In this Diane Sawyer interview Obama seems to be telegraphing what a lot of us already figured: His commitment to the socialist transformation of America is such that he’s willing to sacrifice his own chances of re-election over it. Indeed, Comrade Obama ain’t turnin’ right. Why would he? Turning right wasn’t the mission. Moderating would leave him without any purpose in office. If the bombing run over America has to be turned into a one-way kamikaze mission in mid-flight, then by God, that’s just what’ll happen. No wonder this guy is so frightening.

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” [Obama] told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today.

“You know, there is a tendency in Washington to believe our job description, of elected officials, is to get reelected. That’s not our job description,” Obama said. “Our job description is to solve problems and to help people.”

Of course, Obama would much rather not sacrifice himself, and there are always ideas, such as mass illegal-alien amnesty and perhaps universal voter registration, available to tilt the pool table. But these quotes are telling and frightening. He’ll do it. It doesn’t matter what it costs himself or his party. And perhaps the only thing more frightening than a man not afraid of political self-immolation is the number of congressional Democrats who seem willing follow him right into the fire, come what may.

I am not even slightly surprised.

Charlie Cook has had this race as “Lean Republican” for quite a while, but once again he is being led astray by his own wishful thinking. I had always been confident that Vitter would win comfortably, but lately I’ve become convinced that Melancon could save himself and his party a lot of time and money by simply dropping out of the race, because these Rasmussen numbers aren’t far from what I think the final result is likely to be.

Nobody here likes Charlie Boy. His pandering to the rapidly shrinking base of white Democrats in the state with his claim that he is a “pro-life, pro-gun Southern Democrat” isn’t playing in his own 3rd District, let alone in the rest of the state. National Democrats are pinning their hopes on identity politics, hoping that the old Louisiana political maxim that “Cajuns elect Cajuns” will translate into a base of support in Acadiana and the broader southwestern La. region, that combined with the black vote in the cities might be enough to squeak out a Melancon win.

What they, and Cook, do not understand is that Cajuns could be counted on to elect Cajuns back when there were such things as conservative Democrats. There are no longer, and the growing realization of this in the state is translating into a Republican wave that is transforming the partisan face of Louisiana politics. Charlie Melancon can talk a conservative game all he likes; what the conservative voters of Louisiana have come to understand is that his House vote helped make Speaker Nancy Pelosi possible and that it is subject in all matters to the mercies of the Botox Queen of ‘Frisco. When every single Senate Democrat, including our celebrated “moderate” Mary Landrieu, voted each time for cloture and final passage of ObamaCare, one can be forgiven for wondering why a Senator Charlie Melancon would have voted any differently. Being personally “pro-gun” and “pro-life” is rather academic in the face of a bill that guarantees taxpayer-funded abortions and lays the groundwork for firearms to be regulated as health hazards.

But I’ll give Charlie a little credit and assume that he knows all of this. Perhaps, when he announced, he hadn’t guessed just how badly the 2010 election cycle would begin to shape up for his party, but he’d probably already guessed he was going to have a tough time winning voters in a state that bucked the Obama tide to the tune of almost 20 points, Cajun-vote strategy or no. The bottom line is that Charlie Melancon got into this race mainly because he would have had an even tougher time winning election to his own congressional seat, which would be a likely target for elimination after redistricting even if his constituents didn’t already regard him as a disingenuous hump.

Regarding his opponent, Charlie Melancon’s strategy, and only hope, was to focus on the three-year-old story of David Vitter’s moral peccadillos. That plan probably sounded a lot better before Louisiana’s Democrat senior Senator announced to the state and the entire country that she is a prostitute; a 300-million-dollar-an-hour prostitute who will gladly accept payment for her voting services from the public treasury. Disappointed in Vitter’s moral failings we were; disappointed in his determination to stand as a bulwark against the entire Obama agenda, we most definitely are not. David Vitter’s legislative record reflects the values and wishes of the great majority of Louisianians, we recognize this and understand that there can be no sane rationale for jettisoning him and sending another Democrat to the Senate in the Age of Obama and Landrieu. It won’t surprise me if Vitter breaks 60% on Election Day.

So sorry, Charlie. I don’t think things are going to start looking much better for you over the next 9.5 months.

Why don’t you take some of the edge off this summer with a vacation?

Recently there’s been some talk, here and elsewhere, about a burgeoning campaign to recall Mary Landrieu (D-Storyville).

Anger against Sister Senator Mary (a little Moon Griffon lingo, there) was already palpable here in Louisiana, and fueled further by the recent revelation that, in addition to that 300 million bucks, her health-care vote was sold in exchange for a promise to make her little brother the Mayor of New Orleans.

At this point just about everybody inside the state and out wants Landrieu gone, and since Louisiana has a provision in its constitution allowing for the recall of elected officials, somebody got the bright idea to start a drive to recall the highest-priced hooker in Louisiana history. Thing is, we’ve already tried to recall one member of the 111th Congress, and Attorney General Caldwell returned an opinion to Secretary of State Dardenne that the recall of federal officeholders is Constitutionally impermissable. As he correctly stated:

“The United States Constitution does not provide for, nor does it authorize, the recall of United States officials such as United States Senators, Representatives to Congress, or the President or Vice President of the United States. No United States Senator or Member of the House of Representatives has ever been recalled in the history of the United States.

“The power to regulate the members of Congress, however, has been reserved by the United States Constitution to the respective House of Congress.”

A shame, really; it was a nice thought. Or was it?

Personally, I’m not a believer in the recall. As has been made abundantly clear to us over the last year, elections have consequences. And because they do, it behooves us to make our choices carefully — especially regarding senators, whom we don’t get another crack at for six years. When we make those choices, we have to live with them; no “do-overs”, no opening the floodgates to abuse of the system, and to elections that are never settled matters.

We had our opportunity to turn out Mary Landrieu in November 2008. Once again, we blew it, returning her to a third term in office even as we handed Obama an even larger defeat in the state than we had dealt John Kerry four years before. Our motives were low and selfish — after a spate of retirements of long-serving congressmen during the decade (Billy Tauzin, Jim McCrery, Richard Baker) along with the departure of the sainted Senator John Breaux, we got spooked about losing our seniority in Congress and decided that our best option was to return Landrieu to the Senate yet again so as to maximize our chances of receiving lots of federal bucks we could use for something other than levee reinforcement. Because we couldn’t be bothered to figure out how the Democrat senator we were returning to office would enable the Democrat presidential candidate we rejected so overwhelmingly, Louisianians ended up voting to socialize and ruin their health-care system and wreck their oil-and-gas industry, which pretty much finishes off the economy of the state, Mardi Gras tourism notwithstanding.

We made our bed and now we have to lie in it. No do-overs. Maybe we’ll figure it out in 2014, if we last that long.

For a year now, a dark, often unspoken caveat has been lurking in the backgrounds of our minds when the discussion has turned to the prospect of Republican gains in the 2010 elections. Some have dared speak it aloud: “Yes, the Democrats are going to be swept away in ’10 — if we still have free elections by then.”

The integrity of the democratic process has taken enough of a pounding in recent years thanks to a litany of high-profile Democrat election thefts: the Governor’s Mansion in Washington; a Senate seat in Minnesota; who knows how many razor-thin House elections; and of course, the 2000 attempt at the grandest electoral heist of all. (Even the high-profile prostitution of Mary Landrieu over health care makes it worth remembering how she came into office in 1996.) With the installation of the Chicago Thugocracy, the appropriation of the Census by Rahm Emanuel, and the Congress’ apparent fearlessness in pushing through legislation that has enraged two-thirds of the American people, conservative imagination has been sparked on the question of how Democrats might altogether insulate themselves from that inconvenient biennial bugaboo of federal elections.

Thanks to John Fund, we may have our answer: Universal Voter Registration. As Fund put it:

“In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration. What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overriden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states: ’take everyone on every list of welfare that you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be…’”

Universal Voter Registration would mean the end of the democratic process in America. It would turn every red state blue. It would turn our assumptions about 2010 on their ear.

The notion of mandatory, one hundred percent voter turnout has long been a leftist wet dream: The ultimate maximization of “participatory democracy”, at the barrel of a gun, if necessary. Some proponents of this have theorized that, given the nationwide Democrat edge in voter registration, this would naturally translate into continued, assured Democrat victories; other, more pragmatic leftists have understood that the problem with forcing people to the polls is that they can’t necessarily be relied upon to vote the correct way once inside the booth.

Thus, they’ve come up with something even better: mandatory voter registration. The federalization of state voter rolls, the goal being to register everybody; every man, woman, child, pimp, wino, dog, corpse, fictional cartoon character (the non-fictional cartoon characters are all already in office), and properly-named inanimate object the feds can think of. The ACORN-ization of every election, in every state, in every county, in every city, in every precinct. Whether the decision is of the fate of your local sheriff this fall or that of Barack H. Obama in 2012, a maximum of 30% of the legally registered voters will actually show up, leaving the remaining 70% of names on the rolls to be manipulated however your local and state election officials desire. Turnout can be made to appear as high or as low as necessary. A race that would under ordinary circumstances be a blowout for a Republican immediately becomes a done deal for his or her Democrat opponent, the best part being that the results can be tweaked down to a close margin of Democrat victory in order to maintain the appearance of propriety. Leftists have been working for years to put as many of their number into positions to steal as many elections as possible; hence such endeavors as The Secretary of State Project. Universal Voter Registration will be the oil for the machinery they have been so successful at building.

This is why Mary Landrieu is not concerned about her next election. Or Ben Nelson. Or Blanche Lincoln. Or even John Murtha. They belong to that once-in-a-lifetime trifecta of rabid socialist President and supermajority Democrat dominance of both houses of Congress, a trifecta that has bred their arrogant push to drive their legislative tanks over the backs of the American people; to see to it that they not only will they, the Left, get everything they have ever wanted, they will never have to pay a price for it.

Until now, the total and absolute liberal rigging of American elections has been only an abstract idea. Now, though, it appears the Democrats have a concrete plan and are preparing to move on it, and there is no reason to believe they will not do so with the same fearlessness, and disregard for the anger of their constituents, they have displayed in the health-care fight. After all, why should they? If Democrats succeed in their push for this, what are we going to do — vote them out?

Okay, not all of it, as there are many fine parts of the Sunshine State, but what I’m specifically wondering is, what’s the matter with Florida District 8?

I ask upon reading the news that state Senator Dan Webster, touted as a top candidate to get into the race against unhinged nutbag Alan Grayson, has opted not to make the race. Frustratingly, he’s only the latest in a line of potential GOP prospects who have taken a pass.

Given the NRCC’s dynamite recruiting efforts around the country — they’re even getting viable congressional candidates in states like Hawaii, f’r chrissakes — it’s odd that they can’t seem to put it together in FL-08, an R+2 district that Grayson only won with the help of Obama’s coattails on the one hand and an ethically-challenged incumbent on the other. The district isn’t exactly the most Republican in the world, but Grayson’s was nonetheless one of those classic “fluke” wins, in light of which his increasingly insane behavior is all the more brazen and foolish. This is Orlando, not San Francisco.

What the heck is going on here? Why are the House Dems allowing Alan Grayson of all people to be their point man on foaming moonbattery? And why can’t the GOP seem to capitalize on it?

…so I was proud to see him giving the Republican response last night. His remarks were brief, competent, and unremarkable — in other words, they were exactly like every Republican response I’ve ever seen given to any Democrat address. There’s something about the format — short, prepackaged, artificial — that sucks the life and energy out of even the best speakers. No one will ever look good in a format like this, that immediately follows a president who has just spoken before a live audience for an hour or so.

I attended one of Dr. Boustany’s town hall meetings in Lafayette a few weeks ago, and he came off far better than he did in last night’s remarks. When speaking to his constituents, he was friendly, energized, and passionate, and very honest with us.

Charles Boustany has not been a high-profile congressman, but he has been fighting hard against ObamaCare and is one of the truly good guys in the House, and I’m proud to have him representing me. He has even been a recent guest of RedState. Unlike the slicker man to whom he responded tonight, Dr. Boustany has had a long and distinguished private-sector career doing work that has actually helped a great many people. Unlike the slicker man to whom he responded tonight, Dr. Boustany is a genuine and decent human being.