Looks like as predicted, Doug Hoffman held true to his promise to keep in the race for NY 23, even after being beat in the R. Primary. He’s now running as the “Conservative Party”, whatever that is.

A response from the NY Tea Party is pretty hard and concludes “Doug Hoffman doesn’t have an ice cube’s chance. ” of winning. Mark L. Baire of the UYTEA party called him out pretty directly in this open letter.

So will those “True Conservatives” who condemn write-ins and thrid party bids by loosers of Republican primaries also be Consistent Conservatives who also think Doug Hoffman is wrong, or will there be selective condemnation of Mr. Hoffman’s actions ?

A request to R’s out in CA.

I just received what I think is a push poll for what I think is Babs Boxer or some other Donk, and would like some help to figure out what they are pushing. It’s one of those automated sort of deals where you push numbers in response. Hope that helps identify this one.

Starts with “We have a short survey about issues confronting CA” or something like that.

Then they ask you if you are registered to vote and the usual and then ask if you’re R, D, I or Something else.

I answered everything as a CA voter, but did hit 1 for Republican. Survey thanked me and then hung up.

So if you’re in CA, tell them you’re a Democrat, and the post what they were pushing…Please

Well it seems that even the Wall Street Journal is on to JD Hayworth Huckster with today’s John Fund editorial.

I won’t selectively quote the article, you can read all the details for yourself, but the take aways:

• JD “Mr. Conservative” Huckster is not so conservative when it comes to spending your money according to his voting record and votes for such wonderful things as the Seasoned Citizen prescription drug wealth transfer law, which Johnny Mac voted against by the way.
• The company JD was Huckstering for on all that “free ‘Govment money” is going bankrupt.
• JD Huckster’s voting record on spending issues is anything but conservative.

Can one of the JD Huckster supporters remind me why they support JD, other than the “He’s not Johnny Mac” reason. About all JD need to do now to secure his title as a Huckster is to get an endorsement by that other Huckster from Arkansas.

I just caught the Carlie Fiorina interview on the FOX talking heads show, interview by Chris Wallace.  To sum up, BABS be afraid, be very afraid.

Wallace quizzed Carlie on her stint at HP, seems like that will be a big issue in the general election.

Carlie’s answer was OK I guess, blame most of the cuts at HP on the tech industry collapse in the early part of the decade, point to the growth in earnings, growth in jobs, etc. etc. at HP during her tenure. Not exactly a populist answer, but probably the reality of running a big company like HP during the tech crash.

Wallace threw the social issues card on the table asking Carlie about her views on abortion, and how she might be out of step with the general electorate. Wallace did not throw the Prop 8 card out funny enough.

Carlie’s answer was in my view spot on. She did not run from her views on abortion, she claims to be be pro-life by the way, says she believes what she believes also believes this election is not about abortion, it’s about jobs, the out of control growth of the federal government and all the Tea Party sort of issues. Carlie makes the point on social issues that I think others on the R. side of the ditch are beginning to make; focus on the issues that people are concerned about, don’t run from their own personal views on these issues but don’t let the Democrats re-frame the debate about the issues where they are on the wrong side according to “we the people” into an argument about social issues.

Oh yea, there was a question about the “hair” comments. Carlie said she screwed up by bringing a silly topic out by her comments and she owed the voters of CA an apology for injecting a silly topic into the conversation….no apology to call me Senator BABS.

I’m not a fan of JD, no seriously I ‘m no kidding I’m not a fan of his, but I am amazed at times at how little JD knows and how little he thinks before opening his gob smacker and letting loose with nonsense.

Phoenix New Times ( a lefty news outlet if it’s anything like the one in LA), has coverage of the latest JD trip through the rabbit hole. I’ll avoid revisiting JD’s take on the history of WWII, too much like shooting fish in a barrel.

“At a campaign stop this week, Hayworth was discussing McCain’s reluctance to co-sponsor a repeal of the law sponsored by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint and said, ”Look at what the senator does, not what he says in sound bites for the media. Why hasn’t he signed on as a co-sponsor to Senator Jim DeMint’s bill to repeal ObamaCare? John McCain went to Washington to change it but Washington changed him,” Hayworth said at the event.

Turns out McCain is signed on to DeMin’ts bill and has been since April 20.”

While many here on RS have issues with Johnny Mac, can anyone seriously think that having someone as loose with facts as JD in the Senate would be a good thing? Is this sort of factually challenged, nonsense spouting, individual that the people of AZ want to represent them in the Senate?  YIKES!

Or as a McCain spokesperson put it:

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers, after hearing Hayworth’s response, sent us an e-mail describing a place that usually only exists in DC comics: “Welcome to JD Hayworth’s bizarro world, where up is down, left is right, and truth doesn’t exist.

LA Times has an article up “Campbell goes dark a week before the primary“.

“With a week before the primary, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Campbell has pulled his television advertising and is relying on web ads and telephone calls to drive his message to likely Republican voters.”

The article sites Campbell’s money problems as a big factor in this move. This move is not a big surprise in a state the size of CA where there is no single dominate newspaper and Television advertisements play a huge role at a huge cost.

I don’t look for this to do any good for Cambell’s polling, and I don’t see anyone who planned on voting for him to jump over to DeVore, but we will know what if any effect this move had on the primary in a week.

A new Times USC poll came out yesterday, nothing really shocking in the poll. Link to the poll in PDF.

From the article:

Key Findings

• California voters overwhelmingly want a Senator who will work with President Obama to pass his policies, not against him.
• While some public polls had Steve Poizner pulled within striking distance of Meg Whitman in the Republican primary for governor, Whitman has regained control and holds a wide lead over Poizner heading into the final month.
• Jerry Brown has taken a slim lead over Meg Whitman in this survey after trailing her in the previous USC/Los Angeles Times poll in March.

In the Senate race, Fiorina is up at 34, Campbell down to 18 percent and DeVore is holding pretty much were he has been at 13 percent. There will probably be some movement as the last undecided jump one way or the other, but the shape of the CA General election is becoming clear.

Not related to the poll, the Sunday morning talking head shows were wall to wall commercials from eMeg and Poizner taking shots at each other. eMeg is being pitched as the “True Fiscal Conservative” while Poizner is being pitched as the get tough on immigration candidate.  Two Millionaires are spending lots of money beating up on each other….Oh my.

Flashing back to 2009 we had the infamous NY 23 race, and the whole selected not elected Greek tragedy of Dede Scozzafava, who couldn’t even pass as a RINO, running against Doug Hoffman as the Conservative party candidate. The race and the circumstances that led up to this race were fairly well documented and commented on affair here on RS, with a pretty universal agreement that a primary is where the Republican party should select it’s standard bearer.

I’ve sort of been keeping an eye on this race as it was an interesting political story.  Right now it looks like at least in NY 23, there is another storm brewing and Doug Hoffman again is part of that storm.

Syracuse.com has an article up on the race that is rather interesting.

“Washington, DC — Five months after Doug Hoffman exposed a deep divide in the Republican Party by launching a third-party bid for Congress, the odds are suddenly improving for a repeat three-way race in the 23rd Congressional District this fall.

The scenario began to play out last week as the early momentum shifted to Republican investment banker Matt Doheny, of Watertown, as he battles Hoffman for the GOP nomination.”

I know nothing about ether Republican candidate, but the fact that the voters of NY 23 are going to be heard and not the back room overlords of the NY Republican party is a good thing.

Here’s where things go a bit off the rails, at least as far as Doug Hoffman is concerned.

Doheny, emphasizing that he expects to win the Republican endorsement, has pledged to support Hoffman if he should pick up the GOP nomination. But Hoffman has so far declined to make a similar pledge, a move that has privately angered some of the county chairs.

I don’t have any conclusions to this story, or for that matter know who is going to end up facing the Donk who won the seat after NY Republican party fumbled so badly. From an observer of the political process standpoint, this is a fascinating second round for the Republican party in NY 23, and hopefully whoever is nominated will reclaim the seat for the Republican side.

Over at “The Hill” there’s a column with a video link of an appearance of Glen Beck on the Imus show, pretty good interview with Beck by the way. The part about JD is about 4 minutes in, but Imus and JD are pretty entertaining getting to that point.

The long and short, looks like Beck is not a fan of Johnny Mac, used the term “like to see him go”, but he’s not buying as Imus put it, “…He asked Beck if he’s for “that fat, undisciplined maggot … shock jock?”

Oh my, things aren’t looking good for JD’s run as Birther in Chief, or is he running for the Senate, so confusing.

Setting aside the recent Texas Governor race results and the resulting calls for her resignation from the Senate, looks like Senator Hutchison is working on legislation that might save the space program for now. Despite the calls from some for Hutchison’s resignation, this is the sort of work long serving inside the beltway politicians are good at, well if you think spending money on a space program is a good thing.

NASASpaceflight.com has an article up:  Lawmakers produce Bill to extend shuttle to 2015, utilize CxP, advance HLV.

Senator Kay Hutchison – in conjunction with Representatives Suzanne Kosmas and Bill Posey – has produced a 37 page Bill that proposes major refinements to NASA’s FY2011 proposal, and NASA’s forward plan. The Bill is centered around a shuttle extension to 2015, in support of fully utilizing the International Space Station (ISS), along with saving elements of Constellation – such as Orion and a Heavy Lift Launcher (HLV).

As some small way to buy a bit of breathing room for a new team to make the case for continued development of a man rated launch system, this is a pretty good move. Consider that ex NASA Administrator Mike Griffin did no favors for the manned space program during the transition to the Obama administration with his approach to the transition team; “NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is “not qualified” to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned  ” I couldn’t  figure out what Griffin was up to with his actions during the transition, outside the usual hubris of a brilliant engineering type that forgets sometimes that they really aren’t in charge, but that’s besides the point, Griffin was never as good as Dan Goldin of “Kill the NASA meat ball” fame in my view.

Back to the political world, so what happens if Hutchison takes the advice of some and resigns her seat, would a new Texas Senator be able to carry the water on this sort of thing, or is this initiative just a ploy to keep the political wolves at bay?

LATimes has an article up on Mitt Romney making early moves to get ready for something, and it looks like running for the Presidency in 2012.

The article is ostensibly about Mitt’s book, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness”and some commentary about Mitt redefining himself once again. I don’t know about the assertion of Mitt redefining his core appeal made in the article, but it does look like Mitt is getting in some early work towards running in 2012. Mitt’s behind the scenes help to the Scott Brown campaign is also talked about.

So for 2012, it looks like Mitt is making some small steps towards running, and Mike Huckabee seems to have never stopped running, so that makes two that look to get into the race. Over the coming Summer, who else is going to start making small and not so small moves to make a run?

LA Times, not exactly a bastion of conservative thought, but not the SF Chronicle ether, has a piece up today about Chuck DeVore.

Chuck DeVore faces steep climb for California Senate seat.

There is a left leaning bias in the story, but not terribly so, making the article worth the time to read as a counter to all the noise going on with “demon sheep” this past week.

The article alludes a bit to one of the biggest problems DeVore faces in his run, California is one heck of a big state. The reliance along with cost of paid media to reach all the corners of the state tends to make the eventual winner of the primaries and the general election the candidate who has the deepest pockets to buy all that media. That point has been proven in the last two Senate races in CA and unfortunately Babs will be able to raise lots of money from the Hollywood liberal types and if she really gets behind in the polls, from Liberals across the country to help preserve her Senate seat for the Democrats.

After last year and the Dee Dee fiasco I wondered what was going to happen in NY 23. The race is shaping up now and it is proving to be one worth watching.

Doug Hoffman is running, no surprise there, but there are a couple of others looking to get in the race.

CQ Politics has an article on New York Assemblyman Will Barclay thinking about getting in the race. Barclay seems to be a decent young Republican Assemblymen, but I know nothing about him.

Another candidate, Franklin County Legislator Paul Maroun is also talking about getting in the race.

There is some controversy already, with Doug Hoffman stating to reporters when asked if he would support whoever wins the Republican primary responded, “That’s not even a consideration”. Full coverage at Newzjunky.com.

With all the talk of Tea Parties, third party movements and the like, NY23 is probably still worth watching to see how the future may play out.  Will the Republican party nominate one standard bearer and a second challenge by Doug Hoffman occur, who knows.

LATimes has an article up profiling Fred Davis, creator of Carly’s demon sheep web commercial.

It’s not much of an article, but what’s interesting is this guy has a track record for creating this sort of web commercial.  Back in 2002, he created an infamous “King Rat” commercial for Sonny Perdue who went on to win the Governor’s race in Georgia. I’m not making the claim that “King Rat” had much to do with Perdue’s win, but I would appreciate someone from Georgia’s comment on the effects of that commercial on the race.

Right now it’s too early to see how or if this commercial changes the dynamics of the Republican primary, but  I do think the term “demon sheep” is going to enter into popular culture, at least for a few months.  I also think that camp Campbell is going to have a problem with voters in CA over his support of the “temporary” increase in the gasoline tax and his very strong support of the NO on Prop 8  vote.

Over at ABC news there’s new pictures up of the “Crotch Bomber” bomb. I take no credit for the name by the way, I think it was Gizmo came up with that in a posting earlier today.

This is pretty scary stuff, coupled with the news that there may be 25 more young men waiting to try the same sort of thing.  Watching and hoping that His Obamaness understands that these people are not criminals, no they are terrorists who want only one thing, to kill Americans. It’s not complex, it’s simple and all it takes is one of these terrorists to get lucky and the American people will never forget or forgive the timidity of the Obama administration  that would allow terrorist to succeed.

No amount of new TSA Kabuki dances, no amount of posturing for the cameras by Obamaness and no amount of pretending this is anything other than war is acceptable.

See Alan Grayson Fla 8 Democrat fighting against the First Amendment

See the site that is driving Alan Grayson nuts

See what an involved citizen can do.  Mycongressmanisnuts

This wonderful lady and her group is the taking it to Alan Grayson…

THANK YOU!

Sometimes I think the world and this country is going to heck in a hand basket, sometimes I come across something that shows that the American people still get it.

This is a small article and video from CNN, from up in Bakersfield where there is a new National Cemetery.  There’s no political content to this, no pats on the back, no pokes in the eye out of this story. It’s just a story of ordinary folks from Kern County and Bakersfield honoring a couple of unknown vets who died and were laid to rest with honor and respect by the good folks from Bakersfield.

Veterans day is Wednesday, small town America still remembers why.

CNN story, “Unknown vets spared paupers’ grave”

Bloomberg is up with a story of how the California budget is once again in the hole to the tune of $1.1 Billion.

“California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will know within a month whether a $1.1 billion drop in revenue collections is part of a growing budget shortfall or an isolated event, his budget spokesman said.

Revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30 was 5.3 percent less than assumed in the $85 billion annual budget, state controller John Chiang reported yesterday. Income tax receipts led the gap, as unemployment reached 12.2 percent in August.”

This development is going to turn the race for Governor back in an interesting direction and could be a good one for Republicans….maybe.

The Democratic nominee for Governor, most likely former Governor Moonbeam Brown, will have to explain how he will deal with the sinking ship SS California which is taking on more and more water and a middle class electorate just hanging on in the middle of recession. Raise taxes, more cuts in education, which will annoy the CTA, more cuts to state employees, which will annoy the state workers unions including the powerful state prison guard union, or what.

Over on the Republican side, the nominee for Governor is going to face the same economic facts, but will not have to pander to the various state unions in order to deal with the problem. There is an opportunity to be bold on the R side to deal with the budget problem, but how bold will the R nominee be and will the electorate beleive promises made after the tenure of the “Girlyman Governator” who famously said during the recall election “We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem”, and failed to deliver on anything.

California once again is turning into ground zero for a debate between the views of both parties over the role of government, taxation, government spending on services, and how to balance competing interests and demands. How this debate plays out might just be a harbinger of future races and for that matter the 2012 Presidential race.

Promoted from diaries – and let me be the first to thank the current Senate Majority Leader for ensuring that the Las Vegas Review-Journal endorses his Republican opponent – whoever that may end up being. – Moe Lane

Looks like old Harry Reid done gone and stepped on it, “Big Time”, at least in Vegas with the paper of record for the state.

I usually scan a fair number of Dead Tree media sites, and I have never seen an editorial that slaps down a politician this hard, especially a sitting Senator up for re-election.  Maybe it’s a good sign of the turning of the tide for a MSM that is getting tired of free prostitution for Democratic office holders, maybe this is just Nevada, who knows, but this is a great editorial.

From Sunday’s ReviewJournal

“SHERMAN FREDERICK: Enough is enough, Harry

Stop the childish bullying…..

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.”

“President Obama today announced* that health care reform would indeed mean that someone, somewhere, was going to have to make tough choices about what health care was appropriate in what circumstances.

“As President, it is my duty to step up to the plate and lead. To take these hard decisions and to show that, yes, indeed, we can.”"

source. Examiner LA

Ok…so it’s not real, but it is funny.