PPP and Rasmussen, two of our more reputable pollsters, recently came up with radically different polls on the state of the GOP 2012 Presidential nominee race.  Radically different, that is, on the top three entries.  The rest didn’t move all that much.

Here are the results for both polls and their differences:

Romney shot up 10 points from the PPP poll to the Rasmussen One.  Palin rose five points, and Huckabee dropped seven points.  Romney went from ten points down and a tie for second to a five point lead.  Huckabee dropped from a ten point lead to a third place finish trailing the leader by seven points.  Wow!  That’s a seventeen point swing in less than a week.

Both pollsters are reputable.  Both take pains to get it right.  So what happened?

I suspect the answer lies in the details.  PPP polled “515 usual national Republican primary voters“.  Rasmussen polled “1,000 Likely GOP Primary Voters …[which] include both Republicans and unaffiliated voters likely to vote in a GOP Primary”.

So right off the bat, PPP’s sample was only half that of Rasmussen’s.  Second, they only polled “usual” Republican primary voters.   If you didn’t vote in the 2008 GOP primary, could you be called a “usual” Republican primary voter?  No, not really.

Think back to 2008.  The Democrats had a barn-burner of a primary season.  Hillary and Barack fought it out to almost the last state.   Add in the fact that the Democrats were on the ascendancy that year, and it is safe to say that a goodly number of the politically active Independents voted in the Democrat primary.

That is not the case this cycle.  The battle for the Republican nomination is where the action is, not the Democrat one.  If you are an Independent who likes to be politically active, there is little reason to participate in the Democratic primary.  What would be the point?  Your vote would be totally meaningless.  The only contest worth engaging in will be the Republican one.  So that is where you will likely cast vote this time around, not where you would “usually” cast your ballot.

So when you add up the smaller sample size, the large numbers that will vote in the Republican primary this time who “usually” would vote elsewhere,  and throw in the fact that few people are really paying much attention to the race just yet; one has little problem accounting for the disparity between the two polls.

For everything that is going wrong for America, John McCain must share the blame, along with the ignorant, incompetent, petty-mindedly vengeful, Alinsky-marinated Chicago clique now in the White House.

Barack Obama was not presidential material, and some of us – some tens of millions of us in all probability – believe he won the election because John McCain let him win. Not intentionally, but foolishly.

This was how he did it. The voters were kept ignorant about Obama by the deliberate choice of those whose job it was to inform them. McCain, and McCain alone, was in a position to bypass the highly partisan media and tell the country, every time he stood before the TV cameras and addressed tens of millions of attentive ears, just whom Obama’s political faction consisted of: subversives, such as, most prominently, the America-hating terrorist-supporting Jeremiah Wright, pastoral leader of thousands, and the actual terrorist Bill Ayers, ‘educator’ (read indoctrinator) of generations of children.

But McCain chose not to do it.

Why he chose not to do it must remain forever among the darkest of dark mysteries to those who suppose he had a reason. Only those of us see the light who believe that McCain – undoubted hero and patriot that he is, man of extraordinary courage and endurance – was simply not savvy enough to play the cards he held, and was surrounded by advisers who were also not good at thinking, or just didn’t think.

An innumerable portion of us among the tens of millions knew from the moment McCain was chosen as the Republican candidate (instead of the eminently electable Mitt Romney) – yes, from that very second – that the election was lost. It was then that our hearts sank, not to rise again on the helium of hope until very recently. (The hope, expressed at vast tea-parties, is that Obama can yet be stopped from steering the ship of state on to the rocks.)

The one person in his campaign who could and did think, had all the political astuteness necessary to use the ammunition available to win the fight, was Sarah Palin.

In her book, Going Rogue, she relates how she wanted to raise the damning facts about Obama but was ‘told to sit down and shut up’. Eventually she was reluctantly allowed by ‘headquarters’ to touch on his ‘associations with questionable characters’ but only in the form of a ‘sound bite written into a rally speech’, about Obama ‘palling around with terrorists’ (pages 306-307). One gathers that her will in this matter, as in others, was snaffled and curbed almost to impotence. She does not blame McCain, she is consistently respectful of him, but after reading her account we can and should blame him.

Slight and mild as the little stabbing sound-bite was, ‘the left went nuts, accusing me of lowdown rhetoric unworthy of presidential politics’. (Remember the cruel, lowdown, untrue things the left said about her that they must have deemed worthy of presidential politics?)

But of course the opposition reacted like that. The little stab went home. They knew her reference was potent against them. They feared that if it were made much of, if it were to be emphasized, repeated, insisted upon, their candidate was sunk.

So did McCain read the signs aright and follow up the small victory? Not he. It was always, it seems, more important to McCain to be perceived as a gentleman than that he should win the election for his party, its principles, and its policies. May he long bask in a complacent gentlemanliness as the country endures the consequences of his choice!

His whole organization aided him in making it. ‘Although,’ Palin writes, ‘it was headquarters that had issued the sound bite, the folks there did little more than duck’ when the left reacted with its whining and insolent abuse.

If Palin had been allowed to say whatever she knew needed to be said, or even better if she had been the one to plan the tactics of the campaign, it is possible that McCain would have won. He would most likely not have made a good president, but he couldn’t be as bad as Obama.

If Palin were ever to run her own campaign, signs are she would know how to do it. The autobiographer of Going Rogue emerges from the pages as not only competent, commonsensical, brave, honest, strong, unselfish, knowing her own worth without vanity, but also a born leader, a conservative who understands and shares the values that made America great, and a natural politician who at the same time is a person of integrity. A very rare phenomenon!

The Republican party should appreciate that her exceptional abilities are gifts to it, assets to be grateful for, and should help her make the most of them.

Jillian Becker is editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative

John Fund has an interesting tidbit from Palin’s upcoming book.  I have a feeling we are going to learn just how poorly the McCain campaign was run (not that we didn’t already know this).

Ms. Vincent didn’t reveal any details about the book, but did acknowledge it will describe Ms. Palin’s frustration over her treatment by the staffers she inherited from the McCain campaign after her surprise pick as the GOP vice presidential nominee last year. Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn’t even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. “She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now ‘going rogue’ and booking her own interviews,” Mr. Beck told me. “I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they’d built for her and we were finally talking.”

This answers a long-standing question I have had since September of 2008.  During the election, I could not understand why the McCain campaign was not scheduling Palin on Fox news and the talk radio circuit?  In Palin, team McCain selected a ‘base’ candidate, yet kept her from speaking to the base until the final days of the campaign. 

______________________________________________

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

Sarah Palin does not have the gift of the gab. She is not glib. It was to a large extent Obama’s glibness that got him elected. But what Palin has that Obama doesn’t are  policies based on sound principles well worth carrying out, and the competence to do so.   She knows how to value and use freedom, and she is honest, decent, and efficient. These are qualities of gold.  Obama has none of them.

The speech she made Sunday July 26 when she stepped down as governor of Alaska was not well crafted. It probably sent no thrills up anybody’s leg. She struck no poses. She did not give the impression of being ‘above it all’. (The Huffington Post sneered at it.) But it testified to her strong character, her bold vision, and her solid achievements.

She listed the promises she’d made – and fulfilled: ethics reform; a fair return for Alaskans on the exploitation of their natural resources; protection of the environment; increased funding for, and improvements in education, including better opportunities for special needs students; managing fish and wildlife for abundance; producing energy solutions, getting a natural gas pipeline underway; and defending the constitution.  She was able to report in truth to Alaskans, ‘WHAT I PROMISED, WE ACCOMPLISHED.’ (Notice the ‘we’ – she gives credit to the many who helped her achievement.)

She went on:

So much success! And Alaska there is much good in store further down the road, but to reach it we must value and live the optimistic pioneering spirit that made this state proud and free. We can resist enslavement to big central government that crushes hope and opportunity. Be wary of accepting government largesse. It doesn’t come free , and often accepting it takes away everything that is free. Melting into Washington’s powerful “care-taking” arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us, and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free.

I resisted the stimulus package. I resisted the stimulus package and we have championed earmark reform, slashing earmark requests by 85% to break the cycle of dependency on a stifling, unsustainable federal agenda, and other states should follow this for their and for America’s stability. We don’t have to feel that we must beg an allowance from Washington, except to beg the allowance to be self-determined. See, to be self-sufficient, Alaska must be allowed to develop – to drill and build and climb, to fulfill statehood’s promise. At statehood we knew this. At statehood we knew this, that we are responsible for ourselves and our families and our future, and fifty years later, please let’s not start believing that government is the answer. It can’t make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise. What can? It is the wisdom of the people and our families and our small businesses, and industrious individuals …

Alaskans will remember that years ago, remember we sported the old bumper sticker that said, “Alaska. We Don’t Give a Darn How They Do It Outside?” Do you remember that? I remember that, and remember it was because we would be different. We’d roll up our sleeves, and we would diligently sow and reap, and we can still do this to carve wealth out of the wilderness and make our living on the water, with strong hands and innovative minds, and now with smarter technology. It is what our first people and our parents did. It worked, because they worked. We must be prudent and persistent and press for the people’s right to responsibly develop God-given resources for the maximum benefit of the people.

And we have come so far in just 50 years. We’re no longer a frontier outpost on the periphery of the world’s greatest nation. Now, as a contributor and a securer of America, we can attain our destiny in the promise of our motto “North to the Future.” See, the pressing issue of our time, it’s energy independence, because there is an inherent link between energy and security, and energy and prosperity. Alaska will lead with energy, we will prove you can be both pro-development and pro-environment, because no one loves their clean air and their land and their wildlife and their water more than an Alaskan. We will protect it.

Yes, America must look north to the future for security, for energy independence, for our strategic location on the globe. Alaska is the gate-keeper of the continent…

She vowed ‘to fight harder for what is right’. She never felt, she said, that it was necessary to have a title to do that.

True, she needs to learn more about foreign affairs (as do Obama and Hillary Clinton). And she needs a good speech writer. But these are lacks that can be supplied. She already has what is essential for a great political leader – vision, confidence, competence, integrity, an ability to inspire others, and a profound understanding of what has made America the greatest and freest nation, along with the determination to keep it so. And that means she could be a worthy candidate for the presidency.

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Jillian Becker is editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative.

One of the first things learned by newlyweds is that “me” is replaced by “us”. “I” is now “we”. Before the marriage, the prospective spouse was foot-loose and fancy free. Their choices primarily affected only themselves. With marriage, there are now two people involved. Spouses can no longer think just of themselves, they must now worry about their spouse’s concerns, as well.

Most newlyweds eventually make the transition. Some never do. They chaff at the restrictions now placed upon them. Too often they end the marriage so that they can return to those happy care-free days of singledom.

Political mavericks tend to follow a similar path. While they are outside looking in, they are relatively free to choose their own actions. They affect mainly themselves. But once they are in the inside looking out, they now find that their actions have consequences beyond their little sandbox. They have become, in essence, the establishment. They can be mavericks no longer. They often find the “inside” to be prison that is hard to escape. The strong, independent streak that made them mavericks in the first place now works against them. This causes them great stress. They often burn out.  Sometimes their marriages fall apart.  Such was the case of Newt Gingrich, John McCain, and Sarah Palin.

Newt had great success as a maverick. He spearheaded the great 1994 Republican takeover of the House. For the first time in half a century, the House was controlled by the GOP. A grateful party made him Speaker. His tenure there didn’t even last four years. He left under an ethical and professional cloud. His personal life was a total mess.

John McCain has always been a Maverick. He secured the 2008 Presidential nomination partly because of it. Once he accomplished that, he quickly found out that being a maverick was no longer an option. Now he had to answer to millions of faithful Republicans.

This was brought home to him in a big way when he was thwarted in his efforts to name Joe Lieberman his VP running-mate. When it became obvious that such a move would rip the party in two; he had to look elsewhere. He chose fellow maverick, Sarah Palin.

John gamely played on, but after awhile it was obvious to just about everyone that his heart wasn’t in it. By October, he was mainly going through the motions. By his own account and those of his closest advisers, the sense that Obama was inevitable permeated the campaign. It just wasn’t any fun anymore. He quit.  He couldn’t resign.  He just quit trying so hard.

The latest Maverick to burn out was Sarah Palin. She took on the GOP establishment in Alaska and won. She hit the National stage by storm. She was not your typical politician. She was fresh. She was exciting. But Sarah is now the establishment. Not only is she the sitting Governor of Alaska, she is one of the 2012 heir-apparents as well. Those positions bring with them obligations and responsibilities, the very things that Mavericks chaff under.

There have been many commentaries about her big speech last week announcing her resignation. One thing that her friends and foes both took away from it was that she just wasn’t having any fun anymore. It was time to bail.  Brilliant or stupid, it was time.

Maverick to the end, she resigned rather than fulfill her term. She is now free to do whatever she wants.

Some people say she quit. Mavericks tend to do that.  They just aren’t having fun anymore.

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”.

Daniel Larison, over the American Conservative, responds to Ross Douthat’s new Cheney for President column:

Think about this for a moment. It is undeniably true that most conservatives have blamed the political defeats of Republican candidates in ‘06 and ‘08 on excessive and “wasteful” spending, and they have obsessed over earmarks, and yet McCain, arch-enemy of earmarks and a Republican Senator who voted against the Medicare prescription drug program, was made part of the official pantheon of moderate squishes and someone whose nomination was regarded as a disaster and his defeat was taken as proof that fiscal austerity is a winning message. Clearly, this is incoherent on its own terms, to say nothing of the unfounded assumption that the elections in ‘06 and ‘08 turned on questions of spending. There were issues on which McCain genuinely was a squish, so to speak, and chief among these were immigration and, to the extent that it alienated him from the bulk of rank-and-file Republicans, the torture regime. There is something quite bizarre about a party and movement that have crafted a self-serving narrative about their downfall because of spending that nonetheless try to use McCain’s alleged moderation as a scapegoat, when it was McCain, more than most of his major rivals, who was the most vehement, if not necessarily intelligent, critic and opponent of spending increases…

On immigration, Cheney would have been identified with Bush’s “comprehensive” reform, and he obviously made no public statements that would have created a different impression about his views on this subject…Cheney also quite actively backed the bailouts and berated the House Republicans who resisted the creation of the TARP, which the tea party activists have denounced so vociferously. We can also be fairly sure that many of the same people who rallied around Palin’s pseudo-populist rhetoric while backing a candidate who embraced establishment policies, including all the bailouts, would have rallied to Cheney’s large doses of red-meat rhetoric and ignored the substance of the policies that he had endorsed. A Cheney nomination would have driven home how much of the “real conservatism” to which Ross refers is not anything substantive, but is instead a series of poses and gestures that validate the audience’s preferences and way of life…As I was suggesting yesterday, torture and war seem to be the non-negotiable policies for the mainstream right, and Cheney serves as the symbol and champion of this position.

Larison seems mostly right here.  John McCain was substantively more conservative than Cheney on spending and surely no less conservative on immigration, the McCain deviation which drew the biggest conservative ire.  In this sense the new Republican narrative which calls for more fiscal austerity, but simultaneously insists that McCain lost because of a lack of fiscal austerity, is genuinely bizzare.  Larison insists (in the bolded portion) that this shows that conservatism is mostly about “poses”, which Dick Cheney is presumably better at than McCain.  If this is true, Larison’s take-away is not.  Conservative opposition to McCain has always had less to do with his policies- which are reasonably conservative- and more to do with his tactics and attitude.  John McCain does not defend conservatism, even when he happens to come down on that side of the line.  John McCain always seems somewhat embarrassed by conservatism, and spent nearly a decade letting everyone know that while he was a Republican, he wasn’t one of those Republicans “over there”.  He was a Good Republican.  Good Republicanism runs in the family I guess (sorry Meghan).

And it’s not too clear to me why this is a bad thing.  If you’re an ordinary voter, with limited information, surely it’s reasonable to care about the kind of “poses” that make you seem like part of the movement, instead of an outsider.  Maybe Cheney and McCain are similar, ideologically, but who’s more likely to defend conservatism when conservatism isn’t popular?  To ask the question is to answer it.  And I confess, it seems like an important question for a movement beleaguered by disdain from elite institutions.  Larison makes a mistake by pinning Republican love for Cheney on “torture and war”; McCain’s differences from the Bush administration,  on these issues, are exaggerated at best (surely McCain was the most vocal defender of “the Surge”?).  Simply put, conservatives like Cheney because Cheney likes them.  They’ve perpetually been the damsel jilted by her date at the ball.  Maybe Dick’s not the handsomest suitor, but he’ll have a twirl.

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

This insight warrants a front page post, as Race42008 had received thousands of comments on the potential Lieberman Vice Presidential nomination.

I am not sure if any of our FPP’s or second page contributors made this point (sore loser statutes) at the height of the VP debate?   

Via Ben Smith;

Former McCain veep vetter and Washington power lawyer A.B. Culvahouse made clear in remarks before a Republican lawyers group today that the campaign had investigated the legal issues surrounding putting Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman on the GOP ticket last year and determined it would be a difficult task.

“Five states have sore loser statutes … [making] it very difficult for someone who’s not a member of the Republican Party to become the vice presidential nominee if they only switch parties to become a Republican shortly before the convention,’ Culvahouse said in public remarks at the Republican National Lawyers Association annual meeting aired on C-SPAN.

Culvahouse specifically noted the example of West Virginia, a state Republicans have relied on in recent elections, saying “the constitutionality of that statute has already been litigated in West Virginia.”

“So you were looking at going to the Supreme Court, which is not particularly appetizing,” he said.

McCain’s close friend and colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham was pushing Lieberman, and McCain himself was widely thought to be intrigued by the idea.

But Republicans warned of a revolt on the convention floor.

And now we learn there were some very real procedural roadblocks in the way of a fusion ticket, as well.

Tommy Oliver, Aron Goldman,  Matt C, Kavon Nikrad and DaveG, all reported on the Lieberman VP speculation last fall.    

–

Update: There seems to be some confusion over the ‘sore loser statute’.  The statute seems to be state based and from my research, it may be interpreted differently by each state party/constitution.  

Examples: Ohio, New Hampshire and South Carolina.    

Ohio Code: (A) Notwithstanding section 3513.31 of the Revised Code, if a person nominated in a primary election as a party candidate for the office of representative to congress for election at the next general election withdraws as such candidate prior to the eightieth day before the day of such general election …, the vacancy in the party nomination so created shall be filled by a special election held in accordance with division (B) of this section.

Gamecock, please assist us with interpreting this law. 

The topic of same-sex marriage tends to be an explosive one. In this post I’ll ask about a narrow issue that I hope is relatively noncontroversial. Please keep the comments limited to the topic of civil unions versus same-sex marriage.

If you had to choose between the government recognizing same-sex marriage or just recognizing civil unions which would you choose?

I expect most social conservatives favor civil unions over same-sex marriage if they lose the debate over the meaning of marriage. I expect most social liberals will favor the government recognizing same-sex marriages as opposed to leaving the meaning of marriage unaltered.

I actually would rather see the government recognize same-sex marriage as opposed to civil unions even though I’m a social conservative. Of course I’d rather we not redefine what marriage is in the first place. If we are going to redefine marriage I’d rather we do something less radical than introducing second class marriages that even heterosexuals could use.

So imagine for a moment you have to choose between civil unions or recognizing same-sex marriages. Which would you choose?

Given that the Republican Party is split between the “pragmatists” and the “true-believers”, I thought I’d take a look at one of the key questions surrounding that divide. Should Republicans embrace “80% conservatives” in blue areas of the country? So I’ve gone to the congressional results for the 2008 election. In, 2008 there were 27 Incumbent Republican congressman who held onto their seats in districts Obama carried. 15 of these incumbents had ACU scores above 80 in 2007, while 12 had ACU scores below 80 in 2007. First, let’s take a look at the top 5 performing GOP incumbents in these districts (measured by how far they ran ahead of McCain):

Top 5 incumbents in Obama districts:

Mike Castle (20 ACU)- +48
John McHugh (60 ACU)- +36
Don Manzullo (100 ACU)- +33
Tom Latham (84 ACU)- +33
Paul Ryan (96 ACU)- +32

Here we have a bit of a mix. The top two performers have ACU’s below 80%, while the remaining 3 have ACU’s above 80%. Both Manzullo and Ryan drastically outperformed McCain, though they are clear conservative stalwarts.

Next, let’s look at the bottom 5 GOP incumbents:

Bottom 5 incumbents in Obama districts:

Ken Calvert (88 ACU)- +3
Lee Terry (88 ACU)- +5
Brian Bilbray (92 ACU)- +8
Thaddeus McCotter (84 ACU)- +15
David Dreier (88 ACU)- +16

All of these men are in the above 80% camp, though none are as conservative as Ryan or Manzullo.

All in all, the average victorious incumbent from the above 80 camp, ran 20 points ahead of McCain in these districts. In contrast, the average victorious incumbent, from the below 80 camp, ran 29 points ahead of McCain in these districts.

Things are looking pretty good, so far, for our pragmatists. But, they shouldn’t put the champaigne on ice just yet. Because while these moderates run about 9 points ahead of McCain in Obama districts, they’re also significantly less conservative, as a group. Their average ACU score is 53, while the average ACU score is 92 for the conservative group. And in most cases, the moderates have an unnecessarily large margin of victory. Only 3 of the 12 individuals in our moderate group, won their race by fewer than 9%. In other words, all things being equal, had we replaced these moderates with an average conservative, we would have lost 3 of the 12 seats. Let’s take a look at how that new scenario compares to what actually happened. In reality, we ended with an ACU average, in these moderate seats, of 53. In our new reality, 3 moderate Republicans are replaced by Democrats (with, say, ACU’s of 0), while 9 are replaced by conservative Republicans. This leaves us with an average ACU of 69. The tide has turned, it seems, back to the “true-believers”. But, they shouldn’t count their…well, you know. These numbers are somewhat misleading, for two reasons. 1. There’s some value (it’s hard to measure it precisely) to simply having a party seat in the House, regardless of how the member votes. Because, of course, the House is organized by party, and even 20 ACU Mike Castle would vote for a Speaker Cantor. 2. This is only a study of incumbency. At best, this shows that once Republicans become incumbents, we’re better off if they’re conservative Republicans. How they get into Congress, and whether or not moderate ideology helps them get there, is a study for another day.

*Data on districts Obama carried culled from http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4161

Ok, I realize my last post was too broad in topic to be meaningful (hey, I’m still getting used to this entire posting thing!), so I’ve decided to break it down into its component parts.  You start at the beginning, so let’s look at why Republicans lost big in 2006 and 2008.

Generally, it’s very simple.  Republicans lost because they lost credibility on the important issues of the day.  Those issues DO NOT INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: Iraq, the Patriot Act, and abortion (and similar related issues).  Those issues DO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING: Fiscal responsibility and corruption.

Why not Iraq or the Patriot Act?   Yes, I know that public opinion was against Iraq.  It was also an “over there” issue.  People had bigger concerns at home (ever-expanding federal deficits while people suffered the early warning signs of the impending economic downturn).  As for the Patriot Act, most people realize we haven’t suffered another 9/11 since we implemented it, and they can live with the theoretical problems being screamed by liberals that don’t seem like much of a real threat.  While some people may have come to the polls and said these issues were important, they weren’t their primary reason.

Why not abortion (and other so-con issues)?  Well, very simply, it’s because Republicans did a good job pushing the so-con agenda.  Yes, I understand so-cons wanted more.  They wanted abortion outlawed in all 50 states.  They wanted the overturning of Roe.  They wanted the banning of gay marriage and civil unions.  In the end, however, they should be happy with what they got (and it wasn’t insubstantial), given that these issues are near the bottom of the list of what the American people care about, and that an aggressive posture on these issues tends to turn off those who don’t consider it a major issue (“Hey, why are you talking abortion when my economy is broken?”).

In summary, Republicans lost because they lost focus on why they were given DC in the first place.  They lost focus on what made Pres Clinton popular.  They got power, and they used it to enrich themselves and their districts, confident they could buy their places in Congress with other people’s money.l  Guess what?  It didn’t work, because you can’t out-liberal Democrats.

Aloha: Purpose driven Fitzmas and an Un-gay New Year

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report for submission at Examiner.com.

As Barack Obama dreams of a white-washed “Fitzmas” in Hawaii to replace White Christmas nightmares in Chicago, a mainstream Washington liberal echoes gay hate against traditional marriage Christians.

It seems Hope and Change is still best sought in the resurrected Christ that was born in a manger this date nearly two millennia ago. Merry Christmas!

Purpose Driven Unhappy New Year for Gay activists

With only 29 shopping days left until Christmas, this column documented the vicious hatred of many gay activists towards those against same-sex marriage in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California restoring the exclusivity of traditional marriage in the Golden State. Christians, and especially Mormons, were physically harassed and their property destroyed in numerous incidents in the Golden State and around the country.

We found the story ironic given the drive-by media meme that it is Christians that are the haters for merely wanting to preserve the 5000-year old marriage definition as between one man and one woman; that black and Latino Obama voters were the ones that put Prop 8 over the top; and that the gay activists tactics made a mockery of their self-comparison with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dignified, Holy Scripture driven, non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

We also went out of our way to recognize the fact that the over-whelming majority of gays do not support the extreme acts we reported, and we still acknowledge that fact.

So, it was with some discomfort that we read a gay-rights driven denunciation of the President-Elect’s choice of main-stream evangelical, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life (second in all-time book sales to The Holy Bible) to deliver the invocation prayer at his Inauguration, by a mainstream Washington liberal. Richard Cohen describes his gay sister’s cancellation of an Inaugural party due to the selection of Warren and then states:

I can understand Obama’s desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, “we’re not going to agree on every single issue.” He went on to say, “We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.” Sounds nice.

But what we do not “hold in common” is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue — the rights of gays to be treated equally — as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that’s nothing to celebrate.

There you have it. Americans, simply by opposing same-sex marriage: “de-humanize” homosexuals; believe they are all perverts; “exalt” ignorance and thus, aid and abet violence against them; and deny gays and lesbian their “civil rights.”

Nothing can make the New Year be happy for those with such notions. The irony is that, clearly, despite Obama’s protestations, our next President favors same-sex marriage. He is for all sorts of hate crimes, domestic partnerships and other legislation based on sexual preference. And, he opposed Proposition 8 which was designed to overturn an activist court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal.

But, the Cohen’s of the world that foment hatred of Christians with the lie that it is we that are intolerant, can’t even abide a prayer from someone that merely wants to tolerate a 5000 year old institutional definition that made civilization possible.

Pastor Warren has made clear that he and his church loves gays and has acted upon that love. Cohen does make some good points about Obama’s religious history in the column, so I do recommend reading the whole thing.

Merry white-washed Fitzmas

Prior to Christmas, our only comment on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald’s charges of vacant Obama senate seat selling by the President-Elect’s fellow democrat and Governor, Rod Blagojevich, was to suggest that the silence of Obama’s designate for Chief of Staff (COS) was deafening and that he would likely not serve one day as COS.

The din of Rahm Emanuel’s muteness continues in public, but given impending subpoenas, it appears same will end in private, if only to plead the Fifth. Given that he was the main public face of the pretentious “Office of the President-Elect” complete with the Tar Heel blue transmogrification of the Presidential seal and given that public faces include lips that need to move, we look forward to the naming a new COS-designate before MLK Day.

But the larger issues of this matter, and especially Obama’s attempt to white-wash the whole thing with a Christmas Eve’s eve dump of “internal investigation” findings, convince us that this viscerally more understandable scandal will make Clinton’s Whitewater seem pale and shallow by comparison.

We note the lack of outrage from Mr. Cool in a circumstance that cries out for righteous indignation. His Governor, Blagojevich (who is constitutionally empowered to choose the next junior senator from the Land of Lincoln) is trying to sell the seat he held. He withdrew the name of his preferred pick for his appointed successor, right before Lawyer Fitz announced the charges, arguably before Blago had actually committed a crime. Coincidence? Did Fitzgerald fear that Obama would soon incriminate himself speaking on behalf of his long-time assisstant, Valerie Jarrett?

We find that Obama didn’t tell us he had spoken to Blago about this matter, only to correct it after investigating himself? He changed pronouns from “I” to “we’ in an early vague news conference, famous for how few questions he would take, followed by one in which he instructed reporters not to “waste” questions.

Before Election Day, we suggested dangers citing the “Chicago Way” and how one would get “A Piece of the Action,” should that way come to The District.

Honolulu is as far as you can get from Chicago and still be in the USA, but when he says Aloha on his way back to the Lower Forty-Eight, Fitzmas may not yet be over.

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

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

[Originally published by TMR Legal Editor, Mike "gamecock" DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com which original column contains all links to supportive references.]

As we promised on Sunday when we revealed, for the purpose of full disclosure, our New Year’s Eve, 2007 predictions for 2008, below are our post-mortems. Today, we also announce that Cockstradamus will end his retirement before the end of the year after a Sabbatical since October.

2008 predictions of Mike DeVine, aka Gamecock aka Cockstradamus, followed by explanations:

1 – Southerners and Christians (including Catholics and Evangelicals) astound the Left by failing to establish the first theocratic “impose our views” State in the United States. Instead, judges in Massachusetts establish a Secular Darwinist, Man-Made Global Warming Church theocracy in the Bay State, joining the non-Christian theocratic City-State in San Francisco. Christians whose churches were invaded and taken over for group orgies with Mayoral consent in the City by the Bay are welcomed with open arms by the ecumenical Muslim-Chaldean coalition in Baghdad.

We were basically right on this one. (1-0)

2 – Pakistan fails to devolve into anarchy.

Still hanging on here, but its too close for comfort. (2-0)

3 – The Taliban fails to take over Afghanistan.

Rooster still right. (3-0)

4 – The MSM fails to report the above and continues to refuse to report the US victory over al Qaeda in Iraq.

Our Foghorn Leghorns have flushed this out on several occasions. We have basically won the War in Iraq proper and against al Qaeda. (4-0)

5 – Chelsea Clinton continues press blackout of nine year old reporters from Scholastic America and expands same to include ten-year olds from Nickelodeon.

Even though this was a fairly obscure 2007 story leading into 2008, we still got it right. (5-0)

6 – Bill Clinton finally utters Hillary’s name at a campaign stop in Chicago on February 4, 2008; loses his voice and suffers a myocardial infarction soon thereafter; is hospitalized at University of Chicago Medical Center; and is served with summons charging him with the crime of bigamy and assault and battery with a stogie by a Nurse Ratched.

We are glad we missed on this one but still request prayer for the former president walking around like The Picture of Dorian Gray. (5-1)

7 – Colts defeat Redskins in Super Bowl.

What year was that? OK, Gamecock is better at sports than Cockstradamus, and this year the owner of the alter ego will handle sports. (5-2)

8 – LSU defeats Ohio State for mythical BCS college football championship. Refuses Appalachian State challenge.

We didn’t know that LSU had already scheduled the Mountaineers before they trounced the Buckeyes. (6-3)

9 – Lakers defeat Celtics for NBA championship.

Ok, we missed the winner, but we picked both finalists months away. (8-4)

10 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will win SC GOP primary.

McCain’s military and democrat support in a crowded field in which both Romney and Rudy stopped campaigning too soon…(9-5)

11 – Obama wins Democratic Party nomination.

We would remind that we picked this before the Iowa Caucus. (10-5)

12 – Obama loses election to the GOP nominee. Oops (10-6)

13 – Mike Gamecock DeVine is vilified for refusing to predict who the GOP nominee, and next President of the United States, will be.

Unmerciful persecution of our human owner…(11-6)

14 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will be referred to as President-elect during 2008.

What an oracle! (13-6)

[We also predicted the ending of the oil drilling moratorium even by Democrats, as well, but are not including it given that the President-Elect threatens to re-impose same. Call your congressmen!]

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

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

Stopping at the local Grocery Outlet, I noticed they had a shipment of books that they hadn’t been able to sell. One of the most ironic titles was one by John Podhoretz about Hillary Clinton called, “Can She Be Stopped?” And now we know the answer to the question of can we stop her is, “Yes, we can.”

Of course Podhoretz’s ill-considered tome cannot compare to Dick Morris’ embarassing “Condi v. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” Why Amazon is trying to sell that one at the full retail list price of $15.95 is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

These titles should give those of us who prognosticate the future a sense of humility. To quote the song, “You may be right, I may be crazy.” However, the inner capitalist in me wonders whether “Jindal v. Obama: The Next Great Presidential Race” could be enough to quit the day job on. Hmmmm….

The emergence of the flag-waving liberal

Originally published at Examiner.com

Black Americans are justifiably proud of their country in the wake of the election of Barack Obama as President. In fact, most Americans, including yours truly and other conservatives and Republicans, are proud that the election of a Black man is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that America is not a racist country.

Of this, I am much thankful on this most American of holidays. I have known for decades that America isn’t racist, but do understand, as one African-American columnist put it, that only such an election could convince many blacks that “America loved them back.”

As I wrote on the day after Election Day, we have but one president at a time, and the President-Elect will be my President come Inauguration Day. But we have only one country for all time (if we can keep it), and my patriotic love for it is unrelated to the outcome of elections.

But, not all Americans share this kind of patriotism:

“I felt [Old Glory, pictured] was no longer a symbol of the country I love, but of Bush and support for his war,” said [Ronnie Chapman, a] 48-year-old pharmacist from Cary. “The first thing I did the morning after the election was take it from my den and fly it proudly in front of my house.”

You did the right thing, finally, as did all those that were flying their Star Spangled Banners the day before the election who didn’t take theirs down.

The Raleigh News & Observer considers Chapman’s response as reflecting “the emergence of an unusual – and some might say contradictory – new figure: the flag-waving liberal.”

“For years it’s felt like patriotism was a Republican thing,” said Raven Moeslinger, 21, a senior at UNC Chapel Hill. “Now I feel like we’ve reclaimed it.”

Why did you feel that way for years? Could it be because you have so often heard liberal Democrats complaining of having their patriotism challenged when only their judgment is challenged and remembered Shakespeare’s “Methinks thou dost protest too much” and reached the obvious conclusion?

“We’ve” reclaimed “it”? No, Raven, but hopefully you have joined “it” and that “it” will be a lifelong marriage in love for the extended family we call country. I pray we are not two irreconcilable Americas.

You can build that love by following this example:

“The night after the election, I got in bed and started reading the Declaration of Independence for the first time in a long time,” said Sherry Harmon, 55, of Cary. “I felt I needed to touch base with our roots because I think we need to refresh our ideas of who we are as Americans.”

Bravo. Read the reasons for loving this “Best hope of man on Earth” from the first Independence Day in 1776 thru Election Day 2008.

What you will discover is that, but for the “old” patriotism that led men and women to sacrifice their lives, fortunes and scared honor to found and preserve this Shining City on a Hill, no matter the party of the Commander-in-Chief, there would have been far less to be thankful for.

Here is hoping that the “new” patriots will remain so when the sunshine reflected off Barack’s visage has turned to night.

God Bless America and pass the turkey!

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

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

Martin King that is…

After the most liberal state in the nation rejected same-sex marriage at the ballot box for the second time this decade, protests rallies were held across the nation, including here in Charlotte.

Some gay rights activists point to the defeat of same-sex marriage with the passage of Proposition 8 in California and similar bans approved in Arizona and Florida on this past Election Day as evidence of hate:

“We need a movement in this country,” said Joanie Beasley of Gastonia. “It is time we said no to all bigotry and hate. It is time we demanded our civil rights.”

Bigotry and hate, merely to favor maintaining the over 5000 year old definition of the institution of marriage, which is the institution most responsible for making civilization possible?

Civil rights?

There is no civil right to marry a person of the same sex ratified in any State’s constitution (including North Carolina’s) or the U.S. Constitution, although, judges in Massachusetts and Connecticut essential re-wrote their respective Constitutions to find such a previously “hidden” right.

Beasley, 53, sang along with the crowd Saturday, closing her eyes at the chorus of “We Shall Overcome.” She attended the rally with her partner Nancy Leedy, also 53.

As a veteran trial lawyer that has represented gays in discrimination claims, I think many gay activists make a huge mistake trying to marry their cause to the Civil Rights Movement for blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities.

First of all, it was not necessary for judges to twist the meanings of words in constitutions to support their claims. Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) could point to the 14th Amendment, ratified by supermajorities of Congress and the States, soon after the Civil War, as the basis of their equal rights.

Secondly, many activists in the present movement are essentially demanding that Americans approve of their “lifestyle”, which, translated, means their sexual preferences and behavior. This is a political loser.

Lastly, a distinct, but vocal minority of those hurling bigot and hate epithets at supporters of traditional marriage, resort to the sine qua non of hate: violence.

The real haters have physically harassed churchgoers (especially Mormons), destroyed property and engaged in various other obnoxious physical and non-physical acts that in no way remind one of those that made the tune of “We Shall Overcome” famous.

Clearly, these miscreants in no way represent the overwhelming majority of gays and lesbians, many of whom don’t even favor changing marriage laws. But the leaders of those who do, need to take a page out of MLK’s book and denounce the violence done in their name much as King denounced Black Panthers and the pre-conversion Malcolm X.

I once counseled an openly gay legislator to seek legal changes based on the American concept of “individual” rather than group rights. This is a proven political winner.

Many states have enacted laws that address concerns of inheritance, hospital visitation, and other issues. Moreover, many Americans have no problem with civil unions, especially if they are available to individuals without regard to inquiries of sexual preference.

These successes are being achieved the old fashioned way, free speech to persuade followed by votes by We the People in states and localities.

One day Americans may favor changing the definition of marriage. That day has not yet come. But some gay rights activists want to force the issue on the states thru the courts and point to President-Elect Barack Obama’s campaign statements of his desire to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

That act, signed by President Bill Clinton, provides that no state could be required to respect same-sex marriages in other states. (There are Constitutional issues under the Full Faith and Credit Clause that the U.S. Supreme Court has never addressed, I would note).

I think this would be a huge political mistake given the overwhelming opposition to same-sex marriage and given the damage court imposed social views anathema to those of most Americans can have on the body politic, such as Roe v. Wade’s instant legalization of abortion that arrested evolution on the issue in the states.

The best path for gays to one day achieve their civil rights goals is to insist on a civil debate worthy of Martin Luther King and which engages all of the body politic, rather than having judges cram their agenda down America’s throat.

Further reading:

-Dennis Prager: Is Gay the new Black?

-Michelle Malkin: The Insane Rage of the Same-Sex Marriage Mob

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Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

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

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report
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-Not based on history, especially including the past 24 months.

Merely allowing Bush tax cuts to expire is cause for joy?

One of the factors restraining investors since 2006 and even before the Fannie Mae housing/credit crunch bubble burst, has been their knowledge that income from any investments would be subject to higher tax rates after 2010.

Hear the breathless, panting Drive-By media:

Obama is said to be reconsidering one key campaign pledge – his proposal to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Several people familiar with the discussions told The New York Times that he instead might let those tax cuts expire as scheduled in 2011, effectively delaying any tax increase while he gives his stimulus plan a chance to work.

So we are supposed to jump up and down that the same Democrat policy that helped gring the economy to a halt since they took power in 2007 will continue?

Filibuster threats from the Senate Democratic Party minority prior to their return to the majority in 2006 blocked GOP attempts to making the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax rate cuts permanent. Those are the tax cuts that prevented a recession after 911 and which fueled economic growth from 2002-2006 that exceed GDP averages of the 70s, 80s and 90s.

What is it about economic growth that Democrats don’t like?

One of the other main factors that has caused investors to go on strike over the course of the permanent Obama campaign has been the prospect that he or another tax raising Democrat would win, coupled with the prospect that Obama would accelerate the tax hike.

Yet, we are supposed to swoon at his feet if he merely doesn’t accelerate? McClatchy’s James Rosen catches his breath enough to report:

Some Republicans might be won over [to the Keynesian stimulus package] should Obama decide not to repeal the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000. By letting the cuts expire after 2010, as the law provides, Obama would in effect delay the tax increase that high-income taxpayers would have faced in the next year or two under his original plan.

That could have both economic and political benefits. Obama would not be open to the charge from Republicans and other critics that he is raising taxes in a recession, which many believe is counterproductive.

The press is treating the prospect that Obama would not raise taxes sooner as action, while unwittingly conceding the obvious fact that tax hikes hurt the economy.

Let’s take this one step further. What America needs are tax rate cuts, especially on capital and corporations. The whole Paulson bailout plan was made necessary due to a lack of capital available for loans. And America’s corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world.

Moreover, while I have no objection to a stimulus bill in theory, the fact is that government spending of that kind doesn’t change investor behavior like supply side tax cuts, unless it is on a war-like scale, and even then it usually is accompanied by inflation and can’t be sustained for long wars.

The evidence is in. Witness GDP from 1929-1940 vs. the early 60s and 1983-2006.

Too bad most Democrats and the press know so much that isn’t so, like:

By letting the tax cuts expire, Obama would get the benefit of higher revenues in 2011 and beyond to help finance his promised health care plans without having to propose raising taxes on the affluent, and without the Democratic majorities in Congress having to take a vote on a tax increase.

Such ignorance. Lower tax rates increased tax revenues following JFK (pictured rocking above just before delivering tax cut speech) , Reagan and Bush 43′s tax rate cuts. The whole news article reeks of political maneuvering, as opposed to sober economic analysis.

The GOP needs to hammer these facts home. They must not accept scraps from the President-Elect’s tax table. Demand the main course. Obama professes to admire JFK and Reagan.

Let’s remind him why he should and demand tax cuts now, rather than being content to settle for delays in tax hikes. Let’s put him in a rocker like JFK’s if we have to.

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Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

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

On the heels of Barack Obama’s increasingly impressive popular and electoral vote win (yes, the % margin continues to grow), I must lay out my extended thoughts for the first time. For a number of reasons, I decided more than a month ago to remove myself from this site until after the election. I believe that the commentary had become too divisive and extremely distracting to actual issues affecting real Americans. We seemed to be harping more on William Ayers, rather than focusing on John McCain’s own mistakes. You know your party has gone awry when the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party must resort to tying Obama to Osama bin Laden in an attempt to rally supporters. In all, I remain disappointed in my party and I realized long ago that we had no right to expect the American people to send us back to the White House.

I. Why Obama Won- A Final Review

Now, let’s settle some things that have arisen since November 4: I cannot agree more with Sean Oxedine’s thoughts on the election and its meaning for the Republican Party going forward:

Republicans didn’t lose because they were too conservative, or not conservative enough, or didn’t ban abortion, or wanted to ban gay marriage. They lost because they were given the reigns of power, and they didn’t perform. If you look at the big party changes across recent American elections: 2006/08, 1994, 1982, 1980, 1974, 1966, 1958, they share a common thread: The in-party screwed up.

There is no way around it: Barack Obama can thank President Bush for his victory. I was never a believer in the theory that a wave of minorities and young voters would sweep Obama to victory. In fact, besides a slight increase in African-American turnout, both Hispanics and younger voters (18-29 year-olds) did not turnout as strong as expected. These groups did not vote more, they just voted differently:

via CNN Exit Poll 2008

Vote by Race

• White (74%)- McCain 55%, Obama 43%, Other/No Answer 2%
• Black (13%)- Obama 95%, McCain 4%, Other/No Answer 1%
• Latino (9%)- Obama 67%, McCain 31%, Other/No Answer 2%
• Asian (2%)- Obama 62%, McCain 35%, Other/No Answer 3%
• Other (3%)- Obama 66%, McCain 31%, Other/No Answer 3%

via CNN Exit Poll 2004

Vote by Race

• White (77%)- Bush 58%, Kerry 41%, Nader 0%
• Black (11%)- Kerry 88%, Bush 11%, Nader 0%
• Latino (8%)- Kerry 53%, Bush 44%, Nader 2%
• Asian (2%)- Kerry 56%, Bush 44%, Nader N/A
• Other (2%)- Kerry 54%, Bush 40%, Nader 2%

Other interesting numbers, these broken down by educational level:

High school graduate:

• 2008: Obama +6%
• 2004: Bush +5%

Some college:

• 2008: Obama +4%
• 2004: Bush +8%

What does all of this mean? In the end, Obama won largely because he picked up a large swath of lower to middle-class white voters (many who had voted for Bush in 2004) in former GOP states, including Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. In addition, Obama gained a substantial number of Latino voters who had also voted for Bush four years ago, thus fueling his Western victories in Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

If there is ever a clear indication that this election was a referendum on President Bush, Chuck Todd provides us with the best evidence:

Many have attributed Obama’s win to his organization, his performance among minorities and young voters, his nearly unlimited campaign cash, and his response to the economic meltdown — and all deservedly so. But don’t forget how big of a role Bush’s unpopularity played in this election. With the single exception of Missouri (which barely went for McCain after a delayed call from NBC News), Obama won every state where Bush’s approval rating was below 35% in the exit polls, and he lost every state where Bush’s approval rating was over 35%.

These statistics demonstrate that the American electorate has not moved to the left as much as it may seem. We remain a center-right nation. A distinct group of people did not approve of Bush’s performance, yet still could not bring themselves to vote for Obama. Likewise, I believe that many voters liked and respected John McCain, but simply could not support him because of the “R” next to his name. All conditions considered, the American people were just not going to return a Republican to the White House this time around. (more…)

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com
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-Paint it Blue! North Carolina may Now and only now, be “declared” for the President-Elect.

Incompetence or subterfuge by the Associated Press in their “reporting” on the counting of the presidential election votes in North Carolina?

It’s obvious to this former trial lawyer that a competent cross-examination would find then guilty of venality and in a fetal position whining in a corner if ever they had to answer under oath for their “symbolic” declarations of Obama electoral success and bad “new” math in the Tar Heel State before yesterday. For only yesterday were all the votes counted.

But Charlotte’s law and civil rights examiner reveres the First Amendment as applied to AP and us, and so, will now exercise his.

Another anonymous agent of “Associated Press” repeats the same falsehood we reported earlier. The latest “story” from the nameless, faceless news purveyor appearing in today’s Charlotte Observer:

N.C. vote: Obama leads by 14,192 Associated Press Posted: Friday, Nov. 21, 2008

RALEIGH The margin of President-elect Obama’s victory in North Carolina is just about finalized. Obama received 14,192 more votes than Republican nominee John McCain after the lawful provisional ballots were added to the totals.

The Associated Press declared Obama the winner Nov. 6 after determining there weren’t enough provisional ballots to change the outcome. Obama will be the first Democrat to receive North Carolina’s electoral votes since 1976.

State elections director Gary Bartlett said Thursday the results likely won’t change before the State Board of Elections certifies election winners Tuesday.

Libertarian candidate Bob Barr received 25,722 votes – less than 1 percent of the total vote. Overall voter turnout was 69.5 percent, slightly higher than the record set in 1984.

That is the whole AP story. Notice what’s missing from the story?

I’ll tell you what’s missing. What’s missing is the number of provisional ballots that were cast. Why is this important? Because AP purports to be news organization; the press; a gatherer of facts for the consideration of the non-press portion of We the People, too busy doing non-press work to gather said facts.

I apologize for my, “colleagues”, ack! I am not “associated” with them.

The Facts (as previously reported here at The Examiner:

1) Democrat Obama led Republican John McCain by 13,746 votes after Election day

2) Around 40,000 provisional votes remained to be counted after Election day

3) 40,000 is nearly three times 13,746

4) The State of NC and the AP both decided to go ahead and “declare” the Democrat the “symbolic” winner before all the votes were counted.

5) In three different stories on this issue the AP has mislead its readers

Congratulations to the President-Elect on his victory yesterday, November 20, 2008. The Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner now acknowledges same, now that all the votes have been counted.

We also acknowledge a pattern in these N.C. presidential election stories that convinces us that AP doesn’t need a math teacher. No, they need ethics. Notice I did not say they need an ethics teacher or some seminar designed to sweep the matter under the rug. They know what they are doing. They choose to do it.

Given the First Amendment, the only legal and effective way to teach ethics to the press, absent proof of the near impossible standard of “actual malice”, is that consumers stop consuming their stuff.

We are proud to report that sales of the “carriers” of their contagion are way down. One reason that page views of Examiner.com is up.

*See my TMR link above and for story this weekend (also to be posted here at Race 4 2012 on why NC went blue and how we can turn it, and enough states to garner 270+ electoral votes, red again.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

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

In the last couple weeks we’ve seen no shortage of sentiment implying that the GOP is in something akin to death throes, provided that it doesn’t come to resemble something other than the modern GOP. This post has been building in me for a while, but the latest piece by Ron Brownstein, titled The Bush GOP’s Fatal Contraction, kind of set me off.

Look, I’m not going to say that nothing bad happened to Republicans on November 4. I don’t need to repeat the litany of losses we suffered that day. If you’ve forgotten, read Brownstein’s piece. I’ve seen those numbers myself.

But I don’t think its fair to say that “Bush leaves behind a party that looks less like a coalition than a clubhouse.” It is a pretty d*mn big clubhouse. In the past few years, under a Republican President’s watch, we’ve had two wars go badly, one of which a very large chunk of the country believes was unnecessary and founded on lies, a recession begin, instances of severe corruption, sex scandals, graft, massive deficit spending, and a city go under water, the financial system collapse, and a Republican President argue for a $700 billion bailout. All that was missing was plagues of locusts, and I’d have signed up for Hal Lindsay’s newsletter. The Democrats nominated not just a political candidate, but a pop culture phenomenon, who raised three quarters of a billion dollars over the course of his campaign, who ran (at least in Virginia) on a platform of ending a foreign adventure, tax cuts for 95% of the American people, a health care plan in the middle of the free market and government-run plan, and good old fashioned mom and apple pie.

The result? The Democrat got about 53% of the vote, about the same as the first President Bush got against Dukakis. Lest you think that this can all be chalked up to the racism of those darned West Virginians, Obama only ran about eight-tenths of a point behind Congressional Democrats.

In other words, about 9 in 20 voters voted for Republicans, versus 11 in 20 Democrats. In similar circumstances like 1952 and 1920, the verdict against the in-party has been much more dramatic. This is a bad result, but it is not a “chuck the social/fiscal/defense conservatives over the edge” bad result.

Brownstein continues that “[t]he consistent thread linking the 2006 and 2008 elections was the narrowing of the playing field for Republicans even as Democrats extended their reach into places once considered reliably “red.” Pardon my colloquialisms, but “well duh.” The Republican party consistently failed to perform and to produce good results over the past four years, and when it did (in Iraq), it was too late for the 2006 elections, and just in time for the business cycle to swing negative. When the Republican party was performing well, from about 2001-2003, it looked like reliably blue areas of the country like the upper midwest and the Pacific Northwest were trending their direction, while nothing was going right for Democrats. When you have power and you govern well, the country swings your way. When you have power and you don’t the country does the opposite. Very quickly, it turns out.

The results of this election should not have surprised anyone, and if they did it should have only surprised them by how well the Republicans performed given the circumstances. When you have a President with 25% approval ratings, you don’t make advances into blue states, you struggle to hold on to purple states, and you lose some ground in red states. That’s not partisanship, that’s common sense.

And Brownstein overlooks the most important fact of all when he writes:

But to win the GOP nomination, McCain embraced Bush’s core economic and foreign policies and then selected, in Sarah Palin, a running mate who waged the culture war with a zeal that made Bush and Karl Rove look squeamish. Both decisions weakened McCain’s position with centrist voters; then the financial collapse deepened the hole.

The very important fact that he overlooks is that even with Sarah Palin and McCain’s supposed embrace of Bush’s economic and foreign policies, McCain was leading Obama before the financial collapse took place (and this was well outside the time of the regular convention bounce). Obama was reduced to making snarky comments about lipstick on pigs and old dead fish and running commercials about how McCain couldn’t send e-mails. He was getting ready to drop Keating 5 ads. In other words, up until September 15, this was a very winnable race for Republicans. It wasn’t just at the Presidential level either — between the RNC and the financial collapse, every generic congressional ballot poll had the Democrats’ lead in single digits; we also had the first poll showing Republicans leading in the generic ballot since 2004. We were headed toward a three or four Senate seat loss, rather than the seven or eight one we’re looking at today. Given the overall condition of the country even pre-AIG/Lehman Brothers, that is astounding.

If McCain had pulled it off, and Obama had received only 49% of the vote and Democrats had made minimal gains in Congress or worse, the conclusion would be either (1) that Americans are racist or (2) that Democrats just can’t win the Presidency.  Sorry, but the difference between a permanent Republican majority and a pup tent Republican party isn’t 4% of the vote.

Anyway, the point of all of this is to go back to something very, very important that Patrick Ruffini wrote about a week ago, and which conservatives should ponder carefully before they start excommunicating any branch of the party or otherwise seriously altering their message. He writes:

American elections are by and large not referendums on ideologies. They are contests of personality, optics, and performance in office. This goes the same for when they win or we win — whether it’s 1980, 1994, or 2006/2008. The Democrats did not have to change their ideology to win; they needed to change the charisma level of their standardbearer and needed an economic crisis and a prolonged unpopular war.

Because ideology doesn’t matter in elections, and so much of politics depends on ephemeral characteristics like personality and who was in when the economy cycled south, the parties paradoxically have relatively wide latitude to govern ideologically without fear of public backlash once they get in. This is why cries of “socialism” were so ineffective during the campaign, and likewise why Bush got most of what he wanted in his early Presidency, even before 9/11. If Barack Obama is able to adopt far-left policies and make it look like he’s making the trains run on time, the country will enter a new liberal era not by virtue of public opinion, but by acquiesence to what appears to be competent governance. In 1993-94, the Clintons tried to move the country to the left and looked incompetent in the process. It was the latter more than the former that opened a door for conservatives in 1994.

This is spot on. Republicans didn’t lose because they were too conservative, or not conservative enough, or didn’t ban abortion, or wanted to ban gay marriage. They lost because they were given the reigns of power, and they didn’t perform. If you look at the big party changes across recent American elections: 2006/08, 1994, 1982, 1980, 1974, 1966, 1958, they share a common thread: The in-party screwed up. If the Democrats screw up, all of those glowing internal exit poll numbers about Hispanics and youth and turnout and what-not will turn as depressing for them as they did in 2002 and 2004, when we were crowing about how Republicans had won 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties.

That’s the worst thing about this election for Republicans — our fate is not really in our hands. But in the meantime, we shouldn’t act like the results from November 4 are a 1964/1984 “will we ever govern again” result, because they weren’t. What we’re doing on this site is important, and the party does need to examine how it interacts with its online communities, how it presents its message, and how it attacks the incoming administration. But that’s ultimately for what happens when we are handed the reins of power, to try and make sure we don’t screw up again. At what point in time we’re handed the reins depends as much on the results the incoming Administration is perceived as supplying as it does anything we do in the background, but in the meantime, we’ve got a pretty darned good bedrock to build upon.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com
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A conservative republican senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma (left), wants to prevent a Republican President’s Secretary of the Treasury from spending $350 billion absent approval of Democratic Party congressional majorities.

Thomas Freidman, a liberal Obama-supporting columnist with the New York Times opposes Democrats in congress that want to come to the rescue of their UAW union constituents at General Motors:

Tom, if I thought with $25 billion we could save this industry, I’d be for it, OK?

I wouldn’t.

If there were an amount of money that would fix GM, investors would be begging GM to let them buy in.

It was necessary to stabilize the banking system, but a crucial “bailout” distinction must be made. Charles Krauthammer acknowledges that:

The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama (left) observes that:

Once we cross the divide from financial institutions to individual corporations, truly, where would you draw the line?

Hopefully, the failure of the first $350B, of the Paulson bailout plan, to unclog the money-lending arteries of a financial system distorted and stunted by bad government policies since the late 1990’s, will disabuse the President-Elect of plans to restrict the Liberty of Americans to bail themselves and the country out, as they did from 1983-2005, by being unleashed from central planning and allowed to spread their economic wings.

The government must stop causing companies to fail, allow failing companies to fail and stop preventing investors from investing. Investors went on strike during the 1930’s. Let’s not precipitate a repeat.

Paulson admitted on November 14 that “the financial markets are stabilized.” Fine, give the remaining half of the taxpayers’ money back and shore up the Greenback. Investors worldwide like a strong U.S. dollar. Despite the stabilization, little money is being lent.

Stop criminalizing business failure through the post-Enron Sarbanes-Oxley bill that has stifled new-business start-ups and made London a rival for New York as the world’s financial capitol.

Reduce America’s non-competitive corporate income tax or eliminate it altogether. Haven’t you heard, corporations don’t pay taxes. They just pass them along to consumers. We haven’t the time for any class warfare. Speaking of which, why not cut the capital gains tax rate? This nation is capital starved. Wouldn’t it be better if private investors wanted to infuse capital in banks so that Hank didn’t feel the need to?

The deficit you ask? What is government spending doing to the deficit? If Paulson spends the rest of his kitty, it will be over a trillion with a “T” for this fiscal year. Remember the 80’s and late 90’s when we cut tax rates and revenues gushed into the treasury?

Back to GM. We should be concerned about the millions of workers that could lose their jobs, but a native with a vested interest in Michigan, Mitt Romney (left) weighed in on the matter today:

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

The key to an economic turnaround is to let Americans be free. Free to keep more of their money and free from onerous laws that value the swimming pools of snail darters over the ability of homo sapiens to feed their young.

There is no greater civil right than the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When Jim Crow laws restricted that Liberty, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis and many others engaged in civil disobedience in protest.

During the campaign, President-Elect Obama opposed expanded oil drilling, was caught on tape favoring the bankruptcy of the coal industry, and opposed nuclear power expansion.

Will he stick to those liberty denying positions next year in the midst of a deeper recession?

Maybe Americans should take to the streets again and include the seas this time.
How about in addition to another March on Washington, let’s have a Float on North Carolina’s Outer Banks to build an oil rig? Plenty of water out there for hoses too.

Spreading existing wealth won’t do. Americans must seize their inalienable right to create more.

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Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

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

In the comments section to Adam’s thread, DaveG writes:

Look, every Democrat I know loves John Roberts. They just admire the hell out of the guy. Now, this is a guy who’s a devout Catholic, a family man, and someone who everybody knows would put a knife through the heart of Roe v. Wade should he be given the chance. And yet he’s pretty much universally respected. Why? Because he’s brilliant, he’s likable, and he never once made anybody feel that they’re somehow a bad American because they don’t share his religious beliefs or political views.

The point is, there’s a way to be socially conservative and still remain a viable option for voters who aren’t socially conservative. Reagan/Newt/Pawlenty know how to do this, and I’m really, really close to putting Jindal in that category based on the YouTubes I’ve watched of him over the past few days. Bush/Huckabee/Palin do NOT know how to do this, and quite frankly, they’re really, really bad at it. Not Santorum-level bad, but pretty freakin’ bad.

I tend to think your distinction is an arbitrary one. Bush in 2000, with the sole exception of the “who’s your favorite philosopher?” question, sold his social conservatism very lightly indeed. It’s true enough that his perceived stupidity opened up a cultural divide, pretty much from the outset, but that’s got little to do with the way he articulated his social views. I don’t know anyone who thinks Mike Huckabee’s stupid- he’s almost certainly “smarter” then Bush and is much quicker on his feet- but he had a much harder time selling his shtick then Bush ever did. The Huckabee problem, culturally, wasn’t the same as the Bush problem, culturally. And Palin “problem” culturally is something altogether different.

I’d also say that, to a certain extent, candidates run the campaign that the circumstances demand. I disagree with those who feel Palin’s cultural appeals were misguided and not simply because I happen to have a similar cultural mindset. Anyone who looked at the Democratic primary results ought to have concluded that, for a Democrat, Obama was abnormally strong in the suburbs, exurbs, and white collar urban areas, and unusually weak, for a Democrat, in white blue-collar urban areas and rural areas. I was screaming this back in, like April, but it simply didn’t make any sense for John McCain to try to run a campaign appealing to suburbanites or white-collar urban voters. No sense at all.

Obama had a vulcan grip on these voters. McCain’s best bet was to try to go after rural and blue-collar urban Democrats who’d spurned Obama in the primaries. Palin was a reasonable attempt at this, and her occasional screaming cultural cues were aimed in that direction- they weren’t meant for white collar suburbanites, who were destined to bend over backwards for Obama. Maybe Pawlenty, who actually is a blue-collar urbanite, would have been a better attempt (though, I’m skeptical), but it’s simply ludicrous to suggest that McCain lost, and Palin failed, because they decided to offend suburban and white-collar urban voters. That’s the product of misguided fantasizing by, you guessed it, suburban and urban blue-staters. I fit squarely in this group, so I understand the impulse, but it’s just…not…rational.

Palin sent off blaring cultural cues because the McCain camp, and probably Palin herself, understood these factors. They understood that Obama could take to wearing overalls, chewing on hay, while quoting the Bible on the stump, and he’d still outperform among suburban voters and white-collar urban voters. So they sent out a certain sort of culture warrior- the sort aimed at blue-collar voters, gun owners, etc- and they hoped that she could remain credible long enough to keep these skeptical rural/blue-collar Democrats (the ONLY persuadables) away from Obama. It didn’t work. Fair enough. But, it might have, and almost anything else would have surely failed.

It was a strategy borne of circumstances and it’s not at all clear to me that this is the sort of campaign Palin would have run had they been facing a more traditional Democrat. There’s certainly almost no indication, from archives and videos, that she ran on any flashy cultural connection in her gubernatorial race. Quite the opposite in fact: she spent almost the entire race trying to appear serious and staid. The moment demanded serious and staid, and she delivered. This is what politicians do, and I think DaveG makes a mistake by attributing abiding personal qualities to how a politician approaches any given race. It may well be that this is what the public does, and that Sarah Palin will forever be miss “You Betcha” to America, but I’d expect some more serious analysis from political commentators.

Part two of Gamecock’s election post-mortem shows GOP the way back to the majority

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Part one of our Election 2008 post-mortem, rejected the notion of a “secular American majority”. I agree with Dave Sage that culture drives politics; that America has been growing more secular; and that America desperately needs a new Great Awakening outside of politics. However, Republicans are not yet Daniel in a pagan Lions Den. Part two builds on that theme, as well as how we can win back republicans that bolted the party or sat out this election; as well as win over conservative democrats and many secular voters.]

I knew McCain was going to lose when I received an “Obama saves the GOP” e-mail on the Saturday before Election Day from my friend Don Scoggins, the leader of the Frederick Douglass (below) Society, and one of my personal conservative heroes. Don, a conservative black Republican, helped shape my post-2000 conversion to the GOP and has been an inspiration to me, especially as regards my efforts to reach out to minorities with the conservative message.

In explaining his decision to vote for the Democrat, Don expressed an understandable pride in Obama’s skills and symbolic value in affirming a culmination of the Civil Rights Movement. But primarily, Scoggins was voting against a McCain and a GOP that had lost their way.

At first I was shocked, but a week after the election I started to understand how Obama could save us.

Ironically, the saving will not be had by following Frederick Douglass’s “leave us alone” admonition to President Lincoln. Rather, a conservative resurrection can be built upon, now “all in” on the America Project, minority communities more receptive to the conservative message given conclusive proof that they can rise to any height in America, just like whites, on merit. We must take this message into every congressional district as well as State and Local races. We must recruit Blacks and Hispanics in districts where none immediately come forward, just as we do in majority white districts, and we must choose candidates that can win.

Obama’s third world-like crowds are dispersing back to the real world.

All Americans, too many of whom are ignorant of what disaster liberal government wrought in the 70s and the Reagan conservative anecdote of the 80s, are about to get re-educated in the looming recession born of Fannie Mae government distortion of the free market and Obama and the Democrats’ anti-Free wealth creation Market in favor of spreading your hard earned wealth to others agenda.

Republicans have been held accountable for happenings on their watch over the past decade as they became Democrat-lite. Now, Democrats will be held accountable like they haven’t been since 1994 and 1980.

Americans will be repelled by toys and peanut butter sandwich sharing before Kindergarten sex-ed. They will not confuse compulsion by government with the message of Jesus, like Obama has. They will not share Obama’s aversion to digging into the ground and ocean floor for coal and oil, as well as refinery nuclear power plant foundations for good wages. They will not be amused by energy “price lessons” from the chauffer-driven President, no matter his pigmentation. No, Americans want wealth creating jobs and they want to decide to whom they will spread it. They will not be content with Obama’s minimalist view.

They will want to return to American exceptionalism.

The re-education in the failures of liberal economic policies is underway. Minds will be concentrated, and it is vital that we have energetic new leadership in place to put it all in perspective and be the alternative.

We have leaders that fit the bill like Michael Steele, Mike Pence, Mark Sanford, Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin and many others that have for too long been drowned out by “compassionate conservative” condescension or losing Mavericks, mimicking failed Democrats.

As stated in part one, the faith and conservative social views give us a foot in the door with many minorities. We should listen to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and return to first principles and reach out to those minorities.

But we can also reach out to more secular voters with one of the most basic of conservative principles: federalism. This concept can be the key to disabusing many of the Big Lie that social conservatives want to impose our views.

Social conservatives came into the political arena because federal judges were stifling their free speech and imposing a world view on their children anathema to their views. Co-author of The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton (below), Thomas Jefferson and the most of the rest of the Founders’ vision for happiness pursuit maximization was for federalist dispersion of power to the like-minded in their communities and the power to vote with one’s feet. Moreover, most conservatives don’t want to proselytize in public schools. It’s the liberals that do that with their amorphous tolerance and diversity and their moral and cultural relativism.

All are better off and with a much better chance that their views won’t be categorized with obscenity in speech codes in their children’s schools under a federalist system rather than a one-size fits all whim of a federal judge.

What Gamecock dubs “Faith-based Conservative Federalism” is GOP’s ticket back to the majority.

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

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

From CNN:

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (CNN) –South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on Friday became one of the first high-profile Republicans to publicly criticize John McCain following his electoral defeat, blaming the Arizona senator for betraying conservative principles in his quest for the White House.

The conservative senator, speaking to a group of GOP officials gathered in Myrtle Beach at a conference on the future of the Republican Party, described how the party had strayed from its own “brand,” which, according to DeMint, should represent freedom, religious-based values and limited government.

“We have to be honest, and there’s a lot of blame to go around, but I have to mention George Bush, and I have to mention Ted Stevens, and I’m afraid I even have to mention John McCain,” he said.

DeMint offered a long list of complaints about McCain’s record in the Senate and on the campaign trail.

“McCain, who is proponent of campaign finance reform that weakened party organizations and basically put George Soros in the driver’s seat,” DeMint said. “His proposal for amnesty for illegals. His support of global warming, cap-and-trade programs that will put another burden on our economy. And of course, his embrace of the bailout right before the election was probably the nail in our coffin this last election. And he has been an opponent of drilling in ANWR, at a time when energy is so important. It really didn’t fit the label, but he was our package.”

Senator DeMint is correct. The same thing could have been said months ago, but wasn’t. DeMint urged people to support McCain, but at the end of the day, his heart wasn’t in it.

This was perhaps the greatest problem McCain faced. McCain was the Republican nominee because of crossover Independent votes in New Hampshire and South Carolina. He was a nominee handed by a bunch of lightly informed folks who then left Republicans holding the bag.

I attended the Idaho State Convention this year and an elderly lady who’d been in the party for may years, tried to rally us to McCain. “John McCain wasn’t my first choice for the Presidency, or my second, or my third, or my fourth but…”

Listening to the speakers at the State Convention who tried to sell McCain, they believed they were selling us a load of garbage, but that they were doing their duty to the party, and they expected us to do so as well. Human psychology doesn’t work that way.

Of course, McCain took a few baby steps towards his base. He promised fiscal responsibility, energy, judges. Okay, I can work with that. Add Palin to the ticket and I’ve got something to work for. I made calls from home for McCain-Palin, and it was perhaps the hardest thing to do in politics.

“Only John McCain can bring the real change we need to Washington…”

*gag*

*cough*

The calls I made for John McCain were a challenge. After all these years of McCain stabbing conservatives in the back. To call up complete strangers to urge them to get out and vote for McCain was hard. I wonder if that showed on the phone. I certainly hope not and as someone who’s worked on phones for six years, I did my best to hide it.

Once McCain voted for the bailout, it took me more than a week before I could start making calls again. I’d get to the time I’d set aside for making calls and feel like finding some excuse not to call. I usually prodded myself into doing it by saying, “It’s for Palin, not McCain.” So, I’d call and read the scripts at each house, thank God when I finally reached my quota of calls for the day and go do something fun to mentally wash myself from calling folks for McCain.

I got an e-mail about a week from the election from Camp McCain thanking me. I was one of the top 400 callers for McCain in the U.S.  I hope the others ahead of me on the list felt more enthusiastic in making these calls.

I do feel somewhat more kind towards Senator McCain at the end of the campaign than I did it’s beginning. He has a good family. He’s not a big spender, and he really believes if Americans come together, put aside partisanship and put country first, that will fix things.

In the end, though, he was not a candidate who could lead Republicans to the White House. I can’t blame him. What we got this Fall was Senator McCain. What I can blame our party bosses who decided it was much more important to pick a candidate quickly than to pick him right, and that in order to win elections, you let the nominee of the party not be chosen by the people who need to work their hearts out to win the election, but by a bunch of folks who take their advise on who to vote for in the Republican Primary from newspapers that endorse Democrats in the Fall.

By Mike “gamecock” DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com
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-Lukewarm spue at Foggy Bottom clears 2012 field

The Left now controls all levers of national power in Washington and has no more need for triangulators that delayed the vesting of their birthright.

The worshippers wanting to bring back ’68 have hated Bill Clinton since the 1995 State of the Union that declared the “Era of Big Government” over. Most were no longer enamored of Hillary, either, since her 2003 hawkish Iraq War votes either, but she was, after all, a female feminist icon.

Compared to the cold, hot star of Obama, Hillary is lukewarm and, so, scheduled to be spued out of the Left’s mouth.

I have been saying since last Spring when so many of her “honorable” Senate colleagues abandoned her for Barack Obama, that Senator Clinton would never be majority Leader.

Now, with The Vanquished considering an offer from The One to do his bidding abroad, we learn just how isolated Mrs. Clinton has become:

But remaining in the Senate may not be Clinton’s first choice, either, since she is a junior senator without prospects for a leadership position any time soon.

Democratic officials, speaking only anonymously about private negotiations, say Clinton asked Sen. Edward Kennedy to establish a subcommittee that she would lead that would allow her to shepherd health care reform through the Senate.

But Kennedy, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, wants to lead the effort as a capstone to his career, and there also are other members with more seniority than Clinton whom he wouldn’t want to bypass.

That is the same Kennedy that President Clinton kept out of the loop in the 1990′s lest his extreme views screw up his last six years in office like they did his disastrous first two.

The famous FOB loyalty of the 90s began the evaporation when Al Gore refused to let Bubba campaign in all but Black churches in 2000.

The Left’s grievance of denied power intensified after Florida 2000 and became manifest when WJC’s former Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson betrayed his former boss by endorsing his wife’s opponent at a critical time in the primaries.

The Left that dubbed her husband the “first black president” unjustifiably called him a racist during the South Carolina primary and also turned the race card against her.

The majority of her colleagues in the World’s Oldest Deliberative Body that endorsed a presidential candidate, didn’t pick her.

For Obama’s part, this move is less a Lincolnian “team of rivals” move to have one’s enemies closer than pals, than it is a part of the “Chicago Way” of “clearing the field” of rivals for 2012.

President-Elect Obama’s victories over Clinton and McCain were his first truly contested races. His victories for an Illinois State Senate seat and his win for his U.S. Senate seat were all a result of having opponents disqualified thru election laws or smeared via leaks from sealed divorce files.

Hillary Rodham Clinton would do well to be called Madam Secretary in Albright and Rice’s shadow and as fourth in the line of secession for the Presidency, than be a backbencher for Harry Reid.

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

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

Let me piggieback on Gamecock’s post on religion in politics.  I’ll go a step further. The “analysts” who are commenting on this race seem to have ignored what actually happened in order to fit their own agendas.

We had a Democratic Nominee who had groups like “Believers for Barack,” and spent tens of millions of dollars reaching out to religious voters, running ads on Christian radio stations, handing out fliers with pictures of the said candidate in a church in front of a big cross. The Democrat won against a Republican who was reluctant to talk about his faith. The conclusion: The Republicans need to become a more secular party.

The Republicans nominated the man who wrote McCain-Feingold, who opposed drilling in ANWR, who made a great point of his support for Embryonic Stem Cell Research, disassociated himself from Christian ministers who criticized Islam, and made bi-partisanship a centerpiece of his campaign. The Conclusion: Republicans need to nominate more moderate candidates.

The Democrats ran a candidate who rejected Hillarycare, promised tax cuts for 95% of Americans, pledged to reduce abortions, and cut government waste. The Conclusion: Conservatism is dead.

I’m bemused by the urge to blame Religious Conservatives, when the candidate endorsed in the by Republicans for Choice in the Republican Primaries was the Republican nominee.

Jonah Goldberg highlights a problem with this argument:

Economically conservative social liberals are the “jackalopes of American politics,” in the words of the National Review Institute’s Kate O’Beirne. The press keeps telling us they exist out there in huge numbers, but when you go looking for them, they refuse to emerge from the bushes.

Indeed. Meanwhile, Social Conservative voters are a reality that delivered tens of millions of votes to John McCain, despite some serious reservations. When it comes to ticking off faithful social conservatives, it’s not even a question of trading a bird in the hand, for two in the bush. It’s trading a bird in the hand for a Jackelope and a Unicorn in the bush.

By Mike “gamecock” DeVine, Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com
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-The reason: No “secular American majority” exists. The vast majority of Americans still believe in God.

In his brilliant A Republican Party for a Secular America, David Sage correctly cites the 2008 rejection of the GOP “in its current form” by the American people at the ballot box, but then attributes that rejection to Republican mimicking of Reagan’s social conservative agenda, while agreeing that “conservatism” sells.

David’s sagacity measures 67% on the Gamecock meter. Let me work backwards.

Given Americans’ aversion to granting three consecutive terms to the same party in the White House and their penchant for throwing out the party in said House during economic hard times, even unabashed and unapologetic marketing of conservatism might not have sold this year.

We will never know, because we didn’t even try to sell conservatism before Palin was chosen. And when McCain said me too to President Bush and Senator Obama to the very non-conservative Paulson panic prevention plan, conservative sales went down the drain.

But what of this supposed tipping point aversion to appeals to Judeo-Christian values and the current form of the Party of Lincoln?

The Democratic Party regained majority control of Congress mainly due to Rahm Emmanuel’s “blue dawg” democrat strategy that recruited pro-life and family values Democrats all over the county, not just in Dixie. Barack Obama campaigned as a Christian, opposed gay marriage, and even insisted that the party platform be changed for the first time since 1972 to acknowledge respect for pro-lifers. (I know: Rev. Wright, Minister Farrakhan and the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, but you see my point.)

Moreover, this year, California one of the most liberal states in the country, along with Florida and Arizona, joined 40+ other states in rejecting gay marriage. Polls show that Generations X, Y and the Millenials, are all more pro-life than Baby Boomers.

Now we get to the crux of the matter: Their may not be enough non-secular whites to win a majority, but why would we want to, especially when we don’t have to?

Yes, economic and national security conservatism sells, and it sells best to people of faith. They generally go hand in hand. The problem has been that Blacks have been held captive for 40 years by an exploitive Democratic Party whose Big Lie message has been that America is inherently racist.

Ironically, the election of a self-described African-American may be what finally un-clogs the ears and opens the eyes of many Blacks to the universal message of the GOP.

The Big Lie of the left is now exposed. Don’t listen to a Caucasian rooster. Listen to blacks on the left and the right:

Juan Williams:

There is no other nation in the world where a 75% majority electorate has elected as their supreme leader a man who identifies as one of that nation’s historically oppressed minorities.

Jason Whitlock (pictured above):

Barack Obama had just won the presidency, and the realization that America loved them back stampeded my parents’ emotions like a wedding proposal from the perfect lover you assumed would never settle down.

Donald E. Robinson:

Shortly after leaving the voting booth, [the] 70-year-old community activist…had a thought: “Why do I have to be listed as African-American? Why can’t I just be American?”

I especially like Whitlock’s “America loved them back”!

Fellow conservatives, we, like Whitlock and Williams, have long realized race was no longer a serious impediment to advancement in America and that it is the left’s fault that more haven’t realized same as Blacks have blindly voted 90+% for Democrats despite their failures to deliver on their promises.

That is now past, and maybe, human nature being what it is, it took the election of one of their own to bring home the “love back”. James Taranto echoes gamecock on the prospect that Blacks will now be freed of their Democratic past and cites the example of Catholics post-JFK and Deep South Southerners post-Carter.

It may be too optimistic to hope for major changes minority voting patterns in four years given that Obama will be running for re-election. But the work must begin in earnest now to recruit blacks and Hispanics to run as Republicans in 2010 to join these examples in elected office.

Blacks will now get to see one of their own as President as they live their lives with the realization that their lot in life is mainly determined by what they do, not who gets elected. They will also become more open to the fact that liberty, not government controls, is the best path to prosperity.

As Obama supporter, John McWhorter states, they will be able to have “an honest discussion about the role racism does not play in black communities’ problems.”

Add to the above the fact that a disproportionate number of minorities serve in a US armed force that liberal democrats loathe, and the general aversion to weakness abroad that most Americans share, and you have the makings of a Reaganite-like coalition.

Why?

The overwhelming majority of Blacks and Hispanics are Bible-believing Christians and part of a faith-based American majority.

Despite all the odds against the GOP generally; inherent non-conservative flaws of John McCain; inept McCain campaign; lower GOP base turnout; and October financial crisis surprise, we only lost by 5% in a still mostly 50/50 nation.

We could win in four years just by getting back to 2004 levels of support, but with the “change” wrought by Obama, we may finally have the opening to build the conservative majority in government.

The market for conservative sales may just have gotten a lot larger.

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

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

Pardon the short interruption to look back at election stats again, but First Read has an interesting statistic that may very well come to define election 2008: Obama won every state where Bush’s approval rating was under 35%; McCain won every state where Bush’s approval rating was above 35%. In the end, when all was said and done, how much did the candidates even matter?

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com
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-Election statistics refute claims of “institutional racism”

Barack Obama’s election to lead America’s largest institution, its government, by a 75% Caucasian electorate, should eliminate further civil rights claims not based on actual racist acts by identifiable flesh and blood racists.

When a self-identified African-American receives more votes for president (both actual and as a percentage of the majority group) than a blue blood white guy from Massachusetts, it is time to “no-bill” racism indictments against its institutions.

State, and especially federal laws, have long allowed for civil lawsuits, especially since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, seeking monetary damages as well as injunctive relief for racial discrimination in employment, college admissions, and many other areas.

Originally these laws only allowed for cases that proved intentional acts of discrimination against government or private employer defendants. Over the past five decades, however, federal courts (and some revisions by Democrat majorities in Congress) created a new cause of action for supposed institutional racism based primarily upon statistics in hiring, firing, and promotions within government or companies and admissions to colleges and universities.

The underlying assumption of such claims was that most white Americans were racist, even if they didn’t realize it, and so, were incapable of not discriminating against racial minorities. In 2003, then Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor penned a majority opinion upholding the use of race as a factor in law school admissions in an affirmative action case that suggested such policies would be necessary for another 25 years.

She must have meant “dog years.”

In North Carolina generally, but especially in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, Obama bested Kerry’s 2004 vote totals among whites by 35-27 percent:

“The uptick in white support helped Obama win Mecklenburg County with 62 percent of the vote — a margin that stunned even Democratic Party activists. The inroads among white voters also helped Obama outperform Kerry across the state, even in rural areas in the east and in conservative counties ringing Charlotte. Kerry also won Mecklenburg County in 2004. And while McCain got about the same number of votes in Mecklenburg as President Bush in 2004, Obama got 50 percent more votes in the county than Kerry. The turnout percentage was about the same in both elections.”

Any objective observer of cultural and political America for at least the last 4-30 years must admit the diminishment of race as a significant factor in the choices white Americans make, and that what doomed Kerry and most past democrat losers were their liberal political views without regard to race. (See Oprah, Michael, Tiger, Powell, Thomas and Rice, et. al.)

Many prominent blacks on the left and center left are heralding Obama’s election as proof of the above. The best example from an early African-America Obama supporter:

“Now, if this racism of the scattered and subliminal varieties were the obstacle to achievement that Jim Crow and open bigotry were, then we would have a problem. But yesterday, we saw that this “out there” brand of racism cannot keep a black man out of the White House.

Might it not be time to allow that our obsession with how unschooled and usually aging folk feel in their hearts about black people has become a fetish? Sure, there are racists. There are also rust and mosquitoes, and there always will be. Life goes on.

I know–what about “societal” racism? Well, if we can now relax about the backward folk “out there,” then maybe Obama in the White House can help open up an honest discussion about the role racism does not play in black communities’ problems.”

Sandra Day O-Connor was obviously wrong about White America, and now we have the statistical data and the ultimate symbolic evidence (President-Elect Obama) to prove it.
The only questions that remain are will Democrats and the courts insist upon continuing to discriminate against whites.

Hopefully they will follow the advice of the Chief Justice of United States, John Roberts (pictured above), who declared, in the minority opinion opposing now retired O’Connor’s:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

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Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns.

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

Exhibit A is the post directly below.

When you ignore your party’s significant achievements in power the last 8 years, be it creating two democracies in the Middle East, keeping the homeland safe from terrorist attacks for 7 years, and cutting taxes twice, to name only a few accomplishments, and only focus on the mistakes made, you give your opponents a magnificent argument to keep you from winning office again.  When you engage in petty denunciation of the party for short-term political gain, you endanger its long-term future, even its survival.

And focusing on the accomplishments of the party 20 years ago is not a recipe for winning office.   It didn’t save the Liberals in the 1930′s by focusing on their achievements before the First World War, and it won’t save Republicans now.

And nor is excoriating your party’s leader because he compromised with the opposition a recipe for success.  The Labour Party did that to Ramsey MacDonald and it subsequently was out of government for 14 years.

The path of pettiness is not the path to power.