No, not because of this. It’s the fact that Britain might be the last, best place for actual free-thinking journalism that has won my heart, and simultaneously, the scorn of Robert Gibbs. This is one of many shining examples of how Britain’s media holds politicians (ours and their own) feet to the fire, regardless of the reporter’s own personal beliefs.  Can we trade NBC News for the Telegraph? We’ll throw in Katie Couric and a Mickey Mantle rookie card! If the British press keeps this up I may finally be able to forgive them for the Spice Girls.

Memo to US Press secretary Robert Gibbs

1. Congratulations. Your presidential regime has managed to secure the most supine, slobbering, spineless, unquestioning media coverage since Enver Hoxha’s Albania. A report last month by the Center for Media and Public Affairs said Obama has received more coverage than his two predecessors combined. On ABC, CBS and NBC news the majority of evaluations – 58 per cent – have been favourable. (Compare GW Bush – 33 per cent; Bill Clinton 44 per cent – in first 50 days of office). More importantly, you have Pravda. Yes, no less than 73 per cent of all evaluative comments in your chief propaganda organ – aka The New York Times – have been favourable to Obama.

2. Sure your congenitally libtard Mainstream Media were probably biased that way anyway, but you have played your part. Your combative style – which led you to dismiss the entire British print media just now in one glib, sneering phrase - has earned you the nickname “The Enforcer.” You have a reputation for coming down hard on any media outlet which doesn’t follow your approved version of reality. “I work the referee a little bit,” as you once put it. (A reference, perhaps, to when you played goalkeeper for your college football team).

3. If you are going to make clever-sounding football references displaying your rich understanding of the British press, try to get your terminology right. We call it the “Champions League.” Not the “Champions League cup.”

4. That’s only the beginning of your problems, matey. Your treatment not just of the British media but of Britain generally smacks of a risible ineptitude. First, you let President Obama send back the Winston Churchill bust. Then, you insult our visiting prime minister with a dismally low-key reception (worthy of a minor African head of state, not your closest and most loyal ally) and shoddy gifts (those DVDs). Then you compound the insult by having one of your monkeys declare, Chicago-politics-style, “”There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” OK so we know Obama’s not much interested in foreign affairs and has a special loathing for Britain because it roughed up his Kenyan granddad during the Mau Mau insurrection. But don’t you realise, that one of your jobs as his press secretary is to make out like he loves us so much even his underpants have a union flag on them?

5. Insulting the British print media. Big mistake. We know we’re not angels. We know we can go over the top sometimes. But unfortunately that’s a much bigger problem for you than it is for us. You see, while a lot of your mainstream media will hold fire on stories which they think may reflect poorly on your wondrous Obamamessiah – what his half-brother has been up to, say – we have fewer qualms about telling it like it is. So far, you’ve had a pretty easy ride. The Obama Kool Aid has proved almost as popular beverage in Britain as it is in the US. But just you wait till we start showing our teeth.

6. A lot of Americans know this. They appreciate our irreverence. They enjoy our frank criticisms of all the myriad areas where Obama is getting it so badly wrong – everything from his disastrous cap and trade measures, to his brutal treatment of Chrysler dealerships which didn’t support him, to his pork barrelling, to his failure to do anything that looks remotely like rescuing the US economy. That’s why they come to read us online: because they can and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

7. We had a guy just like you over here once. Guy named Alastair Campbell. Did for our now heavily discredited prime minister Tony Blair what you do for Obama: a little light press bullying; professional turd polishing; that kind of thing. We hated Alastair Campbell, really loathed him. But he got away with bullying us because in those days we didn’t know any better. We were still going through this sort of dumb-cattle phase where we still had some vestigial respect for politicians and trust that they knew what they were doing.

8. But we don’t respect politicians any more. Not our politicians, and not yours either. Imagine how this new strain of irreverence bordering on utter contempt is going to affect our reporting of political affairs. Actually, you’ve no need to imagine. Just read some of our Telegraph blogs.

On Friday,  Rich Lowry shared a Email over at NRO that he had received:

I decided to peruse the comments delivered by the other participants in the 2001 Symposium at Berkeley, expecting to find that Judge Sotomayor’s position was fairly mainstream among the presenters at an event sponsored by “La Raza Law Journal.”

To my surprise, two of the judges speaking after her (she gave the keynote address the night before their presentations), rejected her relativism, her characterization of “[t]he aspiration to impartiality” as “just that”-a mere aspiration, and the endorsement of the use of “prejudices.”  None of the judges expressly disagreed with her by name, but given that, in her words, the “focus” of her keynote address was precisely the endorsement of prejudice, the implicit disagreement was fairly palpable and was probably obvious to the audience.

Lowry’s writer first references California State Judge Valeriano Saucedo, who acknowledged that “he had a certain degree of understanding to Hispanic defendants, but ‘[t]hat does not mean that I apply a different standard of justice, because that is wrong.’”

Also speaking was Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals Judge Judge Richard Pae:

“I used to tell jurors when they entered the courtroom and took their oaths as jurors, ‘You walk into the courtroom with a lifetime of experiences, and we don’t ask you to suddenly forget all that experience, to ignore that experience.’  I asked them if they could judge fairly the case that they were about to hear. I explained, ‘As jurors, recognize that you might have some bias, or prejudice. Recognize that it exists, and determine whether you can control it so that you can judge the case fairly. Because if you cannot – if you cannot set aside those prejudices, biases and passions – then you should not sit on the case.’

“The same principle applies to judges. We take an oath of office. At the federal level, it is a very interesting oath. It says, in part, that you promise or swear to do justice to both the poor and the rich. The first time I heard this oath, I was startled by its significance. I have my oath hanging on the wall in my office to remind me of my obligations. And so, although I am a Latino judge and there is no question about that – I am viewed as a Latino judge – as I judge cases, I try to judge them fairly. I try to remain faithful to my oath.

The accuracy of this Email is confirmed today by The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, appearing on Fox News Sunday.

KRISTOL: … It was a carefully prepared text, published in La Raza Law Journal.

WALLACE: This is her 2001 speech at Berkeley Law School.

KRISTOL: Right, at Berkeley Law School, at a symposium, speaking from a text, a total endorsement of, in my view, identity politics, counting by race, a Latina judge’s voice.

She goes so far that the next day Judge Richard Paez of the Ninth Circuit, who is a liberal Clinton appointee, basically rebukes her and makes a big point of saying, “Look, I’m proud to be a Latino. I bring my experiences to the court. But I took an oath to judge, and I really believe we have to judge impartially and it can’t just be an aspiration,” and he didn’t mention her name, but he basically is rebutting her speech the night before that somehow impartial judging is merely an aspiration.

So I think she has to account for this speech, not just for one sentence.

Again, the following was part of Sotomayor’s speech at the La Raza event, stated prior to the comments made by the two judges who are referenced above:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

You may have already read Andy McCarthy’s question at NRO, echoed the other day by Sean Hannity on his radio program:  “Forget Whether She Qualifies as a ‘Racist.’ Would Judge Sotomayor Qualifiy as a Juror?”

I have not before served as a juror, and I am not a lawyer, but I must think that if, after being called for jury duty, a potential juror were to state to the judge that his worldview informed him that a white, southern background led him to not only a different, but also better, opinion, the person would likely not be chosen for the jury.  Judge Pae said exactly that:  that it’s OK to have “biases and passions,” but if one cannot separate himself from them for the purposes of decision making, that this person disqualifies himself for jury duty; and not only for jurors, as “the same principle applies to judges.”

On May 29, William Kristol noted the comments made that day by Robert Gibbs:

“I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”

Gibbs added:

“I think if she had the speech to do all over again, I think she’d change that word.”

Kristol writes:  “That word was ‘better,’” and asks, “What word would Gibbs have preferred? Apparently, something less judgmental than ‘better.’”

As Kristol said today on Fox News, and as Rich Lowry writes, this doesn’t appear to be a situation that can easily be dismissed as “poor word choice.”  Lowry:

Heaven knows, we all say things in impromtu speeches or on TV or in blog posts that we wish we could take back. But how are you the victim of poor word choice in a speech, as Ed Whelan pointed out the other day, that was apparently delivered from a prepared text and that was then turned into a law review article months later? (Ed refers to it as the “unscripted” law review article.) The problem wasn’t the word choice; the problem was quite obviously what Sotomayor meant to say and said several times in several different ways very clearly.

Other Sotomayor-related news:

• University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato says it’s time for take-backs.

“Judge Sotomayor would be wise not to tap dance around this. Don’t just ‘clarify’ the statement, take it back.”

• William Kristol says it’s the right decision to oppose the nomination, if only because the GOP establishment is of the opposite opinion:

Any doubts I had that it was not just right in principle but also politically smart to challenge the Sonia Sotomayor pick disappeared this morning: The National Journal reports that its survey of “GOP Insiders” shows 64 percent advising that Republicans dodge a battle, with only a quarter recommending fighting. Safe rule of American politics: Two-thirds of “GOP Insiders” are never right.

• Sotomayor’s opinion on the Constitution is that, functionally, there is not one:

The New York Times reports “Sotomayor’s Appellate Opinions Are Unpredictable, Lawyers and Scholars Say“. The story isn’t that surprising when one considers this 1996 Sotomayor quote that Ed Whelan dug up:

“The public expects the law to be static and predictable. The law, however, is uncertain and responds to changing circumstances. … the public fails to appreciate the importance of indefiniteness in the law.”

• In 1998, 29 US Senate Republicans voted against Sotomayor’s nomination to the Second Circuit US Court of Appeals, and 11 remain in the Senate:

Brownback (R-KS)
Enzi (R-WY)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Kyl (R-TX)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)

Dr. George Tiller of the Women’s Health Care Services clinic in east Wichita, Kansas, was shot to death earlier this morning in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church.  Tiller, who recently was in the news when a Wichita jury ruled  that he was not guilty of illegal abortion on 19 criminal charges, operated one of the few clinics in the country that perform partial-birth abortion. Dr. Tiller had also made headlines in 2005 when Christin Gilbert, a 19-year-old woman with Down Syndrome , died  after a multi-day abortion procedure performed at Tiller’s facility.  In 1993, Tiller survived an attack by radical activist Rachelle  Shannon, suffering gunshot wounds to both arms.

People of all political and ideological stripes must unite in the condemnation of this senseless act of violence.  Regardless of what the actual account and motive turn out to be, it is already being shaped politically by left-wing blogs like the Huffington Post as an act of fundamentalist violence by a typical Pro-Lifer.  Blogger Andrew Sullivan has already used this tragedy to attack people of the Christian faith, labeling the crime ‘Christianist Terrorism’ despite knowing nothing about the shooter or the motive behind this crime.  This is shameless politicizing of a tragic death by liberals, and it should stop.  I call on the Huffington Post, the Daily Kos, Sullivan, and all blogs of all political leanings to join together  in condemning this crime and also call on them not to cheapen Dr. Tiller’s memory by using his death to launch disgusting ad hominem attacks on the peaceful members of the Pro-Life Movement. 

This death is tragic for both sides of the abortion issue.  For Pro-Choicers, a person who fought for womens’ reproductive rights has been murdered for his beliefs and the liberty he stood for. For Pro-Lifers, a fundamentalist has once again hijacked the agenda, and cast a dark cloud on reasonable moral objection to abortion at a time when more Americans then ever before are identifying as Pro-Life. But most of all this death is tragic for Dr. Tiller’s family, his wife, children, and grandchildren who will now be deprived of their husband, father, and grandfather.  My thoughts and prayers are with them during this horrible time. Nothing justifies this violent act, and nothing justifies the shameless propagandizing of this death for political purposes.

In the last few years, grassroots Republicans have directed a lot of their anger at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), and it’s sister organization on the House side – the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). These organizations have unfortunately developed a reputation for two things: shutting down “new blood” candidates in GOP primaries against “old bull” incumbents and sinking GOP candidates by running overly nasty smear campaigns against Democrats.

I personally find this to be  a travesty, as I think the NRSC and NRCC are two of the most valuable organizations we have. They are supposed to be the ones finding “new blood”, and talking the best candidates into running. We need them more than ever in the next few years, and there are a few races in 2010 where they have major openings to both pick up seats and rehabilitate their reputation. So, I want to lay out a few suggestions as to how the the NRSC can “get its groove back” quickly and hopefully provide a model of the NRCC to follow.

Specifically, I want to look at two races – one where the NRSC is involved and shouldn’t be and one where they aren’t involved and should be.

First, the Crist-Rubio showdown in Florida. Crist seemingly has a commanding early lead – but Rubio is quickly consolidating a big following in the conservative movement. Personally, I’m a Rubio guy – but I’m also a realist. This is Crist’s race to lose at the moment, and he doesn’t need the NRSC’s help. Furthermore, he has a major image problem with non-Floridian Republicans. I’m not going to call on the NRSC to drop it’s endorsement - what’s done is done - but they would be well served to de-emphasize that race and move on to places where they are needed. Crist can win without them – and they don’t need to get involved in a big-ticket primary between two strong candidates.

On the other hand, the race to unseat Michael Bennet in Colorado is in desperate need of NRSC involvement. The Senator is highly vulnerable, but the GOP is not getting electable candidates in the race. Right now, we merely have and amateur-hour primary between Weld County D.A. Ken Buck (Oh dear…) and Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier (Oy vey…). Nothing against either of these men – but the campaign so far has shown that neither is going to take down even the most vulnerable Democrat. The NRSC actually cited the pickup opportunity in Colorado as a race that they could help with if Crist wins in Florida – but no amout of NRSC money is going to win Colorado if they don’t help us find a candidate now!

So, let’s forget about the Florida fracas, let bygones be bygones, and start using  the NRSC for what it was made for – scouting out quality new candidates, talking them into the race, and making sure they win. In Colorado, they have the opportunity to totally resphape the race by pushing Major General Bentley Rayburn in, introducing his spectacular record of acheivement to the voters (how many candidates have managed a $17 billion military budget?), and making sure that he gets connected to national bigwigs who can bankroll him to victory. Seriously – how do you lose with a guy like this? Just give him a budget, wind him up, and watch him make mincemeat out of Senator Bennet…

…and if you don’t want the general, go pound down John Elway’s door or something. Just give us a candidate!

So – this is how the NRSC and NRCC need to be operating in order to heal the rift with the base. These organizations are sorely needed in today’s political situation, and there is an opening for them to go from zeroes to heroes very quickly if they allocate their resources properly. Let’s forget about the large-scale brouhahas like the Crist-Rubio circus and get the Bentley Rayburns of the world into the races where Democrats are gaining a false sense of security. That is how we can move forward to victory in 2010 and beyond.

Podcast Show Notes

Obama Justice Department tolerates voter intimidation. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

Sotomayor’s anti-2nd Amendment record.

Majority know the truth: abortion hurts women. Pro-abortion movement protests pro-life display . (Hat Tip: Jill Stanek.)

Tolerance: pro-abortion radicals vandalize christian organization.

Oklahoma bans gender selection abortions.

Obama’s confused metaphor.  (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Obama Stimulus pumping. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Burris’ latest defense: I’m not a crook, just a manipulative deceptive liar. (Hat Tip: Sister Toldjah.) 

Apple and Google server farming at California’s expense.  (Hat Tip: Hugh Hewitt.)

Unions hurt stock prices. (Hat Tip: Labor Pains.)

Second Amendment update via Gun Watch.

MP spends taxpayer money to build servant entrance. (Hat Tip: Instapundit.)

Music by Ken Kurland via the Podsafe Music Network.

Click here to listen, click here to download.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Gates calls for more sanctions against North Korea:

Gates told Asian defense officials they were all familiar with North Korea’s tactic of creating a crisis and then demanding payment to end the crisis.

He said the United States and its allies were still open to dialogue with North Korea, but would not bend to provocation.

He said if North Korea would not conform to international norms, “painful” sanctions would be needed to end the nuclear program.

I just have to laugh — well, I would, if it weren’t so utterly tragic — at people who discuss evil dictators like they’re just wayward fellows who happened to accidentally stray from the norm. Hey, newsflash, genius: North Korea doesn’t give a flying crap about “international norms.” Call me nuts, but I don’t think that a lunatic dictator who starves his own people, plays war games, tricks American officials, and runs a police state is operating on the same plane as we are.

Yeah, but they’ll be back to “international norms” once they stop flinging rockets around.

Jay Cost provides his initial reaction to the likely Joe Sestak vs. Arlen Specter Democratic primary.  Cost appears confident that this is clearly bad for Specter and good for Republican Pat Toomey.  Parts:

His departure from the GOP came at about the time that the media was talking about how small and narrow the party is. I don’t think this was coincidental – I think it was timed to give Specter cover: the media would put the spotlight on the GOP rather than him. If they had looked closely at him, I think they would have found that he is a very weak candidate. Lots of moderates win Republican primaries in plenty of states. That Specter would surely fail to do this says more about Specter than the PA GOP. And that Quinnipiac poll shows Specter under 50% in a head-to-head against Toomey. Specter is weak; Sestak can win.

…

My sense is that a strategic pol like Sestak would only get into the race if he thought he could raise the needed cash. Money is how Sestak can make up for the familiarity that Specter has in the state. Toomey raised $4.5 million for his challenge in 2004. Sestak is going to have to do better. He surely will, already having about $3.3 million on hand as of April 1st.

…

This is good news for Toomey. If Specter loses the primary, the race becomes an open seat, which improves his chances. If Specter wins, but Sestak puts up a spirited fight, the negativity of the final weeks should knock Specter down a peg. Plus, Specter would have had to spend a good deal of his cash.

…

The meme on Pennsylvania is that it is trending blue (inaccurate; it hasn’t budged in 50+ years)

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You can contact Ben Hodge on Facebook, through his Web site, and on Twitter.

Just as an aside, I still think the parties target a different average voter, and because of that, the tactics that work for one party won’t necessarily work for the other

It seems that Andrew Sullivan has removed his lips from Barack Obama’s posterior stopped obsessing over Barack F. Kennedy Christ just long enough to fire a few bullets toward the way of Israel. His desperate attempt to “make up” for his ardent support of the Iraq War has officially reached proportions totaling not just wrongheadedness, but pure, venom-laced support for evil. The following toxic, intellectually dishonest screed was accompanied by an AOL poll sponsored by Sullivan inquiring as to whether the United States has “double standards” regarding the rhetoric of Israel and Iran:

But after the carnage of Gaza, with the ethnic cleanser Lieberman at his side, sitting on a massive stockpile of nukes, does Netanyahu really not see why others might be alarmed, if not terrified, when they hear this analogy? Muslims are human beings too. Up against the military might of the US and Israel, they can feel like permanent victims. And when one side has over a hundred nukes, is threatening a strike, and the other is trying to get material for one, the fear is legitimate on both sides.

The danger of religious fundamentalism is everywhere…

The ‘carnage of Gaza,’ which consisted of Israel literally dropping planeloads of fliers advising Palestinians to flee before Israel’s military arrived. The ‘carnage,’ which involved a response to a paramilitary terrorist organization lobbing bombs into Israeli cities. The ‘carnage,’ which targeted only militants, rather than innocents. Maybe if Muslims want to stop feeling like victims, they can stop trying to kill Jews all the time. That way, Israel would leave well enough alone. But in the perverted mind of Sullivan, self-defense is aggression, and when the bullied strikes back at the predator, it’s nothing more than the victim perpetuating some sort of ‘cycle of violence.’ Moral equivalence abounds; motivations mean nothing. Hitting is hitting, and hitting is bad, bad, bad. Once this Kool-Aid has been digested, the barbaric savagery promoted by Hamas and the modern democracy of Israel are one and the same.

Now, what is this analogy Sullivan speaks of? It’s the comparison by a Netanyahu adviser of Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the spirit of ‘Amalek,’ which manifests itself as the eternal enemy of the Jews, a la Nebuchadnezzar or Adolf Hitler. Sullivan attempts to trace the history of ‘Jewish overreaction’ to such threats, implying, through a bizarre analysis reliant on scriptural literalism, that Netanyahu may want to attempt genocide against the Iranian people.

Now, now, says Sullivan: he knows that’s not Netanyahu’s intention, but hey, religious fundamentalism is everywhere, after all:

Now, I do not for a moment believe that this is Netanyahu’s intent or belief. I do not for a second believe that he wants to kill every Iranian man, woman and child, and steal their cattle and clothing. I think he wants to erase every single aspect of the nuclear program out of a genuine security concern for his country. I do think, however, that the understandable Jewish fear of another Shoah sometimes obscures how some statements can be read or interpreted by others – and this cluelessness can hurt Israel. I mean: does Netanyahu believe invoking an ancient religious commandment to annihilate a regional rival is the best way to move diplomacy forward in the Middle East? If Ahmadinejad had cited a command by Allah for the genocidal annihilation of every single Jewish man, woman and child, and if he brought up this religious text to explain his attitude toward Israel in the current moment, do you think Norman Podhoretz would explain it away as unserious or inoperable?

I’ll disregard the continual shameful moral equivalence — lunatic apocalyptic dictator, legitimately-elected prime minister — pah, what’s the difference? — and note that that’s not quite what the adviser was referring to. He was referring to the existential threat posed by Iran (which appears to Sullivan to be of a dubious nature). Does Sullivan think that Israel would even be discussing Iran if its leaders weren’t threatening to wipe Israel off of the map? Does he think that Israel likes having to be constantly fighting a battle for its survival?

It’s modern liberalism epitomized: the bully hits, the bullied hits back, and the bullied is blamed for sticking up for himself.

Rest assured, though, Andrew feels some sympathy for the Jewish state:

Just because the Israelis are paranoid doesn’t mean the Iranian leaders aren’t out to get them.

The Israelis are paranoid perpetuators of carnage.

Khamenei and Netanyahu are just two sides of the same coin.

Bully acting out of malice, bullied replying out of self-defense — it’s all just a cycle of violence, really.

This is what passes for nuance today. God help us.

PS, Mr. Sullivan: I know you know who I am.

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Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com

The Kansas Liberty today reported on a research breakthrough announced Thursday by Dr. Robert Lanza with Advanced Cell Technology.

Dr. Masaaki Tamura, associate professor of anatomy and physiology at Kansas State University and a stem cell researcher, said the announcement, by Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology, was a “big breakthrough.”

Dr. Tamura added that the development could lead to a day - perhaps sooner rather than later - when stem cells derived from the skin and suitable for treating all kinds of human diseases and conditions could be reaped from “a swab of the mouth or a scraping of the skin,” rather than through the destruction of a human embryo.

Lanza, working with researchers at Harvard University and in South Korea, said his research team was able to transform skin cells from adult humans into cells that mimic the “pluripotent” characteristics of embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent refers to the ability to morph into any type of cell and develop into any kind of tissue.

…

In a Reuters article, Lanza described the iPS cells his team developed as “the ultimate stem cell solution.”

“You just add some proteins to a few skin cells, and voilà. Patient-specific stem cells.”

Lanza indicated in a public statement that he hoped to seek permission from the Food and Drug Administration, now headed by HHS Secretary and former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, next year to test the refined iPS cells in human subjects. If all goes well in clinical trials, he said commercial applications wouldn’t be far behind.

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You can contact Ben Hodge on Facebook, through his Web site, and on Twitter.

And may you have many, many more my friend.

“Governor Sanford is the most articulate Republican out there right now, and the other Republicans ought to pay attention – or if they don’t, their numbers will continue to languish.”

“We’ve not tested an ad that does that well,” Luntz said this morning on FOX News.

The last time we had a conservative political leader who received this level of positive approval when he spoke, was President Reagan.   

If Sarah does not run, it will be very difficult for me not to endorse Sanford, even though I place his chances of securing the nomination, very low.  Sanford has become the voice of political common-sense in America. 

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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and twitter/Kris_Lorelli.

Research 2000/Daily Kos New Jersey Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 46%
• Jon Corzine 39%

• Steve Lonegan 43%
• Jon Corzine 40%

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• Chris Christie 38% / 15% (+23%)
• Steve Lonegan 22% / 13% (+9%)
• Jon Corzine 36% / 55% (-19%)

Among Republicans

• Chris Christie 69% / 6% (+63%)
• Steve Lonegan 52% / 5% (+47%)

Survey of 600 likely voters was conducted May 25-27. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

Another new post of mine at NewMajority:

Against [her] profoundly meritocratic backdrop, what some people seem to think is most compelling about her is the fact that her skin is a little bit brown. Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan have both remarked that Sotomayor was clearly only chosen for her skin color, while Politico featured an article remarking upon the ‘amazing diversity’ of Obama, Sotomayor, and Biden surrounding each other.

This is the awful tragedy of affirmative action. No matter how hard a racial minority works, no matter what odds she overcomes, no matter how distinguished she may become, her achievements will always be tainted by that big question mark she knows will always hover over her head.

Her life story has a profoundly conservative, meritocratic backdrop. In a classic case of missing the forest for the trees, the fact that she’s Hispanic has become the main focus.

Another NewMajority piece that I didn’t mention yesterday discusses why we fight Sotomayor.

Certainly, we oppose Judge Sotomayor on the merits of the argument: she is a down-the-line judicial activist who seems to harbor some troubling racial grievances. But she’s not the real target, here: This is ultimately about sapping President Obama’s precious political capital. It’s about finally, unequivocally putting the left on defense. It’s about forcing the Democratic Party to answer tough questions in front of the American people about the role of the judiciary in American government. It’s about uniting a fractured party and reaching out to those who have seen nothing but incoherency in the right’s response to economic issues. This is an issue that the Republican Party has historically performed strongly on, and still can win the trust of the American people with. Republicans of all stripes can rally behind following the Constitution to the letter — in fact, there is quite likely no better test of whether one is a Republican or a Democrat than their legal philosophy. So this is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

Sotomayor’s near-certain appointment will have few legal consequences: In all likelihood, she’ll be another David Souter. At the end of all this, the left gains nothing from a policy standpoint. But we on the right have much to gain politically by seizing this moment.

No, I’m not talking about Sonia Sotomayor – who I’m really not in the mood to comment on.

Instead, I want to give a shout-out to Michaëlle Jean, the Governor General of Canada (Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in the country), who has come under fire from mean-spirited environmentalist radicals.

If you haven’t heard the story, Gov. Gen. Jean recently made a trip to the Arctic region of Canada – where the local Inuit community took her on a seal hunt. After they shot a seal, they threw a big feast and offered Jean the traditional honor of eating a piece of the animal’s heart (considered a delicacy). Being a good head of state, Jean obliged them by slicing open the dead seal, cutting off a piece of the heart, and eating it.

Naturally, this ritual shocked and horrified greenies around the world – especially considering that Canadian sealskin imports were recently banned by the European Union (who apparently don’t like it when cute little seals get whacked).

All kidding aside – the radicals fail to see that seal meat is an important source of nutrition for the Inuit, and seal for them is no different than beef for us. It’s not about killing animals for the heck of it, it’s about food.

For her part, Gov. Gen. Jean is standing by her actions and rejecting cries of those who want to come between the Inuit and a valuable food source. She is a true public servant, and I only wish our leaders here in America had that kind backbone.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH A GREAT NEWS REPORT ON JEAN’S RESPONSE TO THE CONTROVERSY.

For political reasons, I would not favor a Republican Party filibuster of the President’s first nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. But her record as an appeals court judge and publicly enunciated judicial philosophy do render her unfit to serve even as a traffic court magistrate.

Unfortunately, thanks in large part to past feckless GOP judicial nomination strategies, not only were previous unqualified nominees not filibustered; to the contrary, Republican Judiciary Committee leaders later boasted of the large number of their caucus voted to approve their nominations.

To paraphrase Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the architect of the failed strategy as applied to Justices Breyer and Ginsburg: “After all, President Clinton was elected by the American people and elections have consequences.”

DeVine Law is confident that, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), also elected by American people, will un-Hatch that strategy; better exercise the advice portion of the Advise and Consent Clause; and lead a full scale attack against the dominant but weakened judicial philosophy favored by liberals for decades that essentially requires its adherents to violate their Oath to uphold the Constitution.

During the nomination proceedings for Justice Samuel Alito four years ago when the Democrats threatened to filibuster President George W. Bush’s nominee, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) admitted that judicial philosophy was the paramount issue, which any person paying attention had known since at least the 1987 nomination brawl that brawl that sunk the nomination of Robert Bork.

Yet, despite that and the later Borking of Justice Clarence Thomas, liberal Democrat Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne reminds:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., warned during the Alito confirmation that if Democrats used ideology as a measuring stick with Bush nominees, it was inevitable that Republicans would apply the same standard to the appointee of a Democratic president.

“I say to my Democratic friends, think carefully about what is being done today,” Kyl warned in 2006.

“Its impact will be felt well beyond this particular nominee.”

Truly an astounding admission of the consequence of the previous fictions participated in by both parties, but taken advantage of only by the Democrats, in which the discussion of “qualifications” discussed everything but the most important ones.

Let us be clear, there is no history of the Republican Party ever conducting smear campaigns against the nominees of Democrat Presidents. None. And the lesson of Democratic Party “borking” is not that we start now with Judge Sonia Sotomayor. No.

Rather, the lesson that should have been learned in 1987, but really prior to that given the usurpation by the courts of the power to make law since the 1960s by banning voluntary prayer in schools and 1970s discovery of a right to abortion, is that the preferred liberal Democrat judicial philosophy is anathema to Liberty and self-government in a federal republic.

Presidents Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln considered the employment of the philosophy now enunciated by the majority of lawyers and judges in America for the past 40+ years, including Sotomayor, to be grounds for impeachment. But thanks to the Hatch-Kyl past, the GOP can’t even claim it as an “extra-ordinary” circumstance that the Gang of 14 determined to be the only grounds for a judicial filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. (*Full discussion of the issues regarding judicial filibusters and the so-called nuclear option raised in 2005 below)

Past debates have granted Democratic President’s the kind of broad deference that should only be offered in the case of political appointments, but not lifetime appointments to the Third Branch of government. Republicans droned on about the “intelligence” and “temperment” “character” and “experience”, which usually were satisfied if they attended an Ivy League School; hadn’t been convicted of assaulting another lawyer; hadn’t been discovered with a dead girl or a live boy; and was given a satisfactory rating by the ABA.

Those days have changed, and our liberal friend Dionne joins us in welcoming the change:

To pretend that these judicial fights are about anything other than the court’s philosophical direction is a form of willful dishonesty. It’s better to be straightforward about the existence of a political struggle over the court…

President Obama has bemoaned the fatal flaws of the U.S. Constitution as merely a recitation of “negative right: that fails to grant positive rights to the government. He longed for us to “break free” of such constraints. Judge Sotomayor, who has publicly expressed her belief in Latina racial supremacy, was recently chastised by a fellow Clinton appointee for her flippant silence on the Constitutional prohibition against denials of equal protection to the White Race in a judicial decision presently on appeal to the Court she desires to join. The Latina member of La Raza (The Race) also has publicly described the job of a judge to “make policy.”

Sotomayor is not solo in the above beliefs, but she is unique in having stated those mostly ordinary Leftist beliefs publicly. Such beliefs are usually kept quit since the main reason for them is that they usually can’t get their policy preferences approved by We the People and their elected representatives. So, even if she can be defeated in her nomination quest, no doubt any future nominees from this President will be just as liberal.

But, all conservatives must vote against her. In fact, the vote on her nomination will, in many ways, determine who the real conservatives are.

Policy is prescribed to be made by the executive and legislative branches of government. Judges have a limited but vital role to interpret/apply the law as it is given them. But it is easy to pretend to do that with language in an opinion. It has always been a great temptation for judges to do this, and we have always had judges that could not resist. Dred Scott and Plessy come to mind.

Chief Justice John Roberts famously compared the role of a judge to that of an umpire in the game of baseball that the current New York nominee is said to have saved. The qualifications to be an umpire are also quite similar to that of a judge, for in that position one can also fall to the temptation to determine the outcome, and given Sotomayor’s Obama-like desire to empathize with her favored groups, we are certain the Red Sox wouldn’t stand a chance against the Yankees with her behind the plate.

Umpires have be able to see. Judges have to be able to read and comprehend the English language. Contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. Constitution was not written for lawyers to cloud in mystery with phalanzes of vague rhetoric. It was written in mostly plain and unambiguous language.

Umpires have to have character so that they resist the temptation to use their position to favor or punish any team or player based on ulterior motives. Lady Justice is supposed to blind, i.e. impartial to the race, gender or station in life occupied by the litigants.

Finally, umpires have to have the courage to call a third strike on A-Rod in the bottom of the Ninth of Game Seven of the World Series in the Bronx knowing that it will result in the Atlanta Braves winning the series!

Sonia may have saved America’s National Pastime but if her judicial philosophy were to again hold sway on American’s highest court, someone will be required to save America.

Update: In response to a question from “Cold Warrior”: [Is] a simple majority in the Senate [is] all that is needed for confirmation of a Supreme Court justice[?] DeVine says:

Well, that depends. The Constitution does not require that, and in fact, it does not even require that the Senate give a nominee a roll call vote on the floor or that they do anything. That is why I opposed the nuclear option which some sought to invoke to shut down a Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees under Bush. The point of that option was to have the parliamentarian rule a filibuster out of order, despite the rules of the senate allowing same, to claim that the Advise and Consent clause and other provisions of the Constitution requiring super-majorities, require that nominees not be filibustered.

The A&C clause does not require the senate to do anything, much less vote, or much less that any vote only be by majority. The Senate may reject a nominee by inaction. (The President can make vacancy appointments for one year) The Constitution allows the senate to make its own rules and under the rules adopted in January, judicial nominations are not excluded from filibusters. (Budget reconciliations are)

So, the only real conflict that could arise is if the GOP tried to filibuster and the Democrats tried the nuke option.]
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Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

The USA Today has published a study detailing how the stimulus has not hit many of the states it prioritizes for funding:

Nationwide, federal agencies have awarded nearly $4 billion in contracts to help jump-start the economy since President Obama signed the massive stimulus package in February. But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System.

In Michigan, for example — where years of economic tumult and a collapsing domestic auto industry have produced the nation’s worst unemployment rate — federal agencies have spent about $2 million on stimulus contracts, or 21 cents per person. In Oregon, where unemployment is almost as high, they have spent $2.12 per capita, far less than the nationwide average of nearly $13.

…The first waves of that money flowed unevenly in large part because some federal agencies have moved more swiftly than others to sign contracts for projects funded by the stimulus. In many cases, those first contracts went to projects that began years ago or to companies that have long track records of doing government work.

For example, about $3 billion of the government’s first contracts were to speed cleanup of some of the nation’s worst nuclear waste sites, scattered over a handful of states. That has created hundreds of additional jobs at the companies that manage the sites, says Matt Rogers, a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, but the impact has been limited to only a few parts of the country.

…Even so, the first contracts have amounted to only about $7.42 per person on average in the eight states with unemployment rates higher than 10% last month. By comparison, government records show it has awarded about $26 worth of contracts per person in North Dakota, whose unemployment rate is the nation’s lowest.

Hopefully, the MSM will free itself from its Obama trance and continue reporting the harsh realities (and failures) of the so-called stimulus.  Additionally, Republicans should challenge the Obama administration on success claims it makes with regard to the stimulus.  For instance, the GOP should question Obama’s proclamation “had created or saved 150,000 jobs in its first 100 days” and prod the administration to explain the methods it uses to calculate those kinds of statistics.

Also today, Chris Cillizza made a nice post – Five Senators to Watch on Sotomayor – in the Fix today.  The lucky five? John Cornyn, Jim DeMint, John Ensign, Kirsten Gillibrand and the former next President of the United States, Sen. McCain.  The post is definitely worth a read.

I have no desire to see Sonia Sotomayor confirmed to the Supreme Court.  Her judicial philosophy, as near as I can tell, is as unmoored as the spectacularly unmoored Anthony Kennedy’s.  Even in a liberal justice I hope for, and expect, better.  Still, I think on one point, there’s been a lot of overblown hysteria.  Sonia Sotomayor may be a lunatic racist, but if she is, that “wise latina woman” quote is pretty flimsy evidence.  Daniel Larison at Eunomia points to another part of the speech to illuminate this.  He writes: 

[She] acknowledg[es] that neutrality and objectivity do not exist. One should strive to minimize the role of bias, but it is ineradicable. More than that, it sometimes serves a valuable social function–surely, students of Burke can understand this. The people who actually find this shocking or dangerous reveal themselves as believers in pleasant fictions left over from the 18th and 19th centuries. Those who understand that everyone is from somewhere specific, that everyone is part of a particular tradition, heir to a certain background and shaped by the places where he has lived and the experiences in those places, and that universal Man does not exist anywhere in the world, are not troubled by this. For us, it is a simple restatement of the obvious. The idea that where we come from matters deeply and defines who we are is hardly one that conservatives should find outrageous.

This cuts to the point pretty neatly.  But, if you’re still not convinced let’s try a little thought experiment.  Imagine a Jewish person claimed to have a better appreciation of tyranny, because they grew up in a cultural millieu where the Holocaust was an ever-present memory.  It would surely be wrong to call this person a racist; it would probably be wrong to call him wrong, unless lived experience counts for nothing.  There’s nothing wrong, in the abstract, with admitting that background, even race, can alter  perspective in meaningful ways. 

The problem comes in when that notion is affirmatively applied to judging.  Perspective should influence politics, values, etc;   it shouldn’t influence justice.   The legal system, especially the judiciary, is meant to impartially adjudicate disputes.  It serves as a procedural backstop for the occasional wild pitcher in our more free-ranging political system.  Larison is undoubtedly right that we can’t ever be entirely separated from our background; but if there’s any sphere of government where we simply must try, the judiciary is it.  Sonia Sotamayor isn’t a racist.  She simply doesn’t understand that she’s meant to be a bulwark against the tyranny of caprice, not an advocate for it.  That is reason enough to oppose her confirmation without dredging up the racism charge.  After all, to paraphrase John Adams, we ought to be a nation of laws and not of wise latina women.

-Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com

Rasmussen 2009 New Jersey GOP Gubernatorial Primary

• Chris Christie 46% (39%)
• Steve Lonegan 35% (29%)
• Other candidate 4% (3%)
• Not sure 15% (29%)

Favorable / Unfavorable [Net]

• Chris Christie 70% (75%) / 22% (12%) [+48%]
• Steve Lonegan 62% (71%) / 28% (16%) [+34%]
• Jon Corzine 15% / 83% [-68%]

Survey of 400 Likely Voters was conducted May 27. The margin of error is +/- 5 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted May 12 are in parentheses.

Inside the numbers:

Lonegan leads Christie among voters age 30 to 49, but Christie has comparable leads among older and younger voters.

Conservative Republicans in the state are evenly divided between the two candidates, but party moderates favor Christie by sizable margins.

Someone drew the short straw over at Slate yesterday. The center-left contrarian e-magazine put a man named Richard Thompson Ford in charge of defending the Sonia Sotomayor-approved ruling in the now-famous Ricci v. Destefano.

New Haven’s decision may sound like blatant racial favoritism, but in fact the city rejected the firefighter exam because the test violated Title VII, the federal civil rights law that prevents discrimination in employment. Title VII requires employers to consider the racial impact of their hiring and promotion procedures in order to prevent discrimination that’s inadvertent as well as intentional. Ricci’s claim is that the city’s effort to comply with Title VII is itself race discrimination (under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and under Title VII itself).

This argument would undermine an important part of modern civil rights law. Some of Sotomayor’s critics argue that, in the era of Obama, we no longer need such proactive policies to promote racial equality. But racism isn’t a thing of the past yet. In fact, we haven’t corrected the lingering effects of racism that is in the past. It’s precisely because overt racism is no longer the main impediment to racial equality that the law against inadvertent discrimination is arguably now the most important part of civil rights law.

Alright, so in other words, the typical equality-of-results argument for affirmative action. The question, of course, is whether there was any inherent racial bias in the test, which is silly on its face (a Hispanic man was part of this lawsuit, if you’ll recall). The point here seems to be that there is simply no reason whatsoever, if the test was fair, that the results wouldn’t correspond proportionally to demographics. Quite the proposition, Mr. Ford.

There are two ways an employer can discriminate according to Title VII. He can intentionally discriminate by making race a factor in employment decisions—choosing a black candidate over a white candidate because he is black. Frank Ricci claims the city intentionally discriminated when it threw out the exam results because most of the people who scored high were white. An employer can also discriminate by using a selection process that has a disparate impact—in other words, that screens out a particular group for no good reason. New Haven claims that the test it tossed out had a disparate impact.

Well, there actually was a good reason: they didn’t do well on the test.

The city was also in a bind because its agreement with the firefighters union required that the exam count for 60 percent of the decision about whether to promote each candidate and because a city charter rule required that every promotion go to one of the three top-scoring candidates. These rules magnified the disparate racial impact of the exam—no black candidate and only one Hispanic candidate was eligible for promotion, even though several of them passed the test.

Is he seriously contending that the exam itself caused the racial disparity in results? Where is the evidence for this? No one, to my knowledge, has contended that the test itself was somehow biased toward whites (which is almost always a dubious assertion, anyway). The chief complaint seems to be that simply not enough blacks performed optimally.

Conservatives think the law against disparate impact discrimination does more harm than good.

Straw man erected, straw man shot down.

Actually, that’s not what we think. We think that if the blacks didn’t want to see racial disparity in the results, they should have performed more strongly on the test.

But, properly applied, disparate impact law doesn’t excuse poor performance, nor does it require quotas. Instead it smokes out hidden bigotry and requires employers to avoid unnecessary segregation of the work force. Suppose an employer wants to keep women out. Knowing that he can’t just put a “women need not apply” sign in his window, he might use a proxy, such as a weightlifting test, knowing that women on average have less upper body strength than men. The law against disparate impact discrimination is designed to reveal such hidden bias.

Perhaps. Was this the case in the test? No answer.

Perhaps New Haven’s black candidates could overcome these disadvantages by studying harder, like Frank Ricci did. But Ricci took extraordinary steps to ace the test—six months off work to prepare and $1,000 on tutoring.

Now here’s a brilliant argument: Ricci had it coming for studying so hard!

Ricci isn’t attacking the timing of New Haven’s decision; he’s attacking the city for considering the racial impact of the exam. And that’s exactly what disparate impact requires an employer to consider. Ricci’s position threatens to burn down one of the nation’s most important civil rights laws. Even in the improved racial climate of the Obama era, that should set off alarms.

And so the piece concludes. A truly pathetic amalgam of logical fallacies, tortured reasoning, and question-begging. It really has to be wondered: does Ford believe a word he’s writing, or did he just draw the short straw?

I’ll leave you with a quote from a superior mind:

“The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – Chief Justice John Roberts

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Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com.

Sonia Sotomayor showed deference to local authorities on the matter of whether a teenager’s remark that school administrators were “douchebags” should be allowed to be used as a disqualifying statement in her run for class secretary. Some free speech advocates are concerned, though.

Hmm…

In August 2007, Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled against an appeal in Doninger v. Niehoff.

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as “douche bags” because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

The case went to court and in March 2008, Sotomayor was on a panel that heard Doninger’s mother’s appeal alleging her daughter’s free speech and other rights were violated. Her mother wanted to prevent the school from barring her daughter from running.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her, Education Week reports.

In their opinion, the judges said they were “sympathetic” to her disappointment at being disqualified from running for Senior Class Secretary and acknowledged her belief that in this case, “the punishment did not fit the crime.”

…

“The continual expansion of the authority of school officials over student speech teaches a foul lesson to these future citizens,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the New Britain Herald. “I would prefer some obnoxious speech [rather] than teaching students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities.”

As a Sotomayor critic, but also as an originalist, I must say that I’m not sure that this is a fully fair criticism. I think that a reasonable judge could have swung either way on this matter. Even though the basis for the ruling was highly dubious, local authorities were given deference to determine their own provisions.

On the other hand, cases such as these rarely make it before the Supreme Court. It must be remembered that the Court rarely takes up cases unless they’re highly controversial or have something substantive to add to the letter of the law. I’m not completely sure we can derive anything much about Sotomayor from this case.

Of course, one has to wonder whether the case would have been different had it been a young Latina girl complaining about the cancellation of a cultural festival…

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Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com

In a time when our party desperately needs fresh, young blood, Josh Mandel is stepping up to the plate in Ohio.

Josh is a young, energetic state representative that just announced today he is running for state treasurer. Josh is a very appealing candidate, having served two tours of Iraq with the Marine Corps. Futhermore, he was elected in a district that is 2:1 Democrat to Republican by running an old fashioned campaign: Josh knocked on 19,679 doors, wearing out three pairs of shoes.

Watch his announcement video, and you’ll understand what all the buzz is about. You’ll understand how this state rep has nearly 5,000 followers on Facebook. You’ll understand why the Republican Party truly has a future thanks to guys like Josh. And, if you’re so inclined, consider making an investment in Josh by donating to his campaign today.

Quinnipiac 2010 Pennsylvania Senate Race

Democratic Primary

• Arlen Specter 50%
• Joe Sestak 21%

Republican Primary

• Pat Toomey 38%
• Jim Gerlach 10%

General Election

• Arlen Specter 46% (53%)
• Pat Toomey 37% (33%)

• Arlen Specter 45%
• Jim Gerlach 36%

• Joe Sestak 37%
• Pat Toomey 35%

• Joe Sestak 36%
• Jim Gerlach 30%

(more…)

Alex and Richard make some astute points with their analysis of swing voters.  Both parties do lay claim to roughly 40% of the electorate with the remaining 20% deciding the outcome of our national elections.  In a sense, both men are correct and incorrect with their descriptions of these voters and the direction the GOP should take to earn their vote.   I disagree with both gentleman is on the political leanings and intelligence of these voters. 

• A majority of these voters used to reside in swing States, but this has been rapidly changing in the last 20 years. An aging population and the ‘new’ economy has created a nation of transplants, plus new States might be considered purple, such as Nevada, New Hampshire and   
• These voters tend to be pragmatic and right of center, not moderate.
• I would not characterize these voters as “dumb”, but more so disengaged from the political process. The dumbest of dumb voters are already loyal Democrats.

I share Alex Knepper’s frustration that many of these uninformed voters decide our elections and direction of our country, but I also agree with Richard’s suggestion that we must exploit Obama’s theories on economic and social collectivization.  Those of us white males in the ‘majority’ dislike quotas, judicial activism and race-based employment equity. 

The largest untapped voter base are pragmatic, white, baby-boomer males.  Very few of them vote, but when they do, it is usually for a Republican in the form of a protest vote.  This  untapped voter group  is discouraged when they see minority students accepted into post-secondary institutions (strictly based on ethnicity or sex), while their own children are denied entry, even when they have a higher GPA.  These men are usually the primary or largest source of income for their families and expect our political leaders to administer the government similar to a household, by keeping its spending under control and taxation rates low.

The Republican Party wins elections when they engage and motivate these voters.  It is usually successful when they combine both the fronting of wedge issues (Richard) and taking a common-sense approach to policy (Alex).

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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and twitter/Kris_Lorelli.

I’ve got a wonderful wife and daughter (my little Hadassah). I make a decent wage doing a job where I see things the public doesn’t.

It can be very discouraging watching a whole other layer of Obama screwing this nation.

On some levels it makes me think if Americans are this way and embrace this they deserve what Obama’s policies will do to them. Let them be poorer, less safe, and more dependent on bureaucrats. However that feeling is overcome by the knowledge that my children are growing up in this country and I don’t want to see them live in a nation so much worse than the one I grew up in.

However watching Obama skate by with a media more interested in propaganda than investigation is hard. I pray we’re able to trip this man up and political destroy him and his destructive policies. However I see a Republican Party more interested in internal squables than a united front.

We need to save all our energy for viciously attacking Obama all the time. We shouldn’t allow a moment to go by where we’re not exposing this arrogant jerk in the hardest hitting way. However instead we’re fighting each other and letting this cold hateful man enact his agenda.

I would be encouraged if I saw fewer Republicans trying to get in bed with the devil and more Republicans trying to rip Obama a new one. Instead I see weak willed Washington Republicans who gently oppose Obama when they even do.

They act ashamed and cowed. I have no use for politicians who are ashamed to take on a threat to our nation like Obama. We ought to hold nothing back politically in destroying his ability to govern.

At times I’m discouraged and I wonder if it’s even worth voting. However it is. I have children and I don’t want them growing up in the impoverished and sick America, Obama is trying to create.

Right now I’m motivated to attack every establishment Republican that can’t generate the courage to criticize Obama with more than weak and apologetic tone. I want to see these men gone. They may once have served a purpose but now through time in Washington they’ve lost the edge necessary to fight a Chicago radical like Obama. Obama uses communist inspired techniques in his fight against us. We need to be just as tough and just as relentless in our quest to undermine him.

I can see some logic to the admonition that it’s better to have 30 Senators with principles than 40 who cave to Obama. When we have Republicans who go along with Obama it makes his destructive policies appear reasonable. It gives him cover to destroy our system.

I’d like to see Republicans who want to serve Obama go away. I want our leadership and public image to be one of sustained and hard hitting criticism.

Right now Americans don’t have a choice because so many Republicans are acting as Obama’s tools. We ought to have a unified message so the public is clear. They can either choose to accept the bill of goods of Obama or they can choose to remain free and prosperous.

Colin Powell if he really agrees with Obama on policy needs to leave the Republican Party and stop defiling our party with a confusing message. Obama Republicans shouldn’t be tolerated in leadership. We will need a united front to stop the policies coming out of DC. That should be our goal. We shouldn’t be content to just contain the damage. We need to undermine Obama so he’ll be unable to do any more damage.

By definition, in fact. Unless swing voters and swing states do not exist.

Richard Murray acknowledges that the prevailing wisdom — that each party’s base is roughly forty percent of the electorate and about twenty percent of it is up for grabs — is out there. But what he goes on to say does nothing to counter that sentiment. The fact that they are not monolithic does not dispell the sentiment that they have one trait in common: they swing.

Like most politicos, he makes the error of thinking that swing voters have some sort of moderate, independent ideological leanings that can be appealed to; that there’s a specific ‘target’ to be hit. Unfortunately, from my dealings with swing voters and from simple deductive reasoning, it can be discerned that there’s only one thing that almost all swing voters have in common: they’re kind of dumb.

Now, yes, there are exceptions: there are the legitimately informed Reason-style voters who loathe the left’s love of judicial activism and economic interventionism as much as they loathe the right’s love of foreign intervention and legislation of morality. But those are not the mass of voters. Most swing voters, as Ann Coulter lovingly puts it, have the IQ of a toaster: if your ideology is coherent, you’ll naturally be attracted to one party or the other. Otherwise, you’re just wishy-washy. To so many swing voters, nothing exists outside of itself; gun control is really just about gun control, not about property rights. Their thoughts on an issue might boil down to: well, that doesn’t seem right. Or: well, he seems pretty confident. Or: he certainly puts me at ease; he seems like a good leader. I can trust him. It’s nothing more than that to so many people. The Volokh Conspiracy blog does a good job of outlining the ignorance of the swing voter (good news: Republicans tend to be the best-informed!).

It’s a sad irony of democracy that the most ignorant among us choose our elected representatives.

How does that make you feel?

People tend to think the parties each have their (roughly) 40% of voters, and the contest is really for the 20% in the middle.  Well, that’s only partially right.  The parties also have to excite their base for votes, money, and volunteers.  Because of this, the parties are actually aiming at voters somewhere between their base and the middle, and this voter is different for each party.

What’s my point with this?  Because the target voter is different, so too must the strategies for winning that voter be different.  Too often, people have  a knee-jerk reaction to some tactic of the other party, and they think “We must fight fire with fire!”  For example, Pres Obama has nominated an arguably racist and sexist SCOTUS nominee in Judge Sotomayor (based on her comment that a latina, based on being a latina, will come to better conclusions than a white male).  Had Republicans nominated someone who said, based on his being a white male, he would come to better conclusions than a latina, or a black woman, or any other minority, Democrats would rightly call that person out as a racist, and we’d likely never hear the end of it.

The fact of the matter is that this divisive, racist witch-hunting of whites is something that appeals to a Democrat target voter, but that same divisive, racist witch-hunting of minorities doesn’t appeal to a Republican target voter.  Attacking this nominee on the basis of her racism/sexism is a sure loser, regardless of whether it’s true or not.  Actually, pretty much any attack on this nominee is doomed to failure (elections have consequences, folks), but this line of attack will hurt long-term election prospects.

What’s the course of action, then?  Should we roll over, say “Oh, well, can’t do anything about it, so let’s not do anything?”  No, because this is an opportunity to do something to appeal to the Republican target voter.  The GOP should scour her record and go after any collectivist rulings, where she egregiously ruled against the law for the sake of benefitting “the little man.”  Her political philosophy should be thoroughly vetted, where she believes she’s a legislator, not a judge.  Going after her racist tendencies, with only a squishy comment in support, is not the way to go.

Well, he admits he has at least thought about it…

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Wednesday he has considered a run for president, but is putting off thinking about it.

“I’m not going to think about it anymore until after 2010,” Barbour said Wednesday. “Anybody whose even thinking about this before the end of 2010, there’s no need to think about it.”

On the heels of Mike Huckabee’s endorsement of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush Jr. has followed suit:

Rubio posted this Tweet: “Proud to announce the endorsement of Jeb Bush Jr. He will be a great asset in our efforts to reach the next generation of GOP leadership.”

Only time will tell if the older Jeb Bush – the one we all know – will follow his son’s lead.

In a strong dose of irony for the Obama administration, the police officers whose jobs the stimulus “saved”, as Obama so ceremoniously told us, may still receive pink slips at the end of the year:

Without the money, the officers never would have hit the streets. They were to be laid off before their first day of patrol, victims of city budget cuts, until the stimulus money saved the class.

But the White House said the $1.2 million grant only guaranteed their jobs until the end of the year. And facing a growing deficit and a fight to pass an income tax hike, Columbus Police on Tuesday announced massive budget cuts that could mean hundreds of layoffs.

Among those who could lose their jobs if voters reject the increase: the 25 new officers who shook the president’s hand.

We can only hope that more disquieting stories about the stimulus appear in the future.

While many people on this site have debated the merits of the FairTax, I think we can all agree that we DO NOT need the tax reform profiled in this Washington Post article: a value-added tax IN ADDITION TO the current income tax.  According to the article:

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax — called a value-added tax, or VAT — has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government’s budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama’s policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

“There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. “I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.”

Conrad takes the insanity one step farther with his suggestion of a tax hike for high-income earners.  Adding a VAT would only make our taxation system more complex and cumbersome.  Here’s to the thought of this proposal falling dead in the water.

The New York Daily News says that the GOP line on Sotomayor is that she’s a racist. Newt Gingrich himself has foolishly taken this tack, they point out, in conjunction with Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter:

Never ones to shy away from a fight — even a losing one — the Holy Trinity of the GOP — Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh — have taken to calling the Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor a ‘racist,’ with Gingrich even going so far as to ask her to withdraw.

The DSCC, in an e-mail headed by Robert Menendez, is itching for those terms:

Despite all of her qualifications, Republicans stand ready to obstruct. On Tuesday, de facto party spokesman Rush Limbaugh went so far as to accuse President Obama, and Judge Sotomayor, of racism. “Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he’s appointed one … Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.

Or if that doesn’t work, call her a moron.

Pat Buchanan says that she’s just “not that intelligent.” Here’s a good roundup of how dumb she is. Karl Rove, too, implies that she’s dumb.

Americans are not going to accept the proposition that Sonia Sotomayor, top of her class at Princeton, is stupid. And the ‘racist’ claim is simply shrill — it’s an over-the-top, bombastic allegation. Re-frame the issue or grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.

Oh, and by the way, if Sotomayor’s a racist, guess who she’s oppressing? Republicans! Rush Limbaugh says that we’re now an oppressed minority.

Yeah. This is shaping up to be a wonderful fight.

PS — Join my Facebook group opposing Sotomayor.

EDIT: Bill O’Reilly, part of the solution? Wow! On his show right now, he’s discussing the idiocy of the ‘racist’ tack against Sotomayor and mentioned that such stupid rhetoric will only alienate Hispanics more. “The average Hispanic who doesn’t pay much attention,” he said, “will hear that and think ‘Oh, those conservatives are at it again, they don’t like us’…Have you seen some of these right-wing blogs? The average one does not understand that the party is shrinking and needs to expand!”