and frankly, John Raese‘s meteoric rise in the polls & Joe Manchin’s catastrophic fall is nothing short of miraculous–and happened only because hundreds of thousands of fellow West Virginians are paying attention to how Joe Manchin was a rubber stamp for Obamacare (on which he is now trying to flip-flop).

This evening, this ad debuts, exposing Manchin’s duplicity on coal and cap & trade:

The law referenced in this ad is the Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Act, which our Democrat-controlled Legislature passed at Manchin’s request on a near party-line vote during a special session in 2009 as HB 103.

Within another week or two, we will see excerpts from this video in a future Raese campaign ad:

This is a special election for the slightly more than 2 years remaining on the term of office of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd. The winner will be seated before January 3.

However, I fully expect the Democrats to try to delay the certification and seating of the winner because either (A) John Raese would be a major impediment to everything the Dems will attempt during their scorched earth lame duck session or (B) Joe Manchin would rather interim Sen. Carte Goodwin, who has been a reliable rubber stamp for Barack Obama and Dingy Harry, cast as many of the votes as possible to relieve a Sen. Manchin of the burden of voting for all the awful stuff that will be attempted during the lame duck. To this end, partisan Democrat Secretary of State Natalie Tennant will cloak herself in a hyper-technical interpretation of the state Election Code under which she will argue that she must wait several weeks for each of the 55 counties to canvass and certify their respective election returns and some additional time for her to certify the statewide results. However, unless there is a legitimate recount, the right thing would be to follow the tradition that often prevails in most special elections in which once the losing candidate concedes, the “winner” is immediately handed his/her certificate of election and the other necessary paperwork to present to the Senate for his/her swearing in. If you will recall, the Democrats in Massachusetts delayed the seating of Sen. Scott Brown, R-MA, earlier this year, during which time interim Sen, Paul Kirk voted.

Let there be no doubt: as soon as the polls close on November 2, this campaign moves immediately to getting John Raese sworn in. John Raese has already spoken at several events about the fact that he intends to be sworn in as a United States senator on November 3, 2010, and will fight tooth and nail to stop the scorched earth lame duck Democrats.