Syndicated

Ross has an excellent analysis of what the near future of the Republican Party looks like. A bloodbath between several different views of the party is coming. He characterizes Rush’s:

For Rush, there are only two kinds of people in Republican Party: True conservatives like him, and "moderate Republicans." The latter is an ideologically-inclusive category: You can be pro-choice or pro-life, David Frum or Colin Powell, a Rockefeller Republican or a Sam’s Club conservative; indeed, the only real requirement for moderate-Republican status is the belief that the Republican Party needs to reach out to voters who don’t agree with, well, Rush Limbaugh on every jot and tittle of what conservatism is and ought to be.

Ross is right that "the whole argument collapses" while "it has a certain surface plausibility" to "many, many conservatives eager to be convinced that the ’08 outcome had everything to do with John McCain’s heresies and the treason of the Beltway elites, and nothing whatsoever to do with them". Earlier today, I noted a particularly bewildered form of this analysis out of John Ensign. Ross notes that "moderates", in this framework believe that "the Republican Party needs to reach out to voters who don’t with with" … us.

That’s a very nice static analysis. But the good news about politics is that the goalposts always move. A Barack Obama presidency would undoubtedly overreach and create the conditions for the political unraveling of his experiments, probably long after leaving the White House. The tax rates would probably be too high. Healthcare reform would probably go too far. Too much regulation would probably stifle financial services. Obama would probably go too far in addressing (sometimes) legitimate grievances about crime, welfare, etc.

But the next powerful, dominating conservativism will likely be different. It will be responsive to those overreaches. Reagan responded to high-teens inflation, confiscatory taxation, a marginalization of faith in public life, an overreach of the sexual revolution, insufficient defense of western liberal (as in market, not sexual, liberalization) values, an insufficient defense of public safety, etc., which were either the product of policy or "progress." Reagan’s critique was relevant, while Rush’s (and, sometimes, McCain’s (staff’s)) is not.

A part of me thinks that we need to just let this play out. I cannot identify the leaders who will bring us back to a majority. They have to learn and prove themselves, through things like pension and tax fights. The two parts of the coalition Rush and Ross speak for will, inevitably, come back together in some form. In the meantime, they will fight over who is in control of the process first. (and sells more books, sells ads, books more consultanting contracts, places friends in jobs, etc.)

Our focus needs to become identifying talent, solving problems, and providing the intellectual and mechanical tools to help people when the time comes.

Some perspective is desperately needed.

What is the relationship between these two stories from the Hill? Ted Stevens getting convicted of all counts for, in essence, corruption:

Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Senate Republican in history and patriarch of Alaska politics, was found guilty of all seven felony charges for making false statements.

John Ensign trying to blame John McCain for a disastrous Senate Republican showing:

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on Monday said John McCain’s presidential run is making Senate races “more difficult” for the GOP.

They reflect a delusionally out-of-touch Senate establishment. On the same day that Ensign’s colleague starts the march off to prison, he is blaming the guy who tried to clean up his own party. Could this be more out of touch?

By the way.  What is the job of the NRSC? Torecruit candidates and raise money. We are mostly playing defense. John Kennedy was a good recruit, but we don’t have anyone in Arkansas. But how did they do on fundraising? Not so hot: "DSCC doubles NRSC funddraisng … Again." Or "DSCC crushes NRSC in fundraising."

How about the fact that Congressional Republicans just aren’t that popular … because we haven’t changed our ways? The numbers demonstrate abject failure. After all, we have 27% approval, while the Dems have 34%. Oh yeah. And Bush is in the single digits, along with right-track/wrong-track. And we’ve had 9 straight months of job loss.

Maybe the problem is us. The lesson of this election for Republicans cannot be about John McCain, although he has his faults. It has to be about the establishment and us. Our leaders have lead us astray. It is probably time to find new leaders. Rank and file Republicans get that. That’s why the last two guys standing were the farthest from the establishment: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.

Until the establishment in Congress and party accept that they are part of the problem, we are just going to continue to lose more seats and continue to destroy our party and our movement. McCain isn’t doing that.

Recently, there has seemed to have been a shift in the international tenor of the environmental debate. The nomination of John McCain made the Republican Party the last major center-right party in the world to embrace some sort of affirmative strategy to effect global warming. (about mid-way through the previous government, the Conservative Party of Canada switched their position, and in the last unfortunate election, the Liberal Party of Australia, a huge producer of coal, also switched their position)

At the time, there was a little victory jig. However, two things have no happened that are putting a damper on the watermelons (green on the outside, but red on the inside)

First, the Drill Here, Drill Now movement in the United States has gotten international attention. Last month, I was at a conference of European center-right parties. People were aghast at what Newt and crew were up to. Left leaning academics who had been with Democrats told them that the hope of a Kyoto-style agreement in 2012 was understood to be over.

The second is likely to be the Canadian election. There’s a telling piece in today’s Telegraph-Journal, a Canadian paper. John Williamson, from a Canadian free-market think-tank, notes several things that came from the election:

Dreams of a carbon tax are dashed now, although few environmentalists will publicly say so. More likely, they will soon assert the messenger failed, not the carbon tax idea. But of course, we know this is bunk. The Liberals campaigned unequivocally on a revenue-neutral carbon plan to save the planet. It was soundly rejected.

The policy itself, not Mr. Dion’s egg-headed intellectualism, was the political albatross. Long before the campaign was underway, the Liberal Party’s own pollster was warning that the public was not buying the so-called Green Shift. A leaked memo from Michael Marzolini on April 29 was unequivocal: "It was our recommendation that if a carbon tax shift absolutely must be part of our platform – and we do not recommend this at all – that it only be part of a larger environmental strategy involving actual popular proposals." His forecast: "Making a carbon tax shift the key plank in our appeal to the electorate is a vote loser, not a vote winner."

A British journalist getting a briefing on the election got the message:

At a breakfast sponsored last week by the Canadian High Commission in London to discuss the election results, one British journalist astutely observed that the rejection of the tax by voters of a G7 nation could have consequences for the climate change debate. Despite all the scare-mongering from the United Nations and hand-wringing about an alleged "scientific consensus," Canadians nonetheless refused to swallow the tax. If courteous Canadians (that’s how Europeans view us) are willing to say "no thanks" to elite opinion-makers, might not voters in other democracies?

With respect to paying more for energy, Canada found its voice in the global warming debate. It certainly wasn’t the one environmentalists envisioned when the carbon tax was proposed.

One should also point out that the clarity of this message cannot be understated. If not for the economic troubles that emerged late in the Canadian campaign, the Conservatives would likely have won a majority, potentially reducing the Liberal party to a third-party status.

And follow the recommendation of the Virginia Board of
Elections

Meet Fairfax Co. Registrar Rokey Suleman.
He has decided to reject absentee ballots from American soldiers
stationed overseas. In fact, some of the ballots he’s not
counting are those from military personnel serving in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

Mr. Suleman is using a technicality to throw out hundreds of our
brave soldier’s votes. Except that
Marc Ambinder reports that the Suleman is getting the
technicalities wrong.

Voter disenfranchisement in any form is wrong, but the fact that
some are actively seeking to take away the right to vote from the
very people that are fighting to defend this fundamental American
principal is deplorable.

Furthermore, Suleman is a partisan. He was the founder of
the Trumbull, OH Young Democrats. Earlier this year,
he ran, and lost, for the Ohio Democratic State Central
Committee.

Watch him explain himself:

His response- “It stinks, but it’s the law.” A more accurate
response is- “It is voter disenfranchisement, and that stinks”

Tell Rokey Suleman to honor our American soldiers and count
their votes.

Rokey Suleman
Fairfax County General Registrar
703-222-0776
Rokey.Suleman@fairfaxcounty.gov

And join a Facebook
group to send him a message.

Can registration fraud turn into voter fraud? YES IT CAN?

A bunch of election fraud blogs have popped up in individual
states. Here’s a
great one from Iowa with
a great story. In this case, fraudulent voter registration led
to an absentee ballot being sent to one of the fake people … in
Rome:

A concerned citizen from Sioux City, IA made a trip to her
auditor’s office last week to inquire into some political mailings
her family kept receiving. She discovered that several individuals
unknown to her or her family had registered to vote using their
address in 2004. Even more concerning is the fact that one of these
folks, (Iowans love this word) Mr. David Loepp, had already
requested and recieved his 2008 absentee ballot via
international mail in ROME. Voter fraud
in Iowa? Never!

Note that this fake person who doesn’t exist signed an request
form for the ballot.
Click through to see the application and see the signature.

A bunch of election fraud blogs have popped up in individual states. Here’s a great one from Iowa with a great story. In this case, fraudulent voter registration led to an absentee ballot being sent to one of the fake people … in Rome:

A concerned citizen from Sioux City, IA made a trip to her auditor’s office last week to inquire into some political mailings her family kept receiving. She discovered that several individuals unknown to her or her family had registered to vote using their address in 2004. Even more concerning is the fact that one of these folks, (Iowans love this word) Mr. David Loepp, had already requested and recieved his 2008 absentee ballot via international mail in ROME. Voter fraud in Iowa? Never!

Note that this fake person who doesn’t exist signed an request form for the ballot. Click through to see the application and see the signature.

Earlier this week, an extraordinary story hit. CALPERS, the California Public Employee Retirement System, announced that it took a HUGE hit. From the WSJ:

This is a transfer from already overburdened taxpayers to public employees that they didn’t even get to vote on. This is a political opportunity for the right. Corrupt unions are asking for money from the taxpayers to fill their pensions while their own pocket books are getting slimmer.

This is a bailout. And Americans didn’t like the bailout.

Note that when the bailout bill came through Congress, AFL-CIO and other unions wanted their piece of the action too:

He also said the bailout must include protections for worker pensions which suffered large losses because of Wall Street irresponsibility–a point Teamsters President James Hoffa echoed–and it must “ensure that taxpayers receive any future profit from mortgages bought by the Treasury.” 

Whether you agree with the framing of "Wall Street irresponsibility" (I do, to an extent) the unions and their lackeys in Congress are going to have to explain why they deserve a bailout on the backs of the rest of us.

This is an opportunity for the right. These fights will often be at the state level over an issue that people understand: their taxes. The leaders who articulate why this is wrong will become recognizable voices on behalf of all Americans, not just the 12% in union pension programs, will become public figures.

Between this issue and the broader issue of the state budget crisis, there are the seeds of the rebirth of the next right.

OpenLeft, a must read of lefty blogs and infrastructure, somewhat uncharacteristically invites Bertha Lewis, who runs a clearly opaque and un-Open organization, ACORN to defend her organization.

Lewis’s statement is simply full of lies, many of which are refutable with recent statements by ACORN officials and recent media reports from right-wing hit-job press like the New York Times.

She starts the substance of her piece with:

Let’s be clear about one very important thing. The reason ACORN is the focal point of the combined national efforts of the Republicans is because we recently completed the largest non-partisan voter registration drive in U.S. history. We helped 1.3 million low-income people, people of color, and young people complete voter registration applications.

No. They filed 1.3 million forms. The New York Times gets the breakdown right, according to an ACORN official:

On Oct. 6, the community organizing group Acorn and an affiliated charity called Project Vote announced with jubilation that they had registered 1.3 million new voters. But it turns out the claim was a wild exaggeration, and the real number of newly registered voters nationwide is closer to 450,000, Project Vote’s executive director, Michael Slater, said in an interview.

Don’t let the "Project Vote" name fool you. They are essentially the same organization. A NYT story from two days before noted that Mr. Slater’s predecessor would have reported directly to … ACORN’s Chief Organizer:

She wrote that the same people appeared to be deciding which regions to focus on for increased voter engagement for Acorn and Project Vote. Zach Pollett, for instance, was Project Vote’s executive director and Acorn’s political director, until July, when he relinquished the former title. Mr. Pollett continues to work as a consultant for Project Vote through another Acorn affiliate.

Back to Bertha… She argues that they have good integrity checks:

The attacks on ACORN are spurious to say the least. Here a few key facts that our accusers aren’t telling you.

• ACORN has implemented the most sophisticated quality-control system in the voter engagement field but in almost every state we are required to turn in ALL completed applications, even the ones we know to be problematic.

• ACORN flags in writing incomplete, problem, or suspicious cards when we turn them in. Unfortunately, some of these same officials then come back weeks or months later and accuse us of deliberately turning in phony cards.  In many cases, we can actually prove that these are the same cards we called to their attention.

Again… Not so much. That’s not what ACORN told the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Board of Elections. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Local representatives of the organization told Cuyahoga board members that they don’t have the resources to identify fraudulent cards turned in by paid canvassers who are told to register low- and moderate-income voters. […]

"This is not something you can catch with your internal controls, apparently," said board member Sandy McNair at the meeting.

"Not perfectly, no," replied Mari Engelhardt, ACORN political director for Ohio.

That’s ACORN. They lie about their numbers. They lie about their processes. According to their own attorney’s they even lie publicly about embezzlement that they knew occurred:

The June 18 report, written by Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer, spells out her concerns about potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.

It also offers a different account of the embezzlement of almost $1 million by the brother of Acorn’s founder, Wade Rathke, than the one the organization gave in July, when word of the theft became public.

This is a criminal organization. Bertha Lewis is the chief of the organization. And OpenLeft is providing a forum for defenses that are simply saturated with lies about the most basic facts that are already disproven by statements by their own organization.

In all the shuffle of the Presidential race, people have forgot one remaining primary in Louisiana. On November 4, there will be a runoff, followed by a December 6th general election in a seat vacated by Jim McCrery. John Fleming and Chris Gorman are running. Human Events’ John Gizzi says:

On the Republican side, physician Barry Fleming and trucking executive Chris Gorman placed one-two (35 percent to 34 percent ) and will take their battle into the run-off. Their contest is expected to focus on the issue of illegal immigration. Fleming has proposed a transportation system to bus immigrants who have first been screened into the country as laborers, while Gorman has taken a hard-line, border security-first position.

Running third (31 percent) in the GOP primary was trial attorney Jeff Thompson, who had the endorsement of McCrery. Neither Thompson nor the outgoing congressman is expected to get involved in the Fleming-Gorman run-off.   

Indeed, immigration is the issue, and Dan Riehl has a nice write-up of the issues there.

There seems to be a problem with military absentee votes in Fairfax, Virginia. From A Soldier’s Perspective:

The Fairfax County Registrar—and possibly other Registrars in Virginia—is rejecting most Federal Write-in Absentee Ballots (FWAB) cast by our men and women in uniform.

The FWAB is a federally mandated write-in ballot that allows military servicemembers and their dependents to cast an absentee ballot when they have not received a ballot before the election. It is a safety net that allows a servicemember to vote even if the mail truck hasn’t reached his or her remote base in Iraq or Afghanistan in time to cast a regular absentee ballot.

I have talked to several people involved in this process. They are not in fact, yet, rejecting the absentee ballots. They have not been counted and are picking a procedure for doing it. And the current procedure would result in rejecting military absentees.

The basic idea is that if military voters do not get their absentee ballots in time, they can fill out a "Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot" that all election officials are required by federal law to accept. Virgina’s instructions are here. The ballot is here.

The position of the Fairfax Registrar is that the sealed (outside) envelope has to be witnessed. The thing is that there is no location to witness, and the instructions are unclear.

Furthermore, this is in violation of the US law, which pre-empts in this case. ASP continues:

Federal law does not allow this type of disparate treatment of servicemembers. The Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act (UOCAVA), 42 U.S.C. § 1973ff-2, requires states to process FWABs "in the manner provided by law for absentee ballots in the State involved." (emphasis added). In other words, the FWAB must be treated like any other absentee ballot under state law and may not be subject to more restrictive requirements. Yet that is precisely what is being done here.

No other kind of absentee ballots are required to be witnessed in Virginia. So the county registrar is improperly implementing federal law and "suppressing" the military vote.

Two final points:

First, I look forward to the squealing from the lefty groups. Somehow, I predict silence.

Second, there was a solution to these problems proposed earlier. Rep. Kevin McCarthy introduced HR 5673 to expedite the delivery of military absentee ballots. The unions opposed. Here was the operative bit, where they complain about the private sector:

NAPUS is deeply concerned about HR 5673, particularly the provision that sanctions private contractor conveyance of overseas and military ballots.

When the unions opposed the measure, all actions stopped in the House. Nancy Pelosi and Chairman Robert Brady (also chairman of that pristine Philadelphia Democratic Party, whose Secretary has been convicted multiple times of violating election laws) didn’t seem to care about preserving voting rights. Somehow, putting unions ahead of voting rights will be a pattern in the Democratic House.