Everything I Know Is Wrong

Slap on wrist deemed to harsh for Joe the Plumber snoop

Ohio Capitol Connection

Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) Director Helen Jones-Kelley was found to have acted improperly both in her authorization to use ODJFS confidential databases to search for information on "Joe the Plumber" and in her use of state resources to engage in political activity in a report issued Thursday by the state’s Inspector General (IG) Thomas Charles.

In response, Gov. Ted Strickland late on Thursday announced that he was suspending Jones-Kelley for one month without pay, saying that he values “her contributions to the state and her local community” but that he accepts the IG’s judgment “that there was not an adequate business purpose for the searches in question.

A month vacation without pay, boy that guy is strict.

Coleman's lead rebounds to 167

Ten minutes ago the Star-Tribune updated their estimate of the state of the Coleman-Franken re-count from 115 to 167.

Star-Tribune
The incumbent Coleman entered the recount with a 215-vote edge over Franken, a comedian and author. That lead had dropped in the first three days of the recount, but Coleman rebounded some in the latest results and is 167 votes in front when comparing totals in precincts where the new count is complete. But the figure doesn't include ballot challenges, which have caused vote tallies for both candidates to drop.

According to state numbers, there have been 1,893 challenges between the campaigns, although some could be withdrawn before the Canvassing Board's Dec. 16 meeting. The two are running about even in challenges.

The count goes on.

And on...

Whitman: Republican Party Prisoners of Social Fundamentalists

Christine Todd Whitman, co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council and former head of the EPA, in a Washington Post Editorial today says that the reason Republicans were swept out of office all across the country is that they are held hostage by social fundamentalists, unable to move to the left where they really ought to be.

WaPo
Our central thesis was simple: The Republican Party had been taken hostage by "social fundamentalists," the people who base their votes on such social issues as abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. Unless the GOP freed itself from their grip, we argued, it would so alienate itself from the broad center of the American electorate that it would become increasingly marginalized and find itself out of power.

The only problem is that she is completely wrong. Her argument that Republicans must move more to the middle is easily refuted. John McCain is without a doubt the most moderate voter in the Senate, and he made no headway with the so-called middle. Whitman's assertion that he "tried mightily to assuage the Republican Party's social-fundamentalist wing" is laughable. McCain barely managed to hide his disdain for conservatives and conservatism. What really happened is that Republicans, when they had the power to act, didn't behave any differently that Democrats. Republican's "Contract with America" took a principled stance, which energized the electorate, but they didn't follow through with it. Spending was out of control, and entitlements abounded. The electorate decided that since the party in power was acting like Democrats, they might as well elect Democrats.

Whitman is recommending the same strategy liberals have been advocating for turning around our failing school system despite throwing unprecedented amounts of money at it: throw more money at it. Whitman suggests that since throwing the moderate Bush, and uber-moderate McCain at the electorate didn't work, we should go even farther to the left.

Whitman's philosophy is exactly what is already wrong with the Republican party. And she wants more. Instead of differentiating themselves from the left, she says they should join it. That way lies oblivion.  The Republicans will never out liberal the Democrats, and trying to will destroy their party. When the choice is between liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans there can be only one outcome. And it's not good for Republicans.

Republicans, indeed any party that deserves to exist, should take a principled stance and follow through with it. If two parties have the same stance then there is nothing at issue but power, and who holds it. That will never win an election. People have to believe in the principles that drive the party or they won't go along for the ride. In this case the electorate believed in the principles that the Republicans espoused, they just didn't believe they would follow through.

Who can blame them?

Update: Hot Air's Ed Morrissey comes to much the same conclusion, but wisely warns against excluding any part of the party in a rush to attain ideological purity.

Ed Morrissey
In order to regain the majority, we need to stop attacking each other and start focusing on those issues that unite us.  The only way to achieve real change is to combine our strengths and put ourselves back in position to change policy.  It may feel good to stand alone with our ideological purity, but in the end, it will never afford us the leverage to make real changes.  Only by agreeing to pursue what unites us can we forge an alliance that can achieve any positive change for America.

What unites us, then?  We need to get back to those First Principles of fiscal responsibility (which we blew when we had the opportunity), smaller government (which we betrayed with the K Street Project and other lobbyist pandering), national security, free market economics, federalism, and lower taxes.  If we can agree to pursue those as priorities, and if we can rebuild our credibility on those goals, then we can convince moderates to once again support Republicans, especially if the Democrats run off the rails in the next two years.

Well maybe not just a guy in the neighborhood

Bill Ayers has come out of whatever cave he has been hiding in.

Sun-Times
Ayers, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, adds few new details about his relationship with Obama in the afterword to Fugitive Days: Memoirs of an Anti-War Activist. The book is being reissued this month.

“We had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I’d made a small donation to his earliest political campaign,” he writes.

So, not just a guy... more of a family friend who hosted President-elect Obama's first fund raiser in his living room. Now where have I heard that before?

Lieberman at the Fulcrum

Former Democrat, and now Independent Senator Joe Lieberman has thoroughly ticked off his liberal colleagues. When he actively campaigned for Republican Senator McCain this year many of the Democrats with whom he has caucused for the last few years felt that it was the last straw. Their knee jerk reaction upon winning big on November 4th was to strip him of his committees and simply cut him loose to fend for himself.

Cooler heads among the Democrats have realized that Lieberman could very well be talked into caucusing with the Republicans, who would benefit greatly from his vote. Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, says Lieberman has friends in high places.

A high-level senate Democratic source tells me former President Clinton is making calls on Sen. Lieberman's behalf.

I can also confirm, on the same basis, what Huffington Post has already reported, that President-elect Obama is signaling to Senate leadership and other party officials that he wants Sen. Lieberman to be in the Democratic caucus in the 111th Congress.

Marshall points us to Kos who says he has  "also heard from a Senate staffer" and who offers some uncharacteristically thoughtful analysis. Up to a point. He then summarizes, and ignores, his own analysis.

So Democrats have three choices:

1. Let him keep his committee chairmanship,

2. Offer him a new one, or

3. Strip him of everything.

I suspect with Obama's edict (again, assuming such reports are accurate), #3 is off the table as it looks too much like retribution and for whatever bizarre reason, that's apparently bad. Democrats love playing the "battered spouse" bit. But option #2 is still available.

Sure, Lieberman has argued that if he loses Homeland Security he'll bolt, but he's bluffing. He's still got 2012 to think about, and being in a GOP minority with zero committee chairmanships won't do him any favors, either politically or substantively on policy matters.

So call his bluff. Give him some other committee chairmanship. If he doesn't like it and bolts, it won't be because Democrats pushed him out.

Kos then contradicts himself by providing a big graphic link—"Just Say NO to Joe"— at the bottom of his post, to a form providing an automatic way to advocate stripping Lieberman of all his Homeland Security chairmanship and not giving him another.

Democrats are clearly conflicted. On the one hand they long for revenge, though "that's apparently bad". On the other hand they need Lieberman if they want to push through their agenda with as little opposition as possible. From another point of view, Lieberman can't feel very indebted to the Dems, he won his last contest with the help of large numbers of Republicans who voted for him. All of which puts him at the exact point from which, very carefully, a large amount of leverage could be deployed.

Both liberal Democrats and moderate Republicansfear Sarah Palin

Why, you ask, is their so much cowardly and downright rude criticism of Sarah Palin from liberal Democrats, and even moderate Republicans (not to mention the McCain campaign)? The answer is easy. Fear.

Rasmussen
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.

Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable.
[emphasis mine - Sean]

Sarah Palin represents new energy and new vitality for the conservative movement in America. Conservatives see her as someone who unapologetically stands up for conservative values. She may not be an awe inspiring speaker, her manner may be down-home, but her obvious belief in common-sense conservatism is beyond question. When you are right you shouldn't have to apologize for it—and she doesn't.

Compassionate conservatism is a mistake. Moderate republicanism is a mistake. John McCain failed to rally the base because the base is conservative, and John McCain is not.

The base hungers for an unapologetic conservative. There will be a lot of searching for answers in the next two years. A lot of trying to figure out where the Republican party should go, what it should be. There will be skirmishes between the conservative and moderate factions of the party—maybe even outright war. But the answer is really very simple: stand up for what you believe in.

The Republican party has proven beyond a doubt that they cannot outdo the Democrats at being the bringers of entitlements. Conservatives don't believe in entitlements and can't muster the enthusiasm required to spend other people's money in really creative and wasteful ways. Conservatives would rather find a way to solve a problem without making people dependent on government. And that is what they should do.

Conservatives will never be as good at hiding their true agenda as liberals are. They simply don't have as much practice at dissembling. Americans have never really liked a truly liberal agenda, and because of this liberals are accustomed to masking their purposes in order to get elected; the press aids and abets them. Conservatives on the other hand have not shown any aptitude whatsoever for hiding their motives, and the press shows their plans in the worst possible light in every case.

Conservatives are good at being right. They are good at using reason rather than emotion to guide their actions. They are practical. They stand upon solid moral ground. They should not be afraid to state their true reasons for wanting to pursue a conservative course.

It really is that easy.

No evidence of "Bradley Effect" in this years polling

The "Bradley effect"—named after Tom Bradley—who lead in the polls but did not prevail in the actual 1982 California election for Govenor—has hopefully reared it's ugly head for the last time. The assertion of the Bradley Effect is that white people when polled said that they would be voting for Tom Bradley because they they didn't want to be perceived as racist, but then did not vote for him because they really are racist.

Associated Press
Whether whites supported Barack Obama or not, they don't seem to have lied to pollsters about it.

Obama's election triumph on Tuesday presented no evidence of the so-called Bradley effect, in which whites who oppose a black politician mislead pollsters about whom they will vote for. Instead, national and state pre-election polls were generally accurate in reflecting voters' preferences in the presidential contest.

"I certainly hope this drives a stake through the heart of that demon," Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority, said of the Bradley effect.

The Bradley Effect never had any basis if fact. It is just as likely that the results were due to the same over performance that we have seen for Democrats in the presidential polling in 2000 and 2004. The speculation that race was the culprit was a self serving justification. Hopefully we have seen the last of it.

Franken now down only 237 votes

Star-Tribune:

Just as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie was explaining to reporters the recount process in one of the narrowest elections in Minnesota history, an aide rushed in with news: Pine County's Partridge Township had revised its vote total upward -- another 100 votes for Democratic candidate Al Franken, putting him within .011 percentage points of Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

The reason for the change? Exhausted county officials had accidentally entered 24 for Franken instead of 124 when the county's final votes were tallied at 5:25 Wednesday morning.

"That's why we have recounts," Ritchie said, surveying the e-mail sent in from the county auditor. "Human error. People make mistakes."

I find it fascinating that these "accidents" always seem to favor the Democrats. There must be some law of physics I don't know about.

I won't hold my breath while I wait for them to "find" more Coleman votes.

Update: From Powerline.

Hot off the press, the first apparent evidence of fraud. Last night at around 7:30, a precinct in Mountain Iron, St. Louis County, mysteriously updated its vote total to add 100 new votes--all 100 for Barack Obama and Al Franken.

Mountain Iron uses optical scanning, so the Coleman campaign asked for a copy of the tape documenting the ballots cast on election night. St. Louis County responded by providing a tape that includes the newly-added 100 votes, and is dated November 2--the Sunday before the election. St. Louis County reportedly denies being able to produce the genuine tape from election night, even though Minnesota law, as I understand it, requires that tape to be signed by the election judges and publicly displayed.

Maybe there is some legitimate explanation for these events, but I haven't thought of one yet. More to come.

I Hope

I have two hopes for the immediate future... which are entirely contradictory. It's an either/or kind of a situation.

Hope number one is just a flight of fancy. I hope Mr. Obama ran to the left in order to win, but will govern as a centrist.

Done laughing? Let's proceed.

Hope number two I think is highly likely. I hope Mr. Obama does everything he promised to do. I hope he pushes through his tax increases, which are targeted at exactly, precisely the wrong place to help us recover from a recession. I hope he advances his Euro-socialist agenda with massive entitlements and transfer of wealth. I hope he impliments his naive, Utopian foreign policy.

And I hope it doesn't take too long for the American people to figure out that Mr. Obama is not in the least the person he ran as being.

A Dream Fulfilled

My friend Tim writes:

After one of the most contentious election battles—huge voter turnout with a small margin of victory—is there anything we can agree on? The answer is a resounding YES! Our country's long battle with racism is over. We can remember the past but it's time to move forward.

More than half the population voted for a black man. The other half did not vote against him because he was black, they voted against the man's ideology. If even one out of ten US voters were racist this election would not have been won by Obama. This election is about the end of race pimping strong arm tactics and whining holding any sway. But more importantly this election is about a dream of Martin Luther King being fulfilled. As conservatives we join with our liberal citizens and celebrate a country where any one can grow up to be president.