I don’t closely read The Daily Kos, and so I don’t know if Kos is toying with conservatives, here.  But Markos Moulitsas says that, as a Democrat, Charlie Crist would be a “marginally good Democrat.”

It took collapsing poll numbers for Specter to hit the “panic!” button and switch parties. That’s probably what it’ll take for Crist to realize his problems, and when he does, he’ll have a tough call to make: go down with his party, or pull a Specter and ditch it for better electoral prospects on a different line. That could mean a switch to the Democratic Party where he’d likely be no worse than the other senator from Florida, Bill Nelson — a marginally good Democrat, a step up from Landrieu, Nebraska’s Nelson, and the Wal Mart Twins (and no better). Or it could mean an independent run, where he might be able to pull a Lieberman (complete with a Joementum fundraising campaign visit) and work to attract independents, mainstream Republicans, and Democrats disaffected by their poor field and try to win a split three-way field.

In terms of the threat of Rubio, Kos writes:

But the primary is 14 months away, and grassroots conservatives are moving over to Rubio en masse. He will have enough money to compete (Club for Growth, among others, are behind him), he’s got big names like Mike Huckabee gathering behind him, and the right-wing noise machine loves him — and not just Florida wingnut radio, but national outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board. And with pictures like this in their arsenal, conservatives will have all the ammo they need to bring down Crist:

And while I don’t know just how far left The St. Petersburg Times is (they did endorse Obama), I do think that Wednesday’s editorial can erase most doubt that they won’t be endorsing Crist in the Senate race:

Gov. Charlie Crist’s sellout to developers is now complete. He signed into law Tuesday a bill that neuters the governing boards of the state’s five water management districts, which grant permits for large-scale water pumping and wetlands destruction. Now that authority will rest solely in the hands of the districts’ executive directors. Developers and big industry will be able to more easily drain Florida and pave over what’s left.

Piece by piece, this governor has systematically dismantled what little protections there are for Floridians fed up with traffic and overdevelopment.

______________________________________________________________

Benjamin Hodge co-owns the Web site KansasProgress.com, based in Johnson County, KS, in the Greater Kansas City area.  You can contact Hodge on Facebook, through his Web site, and on Twitter.

Abigail Thernstrom in The Wall Street Journal:

Unfortunately, only Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia addressed this issue — and only briefly. “The war between disparate impact and equal protection will be waged sooner or later, and it behooves us to begin thinking about how — and on what terms — to make peace between them,” he concluded.

All racial classifications are highly suspect under the 14th Amendment. The Constitution protects individuals from discrimination — without respect to race. Distributing benefits and burdens on the basis of color was supposed to be the ugly mind-set the leaders of the civil rights movement struggled so heroically to change. We have not escaped such race-thinking yet, but this decision is an important step in the right direction.

Here we should listen to Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff. He appeared at a hearing held by the Civil Service Board before the test results were released. “The people who passed should be promoted,” he said. “When your life’s on the line, second best may not be good enough.” Residents in a burning building want competent firefighters. They don’t care about the race of those whose job it is to save them.

______________________________________________________________

Benjamin Hodge co-owns the Web site KansasProgress.com, based in Johnson County, KS, in the Greater Kansas City area.  You can contact Hodge on Facebook, through his Web site, and on Twitter.

WRS (R) Connecticut 2010 Senatorial Survey

• Rob Simmons 47%
• Chris Dodd 38%

• Chris Dodd 42%
• Peter Schiff 38%

Survey of 400 likely voters was conducted June 24-25. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percentage points.

Inside the numbers:

Republican voters are only slightly more supportive (just outside the margin of error) of Simmons than Schiff, despite knowing Simmons much better and for a longer period of time. Schiff garners the exact same support among strong Republicans as Simmons does, indicating that Schiff could start the race with significant base support, equal to the support Simmons currently enjoys.

Schiff vs Dodd

• Self Identified Republican: 69% Schiff
• Self Identified Strong Republican: 90% Schiff

Simmons vs Dodd

• Self Identified Republican: 74% Simmons
• Self Identified Strong Republican: 90% Simmons

Marist New York 2010 Gubernatorial Survey

Republican Gubernatorial Primary

• Rudy Giuliani 77%
• Rick Lazio 16%

Democratic Gubernatorial Primary

• Andrew Cuomo 69%
• David Paterson 24%

Gubernatorial General Election

• Rudy Giuliani 54%
• David Paterson 37%

• Andrew Cuomo 51%
• Rudy Giuliani 43%

• David Paterson 41%
• Rick Lazio 40%

• Andrew Cuomo 68%
• Rick Lazio 22%

Would you rate the job Governor David Paterson is doing in office as excellent, good, fair, or poor?

• Excellent 3%
• Good 18%
• Fair 39%
• Poor 37%

Do you agree or disagree with the statement: Governor David Paterson is a good leader for New York State?

• Agree 31%
• Disagree 65%

Do you agree or disagree with the statement: Governor David Paterson is changing the way things work in Albany for the better?

• Agree 27%
• Disagree 68%

Do you approve or disapprove of how Governor David Paterson is handling the economic crisis?

• Approve 31%
• Disapprove 61%

Do you approve or disapprove of how Governor David Paterson is handling the crisis in the New York State Senate in Albany?

• Approve 43%
• Disapprove 49%

Would you rate the job New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is doing in office as excellent, good, fair, or poor?

• Excellent 21%
• Good 46%
• Fair 22%
• Poor 5%

Republican Senatorial Primary

• George Pataki 51%
• Peter King 36%

Survey of 1,003 registered voters was conducted June 23-25. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points; for the subsamples of 441 Democrats and 281 Republicans, ±5% and ±6%, respectively.

Former Sen. John Sununu won’t run for retiring Sen.Judd Gregg’s seat next year.

“Representing New Hampshire in the United States Senate is a great honor, but effective public service is much more than just a desire to hold office. It’s essential that the timing fit both personally and professionally,” Sununu said in a statement.

“Equally important, campaigns require great sacrifice from family. After running in seven primary and general elections over 12 years, my family still means more to me than anything else. I very much intend to keep it that way.”

Sununu had avoided discussing his political future since he lost to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) last year. His father, John F. Sununu, is now the chairman of the state party.

Sununu’s decision not to make a political comeback now draws attention to Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, who is being wooed by Gregg to run for the seat and is seriously considering a candidacy. 

Businessman Fred Tausch is also a potential candidate, and he has spent money on statewide television and radio blasting President Obama’s fiscal policies — in the run-up for a prospective campaign.

The Democratic nominee is expected to be Congressman Paul Hodes, who currently faces no primary opposition.

 

Follow Max Twain on Twitter

Michael Barone has a new piece over at the American titled “The GOP’s Real Problems for 2012″. He writes:

Nonetheless I still think Republicans are going to have a hard time coming up with a strong presidential nominee in 2012, as I reflect on their difficulty in doing so in 2008. For as I look back on that Republican nominating contest, it seems to me that none of the Republican candidates had a good strategy for winning the nomination. And if a candidate does not win the nomination, it does not really matter how strong he (or she) would be in the general election.

Sensible enough huh?  He then lays out 5 implications for 2012, based on each of the major candidates’ 2008 runs. 

1.  (From McCain):  you can’t hope to win by waiting for every other candidate’s strategy to fail unless you have an in with Lady Luck.

2.  (From Rudy):  You cannot wait too long to compete. If you bypass New Hampshire, you must compete in Iowa, or vice versa, or very soon thereafter.

3.  (From teh Fred):  Either compete strongly and early enough in Iowa to make a good showing in the straw poll or stay out of Iowa altogether (as John McCain did, to not significant detriment, in 2000 and effectively did, to no significant detriment, in 2008).

4.  (From Huckabee):  Huckabee or a candidate with a similar profile can corner the votes of evangelical and born-again Christians and, starting with Iowa, can round up a significant number of delegates…But otherwise he is in the position of Jesse Jackson in the 1984 and 1988 Democratic contests, able to run a significant second or third thanks to strong support from one of the party’s core constituencies but unable to run first.

5.  (From Romney): Run as yourself. Emphasize your strengths and avoid contests that are not suited to them. This will not guarantee victory, but it will make a victory in the battle for the nomination worth more in the general election, since you will not have to visibly pirouette from appealing to a relatively narrow primary electorate to the much broader (and potentially expandable) electorate you will face in the fall.

This is all pretty good advice, but I worry about the underlying argument; that Republican possibilities are likely to be weak general election candidates because they ran poor primary campaigns.  In the first place, I’m not sure Barone is right about his individual criticisms (and read the whole article to see exactly what he has to say).  It’s obvious, of course, that Rudy shouldn’t have held everything til Flordia.  It’s more obvious in retrospect, but it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out even then.  Plenty of folks who wished Rudy no ill (myself included) pointed out the strategic flaw months before everything broke down.  Still.  His strategy was, in large part, dictated by his circumstances.  When you’re a gun-control supporting, pro-choice, city-dwelling, hawk, you’re bound to struggle in Christian Iowa or dovish, libertarian New Hampshire. 

Clearly Romney’s attempt to position himself as THE conservative floundered, and left him wearing two scarlett F’s on his neatly tailored suit.  Still.  When you’re a Massachusetts Mormon in a party dominated by Southern Christians, playing the moderate isn’t exactly a great long-term strategy. 

Undoubtedly Mike Huckabee was hurt by the narrowness of the pastor tag.  Still.  He was a pastor.  Even when he dropped the Onward Christian Soldier stuff, and adopted the Friendly Neighbor Looking Out for the Little Guy schtick, he was still seen as Pastor Mike. 

A lot of these criticisms are not examples of flawed campaigns, but rather of flawed candidates.  No matter how you rolled the Massachusetts Mormon dice, in 2008, in the Republican Party, you just weren’t likely to hit a 7 or 11.  While candidates aren’t slaves to their environment, they can’t simply re-write their careers and lives to fit a new situation. 

So in one sense Barone is right enough: we simply don’t have many potential candidates who are in a good position to naturally do the sort of things necessary to both win over the current Republican electorate, and put together a campaign strategy which gels with the moment.  Retreads like Huckabee and Romney and Palin may be slightly better fits in 2012, but it ought to be clear by now that they won’t be perfect fits.  Heading into 2012, we need to look for a candidate who’s already, more or less, where he needs to be to meet the moment.  Our success, or lack thereof, on that front will dictate both our campaign strategy and our “problems”.

What if, on January 21, 2001 instead of accompanying Vice President-Elect Dick Cheney to the Inauguration, Vice President Al Gore had led a large, angry mob in a march on Florida’s State Capitol building in Tallahassee to hand out Presidential survey election ballots ruled illegal by the Supreme Court? What if either of our impeached Presidents, Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton, had lost their respective removal trials in the U.S. Senate but refused to vacate the White House and relinquish power?

Would police action to remove either Gore, Johnson or Clinton from office, pursuant to orders of the Supreme Court and at the direction of the Attorney General, whether or not carried out by U.S. Marshals, Florida State Troopers, the FBI, Secret Service or the U.S. Army, immediately after which the person next in the line of succession under the Constitution assumes the office of Chief Executive, be considered a coup?

Merriam-Webster defines a coup d’etat as:

a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics ; especially : the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group

President of the United States, Barack Obama aka Leader of the Free World and famed non-meddler in the affairs of Iran, whose small group of ruling Mullahs came to power via a sudden, decisive exercise of political force that overthrew the existing government while violently seizing American hostages, has joined Marxist Dictator Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Communist Dictators Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) in denouncing the removal of Honduran President Manual Zelaya as an “illegal coup”.

Is this the lowest day in the history of the United States’ presidency? Obama’s un-clenched hand remains extended to the freshly bloodied fists of Iran’s Ayatolla Khameini and President Ahmedinijad. I say freshly since well before the mullahs shot down unarmed innocents in the streets of Tehran of late, their hands have been encrusted for decades with the blood of Americans and others via terrorist attacks in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Khobar Towers. Obama remains willing to “deal” with those murderers.

Yet, the recent events in Honduras have brought about Obama’s conversion to the Church of Meddlesomeness to the point of isolating a small, poor Democracy? What great injustice has drawn the stare of our President’s evil eye?

Let us look at the series of events our converted Meddler-in-Chief denounces as a “coup”, in light of its actual definition (Noah Webster, pictured above) and the Rule of Law:

Constitution limits Presidential terms

Mel Zelaya is, or was, the President of Honduras. He and Hugo Chaves were tight. So tight, it seems, that Zelaya wanted to emulate Hugo by changing the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for office until he durned well gets tired of it.

President plays no role in enactment of Constitutional Amendments

To change the constitution in Honduras you have to convene a constituent assembly. The president cannot do that. The Honduran congress must approve a national referendum calling for the constituent assembly to consider changes to the constitution. Zelaya didn’t like the part about the constitution requiring approval of the congress before a national referendum could be called. So … he decided to call one on his own.

President acts outside his Constitutional Authority

OK .. so here we have President Zelaya calling for a national referendum when he doesn’t have the power to do so. The next problem is obtaining ballots! Since the Honduran congress had not called for the referendum, as required by the constitution, the government certainly wasn’t going to print the ballots! After all, how smart would it be to print ballots for an illegal referendum? So … Zelaya had to get the ballots printed elsewhere. Here’s an idea! Get his pall Hugo Chavez to print them! Yes! That will work!

Supreme Court declares President’s actions unconstitutional

So Chaves prints Zelaya’s ballots and they’re shipped to Honduras. Enter the Honduran Supreme Court. The court considers Zelaya’s election in light of the requirements of the Honduran constitution, and rules the referendum illegal and unconstitutional. The court then issues an order to the Honduran military telling them not to do the logistical work associated with Zelaya’s phony referendum. Remember, now … all of this has one primary goal. To get rid of the term limits limiting Zelaya’s rule in Honduras.

President defies Court Order

After the supreme court’s decision, General Romeo Velasquez tells President Zelaya that he is subject to a proper order from the Supreme Court and will not be able to carry out Zelaya’s referendum. So … Zelaya fires him. The Supreme Court orders Zelaya to reinstate Velasquez, and Zelaya refuses to do so.

Military detains President as he leads an illegal mob intent on its own coup d’etat

At this point Zelaya’s ego is getting the better of him. If the military won’t run his illegal referendum, he’ll just do it himself. He gins up a mob and leads them to the military compound where Hugo’s ballots are stored and then has his supporters begin distributing the ballots to the masses.

President arrested for criminal acts but is mercifully allowed exile rather than prosecution

Based on the Supreme Court’s ruling the Honduran attorney general said that the proposed referendum was illegal and said that he would arrest anyone attempting to carry out the election. Zelaya was arrested by the military and was escorted out of the country.

Not a coup

Messy situation, but not a coup, given that the military never seized control of the government as the Speaker of the House assumed the Presidency on an interim basis pending the already scheduled November election.

Not a few suggest that it would have been better to have detained Zelaya in country and removed him via impeachment, but his actions were wreaking havoc on civil order. It should also be noted that all major institutions in the country, including his own political party, supported his removal from office.

Compare to Obama’s actions in the USA

Shall we return to the definition of coup d’etats as we analyze how Obama became CEO of Chrysler, General Motors and large segments if the banking industry?

TARP was passed by Congress in 2008 for the purpose of Protecting the financial industry by Relieving banks of Troubled Assets, hence the acronym.

To date, no bank has been relieved from the first troubled asset. Instead, hundreds of billions have been used to buy government ownership in banks, and to takeover GM and Chrysler, all with no constitutionally mandated just compensation paid to creditors or shareholders whose property interests were taken.

Rather, taxpayer money has been funneled thru under duress bankrupticies for political payoffs to labor unions with taxpayers on the hook for future products liability, debts and losses by the auto companies and banks.

In effect, a small group (Obama/Geithner/Bernanke) overthrew and/or altered existing corporate governance under the Rule of Law via the sudden and decisive force of the Executive Branch of the Government of the United States.

Would that President Obama would eschew constructive coups in the America; denounce them among the Axis of Evil; and quit imagining them where they haven’t occurred in Central America.

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

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

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

FDU PublicMind New Jersey 2009 Gubernatorial Election

• Chris Christie 45%
• Jon Corzine 39%

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 45%
• Jon Corzine 21%

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• Chris Christie 34% / 25% (+9%)
• Jon Corzine 31% / 54% (-23%)

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 38% / 17% (+21%)
• Jon Corzine 17% / 64% (-47%)

Which candidate for New Jersey governor is better described by…?

Honest, trustworthy

• Chris Christie 33%
• Jon Corzine 24%

Understands the concerns of the average person

• Chris Christie 40%
• Jon Corzine 28%

Has the background and experience to be a good governor

• Jon Corzine 42%
• Chris Christie 29%

Regardless of which candidate you want to win, if you had to guess, who would you say is going to win the election for governor in November?

• Jon Corzine 46%
• Chris Christie 38%

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 45%
• Jon Corzine 34%

How would you rate the job Jon Corzine is doing as governor?

• Excellent 2%
• Good 24%
• Fair 39%
• Poor 31%

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Jon Corzine is doing as governor?

• Approve 36%
• Disapprove 49%

Survey of 803 registered voters was conducted June 22-29. The margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points.

PPP (D) New Jersey 2009 Gubernatorial Survey

• Chris Christie 51%
• Jon Corzine 41%

Among Men

• Chris Christie 61%
• Jon Corzine 33%

Among Women

• Jon Corzine 48%
• Chris Christie 42%

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 60%
• Jon Corzine 26%

Among Republicans

• Chris Christie 93%
• Jon Corzine 3%

Among Democrats

• Jon Corzine 75%
• Chris Christie 16%

Among Whites

• Chris Christie 60%
• Jon Corzine 33%

Among Moderates

• Chris Christie 47%
• Jon Corzine 42%

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• Chris Christie 43% / 33% (+10%)
• Jon Corzine 36% / 56% (-20%)

Among Independents

• Chris Christie 46% / 28% (+18%)
• Jon Corzine 24% / 70% (-46%)

Among Men

• Chris Christie 52% / 26% (+26%)
• Jon Corzine 30% / 63% (-33%)

Among Women

• Chris Christie 34% / 38% (-4%)
• Jon Corzine 42% / 50% (-8%)

Survey of 1,094 voters was conducted June 27-29. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Party ID breakdown: 43% (D); 30% (R); 27% (I). Political ideology breakdown: 51% Moderate; 28% Conservative; 21% Liberal.

There’s been a rather interesting debate raging here as to whether any of today’s political figures, especially Sarah Palin, are embodying the legacy of Ben Franklin – described by our good friend Mr. Knepper as a “worldly man with an elitist strain.” He goes on to write the following:

But the elitism of the Founders is why we’re supposed to admire them. They were intellectuals. Men of distinction. men of both word and action. Men who, on the whole, were both virtuous and slayers of established dogma. Pick up The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — or a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack,even. Even making adjustments for the archaic writing, can you imagine Sarah Palin writing such a tome? Of course you can’t. Not even she can. That’s why she hired a ghostwriter.

While I have tremendous respect for Alex Knepper’s intellect (and I say that honestly), I think he is really missing the essence of Franklin. Alex rightly notes that Franklin was a ”diplomat, scientist, inventor, political theorist, and writer,” but he omits the single biggest descriptor that defined the man: ”printer.”

First and foremost, Benjamin Franklin was a newspaperman and an editorialist. Born to humble beginnings and lacking in much formal education (even by the standards of the time), the young Franklin was apprenticed to his printer brother during his adolescence and pursued the profession for most of his adult life – eventually becoming publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette. Ben Franklin was indeed an extremely intelligent man, but he was also a common man who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and spent his life distributing information to other common men – not to mention writing under populist aliases such as “Poor Richard” and the widow “Silence Dogood”.

Furthermore, if anyone ever appreciated the value of populist rhetoric, it was Ben Franklin. Let’s face it, we’re talking about a man who, as Ambassador to France, charmed the French aristocracy by cavorting around Paris in a coonskin cap. Everyone who was anyone wanted to be seen with the representative from the wild frontiers of America, and Franklin’s backwoods yokel act played a major part in securing French support for the colonists in the Revolutionary War. So, while the coonskin may not have been Franklin’s standard attire back home, it certainly showed that the man was a populist’s populist when it came to selling his message. 

Indeed, if anyone in politics today mirrors Franklin, it is Sarah Palin. However, comparing Franklin to politicians isn’t really fair – as he was never really a politician himself, but rather  a media figure. He was a self-educated man who became the leading pundit of his day – in a sense he did for the American colonies what talk radio does for us. So, in my opinion, his true heirs in today’s world are other self-educated philosophers who keep one foot in the world of “Joe Six Pack” while keeping the other planted firmly in the world of conservative political thought. I speak, of course, of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity.  These men, not the creatures of Washington, are the Franklins of the modern world.

Yes, Franklin was he was everything Alex said he was – and I doubt that anyone will ever rival his ability to contribute simultaneously to politics and science.  But beyond all of those things - he was also a man of the people if there ever was one.