs who voted for the stimulus, cap and tax, and health care are likely to experience a different kind of exit from the majority.

Dreading our future

2009-12-22T01:22:00.000-04:00

I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.
Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.
I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

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Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.
Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.
Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.
President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.
Equally surprising, he has become an insufferable bore. The grace notes and charm have vanished, with peevishness and petty spite his default emotions. His rhetorical gifts now serve his loathsome habit of fear-mongering.
"Time is running out," he says, over and again. He said it on health care, on the stimulus, in Copenhagen, on Iran.
Instead of provoking thought and inspiring ideas, the man hailed for his Ivy League nuance insists we stop thinking and do what he says. Now.
His assertion we will go bankrupt unless Congress immediately adopts the health monstrosity marks a new low. At least it did until he barged into a meeting in Copenhagen to insult the Chinese with the same do-it-now arrogance on carbon emissions.
Don't get me wrong -- it's OK to insult the Chinese, but save it for an urgent life-and-death issue. Iran qualifies, with its plans for a nuclear arsenal, yet Obama has not pushed China on that issue with the fervor of his attacks on their dirty smokestacks.
Washington has its own freak show and it also features Big Government theocrats. One of the mainstream media myths is that the Democrat-on-Democrat attacks of late pit moderates against liberals.

Horse hockey. No person of conservative or moderate sensibility could possibly support a federal takeover of the massive health system.
That some who profess to be moderates have gone along, either out of fear or partisan loyalty or payoffs, only underscores the madness.
In fact, it is a myth the fight is over health care at all. It is a vulgar power dispute between liberals and extreme liberals, with health care a convenient portal for command-and-control of 17 percent of the economy.
It's definitely not reform.
Notice how little Obama talks about sick people or medicine or suffering or any of the realities of illness and death. There is almost no mention of the moral dimension that supposedly animates the demand for universal coverage.

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The public intuitively understands the con, which is why it prefers the flawed status quo. Voters tell pollsters by as much as 3-to-1 they think a federal takeover will cost them and the country more money and will produce more red tape instead of better care.
Yet, because power corrupts, and one-party rule corrupts absolutely, dissenters are considered heretics. Until the next election.
Meanwhile, Mother Nature delivered her verdict with yesterday's blizzard in Washington. I am cheered by the thought that finally, hell has frozen over.
Unions feed as city bleeds
The disastrous decision by the City Council to kill a jobs-generating, $300 million development project in The Bronx was a scary sign of the rise of union power. But it's not the only one.
Virtually every day brings fresh evidence of how unions and their captive politicians are taking New York down a destructive path.
Consider the slash-and-burn MTA service cuts, which include a plan to end free rides for hundreds of thousands of students. It's no accident the decision, aimed at saving $400 million, comes as the agency is forced by the courts to pay raises of $300 million over two years.
At nearly 4 percent a year for each worker, the raises, first granted by a suspect arbitration process, mean the MTA's first obligation is to a union-protection racket instead of to paying customers. To cut services while giving raises in a recession is insane.
Something similar is happening with schools. Gov. Paterson's attempt to keep the state from running out of cash by delaying a fairly minor state-aid payment of $146 million was met with a lawsuit. The teachers union and some school boards claim he has no right to make the decision without legislative approval.
That would be the same Legislature that, when the union says jump, asks "how high."
Paterson showed courage by also calling the lawsuit the selfish act it is.
"We're supposed to get all the money and everybody else can just divide up the crumbs," he said of the attitude behind the suit. "It's clear to me they don't care about anybody but themselves."
The long-term impact of excessive union pandering is reflected by a Citizens Budget Commission study. Working with the Partnership for New York, it surveyed 52 large firms and found the city could save about $1.4 billion annually simply by providing the same health-insurance benefits as private firms.
Pension savings would be astronomical if the city could follow the private-market system of defined contributions instead of defined benefits.
Instead, it's locked into exorbitant and outdated plans. Taxpayers this year alone are paying $10.4 billion for the health insurance of employees and retirees and pensions for current workers.
In short, the problem is bad and getting worse. Each and every day.
Judge not - & be judged
There is no fury like that of an arrogant judge. Or 18 of them. That's how many signed an extraordinary letter calling the city's top lawyer, Michael Cardozo, "imperious" and "insulting."
Cardozo dared to criticize the slow pace of the courts, saying too many judges put off decisions or can't manage their caseloads.
The oddity is that Cardozo and his boss, Mayor Bloomberg, have too rarely faulted individual judges for bonehead rulings. Their silence earned them only an expectation it would be permanent.
With nothing to lose, maybe now they will speak up more often.
Larking up wrong tree
A story about city Christmas tree sellers told of their enduring long days and cold nights -- and the daffy questions of cus tomers. Among the dumbest: "How much are the $25 trees?"

Victory by Democrats on health care could turn sour

2009-12-18T01:02:00.002-04:00

By Gloria Borger, CNN Senior Political Analyst

December 17, 2009 6:32 a.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Democrats concerned about retirements in their ranks in Congress
Gloria Borger says recent state election in Kentucky highlights risks to Democrats
GOP candidate "nationalized" election by tying Democrat to Pelosi, Borger says
Democratic victory on unpopular health bill could hurt the party in midterm elections, she says

RELATED TOPICS

Editor's note: Gloria Borger is a senior political analyst for CNN, appearing regularly on CNN's "The Situation Room," "Campbell Brown," "AC360°" and "State of the Union With John King," as well as during special event coverage.

Washington (CNN) -- Democrats in Congress, already worried about their dim prospects in the 2010 midterm elections, have been thrown in a tizzy about something else that could reduce their majority: retirements.
They are four departures down and worried about more members leaving districts that have grown more competitive. And they're right to be concerned: Districts without any incumbent running often wind up switching to the other party.
But there's much more to worry about. Consider the results of a recent "open seat" special election for the state senate in a Democratic district in rural eastern Kentucky: Republican Jimmy Higdon beat the Democrat Jodie Haydon by tying him to, of all things, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.
"Congress is out of control," one effective ad intoned, "and [Haydon] will bring Nancy Pelosi's one-party control of government to Frankfurt."
Republican Higdon won by 12 points.
Sure, the Democrats say, there are local reasons their guy lost: The district itself is trending Republican. There were only about 20,000 voters. Obama himself only carried 38 percent of the vote there.
And while both candidates oppose abortion rights, the Republican Higdon was endorsed by the local right-to-life groups -- a big plus in this socially conservative region -- which he trumpeted in TV spots. So, they claim, all politics is local, right?
But wait. How do you explain the good GOP turnout? Or the fact that the Democrats won a prior special election in Kentucky earlier this year -- when no national issues were interjected -- but lost this time when the themes centered on Washington? "The country likes and wants balanced government," says Brad Todd, a GOP political consultant who worked on the Kentucky race. "And they feel the country is out of balance right now."
In other words, it's easy to nationalize even a state senate race when the locals don't like the way things are going in the country.
And it's not only the economy, although that is a big part of it -- with unemployment at more than 11 percent in Kentucky. The health care debate, which was supposed to be a huge plus for Democrats, has instead become a huge political albatross. "It's a polarizing issue," says Todd. "The Democrats have been pushing on this issue for an extended period of time now -- in the face of public opinion against it. The length and content of the health care fight has hurt the Democratic brand."
O, the irony: The Democrats -- who run the Congress and the White House -- have to pass health care to prove they can govern. If it falls apart, after all this time, they will look weak and ineffectual. Yet while they toil long days and nights trying to put together the votes, the bill itself has morphed into something the public fears. So passage could well become a short-lived political victory.
Some numbers: According to CNN polls, almost 8 in 10 believe it will add to the deficit. When asked whether the Senate bill would help your family a resounding 75 percent said no. And will it increase your taxes? Eighty-five percent said you bet it will.
So why not have a GOP candidate in Kentucky inject health care into a state senate race? "Keep the big hand of government out of our personal health care decisions," one Higdon ad warned ominously. One Democratic strategist familiar with the race says the ad didn't matter much since not enough people saw it to have a real impact.
Beyond Kentucky, the Democrats also protest on health care: The issue is misunderstood, they say. We are just losing the spin war and that will change, they say. Even if all of that is true, there's something else to understand: Once health care passes, it's still going to be unpopular. At least until the Democrats can prove why it works, and that could take a very long time.
The Republicans haven't exactly covered themselves in legislative glory, either. They might have had a real shot at success -- if that's what they really wanted -- if they had called the president's bluff. They might have looked for some areas of agreement on health care that could be passed with bipartisan votes. Instead, they opted for the "just say no" strategy.
It's a bad idea, but it's working. Why? Because "no" works when you're opposing something that is unpopular.
So maybe, as the Democrats say, this GOP Kentucky state senate victory was an outlier. "Since inauguration, there have been five races where national issues have been on the ballot and in each and every one of them ... Democrats won," says Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Hari Sevugan. "The real harbinger of things to come ... is the deep split in the Republican Party that is allowing a right wing fringe to take over, purge moderates and present a fundamentalist agenda to voters."
Gee, sounds like the Democrats are also happy to nationalize the upcoming midterm elections -- against the Republicans. As for the voters, they're just looking for results.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger.

Tea Party Movement Evolves Into Political Force With Eye Toward 2010

2009-12-17T00:33:00.000-04:00

FOXNews.com

The "tea party" movement that gained steam shortly after President Obama took office is seeing a surge in popularity, with a string of candidates and officials willing to take up its cause and a political infrastructure that's starting to mirror that of an actual political party.

In this Aug. 31 file photo, "tea party" demonstrators hold signs at a protest in Flagstaff, Ariz. (Reuters Photo)

What started as a conservative protest klatch has evolved into a political force with enough muscle to potentially alter the course of the 2010 mid-term elections.
The "tea party" movement that gained steam shortly after President Obama took office is seeing a surge in popularity with a string of candidates and officials willing to take up its cause and a political infrastructure that's starting to mirror that of an actual political party.
The tea party activists rallied for smaller government and lower taxes again on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon -- among the headliners were Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and former Texas Rep. Dick Armey, whose FreedomWorks group has acted as somewhat of an umbrella organization.
That's just the latest affirmation of tea party momentum:
-- Various tea party groups and supporters, including FreedomWorks, are launching political action committees to back candidates financially in the 2010 elections.
-- A Rasmussen poll last week showed that more voters would rather elect a "Tea Party" congressional candidate than a Republican one.
-- A documentary film was recently released tracking the evolution of the movement.
-- And several groups are pulling together the National Tea Party Convention in early February in Nashville, where former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is set to headline.
Sherry Phillips, vice president of convention organizer Tea Party Nation, said the event will be a chance for hundreds of delegates to figure out the future of the movement.
"It needs to move past just the rallies," Phillips told FoxNews.com. "We can't just stand around holding signs."
Prominent Republicans including Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn plan to speak at the convention. Phillips said the overarching goal of the tea partiers is to affect the 2010 elections and support candidates who reflect their values.
She said there's a split within the multifaceted movement over whether tea party should be big "T" or little "t." In other words, do the activists form their own party, officially, or try to influence the composition of the existing ones?
Tea Party Nation opposes the creation of a new third party. And FreedomWorks' Matt Kibbe said the special election in upstate New York last month -- in which Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman drove the Republican candidate out of the race with the help of tea party activists -- can be considered an "anomaly." (Hoffman ended up losing narrowly to Democrat Bill Owens.)
"I think a more practical solution is to take over the GOP," Kibbe said, explaining that the tea party movement can have the most impact by directing volunteers and money in support of GOP candidates who reflect their small-government values.
He mentioned Pennsylvania, where Pat Toomey is carrying the conservative banner in the U.S. Senate race, and Florida, where Marco Rubio is doing the same, as two model states.
"We're going to see a new set of leaders in Washington come November," Kibbe said.
FreedomWorks, meanwhile, is planning to put its money where its mouth is in the coming months. Armey told Fox News his group will start a PAC, not to fund candidates directly but to fund activities who support them.
Organizer Eric Odom recently launched his Liberty First PAC, and Phillips said her group is also considering creating a PAC.
The Republican Party would prefer to invite tea partiers into the fold rather than run against them in general elections, and this may force a change in the makeup of the GOP itself.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said his hope is that "we can all come together."
"This is the conservative party of the country," Steele said. "We offer that ... political infrastructure, if you will, if you want to run for office or if you want to be involved politically. This is the best place to do it."
The Rasmussen poll spelled out the kind of vote-splitting trouble the tea party movement could stir if it forms a third party. It showed that 23 percent of people would pick a "Tea Party" candidate on a congressional ballot without knowing who that candidate is, while just 18 percent would pick the Republican. Thirty-six percent would pick a Democrat.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters was conducted Dec. 4-5 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
FoxNews.com's Judson Berger and Fox News' Molly Henneberg contributed to this report.

Senate Watch 2010

2009-12-16T01:14:00.000-04:00

Twenty states to keep an eye on.

By John J. Miller

A year after the decimation of 2008, Republicans are newly confident about their election prospects in the Senate. Then again, they have almost nowhere to go but up: The GOP occupies only 40 seats, compared to 58 for the Democrats (plus a pair of “independent” allies, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bernie Sanders of Vermont).

As always, many races are foregone conclusions, such as the special election in Massachusetts next month to choose a successor to the late Ted Kennedy. But at least 20 of the 2010 Senate races are worth watching. Herewith, a state-by-state summary.

ARIZONA: Could Republican senator John McCain possibly lose two elections in a row? Last month, a Rasmussen poll of likely GOP primary voters suggested that Barack Obama may not be the last guy to defeat him: McCain clings to a measly two-point lead over former congressman J. D. Hayworth, 45 percent to 43 percent. Right now, Hayworth, a talk-radio host, is not even a declared candidate. There’s a significant gender gap, with McCain winning big among women and Hayworth well ahead among men. Democrats have yet to put forward a top-tier candidate. The primary is late, on August 24. LIKELY REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

ARKANSAS: Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln faces a tough election. A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows her trailing Republican state senator Gilbert Baker, 47 percent to 41 percent. Three other Republicans — businessman Curtis Coleman, activist Tom Cox, and state-senate majority leader Kim Hendren — also enjoy leads over Lincoln. Two-term incumbents are difficult to unseat, and Lincoln should not be underestimated — but neither should any of her challengers. LEANING DEMOCRATIC RETENTION.

CALIFORNIA: Conservatives always think Democrat Barbara Boxer will be more vulnerable than she really is. Their hope for 2010 is that an exceptionally strong GOP year finally will make the difference. On June 8, Republican primary voters will decide between state senator Chuck DeVore and former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina. Last month, a Rasmussen poll of likely voters showed Boxer leading both by double digits. LEANING DEMOCRATIC RETENTION.

COLORADO: Michael Bennet, the Democrat appointed to fill out the remainder of fellow Democrat Ken Salazar’s term when Salazar was appointed secretary of the interior, will seek a new term of his own. He faces a primary challenge from former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff. The Republican favorite is former lieutenant governor Jane Norton, who must survive her own primary against Weld County district attorney Ken Buck and former state senator Tom Wiens. In September, a Rasmussen poll of likely voters put Norton ahead of Bennet, 45 percent to 36 percent. TOSS-UP.

CONNECTICUT: It once seemed as if Democrat Christopher Dodd enjoyed a lifetime appointment to the Senate. Now scandals have made his reelection an iffy proposition. Last week, a Rasmussen poll of likely voters gave him an unfavorable rating of 58 percent. The same survey showed former Republican congressman Rob Simmons leading Dodd in a potential match-up by 13 points. Another declared GOP candidate, Linda McMahon — the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, the fake-wrestling company — was ahead of Dodd by 6 points. Simmons is almost certainly the better general-election contender. He may even become a slight favorite to oust the incumbent, assuming Dodd stays in the race, which is not a certainty. TOSS-UP.

DELAWARE: This is a special election to complete the last four years of the term Joe Biden won on the day he was also elected vice president. The office is currently held by Biden’s former chief of staff, Ted Kaufman — a presumptive seat-warmer for Biden’s son, state attorney general Beau Biden, who is widely expected to announce his candidacy soon. On the GOP side, Rep. Mike Castle, a former governor, will make a strong bid in this Democratic-leaning state. A few polls have put Castle in front, but not by much. A Susquehanna Polling and Research survey gave the advantage to Biden. LEANING DEMOCRATIC RETENTION.

FLORIDA: Conservative Marco Rubio, a former state house speaker, continues to close the gap between himself and moderate governor Charlie Crist in what may be the country’s most-watched GOP primary. Rubio remains behind in the polls and in fundraising, but he has turned his long-shot bid into a serious challenge. His goal will be to pass Crist during the two-or-three-week sprint shortly before the August 24 primary. The presumptive Democratic nominee is Rep. Kendrick Meek, who probably can’t beat either Crist or Rubio. LIKELY REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

ILLINOIS: This is President Obama’s old seat. The current occupant is Democrat Roland Burris, the appointee of former Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich, whose federal corruption trial is scheduled for next year. Burris is stepping down. Several Democrats seek to replace him, including state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, Chicago Urban League president Cheryle Jackson, and state inspector general David Hoffman. On the GOP side, Rep. Mark Kirk appears to have the nomination locked up. He is one of the most liberal Republicans in the House. The failure of conservatives to put forward a genuine alternative speaks to their weakness in the state. Polls suggest a close general election. LEANING DEMOCRATIC RETENTION.

KANSAS: Republican Sam Brownback is retiring from the Senate and running for governor. His successor almost certainly will be a fellow Republican. The real race here will take place not in November, but in the primary on August 3. Two GOP congressmen are in the mix: Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt. Last week, a poll of adults by SurveyUSA showed a close contest, with Moran at 37 percent, Tiahrt at 34 percent, and 29 percent undecided. LIKELY REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

KENTUCKY: Party loyalists often worry when an incumbent retires, but many Republicans felt relieved when gaffe-prone senator Jim Bunning announced that he would not seek a third term. Potential GOP successors include Secretary of State Trey Grayson and eye doctor Rand Paul, who is the son of 1988 and 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul. Like his father, Paul is an advocate of small government and a foreign-policy isolationist. Grayson will have the support of the party establishment. If Paul can rally his father’s campaign supporters — a small but passionate bunch — he could pull off a minor upset. Democrats will choose between Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo and Attorney General Jack Conway, with Mongiardo favored. The primary is on May 18. LEANING GOP RETENTION.

LOUISIANA: Republican senator John Vitter would be a shoo-in for reelection, except for that business a couple of years ago about the prostitution ring. He remains the favorite against Democratic congressman Charlie Melancon, but Melancon has material for some of the year’s most blisteringly negative ads. LEANING REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

MISSOURI: The retirement of GOP senator Kit Bond sets up a close race between two dynastic families in a classic swing state. GOP congressman Roy Blunt (father of former governor Matt Blunt) will square off against Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (daughter of former governor Mel Carnahan and former senator Jean Carnahan). Republicans are encouraged by the fact that although 2008 was a rotten year for them, John McCain still managed to carry Missouri by a slim margin. TOSS-UP.

NEVADA: Will Harry Reid be Daschled in 2010? Tom Daschle, also a Democratic Senate majority leader, lost reelection because his constituents regarded him as too liberal. A December poll of likely voters by the Las Vegas Review-Journal points to Reid’s vulnerability. Former state senator Sue Lowden, a Miss America runner-up in 1973, leads Reid, 51 percent to 41 percent. Businessman Danny Tarkanian, the son of legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, also performs well against Reid, 48 percent to 42 percent. TOSS-UP.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: The retirement of Republican Judd Gregg creates a pick-up opportunity for Democrats in a state that has been trending their way. Congressman Paul Hodes will be their nominee. Republican attorney general Kelly Ayotte will be a strong candidate as well. A Granite State poll of likely voters, released in October, showed Ayotte ahead of Hodes, 40 percent to 33 percent. TOSS-UP.

NEW YORK: The Empire State will have two senatorial elections in 2010. The reelection of Democratic senator Chuck Schumer is all but assured. The other race will determine who completes the final two years of Hillary Clinton’s term. It’s potentially competitive. Clinton’s appointed successor, Kirsten Gillibrand, will carry the torch for the Democrats. A couple of Republicans would stand a chance of ousting her. Polls suggest that Rudy Giuliani would win easily and former governor George Pataki would run well. So far, neither man has declared. LEANING DEMOCRATIC RETENTION.

NORTH CAROLINA: No incumbent has won reelection to Nixon nemesis Sam Ervin’s old Senate seat since Lyndon Johnson was president. Republican Richard Burr will try to succeed where Democrat Terry Sanford and Republican Lauch Faircloth failed. His likely Democratic foe is Secretary of State Elaine Marshall. In November, a Public Policy Polling survey of voters gave Burr a 4-point lead over a generic Democratic opponent and an 11-point lead — 45 percent to 34 percent — over Marshall. LEANING REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

NORTH DAKOTA: Right now, there’s only one poll that matters — the one in the head of Republican governor John Hoeven. If he decides to challenge Democratic senator Byron Dorgan, he becomes an instant favorite. If he declines the opportunity, Dorgan almost certainly cruises to reelection. In November, a Zogby poll gave Hoeven a commanding lead, 55 percent to 36 percent. Expect Hoeven to announce his decision around the New Year. TOSS-UP.

OHIO: In this open-seat race to succeed Republican George Voinovich, the GOP establishment has rallied around Rob Portman, a former congressman from Cincinnati as well as a budget director and trade diplomat during the Bush administration. Car dealer Tom Ganley also will compete for the Republican nomination. He has promised to spend up to $7 million of his own money running to Portman’s right, and his first television commercials were launched last month. Democrats will choose between Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher. Through the summer, polls showed both Brunner and Fisher beating Portman. By September, however, Portman had passed them and held a lead within the margin of error. TOSS-UP.

PENNSYLVANIA: Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat, potentially faces two tough elections. The first is in the Democratic primary on May 18, when he faces Rep. Joe Sestak. Last week, a Rasmussen poll of likely primary voters showed Specter ahead 48 percent to 35 percent — up from just a 4-point lead in October. If Specter survives this contest, he will probably face former Republican congressman Pat Toomey in a general-election rematch of the 2004 GOP primary. Rasmussen shows Toomey leading both Specter (46 percent to 42 percent) and Sestak (44 percent to 38 percent). TOSS-UP.

TEXAS: Republican senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is running for governor and says she plans to resign her seat — though recently she has said it won’t be until after the March 4 GOP primary, which promises to be a close election between her and incumbent Rick Perry. If she wins, she will almost certainly step down — and create a race where there isn’t one today. If she loses, all bets are off. Conservative Michael Williams recently declared his candidacy. The field is bound to grow. LIKELY REPUBLICAN RETENTION.

— John J. Miller is NR’s national reporter.

Paul Ryan and the future of the GOP

2009-12-16T01:09:00.002-04:00

This commentary from GOP thought leader Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin really sets the intellectual and political framework for where the GOP might be headed. He goes after Crony Capitalism, the melding of Big Money, Big Business and Big Goverment. This is what’s next. Here are some important bits:

1) Since bringing us back from the precipice however, the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] has morphed into crony capitalism at its worst. … No longer concerned with preserving overall financial market stability, Treasury’s walking around money continues to be deployed to reward the market’s Goliaths while letting its Davids suffer.
2) Washington is working hard to nationalize other sectors of our economy too. The House Finance Committee is pushing a massive financial “reform” bill, effectively creating banking utility companies. The Treasury Department has effectively nationalized the housing finance sector, with Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac demonstrating how fast big businesses, through a federally blessed and backed oligopoly, can fall. Now, on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, health care and energy lobbyists continue to fall over themselves to cut their deals–knowing that if they aren’t at the table, they’ll be on the menu.
3) Big businesses’ frenzied political dealings are not driven by party or ideology, but rather by zero-sum thinking in which their gain must come from a competitor’s loss. Erecting barriers to competition is a key to maintaining advantage and market share. With Washington leading the way, it makes sense for the big boys to redirect their resources to their lobbying shop and government affairs office. They’re far less interested in expanding the economic pie than with making certain that they get their slice.
4) For every encroachment into the market by the federal government–under the guise of “reform”–there exist pro-market alternatives that Republicans must articulate and passionately defend. University of Chicago’s Luigi Zingales, who has written extensively on the issue of crony capitalism, reminds policymakers that the path forward requires “adopting a pro-market, rather than pro-business, approach.”

Ex-Kennedy Aide In Fraud Bust

2009-12-16T01:06:00.002-04:00

Feds: Senate office manager stole $75,000 in bonus payment scheme

DECEMBER 15--The former office manager for the late Senator Ted Kennedy was indicted today on federal theft and fraud charges for allegedly pocketing more than $75,000 in unauthorized bonus payments over five years. Ngozi Pole, 39, was named today in a six-count felony indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (a copy of the charging document can be found below). According to prosecutors, Pole, pictured at right, was in charge of processing bonus payments approved by either Kennedy or his chief of staff. These payments, according to the indictment, came in two forms: a "holiday bonus" paid in December or January, and an "end-of-the-fiscal-year bonus" paid after September 30. The holiday bonuses ranged between $1000 and $2000, while the fiscal year bonuses "generally ranged from $3000 to $5000." These bonuses were not paid in lump sums, rather Kennedy employee salaries "were raised for a short period, after which employees' annual salaries were returned to their prior levels." Pole has been accused of keeping his salary at the inflated level for more than the prescribed period. From 2002-2007 he illegally pocketed more than $75,000, according to the indictment, and hid these larger-than-authorized payouts by submitting falsified records to successive Kennedy chiefs of staff. (12 pages)

Rep. Gordon is fourth Democratic retirement

2009-12-15T01:04:00.002-04:00

By Aaron Blake - 12/14/09 10:40 AM ET

Democratic retirements are beginning to mount, after the announcement Monday that Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) will not seek reelection next year.

Gordon said in a statement that, after a quarter-century in Congress, it’s time to retire.

“Every decision I have made in Congress has been with [constituents'] best interests in mind,” he said. “I hope the people here at home feel that I have served them as well as their good advice and views have served me.

“When I was elected, I was the youngest member of the Tennessee congressional delegation; now I’m one of the oldest. In fact, I have members of my staff who weren’t even born when I took office. That tells me it’s time for a new chapter.”
Gordon joins Reps. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.), John Tanner (D-Tenn.) and Brian Baird (D-Wash.) in announcing his retirement in recent weeks. Also, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) announced Friday that he will resign early to run for governor.

Gordon became a leading GOP target as the year progressed. State Sen. Jim Tracy (R) recently began looking at a campaign against him.

Polls show Dems might lose Obama, Biden Senate seats

2009-12-14T13:31:00.000-04:00

Republicans seek strongest candidates for key midterm ballots

By Donald Lambro

President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. won't be on the midterm ballot next year, but their former Senate seats will be, and both races are now either tossups or leaning Republican in high-visibility contests.
Mr. Obama, who was a freshman senator from Illinois when he was elected president, and Mr. Biden, who was in his sixth term as a senator from Delaware, come from states that have been running strongly Democratic in past elections. No one doubts that Mr. Obama would have been a re-election shoo-in had he remained in the Senate and that Mr. Biden had his seat for the foreseeable future.
But in another sign of political winds that appear to be blowing against the Democrats in the 2010 cycle, Republicans and independent political analysts say the chances are at least even that their seats could be taken over by two strong Republican candidates next November, when the GOP is expected to make gains in Congress and in the state governorships.
"Not to steal one of President Obama's favorite words, but in Illinois and Delaware, Republicans have a truly historic opportunity to win both the president and vice president's Senate seats, and we're fortunate to have the strongest possible candidates already in the race," said Brian Walsh, chief spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
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"There is still a long way to go until the election, and we certainly expect polls will fluctuate, but it's clear that even in traditionally blue states, voters are demanding accountability and want to restore checks and balances in Washington," Mr. Walsh said.
In Illinois, where Democrats are still reeling from an explosive "pay to play" corruption scandal that led to the arrest and impeachment of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, five-term Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the expected Republican nominee, is running for Mr. Obama's seat. The Democratic front-runner is state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, whom an opposing Democratic campaign adviser calls a "deeply flawed" candidate.
Illinois Republican leaders have been pounding Democrats for widespread corruption in the state's government, noting Mr. Giannoulias' ties to real estate developer and Democratic fundraiser Tony Rezko, who was convicted last year of fraud and money laundering.
"His family bank, where Alexi served as an officer, made loans to Tony Rezko, who is now sitting in a penitentiary," Republican state chairman Pat Brady said.
But Democratic campaign strategists have been among Mr. Giannoulias' critics, too.
"Alexi Giannoulias' own vulnerabilities are so significant, and far more damning than Kirk's among the electorate. ... His nomination would put Barack Obama's former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats," pollster Geoff Garin said last month in a widely distributed polling memo for Senate candidate David Hoffman, who is opposing Mr. Giannoulias for the Democratic nomination.
Earlier this year, the White House and state Democratic leaders thought that state Attorney General Lisa Madigan would guarantee that Mr. Obama's seat would remain in Democratic hands. But after getting the full Oval Office treatment to persuade her to run, she turned down Mr. Obama.
Party strategists say Mr. Giannoulias was their second choice, though White House adviser David Axelrod, who lobbied for Ms. Madigan, isn't enthusiastic about the turn of events. "She would have walked into the seat," he told the New York Times last month.
"The Blago saga will hang heavy over our politics," Mr. Axelrod said.
Sen. Roland W. Burris, who was appointed by Mr. Blagojevich to fill the vacancy, decided not to seek the election after he became the target of a Senate ethics committee investigation arising out of the corruption charges against Mr. Blagojevich. He was cleared of wrongdoing, but the panel said he had provided "incorrect, inconsistent, misleading" information about his conversations with the embattled governor and that his actions were "inappropriate."
The latest Rasmussen poll has Mr. Kirk, a party moderate who represents the northern suburbs of Chicago and has regularly won support from Democrats and independents there, in a statistical dead heat with Mr. Giannoulias, trailing the Democrat by 42 percent to 39 percent last week. An earlier poll had them tied at 41 percent.
Mr. Brady, who is privy to internal Republican Party polls, said Mr. Kirk "will win by five points or more. I don't think this is as close as pollsters say."
The Cook Political Report and the Rothenberg Political Report are calling the contest a tossup, but both election handicappers think the Republicans have a good shot at taking the seat.
"The state has a strongly Democratic bent, but the party's [corruption] problems, questions about Giannoulias, and an unusually appealing moderate Republican nominee give Democrats major problems in the Land of Lincoln," the latest Rothenberg Political Report said.
Mr. Biden's seat in Delaware also appears vulnerable. Rep. Michael N. Castle, a Republican who has won nine statewide elections as the state's only House member, has been leading state Attorney General Beau Biden in polls. Mr. Biden has delayed saying whether he will be a candidate for the remaining four years of his father's term.
Mr. Castle, a 70-year-old former governor, is a moderate whose cross-party appeal has drawn support from Democrats and independents over a political career that spans more than 40 years. A recent head-to-head voter survey by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, showed Mr. Castle leading the younger Mr. Biden by 45 percent to 39 percent.
A Public Policy Polling analysis of its findings pointed to two strong trends in Mr. Castle's favor: a 52 percent to 23 percent lead among independent voters, and the fact that he draws far more support from Democrats than Mr. Biden does from Republicans. The analysis found that 48 percent of Democrats view the Republican lawmaker favorably, while 15 percent of Republicans have a positive view of the 40-year-old Mr. Biden.
Independent analysts still think the vice president's son will enter the race, but there has been growing speculation about why he has not revealed his intentions more than two months after Mr. Castle announced his candidacy. He returned home in October after a year's tour of duty in Iraq and has been spending more time with his family while he considers his options.
"Both personally and politically, this was necessary and smart. There probably isn't much of a need for Biden to establish his campaign early, since he doesn't need to build a brand-name recognition and certainly won't encounter any trouble raising money," said Jennifer Duffy, senior elections analyst at the Cook Political Report.
Stuart Rothenberg has put the Delaware Senate race in his "lean Republican Takeover" column but cautions that "even if Beau Biden takes a pass on the contest, the combination of the state's Democratic bent and Castle's popularity strongly suggest a very competitive contest."
But many oddsmakers and analysts still think the edge goes to Mr. Castle. "This race is close, and Biden, if he gets in the race, will have a decent shot at winning. But Mike Castle looked like the favorite last winter, and nine months later he still does," said an analysis on Public Policy Polling's Web site.

Whole Foods Republicans

2009-12-14T01:19:00.002-04:00

The GOP needs to enlist voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics.

By MICHAEL J. PETRILLI

The Republican Party is resurgent—or so goes the conventional wisdom. With its gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, an energized "tea party" base, and an administration overreaching on health care, climate change and spending, 2010 could shape up to be 1994 all over again.
Maybe. The political landscape sure looks greener than it did a year ago, when talk of a permanent Democratic majority was omnipresent. But before John Boehner starts measuring the drapes in the Speaker's office, or the party exults about its possibilities in 2012, it's worth noting that some of the key trends driving President Barack Obama's strong victory in 2008 haven't disappeared. Republicans need to address them head-on if they want to lead a majority party again.
There are the depressing numbers on young voters (two-thirds of whom voted for Mr. Obama), African-Americans and Latinos (95% and 67% went blue respectively). But these groups have voted Democratic for decades, and their strong turnout in 2008's historic election wasn't replicated this fall, nor is it likely to be replicated again.
The voting patterns of the college-educated is another story. This is a group that, slowly but surely, is growing larger every year. About 30% of Americans 25 and older have at least a bachelor's degree; in 1988 that number was only 20% and in 1968 it was 10%.
As less-educated seniors pass away and better-educated 20- and 30-somethings take their place in the electorate, this bloc will exert growing influence. And here's the distressing news for the GOP: According to exit-poll data, a majority of college-educated voters (53%) pulled the lever for Mr. Obama in 2008—the first time a Democratic candidate has won this key segment since the 1970s.

View Full Image

David Gothard

Some in the GOP see this trend as an opportunity rather than a problem. Let the Democrats have the Starbucks set, goes the thinking, and we'll grab working-class families. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, for instance, wants to embrace "Sam's Club" Republicans. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee pitched himself in 2008 as the guy who "looks like your co-worker, not your boss." Even Mitt Romney blasted "Eastern elites." And of course there's Sarah Palin, whose entire brand is anti-intellectual.

To be sure, playing to personal identity is hardly novel, nor is it crazy. Bill Bishop and other political analysts have noted that people's politics are as much about their lifestyle choices as their policy positions. Republicans live in exurbs and small towns, drive pick-up trucks or SUVs, go to church every Sunday, and listen to country music. Well-heeled Democrats live in cities and close-in suburbs, drive hybrids or Volvos, hang out at bookshops, and frequent farmers' markets. These are stereotypes, of course, but they also contain some truth.
Widening this cultural divide has long been part of the GOP playbook, going back to Nixon's attacks on "East Coast intellectuals" and forward to candidate Obama's arugula-eating tendencies. But with the white working class shrinking and the educated "creative class" growing, playing the populism card looks like a strategy of subtraction rather than addition. A more enlightened approach would be to go after college-educated voters, to make the GOP safe for smarties again.
What's needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate "Whole Foods Republicans"—independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated indiividuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable urban environments; they believe in environmental stewardship, community service and a spirit of inclusion. And yes, many shop at Whole Foods, which has become a symbol of progressive affluence but is also a good example of the free enterprise system at work. (Not to mention that its founder is a well-known libertarian who took to these pages to excoriate ObamaCare as inimical to market principles.)
What makes these voters potential Republicans is that, lifestyle choices aside, they view big government with great suspicion. There's no law that someone who enjoys organic food, rides his bike to work, or wants a diverse school for his kids must also believe that the federal government should take over the health-care system or waste money on thousands of social programs with no evidence of effectiveness. Nor do highly educated people have to agree that a strong national defense is harmful to the cause of peace and international cooperation.
So how to woo these voters to the Republican column? The first step is to stop denigrating intelligence and education. President George W. Bush's bantering about being a "C" student may have enamored "the man in the street," but it surely discouraged more than a few "A" students from feeling like part of the team.
The same is true for Mrs. Palin's inability to name a single newspaper she reads. If the GOP doesn't want to be branded the "Party of Stupid," it could stand to nominate more people who can speak eloquently on complicated policy matters.
Even more important is the party's message on divisive social issues. When some Republicans use homophobic language, express thinly disguised contempt toward immigrants, or ridicule heartfelt concerns for the environment, they affront the values of the educated class. And they lose votes they otherwise ought to win.
The races in Virginia and New Jersey show what can happen when the GOP sticks to its core economic message instead of playing wedge politics. Both Republican candidates won majorities of college-educated voters. Their approach attracted Sam's Club Republicans and Whole Foods Republicans alike.
It's good news that America is becoming better educated, more inclusive, and more concerned about the environment. The Republican Party can either catch this wave, or watch its historic opportunity for "resurgence" wash away with the tides.
Mr. Petrilli is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a frequenter of the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Md.

The Real Lessons of 1994

2009-12-14T01:16:00.002-04:00

Voters punished Democrats for Hillarycare. They'll do the same for Obamacare.
by Jeffrey H. Anderson and Andy Wickersham
12/21/2009, Volume 015, Issue 14

Democratic senators and congressmen have been trying to convince each other, particularly their more conservative colleagues, that they'll all be better off in the 2010 elections--and will avoid a repeat of their 1994 debacle--if they pass Obama-care. Bill Clinton, half of the central duo in the failed attempt to pass Hillarycare in 1994, recently addressed Senate Democrats and sang the party-line tune. Speaking to reporters afterward, Clinton said, "I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as they can. . . . The worst thing to do is nothing."
But the evidence cuts the other way. Democrats did indeed get slaughtered in 1994--with Republicans taking over the House for the first time since the Truman administration--but it wasn't because they failed to pass Hil-lary-care. It was because they tried.
It's true, there were no formal votes on a bill, so there was no chance for Democratic members to distance themselves officially from the plan. Nevertheless, voters knew that it was the more conservative Democrats (with the GOP, then as now the minority party, urging them on) who killed the bill--over their more liberal colleagues' objections.
So who paid the price in 1994? Was it the typical Democrats, for trying to pass Hillarycare or their more conservative colleagues for stopping it?
The question is timely, for Americans' notion of what their health care would be like under Obamacare is strikingly similar to what they thought it would be like under Hillarycare. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that, by 37

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to 19 percent, Americans think the quality of their health care would get worse, rather than better, under Obamacare. The same poll's nearly identical question about Hillarycare in 1994 also showed that Americans thought the quality of their health care would get worse, by 38 to 20 percent. What, then, really happened to Democrats in the 1994 election? We took liberal/conservative ratings from the American Conservative Union and divided congressional Democrats into ideological thirds: most conservative, typical, and most liberal. We then examined how each group of Democrats fared in seeking reelection in the wake of Hillarycare and compared those results with the reelection bids of Democrats in the congressional elections of the last 20 years.
The conclusions are clear, and they defy the notion that the worst thing that Democrats could do is nothing. In the other nine elections over the past 20 years, the typical (middle-third) Democrats have done far better than the more conservative Democrats. In fact, conservative Democrats have lost 67 percent more often than their party's typical members. In 1994, that turned around completely: That year, typical Democrats lost 56 percent more often than their more conservative colleagues.
In other words: Voters did punish Democrats for trying to pass Hillarycare, but they didn't punish them evenly--and they certainly didn't punish them for failing to pass it. Instead, voters went comparatively easy on the more conservative Democrats who opposed it.
Conservative Democrats generally do worse than their colleagues in seeking reelection because they usually run in contested districts that either party can realistically win. They are often running on Republican--or at least highly disputed--turf. Conversely, the most liberal Democrats usually run in Democratic strongholds. Over the last two decades--apart from 1994--more conservative Democrats have been twice as apt to lose as other members of their party. Given the districts or states in which they run, this is not at all surprising. But what is surprising is this: In 1994, the more conservative Democrats erased that disadvantage.

In 1994, the more conservative third of Democrats ran in states where the average margin of victory for President Clinton had been only 1.6 percentage points (compared to 5.6 percentage points nationally). Meanwhile, the other two-thirds of Democrats ran in states where Clinton's average margin of victory had been 7.7 percentage points. Despite the far greater challenge they faced in running on much less friendly soil, the more conservative Democrats won every bit as often in 1994 as other Democrats did--the only time in the past 20 years that they were able to pull off this improbable result.
But what is most striking is how much better the conservative third did than the typical Democrats of the middle third. Compared with the more conservative Democrats, typical Democrats ran twice as often in the six most consistently Democratic states (those Democrats won by 10 percentage points or more in each of the past five presidential elections) and barely half as often in GOP states (those the GOP won in most of those elections). Despite this huge advantage in voter composition, they not only failed to win more often, they lost 56 percent more often.
Swing-voters apparently (and rightly) blamed typical Democrats for advancing Hillarycare. Where independent voters were not really decisive--such as in the most liberal members' districts--this effect wasn't strongly felt. But where independents held sway, typical Democrats felt their wrath. And in 1994, the voters did this without the benefit of being able to consult concrete votes on the proposed health care

legislation. They won't be similarly handicapped in 2010. In June of this year, a Fox News poll showed that (among those who had an opinion on the matter) 73 percent of independents approved of President Obama's job performance. After five months of debate over Obama's health care overhaul, the same poll now shows that only 40 percent of independents approve of his job performance.
If Democrats want to go on an electoral suicide mission in the face of clear public opposition and try to pass a nation-changing piece of legislation by a party-line vote (both Social Security and Medicare were passed by majorities of both parties in at least one congressional chamber), they should consider one further fact. The proposed legislation won't take effect quickly, much of it not until 2014. Before then, we'll vote in two national elections. The American people would not only be able to vote out members who disregard their wishes and pass legislation they don't want. Through the election of other members, they would be able to repeal that legislation.
In the wake of the Hillarycare debate in 1994, voters harshly punished typical Democratic members. As the calendar approaches 2010, many Democratic members face a potentially career-defining choice that will determine whether their constituents will regard them as being among the more conservative members of their party, or among its typical members. If 1994 is any guide, this determination could well decide their fate. The question for such Democratic members is this: Are you willing to die charging a hill that may well be retaken in 2010 and 2012 in your absence?
Jeffrey H. Anderson, a senior fellow in health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute, was the senior speechwriter for Secretary Mike Leavitt at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and is the director of the Benjamin Rush Society. Andy Wickersham is a writer and consultant.

Democrats’ ‘big tent’ faces challenges from conservative members

2009-12-11T00:20:00.002-04:00

Newly elected moderate and conservative Democrats helped the party build a ‘big tent’ majority in the House. But those very same members – worrying about 2010 elections – are threatening Democrats' majority on major votes.

Washington

House Democrats fought their way back to power in 2006 and expanded their majority in 2008 by recruiting candidates who could win in conservative districts – a strategy that’s coming back to bite them as they try to move a sweeping legislative agenda.
The “majority makers,” as Speaker Nancy Pelosi dubbed them, fit the moderate-to-conservative districts they aimed to win. They railed on big government, spending, and taxes. Some challenged the merits of government regulation, called for more limits on abortion rights, opposed any softening of illegal immigration policy, or appeared in photos toting rifles.
Now, with legacy bills for Democrats on the line, many are voting that way. On issues ranging from healthcare and climate change to social issues, the “majority makers” often find themselves challenging the very majority they helped to create.
At the same time, big bills on healthcare, climate change, and Wall Street regulation could spell the demise of Democrats’ majority in the 2010 elections, if conservative Democrats lose for voting outside the comfort zones of their districts. The influence of these Democrats in shaping key legislation is leading some traditional Democratic constituencies – such as consumer watchdogs – to express dismay over what’s emerging from bill-crafting House committees.
“What these votes do is form an overall impression in voters’ minds on whether these members are too liberal for the district. I see these as tone-setting issues for 2010,” says David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report in Washington.
Of 48 races ranked by the Cook Political Report as competitive in 2010, 36 are held by Democrats. In another 60 potentially competitive races, Democrats hold 45 of those seats, as well.
“Democrats are in a bind,” says Mr. Wasserman. To hold the House in 2010, “they have to juice up their own base and retain independent voters.”
With the balance in the House at 258 Democrats to 177 Republicans, the majority has some leeway to indulge dissent from its restive right wing. But leaders still need 218 votes to move a reform agenda. With the GOP closing ranks on important votes, Democrats can afford only 40 defections on big votes. For now, conservative or moderate Democrats from red districts are claiming most of them – and then some.
Of the 39 House Democrats who opposed healthcare legislation in a Nov. 7 vote, 31 represent districts that backed GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008. Four others were elected by districts that voted for George W. Bush in 2004. The bill passed, 220 to 215.
The big issues for most dissenting Democrats were the overall cost and concern that the bill did not do enough to rein in health costs in the longer term.
“It was punitive toward small businesses, and it paid for reform by raising taxes rather than by squeezing the inefficiencies out of and modernizing our healthcare system,” said Rep. Jason Altmire (D) of Pennsylvania in a postvote statement. “Until we rein in skyrocketing healthcare costs, we will simply be perpetuating an inefficient system that is unsustainable over time.”
Two days after the healthcare vote, the liberal activist group MoveOn.org Political Action launched television ads targeting seven lawmakers who voted against healthcare – six of them Democrats.
Besides Mr. Altmire, the other Democrats were Reps. Mike Ross of Arkansas, Glenn Nye of Virginia, Rick Boucher of Virginia, and Larry Kissell and Heath Shuler of North Carolina.
Freshmen facing the toughest reelection bids weren’t pressured to fall on their swords on this vote.
“After carefully reviewing this legislation and hearing from thousands of Coloradans across my district, I could not support this bill,” said freshman Rep. Betsy Markey (D) of Colorado in a statement. Ms. Markey, who faces a tough reelection race in 2010, is the first Democrat to hold the seat since 1973. This “majority maker” got a pass on this vote – and a hug from Speaker Pelosi on the floor.
Limits on abortion
Among the toughest negotiations was a call from social conservatives in the Democratic caucus to strengthen restrictions on funding abortion services in healthcare reform.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan, who cosponsored the amendment with Rep. Joe Pitts (R) of Pennsylvania, claimed 40 Democrats willing to vote down the bill over this issue. At the 11th hour, Pelosi agreed to allow a floor vote on the amendment, which passed 240-194. Sixty-four Democrats joined all Republicans in adding these restrictions to the House bill, including 35 red-district Democrats. In all, 56 percent of Democrats who opposed healthcare reform also voted in favor of this amendment.
After the vote, abortion rights Democrats announced that they have more than 40 votes against the final version of the bill, if the Senate fails to remove this provision in conference.
Climate change
Most of the Democrats who opposed healthcare reform also voted against the majority on climate-change legislation, which narrowly passed the House, 219 to 212, on June 26. As with previous energy bills, fault lines in the vote reflect regional interests – notably, whether the region depends on coal for electricity – rather than strict party identification. But the more conservative ideology of the “majority makers” did play a role.
“When Democrats expanded their base in 2006 and ’08, they brought in Democrats who represent very different constituencies. They are far more independent-minded, more moderate in ideology, and more pragmatic,” says G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll. “It’s making a big difference in key votes.
“On issues like climate change,” he adds, “there’s a real fear on the part of many of these [new] Democrats that by meddling with the cap-and-trade system, you weaken the power of firms to compete and eventually we’ll be deep in recession and debt.”
Managing the big tent
The strategy of reaching into GOP districts to expand the Democratic majority faces its starkest test as leaders try to rally a diverse caucus around major controversial bills.
“Persuasion will only work to a limited extent. These are Democrats who are ideologically opposed to what the White House wants, and the only option [Democratic leaders] have is to lean on them,” says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. “But there is a timidity in the speaker’s office of using that power and great fear of [the House] tipping back to the Republicans, as it did in 1994.”
Questioned often on this point, Pelosi says managing a bigger tent is a challenge she’s glad to have, given the alternative. She still meets weekly with the freshman class of 2008 and, separately, with the class of 2006. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has set up a designated funding stream to help Democrats in marginal seats.
“She has always said: You represent your district, but you also try to find consensus within the caucus,” says Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for Pelosi.
On the prospects of social Democrats bringing down healthcare reform over the abortion issue, he adds: “There is always this prevailing Washington wisdom that this hurdle is going to be the highest and you can’t overcome it. But through building consensus with the caucus we have gotten over those hurdles.”

Generic Congressional Vote

2009-12-11T00:19:00.002-04:00

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	Republicans	Democrats	Spread
RCP Average	11/5 - 12/7	--	44.2	43.4	Republicans +0.8
Bloomberg	12/3 - 12/7	714 LV	42	38	Republicans +4
Rasmussen Reports	11/30 - 12/6	3500 LV	43	39	Republicans +4
Democracy Corps (D)	11/12 - 11/16	875 LV	45	47	Democrats +2
CNN/Opinion Research	11/13 - 11/15	928 RV	43	49	Democrats +6
Gallup	11/5 - 11/8	894 RV	48	44	Republicans +4

See All Generic Congressional Vote Polling Data

Recent Commentary & News Stories

Mark Penn's two firms awarded millions from stimulus for PR campaign

2009-12-10T00:38:00.002-04:00

By Alexander Bolton - 12/09/09 12:00 AM ET

A contract worth nearly $6 million in stimulus funds was awarded by the Obama adminstration to two firms run by Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster in 2008.

Federal records show that a contract worth $5.97 million, part of the $787 billion stimulus Congress passed this year, helped preserve three jobs at Burson-Marsteller, the global public-relations and communications firm headed by Penn.Burson-Marsteller won the contract to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television. Nearly $2.8 million of the contract was awarded through a subcontract to Penn's polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland, according to federal records.
Federal records also show that a former adviser to President Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign received nearly $70,000 from that contract to help alert viewers in difficult-to-reach communities that their televisions would ssoon no longer receive broadcast signals.
The adviser, Alfredo J. Balsera, who heads a public-affairs firm based in Coral Gables, Fla., helped craft Obama’s Hispanic advertising message.
Republicans on Tuesday criticized the federal spending on the advertising project as a waste of taxpayer dollars. They noted that the advertising campaign took place on May 5, only 39 days before the digital television transition was scheduled (June 12).
GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) held a news conference Tuesday to blast 100 “wasteful” projects funded by the $787 billion economic stimulus package Congress passed earlier this year, concluding that at least $7 billion of the $217 billion spent through November was wasteful and mismanaged
The GOP senators highlighted the direction of the stimulus funds on the same day Obama outlined a new series of proposals for creating jobs that Republicans view as another stimulus measure. The proposals include tax cuts for small businesses, tax incentives for employers to hire new workers and infrastructure spending.
The need for additional measures has raised questions over the efficacy of the stimulus package passed earlier this year.
White House officials have said the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the stimulus helped to create 1.6 million jobs. White House aides also have noted that the national employment report for November showed dramatic improvement compared to early this year.
A White House spokeswoman on Tuesday responded to the GOP report by saying Coburn’s previous reports on stimulus spending have been filled with “false or misleading claims.”
“In the end, even if there are a few unwise projects, it is only a handful out of the over 50,000 projects that have been approved to date,” said Liz Oxhorn, a White House spokeswoman. “The real question here is whether Recovery Act critics will at long last acknowledge that well over 99 percent of the projects are sound, effective and working as promised.”
McCain and Coburn did not show any indication that they knew two Democratic political strategists received funding through the grant.
A review of federal records by The Hill revealed Penn and Balsera received money from the economic stimulus program.
Burson-Marsteller, which Penn heads as CEO worldwide, won the $5.97 million contract through Young & Rubicam. (Burson-Marsteller has been a part of Young & Rubicam Brands since 1979.)
Burson-Marsteller did not respond to two requests on Tuesday to discuss its contract with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
On Wednesday, after news of the contract attracted widespread attention on the Internet, Burston-Marsteller issued a statement defending its work. The firm said it spent only $4.36 million of the contract to complete the digital television advertising initiative. An FCC official confirmed that number.
"Burson-Marsteller, and the approved set of vendors, including its sister company Penn Schoen & Berland LLC, successfully completed the work with the FCC on time and under budget, the company said in its statement. "Burson-Marsteller received a total of $1,375,000 in professional fees to manage and support this time sensitive national and local effort with a large team of professionals. They disbursed the rest to firms around the country in local communities," the company said.
Burson-Marsteller said its sister company, Penn, Schoen & Berland, received only $142,000 in fees. The rest was spent on a $2.4 million media buy that went to newspapers and local radio stations around the country and $147,000 spent for the services of advertising production houses, according to Burson-Marsteller.
A contract award summary posted on Recovery.gov, the government website that tracks stimulus spending, states Burson-Marsteller was awarded a competitive contract by the FCC to help prepare “unready households for the DTV transition.”
The purpose of the campaign was to “bolster the reach, penetration and impact of the FCC’s DTV readiness messages in selected markets, specifically among the groups that had been determined to be the most at risk.”
Cassandra Andrade, a senior associate with Balsera Communications, said, “I can see where there’s concern, but the contract was strictly based on our merits. We’ve been working on multicultural outreach for many years.”
Andrade said her firm worked to contact Hispanic television viewers in Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Andrade noted that according to Nielsen, a media-research company, there was a sharp decline in the number of unready homes in the week leading up to the digital transition and that 97.5 percent of households were ready for the switch.
A spokesman for Penn, Schoen & Berland did not respond to a request for comment.
Penn received scrutiny during and after the 2008 presidential campaign for the role he played in Clinton’s unsuccessful White House bid. Some Clinton supporters questioned whether his service was worth the millions in fees he billed to the campaign.
Penn’s firm billed the campaign $5 million for polling and at least $8 million for sending out direct-mail pieces, according to Time magazine. Clinton’s campaign finally paid off the debt in July.
Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said the three jobs saved at Burson-Marsteller represented a poor value for taxpayers.
“It illustrates a very poor way to create jobs,” Kyl said.
Kyl said the appropriateness of Democratic strategists receiving funds “depends on whether they exerted some influence.”
The digital television advertising campaign ranked as No. 3 on the list of 100 projects that GOP senators on Tuesday highlighted as “pure waste” in the billions of stimulus funds spent this year.
At the top of the GOP list is a $5 million grant from the Department of Energy to create a geothermal energy system for the Oak Ridge City Center shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The main problem with the project, say Republicans, is the fact the mall has been losing tenants for years and is mostly empty.
GOP senators also blasted a $1.57 million grant to Penn State University to search for fossils in Argentina and a $100,000 award to a liberal-leaning theater in Minnesota for socially conscious puppet shows.
Two million dollars in stimulus money went to build a replica railroad as a tourist attraction in Carson City, Nev.
A dinner cruise company based in Chicago received nearly $1 million in funds to combat terrorism.
Half a million dollars went to Arizona State University to study the genetic makeup of ants to determine distinctive roles in ant colonies; $450,000 went to the University of Arizona to study the division of labor in ant colonies.
The State University of New York at Buffalo won $390,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana. The National Institutes of Health got $219,000 in funds to study whether female college students are more likely to “hook up” after drinking alcohol.
The University of Hawaii collected $210,000 to study the learning patterns of honeybees, and $700,000 went to help crab fishermen in Oregon recover lost crab pots.
This article was updated on 8:17 p.m.
Update: The Hill initially reported on the basis of federal records that nearly $6 million in stimulus money was paid to Burson-Marsteller and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates. Burson-Marsteller received a federal contract worth $5.97 million. As part of that contract, Penn, Schoen & Berland received a subcontract worth more than $2.7 million. A spokesman for Burson-Marsteller said only $4.36 million from the contract is scheduled to be paid out. Burson-Marsteller declined to respond to a request Tuesday to explain the details of its contract.

2010 Connecticut Senate Race

2009-12-10T00:32:00.001-04:00

Connecticut Senate - Simmons vs. Dodd

Poll	Date	Sample	Simmons (R)	Dodd (D)	Spread
RCP Average	9/8 - 12/7	--	47.7	38.3	Simmons +9.4
Rasmussen Reports	12/07 - 12/07	500 LV	48	35	Simmons +13
Quinnipiac	11/03 - 11/08	1236 RV	49	38	Simmons +11
Daily Kos/R2000	09/08 - 09/10	600 LV	46	42	Simmons +4

Connecticut Senate - McMahon vs. Dodd

Poll	Date	Sample	McMahon (R)	Dodd (D)	Spread
Rasmussen Reports	12/07 - 12/07	500 LV	44	38	McMahon +6
Quinnipiac	11/03 - 11/08	1236 RV	43	41	McMahon +2

Ohio Governor - Kasich vs. Strickland

2009-12-10T00:31:00.002-04:00

Candidates

John Kasich (R)
Bio | Campaign Site

Ted Strickland (D)
Bio | Campaign Site

Ohio Snapshot

Job Approval: Gov. Strickland | President Obama

Senate: Fisher vs. Portman | Brunner vs. Portman

FINAL POLLS & ELECTION RESULTS
2008 President: Obama (D) vs. McCain (R)
2008 President: Democratic Primary
2006 Governor: Strickland (D) vs. Blackwell (R)
2006 Senate: Brown (D) vs. DeWine (R)
2004 President: Bush (R) vs. Kerry (D)
2004 Senate: Voinovich (R) vs. Fingerhut (D)

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	Kasich (R)	Strickland (D)	Spread
RCP Average	10/14 - 12/7	--	45.0	42.3	Kasich +2.7
Rasmussen Reports	12/7 - 12/7	500 LV	48	39	Kasich +9
Quinnipiac	11/5 - 11/9	1123 RV	40	40	Tie
Ohio Poll/Univ of Cin.	10/14 - 10/20	687 RV	47	48	Strickland +1

See All Ohio Governor - Kasich vs. Strickland Polling Data

Charter Schools Against the Odds

2009-12-09T14:18:00.002-04:00

They're growing, despite union hostility.

Charter schools reached a new milestone this year. According to the Center for Education Reform, more than 5,000 charters are now operating in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Considering that the first charter didn't open until 1992, and that these innovative schools have faced outright hostility from teachers unions and the education bureaucracy, their growth is a rare gleam of hope for American public schools.
More than 1.5 million students now attend charters, an 11% increase from a year ago. That's only about 3% of all public school students, but the number has more than quadrupled in the past decade. And it would be much higher if the supply of charter schools was meeting the demand. As of June, an estimated 365,000 kids were on waiting lists.
The students who attend these schools, which are concentrated in urban areas, tend to be low-income minorities. Yet they regularly outperform their peer groups in traditional public schools often located blocks away. In their 18-year history, only 740 schools have lost their charters and been shut down for poor performance. Unlike traditional public schools, charter schools must be re-authorized every few years, which means they don't exist in perpetuity to fail multiple generations of youngsters.
Despite this record of accomplishment and accountability, the charter school movement continues to face all manner of obstacles. Eleven states ban charters, and even those that don't can make it very hard for them to succeed and multiply. Charters typically receive less money per pupil and, unlike other public schools, they must pay for the buildings they occupy. In many states, charter enrollment is capped and only school districts—which generally oppose charter schools—are allowed to approve charter applications.
The Obama Administration has said it will withhold discretionary federal education dollars from states that block the creation and growth of charter schools. Let's hope it follows through. We'd be hard pressed to name a more successful education reform in recent decades.

Calls Mount for Reid to Apologize Over Slavery Remark

2009-12-09T01:22:00.002-04:00

From Nevada to Washington, calls were mounting Tuesday for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to apologize for comparing opponents of health care reform to supporters of slavery.
The antagonistic comment, made on the Senate floor Monday, came at a sensitive time for health care reform, with Democratic leaders trying to push a compromise by the holidays, and in the middle of Reid's heated race for re-election in Nevada. The remark did not bode well for either effort.
Senate Republicans blasted Reid for the comparison, calling it "offensive" and "unbelievable" and suggesting he was starting to "crack" under the pressure of the health care reform effort.
In the comment, Reid argued that Republicans are using the same stalling tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era -- and during the women's suffrage and civil rights movements.
"Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let's start over.' If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right," Reid said Monday. "When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.'"
He continued: "When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right.
"When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today."
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele called the comment an "ignorant moment," citing the comparison as the latest Democratic bid to play the "race card."
"It has nothing to do with the historic roots of slavery. ... Harry needs to go to the well of the Senate, take it back, and apologize for offending the sensibilities of the American people on something so important," he told CBS News on Tuesday.
Reid's potential Republican opponents in the 2010 Nevada Senate race were also quick to condemn the remark, noting that a new poll suggests most Nevadans oppose the health care reform package on Capitol Hill.
"It seems that with the more power and prestige that Senator Reid gains in Washington, the more insulting he gets towards those of us back home," former state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden said in a statement. "Now, he compares the majority of Nevadans opposing his government-run health care scheme to proponents of slavery. ... Senator Reid should apologize -- once again -- for his unfortunate comments about our citizens."
Las Vegas businessman Danny Tarkanian also called on Reid to apologize, calling his remark a "disgrace" to the Senate and an "embarrassment" to his state.
Both Tarkanian and Lowden are seen as potentially formidable opponents for Reid. A new poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and conducted by Mason-Dixon showed Nevada voters favoring Lowden over Reid by 51-to-41 percent, and favoring Tarkanian over Reid by 48-to-42 percent. The poll of 625 Nevada voters had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
The newspaper's polling also found that 53 percent of Nevadans oppose President Obama's health care reform proposals, though a significant majority wants to see some kind of reform.
The Reid criticism came from both sides of the aisle.
Richard Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said the comparison was a sign of "silly season in Washington."
"We see Harry Reid saying silly things on one side, we see Republicans talking about killing grandma on the other -- wake up, Washington," he said.
But Reid stood by the remarks on Tuesday, saying those attacking him are "only proving my point."
"I think the point is quite clear by this point that at pivotal points in American history, the tactics of distortion, delay have certainly been present. They've been used to stop progress. That's what we're talking about here. That's what's happening here. It's very clear. That's a point I made -- no more, no less," he said.
Spokesman Jim Manley called the backlash "feigned outrage."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that neither he nor the president was aware of the remarks.
"(The) Senate is focused on passing a health care bill," Gibbs said.

Shocker polls: That Sarah Palin-Barack Obama gap melts to 1 point

2009-12-08T11:45:00.002-04:00

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, look what the pollsters just brought in.
A pair of new surveys revealing that Democrat President Obama is still declining and has hit a new low in job approval among Americans just 56 weeks after they elected him with a decided margin.
And -- wait for it -- Republican Sarah Palin is successfully selling a whole lot more than books out there on the road. Even among those not lining up in 10-degree weather to catch a glimpse of pretty much the only political celebrity the GOP has these days.
First, el jefe. Facing double-digit unemployment, rising spending, deficits and Afghan war casualties plus a keystone but stalled healthcare reform effort that caused a rare Sunday presidential visit to Capitol Hill, Obama recently fell below 50% job approval for the first time.
Then, last week's deft dance of rhetoric over sending reinforcements to Afghanistan but, on the other foot, bringing them home quickly maybe gave him a brief boost. That, however, collapsed with equal rapidity.
Obama's new Gallup Poll job approval number is 47%. Last month it was 53%.
Regular Ticket readers will recall how in this space in late November we pointed out that Obama's closely-watched job approval slide was coinciding with Palin's little-noticed rise in favorability. And it appeared they might cross somewhere in the 40s.
Well, ex-Sen. Obama, meet ex-Gov. Palin.
The new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows Palin now at 46% favorable, just one point below her fellow basketball fan.
(The same poll, btw, has bad news for Dick Cheney-haters; the outspoken former VP has climbed out of the 29% basement back up to 39% now. How do you suppose he's done that without a new book? But that's another story.)
Not that either Palin or Obama will admit caring about such trivial things as disparate political polls....

...1,071 days before the 2012 election, when Republicans will have the concept of change on their side. Although Obama's camp is already using the looming Palin pall as a fundraising tool. Never let any potential threat go unmonetized.
The new numbers seem to indicate that despite oft-cited predictions about the dire impact of Palin resigning her Alaska governor's job last July, a lot of people who don't live in Alaska (and, come to think of it, most people don't live in Alaska) don't seem to care. She wasn't their governor then and she still isn't.
Palin's low favorable poll point of 39% came right after the mid-summer resignation and she's been slowly climbing since, fueled by media attention fueled by eager reader response over her book contents, her tour and the spontaneous outpouring of support at her carefully-calculated bus stops along the way -- 31 appearances in 25 states, many of them politically crucial.
Imagine what critics would be saying now if Palin was neglecting her elected Juneau job to sell books in the lower 48 and talk to an elite club of Washington journalists, if there is such a thing.
The view, Palin told the capitol's Gridiron Club Saturday night in her self-deprecating and at times pointed remarks (full text right here), is a whole lot better from inside the bus than from under it.
Palin critics -- and, by golly, there still are some, believe it or not -- say that she's a polarizing political figure.
And they're dead-on correct: 46% like her (including 8 of 10 Republicans), 46% don't (including 7 of 10 Democrats) and only 8% are undecided (no doubt including many who've been living underground since John McCain unveiled his VP GOP running mate in Dayton some15 months ago).
But here's the fascinating, little-noticed catch:
The very same polarization now holds true for Obama, the fresh fellow from the old Chicago Democratic machine who was supposed to bring hope and change to a nation tired of divisive politics and the harsh partisan tone of Washington.
Fully 83% of Democrats approve of him, but only 14% of Republicans do.
Among independents, who provided the crucial winning boost for the Democrat ticket in November 2008, Obama's support has melted to 42% today, in large part over immense spending and deficit concerns.
And as political veteran Dave Cook points out over on the Vote blog, just since last month 3% of Obama's own Democrats have abandoned his ship, another 4% of Republicans and fully 7% of independents.
Other recent polls have shown Republicans leading for the first time this year on the generic congressional ballot and self-identified Republicans closing the gap with self-identified Democrats.
Meanwhile, Palin continued her book/celebrity sales tour across the heartland, stopping Sunday in -- oh, look! -- Iowa. "No politician comes to Iowa by accident," Republican strategist Tim Albrecht told AP's Mike Glover.
More significantly, Palin was in western Iowa which is ruled by the Republican Party, which in the Hawkeye state these days is ruled by conservative evangelicals, who form a large chunk of Palin's evolving base. As another ex-governor, Mitt Romney, learned to his dismay in the 2008 GOP caucuses won by another ex-governor (and Baptist preacher), Mike Huckabee.
Obviously, not every politician visiting Iowa each election cycle ends up running for president. And not every Iowa winner collects the big prize. But no one gets to the White House without going to Iowa. Which Palin has now done on her own. Purportedly selling a book.
-- Andrew Malcolm

Is There a Doctor in the House?

2009-12-08T00:50:00.000-04:00

Ron Paul, the GOP's unlikely savior.

Published Dec 4, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Dec 14, 2009

I have to admit that I kind of like Rep. Ron Paul. Partly it's that we're both from Pittsburgh, and both began our careers as paperboys for the Pittsburgh Press. More important, Paul is something unusual in politics. He appears to believe in something. His fundamental views have not changed since 1971, when he decided to run for Congress in Texas because President Nixon abandoned the gold standard.
I don't like labels, but in this case I'll use some. Paul, a Duke-trained physician, is an angry, apocalyptic, populist, hard-currency libertarian. He is against paper money, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, and most of the federal government's role in our lives, from fighting in Afghanistan to printing Social Security checks. Paul never saw an establishment he didn't loathe. Many of his ideas are unworkable, some are dangerous, and some of his supporters are conspiracy theorists so paranoid, they probably think this column is part of the Plot. But, as odd as it seems, Paul has become a player in Washington and at the grassroots. His emergence should be a lesson to rudderless Republicans. They don't want to scare away independent voters, but they need to find a way to emulate Paul's outsider's anger and his commitment to conservative essentials.
The last time Paul was center stage in politics, running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, he flamed out. Even in New Hampshire, where the license plates read LIVE FREE OR DIE, he was seen as too weird and finished fifth. More recently he appeared on film fending off Sacha Baron Cohen (a.k.a. Brüno) in a motel room. It was not a funny scene.

Last week the indefatigable Paul was onstage again. After decades of trying, he finally succeeded in getting Congress to attack the Federal Reserve Board, or at least the legendary secrecy of its deliberations. A House committee approved Paul's bill to open the Fed's books to public audits, which would expose the bank's dealings with foreign banks, its emergency infusions of cash and credit into institutions here and abroad, and its decision making on our interest rates and other monetary tools. Paul's real aim was not just disclosure but destruction. If the backroom deals of the past two years are exposed, he figures, public outrage will overwhelm the Fed.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke thinks public audits would destroy the bank's independence, but he was too busy fighting for his own political life to outmaneuver Paul. Though the mainstream consensus is that Bernanke (and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) helped save the world economy from catastrophe, Paul is having none of it. By doubling the money supply and making extensive loans, Paul says, Bernanke's Fed has made "the entire federal government one giant toxic asset." The dollar will tank; inflation will return; the sun will set on what is left of the American empire—or at least so says Paul in his new bestseller, End the Fed. Somebody has to take the fall, and Bernanke—who has trillions of dollars at his disposal but not one dime of PAC money—could be the guy. Last week Paul's Senate friend, socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, placed a "hold" on Bernanke's nomination for a second term, which means the chairman will need 60 votes to keep his job.
No one thinks Ron Paul is going to lead the GOP, let alone be president. He's 74 years old and just too…cout there. He is an obscure guy who waited patiently (if not quietly) for the cycle of history to come back around his way, and finally it did. We have been arguing about money, credit, and banks since the first days of the republic. Paul is a bargain-basement Jefferson for our time.
Still, the GOP needs to study Ron Paul, and learn. No one has better captured the sense of Main Street outrage over secret insider deals and Wall Street bonuses. No one has been more consistent about sticking to core conservative values—including the one that says the government shouldn't spend more money than it takes in. If the GOP is going to appeal to independent voters, it has to confront its own corporate allies. "Republicans need to find a populist edge again," says Craig Shirley, the author of Rendezvous With Destiny, a new account of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign. "Reagan spoke to the guy who thought he was being screwed by big business, by big government, by the big media." The good doctor, of all people, is showing Republicans the way. What they need is a candidate who embodies the spirit of Ron Paul. Just so long as it isn't Ron Paul.
Howard Fineman is also the author of The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country.

The Irrefutable Result of 40+ Years of Liberal Progressive Governance

2009-12-07T15:39:00.000-04:00

Top 10 American Cities With the Highest Poverty Rate by
Rank, City, State, and % People Below Poverty Level

1. Detroit, MI 32.5%
2. Buffalo, NY 29.9%
3. Cincinnati, OH 27.8%
4. Cleveland, OH 27.0%
5. Miami, FL 26.9%
5. St. Louis, MO 26.8%
7. El Paso, TX 26.4%
8. Milwaukee, WI 26.2%
9. Philadelphia, PA 25.1%
10. Newark, NJ 24.2%
U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007

History of City Mayors of those Top 10 Poorest Cities:

Detroit
Since 1962 every mayor of Detroit has been a liberal progressive democrat

Buffalo
Since 1962 every mayor of Buffalo has been a liberal progressive democrat

Cincinnati
Since 1962, there has been only 3 Republican Mayors, but 10 liberal progressive democrat Mayors the last one 30 years ago.

Cleveland
Since 1942, there have been 2 Republican Mayors but 9 liberal progressive democrat Mayors

Miami
Since 1957, there have been 1 Republican and 1 Independent Mayor and 10 liberal progressive democrat Mayors

St Louis
Since 1949 there has been nothing but liberal progressive democrat Mayors in St Louis. 9 to be exact.

El Paso
The last Republican Mayor of El Paso was 1889 Every one since has been a democrat then a liberal progressive democrat

Milwaukee
Since 1960, Milwaukee has had 4 Mayors, all liberal progressive democrat

Philadelphia
Since 1952 Philadelphia has had nothing but liberal progressive democrat mayors, all 9 of them.

Newark
Since 1953, Newark has had nothing but 5 liberal progressive democrat Mayors,

Top 10 States with Highest Poverty Rate,
by
Rank, State, and % People Below Poverty Level

1. Mississippi 21.1%
2. District of Columbia 19.6%
3. Louisiana 19.0%
4. New Mexico 18.5%
5. Arkansas 17.3%
5. West Virginia 17.3%
7. Kentucky 17.0%
7. Oklahoma 17.0%
9. Texas 16.9%
10. Alabama 16.6%
U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006

History of State Governors of those Top 10 States

Mississippi
Since 1876 Mississippi has had 32 Governors. 30 of them have been Democrat.

District of Columbia
OK they are called 'Mayors' but since it is the highest official, it is listed under States and Governors. Feel free to list in the Cities above if you like.
Either way, since 1967 it has been nothing but Democrat Mayors running Wash DC.

Louisiana
Since 1881 there have been 33 Governors with only 4 being Republican the other 29 Democrat.

New Mexico
Since 1925 NM has had 24 Governors only 7 Republicans with 17 Democrats

Arkansas
Since 1836 there have been 62 Governors with only 4 Republicans, 1 Military, and 57 Democrats.

West Virginia
Since 1933 there have been 16 Governors of WV. 4 were Republicans with 12 being Democrats.

Kentucky
Since 1867, Ky has had 38 Governors with only 8 Republican and 30 Democrats.

Oklahoma
Since 1907 OK has had 26 Governors 4 Republicans and 22 Democrats

Texas
Since 1846 (When Texas joined the Union) There have been 50 Governors. Only 6 of which were Republicans and 4 Military after Civil War.

Alabama
Since 1872 there have been 40 Governors, 3 Republicans and 37 Democrats.

Now is it just me that sees a very major commonality between all these American cities, North, South East and East, and the people who run these Top Ten Cities (250,000 or more population) with the Highest Poverty Rate?

And is it just me that sees a major commonality between all these American States, and the people who run these Top Ten States with the Highest Poverty Rate?

I keep hearing about how the 'Liberal Progressive Democrats' are so great at governing and running things, and making 'poor people' richer, while taxing the wealthy.

But the top 10 cities and states who have been run by 'Liberals - Progressives - Democrats' from around 80% to a full 100% of the time all happen to be the ones with the HIGHEST POVERTY RATES.

Now exactly why is it the 'Liberal Progressive Democrats' who seem to be so high on 'social justice' on 'equality' on 'taking from and taxing the rich to give to the poor' all happen to be running these same poorest cities and states most if not 100% the time?

The answer? Progressive Liberal Democrats are using the down trodden and the poor (because they are unable to defend themselves) to gain and maintain power. If you look at the current administration through this 'set of glasses', it all becomes very clear.

Number of Democrats Falls to Four-Year Low

2009-12-07T00:11:00.002-04:00

The number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell by nearly two percentage points in November. Added to declines earlier in the year, the number of Democrats in the nation has fallen by five percentage points during 2009.
In November, 36.0% of American adults said they were Democrats. That’s down from 37.8% a month ago and the lowest number of Democrats since December 2005. See the History of Party Trends from January 2004 to the present.
The number of Republicans inched up by just over a point in November to 33.1%. That’s within the narrow range that Republicans have experienced throughout 2009 - from a low of 31.9% to a high of 33.6%.
The number of adults not affiliated with either party grew half a point last month to 30.8%.
Despite the changes, there are still more Democrats than Republicans in the nation. But the gap is down to 2.9 percentage points, the smallest since December 2007.
Rasmussen Reports tracks this information based on telephone interviews with approximately 15,000 adults per month and has been doing so since November 2002. The margin of error for the full sample is less than one percentage point, with a 95% level of confidence.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
Between November 2004 and 2006, the Democratic advantage in partisan identification grew by 4.5 percentage points. That foreshadowed the Democrats' big gains in the midterm elections. The gap grew by another 1.5 percentage points between November 2006 and 2008 heading into the election of President Obama. However, the gap is currently 4.7 percentage points smaller than it was in November 2008. It remains to be seen where the trend will head in 2010.
Keep in mind that figures reported in this article are for all adults, not likely voters. Republicans are a bit more likely to participate in elections than Democrats.
Obama's overall approval rating in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index fell below 50% for the first time in July. A month-by-month review of the president’s ratings shows that they held steady in August and September before declining over the past couple of months.
Data from our monthly partisan identification survey is used to set weighting targets for other Rasmussen Reports surveys. The targets are based on results from the previous three months.
In recent months, Republicans have gained ground on 10 key issues tracked by Rasmussen Reports and on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Dems Need a Midcourse Correction

2009-12-04T01:29:00.000-04:00

To retain control in 2010, the party needs to forge better relations with industry.

By ROGER C. ALTMAN

Democrats may be headed for abnormally big losses in the 2010 congressional elections. The Cook Political Report, the most respected observer of congressional races, recently gave Republicans a 35%-40% chance of recapturing both Houses. The median forecast probably has Democrats retaining only a 10-15 seat majority in the House and a five seat margin in the Senate.
Either outcome would represent an electoral earthquake. It would force President Obama to the right because he could not govern without Republican support.
How serious is the weakened political standing of congressional Democrats? Recent polls are clear: Only 26% of Americans approve of this Congress, according to the latest Gallup poll. That's the same low level of three years ago, just before control of both Houses shifted from Republicans to Democrats. Even President Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50% in the two latest national polls. All of these readings carry anti-incumbent implications.

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President Obama with the House Democratic leadership.

To turn this trend around, Democrats should implement some midcourse corrections. By providing new incentives for job creation and bank lending, offering more detailed and forceful commitment to deficit reduction, improving relations with industry, and taking a more forceful stance towards Wall Street, the Obama administration can reduce next year's election risk.

This election prognosis is rooted in the troubled economic outlook. It is likely that there will be weak economic growth in 2010, continued unemployment rates around 10%, and, therefore, growing levels of political discontent.
Goldman Sachs forecasts just 2% real growth for 2010; the Federal Reserve Staff is projecting 2.8% improvement. That is just not enough growth to meaningfully lower the sky-high 10.2% unemployment rate and 17.5% underemployment rates we have today. All of this would add to the already dismal approval ratings for congressional incumbents.
Such a weak recovery reflects the troubled financial condition of households and the American banking system. For households, this manifests itself in the rising personal savings rate, up to 5% from zero, as they reduce spending and pay down debt, and in consumer confidence levels, where the Conference Board Index fell again last month. These trends augur poorly for consumer spending, which represents 70% of our GDP.
On the banking side, lending volumes continue to fall. Total business credit outstanding has declined for 11 consecutive months and now is down 16% from its 2008 peak of $1.6 trillion. With both bank lending and consumer spending under such pressure, it's inevitable that employment and growth will be weak.
Other factors are weakening public support for Democrats. In particular, there is serious concern over spending, deficits and debt. The projected deficits are so high that only 42% of the public approves of the president's handling of the budget. There is also deep anger over the bailouts, which we saw in angry congressional hearings last week.
The first priority should be implementing fast-acting incentives to create jobs. The most direct approach is a new jobs tax credit, perhaps a $5,000 employer credit for each job created over its current baseline employment. If this is applied for two years, we could create up to 1.5 million jobs. While this might be expensive, it is acceptable under the circumstances.
The other job-creating opportunity concerns bank lending. Small- and medium-sized employers are starved for credit. We need a temporary mechanism for guaranteeing business loans so that they can be securitized and sold. The guarantee should be partial to retain the benefit of private credit judgments.
A second adjustment involves the alarming deficit outlook. A framework and timetable for addressing it should be put forward now. This might involve a congressional commission, rather than private citizens, together with legislative fast-track authority for its late 2010 recommendations.
A third step involves the party's deteriorating relations with industry. This relationship must be fixed because the views of industry often coincide with those of independent voters. The commitment to address the deficit would help, together with moderate regulatory policy on telecommunications and antitrust, and adding one or two businessmen or women to senior levels of the administration.
Finally, Congress and the administration have been too restrained towards Wall Street. As a member of Wall Street, I'm highly aware that it exists today only by the grace of the taxpayer. Very few—if any—of the larger securities firms would have survived without the $11.5 trillion of emergency, federal credit support. The financial community owes more recompense to the public than it has furnished to date.
These policy adjustments generally fit the president's ideology of pragmatism. They are also timely, coming halfway through this congressional term. Most importantly, their centrist nature should improve Democrats' standing with voters.
Mr. Altman, founder and chairman of Evercore Partners, was deputy secretary of the Treasury in the first Clinton administration.

Rumsfeld Cries Foul on Obama Claim Troop Requests for Afghanistan Were Denied

2009-12-03T00:51:00.002-04:00

Oct. 21, 2009: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaks as former Vice President Dick Cheney listens at the Center For Security Policy dinner in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo)

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday lashed out at President Obama for claiming the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday lashed out at President Obama for claiming the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' repeated requests for more troops in Afghanistan.
In a rare break in his public silence since leaving the Pentagon, Rumsfeld rejected the claim as a "bald misstatement" and "disservice" that cannot go unanswered.
"Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as secretary of defense, deserves a response," Rumsfeld said in a written statement. "I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006."
The president leveled the charge in his speech Tuesday night outlining his plan to send 30,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan.
In his speech, Obama gave a detailed history of the Afghanistan war starting with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He argued that the Iraq war drew needed resources away from Afghanistan, allowing the situation to deteriorate since 2003.
"Throughout this period, our troop levels in Afghanistan remained a fraction of what they were in Iraq," Obama said. "Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained Wednesday that Obama was referring to requests that came in during 2008, and suggested Rumsfeld was on thin ice with his criticism.
"I will let Secretary Rumsfeld explain ... whether he thinks that the effort in Afghanistan was sufficiently resourced during his tenure as secretary of defense," he said.
But if Obama were referring to the 2008 period, he would seem to have been pointing the finger at his own secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who served in the same position in the previous administration.
Rumsfeld said in his statement the White House should make public any such requests if they exist to back up the allegation.
"The president's assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan," Rumsfeld said.
He urged Congress to review the claim in the upcoming debate to "determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied."
Unlike former Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld has kept largely out of the public eye since leaving the administration after the 2006 mid-term elections in which Republicans suffered huge losses, largely the result of setbacks in the Iraq war.

Cheney: 'No Aspirations' for Further Office

2009-12-02T01:10:00.001-04:00

Posted by Tom Bevan | Email This | Permalink | Email Author

A couple of weeks ago on Fox News Sunday, Liz Cheney set off a round of (somewhat far fetched) speculation about her father running for president when she blurted out "Cheney 2012" in the middle of a panel discussion on national security.
Today, in an interview with Politico, the former Vice President put the kibosh any talk of a 2012 run, saying, "“Why would I want to do that? It's been a hell of a tour. I've loved it. I have no aspirations for further office.”
So we can strike Dick Cheney from our list of possible Republican dark horses. To see who else is still on the list, click here.

Unemployment and Midterms

2009-12-01T01:02:00.000-04:00

By JOHN HARWOOD

Published: November 29, 2009

If they crave comfort, Democratic candidates can grab onto this: political science research finds little historical connection between unemployment and midterm Congressional elections.

Getty Images, left; Associated Press, right

The parties of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower lost a comparable number of House seats in midterm elections in 1950 and 1954 despite differing unemployment rates.

The Caucus

The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. But neither the Obama White House nor outside Democratic strategists count on that evidence to protect them in the midterm elections of 2010. That is why, in a week when the Senate begins debating health care and President Obama reveals his new war strategy for Afghanistan, the White House “jobs summit” may be just as important politically. It represents the beginning of the Democratic effort to decide which new initiatives may be most effective in stimulating new hiring, and how aggressively to pursue them.

Economists say that even robust additional steps beyond the $787 billion stimulus package will only marginally reduce joblessness next year — perhaps by one percentage point. But any sign of pre-election progress may prove crucial to the Democrats’ effort to keep a stormy election season from becoming a hurricane.
Loss of Seats Is the Norm
In the 15 midterm elections since Harry S. Truman won the White House in 1948, the sitting president’s party lost House seats 13 times. The exceptions were in 1998, when Democrats benefited from a robust economy and a backlash against the Republican drive to impeach President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, and in 2002, when Republicans capitalized on President George W. Bush’s post-Sept. 11 fight against terrorism.
So both parties expect the Democrats’ House majority, now 258 seats, to shrink. Less clear is whether the highest unemployment in a generation will expand the loss to well beyond the average, 22 seats in each midterm election since 1950.
After matching data on joblessness and elections, Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver, asserted in a recent blog post, “There’s not much evidence unemployment has any effect at all.”
Reagan-era Republicans lost 26 House seats amid the high joblessness of the 1982 recession. Yet Democrats lost a comparable number under Mr. Truman in 1950, as did Republicans under Mr. Bush in 2006, when unemployment remained low.
But that conclusion hardly reassures Mr. Obama’s party. The 1950 and 2006 contests were driven most by national security worries; the economy is expected to dominate 2010. And the major 1982 Republican defeat coincided with the last time unemployment cracked 10 percent — until now.
“What does seem to matter is economic growth,” Mr. Masket observed, particularly pre-election growth in disposable income. Forecasters predict only moderate overall growth of less than 3 percent in 2010, with high unemployment limiting gains in income.
‘It’s All About the Change’
Of the 38 Democratic-held House seats that the political handicapper Charlie Cook deems as in jeopardy, 16 lie in states that had unemployment rates of 10 percent or higher in October. Three of eight endangered Democratic Senate seats are also in those states.
But pollsters say unemployment now shapes views of the economy for voters nationwide. Democratic strategists consider it crucial to demonstrate a positive turn due to Mr. Obama’s policies before the election.
“People need to see that point of inflection,” said Mark Mellman, who advises Democratic House and Senate candidates. “It’s all about the change.”
Other analysts say that on unemployment, all inflection points are not created equal. One variable is how fast joblessness declines; another is whether it falls back below 10 percent.
“Anything in double digits, they’re not going to get any credit for that,” said Daron Shaw, a political scientist at the University of Texas who advised Mr. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
The history of turning points in midterm elections colored by sharply rising unemployment does not settle the argument.
In 1954, Democrats blamed President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Republican-led Congress as unemployment, which averaged 2.9 percent the year before, rose to 6.1 percent in September. The rate began decreasing in October; Mr. Eisenhower’s party lost a comparatively modest 18 seats.
In 1958, a deep recession drove unemployment from the 1957 average of 4.3 percent to a peak of 7.5 percent in July. Its subsequent decline could not save Mr. Eisenhower’s party from a staggering 47-seat loss.
A 2010 defeat that large would give Republicans control of the House. Mark Zandi, an economist, predicts that under current policies, unemployment, which stood at 7.6 percent as Mr. Obama took office in January, will peak at 11 percent next summer and fall no lower than 10.5 percent by Election Day.
That grim outlook propels the White House search for ways to increase employment more rapidly. Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats must weigh the uncertain benefits of additional spending against the costs, economic and political, of further widening the budget deficit.
As with health care and Afghanistan, they have no comfortable options.

Switzerland and the Minaret

2009-11-30T13:33:00.002-04:00

Sunday's vote keeps European heads in the sand about Muslim immigrants.

Nearly 58% of Swiss voters Sunday cast their ballots in favor of banning the construction of new minarets in the Alpine republic, a surprise result that led at least one Swiss member of parliament to declare that "the foundations of Switzerland's direct democracy have failed."
That is clearly wrong. Swiss direct democracy shows its mettle when Swiss voters use it to stand up to their political elites, as happened here. Having said that, Sunday's vote, for all the hand-wringing leading up to it, was a decidedly mild-mannered sort of protest. The construction of new minarets is banned, but the building of mosques is unaffected, and the vote does not affect the four existing minarets in the country. Nobody's freedom of worship is threatened, but a symbolic message has been sent.
But what message, exactly? The vote betrays an undercurrent of fear among the Swiss—a fear that is not without cause. There is no denying the connection between radical imams and terrorist acts. Nor should anyone look away from the fact that too many European Muslims flatly reject the norms of their host countries, sometimes in ways that are criminal: honor killings, child brides and the like.
Yet banning minarets does nothing to address that fear. It merely makes it less likely that the average Swiss will be confronted by a visible symbol of Islam upon his skyline. Thus, even as a symbolic gesture, it seems to encourage a head-in-the-sand approach toward the 5% of Swiss who are Muslim. In much of Europe, this is the norm anyway, the result of political correctness and cowardice.
Rather than being a blow against that attitude, Sunday's vote seems only to reinforce it. Banning minarets won't do anything to assimilate Switzerland's or Europe's Muslims, or to ensure that economic opportunity is available to everyone of whatever creed, or to deal with Western Europe's demographic problem of too few newborns.
The ban, in other words, does too much and too little at once. Too much because it becomes a very visible and easily exploited symbol of supposed European intolerance. But it accomplishes too little because it seeks merely to hide from view the problems that gave rise to the fear of the minaret in the first place.

Voter Anger Is Building Over Deficits

2009-11-27T02:01:00.002-04:00

The generic poll shows a 16-point swing to the GOP over last year.

By KARL ROVE

After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.
Eureka!
Well, almost. What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.
Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.
However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.
An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card. In February, Mr. Obama's budget plan for the next decade projected that revenues would equal about 18% of GDP while spending would jump to 24% of GDP, up from its post World War II average of 21%. Annual deficits of about 6% of GDP were projected for years to come.

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When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion. The total national debt also soared to $7.5 trillion at the end of last month, up from $6.3 trillion shortly after Inauguration Day.

This spending has been matched by a decline in the president's poll numbers. This week, Gallup found that his job approval rating slipped below 50%. Last March, Americans approved of Mr. Obama's handling of the deficit by a 52% to 43% margin in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. By October, his standing had flipped in the same poll, with 45% approving and 51% disapproving.

About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy making process.
Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.
Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.
Or, you can send him a Tweet@karlrove.

Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which asked voters if they'd rather boost "the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits" or keep the "budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover." Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.
These numbers suggest trouble for Democrats. In 1994, a wave of budget concerns (among other factors) handed Republicans control of Congress. Just before Election Day that year, 33% of voters approved and 59% disapproved of President Bill Clinton's handling of the deficit.
Today the latest Quinnipiac Poll tells us that only 19% of voters believe that Mr. Obama's health-care reform won't add to the deficit. The rest of us have reason to be skeptical. The bill includes all sorts of budget gimmicks, two of which illustrate that there is no fiscal restraint in it. One calls for steep cuts in Medicare and the other imposes a 40% excise tax on private, gold-plated health plans. It's just not plausible that this Congress will actually cut Medicare or tax health plans the unions have spent decades creating.
The administration says it is now instructing agencies to either freeze spending or propose 5% cuts in their budgets for next year. This won't add up to much unless agencies use the budgets they had before the stimulus inflated their spending as their baseline in calculating their cuts.
For example, if the Education Department uses its current stimulus-inflated budget of $141 billion instead of the $60 billion budget it had before Mr. Obama moved into the White House, freezing its budget will do nothing to fix the fiscal mess the president has created.
Ominously for Democrats, concerns over spending have recently helped to flip the Gallup generic ballot to now favor Republicans by four points (48% to 44%). Last year, Democrats held a 12-point generic ballot advantage. The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. By comparison, in the run-up to the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans first eclipsed Democrats in March of that year, when they gained a one-point advantage, before falling behind Democrats until the fall.
Mr. Obama's spending choices are dragging congressional Democrats into ugly electoral territory where many are likely to meet a brutal fate next fall.
Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

N.E. governors’ races give GOP a chance to build on gains

2009-11-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

By Sasha Issenberg

CEDAR CREEK, Texas - Invigorated by state house victories earlier this month in Virginia and New Jersey, Republicans are turning their attention to governorships in New England, where they believe the retirement of four incumbents and a competitive race in Massachusetts has created wide-open opportunities.

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Even though the GOP is a weak presence in the region’s national politics - no Republican congressmen and only three GOP senators represent New England in Washington - its leaders said at a national meeting last week in Texas that they are preparing a well-funded effort to contest a crowded slate of governors’ races in 2010.

All New England chief executive jobs will be on the ballot next year. In Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Republican governors will be leaving office, as will Democrat John Baldacci of Maine. Only in New Hampshire, where Democrat John Lynch has yet to draw a serious Republican challenger, does an incumbent appear cer tain to stay on next November.

The competition to fill the open posts - and to unseat Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick - has energized Republicans who see new promise running as an out-of-power party at a moment of voter anxiety.

“We’re talking about jobs and solutions, and seeing the results from Virginia and New Jersey proves it works,’’ said Matt Jacobson, the president of Maine & Company, a business group, and one of 22 announced candidates for the state’s governorship.

A political newcomer, Jacobson attended a “candidate school’’ sponsored by the Republican Governor’s Association this summer. There, he refined basic skills like how to be a more confident fund-raiser.

Last week, at a hotel outside Austin, Texas, where the RGA was meeting, Jacobson said he was excited to learn from governors-elect Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie, whose campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, have made them role models for class of 2010 recruits.

“They talked about issues and solutions,’’ said Jacobson. “This wasn’t a beauty pageant. This was about a clash of ideas.’’

Republicans nationwide have credited the RGA and its chairman, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for playing a key role in this fall’s victories, through its advertising efforts and direct contributions to candidates. The group said this week that it already had more money on hand, about $25 million, for the 2010 cycle than it spent in 2006.

Barbour exudes confidence: “We can win anywhere, we really can,’’ he said.

Next year’s elections, however, will test the RGA’s reach: 37 governorships will be decided, 21 of them open.

Recruiting experienced candidates in New England has been a recurring challenge, party officials acknowledge, given the party’s inability recently to compete with Democrats in state-legislative or selectman elections.

While Republicans have struggled to enlist strong candidates in Connecticut and Rhode Island, they are confident they have the strongest possible standard-bearers in Vermont and Massachusetts, where health-industry executive Charlie Baker, who did not attend the RGA meeting, is challenging Patrick. Baker is a fiscal conservative who supports gay marriage and abortion rights, and he has selected an openly gay state senator, Richard Tisei, as his running mate.

In Maine, Republicans have drawn a broad field, including 2006 state Senate candidate Peter Mills and ski mogul (and former Red Sox part owner) Les Otten.

Talk of “problem-solving’’ and “real-world solutions’’ are common platitudes at gatherings of governors, who fancy themselves pragmatic managers undistracted by Washington’s ideological struggles. But candidates nurtured by the RGA are getting a focused tutorial on how to be a Republican on turf typically won by Democrats in national elections.

“Stay focused on those bread-and-butter issues including jobs,’’ said Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, the RGA’s vice chair, explaining the strategy. “In Minnesota, we get asked about how to advance the social issues, and I have views on that, as does most of my party, but we try to also present it in a way that is thoughtful, civil, respectful, and the tone of it isn’t harsh and judgmental and condemning.’’

New England’s current Republican governors have already mastered the practice of finding useful distance from their parties to sustain local support. Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, who is retiring, has been a supporter of President Obama’s stimulus. Rhode Island’s outgoing Republican governor, Donald Carcieri, said last week he might support domestic partnerships for gays.

“I think it’s like the Avis Rent a Car thing: you’ve got to work harder,’’ Vermont Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie, who is running to succeed Douglas, said of being a New England Republican. “I’m not running for Congress, I’m not running for Senate, but I’m running for governor of Vermont, and I’ll work with any administration.’’

Republican strategists suggested their gubernatorial candidates were able this year to carry two states won by Barack Obama not so much by moving to the center, as by banishing disputes on social issues from the conversation. That approach, they said, allowed them to assemble the type of broad, center-right coalitions that have recently eluded congressional Republicans but offer the only formula for the party to prevail in New England.

“You had very conservative, prolife Republicans voting for a prochoice candidate (Christie) and moderate, prochoice Republicans voting for Bob McDonnell,’’ said Barbour. “This election stood for the proposition that Republicans will stick together when they’ve got quality candidates, whether they’re moderate candidates or conservative.’’

Democrats are drawing up strategies to tap into voter discontent. In both Connecticut and Rhode Island, Republicans have controlled governorships for nearly 15 years, offering Democrats an advantage in a year when voters are expected to express their antipathy toward incumbents, said Democratic Governors Association executive director Nathan Daschle.

“One thing about governor’s races that’s different from the House and the Senate is they’re tough to nationalize,’’ said Daschle. “What happens in these races doesn’t have anything to do with President Obama or what’s going on in Congress.’’

Democrats at risk in 2010 shift from offense to defense

2009-11-25T00:42:00.000-04:00

By John Fritze, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — It's been more than a year since he was first elected to Congress, but for Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick, the race never really ended.

The first-term Idahoan still updates his campaign website. He travels back to his district every weekend to shake hands. And he has pulled in $1 million in political donations — an average of $3,000 a day — for his re-election campaign.

"I didn't make my first fundraising call until the Monday after the election," quips Minnick, a 67-year-old former businessman. "I took the balance of the week and the weekend off."

Faced with a down economy, high unemployment and polarizing decisions on health care and energy, Minnick and dozens of other vulnerable Democrats in Congress are juggling votes in Washington with a campaign that's in full swing a year before the 2010 elections.

The stakes are high not only for the lawmakers whose jobs are on the line, but for President Obama.

At this point, non-partisan political experts such as Charlie Cook don't expect a repeat of the 1994 "Republican revolution," when the GOP seized control of Congress after a Democratic president failed to revamp health care. But they do project losses that could complicate Obama's agenda.

The Democratic shift from offense to defense is partly a product of history: After World War II, the party of a first-term president has lost an average of 16 congressional seats in midterm elections, says Cook, editor of the non-partisan Cook Political Report. And 2010, he says, is shaping up as even more challenging for the Democrats.

"We know winter's coming," Cook says. "Some of these new plants aren't going to survive."

Democrats added 66 members to their House and Senate majorities in the past two elections by winning traditionally Republican seats. Forty-nine Democrats represent districts carried by Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008.

Republican wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races this month demonstrated that independent voters who have fueled past Democratic success in those districts are willing to elect GOP candidates as well. A November Gallup Poll showed voters favored Republican congressional candidates over Democrats, 48% to 44%.

GOVERNORS' RACES: Va., N.J. give GOP reason to celebrate

Four years ago, before Democrats swept into office, a Gallup Poll found that 50% of voters favored Democrats compared with 43% for Republicans.

The dynamic already is affecting policy on Capitol Hill, where Democratic leaders have struggled to pass controversial legislation despite wider majorities than two years ago. Democrats representing conservative districts forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California to include stronger abortion restrictions in the $1.1 trillion health care bill that the House narrowly approved Nov. 7.

Minnick, whose district supported McCain, voted against his party 60% of the time during his first six months in office, a Congressional Quarterly analysis shows. He opposed the health care bill, the $787 billion economic stimulus and a global-warming bill — all of which have been cast by Republican leadership as budget-busters or harmful to the economy.

Yet one of his GOP opponents predicts Minnick's voting record won't protect him in 2010.

"The people in Idaho are upset with the current direction the nation is going," says Vaughn Ward, 40, an Iraq war veteran. "They hold all Democrats responsible."

Tides, tables turn

Less than a year ago, Republicans were sulking.

Driven by President Bush's low approval rating and the Iraq war, Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. Two years later, the party won the White House and built a 60-vote majority in the Senate — enough to overturn filibusters if all Democrats and two independents vote together. In the House, Democrats secured nearly three in five seats.

As Democrats won, the GOP wrestled with how to fuse conservative values with the need to attract independent voters. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll in June found that 52% of people couldn't come up with a name when asked to specify "the main person" who spoke for Republicans.

"After the last election, the one word I would have used would be 'despondent,' " says Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Then in August, voters who were angry over the cost of the president's stimulus and the scope of his health care plan turned out to confront lawmakers at town-hall-style meetings across the nation.

Despite signs of economic progress, unemployment continued to rise — creating a talking point Republicans rarely fail to sound. "The American people are looking at what's going on in Washington and are saying we see a lot more government but a lot fewer jobs," says Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

As momentum started to build, star Republican candidates began jumping into races. A widely well-regarded state attorney general, Kelly Ayotte, launched a campaign for New Hampshire's open Senate seat. In Delaware, Rep. Mike Castle, a popular nine-term congressman, announced he would seek the Senate seat left vacant by Vice President Biden.

Now, even some veteran Democrats are in tough re-election battles. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has raised $17 million since 2005, but his approval rating at home has slipped. An October poll by the Las VegasReview-Journal found that half of voters had an unfavorable view of Reid, a senator since 1987.

"We're rebuilding," Cornyn said. "It's amazing how much a difference 10 months can make."

Not all smooth sailing for GOP

With the election almost a year away, there are warning signs for Republicans, too.

The GOP lost a House seat in Upstate New York this month after national Republican leaders and conservative groups rejected the party's nominee and backed a third-party conservative candidate. The district had been represented by Republicans for more than a century.

Similar internal ideological fights are shaping up in Republican primaries across the USA, including in Florida's Senate race. There, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist faces a challenge from the more conservative Marco Rubio. Crist is taking flak from the right wing of the GOP for supporting Obama's economic stimulus plan.

Though they've gained ground in public opinion polls, it's not as if Republican lawmakers are popular. A Gallup Poll last month showed that 37% of respondents trusted Republicans in Congress on health care. Almost five in 10 trusted Democrats.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, acknowledges that next year will bring a "very tough and competitive election" for Democrats. He also says Republicans are running without a clear platform of ideas.

"The public doesn't really see the Republicans as providing any answers," he says. "If you're a Republican, you've a got a hard message to say, 'Let's do what we were doing before the Democrats took over.' "

Cook says that's one reason Republicans are not likely to repeat the 1994 takeover, when they used their "Contract with America" to propose specific ideas.

"The Republican brand is still badly damaged," Cook says. "We think this is going to be a really rough election for Democrats, but it may not be nearly as bad as it could be."

Overall, the playing field in the Senate is more even than in the House. Out of 37 races, Cook rates six Democratic and four Republican seats as tossups. All four Republican tossup seats are being left open by retiring senators.

In Missouri, Republican Sen. Kit Bond is retiring after 22 years. Seven-term Republican Rep. Roy Blunt, 59, who is running for Bond's seat, is telling voters that Democrats shouldn't have a lock on Washington: "The whole issue of checks and balances in the federal government will be important in this race."

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a member of the state's most prominent Democratic political family, is pitching a message of change — similar to the one Obama used last year.

"Special interests have a stranglehold on Washington and we've got to break that stranglehold," says Carnahan, 48. "We know that change doesn't happen in one election."

A Public Policy Polling survey last week showed the two in a dead heat.

One deciding factor in close races will be whether young and black voters who were inspired by Obama in 2008 will turn out to the polls again next year even though he's not on the ballot, says Nathan Gonzales, political editor at the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report.

A key issue, Gonzales says, will be the economy. If it improves, so do Democrats' chances of success, he says. If it stagnates, and Republicans can paint the costly stimulus as a failure, Democrats will be in trouble.

"Right now, it's too early to know which side will benefit," he says, but "the economy is going to be a key factor to all the races."

Economic rebound, GOP turf battles could help level playing field

The stakes are high not only for the lawmakers whose jobs are on the line, but for President Obama.

Where Dems could pick up House seats

Republican seats considered by the non-partisan Cook Political Report to be the most vulnerable:

Tossups (3)

State	District	Incumbent

Illinois	10th	Rep. Mark Kirk{+1}

Louisiana	2nd	Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao

Pennsylvania	6th	Rep. Jim Gerlach{+1}

Leaning Democratic (1)

State	District	Incumbent

Delaware	At large	Rep. Michael Castle{+1}

Where GOP could pick up House seats

Democratic seats considered by the non-partisan Cook Political Report to be the most vulnerable:

Tossups (14)

State	District	Incumbent

Alabama	2nd	Rep. Bobby Bright

Arkansas	2nd	Rep. Vic Snyder

Colorado	4th	Rep. Betsy Markey

Florida	8th	Rep. Alan Grayson

Idaho	1st	Rep. Walt Minnick

Kansas	3rd	Rep. Dennis Moore{+1}

Maryland	1st	Rep. Frank Kratovil

Mississippi	1st	Rep. Travis Childers

New Hampshire	2nd	Rep. Paul Hodes{+1}

New Mexico	2nd	Rep. Harry Teague

Ohio	1st	Rep. Steve Driehaus

Ohio	15th	Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy

Pennsylvania	7th	Rep. Joe Sestak{+1}

Virginia	5th	Rep. Thomas Perriello

Leaning Republican (1)

State	District	Incumbent

Louisiana	3rd	Rep. Charlie Melancon{+1}

1 — Not running for re-election

Sources: The Cook Political Report; House Press Gallery

The Carter Ricochet Effect

2009-11-24T11:35:00.000-04:00

Jimmy Carter's presidency offers a lesson in how the purest intentions can lead to the most disastrous results.

An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.
No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.
How it worked out became inescapably apparent 30 years ago this month. On Nov. 20, 1979, Sunni religious fanatics led by a dark-eyed charismatic Saudi named Juhayman bin Seif al Uteybi seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. After a two week siege distinguished mainly by its incompetence, Saudi forces were able to recapture the mosque at a cost of several hundred lives.
By any objective account—the very best of which was offered by Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov in his 2007 book "The Siege of Mecca"—the battle at the Grand Mosque was a purely Sunni affair pitting a fundamentalist Islamic regime against ultra-fundamentalist renegades. Yet throughout the Muslim world, the Carter administration was viewed as the main culprit. U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Libya were assaulted; in Pakistan, the embassy was burned to the ground. How could that happen to a country whose president was so intent on making his policies as inoffensive as possible?

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Happy days no more: Jimmy Carter and the Shah of Iran.

The answer was, precisely, that Mr. Carter had set out to make America as inoffensive as possible. Two weeks before Juhayman seized the Grand Mosque, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. They did so after Mr. Carter had refused to bail out the Shah, as the Eisenhower administration had in 1953, and after Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, had described the Ayatollah Khomeini as "somewhat of a saint."

They also did so after Mr. Carter had scored his one diplomatic coup by brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Today, the consensus view of the Obama administration is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ease tensions throughout the region. But worthy though it was in its own right, peace between Egypt and Israel was also a fillip for Sunni and Shiite radicals alike from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza. Whatever else the Middle East has been since the signing of the Camp David Accords, it has not been a more peaceful place.
Nor has it been any less inclined to hate the U.S., no matter whether the president is a peace-loving Democrat or a war-mongering Republican. "Everywhere, there was the same explanation," Mr. Trofimov writes in his account of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. "American institutions, declared a student leader in Lahore, had to be burned down because 'the Holy Kaaba had been occupied by Americans and the Jews.'"
On the other hand, among Muslims inclined to favor the U.S., the Carter administration's instincts for knee-jerk conciliation and panicky withdrawals only had the effect of alienating them from their ostensible protector. Coming as it did so soon after Khomeini's rise to power and the revolutionary fervors which it unleashed, the siege of Mecca carried the real risk of undermining pro-American regimes throughout the region. Yet American embassies were repeatedly instructed not to use their Marines to defend against intruders, as well as to pull their personnel from the country.
"The move didn't go unnoticed among Muslim radicals," notes Mr. Trofimov. "A chain of events unleashed by the takeover in Mecca had put America on the run from the lands of Islam. America's foes drew a conclusion that Osama bin Laden would often repeat: when hit hard, America flees, 'dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing.'" It is no accident, too, that the Soviet Union chose to invade Afghanistan the following month, as it observed a vacillating president who would not defend what previously were thought to be inviolable U.S. strategic interests.
Today, President Obama likes to bemoan the "mess" he inherited overseas, the finger pointed squarely at President Bush. But the real mess he inherited comes straight out of 1979, the serial debacles of which define American challenges in the Middle East just as surely as the triumphs of 1989 define our opportunities in Europe. True, the furies that were unleashed that year in Mecca, Tehran and elsewhere in the Muslim world were not of America's making. But absence of guilt is no excuse for innocence of policy.
Pretty soon, Mr. Obama will have his own Meccas and Tehrans to deal with, perhaps in Jerusalem and Cairo. He would do well to cast a backward glance at the tenure of his fellow Nobel peace laureate, as an object lesson in how even the purest of motives can lead to the most disastrous results.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com

Are Democrats exiting the sinking ship?

2009-11-24T10:28:00.002-04:00

By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
11/23/09 11:39 AM EST

Comes the news that Democratic Congressman Dennis Moore of the 3rd district of Kansas is not running for reelection. Interesting. Congressman Moore was reelected by a 56%-40% margin in 2008, and Barack Obama carried his district 51%-48%, while losing the other three congressional districts in Kansas.
There could be many plausible reasons for Moore to retire from Congress. He turns 65 in 2010 and at the end of his term will have served 12 years in Congress. He served 12 years as Johnson County District Attorney in 1976-88, and so he’s devoted more than half his working lifetime to public service. Serving in Congress means having to go back and forth between your district and Washington all the time (and a quick look at a travel website shows only two flights per day between Reagan National and Kansas City International), constantly being reachable by your constituents, etc., etc.
All that said, this still seems an ominous sign for congressional Democrats. Moore was first elected in 1998 when he beat one-term incumbent Vince Snowbarger. Moore profited from a bitter split in the Republican party between hard-line opponents of abortion (including Snowbarger) and moderates based in Johnson County. That split persisted for a decade; the current governor of Kansas, Mark Parkinson, is a longtime moderate Republican and sometime state legislator who was chosen as a ticket-mate by Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius and who succeeded her when she resigned to become Health and Human Services Secretary; Parkinson has said he will not run for a full term in 2010.
Moore’s moderate mien and voting record, his history of winning votes in Johnson County and internecine Republican fighting enabled him to win reelection five times. He won 65%-34% in 2006, his best showing, and against challenger Nick Jordan, a moderate touted by national Republicans, he won by the very solid margin of 56%-40%. Moore was undoubtedly helped by the Obama candidacy in 2008 in the three distinct parts of the district.
●In Wyandotte County, which includes Kansas City, Kansas, with its black community; turnout was up 7% (despite zero population growth) between 2004 and 2008 and Obama carried the county 70%-29%, with a 23,000-vote margin.
●Historically Republican Johnson County, containing many of the affluent suburbs of metro Kansas City, is now the largest and highest-voting county in Kansas. Turnout in 2008 was up 10% from 2004. In that year Johnson County voted 61%-38% for George W. Bush; in 2008 it voted only 54%-45% for John McCain. The Republican margin was cut from 60,000 to 25,000—barely enough to offset the Obama margin in much smaller Wyandotte County. Johnson County has had robust population growth (8% in 2004-08) and turnout seems likely to be robust in this affluent area in 2010.
●The 3rd district also includes part of Douglas County, including most of the old New England Yankee-established town of Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas. Historically Douglas County was Republican and in presidential elections from 1920 to 1988 voted Democratic only once, in 1964. But starting in 1992 it has voted Democratic in every presidential election. Kansas was not a target state, so we can assume that the Obama campaign did not spend lavishly on organization here; even so, turnout was up 7% countywide in 2008 over 2004, and the Democratic margin increased from 57%-41% to 64%-34%. In popular votes the margin doubled from 8,000 votes to 16,000 votes.
That’s how the three parts of the district voted in 2008. Now look at the prospects for each of them in 2010 from Dennis Moore’s point of view, keeping in mind current public opinion polling and the results in the actual elections held in 2009. In Wyandotte County, black turnout is likely to be sharply down from 2008, when Americans elected our first African-American president. Moore’s vote for House Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill could be a liability if Republicans can convince lower-income voters that it means higher utility rates for them. In Johnson County, opposition to the big government programs of the Obama administration and congressional Democratic leaders is likely to produce sharply increased Republican percentages and could produce robust offyear turnout. Moore’s vote for the House Democrats’ health care bill is likely to be a political liability here. In Douglas County, turnout among students and college town denizens is likely to be off, particularly among those voters who hoped that Obama’s installation would produce a speedy end to American involvement in Iraq. Meanwhile, it seems unlikely that Kansas Republicans will be riven by the abortion war that raged between 1998 and 2006, as economic issues have overwhelmed cultural issues in voters’ minds.
In other words, 2010 undoubtedly looks like an uphill race for Dennis Moore. By announcing his retirement, he is free to vote for House Democratic leaders’ unpopular legislation without political repercussion and is spared the trouble of extensive campaigning. That’s fine for him. But if other Democratic incumbents in marginal districts—and, remember, the 3rd district voted for Obama—choose to follow Moore’s course, that could make it much harder to Democrats to maintain a big majority in the House and could make it easier for Republicans to gain most or all of the 41 seats they need to win a majority there.

Forecast for Dem primaries: Ugly

2009-11-24T00:45:00.000-04:00

: The most closely watched Senate primary is in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Arlen Specter (above) and Rep. Joe Sestak are slugging it out in unusually personal terms. Photo: AP

Republicans aren’t the only ones staring at the unnerving prospect of a 2010 primary season filled with smash-mouth intraparty contests that threaten to distract the party and leave Senate nominees bloodied and cash-depleted.

In a handful of next year’s most competitive Senate races — and for a few of the Democratic Party’s most precariously perched incumbents — discordant Democratic primaries are already taking shape, complicating a midterm election landscape in which the party will be playing defense for the first time in four years.

In some cases, the Democrat-on-Democrat fights are simply about ambition. In others, ideology is at the heart of the conflict. The common denominator is that the intraparty battles stand to divert critical resources and divide the party at an especially inopportune time.

“There are a couple of big [states] that should concern them,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “It may not tear the national party apart, but does it tear the party apart in some states?”

The most closely watched Senate primary is in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak are slugging it out in unusually personal terms.

Specter has cast Sestak as ineffective and opportunistic, attacking him for his failure to register to vote in Pennsylvania until shortly before launching his 2006 congressional campaign and labeling the two-term congressman as “No Show Joe” — a reference to the House votes Sestak has missed while pursuing the Senate nomination.

Not to be outdone, Sestak has assailed the party-switching incumbent’s character, referring to Specter as a “flight risk” for Democrats and reminding the party rank and file of Specter’s decades-long career as a Republican. Last month, Sestak launched a website dedicated to “The Real Arlen Specter,” featuring quotes Specter would rather forget and past tributes to the five-term incumbent from a cast of GOP heavies including President George W. Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum, Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush adviser Karl Rove.

While Democrats are buoyed by polling that suggests either candidate would run competitively against presumptive Republican nominee Pat Toomey, Republicans are nevertheless enjoying the show, applauding Sestak’s attacks on Specter’s left flank in the hopes that both will be drawn further leftward in the battle to win over the Democratic base of activists.

“It’s going to be beyond ugly,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College poll, speaking to the tone of the May primary. “I think it’s going to be at a level that’s virtually unprecedented.”

In that sense, Pennsylvania’s vitriolic Democratic contest resembles the one in Kentucky, where Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and state Attorney General Jack Conway have been at each other’s throats for months.

In just the past week alone, Mongiardo accused Conway of selling out coal-dependent Kentucky by investing millions of dollars in a Texas energy company “that favors natural gas over developing Kentucky coal” and for failing to disclose his purchases of stock in the firm.

Conway has called the charges “flat-out false” and responded by accusing Mongiardo of having his own natural gas investments. Last week, Conway put out a news release asking, “If Steve Beshear Can’t Trust Dan Mongiardo, Why Should Kentucky Voters?” — a riff on Mongiardo’s well-known tension with the state’s Democratic governor.

Conway has also questioned the lieutenant governor’s ethics, tagging his foe “Double-Dip Dan.”

“Is Dr. Dan hiding his income, cheating on his taxes, overbilling the Kentucky Medicaid Program, lying on his federal and state disclosures or all of the above?” reads another press release, referring to Mongiardo’s medical practice.

“The fight’s gotten pretty nasty,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. “They’re getting pretty nasty pretty early.”

While contested primaries can sometimes prove beneficial, enabling candidates to hone their message and retail politicking skills, the risk in both Pennsylvania and Kentucky is obvious: The eventual nominees might be too damaged to overcome the expected stiff GOP opposition, and the candidates themselves might find their cash reserves drained and in urgent need of replenishment.

And there is another potential drawback, as well: The primaries could generate plenty of fodder for the other side to use in the fall.

“At this rate,” Cross said of the Kentucky Democratic Senate contest, “they’re going to be building up an ammunition magazine for the Republicans.”

The Democratic Senate primary in Illinois — largely quiet until recently — might be the next flash point, another example of Democrats field-testing attacks on each other that will most likely prove useful for the GOP.

There, the campaign of former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman charges that state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’s baggage from his career as a banker makes him unelectable, an argument that is likely to be revisited in some form by the GOP if Giannoulias, currently the front-runner in the polls, ends up as the nominee.

In a memo leaked to news organizations this week, a Hoffman pollster called Giannoulias’s perceived vulnerabilities “damning” and argued that Giannoulias “would put Barack Obama’s former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats.”

In Illinois, the Senate primary will take place in February, leaving plenty of time for the party and the eventual nominee to regain their balance. But in a place like Colorado, where a Senate primary between appointed Sen. Michael Bennet and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is only beginning to heat up, a bruising contest carries far more risk — not only are voters unfamiliar with Bennet but the August primary leaves little time for the party to unite before Election Day.

The late primary is “always an extra challenge for anyone who comes out of these things,” noted Floyd Ciruli, an independent Denver-based pollster.

While acknowledging that a handful of Senate primaries have been or are shaping up to be costly and contentious, Democrats argue that there are far less tough primaries on their side than on the Republican side. Equally important, they note, the Democratic contests generally aren’t rooted in ideological disputes.

“They are political contests for people who want jobs and are less ideological sessions,” noted Saul Shorr, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Clearly, in the Republican Party, there is an argument about what they are.”

“We have a few primaries, but they pale in comparison to their 12 bloodletting, ideological, anti-establishment battles that are not only indicative of profound party schisms but could also dramatically impact their party’s ability to win these seats in November,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Asked if the DSCC would spend money for its preferred primary contenders this cycle, Schultz responded: “We absolutely have [invested in primaries] in the past and may this cycle, as well.”

Some in the party privately worry that it might come to that in several states, including one that isn’t even on the radar at the moment. In what was widely perceived as a warning shot to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat facing a difficult 2010 reelection, the progressive group MoveOn.org announced earlier this month that it has raised $3.5 million to fund a primary to any Senate Democrat who votes against the health care bill.

There happens to be a possible candidate who might find the offer tempting in the event Lincoln casts a “no” vote: Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is thought by some to be mulling over a primary challenge to Lincoln and who is currently positioning himself as a champion of health care reform. On Wednesday evening, Halter appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown” to promote a free medical clinic being held in Little Rock this weekend.

“One question is whether she will get primaried if she votes against this,” said one senior Democratic strategist. “Will MoveOn find $6 million to get the lieutenant governor of Arkansas to run?”

Asked if MoveOn’s threat was a problem for the party, the strategist responded: “[Expletive] yes.”

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Pressure From the Right: GOP Candidates Bet On Obama Fatigue

2009-11-24T00:42:00.000-04:00

John McCain rails against a bipartisan global warming bill two years after sponsoring one himself? He says he's "dear friends" with Sarah Palin and enjoyed her book? The one that trashes his 2008 presidential campaign? Strange, I thought. Then I saw a poll that showed the sometime maverick-moderate vulnerable to a primary challenge next year from the right.

The Republican primary process has triggered an epidemic of identity crises among prominent and promising Republicans. Between Sarah Palin, tea parties, and the Club For Growth, there are Senate candidates scurrying rightward on everything from taxes and health care to energy, national security, labor issues, and President Obama's stimulus package.

Conservative groups and celebrities already are looking at a short-term win, since the primary victors will either be people they endorsed or people they've helped push to the right. The longer term is more questionable. It's certainly possible that joblessness and Obama fatigue will be so widespread that conservative candidates will go on to win a year from now. But it's equally possible that they'll find themselves out of step with public views, fighting off flip-flop allegations, or both.
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Parties tend to go through pendulum swings of practicality vs. ideology. As a political reporter back in 1992, I'll never forget the many New Hampshire Democrats who told me their hearts were with Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the most liberal candidate in the primary race, but they were going instead with a centrist Southern governor named Bill Clinton. It had been 12 years since a Democratic president and all they could think about was winning.

A recent CNN poll backs up my sense that it's too soon for Republicans, less than a year out of the White House, to feel that pragmatic or desperate. The poll found that 51 percent of Republicans prefer candidates who agree with them on issues, versus 43 percent who prefer candidates who could beat the Democrat. Meanwhile, fresh off eight years of George W. Bush, Democrats were far more interested in winning, 58 to 38 percent.

Pressure from the right has already defined a Senate race in Pennsylvania, where the anti-tax Club For Growth has endorsed its former president -- former congressman Pat Toomey. That put such a scare into moderate Sen. Arlen Specter that he became a Democrat rather than face Toomey in a primary. Pennsylvania turned out conservative Rick Santorum three years ago in favor of Democrat Bob Casey and last year went for Obama by 10 points. While Specter won five terms as a moderate Republican, Toomey could prove too conservative for the state.

National recruiters were thrilled that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a popular moderate, agreed to run for the Senate. But the Club for Growth and political action committees such as the Senate Conservatives Fund have endorsed conservative former state House speaker Marco Rubio and gone on offense against Crist. The governor is no longer pushing a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, or hosting global warming summits in Florida. He hosted two but canceled a third last summer.

Crist is also disavowing his literal and political embrace of Obama and his recovery plan last winter when the national economy was on the brink of collapse. He told Rolling Stone last spring that he "absolutely" would have supported that plan if he were a senator. But this month he told CNN that "I didn't endorse it. I didn't even have a vote on the darn thing."

So far the Club For Growth's formal endorsements in Senate races are limited to Florida and Pennsylvania, while Palin has weighed in for Texas Gov. Rick Perry in his re-election fight against moderate GOP senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. But the indirect impact of conservative pressure is much broader, affecting Senate races in places like Connecticut, Illinois, Arizona, Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Delaware. GOP hopefuls are mostly toeing the line, even if it means doing 180-degree turnarounds.

Club president Chris Chocola told me that his group exists to convert candidates to its way of thinking. "I don't think it's problematic at all" that some candidates are changing their minds, he said. "It's a good thing. It's positive. If we're influencing their view on the issues, then we feel like we're doing our job." If some or even all of those people lose, Chocola doesn't plan to be a scapegoat. "There are always people that want to blame us for less than ideal outcomes, but we don't worry about that," he said.

For those of us who closely covered Democrat John Kerry's 2004 campaign for president, it's hard to view flip-flops as a minor issue or a positive for a candidate. In that race it was a hammer that Republicans used to pound Kerry and paint him as untrustworthy.

Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster that year, doesn't think Republicans will get a pass. If the one-time moderates manage to prevail, he told me, '"They're going to have huge problems because they flip-flopped for crass political purposes and because they're flip-flopping to positions that are going to be unpopular. They are going to end up with both a substance problem and a character problem." The consistent conservatives such as Toomey and Rubio wouldn't have the character problem, he said. They'd just have "a serious substance problem."

YouTube is a trove of entries in the Republican purity sweepstakes. One particularly awkward clip shows Illinois Rep. Mark Kirk saying he voted for a House climate-change bill last June because "it was in the narrow interests of my congressional district" to do so. As a senator, the GOP Senate hopeful said through boos at a September rally, "I will vote no on the bill coming up."

It's unclear how Kirk would do that, since he wouldn't be in the Senate when it plans to take up the bill in spring. Nor is it clear that the bill has "largely died" in the Senate, as he asserts. Furthermore, a bipartisan compromise emerging in the Senate likely will include new nuclear plants and offshore drilling, two steps Kirk told his audience are necessary. Never mind all that. Conservatives have branded the bill "cap-and-tax" because of its cap-and-trade system of curbing emissions -- and once supportive GOP candidates now are fleeing from it.

McCain is one of them. He talks of cap-and-tax and calls current bipartisan efforts by his Senate friends "horrendous." But he can be found on YouTube in his former life as a three-time lead co-sponsor of similar bipartisan energy and climate bills. We may be handing young people "a very damaged planet," McCain said in New Hampshire in summer 2007. "We have to move forward with green technology. We have to have this cap-and-trade system where if somebody reduces greenhouse gases, they earn a credit and they can sell it to somebody else ... It's not as though it's something that's going to be terrible for the American people, although we may have to make some sacrifices."

McCain is feeling squeezed from the right in Arizona. Conservative talk-show host J.D. Hayworth, a former congressman, is in a statistical tie with the most recent GOP presidential nominee -- and hasn't even decided whether to run. Rob Simmons, a former Connecticut congressman running for Senate, is also moving right, reversing past support for cap-and-trade and legislation making it easier to form unions. Centrist Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware voted against health reform under pressure from his party. Now he's trailing Attorney General Beau Biden in the 2010 Senate race.

Obama won Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Florida last year, and might have won Arizona had favorite son McCain not been at the top of the Republican ticket. These are not states dominated by ideologically conservative voters. So Republican primary candidates and voters are placing a bet here. They're betting that jobs will continue to vanish, the deficit will continue to rise, health reform will continue to be unpopular, and Obama's approval rating will continue to erode. They are positioning themselves for the post-Obama era, betting that majorities will be ready to see it end less than two years after it began.

Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later

2009-11-23T01:25:00.003-04:00

By Jonah Goldberg

Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus' Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor's writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:

"The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle."

Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, "That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate."

But soon, the original contributor confessed: "I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It's taken from the first paragraph of ‘Dreams From My Father,' written by Barack Obama."

The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.

My all-time favorite response to John McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate was from Wendy Doniger, a feminist professor of religion at the University of Chicago. Professor Doniger wrote of the exceedingly feminine "hockey mom" with five children: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

The best part about that sentence: Doniger uses the pronoun "her" - twice.

Just this week, a liberal blogger at The Atlantic who has dedicated an unhealthy amount of his life to proving a one-man birther conspiracy theory about Palin's youngest child (it's both too slanderous and too deranged to detail here) shut down his blog to cope with the epochal, existential crisis that Palin's book presents to all humankind. The un-self-consciously parodic announcement seemed more appropriate for a BBC warning that the German blitz was about to begin, God Help Us All.

Indeed, some of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated.

In fairness, just as there are people who hate Palin for the effrontery she shows in daring to draw breath at all, there are those who love her with a devotion better suited for a religious icon.

I hear from both camps, often. And while I don't think both sides are equally wrong (after all, the acolytes of the Doniger school openly reject reality more than any so-called creationist), I don't think either position is laudable or sufficient.

Sarah Palin is neither savior (that job has been taken by the current president, or didn't you know?) nor is she satanic. She is a politician, a species of human like the rest of us.

I'm fairly certain that if you read many of her public-policy positions but concealed her byline, many of her worst enemies would say "that sounds about right," and some of her biggest fans would say "that sounds crazy." But most people would say that her views are perfectly within the mainstream of American politics. She may be more religious than coastal elites in the lower 48, but that is something some bigots need to get over, anyway.

I'm happy about the books she's selling thanks to the controversy over her, but that doesn't mean I think these controversies are justified. Palin holds no public office and, as of yet, is not running for one. But the Associated Press assigned eleven reporters to "fact-check" her book, while doing nothing like that to fact-check then-candidate Obama's or current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's no doubt riveting book.

As it stands, my sense is that Palin is good for the Republican party but not necessarily great. She generates enthusiasm among, and donations from, the base. But she also turns off many of the people the GOP needs to persuade and attract. That could change with this book tour, and I hope it does. Whether she's ready or qualified for the presidency is another matter. But the presidency is a long way off, and besides, that's what primaries are for.

Time To Clean House

2009-11-23T01:19:00.004-04:00

Dealing with ethics problems will be a tough task for House Democrats in 2010.

by Charlie Cook

Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009

As House Democrats try to avert political disaster by limiting their 2010 losses to about 16 seats, the norm for post-World War II presidents' first midterm elections, dealing with their members' ethics problems may be one of their toughest tasks.

With health care reform off their plate for now, House Democrats are showing that they understand the tightrope they must walk -- address unemployment without exacerbating worries about the size of government and the federal deficit. Meanwhile, though, the ethical clouds over House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.; Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee; and several other members of that subcommittee bring back memories of the House Bank and Post Office scandal, which in 1994 helped end 40 years of Democratic rule in the House, and the scandals involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Republican Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio, Tom DeLay of Texas, and Mark Foley of Florida that helped topple the GOP majority in 2006. Independent voters, who swung toward Democrats by an 18-point margin in 2006 and cost Republicans their majority, are particularly sensitive to ethics charges. They will be watching to see whether Democrats clean their own House.

Although a grand jury is unlikely to indict Rangel, he has become a huge embarrassment for Democrats.

The Defense Appropriations Subcommittee smells like a cesspool, one that is threatening to foul the entire Democratic Congress. Several subcommittee members look as if they have been engaging in "pay to play," with campaign contributions being accepted in exchange for earmarks and with government spending decisions linked to jobs or consulting deals for relatives and former staffers. Democrats not on that smarmy subcommittee will likely suffer if they fail to clean the mess up.

Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., is honest as the day is long, but he is incapable of controlling Murtha. Only Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., can rein the Pennsylvanian in. Because Murtha was one of Pelosi's most important supporters as she climbed the leadership ladder, she finds it difficult to turn her back on him. Yet allowing Murtha to keep his subcommittee chairmanship jeopardizes the seats of other Democrats and possibly her speakership.

Although a grand jury is unlikely to indict Rangel, he has become a huge embarrassment for Democrats. If he chaired anything other than the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, his failure to report all his income to the IRS might be less of a problem for his party. Rangel's leadership role is a Democratic headache that's apparently not going away, given the outrage that members of the influential Congressional Black Caucus expressed over early efforts to strip one of their own, William Jefferson, of his Ways and Means seat after $90,000 was found in his freezer. Imagine the Black Caucus's reaction if Pelosi moved against Rangel.

Complicating the Rangel situation is that Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., is next in line in seniority on Ways and Means. He is erratic, controversial, and widely viewed as incapable of being an effective chairman. In some ways, Stark is Rangel's insurance policy.

What many House Democrats would clearly prefer is for Murtha and Rangel to announce that they won't seek re-election, thus avoiding the bloodletting that trying to oust them would cause. The filing deadline for Rangel's seat is July 15. For Murtha's it is March 9.

The leadership can deal with the Ways and Means succession problem after the election. Assuming they keep control of the House, Democrats could turn Ways and Means over to one of the four members immediately behind Stark in seniority -- Sander Levin, D-Mich.; Jim McDermott, D-Wash.; John Lewis, D-Ga.; or Richard Neal, D-Mass.

So the question is whether the Democratic leadership feels it should risk taking no action against Rangel and Murtha; should try to take away their gavels; or should give them a hearty thank-you for their long years of service -- a thank-you accompanied by a big push toward retirement. If Rangel and Murtha signal that they are headed for the exit, they might make themselves less appetizing targets for ambitious prosecutors seeking to nail a politician's scalp to the door.

House Democrats need Speaker Pelosi to lead gently, or not so gently, by moving Rangel and Murtha in the direction that would benefit the overall Democratic Caucus. She is unlikely to act without considerable pressure from caucus members. As the election gets closer and anxiety gets higher, that pressure will probably mount. Otherwise, Democrats will just have to take their chances with Rangel and Murtha onboard and hope for results different from 1994 and 2006.

GOP Governors Emphasize Results Over Rhetoric

2009-11-23T01:19:00.000-04:00

By Mike Memoli

CEDAR CREEK, Texas -- As Barack Obama began crafting his administration last year, the term "competence over ideology" was often used to describe the incoming president's approach. Fast forward past another election: as the top Democrat's job approval rating dipped below 50 percent and his signature first-year initiatives face increasing doubts, a bullish group of Republican governors emphasized results over rhetoric as they predicted continued success in 2010.
In Washington, Republicans have been branded as the party of no for achieving near-constant unanimity on major votes on stimulus and health care. Gov. Haley Barbour, chair of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), called that an inevitable consequence of both diminished numbers and simple procedural roadblocks. But because of that Beltway reality, victories in the gubernatorial arena are a needed sign of life for the party, he said.

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"In states where there are Republican governors, people can see if conservative and Republican ideas, when actually implemented, work," Barbour, a two-term Mississippi governor, said at the RGA's conference here this week.
As the focus turns to the midterm races for Congress and state offices, the RGA event was designed not just as a warning to Democrats, but as a guide for the rest of the GOP. One clear message seemed to be that as an ideological schism felled the party in a Congressional race, Republicans won key gubernatorial tests by focusing relentlessly on the top concern of voters.
"Every moderate Republican in Virginia voted for Bob McDonnell even though he was a conservative. Every conservative Republican in New Jersey voted for Chris Christie even though he was clearly the moderate candidate," Barbour said. "Folks should campaign on the right things - it helps keep the base together, and also wins a majority of the independents in both of these cases."
"Focusing on bread and butter issues and having not just rhetoric, but ideas and solutions ... I think is a big part of the equation in places like Minnesota and Vermont, all across this great country," Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota said. Borrowing again from an Obama campaign theme, he added: "If you're positive and optimistic and hopeful and civil, you're reaching out even if people don't agree -- those are some of the ingredients that you see are common to candidates being successful."
The governors here did not shy from a policy fight, with most of the attending governors joining together to make a forceful case against proposed health care legislation in Congress. In doing so, however, they were careful not to deny the necessity for changes in the system, and offered ideas that they said would be met with bipartisan agreement. Some of the rhetoric was more politically charged from some on the dais, but the general message was that the party welcomed a respectful contest in the issues.
"People want our presidents to succeed. They want our country to succeed," Barbour said. "So in my opinion it doesn't serve any purpose to be critical of the president personally." That sentiment showed in some of the governors' rhetoric - criticizing Democratic Congressional leaders by name but speaking generally of "the administration" and not Obama individually.
Looking ahead, Barbour told a larger gathering at the conference that 2010 is "going to be a good year for us." Comparing it to 1994, when he chaired the RNC, Barbour said: "This feels better this early," in part because of the increasingly unpopular policies at the federal level.
Those federal issues will "really matter in these governors races," RGA executive director Nick Ayers said. The lesson of 2009 was not that the mood of the electorate is anti-incumbent, but anti-spending and anti-government overreaching. That's more cause for concern on the part of Democrats looking to hold on to their majority of governorships -- of nine Democrats seeking re-election in 2010, "seven of them at this point have Corzine-like numbers and have Corzine-like governing problems," Ayers said.
Nathan Daschle, Ayers' counterpart at the Democratic Governors Association, countered that a number of Republican-held seats are in the same jeopardy because of their own challenges. New state-by-state unemployment data shows at least a half dozen states with Republican governors had higher unemployment rates than New Jersey's, which means "that both parties are going to have to carry the same burden next year."
"The RGA didn't have to put up any of their incumbents in '09, which was a huge boost for them. But next year they do," Daschle said. "And some of them are very vulnerable."
Among them were Republican governors not in attendance: Nevada's Jim Gibbons. Other GOP held seats in California, Connecticut and Florida are in jeopardy as well, with the declining fortunes of the retiring governors tied in part to the economy as well.
Daschle also said that Republicans need to nationalize gubernatorial contests to "cover up deep divisions" that have poured into state races as well - affecting candidate recruitment in Colorado recently, for instance. There is even a tough GOP race shaping up involving the host governor, Rick Perry. These factors lead Daschle to make what may be an optimistic assessment of the role federal issues may have.
"In 2010 voters will have other candidates on the ballot to make a statement about on national issues," Daschle said, referring to House and Senate contests that will also be on the ballot next fall.
Even if the specific federal issues themselves aren't on the ballot, a broader concern over the size of government that may translate at the state level. One governor far away from Washington offered an example of how that message would play in his race.
"Clearly the federal government is taking away our freedoms and our opportunities for a strong-growing economy," Alaska's Sean Parnell said in an interview. "We're fighting them off every day that I'm governor."

Mike Memoli covers the White House for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at

Why We're Not 'Post-Racial'

2009-11-21T02:14:00.000-04:00

Jesse Jackson versus Artur Davis.

When Alabama Congressman Artur Davis voted against the health-care bill that passed the House earlier this month, he probably expected some grief from fellow Democrats. But he couldn't have anticipated being accused of selling out his race.
Mr. Davis was the only black Member to oppose the legislation, and his vote earned him a rebuke from Jesse Jackson at a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation reception Wednesday night. "We even have blacks voting against the health-care bill," said Mr. Jackson. "You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man."
Mr. Davis is running for governor in a state that John McCain won last year, and his vote was surely influenced by the reality that Alabamans aren't the biggest fans of ObamaCare. The Congressmen, to his credit, took the high ground in response to Mr. Jackson's low blow. "One of the reasons that I like and admire Rev. Jesse Jackson is that 21 years ago he inspired the idea that a black politician would not be judged simply as a black leader," he said in a statement referencing Mr. Jackson's 1988 Presidential bid. "The best way to honor Rev. Jackson's legacy is to decline to engage in an argument with him that begins and ends with race."
Liberals insist that America still isn't "post-racial," notwithstanding the election of President Obama. But when a politician's skin color is gratuitously invoked in a debate about whether the government should have more control of health care, you have to wonder if the political left has any serious interest in a color-blind society. Former President Jimmy Carter suggests that whites who oppose the President's policies are racists; Mr. Jackson says blacks who oppose them are betraying their race.
Even in the age of a black President, too many liberals still believe they have more to gain from identity politics than from a post-racial America.

Latest Election Polls

2009-11-20T00:11:00.000-04:00

Thursday, November 19

Race (Click to Sort)	Poll	Results	Spread
California Governor - Whitman vs. Brown	Rasmussen	Brown 41, Whitman 41	Tie
Florida Governor - McCollum vs. Sink	Daily Kos/R2000	McCollum 35, Sink 33	McCollum +2
Florida Senate - Republican Primary	Daily Kos/R2000	Crist 47, Rubio 37	Crist +10
Florida Senate - Crist vs. Meek	Daily Kos/R2000	Crist 50, Meek 33	Crist +17
Florida Senate - Rubio vs. Meek	Daily Kos/R2000	Rubio 30, Meek 38	Meek +8
Arkansas Senate - Baker vs. Lincoln	Zogby	Lincoln 41, Baker 39	Lincoln +2
Arkansas Senate - Hendren vs. Lincoln	Zogby	Lincoln 45, Hendren 29	Lincoln +16
New York Governor - Giuliani vs. Cuomo	Marist	Cuomo 53, Giuliani 43	Cuomo +10
New York Senate - Giuliani vs. Gillibrand	Marist	Giuliani 54, Gillibrand 40	Giuliani +14

Hard of Hearing

2009-11-19T02:01:00.000-04:00

Voters send a message, but the White House ignores it.

By PETE DU PONT

Elections matter. They are sometimes governed by voters' passion; they sometimes change the course the country is following (as in 2008); and sometimes, like earlier this month, they fire warning shots across the bow of our ship of state.
On Nov. 3, the voters in just about every election told our governments they were moving in the wrong direction, and that the course must be changed.
Barack Obama carried Virginia last year, but his party lost substantially in this fall's gubernatorial election. Republican Bob McDonnell carried nine of the 11 Virginia congressional districts, including three that Democrat Congressional candidates won last year. In those three districts, Mr. McDonnell got 62%, 61% and 55% of the vote.
Over in New Jersey, a big-time Democrat state where incumbent governor Jon Corzine outspent his opponent 3 to 1, Republican Chris Christie won, 49% to 45%. Mr. Obama carried New Jersey a year ago by a margin of more than 15%, so the voter swing was 20 points from Democrat to Republican.
In Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama in 2008 carried the four counties of suburban Philadelphia with 57% of the vote. This year the Republican Supreme Court candidate won them 55% to 45%, and six of the seven statewide winners were Republicans.
Even more important to future election results may have been the youth and senior citizen voting. In New Jersey, the 2008 youth vote was 17% of the total, and went for Mr. Obama 67% to 31%. But in 2009 the youth vote was just 9% of the total and went for Mr. Corzine only 57% to 36%. In Virginia the youth vote made up 21% of the total in 2008 and went for Obama by a 21% margin. It was only 10% of the vote this year, and it went Republican by a 10% margin.
Senior citizens' voting patterns were even more interesting. In New Jersey they were 15% of the vote in 2008, with a 6% majority for John McCain; this year, they were 19% of the vote and went for Mr. Christie by 15%. In Virginia, they were 11% of the voters in 2008 and went for Mr. McCain by a 7% majority; this year, they were 18% of the voters and McDonnell won them by 20%.
So while the youth vote dropped and shifted pro-Republican, the senior citizen vote increased and went even more Republican.
To put all this in pollster perspective, Gallup reported that Democrats led the generic ballot question--"Which party do you support in local congressional elections?"--by 15 points last December and six points in July. Last week Republicans had a four-point lead.

***

You may recall February's Newsweek cover story "We Are All Socialists Now," forecasting that the "America of 2009 is moving towards a modern European state," and as it does it "will become even more French." So there will be "more government taxing and spending" and "more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth."
We have already seen an explosion in spending, and higher taxes will be with us on Jan. 1, 2011, when the Bush tax cuts expire. If Congress does nothing, the tax rate on capital gains will rise from 15% to 20%. The House health-care bill contains a 5.4% surtax, brainchild of Rep. Charlie Rangel, that would take the rate up to 25.4% for higher-income taxpayers. The two increases together, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out, amounts to a 69% hike.
The Joint Tax Committee reports that one-third of the project $460 billion revenue from the Ragel tax would be paid by small-business owners, who are employers and job creators. Says the New York Times: "It is fitting that they pay a heavy share of the cost of health care reform." And since none of these taxes are indexed for inflation, 10 years from now this tax bite will apply to people and small businesses with incomes equivalent to perhaps $335,000 today.
Facing the prospect of higher taxes, government-managed and -controlled health care, and the huge costs of the pending global-warming bills, people at home and now people in the Congress are beginning to have second thoughts. According to Rasmussen's recent polls, 42% of Americans strongly oppose the health care bill while only 25% strongly support it, and according to Gallup only 29% of people would advise their congressmen to vote for it--substantially down from last month's 40%.
Members of Congress of course pay close attention to their constituents. Of the 80 Democratic House members whose districts were carried by either George W. Bush or Mr. McCain, 9 voted against the "stimulus" bill, 21 voted against a budget resolution for doubling the national debt in four years, 36 voted against "cap and trade," and 36 voted against the health-care bill.
What we don't know is if this trend will continue as the Senate votes on health care (if it can get past a filibuster), and both houses vote on any conference bill, or whether many Senate Democrats will want nothing to do with a climate bill or, most important, will attempt to slow the massive growth of annual spending. But if the Democrats ignore the public's growing skepticism, the Republicans will do very well in the 2010 elections.

***

Most surprising is that the Obama administration sees no important message in this month's election and has made no change in its legislative strategy. If the Republicans make real progress in the elections next November, what does the administration do then?

Dissection of Palin's 'Going Rogue' begins

2009-11-18T20:50:00.002-04:00

By Sean Cockerham and Erika Bolstad | The Anchorage Daily News

Sarah Palin's book, "Going Rogue," came out Tuesday, a best-selling compilation of anecdotes, political prescriptions and score settling.
The former Alaska governor's 413-page book caused a media sensation, with exhaustive coverage and friends and foes scrutinizing every word.
Palin writes about her Wasilla upbringing, her marriage and children, and how her early aspirations to be a television sports reporter turned into a life of politics. She describes her trajectory from Wasilla city politics to governor; from the vice presidential campaign trail to her resignation this summer, when she decided it was time to "pass the ball."
Palin, who has not given interviews to Alaska news media since leaving office, describes her decision to step down, a move that shocked even some of Palin's closest supporters.
In the wake of the presidential campaign, her administration was besieged by public records requests and ridiculous ethics complaints designed to bankrupt her, she writes. Her approval ratings in Alaska plunged from almost 90 percent to 56 percent amid a "one-sided public discourse" over the ethics claims, she writes.
"Slowly and steadily, my record, my administration's efforts, and my family's reputation were shot to hell," Palin writes.
Clarity came in a telephone call from Iraq with her enlisted son, Track, she writes. Her son urged her not to let the criticism get to her, she writes, that she shouldn't take a "dishonorable discharge," and should only leave office if it was to move up to something more worthy. Palin described asking if it was worthy to protect her family, to fight for Alaska and the nation, and to break the "bureaucratic shackles" paralyzing the state.
"I'm not a quitter, Track ... I'm going to fight."
Palin writes that the "sheer volume of paperwork and legally required responses brought the business of governing the State of Alaska to a grinding halt. Eventually it overwhelmed us - and was obviously meant to."
Andrew Halcro, a former Republican state legislator and frequent Palin critic, said she could have pushed to change how Alaska deals with ethics complaints, and it's "asinine" to say Alaska governing came to a standstill because of them.
"I mean, really, was the commissioner of education working on complaints? Did you have (resources commissioner) Tom Irwin in there instead of working on the gas line, digging through FOIA requests?" said Halcro, who lost to Palin for governor in 2006 and is preparing a campaign for Congress against Rep. Don Young.
Halcro said what he's seen so far of Palin's book is an exercise in blaming others. "She's accepted very little responsibility for pretty much anything that's gone wrong in her life," Halcro said.
Palin's lawyer, Tom Van Flein, said Tuesday that those who claim that Palin is using the book to blame others are the same people who have unfairly criticized her and failed to take responsibility themselves.
"All Sarah Palin is doing is pointing out what really happened, and there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with the truth of what occurred," he said.
Palin described Halcro in the book as a "wealthy, effete young chap who had taken over his father's local Avis Rent A Car, and he starred in his own car commercials."
Some of Palin's sharpest criticism is aimed at top aides on Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. She writes that the campaign muzzled her and failed to stop anonymous staffers from making vicious claims about her to the press.
The book is "total fiction," the Arizona senator's former campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, told CNN. Palin paints him as a screaming, back-biting political operative. Throughout the book, Palin doesn't name some people she disparages, including many from Alaska. One is Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla, who wrote a long e-mail warning of Palin's small-town leadership, ultimately forwarded around the country. Kilkenny is referred to in the book as both "the town crank" and a "Birkenstock-and-granola Berkeley grad who wore her gray hair long and flowing."
Palin's former legislative director, John Bitney, also doesn't get named, although Palin criticized him for, among other things, turning "out to be a Blackberry games addict who couldn't seem to keep the lunch off his tie." Bitney, who was a high school classmate of Palin and worked on her campaign for governor, said he was hurt by it. "On the Blackberry, it takes one to know one, as far as Blackberry etiquette, and I guess I don't have her clothing budget to be as GQ as she wanted."
Much of the national media coverage has focused on Palin's criticism of the McCain campaign staffers, as well as her recounting that the McCain campaign forced her to pay $50,000 in legal bills for the cost of vetting her as a vice presidential candidate. The campaign's general counsel told the Associated Press that was untrue, and McCain told a Capitol Hill publication, The Hill, the expenses were instead related to the "Troopergate" investigation.
McCain told The Hill that he nevertheless enjoyed the signed book that Palin gave him and wishes her well. "I hope she sells lots of them," he said.
Fact-checking and debates over the book's worth raged on Tuesday. Palin makes much in her book of her admiration for President Ronald Reagan. His "sense of national purpose resonated with me," Palin wrote of Reagan, who took office when she was in high school. "I liked him, and I liked the fact that he was never afraid to call it as he saw it."
The fact-checking Web site Politifact.com on Tuesday disputed some of Palin's claims, including that Reagan led the nation out of a recession that is worse than the one it currently faces.
The New York Times book review described "Going Rogue" as "part cagey spin, part earnest autobiography, part payback hit job." National Republican strategist Mary Matalin said in an interview she was saddened by Palin's fight with McCain campaign strategists, but said Palin is good at defending herself. Matalin described the book as eloquently laying out conservative principles.
"She's a unique voice, and she's a clear voice for common-sense conservatism," Matalin said.
Palin will now embark on a nationwide book tour, starting today in Grand Rapids, Mich., and continuing by bus to other small cities across the country. Writing in the final paragraph of the epilogue, she says she has often been asked, "Where are you going next?"
"Good question! I'll be heading home to Alaska, of course. Back to that kitchen table. We'll discuss the day's news and the next stop. I always tell my kids that God doesn't drive parked cars, so we'll talk about getting on the next road and gearing up for hard work to travel down it to reach new goals."

Another Look at Obama's Job Approval

2009-11-18T00:58:00.002-04:00

If you are looking for a good snapshot of where President Obama's job approval is right now, you cannot do better than the RealClearPolitics average. It's intuitive, straightforward, and indispensable.
Another way to look at Obama's job approval is to examine the trend line for each pollster. This can offer a way to control for their "house effects." The following chart does that by looking at the monthly average of eight major media pollsters (Fox, CBS, CNN, Ipsos, Pew, NBC, ABC, and AP).
A few observations are in order:
1. By separating the pollsters from one another, we can see the various house effects. For instance, CBS and ABC are the most favorable polls to Obama while Fox and NBC tend to be the least. AP and CNN are the "bounciest." Some months, they are above the average. Other months, they are below.
2. Obama's job approval slid precipitously from July through August. This coincides with the heating up of the health care debate. This trajectory is consistent across all eight pollsters.
3. The President rebounded a bit from his August/September lows, but he is now at or near his lowest point in all of the polls except the (bouncy) AP poll, which had him much lower in September than the other polls. This chart makes that clear:
4. The polls generally find Obama's overall job approval higher than his approval on various issues. For instance, these are the results of the latest ABC News/WaPo poll:
One can't help but wonder if a legislative success on the health care package will result in a further decline in the President's job approval rating.
5. What will be interesting to watch next year is whether the President's job approval slides further as the campaign begins in earnest. Will the Republican argument against Obama and the Democrats - once it hits the airwaves - damage the President's standing further? It is possible. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both suffered about 8-point declines in their job approval ratings from January to November of their first midterm years. [Obama is about where both Presidents were at this point in their terms, a little behind Reagan and a bit ahead of Clinton.] George W. Bush's net approval dropped 36 points in 2002; of course, it was very high after 9/11. Also regarding Bush 43, when the Democratic campaign against him heated up in early 2004, his net job approval slid 13 points from the first of the year to the beginning of the summer.
Will the Republican argument against Obama push some voters who disapprove of Obama on specific issues into overall disapproval? Will it push some of those marginal approvers into disapprove/don't know?

GOP Dark Horses for 2012

2009-11-17T14:03:00.002-04:00

By Tom Bevan & Mike Memoli
Three years before the 2008 election, Barack Obama was a freshman Senator from Illinois who had wowed the crowd with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was touted as a rising star in the Democratic party, but not seriously considered as a legitimate presidential candidate for the 2008 race. Likewise, in November 2005 Mike Huckabee was serving his ninth year as Governor of Arkansas and was on no one's radar screen as a serious presidential contender. Twenty-six months later Huckabee stormed the field, won the Iowa caucuses, and went on to finish second to the eventual nominee, John McCain.
This time around, Huckabee now sits atop the heap of speculation about possible GOP candidates for 2012, along with other familiar faces including former Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich. There is a new face in the mix as well: Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is actively pursuing the rubber-chicken circuit and giving off every indication that he will throw his hat in the ring.

But there are a handful of other potential Republican presidential candidates who are getting little, if any, attention. It's possible a number of these Republicans who are not currently part of the conversation will decide to make the race and could emerge as serious contenders for the nomination. So who are the GOP dark horses for 2012? Click here to see the list.

Hoffman 'unconcedes' in N.Y.-23 House race

2009-11-16T22:49:00.004-04:00

By Jordan Fabian - 11/16/09 06:34 PM ET

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman has "unconceded" in New York's special House election after reports that the vote margin between him and Rep. Bill Owens (D) has narrowed.
Hoffman conceded the race on Election Night after learning he trailed Owens by 5,335 votes. But the Syracuse Post-Standard reported last week that the margin had shrunk to 3,026 votes after recanvassing.
Hoffman appeared on conservative commenatator Glenn Beck's radio show this afternoon. Beck asked the him if he would "unconcede.""Yes, if I knew this information at the election night, I would not have conceded," Hoffman said. Beck asked him again if he was "uncondeding" and Hoffman replied "If that’s possible, yes."
Officials in the upstate New York district are still counting over 10,000 absentee ballots, which also had Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava's name on them. Scozzafava dropped out of the race three days before election day citing poor fundraising and polling returns. She then backed Owens.
Owens was sworn into Congress on Nov. 6, just before Democrats voted on the healthcare reform bill on Saturday. Should Hoffman come away with more votes, a highly unlikely possibility, Owens would have to be removed from office, according to the House Clerk.
Hoffman would have to take over 65 percent of the absentee ballots in order to eclipse Owens. In the interview, Hoffman admitted his victory would be a "long shot."

So much for the power of incumbency

2009-11-16T13:20:00.000-04:00

Gov. Jon Corzine (D) failed to win reelection in New Jersey . . . (Mel Evans/associated Press)

By Chris Cillizza

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009

Amid the spin spewing from the parties over what this month's elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York meant, there is one indisputable lesson learned: Voters don't like incumbents these days.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) was thrown out by voters, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) was nearly defeated despite outspending his opponent by 20 to 1.
Although the candidacy of Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman fell short in the special election in Upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District, his rapid rise was based mainly on anti-Washington, throw-the-bums-out messaging.
Virginia's governor's race did not include an incumbent, but voters roundly rejected the party of President Obama and outgoing officeholder Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
In Pew Research Center's polling, just over half of Americans said they would like to see their members of Congress reelected next fall. Only 34 percent said they want most incumbents to be reelected in the midterms.
Pew describes those numbers as among the most negative in two decades of collecting data. They approach levels found in the run-ups to the 1994 and 2006 midterms -- elections in which there were significant seat changes in the House and Senate. In October 2006, 55 percent said they wanted to see their lawmakers reelected and 37 percent favored the reelection of most members of Congress; in October 1994, 49 percent favored the reelection of their own lawmakers and 29 percent backed reelection of Capitol Hill incumbents in general.
Even more troubling for incumbents is that independent voters are more down on their elected officials than partisans of either stripe. Only a quarter of independents want to see congressional incumbents reelected next year, while 42 percent support their own lawmakers in the midterms.

What's clear from this and other national polling as well as a variety of state data is that there is a widespread belief that politicians are not acting in the best interests of those they represent. This sentiment isn't terribly new, but the depth of these anti-incumbent feelings -- particularly among political independents -- makes it newsworthy.
While it's likely that any sustained sentiment of this sort will hurt Democrats more than Republicans, this sort of political environment is decidedly unpredictable and could lead to surprising defeats for presumed safe incumbents -- of both parties -- next November.
D for defeat?

Two Quinnipiac University polls released late last week in Ohio and Connecticut provided sobering news for Senate Democrats.
In Connecticut, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D), whose numbers experienced a resurgence over the summer, trailed former congressman Rob Simmons (R) by double digits.
Even against such virtual unknowns as former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive Linda McMahon, state Sen. Sam Caliguri and former ambassador Tom Foley, Dodd is in a statistical dead heat.
Need more evidence? Just 40 percent approve of the job Dodd is doing in Congress, and just 39 percent say he deserves reelection. Not good. At all.
The data in Ohio was less daunting for Democrats but still dispiriting. Republican former congressman Rob Portman polled 39 percent support compared with 36 percent for Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D), a significant reversal from a September survey, in which the Democrat led by double digits.
Since neither Portman nor Fisher is particularly well known, the turnaround is attributable almost entirely to a general decline in the Democratic brand, as shown by the majorities who disapprove of how Obama is handling the economy and health care.
Gov. Ted Strickland is also feeling the effects, having slipped into a dead heat with former congressman John Kasich (R).
Connecticut and Ohio are among the five states most likely to switch parties next year. Here are all five:
5. Ohio (Republican-controlled): Portman is the class of this field -- an able, attractive candidate with star power. But, he has direct ties to the unpopular economic and trade policies of the Bush administration (he served as U.S. trade representative and as head of the Office of Management and Budget) that Democrats are planning to exploit. Fisher is vulnerable to a primary challenge from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, but repeated fundraising failures suggest she doesn't have the tools to put together a candidacy.
4. New Hampshire (R): The recently announced candidacies of Republican businessmen Bill Binnie and Ovide Lamontagne complicate former state attorney general Kelly Ayotte's march to the nomination. Binnie is likely to position himself to Ayotte's left, while Lamontagne is sure to cast himself as the only real conservative in the field. Rep. Paul Hodes, meanwhile, has a free run at the Democratic nod.
3. Nevada (Democratic-controlled): The current anti-incumbent climate has to worry Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has built a career on his insider smarts. Reid's early television ads echo the sort of spots Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ran in 2008; they are transactional -- designed to show voters what Reid gets for the state and what him not being in the Senate would mean. Reid's greatest advantage, however, may be the quality (or lack thereof) of his Republican opponents.
2. Delaware (D): State Attorney General Beau Biden (D) continues to play coy about whether he will run for his father's old seat and, if so, when he'll announce those plans. Assuming Biden gets in soon, it will set up a terrific race against Rep. Mike Castle (R), whose long record of electoral successes in the First State make him a formidable opponent.
1. Connecticut (D): When Dodd's numbers tanked this spring, his allies insisted that there was still plenty of time for him to set things right with voters. And, over the intervening months, he seemed to get his feet under him -- and his poll numbers improved as well. That's why the Quinnipiac numbers are so troubling for Dodd -- they not only show a significant regression for the incumbent, but they also come less than a year before the vote. Expect increased pressure from party leaders for Dodd to step aside.
Countdown

One day: "Going Rogue," former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's memoir of the 2008 presidential campaign, is officially released.
20 days: Palin stops in Sioux City, Iowa, to sign copies of her book. Fix rule: Politicians never go to Iowa by accident.

Dede Scozzafava Is No GOP Moderate

2009-11-16T13:01:00.000-04:00

She is a donkey in an elephant costume.

By Deroy Murdock

Re-canvassed votes in upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District foreshadow the second coming of third-party candidate Doug Hoffman. As Mark Weiner of the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Thursday morning, Conservative nominee Hoffman’s 5,335-vote deficit behind Democrat Bill Owens has shrunk to just 3,026 after Election Night tabulation errors were corrected. Some 10,200 absentee ballots remain uncounted. State Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin told Weiner, “All ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to be removed.”

However this develops, before Election Day 2009 vanishes into the rear-view mirror, one big myth demands correction, lest it harden into “fact.” Dede Scozzafava is no moderate Republican. The GOP state assemblywoman who abandoned this special election boasts a solid liberal record of votes and activism far left of the GOP’s center, or even its wobbly port flank — home of Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.

Nonetheless, the GOP’s detractors are showcasing Scozzafava as “proof” that reasonable centrists are unwelcome in today’s intolerant, extreme, far-right Republican party.

The Washington Post’s Jason Horowitz called the six-term legislator “a little-known state assemblywoman with moderate Republican views and a mouthful of a surname.” Horowitz’s November 10 piece was sub-headlined: “It’s a Grand Old Purging as moderate’s ouster spotlight’s Republican dysfunction.”

As CBS News’s Steve Chaggaris remarked: “Conservative Republicans will undoubtedly claim victory in sidelining the moderate GOPer, Scozzafava.”

UrbanDictionary.com now defines “Scozzafaved” as being “Purged of moderation, e.g., within a Congressional district.”

Scozzafava is no upstate version of Long Island’s Peter King (2008 American Conservative Union rating: 50) nor Florida’s Lincoln Diaz-Balart (52), truly centrist congressional Republicans who somehow go astray without offending the party’s beliefs or enflaming its base. Conversely, Scozzafava is a donkey in an elephant costume. Consider just a few lowlights from her previous record and recent campaign:

Scozzafava earned a feeble 15 out of 100 on the New York Conservative party’s latest legislative report card. Sheldon Silver, an ultraliberal Manhattan trial lawyer and State Assembly Democratic leader, earned a 10. Conservative party chairman Mike Long observed that in the state house, “46 Democrats have voting records more conservative than the Republican pick for Congress!”

Scozzafava voted not once, not twice, but 190 times to raise or extend taxes. Few issues are more sacred to the GOP faithful than tax limitation. There is nothing moderate about violating this core party tenet — not rarely, but nearly 200 times.
Indeed, Scozzafava’s tax votes are so bad that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attacked her on them.

“Albany politician Dede Scozzafava voted to raise or extend taxes on New Yorkers over 190 times,” declared a September 22 DCCC press release, denouncing “increases on sales taxes to wireless surcharges.”

As columnist Michelle Malkin recalls, Scozzafava voted in Albany for Democratic budgets, approved a $180 million state-level bank bailout, and backed President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package.

Scozzafava favors “card check” legislation that would kill secret ballots in union-organizing elections. She also accepted campaign cash from the Longshoremen’s, Electrical Workers’, and Service Employees’ unions, as well as the National Education Association, the notorious teacher’s union that just screams “NO!” to nearly every school-choice initiative.

“I was first on the Planned Parenthood board when I returned to the North Country,” Scozzafava said last year as she accepted the Family Planning Advocates’ Margaret Sanger Award for pro-abortion activism. It’s bad enough for a Republican to be pro-abortion. But must she be an award-winning pro-abortion Republican?

Scozzafava was endorsed by the leftist, ACORN-associated Working Families Party and ran on its ballot line with 2008’s Obama-Biden ticket and 2004’s Kerry-Edwards team.

Scozzafava was endorsed by Markos Moulitsas, editor of The Daily Kos, arguably the Left’s most influential political website. Beneath the headline “NY 23: The most liberal candidate leads (and it’s not the Dem),” Moulitsas wrote: “So it’s official, I’m rooting for the Republican to win.”

Citing polling numbers that plunged after the district’s mainly GOP voters recoiled at her record, Scozzafava suddenly fled the race on Halloween, just three days before the election. Most nominal Republicans would have mirrored the Republican National Committee and endorsed Conservative Hoffman, or at least stayed neutral. Instead, Scozzafava did something truly un-Republican: She embraced Democrat Bill Owens. With Scozzafava’s backing, and amid all this tumult, Owens edged Hoffman 49 percent to 45 on November 3, with Scozzafava scoring 5 percent.

If elected, Hoffman would have rebuffed Nancy Pelosi’s Obamacare bill on November 7. That might have persuaded Rep. Ahn Cao (R., La.) to reverse his lone GOP “yes” vote and join his conference in unanimously rejecting Pelosi’s 1,990-page behemoth. Seeing 100 percent Republican opposition might have inspired another Democrat to spurn this legislation. Obamacare then would have failed by exactly one vote, and this entire sick mess would have flatlined. Thus, Dede Scozzafava is as plausibly responsible as anyone for keeping Obamacare alive.

GOP voters and activists at least grudgingly can accept moderate Republicans who sometimes violate Reaganite principles, especially in states like New York that are not quite Texas or Utah. But henceforth, GOP leaders must understand that picking Scozzafavian candidates is a recipe for revulsion among party stalwarts. If GOP elders prefer to see teardrops rather than confetti fall on election night, they should nominate more Democrats like Dede Scozzafava.

— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Dems at risk of losing Obama's old Senate seat

2009-11-16T00:52:00.003-04:00

2010 | Party lacks candidate able to scare off GOP contender Kirk

BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Columnist

WASHINGTON -- About a year ago, thousands jammed Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate Barack Obama's election to the White House, a communal civic defining moment. But those giddy days are long gone as Democrats in Illinois face the potential of losing the Senate seat President Obama once held next November.
The Illinois primary is Feb. 2, and the Democrat and Republican races are ripening, with the deadlines to file or withdraw nominating petitions now passed.
Democratic Party leaders in Washington -- and the Obama White House -- failed to recruit a candidate strong enough to scare Rep. Mark Kirk -- the Republicans' best bet -- from the race. The only luck they had was the decision by Sen. Roland Burris -- appointed by now-indicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama's remaining term -- not to run to keep the seat.
The chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois -- Michael J. Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House -- is the father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who rebuffed Obama and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee when they wooed her for the Senate. Papa Madigan, more concerned with keeping his state House majority, doesn't really care who the senator is.
A look at the leading Democratic and GOP Senate candidates:
Alexi Giannoulias is the Democratic front-runner. His main competitors are Cheryle Jackson, the former Chicago Urban League chief and former Blagojevich spokeswoman; former City of Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, and attorney Jacob Meister, who is a factor only because he put more than $1 million of his own cash into the race. With days lost to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, well, it's practically voting day already.
The money: As of Sept. 30, federal reports show Giannoulias has $2.4 million on hand. Hoffman has $836,957 (which includes $500,000 he lent to his campaign). Jackson has $317,828.
Name recognition: Giannoulias is the only one -- Democrat or Republican -- who has run statewide. Hoffman, Jackson and Meister have never run for elected office.
The endorsements: Giannoulias locked up labor support. Hoffman has a string of endorsements from North Shore state lawmakers who like his good-government and ethics messages. Jackson has prominent African-American elected officials and the feminist EMILY's List on her side.
The base vote: Meister is looking for a gay and Jewish base. Giannoulias' base will include labor, many city wards, county chairmen, Greek Americans and some support Downstate. Hoffman's base is the North Shore suburbs, Jews, and wards in Chicago with a lot of police and firefighters.
Jackson's base includes females and African Americans. Burris is the Senate's only black member.
The minus: Giannoulias' potential biggest liability is his former association with Broadway Bank, founded by his father and the subject of controversy because of loans made to alleged mobsters and convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko. Giannoulias did not make the loans.
Hoffman's minus is lack of name recognition and money. Jackson's Achilles' heel is Blagojevich. Meister's minus: He's unknown.
On the GOP side:
The money: Kirk has $2.3 million to $340,048 for Hinsdale real estate developer Patrick Hughes (including $250,000 of his own money). The others on the ballot have a few thousand dollars.
Name recognition: Kirk, a veteran lawmaker from the North Shore 10th District, is a favorite of editorial boards. He's running a stealth primary campaign, however, refusing to disclose a political schedule. So far it has worked.
Endorsements: Kirk has GOP establishment in Washington and Illinois. Hughes hits Washington on Tuesday to seek backing from conservative groups, hoping to catch a conservative wave, similar to a New York House contest where the moderate Republican was forced out by conservatives.
Kirk, billed as a moderate, was caught up in a controversy last week when news leaked out that he solicited Sarah Palin for support.
Minus and plus: For Kirk, running to the right, a plus for the primary and a minus -- maybe -- in the general election.

Gingrich: Contract with America round 2

2009-11-15T00:24:00.002-04:00

by Mark Silva
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and purveyor of the GOP "Contract With America'' that helped his party win control of the House after President Bill Clinton's election, says GOP chairman Michael Steele has started work on a new framework for 2010 that he is calling "First principles.''
"I've been talking with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, '' Gingrich said today, speaking with students at C-SPAN's Cable Center Class.
"He is developing a first principles model that I think is a very exciting , positive step in the right direction,'' said Gingrich, who has said that he will decide by February about waging his own campaign for president. "B September , it might be very, very good for the Republicans in the House and Senate to have a common ground on which to campaign, whether they call it a Contract for America or some other device.
"Having a positive set of things that say, 'if you elect us, these are the positive steps we will take,'' Gingrich said, on a program that C-SPAN3 is airing at 5 pm EST. This "may well be the key building block to really become the alternative party, not the opposition party.''...
"If the Democrats stay stuck over on a very left wing program and if they continue to have a job-killing record in Congress, I think by September and October you could suddenly have a very exciting election.''
The fabled Contract which Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom Delay and others fashioned six weeks before the midterm congressional elections of 1994 led to a GOP takeover of the House that kept a newly elected Democratic president in check - a formula that the GOP would love to revive for the 2010 midterms.
A Gallup Poll this week found that Republicans are doing well in the "generic candidate'' race - with more people saying they are likely to support a Republican than those saying they are likely to support a Democrat. Gingrich suggests that his party needs to put more than names on those ballots, and add some principled promises as well.
"We didn't do the Contract until very late in the campaign,'' he noted. "You could begin to put together a set of firs principles around which 80 percent of the country would rally... and then come Labor Day, you could begin to look a what are the five or 10 biggest things that the Republicans could offer as their contract for America.''
He's got four ready to go:
"The No. 1 issue is jobs... The No. 2 issue is energy... The No. 3 challenge... replace the big government monstrosity that they passed on Saturday ( a reference to the Democratic-led House healthcare bill. "The No. 4 challenge is education.''

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