A great ad the people of Louisiana need to see.
Democrat Melancon: I Cosponsored Card Check Because I Opposed It
I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years, and this is the first time I’ve heard anyone make this claim:
In turn, Melancon, a co-sponsor of EFCA, is seeking to change the bill. An aide to Melancon said the lawmaker is working on a “bipartisan solution” that would bring labor and business together…
Melancon is an EFCA co-sponsor, but said he was working on making changes to the bill after being asked by local business leaders last week to drop his sponsorship.
NRSC Already Hitting Charlie Melancon
This is going to be a fun election. Melancon has tried to play himself off as a conservative Democrat for a while, including opposing cap-and-trade. But his heart just isn’t in that role.
U.S. Att’y Jim Letten Nails Another Corrupt New Orleans-Area Democrat
From the diaries by Erick.
Last Saturday it was a judge in St. Bernard Parish.
This week it’s a Gretna City Councilman. (Gretna is the parish seat of Jefferson, suburban New Orleans.)
That’s not really news.
The really interesting story here is that U.S. Attorney Jim Letten is the guy going after these clowns. Letten is a Republican and an eight-year Bush appointee who has the support of both Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
With both Louisiana senators now in agreement, Letten, the GOP’s choice for the job eight years ago, appears to be a lock to win Senate approval and hold onto his spot as the Justice Department’s top man in the New Orleans area. President Barack Obama, however, has the final say on whether Letten’s name is submitted for a vote.
Cautioning that her recommendation is only a first step in the process, Landrieu expressed confidence that Obama will nominate Letten, a registered Republican appointed by President George W. Bush.
“I think Jim Letten has good support from a broad range of Democrats as well as Republicans, ” Landrieu said as the U.S. attorney stood at her side for a news conference on the steps of the state Supreme Court.
“And I think President Obama said as he ran for this office that he wanted to reach across the aisle and build bridges and find middle ground. And I don’t think that he’s going to find this recommendation unusual.” [emphasis added]
This would seem to be a case where the grownups on both sides of the aisle agree that what The People need is not Hope and Change, but More of the Same.
Senate votes to keep automatic pay raises
During the Senate’s consideration of the most recent Congressional spending orgy — the 1,132-page, $410 billion, nearly 9,000 earmark-infested Omnibus spending bill, Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter forced the Senate to vote to keep their automatic annual pay raises:
He tried to amend the measure with a proposal that few lawmakers would dare to oppose in a recession: canceling the automatic increases in lawmaker salaries, now at $174,000. Using a parliamentary tactic, Vitter forced Reid to schedule a vote on his amendment for a vote.
Unfortunately, the Senate voted 52 to 47 to kill Vitter’s amendment and keep their automatic pay raises.
As I wrote back in 2003, the Congressional automatic stealth pay raise system is just wrong.
Cao VS Vitter? Really?
Newt Gingrich is right. Republican campaign consultants are probably the dumbest, most short-sighted unimaginative pedestrian minds working in politics today. And, in hindsight, even while acknowledging the great job he did in 2004, I think I’ll lay some of the blame at the feet of Karl Rove as one of the major reasons why in recent years with his 50+1 strategy. On the surface, it sounds smart to “go where the votes are” and write off “unwinnable” districts and demographics, but in the long term, it’s the mark of a dying party. We can’t keep writing off entire regions and segments of the population and expect to remain viable as a party.
A rule in business is that you either grow or you die - and we can’t grow if we refuse to compete in Blue districts and states. Yet this is what out latte-sipping, pencil-pushing army of consultants continue to suggest we do.
An example of this type of thinking is amply demonstrated by this post here. Note that I’m not calling this person out and I mean no disrespect, but nonetheless I feel I have to take the time to show just how utterly boneheaded this sort of thinking is, and how important it is to purge it from the GOP before it does any more damage.
Senate Republicans Throw Another Conservative Under the Bus - Jim DeMint
The Politico reported last week that “GOP Pressures Bunning to Quit” and named two “GOP sources” as authority for a story full of false accusations and rumors. These sources implied that Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) had not made clear his intentions to run for another term and had not raised enough money to win the 2010 Kentucky Senate race. In a story linked on Bluegrass Politics, “Bunning expressed frustration that McConnell hasn’t publicly backed his 2010 re-election bid and said McConnell ‘had a lapse of memory’ last week when he told reporters that he didn’t know if Bunning planned to seek re-election.” Senator Bunning was the first conservative to be chucked under the bus by unnamed sources in GOP leadership and we now know our second conservative victim - Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). Who is next?
