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Glenn Reynolds: More impact is what’s next for the Tea Party movement | Washington Examiner
Jan 31st
via Glenn Reynolds: More impact is what’s next for the Tea Party movement | Washington Examiner
By: Glenn Reynolds
Sunday Reflections Contributor
January 31, 2010
A year ago, the Tea Party movement didn’t exist. Today, it is arguably the most popular political entity in America. The movement is already more popular than the Republican or Democratic parties, according to a recent NBC / WSJ poll .
Even in blue-state California, three in 10 voters identify with the Tea Party movement.
And, of course, Scott Brown’s come-from-behind blowout in Massachusetts occurred in no small part because of money and volunteers from the Tea Party movement around the nation.
This is heady stuff — and, for people in the political establishment, both Republicans and Democrats, it’s worrying stuff. If political movements can bubble up from below, and self-organize via the Internet, what will happen to the political class?
It’s one thing when record stores or video rental places get dis-intermediated. It’s a whole different ball game when people who rely on politics not only for their livelihood, but for maintaining their considerable sense of self-importance discover that they may not be quite as necessary as it once seemed.
But that hard lesson is becoming apparent. In fact, the Tea Party movement seems to be showing better political judgment than either of the two major political parties.
Last week, Joe Scarborough wrote that the Tea Party movement might “tear itself apart.” His evidence of this: Some squabbling over a Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tenn. Well, squabbling is normal in movement politics, particularly when people think they’re being shortchanged on money and credit. But what’s really striking about the Tea Party movement isn’t that there’s squabbling — it’s how little squabbling, overall, there has been.
Scarborough’s column, remember, was occasioned by the Brown victory in Massachusetts. A few Tea Party purists didn’t want to support Brown, seeing him as insufficiently pure. But the vast majority made the entirely pragmatic determination that Brown, whatever his flaws, was vastly better than his Democratic opponent Martha Coakley, and just the guy to stop Obamacare in its tracks if elected.
They poured in donations and volunteers (millions of dollars and thousands of people), and helped Brown win, and were immediately proven right as Brown’s victory did, in fact, derail Obamacare and produce a general Democratic flight from the whole hope and change agenda.
The Republican and Democratic hacks who were supposed to be worrying about this sort of thing, meanwhile, were asleep at the switch. Republican Party support to Brown was late in coming, appearing only after the Tea Party support raised his profile.
Democrats were even slower to recognize the threat and react, and their reaction — a last-minute visit by President Obama — probably hurt more than it helped, demonstrating their tone-deafness regarding public attitudes.
So far the Tea Party’s record is looking pretty good. But what happens next? Many people — er, well, many pundits, anyway — complain that the Tea Party movement is entirely oppositional: For a brief moment, the key buzzword was “nihilistic,” though the connection between Turgenev and Tea Parties seems rather tenuous.
In fact, Tea Partiers seem quite clear on what they’re for: A limited government, one that keeps its nose out of their business and focuses on things like protecting the country in preference to redistributing income.
As blogger Freeman Hunt wrote recently:”You want a big tent? It’s fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it.You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats.”
Only to the likes of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is support for limited government a species of nihilism. But Tea Partiers are, in fact, working on a platform, which they’ve called the Contract From America . Though the name may remind some of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, this is something very different.
It’s a set of ideas developed via an interactive Web site, where voting determines which elements are most important. And it’s not a top-down contract consisting of promises made by leaders to the voters — it’s more in the nature of a contract of employment from the voters, which politicians may choose to accept, or look for alternative employment.
This is basically a crowd-sourced party platform, with the smoke-filled rooms and convention logrolling taken out of the picture. More dis-intermediation. I’m guessing that the political class won’t like it much, either.
But whether the political class likes it or not, this sort of thing is probably here to stay. While 2009 was the year of denigrating and ignoring the tea parties, I suspect that in 2010, they’ll be listened to quite closely. Those who fail to do so, are likely to find themselves out of a job.
ExaminerContributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds hosts “InstaVision” on PJTV.com, and blogs at Instapundit.com. He is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee.
Read more at the Washington Examiner:http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/More-impact-is-what_s-next-for-the-Tea-Party-movement-83041312.html#ixzz0eDfpIYCy
EXCLUSIVE: Republican Scott Brown has raised at least one million dollars every day this week | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
Jan 15th
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Knowledgeable sources in Massachusetts tell The Daily Caller that Republican candidate for Senate, Scott Brown, has raised at least $1 million dollars every day this week, most of it online.
Although Brown’s campaign touted Monday’s money-bomb fundraiser that brought in $1.3 million dollars, the campaign declined to confirm totals for other days this week.
“I can’t comment on figures,” said spokesman Felix Browne.
While poll numbers show a Republican win is plausible in the state where Sen. Ted Kennedy long served, neither the RNC nor NRSC has sent much money north. Given the fundraising success Brown apparently has had with grassroots supporters over the Internet, cash infusions from the national Republican party may not be necessary.
Brown will face Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat on Tuesday.
UPDATE – 5:26 P.M. – President Obama has recorded a video in support of Coakley, citing “opponents of change … pouring money into” Massachusetts as the reason why the race has been moved from leaning Democratic to a toss up Thursday by both the Cook Political Report and the Rothenberg Political Report.
Obama says in the video that the health care reform bill “and other fights will rest on one vote in the United States Senate.”
“That’s why what happens Tuesday in Massachusetts is so important,” he says.
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
Dec 7th
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?
On August 31, I headed to the health care town hall meeting of my congressional representative, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). I suspected that she planned to stack the meeting with paid organizers, after shevowed on Real Time with Bill Maher to bring “millions” of people into the streets to support the so-called “public option.” So I brought a video camera.
A friend and I took turns filming protesters on both sides of the issue. We caught an organizer from the group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) instructing followers to block dissenting views: “So if they stand up and start asking questions, and you’re in that area, simply stand up, and start chanting… ‘Health care now! Health care now!’”
My experience at Rep. Schakowsky’s town hall meeting that night convinced me to challenge her in the 2010 election. I had already stood up to Rep. Barney Frank at Harvard University, when I asked him about his role in the financial crisis. I could not simply watch thugs drown out the people of my own community back home, and do nothing.
The HCAN video became a YouTube sensation, the “smoking gun” in the controversy over which side of the debate was “Astroturfing”—i.e. creating a false image of grass roots support. I have since discovered that the video contains clues about how the entire nationwide health care campaign was planned and executed by congressional Democrats and the White House.
It turns out that the organizer in the video is John Gaudette, the Illinois director of HCAN. Gaudette alsoworks for a left-wing group linked to ACORN called Citizen Action/Illinois. Rep. Schakowsky sits on the Policy Council of the group, which suggests that she may have known about or even coordinated the suppression of her own constituents’ views by HCAN.
The plot thickens.
Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.
While in prison—or “forced sabbatical,” he called it—Creamer wrote a lengthy political manual, Listen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).
The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern—themost frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House—and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”
In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009:
- “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
- “We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
- “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
- “We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
- “We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
- “We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
- “Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
- “We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
- “We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
- “To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”
Creamer adds: “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”
Democrats have followed Creamer’s plan to the letter. They have claimed our health care system is in crisis despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the care they receive. They have—with the help of President Obama—circulated false horror stories about Americans dying for lack of health care and health insurance.
They have targeted the health insurance industry, with Rep. Schakowsky herself promising to “put the private insurance industry out of business,” though it is a top employer in Illinois.
Democrats have cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association, among others. They have brought in the President himself to tell wavering “Blue Dog” Democrats that their re-election chances depend on passing health care reform. They have bused in SEIU members to town hall meetings, and used rabbis and pastors to back health care reform from the pulpit.
They have used a complex, interconnected web of organizations—including HCAN and Organizing For America, the former Obama campaign arm—to whip up support and silence opposition. And they have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to convince the public to support bills that their representatives have never read themselves.
Creamer wrote his plan in 2006, explicitly proposing that it be carried out in 2009, once a “progressive Democrat is elected President” and once Democrats could count on 60 votes in the Senate. It is curious that Creamer, sitting in prison, could have predicted the details and the timing of President Obama’s legislative agenda so precisely.
The likeliest explanation is that Creamer helped design the Democrats’ health care strategy. That would explain why President Obama made health care an obsession in 2009, when it was only one among many issues he raised on the campaign trail in 2008. It would explain the role of several overlapping left-wing groups, including Creamer’s own Citizen Action/Illinois.
It would explain why HCAN was particularly aggressive at Rep. Schakowsky’s own town hall meeting. And Creamer’s involvement would also explain his high profile after being released from prison. He worked for the Obama campaign, training volunteers at “Camp Obama.” He has continued his work at the Strategic Consulting Group, leading “many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns,” he claims. He was also at the White House state dinner last month—together with Stern, Axelrod, and other cronies—despite the fact that ex-convicts are usually barred from such events.
Creamer’s broader aim, as laid out in his book, is the “democratization of wealth” in America and “progressive control of governments around the world.” As he recently wrote on his blog at the Huffington Post: “If we succeed in winning health insurance reform we will have breached the gates of the status quo. We will demonstrate that fundamental change is possible. Into that breach will flow a wave of progressive change.”
It is a radical agenda, making use of Rep. Schakowsky’s public profile, a network of far-left organizations, and Creamer’s old friends in the White House. It began in federal prison, and has unfolded exactly as intended, over the protests of thousands of ordinary Americans across the nation. It will not end with health care. It will continue until Mr. Creamer’s Alinskyite dream of radical change is realized—or until voters stand up and put a stop to it in 2010.
Obama Job Approval Down to 49%
Nov 20th
November 20, 2009
Obama Job Approval Down to 49%
President becomes fourth fastest to slip below the majority approval level
PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Daily tracking results show 49% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, putting him below the majority approval level for the first time in his presidency.
Although the current decline below 50% has symbolic significance, most of the recent decline in support for Obama occurred in July and August. He began July at 60% approval. The ongoing, contentious debate over national healthcare reform has likely served as a drag on his public support, as have continuing economic problems. Americans are also concerned about the Obama administration’s reliance on government spending to solve the nation’s problems and the growing federal budget deficit. Since September, Obama’s approval rating had been holding in the low 50s and, although it has reached 50% numerous times, it had never dropped below 50% until now.
Of the post-World War II presidents, Obama now is the fourth fastest to drop below the majority approval level, doing so in his 10th month on the job. Gerald Ford dropped below 50% approval during his third month in office, and Bill Clinton did so in his fourth month. Ronald Reagan, like Obama, also dropped below 50% in his 10th month in office, though Reagan’s drop occurred a few days sooner in that month (Nov. 13-16, 1981) than did Obama’s (Nov. 17-19, 2009).
But all presidents except John Kennedy dropped below the majority approval level at some point in their presidencies, and all recovered after the first time below this mark to go back above 50% approval.
Half recovered quickly — Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush were back above 50% approval the same month they dipped below that mark, and Lyndon Johnson returned to majority approval in his second month after his initial sub-50% rating. The remainder continued to sink further below 50% and remained there for many months, but eventually recovered, with Ford’s effort boosted by the Mayaguez incident.
George H.W. Bush took the longest time to recover, going more than a year before his approval rating was restored to the majority level. Unfortunately for him, the 1992 election at which voters denied him a second term in office occurred during this time, and his rating did not go back above 50% until just before he left office in January 1993.
Notably, most of the presidents who fell below 50% during their first term recovered in plenty of time to be re-elected. This list includes Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Ford and Jimmy Carter recovered in the short term but could not sustain improvement long enough to convince voters they deserved a second term, and, as noted, the elder Bush recovered after he was voted out of office. Johnson may well have joined that list had he decided to seek a second term. And Eisenhower did not go below majority approval until after he had been re-elected.
Thus, Obama’s descent below 50% is an important symbolic milestone in his presidency, but history suggests the odds of his regaining majority approval are high, and he could do so relatively soon, particularly since the individual nightly numbers for him in recent days have been right around the 50% mark. History would suggest his current loss of majority approval bears little relation to his chances of being elected to a second term in 2012.
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Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,533 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 17-19, 2009, as part of Gallup Daily tracking. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones and cellular phones.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
2010 Election Cycle Starts Now !
Nov 15th
Sorry I am late posting this, but I am bogged down with writing several papers for school. I have list of stuff I need to add once I get to a conformable position with progress in my term papers and thesis papers.
Above, is a rally that our friends @ CSA had last Saturday (Nov. 7th), entitled “2010 Starts Now”. Steve Flanagan of CSA gave a speech that reenergized tea party members, highlighted the victories of the 2009 election cycle, and outlined the beginnings of a strategy for 2010 elections. Visit CSA @ www.CSA-1776.org and on meetup.com where many members chat online between meetings and political action events. Although they are based and active on Long Island, in New York, this group has ignited much of the bigger Tea Party movements throughout the US. They were the first with the Town Hall Confrontations of elected officials (Steve Bishop), which made it into the mainstream media and gave the democrats a BIG problem during the August recess this past summer, extending way into the fall. The strategy of CSA has been a model for other groups across the US, and collectively through our actions we are bringing real change. Shout out to Virginia and New Jersey for turning their state leadership from blue to red. 2010 will see more of the same in local, state and national politics. Change, it’s commin’ and were taking Back America, and throwing the bums out.
To Our Friends in Europe, We Apologize for Our President
Nov 8th
To Our Friends in Europe, We Apologize for Our Presiden
tby John Loudon
The America in which I was raised always stood for freedom, and not just freedom for Americans but freedom for suffering people around the World. When I was an exchange student in Germany in 1983, I found myself in endless debates about this, and about my President Ronald Reagan and his desire to build a missile defense system in Western Europe. I loved the German people. The kids were so refreshing in many ways, but their cynical views of the motives of my President shocked me.
John Loudon at Berlin Wall
I admit that I am a little unique. As a fairly young child, I poured through every issue of Time magazine, which is like our version of the German magazine, Die Zeit. Jimmy Carter was the President. He talked of peace while cutting our defense spending. I remember being very scared seeing charts and graphs comparing our defense systems including war planes, ships and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The American armaments were blue and the Soviets vastly superior forced were Red. Here my story gets really odd. I was 12 years old when I read George Orwell’s 1984. The year was 1979. I was so struck by what I read and the parallels to the modern Soviet Union, that I picked up a copy of theCommunist Manifesto. What I read made me nearly shriek in fear.
The Communist manifesto holds that communism cannot work unless the World is communist. The other fact I read, was that every time in this Century that America was attacked, a Democrat was in the White House, downsizing our military. So it was clear that the nearer the Soviet empire came to economic collapse, and had superior military capabilities, the more likely it was that they would attack. They were aggressively building up while Carter, the face of America, was downsizing our military. I often had trouble sleeping at night for fear of the Soviet missile attack.
Then we elected Ronald Reagan. He became the new face of America to the World. My German friends did not like him. He moved fast and completely changed the course of America. He began rebuilding our military and he delivered that famous speech in Berlin in which he challenge Soviet President Michael Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” My teenage German friends kept arguing that Reagan was a war-monger and that while Americans were good people, our President was bad. I tried to explain that in our political system, you cannot separate the two. Our President is us. The President cannot go to war without the American people. But he will go to war to protect you. He wants to use American tax dollars to place a missile defense system in Western Europe to protect you, because he felt a moral duty to you.
One of the most momentous experiences in my life was in June of 1990. I was back in Germany! Now I was married and my new wife, Gina and I were making a fast trek through Europe on our way to Berlin. On Saturday, June 16, 1990 I had the amazing privilege to chop on the wall. I got very emotional and still do to this day, at the realization that I was literally tearing open the cage that imprisoned my fellow man. This was of course a symbolic move, although we wondered whether Gorbachev would change his mind or become the victim of a coup and the Wall chopping would stop. So I joined hundreds of people, mostly Germans, I rented a hammer and chisel and I chopped. The real satisfaction was that I had helped to elect a President who valued the individual lives of any human being, without regard to geography, religion or people group enough that he would risk everything to set them free.
Now we have a new face of America. We elected Barak Obama, and he does not feel that moral duty to you as Reagan did, at least not enough to stand up to the shrill American voices that hate the American military. So he will not be there on November 9th to Celebrate the Fall of the Berlin Wall. I do not think he sees it the way you do. He will also not participate in the festivities on the campus of my College. Westminster College, in my State of Missouri, is where the great Allied leader Winston Churchill gave theIron Curtain Speech. He told the World how millions of our fellow human beings were being stuffed into the cage, the very cage I was privileged to help dismantle. He had a way with words. On the campus of another American College he gave his shortest speech “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give in.” But I digress.
Our new President believes that you are on your own. As the KGB agent-turned-billionaire, puppet master of the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin conducts war games of an assault on Poland,Obama has decided to tear down the American missiles from Poland. We knew that he cared less as hepromised to remove our protection from the Iraqi people. 150 of them were slaughtered just this week. He really wants to find a way out of Afghanistan and pull our soldiers out just as you are pulling your U.N. workers out right now.
So my new President will not be there with you, like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were there for you. He has other priorities. I really wish I could be there to celebrate with you. Unfortunately, with the passing of time, I have five children, our economy is bad, and I too, have other priorities. So I am sorry that my President, the American face to the World will not be there for you. I feel just a little better knowing that you asked America to give him to you. I hope you like him.
Tuesday’s results on top and down ballot: The closer you look, the worse it was for Democrats
Nov 8th
Posted by Brad Smith (redstate.com)Saturday, November 7th at 12:47AM EST
The more one digs into Tuesday’s election results, the worse they look for Democrats. Let’s start by reviewing once again the three high profile races: New York’s 23rd Congressional District special election, and the gubernatorial in New Jersey and Virginia.
The Democrats have to know that NY-23 was a fluke – they can’t count on gross Republican miscalculation in 2010. Meanwhile, Democratic efforts to write off the New Jersey and Virginia losses by blaming them on bad candidates simply don’t ring true.
In Virginia, Creigh Deeds was not a bad candidate. In the primary, despite being vastly outspent, he hammered the powerful Terry McAuliffe. He had the endorsement of the Washington Post, which argued that of three strong Democratic primary candidates, in the general election, “Deeds’ moderate platform would have the broadest appeal.” On liberal blog sites, Deeds was the overwhelming favorite as the best candidate, the one most likely to win the general election.
Jon Corzine was not a bad candidate, either – he could self-fund his race, an enormous advantage, and outspend any opponent 3 to 1, as he did to Chris Christie. He had been elected statewide twice before. What Corzine was, was a bad governor. And why was he a bad governor? Because he followed the same type of policies that the Democrats are now pursuing on a national level. Maybe someone will notice that.
It has been noted lately that the Democrats plan to hold on next fall is to go negative, and to do so early – to “vaporize” opponents, as Harry Reid says. But that is exactly what both Deeds and Corzine tried to do. Corzine, who won by 11 points in 2005, lost by 4 this year. Deeds, who lost to the same man in the attorney general race 4 years ago by fewer than 350 votes, this time lost by 18 percentage points. Meanwhile, President Obama embraced and campaigned with both men. Yet McDonnell won by the biggest margin for a Republican ever, and Christie by the largest margin for a Republican in 24 years. Thus, the Democrats’ two key strategies to hold on in 2010 (other than pray for a better economy) failed miserably – Obama couldn’t save them, and relentlessly negative campaigning couldn’t save them. These men were not bad candidates, as their past success and praise for them suggests – rather, they were running on bad issues in a time in which Democrats are increasingly blamed for the nation’s difficulties.
In the other Congressional special election, California’s 10th District, Lt. Governor John Garamendi won by 11 points after heavily outspending his opponent in a district won by his predecessor in 2008 by 34 points, in which Democrats have an 18 point edge in voter registration, and which Obama carried by 31 points. Not much to crow about.
Down ballot, in races for lower offices, including state legislatures and mayors, it gets worse. Republicans rolled to easy double digit victories in the Virginia Attorney General and Lt. Governor races. In the Lt. Governor’s race, Bill Bolling, who won by just 1 percent in 2005, won by 12 points. Republicans gained 6 seats (pending one recount) in the State Assembly, giving them a 61-37-2 majority. Republicans gained a seat in the New Jersey House. Republicans took control of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and won six of seven statewide races in the Keystone State. Republicans gained in the heavily populated New York City suburbs , taking control of both Westchester County and Nassau County for the first time in a decade. They even gained a couple seats on the New York City Council (in addition to the re-election of their sort-of Republican Mayor Bloomberg). In Michigan, in a special election for a state senate seat that had gone Democratic by 61-39 when it was last up in 2006, the Republican flipped the landslide around and won 61-36. Republicans also flipped a New Hampshire state house seat in a special election.
When the Republicans are rolling up victories in the northeast corridor and in Michigan, the Democrats have to be worried. But Republican successes weren’t limited to such recent Democratic stomping grounds. In liberal Washington state, a Republican captured 58 percent of the vote to win a state House seat controlled by Democrats for 22 years, and Republican candidates steamrolled to landslide victories to easily retain seats in two other special elections for state house.
We might also note that the Republicans picked up two Democratic seats in special elections last month, winning a previously Democratic state house seat with 63% of the vote in a special election in Tennessee last month, and also picking up a formerly Democrat held state house seat in Oklahoma.
Even in the safest of Democratic bastions, the Democrats underperformed. In a special state house election in Missouri, for example, Democrats held a safe Democratic seat with 61 percent of the vote. Sounds impressive, but in 2008, in what was also an open seat race, the Democrat carried the district with 69 percent of the vote . This year’s showing, in fact, was the worst for the Democrats in the district since at least 1994. Meanwhile, Republicans romped to victories in safe Republican state legislative seats in South Carolina, and two races in Georgia.
Democrats held most of their big city mayors, but Republicans did to as incumbent mayors did well throughout the country, in what were mostly non-partisan races. But a few offices changed party control, however, usually away from the Democrats, and many in the battleground Midwest and in the northeast, where the GOP is supposed to be dead.
Toledo elected independent Mike Bell, ending 20 years of Democratic control. An independent also defeated an incumbent Democrat in Dayton. Republicans picked up the Mayor’s office in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In an open seat race in Manchester, New Hampshire, Republican Ted Gatsas kept the Mayor’s office in GOP hands with the best showing by a Republican in the city in more than a decade. In another open seat Mayor’s race, in Norwich, Connecticut, Republican Peter Nystrom easily won election to an office previously held by a Democrat. Republicans also won the Mayor’s office in Stamford for the first time since 1993, winning 55 percent of the vote in a city with a 2-1 Democratic edge in voter registration. A Republican ousted the Democrats from the Mayor’s office in Stratford, Connecticut, and the GOP picked up council seats throughout the state. You have to wonder if Chris Dodd was watching.
Republicans picked up Mayor’s offices out west, too. In a non-partisan race in Washington’s 4th largest city, Republican Tim Leavitt defeated labor-backed, 14 year incumbent Royce Pollard, saying, “My opponent seems to think government creates jobs. Creating jobs is done by the business community. Where government can help out is by getting out of the way.”
The Democrats did pick up one mayor’s office of note, in Charlotte, North Carolina, but Republicans returned the favor by taking the Mayor’s slot away from the Democrats in Greensboro. Democrats were left to find solace in such holding actions, such as not losing as many state assembly seats in New Jersey as they had thought they might.
Republicans ought not, and probably cannot, sit around and hope they can ride into office in 2010 merely on a bad economy and Democratic ineptitude. For one thing, the economy is resilient enough, and the Democrats and the Fed have thrown enough money into it, that the economy and the unemployment numbers should be improved and improving a year from now. We need to press forward with common sense solutions to everyday concerns, and be explaining now why the President’s economic policies are retarding, rather than helping, the economy to recover. And we should keep emphasizing the value of freedom. But we can’t just expect 2010 to fall into our laps. That said, Tuesday was a very good night for Republicans, and the more one looks at it, the harder it is for Democrats to claim otherwise.
Freewheeling young voters scare both parties
Nov 8th
AP Photo
By: MICHAEL BARONE
Senior Political Analyst
November 8, 2009
In November 2008, 658,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 782,000 did so in Virginia. In November 2009, 212,000 Americans under 30 voted in New Jersey and 198,000 did so in Virginia. In other words, young voter turnout this year was down two-thirds in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia.
These numbers are extrapolations from exit poll results and should be regarded as approximate and not precise. But they tell a vivid story, and one with scary implications for both Democratic and Republican political strategists.
The scary story for Republicans was plain a year ago. Young voters went 66 to 32 percent for Barack Obama, while voters over 30 went for Obama by only 50 to 49 percent. Some analysts projected an enduringly Democratic Millennial Generation that would send the Republican Party the way of the Whigs.
But that future obviously didn’t arrive last week and it doesn’t seem likely to arrive in November 2010. Young voters cast 441,000 votes for Obama in New Jersey but only 121,000 for Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, who brought Obama into the state five times and featured him in his TV ads.
Young voters cast 469,000 votes for Obama in Virginia and provided him with 70 percent of his statewide plurality, but they only cast 87,000 votes for the hapless Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds. Republican Bob McDonnell actually carried the young vote 54 to 44 percent.
A drop-off in young turnout is normal in off-year elections. But this drop-off was enormous. Evidently the aura of candidate Obama was a lot more attractive to young Americans than the policies of President Obama and the roughly similar policies of the Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia.
This is a generation accustomed to making its own choices and shaping its own world. They listen to their own iPod playlists, not someone else’s Top Forty; they construct their own Facebook pages rather than enlisting in the official Elvis Fan Club.
Democrats’ policies are not in sync with this mentality. They seek a government-run health care regimen, in which young Americans will be forced to sign up for expensive insurance to subsidize older people with more health problems. They seek to jam employees into labor unions, who will insist on 5,000 pages of work rules and rigid seniority systems.
They have a raft of policies — higher taxes on high earners and those not enrolled in favored health insurance plans, cap-and-trade legislation that taxes everyone who use electricity — that discourage job creation and stifle innovation. Freezing things in place may sound good to those who already occupy a comfortable niche, but it does little for the many young people who are currently looking for a job.
Especially when they’re seeking a job in which they can use their talents creatively and imaginatively to serve society as well as themselves. The full employment economy that prevailed for a quarter of a century until 2008 enabled new workers to find such opportunities. An economy that promises 10 percent unemployment as far as the eye can see — which is where the Democrats’ job-killing policies seem likely to produce — forces young people to take whatever job they can get, however unappealing, as young people did in the 1930s.
Against this background, the Democrats’ relatively liberal policies on cultural issues don’t seem to have much appeal, as was plain in Virginia. Certainly not enough to bring many young voters to the polls. Obama posters and T-shirts are no longer selling well and chants of “hope and change” now seem dated.
That’s likely to be a problem for Democrats in 2010, as it was in 2009. But there’s a problem for Republicans too, when the Millennials do turn out again in large numbers, in 2012 or whenever. The challenge for them is to come up with policies that they can argue will enable young Americans to choose their future, policies that will again produce the bounteous economic growth that provides opportunities for work that can be productive, creative and satisfying.
The House Republicans’ alternative to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chaotically cobbled together health care bill is a start. So are Gov.-elect McDonnell’s detailed proposals in Virginia and Gov.-elect Chris Christie’s somewhat vaguer proposals in New Jersey.
This year the Democrats’ proposals proved unappealing enough to keep young voters from the polls. But Republicans will need better ideas when they finally do show up.
Michael Barone, The Examiner’s senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His columns appear Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
Conservative Society For Action Halloween Rally – All Politics Are Local
Nov 2nd
Our friends at Conservative Society For Action (CSA), the main force behind the tea party movement in Long Island, New York had their get out the vote rally on Halloween afternoon on 10/31/09. Director Steve Flanagan gave a motivating speech that highlights the problems with national and local politics. He stressed that there are no such thing as an off year election, and by ignoring local elections, our country has got to where we are today, Remember to vote this election day in your town. From the guy who paves your roads, to local judges, to state representatives, to governor make sure you get out there and vote. Time to take our country back!! Go Hoffmaan-23
Direction of GOP at Center of N.Y. Congressional Race
Oct 31st
Doug Hoffman, Conservative Party candidate in upstate New York. Photo AP Press
WASHINGTON — What began as a little-noticed congressional campaign in upstate New York has become a high-profile battle for the direction of the Republican Party, and it could play a big role in the GOP’s approach to the 2010 elections and beyond.
With Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman mounting a serious challenge to moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens, prominent Republicans are splitting support between Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Scozzafava, providing an unusually raw display of the party’s divisions.
Supporters of Mr. Hoffman, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, say the GOP needs to return to its conservative roots. Backers of Ms. Scozzafava, such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, say the party must embrace centrists who can capture swing districts.
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Associated Press
Doug Hoffman, Conservative Party candidate in upstate New York.
There have been few neutral surveys in recent weeks, but polls backed by both liberal and conservative groups suggest this has become a two-person race between Messrs. Owens and Hoffman. Democrats, clearly viewing it that way, have been aiming their fire at Mr. Hoffman.
The vacancy occurred when President Barack Obama chose the district’s eight-term congressman, Rep. John McHugh, to serve as secretary of the Army.
The district has been in GOP hands for nearly 120 years. There are about 46,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, though Mr. Obama won 52% of the vote there in 2008. Like the rest of the Northeast, New York state has trended Democratic; only two of its 29 House members are Republicans, down from nine in 2004.
The latest surprise came Thursday, when former New York Gov. George Pataki, a moderate Republican, endorsed Mr. Hoffman. The move may signal that some Republicans have given up on Ms. Scozzafava.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in an interview that the tumultuous race reflects a healthy ferment within the party. “The fight is, are you going to adhere to principles or are you going to be a Democrat-light?” he said. Asked if that meant Ms. Scozzafava represented “Democrat-light,” Mr. Steele said that was up to voters.
The intra-GOP battle has intensified as polls suggest support for Mr. Obama is slipping. Some Republicans believe the path to victory lies in tapping the energy of conservative activists. Others want to replicate Democrats’ success in appealing to independents.
Republicans would likely cite a Hoffman win as a vindication of conservative principles. If Mr. Owens wins, Democrats will say it prove that splits in the GOP are hobbling the party.
The race also may determine what kind of candidates the GOP recruits for 2010. A Hoffman win could persuade them to tack to the right, while a Democratic victory could boost centrists’ prospects.
—Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article.
Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com