Odds and ends number 50
Half a hundred now of these items which deserve a paragraph or three, and in this rendition several are of national interest.
I wanted to start out with a rather comprehensive look by Accuracy in Media at voter fraud. In truth, this is less of an expose than a confirmation because we on the Right had been thinking about this for years, and some of these accounts have filtered down to a local level.
Now I’ve heard people claim that voting should be a privilege reserved to property owners or to those who pay taxes rather than receive goodies from the government. I don’t agree with that approach, but I think that perhaps if local election boards are running into a problem with last-minute registrations scant weeks before an election, the simple solution would be to simply move back the deadline. Honestly, if people wish to register to vote they’re going to do it well in advance of the election. This would also do away with the open invitation to fraud known as same-day registration.
But I also agree we should do away with motor voter laws and eliminate early voting. If people are serious enough to vote they already have the right to get an absentee ballot. To me it’s a waste of taxpayer money to spend thousands on multi-day elections when just 2% of voters participate.
And don’t even go there and tell me I want to suppress turnout, because I don’t. I want prospective voters to take their responsibility more seriously. The left always screams “voter suppression” whenever some common-sense idea like photo voter ID or those others above are introduced, but they are all in favor of oppressive campaign finance laws. Isn’t that monetary suppression? Hypocrites.
The report is well worth a read.
Along that same line, writers Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer ask why certain corporate interests can go scot-free under the Obama regime while others are hounded by the Justice Department. That’s not to say that Wall Street is a batch of crooks by any means, but in politics perception is reality and the fact that Wall Street gave far more to Barack Obama than John McCain leads to the thoughts of pay-for-play and cronyism.
Speaking of entities which give Democrats a lot of money, Matt Patterson and Trey Kovacs of the Competitive Enterprise Institute asked in the Washington Times why unions just won’t let go if a bargaining unit doesn’t want to stay with them. Well, the answer seems pretty simple to me – as they write:
There is a reason why unions are fighting to hold workers against their will and challenging laws that bring greater freedom to the workplace. Union leaders need a monopoly on labor in order to bankrupt governments and corporations, and they require unfree markets to maintain their own power and wealth.
That goes in the category of “duh,” workers be damned.
And this is a video worth sharing, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the point.
Personally I would prefer Medicare eventually be phased out or devolved to the states, but I realize that’s a decades-long process. Having said that, though, it’s obvious that Obamacare is the wrong direction to go despite the fact it cuts Medicare. Paul Ryan’s not pushing seniors off the cliff.
Finally, I wanted to bring up the attention being paid to a national issue by our own Congressman, Andy Harris. In a recent release, he decried the abuse of taxpayer dollars by those here illegally:
Illegal aliens are filing false tax returns claiming numerous fake child tax credits. Once our tax dollars are in the hands of illegal aliens, it’s impossible to get the money back. Once I learned about this outrageous loophole that allows billions of dollars per year to be stolen from US taxpayers, I knew I had to act.
In November of 2011, I joined Rep Sam Johnson in introducing H.R. 1956, Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act, to close this loophole. The bill is necessary because the IRS claims that they are simply following the law. We had hoped that the IRS would act without legislation.
One would think that the White House would instruct the IRS to stop giving away tax dollars to illegal aliens scamming our tax system. This is an urgent and immediate problem, especially as we’ve passed the tax filing deadline of April 15th.
The child care tax credits have grown from $924 million in 2005 to $4.2 billion last year. H.R. 1956 will curb the fraud in this program by requiring the IRS to only allow this tax credit for children with a social security number. H.R. 1956 was assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee and I am waiting for the hearing to be scheduled any time. (Emphasis in original.)
So my question is why there’s been no hurry to move this bill? I guess one would have to ask Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) because it’s his committee. Perhaps his contributors would like the waiver to stand?
In truth, though, I think this is another in the series of ill-advised cautions by the Republican establishment to not risk alienating the Latino vote. Never mind that they turn off millions of voters who are concerned about the illegal alien problem – I’ll grant it’s less of a concern now that migration by illegals is now a net outflow due to a poor economy, but once conditions improve we may become a magnet once again.
Well, that cleans out my mailbox for the most part. Glad you stopped by for some original monoblogue content – I can’t put all my good stuff on Examiner because in all honesty I’m not sure their format would lend itself to such a post. That’s why I maintain this independent, conservative site!
But by all means you should subscribe to my Examiner page to get notice of when I do post there. I’m having fun juggling all these writing plates! Haven’t broken one yet.
And a happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I wrote this yesterday so I could devote a little time to the moms in my life today, so enjoy.
The real life of ‘Julia’
In a blatant pitch to woo female voters – presumably the base of the Democratic machine – the Obama re-election campaign came up with the “Life of Julia” concept. Poor Julia is seen suffering through a life of government dependence from age 3 when she’s enrolled in Head Start (I suppose by Julia’s unseen parents) to age 67, when she “retires comfortably” on Social Security.
Of course, this little slideshow has been unmercifully (and rightfully) parodied by Lee Stranahan into the Life of Rover, given a conservative rebuttal by the Heritage Foundation, put under a libertarian remix, and become fodder for endless Twitter shots using the #Julia hashtag, some of which are featured at the tail end of this article by Meredith Jessup in The Blaze. It seems like every time Obama tries to go viral with a hashtag, conservatives have a ton of fun with it.
My question, though, is why Obama’s so worried about the female vote. One thing the President has going for him is a fair amount of personal likability, as the First Family has been carefully scripted to appeal to women as a happy nuclear family. Granted, the Obama children are far younger than President George W. Bush’s twin daughters, but it seemed like every time one of the Bush twins misbehaved it was made into news – on the other hand, a recent Mexican trip for Obama’s older daughter Malia had its accounts scrubbed and sanitized after word got out about the 13 year old’s journey south of the border.
But women have been hard hit by the poor economy, and oftentimes the female handles the bills in the family. Whether they’re a single mom or part of the rapidly disappearing nuclear family of Mom, Dad, and two kids, women have found that over the last three years it’s been getting harder to make ends meet.
And there’s also intention behind making ‘Julia’ a single mom – you may notice that there’s no husband in the picture when she has ‘Zachary.’ (Does that sound like a focus-grouped name or what?) Of all the women who voted in 2008, it was single women who came in most heavily for Obama – a 70-29 margin. If he loses even 10 percentage points on that total, Barack Obama has to know that his re-election bid is toast. But single women haven’t been exempt from the stagnant economy, either.
In reviewing the ‘Julia’ slides, there’s also no question that the Obama campaign is playing the class envy card to the hilt, even in this example. At 17 Julia could lose her public education funding to “pay for tax cuts to millionaires,” for example. And Julia’s life is doomed if we even cut one penny from these bloated federal programs or dispense of Obamacare, as several slides warn.
But would it? What if Julia’s parents didn’t send her to Head Start but took the time to read to the child – or better yet, made the investment of time and effort to homeschool her – even as they sacrifice the tax burden of helping to support the public education they aren’t using? Chances are Julia would still be able to enroll in that college. (I’m also curious: if Julia’s going into web design, is a four-year degree even required? It seems like she could acquire those skills in a two-year associate program at a community college.)
And perhaps her parents, if they raised her right, would instill in Julia the work ethic to get her to avoid taking out thousands of dollars of student loans because she would have learned to be responsible for the results of her own education while working her way through college, along with the moral compass to wait until the right stage of life to marry Zachary’s father before they have the little rugrat. Until that point she would pay for her own contraception, thank you. (Needless to say, abstinence is free.)
That work ethic would come in handy when Julia opens her own business because she will have to work twice as hard to overcome the roadblocks in her way – not because she is a woman, but because of all the red tape an overbearing bunch of pencil pushers throw in her path. She would also have the pride to not accept work simply from the set-asides given to a female-owned business, but because she does a damn good job of it. It’s the only way she would know.
And Julia would retire comfortably because she lived a reasonable but frugal lifestyle, investing wisely in her future despite government’s best efforts to confiscate every dollar she made. Julia and her husband of over 40 years would enjoy the sunset of their lives despite never receiving a Social Security check from a bankrupt system.
But perhaps my favorite parody of Julia came from the Facebook site AttackWatch:
The Gaps of Julia
At 1 year old: Under President Obama, Julia’s posts “I hate Obama!” on her Facebook page. She is investigated by the Secret Service for threats against the President. (That’s one precocious child!)
At 16 years old: Under President Obama, Julia goes goth and changes her religious affiliation to “Wicca.”
At 18: Under President Obama, Julia realizes she’s learned more on her own than she ever has at public school and registers as a Republican voter.
At 19: Under President Obama, she realizes her Pell grants don’t cover anything but a small tuition, so she takes out student loans to supplement her income.
At 23: Under President Obama, Julia begins her career as a web designer. Despite what Obama said all those years ago, she’s still paying hundreds a month on her student loans. She makes her payments on time, but rising taxes have made it difficult to eat much more than rice, beans, and ramen. She’s happy to know she can sue for wage discrimination, except that she’s making more than her male coworker who regularly attends Occupy Wall Street meetings. Since he’s known to go into work stoned, she’s inclined to believe the pay difference is because of her performance.
At 25: Under President Obama, Julia has worked as a web designer for the past four years. She’s chosen to be responsible with her health and family planning, and doesn’t want to drain the system by using other peoples’ money for her sex life.
At 31: Under President Obama, Julia and her husband decide they’re financally secure enough to have a child. Julia wishes she could be a stay-at-home mom, but she can’t because men’s wages have been stagnant for 50 years now and they can’t live solely on her husband’s income. She slips and lets the tax payers pick up the tab for her maternity leave. Both her and her husband’s taxes go up the following year. They consider selling their house to move into a condo half the size.
At 37: Under President Obama, Julia’s son Zachary starts kindergarten. She’s there to see him off at the bus stop because she quit her job, deciding the slight bit of extra pay wasn’t worth it since taxes and highly-regulated child care costs were so high. She and her husband fight more than they’d like, but remain close. Zachary eats better than they do, they make sure of that.
At 42: Under President Obama, Julia decides to start her own at-home business to try and bring in at least a meager extra income. She finds that Obama’s tax cuts for small businesses help, but his extra excise taxes on manufacturers and healthcare and income do not. It’s not a zero-sum game; she’s losing money. She wants to help people, so she hires another worker, but has to lay him off after a year because she can’t afford the healthcare costs.
At 65: Under President Obama, Julia submits an application for Medicare. She’s eagerly granted acceptance.
At 66: Under President Obama, Julia develops a brain tumor. She submits an application to Medicare, which is denied. “Due to age,” and “See Quality of Life (QoL) Regulations” stick out through her watered eyes. She chokes and sobs. She hugs her 70 year old husband when he returns from work. They cry together, in bed, just holding each other. “We tried,” Julia whispers to her husband.
At 67: Under President Obama, Julia passes in her husband’s arms. Full of anger that his ailing wife was denied care from the Obamacare Government because of costs, he takes his wrath to Facebook. He writes, “President Obama, I can’t stand everything you’ve done!”
At 71: Under President Obama, Julia’s husband is investigated by the Secret Service for threats against the President.
President Obama has now been president for at least 67 years.
You might laugh, but the sad fact is that millions of gullible voters will lap up the Obama Kool-Aid and believe he’s only trying to help the middle class. He’s helping them, all right – helping them become poor and dependent on government handouts of some sort.
Who will they be in it for?
This goes in the category of “I had to laugh.”
Because I have one of the millions of e-mail addresses that makes up Barack Obama’s list of internet friends, I get his campaign missives on practically a daily basis. Yesterday’s was a hoot, and I excerpt here:
Mark your calendar: On May 10th, George Clooney is hosting an event at his home in Los Angeles to support President Obama.
If you donate $3 or whatever you can today, you’ll be automatically entered to be there, too.
We’ll take care of airfare and accommodations — all you need to do is think about who you’d ask to join you for an evening with President Obama and George Clooney.
At least twice in the last few months there was been the enticement of having dinner with the President, but the unwashed masses don’t seem to be coughing up enough $3 donations to make that work anymore. If it were he wouldn’t need a SuperPAC, even though it’s not making a ton of money either.
I suppose that’s the risk you run when pandering to the food stamp generation. So Obama needs a little bit of star power now, and anyone with half a brain for popular culture knows that when one uber-liberal Hollywood star has a political event, a whole flock of them (along with assorted other beggars and hangers-on) show up. So the thought in the Obama campaign must be that a million people will cough up $3 to show up at George Clooney’s house to be laughed at as that giant sucker who won the contest. Maybe they’ll put the winner in a closet so they can have the real party and stick their hands into the Obama stash.
Unfortunately, the same fundraising approach is being used by the Romney camp (as is the dinner one) and it’s beginning to make me wonder if our culture is just too starstruck and obsessed with celebrity to think rationally anymore. It used to be that people donated money because they believed in the candidate, but what message does it send out when one can donate a trivial amount to be entered into a contest as the longest of shots to have to rub elbows with the President? Okay, the chance to see the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Patriot’s Day wouldn’t have been a bad enticement for me but I resisted. It would have been a good game to watch, too. (I wonder if Romney stayed for the whole thing? Reason number 8,564 I couldn’t be a politician: if I go to a ballgame I am there until the final pitch. I don’t care if they play 20 innings.)
We all know Barack Obama decries the Citizens United decision out of one side of his mouth while eschewing campaign finance limits with the other. But if people want to donate against their self-interest in the slimmest of hopes of hobnobbing with Hollywood elitists, Obama is all for that. And considering no one has to report donations under $200 to the FEC, no one will really see where the money comes from, just that they’ll have the cash to spend on glossing over the Obama record.
Something tells me there’s something for George Clooney in this too. Those elitists really hate spending time with real people from flyover country, so I’m guessing there’s a Department of Energy grant or farm bill earmark somewhere chosen especially for him. Good luck to the person selected from among all the donors, because the rest of us are going to lose if Obama wins.
A fork we stick in Rick
So it ends, not with a bang but more of a whimper.
The news that Rick Santorum has opted to suspend his campaign just two weeks before a multistate primary where opponent Mitt Romney would be expected to do well in all the states – except possibly Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania – coupled with the withdrawal in all but name by Newt Gingrich over the weekend (“he had more things to hit with than I did”), means that Mitt Romney will be the GOP nominee come September. Sure, Ron Paul is still in the race but he hasn’t won a primary yet.
Obviously that’s frustrating news to Santorum backers (like The Other McCain) as well as residents of the five states (including Delaware) who were expectantly awaiting their turn in the national spotlight, but it also brings up a couple interesting questions.
- Who will be the second banana on the ticket? We saw a rejuvenated Republican Party for a brief time in 2008 when Sarah Palin was selected, so one would hope Romney assuages conservatives with a strong pick.
- Will the electorate in the remaining states which have not conducted primary elections embrace Mitt as the nominee?
I don’t know what the rules are for ballot withdrawal in the remaining states, but it’s quite likely that the last four standing (Romney, Paul, Gingrich, and Santorum) are on the ballot in 17 of the 19 remaining states (Nebraska and Montana are caucus states.) And we can look back at Virginia for a case study in just how much anti-Romney sentiment was out there – in a contest limited to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, Romney couldn’t even carry 60 percent of the vote. Had it been Santorum or Gingrich on the ballot straight up against Romney, Rick or Newt may have carried the state.
It would be quite surprising now if Romney didn’t get a clear majority of the votes, but the depth of anti-Romney sentiment may be most expressed in states where Santorum or Gingrich were thought to be strongest (most likely Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Indiana, and South Dakota among remaining primary states.) But this ceding of the Presidential field could also have a detrimental effect on conservatives in downticket races as well – one example being the U.S. Senate primary in Indiana where moderate Senator Richard Lugar faces a primary opponent in Richard Mourdock.
But all the talk of a possible brokered convention and a white knight coming in to save the GOP will now be replaced by emotions from anger at the establishment to outright despair from the Right that Romney can’t win and we’re doomed to another four long years of Barack Obama. Yet if every conservative in the country came out and voted, we would win because Democratic turnout tends to lag behind Republican regardless of whatever tricks the Democrats try to pull. It’s simple math – around 40 percent of the country self-identifies as conservative while only 20 percent or so self-identify as liberal. Even if the squishy middle splits evenly, we win.
And it’s not like the incumbent has much of a record to run on, unless you define record deficits, record number of adults out of the work force, and record high gas prices as records to brag about. Obama has those.
So here we are: Obama vs. Romney. It wasn’t my personal choice (since I voted for Santorum after all my other good choices split the scene) but that’s the way it’s going to be.
And now for something (almost) completely different:
I have it on very good authority that someone familiar to local voters is going to jump into the First District Congressional race. That’s all I’m going to say for now, but watch this space for more details.
Where I went wrong (and right)
Okay, the results have come in and I got some sleep and a day at my outside job to consider them, so let’s go back to my prediction post and see how I did.
I was actually correct in the order of presentation on the top four Presidential candidates statewide, but Mitt Romney exceeded even the pollsters’ expectations when he won just under half the vote. I suppose that inevitability factor may have affected the results because it appears our turnout in 2012 will end up about 20 percent less than it was in 2008, when the race was effectively over by the time we voted. Because few people like to admit they’re backing a loser, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of voters changed from Gingrich to Romney at the end while other Newt backers stayed home. It also proves Ron Paul has support a mile deep but an inch wide since both well underperformed what I thought they might. I actually missed Santorum by less than a point, although it surprised me that Rick only won two counties (Garrett and Somerset.) I would have thought Rick would carry 4 to 6 of the more rural counties, including Wicomico. But once Romney outperformed it was over.
And you may wonder why I had Fred Karger at 2 percent. I thought he would do better because, as a gay Republican candidate in a state which was bound to be a Romney state anyway, voting for him may serve as a message about the gay marriage referendum likely to appear in November. Instead, he got only less than 1/10 of my predicted total and finished dead last. I also managed to garble up the exact order of the also-rans, but with such a small sample who knew?
That same statewide trend seemed to affect my Wicomico result too because Romney outperformed and Gingrich/Paul suffered for it.
And while I didn’t predict it, I find it quite fascinating that 12 percent of the Democratic primary voters selected “none of the above” rather than Barack Obama. However, that statewide average varies wildly from under 3% in Prince George’s County, about 5% in Baltimore City, and just over 7% in Montgomery County to fully 1/3 of Democrats in Allegany County and a staggering 34.7% in Cecil County. In the last comparable election with a Democratic incumbent (1996) President Clinton only received 84% of the vote (onetime perennial candidate Lyndon LaRouche got 4%) but no county came close to getting 1/3 or more of the ballots against the President.
I didn’t miss the “barnburner” aspect of the Senate race by much as it wasn’t called until nearly midnight. But Dan Bongino carried 34% of the vote and won by 6 points over Richard Douglas. (I called it for two points, but I underestimated the impact of the little eight.) I think Joseph Alexander gets the advantage of being first of the ballot, and that accounts for his second straight third-place finish. The rest? Well, the order wasn’t all that correct but they were mostly only off by a percent or two and I got last place right. And to prove it was a close race, both Bongino and Douglas carried 12 counties apiece.
What mystifies me the most isn’t that Rich Douglas carried Wicomico rather easily, but how much support the other eight received – they collectively picked up almost 100 more votes than Douglas did! I would love to know the mindset of the people who voted for most of these minor candidates. I can see a case for Robert Broadus based on the Protect Marriage Maryland group, but what did the others really do to promote their campaigns? At least I know Douglas had radio spots and reasonably good online coverage.
But I did peg Ben Cardin to within 4 points statewide.
On some of the Congressional races: despite the fact I screwed up the percentages, at least I correctly called the Sixth District winners as Roscoe Bartlett and John Delaney. Both did far better than I expected, and I think part of the reason was that both their key challengers’ campaigns imploded in the last week or two. A week ago we may have had something closer to the numbers I predicted. Think Rob Garagiola and David Brinkley may commiserate anytime soon?
The ‘relative ease’ I suspected for Nancy Jacobs was even easier than I thought. I guess Larry Smith didn’t have nearly the campaign as I believed because he came up short on my prediction about as much as Nancy Jacobs was over – I wasn’t all that far off on Rick Impallaria.
While there is a slim chance I may have the First District Democratic race correct, I was surprised that Eastern Shore voters didn’t get all parochial and support the one Eastern Shore candidate, John LaFerla, over two from across the Bay. He only won Worcester, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties, and I would chalk most of that up to Wayne Gilchrest’s endorsement. Kim Letke was about 6 points better than I thought and LaFerla was six points worse because he way underperformed on the Eastern Shore. I suspect no small part of that underperformance by LaFerla was his extreme pro-choice stance, as getting the NARAL endorsement doesn’t play well among local Democrats. There is a 136 vote margin out of about 23,500 cast.
Out of the rest, the only one I got wrong was the Eighth District, and I think that was a case of better name recognition than I expected for Ken Timmerman and less of a vote split among the three candidates from Montgomery County.
As for the Democratic incumbents, I could have wrote “over 85%” and still been right, with the minor exception of Steny Hoyer getting 84.8%.
So this is how the races for November will line up. Sometime this evening I will update my sidebar to reflect this:
- U.S. Senate: Dan Bongino (R) vs. Ben Cardin (D – incumbent)
- District 1: Andy Harris (R – incumbent) vs. Wendy Rosen (D – pending absentees and possible recount)
- District 2: Nancy Jacobs (R) vs. Dutch Ruppersberger (D – incumbent)
- District 3: Eric Knowles (R) vs. John Sarbanes (D – incumbent)
- District 4: Faith Loudon (R) vs. Donna Edwards (D – incumbent)
- District 5: Tony O’Donnell (R) vs. Steny Hoyer (D – incumbent)
- District 6: Roscoe Bartlett (R – incumbent) vs. John Delaney (D)
- District 7: Frank Mirabile (R) vs. Elijah Cummings (D – incumbent)
- District 8: Ken Timmerman (R) vs. Chris Van Hollen (D – incumbent)
So out of 19 contested races I predicted 15 correctly, and I stuck my neck out on percentages a few times as well. I missed Romney by 8 points statewide and 9 points here in Wicomico County. I think the “inevitable” mantle made the difference.
But with Dan Bongino I was only 2 points off statewide. Probably my worst guess, though, was being 19 points off with him in Wicomico County. It’s worth noting that the Douglas late-game media strategy seemed to pay off on the Eastern Shore since he carried six of the nine counties and would have carried the nine-county Shore if he hadn’t been blown out in Cecil County by 1,250 votes. Bongino carried five counties with over 40 percent of the vote (Cecil was one along with Anne Arundel, Frederick, Queen Anne’s, and Montgomery) while Douglas could only claim two such counties (Dorchester and Talbot.)
I saw this possibly ending up as a rerun of the 2010 race where Eric Wargotz had more money while Jim Rutledge had more grassroots (read: TEA Party) support. Obviously media reaches a LOT more people quickly than grassroots efforts do in a statewide race, and the money to buy media is a key element of a successful campaign. That’s where Eric Wargotz succeeded, because Jim Rutledge didn’t raise a lot of money and Eric had a sizable bank account to tap into.
But as it turned out the Douglas bankroll wasn’t all that large, and an abbreviated campaign with a spring primary didn’t give Rich quite enough time to build a support base of his own. Those three or four extra months Dan worked on his campaign (at a time, remember, when better-known prospective opponents like Wargotz and Delegate Pat McDonough were considering the race) turned Bongino from an also-ran into a nominee. By succeeding enough to nationalize the campaign Dan made himself into a formidable opponent to Ben Cardin. Had this been a September primary, though, the result may have been different.
Now we have just under seven months until the general election, a chance for the campaigns to take a quick breather and begin to plot the strategy for November victory. For Democrats, it will be a hope that Obama can fool people into believing he’s an effective President and having long enough coattails. On the other hand, Republicans need to point out the Obama record while spelling out their own solutions – that’s where we’ve been lacking in some respects. We need to give people a reason to vote FOR us rather than AGAINST the other SOB.
So start working on those platforms, ladies and gentlemen. If we are to win, we need to not be a pastel Democrat-lite but present bold colors to Maryland and the nation.
Newt to push for Delaware votes
Those of you across the border may be interested to know Newt Gingrich has several Delaware events planned this week, well in advance of their April 24 primary. He also has two stops later today in Frederick, Maryland.
Newt will be at a local auto dealership and Hood College in Frederick in a last-ditch effort to improve his Maryland standing, which places him in the low teens, according to recent polls. But tomorrow evening wife Callista comes to the First State for a speaking date at the Sussex and Kent County Republican Women’s Dinner in Milford.
Thursday will be a whirlwind day of stops in Delaware, with plans for Callista to read to children at a Christian academy in Dover, Newt to visit the Delaware Electric Cooperative office in Greenwood, then both holding late afternoon and evening rallies in Magnolia and Millsboro, at their respective fire halls. (I suppose one could call that a whistle stop tour.)
It’s obvious Newt is making his appeal to the conservative side of the Delaware GOP as his initial itinerary steers him away from the more centrist Wilmington area, where the bulk of Delaware voters live. On the other hand, the rural portion of Delaware he’s visiting is well off the beaten path for Presidential politics in most years – but 2012 will be an exception.
And it’s likely that these events will have a markedly different feel than Newt’s Salisbury stop, because they’ll likely be populated with local officeseekers gladhanding and the actual trappings of a political rally as opposed to Newt’s low-key college presence – conveniently, Newt has a fire hall rally in both Kent (Magnolia) and Sussex (Millsboro) counties. This is important because Delaware has a number of local elections including a Republican nomination to oppose current Governor Jack Markell.
So Newt fans who couldn’t get a seat at Salisbury University because the event was only open to campus attendees can see the Gingriches live and in person on Thursday if they want to take the drive up Delaware Route 24 to Millsboro. It’s a nice, sleepy little town that will be far more awake come Thursday evening.
2012 campaign comes to Salisbury as Gingrich gives a ‘different’ speech
They were lined up an hour early at Holloway Hall at Salisbury University to witness a little history – for the first time in recent memory the presidential campaign came to the lower Eastern Shore.
And true to the advice given by one university official who stressed the school wanted to promote “critical thinking” without heckling or other inappropriate disruptions, the audience of about 200 inside the hall was very well-behaved. The parents of these SU students should be quite proud of how their charges acted inside the hall. Once the question-and-answer period began it was obvious that not all in the room shared Gingrich’s worldview but the discussion was extremely civil.
Gingrich to make SU appearance
Well, the Presidential campaign comes to the Eastern Shore – but you need to be a member of the SU campus community to see him.
Taking a page from fellow competitor Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich will be appearing at Holloway Hall tomorrow afternoon from 3 to 4 p.m. However, the event is closed to the general public as it’s only open to those with campus ID.
More as the story develops…
Update: I managed to talk my way into the event through a friend, so a full report tonight.
The key nine days
Well, as Mitt Romney says on his website, “it’s your turn, Maryland.” But will the turn be expressed in simple media buys or are we going to be graced with the presence of the four major candidates? That’s the question which doesn’t seem to have an answer, but unfortunately the signs presently point to a heavier emphasis on Wisconsin (which also votes April 3 and has a slightly larger delegate package) than on Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Most would consider Mitt Romney the favorite in this state, which is relatively similar in makeup to a number of other Northeast states where he’s done well. Mitt was the first to visit this state last week by holding a townhall meeting in Arbutus, but he’s also cultivated a long list of endorsements from state elected officials and party insiders in the months leading up to the primary. Add in the fact he has plenty of money to saturate the state’s two key media markets (one of which he also used leading up to the Virginia primary) and he may not even feel the need to visit the state again.
Newt Gingrich hasn’t been a stranger to Maryland, being the keynote speaker at the state party’s Red White and Blue Dinner twice in the last three years (the other speaker was Mitt Romney in 2010.) But while he has a Delaware appearance on his upcoming schedule tomorrow evening at Hockessin (near Wilmington), there are no Maryland events on his docket yet. However, Newt does not have a Wisconsin event slated for himself until Thursday evening, meaning he could spend the midweek in the Free State.
Moreover, Gingrich has an incentive to campaign in this area, as First District Congressman Andy Harris is one of his state co-chairs. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that Gingrich will be in Annapolis Tuesday, which fits with the Delaware event.
Ron Paul has already slated a Maryland event, appearing at a rally at the University of Maryland on Wednesday evening. But he has slowed down his appearances since keeping up a frenetic pace in caucus states earlier this month, sticking mainly to rallies at large colleges (such as the University of Maryland) in other states.
So far Rick Santorum has a limited number of events on his calendar, all in Wisconsin. It’s likely he would be in the Badger State until at least Tuesday, when he has two rallies there. In theory he could be in Maryland tomorrow but that’s very short notice. Given that his rallies seem to be somewhat lengthy affairs, there would likely need to be some advance notice so if he’s indeed coming to Maryland it’s likely Rick would make a final push here closer to the end of the week.
And while early voting has commenced, the vast majority of votes will still be cast on Election Day April 3. So if presidential candidates want to do some retail politicking here in Maryland, their opportunity to do so is waning quickly.
The Maryland campaign begins
Now that Mitt Romney has won the Illinois primary – it was called for him barely a half-hour after the polls closed – one of the next “big” states on the docket is Maryland. (Louisiana comes first, on Saturday.) But Romney is the first major candidate to make a late push in the state, scheduling an event in Arbutus (3:30 at the American Legion Post 109, to be exact) later today. Something tells me Bob Ehrlich is going to show up at this event in his hometown.
One other piece of news worth mentioning is that Romney got another late endorsement from Harford County Executive (and 2014 candidate for something) David Craig, who said in part:
America is yearning for leadership. We are yearning for someone who can improve our course, who can inspire ingenuity, and who can get our economy churning. That man is Mitt Romney.
As Governor, Mitt Romney inherited large deficits that he turned into record surpluses, through focusing on the economy by signing job-creating incentives into law and by slashing the red tape that hinders small business growth.
In 1999, the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics had been bogged down in a bid-rigging scandal, sponsors were fleeing, and the budget was bleeding red ink. When Mitt Romney came on board, he revamped the organization’s leadership, trimmed the budget, and restored public confidence.
He is a leader with executive experience and a proven track record of fixing what is broken, and America is broken.
I would tend to disagree with parts of that statement, but all the endorsement proves is that Craig is like a number of other politicians who seem to be banking on Romney being the “electable” Republican.
But the reason I really wanted to bring this up was to do some lobbying.
If a Republican candidate is to win in November, he is going to have to gather some crossover Democrats and conservative independents who respond to his message. And what better place is there to test drive such a message than an area where Democrats have the voter registration advantage but Republicans hold the offices? Yes, I think Salisbury would be an ideal stop for a Presidential candidate.
Most of the campaigns are spending time in Louisiana this week, which makes sense. But the only candidate who is planning on spending significant time in Maryland next week insofar as I can tell is minor candidate Fred Karger, and my gut feeling is he’d come nowhere near the Eastern Shore because, to put it charitably, he’s not exactly conservative.
I realize that presidential campaign schedules are made on the fly, but I’m sure we would be happy to welcome Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, or even Mitt Romney around these parts. Special added bonus: Delaware votes April 24.
So there is your offer. Take advantage of our hospitality while you can.
A (somewhat) false alarm
On Sunday I received an e-mail from a friend and professional associate of mine wondering aloud if a coup d’etat was being perpetrated:
It appears from my cursory review (I could be wrong, but I don’t think so) that this EO gives this administration complete and utter control, up to and including confiscation, of all farms and equipment, and many, many other items of infrastructure if they, in so many words, choose to do so.
Well, I suppose I’m happy to report that, while the mainstream media has pretty much ignored the Friday afternoon document dump (something they are quite reliable for), Ed Morrissey at HotAir took a closer look at the Executive Order’s effects. In essence, this EO is a rewrite of one (EO12919) signed by President Clinton in 1994, but updated to reflect the new cabinet positions created since.
But there is a problem here; it’s just not the one we think it is.
The law Obama’s EO traces its origin to was passed in 1950, at the start of the Cold War. While the Soviet Union is no more and we have gone through twelve Presidents in that time span (not to mention some more or less undeclared wars and incursions to various points around the globe) the question really should be why, if the update was needed, did President Obama wait until just a few months before the end of his term? Or perhaps another question: why release this on a Friday afternoon when many millions are paying rapt attention to a basketball tournament?
A possible rethinking
A little over a month ago I wrote a post which challenged Ron Paul to prove there was caucus fraud or get out of the race. Well, at first I was criticized by rabid Paul supporters who questioned my assertions, stating it wasn’t the candidate himself making them, well, until he actually made that suggestion. Of course they ignored me then.
But after the debacle on Saturday in St. Charles County, Missouri (or as blogger Bob McCarty termed it, the “St. Patrick’s Day Massacre“) I’m reminded of another incident in the recent past. And I’ll get to that in a moment.
First, though, I want you to read a couple other accounts (The Other McCain and All-American Blogger) of the incidents, including the comments, and learn that Ron Paul supporters sometimes leave a lot to be desired in manners. All done? Good.
Now you can continue past the jump.
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