How to fix 2010
Steve Rosenthal offers some sound advice for Democrats whose knees are shaking over 2010’s midterm elections. Step one: stop whining. Step two: remember the Obama agenda (5 million green jobs this decade, rebuilding our infrastructure — which means jobs — rebuilding our schools and our information systems, which again, means jobs, and universal healthcare … okay that one’s not going so well, but you get the idea…) Step three: get your act together, Congressional Democrats, and actually PASS the Obama ‘08 agenda, for the love of God, you politically clumsy, tone-deaf herd of dimwit cats! Okay, he didn’t say that last part. I kind of threw that in … There’s more, read it here.
The Rubio shuffle
UPDATE: Apparently, now Rubio doesn’t believe in mankind’s hand in global warming anymore, either, and he’s reversed his position on cap and trade. Up next — Marco sends RedStaters over the moon by denying evolution, reveals new career as a NASCAR driver, and travels to Alaska to personally execute polar bears with his very own gun …
I’ve often wondered what would happen with Marco Rubio’s RedState tea party rhetoric met Florida’s fiscal reality. Well … probably something like this:
Adam Smith notest that we’ve struggled lately to get a clear answer from Marco Rubio on whether as governor he would have accepted money from the federal stimulus package about which he is so critical. Keith Cate on Tampa Bay’s NBC affiliate got a clearer answer:
“Ultimately,” Rubio said. “I would have accepted those portions of the money that would not have put Florida in a worse position off in the future than it is right now.”
How Crist like.
Indeed. Read more
New DKos poll: Birthers for Rubio … and Kendrick who???
A new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll has some troubling news about the support for Marco Rubio, which seems to be coming from an assortment of teabaggers and birthers. The same poll shows that normal Republicans prefer Charlie Crist, and unfortunately for the Dems, Kendrick Meek is still a total unknown. The poll shows an incredible, 43-point swing in GOP support, from Crist to Rubio, since January:
Charlie Crist (R) 47 (57)
Marco Rubio (R) 37 (4)
And where is all that fresh Rubio support coming from? Birthers, for one: Read more
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just leave town?
…. Charlie Crist is still taking flak over his “I had no idea Obama was in Florida” fib. Apparently, there’s this thing called a “public records search…”
A detailed itinerary and invitation was provided by the White House on Oct. 23, three days before the visit, and Crist’s executive assistant wrote back the same day saying, “Unfortunately, the governor will be unable to attend.”
In ordinary times, Crist’s claim may have drawn puzzled looks for a day or two. Obama’s visit was widely previewed in the news and the governor is a regular reader. …
E-mails obtained by the St. Petersburg Times this week through a public records request cast doubt on that claim. The messages prove Crist’s office was aware of the visit, and it seems unlikely his aide would have dismissed Crist going to Jacksonville without checking with Crist.
Uh-oh. Read more
Teabaggers take the next logical step in Florida
Teabaggers: a super-smart movement demands a super-smart party.
Teabagging is not just an hilarious epithet: it’s a Florida political party…
A Florida conservative has registered an official “Tea Party” with the office of the Secretary of State, and is promising to run candidates against Republicans and Democrats in state and national races.
“The current system has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties. It’s time for real change,” says Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, the new party’s chairman, who couldn’t be reached immediately by phone, in a press release.
A spokeswoman for the Florida Secretary of State, Jennifer Davis, said the party had registered in August, and that its qualified candidates will appear on the ballot in the state.
O’Neal compared his party’s role to that of the Conservative Party in New York’s 23rd District.
Let me just say that I think this is a brilliant idea, especially if the Florida Tea Party is as successful as New York’s Conservative Party has been at winning elections. I mean, don’t you just long for the days of the former Conservative Party governors and New York Mayors up there in NY? What? … Not even ONE??? Oh…. Well, anyhoo, at least the Tea Party can really stick it to the parties by primarying any RINO or DINO who tries to stray from what the Founding Fathers … what??? Florida is a closed primary state that doesn’t allow people to run on multiple party lines they way they can in New York, so all the “Tea Party” can do is wait patiently but nervously like a pimply stag kid at the prom, while the real parties to pick their candidates, and then play a spoiler role in the general election just like that weird Hoffman guy did in New York 23? And then, that will only happen if Mr. O’Neal can dredge up enough votes to get him past the Florida Whig Party, the Possibility Party, and the Surfers Party of America next November??? Well can we at least get Marco Rubio to switch over and run as the Tea Party standard-bearer??? Well, at least we’ve got a website … oh… not that either, huh?
Keeping all the crazies in one place where you can see ‘em? Priceless.
Hug? What hug??? … Stimulus money? What stimulus money???
Jesus, Charlie. You’d think they didn’t have the Internets in the governor’s mansion. You’ve actually got to feel for the guy. He started out his political life as “good time Charlie” — the guy everybody likes. Democrats like him … Black people like him … hell, President Obama likes him, too! See? Look!
Charlie's new story: he didn't hug Barack Obama, he gave him the Heimlich meneuver.
Only now, Charlie’s love fest with the opposite party is causing him heartburn in his. See, the Republicans have been (shhhh!) taken over by the crazy people … And Charlie’s beside himself trying to figure out what to do about it, now that he’s running for Senate. Read more
Is our wingers learning? Teabagger war on GOP continues
The teabag movement has become a war on the GOP.
Not content to lose just one historically Republican House seat, the winger jihadis are continuing their fight for total irrelevancy for the GOP. Charlie Crist remains a target, having been dropped by the NRSC (To hear RedState tell it, specifically at their request.) But there are others on deck, too. Wingers are next looking to deep six the not-right-wing-enough Carly Fiorina, who has her sights set on Barbara Boxer’s seat in California (yeah. Good luck with that.) Having deemed Ms. Fiorina too modern a gal for conservatism, the jihadis are throwing their two-t0-three-ounce weight behind a more suitable candidate, and elected Republicans, who remain completely flummoxed by the ongoing palace coup, are tucking their tails between their legs and going along. From the New York Times, signs the wingnuts have learned the wrong lessons from New York 23:
Ms. Palin, who had endorsed Mr. Hoffman in the upstate New York race, indicated that she had not been dissuaded by his loss.
“To the tireless grass-roots patriots who worked so hard in that race and to future citizen-candidates like Doug,” she wrote on her Facebook page, “please remember Reagan’s words of encouragement after his defeat in 1976: the cause goes on.”
And Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, announced that he was endorsing Chuck DeVore, a conservative, in the California race for a Senate seat. Mr. DeVore is opposing Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, who was encouraged by party leaders to seek the nomination.
Other conservatives, too, were not deterred by the New York defeat. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative organization that strongly supported Mr. Hoffman, said that conservative activists intended to play a role in Republican primary and general elections next year and that it was just as important to keep unacceptable politicians out of Congress as to help others win.
Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, another conservative group that campaigned heavily on behalf of Mr. Hoffman, said the organization was now considering issuing endorsements in contested Senate and House Republican races in New Hampshire, Florida, Kentucky and California.
And while Count Chocola looks to extend Club for Growth’s 100 percent electoral losing streak, DeMint has taken to doing joint conference calls with Col. Von Erickson, where the two ask teabaggers to pray them up some conservative candidates. Seriously. I’m starting to wonder whether Rahm Emanuel is planning all of this behind the scenes…
Sorry, Charlie: John Cornyn declares the NRSC to be irrelevant
NRSC's Cornyn to Charlie: just pretend we're not even here...
Despite the fact that he turned out to be right about New York 23 — Dede Scozzafava was a solid local candidate, who might have won that race had the entire Republican establishment not turned on her, while Doug Hoffman was as much a carpetbagger as the RedStaters and Palins who tried to shoe-horn him into office — and despite the fact that the jihadis strategy of purging so-called RINOs in favor of unelectable wingnuts proved to be a spectacular failure (resulting in a Democratic pick-up of two more House seats) … John Cornyn has decided to fall on his knees before the teabaggers anyway, starting with walking … no, make that running … away from Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Read more
Meanwhile, a lesson for Democrats
Message to Dems: the base is getting impatient.
Yesterday’s elections were a shot across the bow for the teabaggers, even though you’ll never get them to admit it, and a victory for old fashioned, establishment Republicans, who proved once again, that boring old messages like “change,” taxes, and even transportation, win elections. Swearing one’s sacred trust to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, do not. But while yesterday’s races were, according to voters themselves, not a referendum on the president, there is a lesson in the Virginia and New Jersey losses for Democrats, and it comes down to who stayed home: namely, young voters and minorities.
Bottom line: the base didn’t come out for the Dems yesterday, in Virginia in part because the candidate, Creigh Deeds, was such an incompetent, he ran away from Barack Obama rather than toward him (Obama has a 52 percent approval rating among those who voted in Virginia according to exit polls, and 57 percent in New Jersey. Sorry, RedState…) In New Jersey, there was simply no rallying the troops for a former Wall Streeter who was as unpopular as he was unpleasant. Where the Republicans could send motivated senior citizens, who already were uncomfortable with the Democrat in the White House, to the polls, getting youger voters there would have taken something else, barring putting Barack Obama himself on the ballot. Read more
Dede’s revenge: Hoffman concedes in New York 23
What an ending. Doug Hoffman, the Glenn Beck devotee and favorite of Erick Erickson and the RedState jihadis, has conceded the race in New York’s 23rd District, making Bill Owens the first Democrat since the Civil War to represent the district in which he — and not Mr. Hoffman — lives. Is it just me, or is the Watertown Daily Times, which has been pounding away at Hoffman’s lack of knowledge about local issues on its editorial page, waxing a little snarky in its headline:
So what have we learned, RedStaters? Read more
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