We are one week into Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan. A number of polls are coming out telling a variety of stories about what it means. But one thing is clear: Barack Obama’s campaign has had several significant strategic failures this summer. And they failed to define Paul Ryan out of the gate with their Mediscare tactics. And they failed to define Mitt Romney | Read More »
One upside of President Obama’s hostility to business is that business leaders like Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin have come forward to share their experience. Tom Smith, the Republican Senate nominee in Pennsylvania is one of them. He is endorsed by Pat Toomey. He is up against Bobby Casey, a career politician son of a career politician. But at least his dad was willing to | Read More »
For the next several months, we are going to be focusing, naturally, on the Presidential race, Senate races, House races, and governor’s races. However, what happens down ballot is important too. And there is a lot of hope down ballot when we look around the country. Over the next several months, I hope to highlight races in unexpected places where Republicans can put points on | Read More »
I applaud House Speaker John Boehner for his letter to President Barack Obama on Russia. I also applaud him for holding fire on Obama while he was abroad at an important security summit. It much more clearly articulated Obama’s shocking behavior with respect to Russia than any other criticism to date: The Russian government has not lived up to its obligations to support the world | Read More »
The discussion of Republican Party rules reform is beginning in the aftermath of the catastrophe of the new rules that were created by the RNC leadership in 2010. Many people attribute the lengthening process to just the new rules, but I would argue that there are several other factors. Some of the obvious ones are the weakness of the candidate field and new campaign finance | Read More »
Last night President Barack Obama spoke at two “star-studded” Hollywood fundraisers. And, according to Politco, he noted to a group of people who make their quite nice livings in theatrics that “people … like … poetry” rather than the “prose” of governing. Mentioning former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo’s quip that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, Obama said he’s written more of | Read More »
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) asked Ben Bernanke at the recent Senate Budget Committee if the lack of Presidential leadership was hurting the US economy. He asked, “I’m afraid President Obama has just been phoning it in here the last couple years in terms of our debt and deficit issue. … Can you speak to how harmful that is in terms of economic growth?” Now Bernanke | Read More »
There’s an interesting scandal right now in New Mexico right now. You see, the New Mexico constitution tries to stop corruption, a real problem in the state as the Economist recently noted, by requiring that state legislators cannot draw a salary from other sources during the legislative session. But Channel KRQE has reported that there is a set of legislators who do not abide by | Read More »
So, I confess, I had to look up who Luther Campbell was, aside from a guy who came in fourth in a race for county mayor in Miami-Dade County. He was a somewhat high-profile music promoter, fronting for groups like 2 Live Crew. But it is his electoral experience, as described in his column in the Miami New Times, that draws our attention today. He | Read More »
For a number of reasons, I tend to avoid claims of media bias, as I am often reminded of Silberman’s Law, from Rumsfeld’s Rules, that notes that we often overstate “conspiracy,” while “underestimat[ing] incompetency and fortuity.” However, I have trouble explaining this one any other way. The New York Times editorial page editor, Andy Rosenthal, says, “A half-dozen times or so I’ve asked followers of my | Read More »
I have been writing up a storm about absentee ballot fraud in various places around the country. Today, the FBI arrested eight people in Florida who appear to have committed some pretty severe fraud in a 2010 School Board election in Madison,. The violations are pretty straight-forward, but also pretty brazen. Read the story: The investigation revealed that Johnson and her husband, Ernest Sinclair Johnson, | Read More »
Two weeks ago, we noted a Chicago Tribune story about fraud by either the Indiana Democratic Party or the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns in the 2008 Democratic Primary in Indiana. Now Indiana Republican Party Chairman Eric Holcomb is doing what I urge GOP chairman to do: document all the fraud that actually happens on the ground and the convictions that occur. I always | Read More »
Today the Senate voted for an amendment to give a subsidy to rich people. Not the first time, and it won’t be the last time. But is a perfect microcosm of today’s politics and the politics that got us into the housing crisis. Next time any of the Senate Democrats say anything about “Occupy Wall Street”, they should get asked a simple question: if you | Read More »
So the left would have you believe that the voter fraud debate is really about racist Republicans trying to prevent African-Americans and other minorities from voting. The New York Times ran this argument earlier this month, conveniently ignoring that the right-wing bastion Rhode Island passed a voter ID sponsored by leading African-Americans and Latinos, all Democrats. Well, today we are greeted by an | Read More »
Getting a candidate on the ballot in Indiana is not easy. I know, from first hand experience, that many campaigns struggle to do it. But it now appears that in 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton took a short-cut. They just cheated. It turns out that someone appears to have forged the signature of former Democratic Governor Joe Kernan on the petition to get Barack | Read More »
Today, the New York Times has an editorial attacking so-called voter ID bills. According to Democratic and New York Times (but I repeat myself) mythmaking, voter ID is a racist Republican scheme to stop minorities and Democrats from voting: Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to | Read More »
Yesterday the press announced a bipartisan compromise over the FAA. Of course, that wasn’t what happened. One reporter told me that the deal was bipartisan because “that was how Reid framed it in his statement.” What really happened was that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats proved themselves to be venal, the press fell down on the job, the White House had a panic attack, and | Read More »
In Jaunary, I wrote about indictments in a New York State election fraud investigation. In a September 2009 Working Families Party primary in Troy, NY, there were allegations of voter fraud. Two Democratic members of the Troy City Council were indicted on 116 charges related to absentee voter fraud. Now the (Democratic) City Clerk has resigned and plead guilty to a felony as part of | Read More »
Later today, Mitt Romney will be giving a speech about ObamaCare. My first thought when I heard this was that it was a great way to change the subject from his own record in Massachusetts. After all, the question is really about what Mitt Romney did and what he learned about it. Therefore, I submit some questions to his campaign and I urge the press | Read More »
On Monday, the Conservative Party of Canada took its first majority in its history. This was a victory on several levels. First, after a disastrous 1993 election in which the Progressive Conservative party was reduced to two seats after its base split off in the west into the Reform Party and rise of the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec. Now a reconstituted Conservative Party (note the | Read More »
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