California Conservative

Dick Pollman has a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer talking about how hard it is to imagine that the Democrats won’t win the White House. My question for him is why he hasn’t noticed that Democrats have a habit of blowing opportunities.

Here’s an old saying about the Arafat-led Palestinian Authority that’s almost as applicable to the Democrats as it is to the Palestinians: The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. In 2004, Democrats like Susan Estrich and Bob Beckel appeared on TV saying that it was John Kerry’s race to lose, that President Bush would be a one term wonder just like his dad.

There’s a reason why Democrats frequently blow opportunities. They often equate resumes with qualifications. They picked John Kerry because he had military experience, which they considered important because we’re at war. What they didn’t take into account was that Sen. Kerry was an elitist snob that couldn’t connect with a blue collar worker if his life depended on it. They also didn’t take into consideration that he’d been wrong on the major foreign policy issues of his generation.

This year, they’ve settled on Barack Obama as their candidate. He’s considerably more likeable than Sen. Kerry but his associations with Jerremiah Wright, William Ayers and Tony Rezko have raised questions about how much he shares the American people’s values. When Michelle Obama told Wisconsin voters that she was finally proud to call herself an American because people were supporting her husband, people scratched their heads. Here’s Ed Koch’s reaction to Michelle Obama’s statement: (more…)

Liz Sidoti’s latest article paints a picture that’s rosier for Democrats than I think is warranted. It’s titled “Democrats Favored in Electoral Map.” Three months ago, I could’ve bought into a number of things that Ms. Sidoti says. That’s long before the Democratic nomination process turned into a bloodbath. Here’s Ms. Sidoti’s picks for potential Democratic opportunities:

Three Western states—Colorado (9), Nevada (5) and New Mexico (5)—appear obvious targets for Democrats given their gains in the region, sharp population growth and large numbers of swing-voting Hispanics. But McCain, a four-term senator from Arizona, does well among those voters, too; his Senate support for an eventual path to citizenship for illegal immigrants could help.

To the east, Iowa (7) holds promise for the Democrats; Republicans narrowly put it into their column in 2004 after years of Democratic dominance. Both Obama and Clinton competed here during the primary. McCain’s opposition to ethanol subsidies complicate his chances, nor is he a favorite of evangelicals. Though less likely to change hands, Missouri (11) is a perennial battleground.

McCain also must defend the two vote-rich prizes that decided the past two elections.

Ohio (20), a bellwether that tipped the race to Bush in 2004, may be poised for a switch, with a rash of job losses, high numbers of Iraq casualties and a series of Republican statewide political defeats in including the governor. (more…)

When Kimberly Strassel sat down for an interview with Steny Hoyer, it was apparent that Rep. Hoyer was in full spin mode. To be fair, though, I wasn’t surprised. Let’s reme,ber that the Democratic House didn’t live up to expectations, especially on their highest priorities. Here’s a great example of Rep. Hoyer’s election spin:

He’s counting on a Democratic president and a greater majority in the Senate to make his life easier. “The election of ‘06 was a change election, but what became clear last year was that [the voters] only elected one-third of the policymakers, the House of Representatives,” he says. “Two-thirds of the Senate was not elected in ‘06; the president was not elected in ‘06…So I think this is the big change election. The American public is going to have to decide whether they want to stay the course or whether they want to change the course…If they want to change the course, they’ll vote for Democrats in the Congress and a Democrat for the presidency, and then they can hold us accountable for what we do.”

Hoyer will likely be disappointed in terms of electing a Democrat as president. At this point, it looks like Barack Obama is the second coming of George McGovern. It isn’t a stretch to think that Obama’s disconnect with blue collar Democrats will put additional House seats in play, especially in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio. (more…)

ABC’s Jake Tapper just posted that the Pastor Wright ad that the NCGOP planned on running won’t run, at least in a large part of the state. The people at those stations are kidding themselves if they think that this stops the so-called controversy. First, let’s identify the stations:

ABC Charlotte affiliate WSOC-TV and CBS Raleigh affiliate WRAL-TV are refusing to air the North Carolina Republican Party TV ad featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an ad condemned by both the RNC and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“I just don’t think it’s appropriate to be on our air,” Joe Pomilla, general manager for WSOC-TV, told The Charlotte Observer. “I think it’s offensive, and I’m not real comfortable with the implications around race.”

Mr. Pomilla’s saying that the ad has racial implications is insulting. This ad doesn’t have anything to do with race except with people who think that everything is racial. This has to do with highlighting Sen. Obama’s relationship with extremists. That’s fair game.

There’s another question that begs asking, namely, would they have refused to run this ad if Hillary was making this buy? I suspect that they would. If they would’ve run this ad had it been Hillary’s buy, then isn’t that censorship?

It’s worth questioning Democrats’ objections to the ad based on this statement: (more…)

Now that the North Carolina GOP advertisement is the latest buzz, John McCain weighed in against the ad. That’s a shame. He should’ve said he didn’t agree with it but that it’s the NCGOP’s call on whether they should run it. Instead of doing that, he tried lecturing Republicans:

McCain called the ad “offensive” and said it “degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats.”

“From the beginning of this election, I have been committed to running a respectful campaign based upon an honest debate about the great issues confronting America today. I expect all state parties to do so as well,” McCain wrote in an e-mail to Daves, asking her to pull the ad.

Sorry, Sen. McCain, but this isn’t part of your business. If the North Carolina GOP wants to tie Rev. Wright to Democratic gubernatorial candidates, then they should do so without getting lectured by an outsider, even if that outsider is the GOP presidential nominee. PERIOD.

I’d further ask Sen. McCain what he finds offensive about the ad. The fact that it’s causing Sen. Obama grief tells me that it’s worth running. I’d also suggest that the Pastor J-Wright issue is important to alot of people. Just because John McCain doesn’t want to hit Obama hard on the character issue doesn’t mean that those issues are off limits. I suspect that the North Carolina GOP is attempting to put the Democrats’ candidates for governor on the defensive for endorsing Sen. Obama. I suspect that they’re trying to say that his judgment isn’t solid and that these candidates have exercised poor judgment in endorsing him.

I also suspect that this ad is having great effect in North Carolina because it’s a solidly red state. Pastor J-Wright’s anti-American diatribes won’t sit well with North Carolina voters.

That’s fair game as far as I’m concerned.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, RNC, North Carolina GOP, Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

In this morning’s LA Times, Arianna Huffington explains that the media bias against Democrats isn’t because of “the blowhards on AM talk radio” or Fox News. She explains that it’s the “right-wing message has become a part of the news media’s DNA.” No, that isn’t a missprint. Huffing Arianna actually thinks that the media is going too easy on Republicans. Here’s part of her venom:

Certainly other White House insiders, such as William Safire and George Stephanopoulos, have made the leap to TV and print news. But this current crop remains unabashed propagandists. By embracing them, the mainstream media have revealed a mile-wide streak of self-loathing.

Have they been so cowed by the Republicans’ relentless branding of them as “liberal” that they feel compelled to sleep with the enemy? Make no mistake, Rove, Kristol and Snow are the enemies of honesty, truth, facts, reality and the public’s right to know.

Rove’s commitment to deception is legendary. His entire career as a GOP shot-caller was built on it. Kristol, Dan Quayle’s chief of staff in the first Bush administration, is neoconservatism’s crown prince. As editor of the Weekly Standard, he was a prime pusher of invading Iraq, and his claims about the war’s progress have been discredited again and again. His reward: a column in Time magazine in 2006-07, and then this year a conservative slot on the Gray Lady’s Op-Ed page. The New York Times might as well have given a weekly column to infamous fabricator Jayson Blair.

To parrot George Will “Well.”

Rove, Kristol and Snow are “enemies of honesty, truth, facts, reality and the public’s right to know”? Hearing the publisher of the Huffington Post make that statement is one of the most absurd statements I’ve ever heard. (more…)

The concession speech that Sen. Obama delivered last night was an exercise in intellectual dishonesty. In delivering such a dishonest speech, he’s re-inforcing the notion that he’s just another intellectually dishonest politician. Here’s part of his intellectual dishonesty:

John McCain believes that George Bush’s Iraq policy is a success, so he’s offering four more years of a war with no exit strategy; a war that’s sending our troops on their third tour, and fourth tour, and fifth tour of duty; a war that’s costing us billions of dollars a month and hasn’t made us any safer.

That’s a steaming pile of BS. Sen. McCain criticized President Bush’s policy. Sen. McCain frequently told people that he didn’t have confidence in Don Rumsfeld, that they needed more troops in Iraq. Had President Bush implemented the surge right after his reelection, Iraq likely would’ve been largely cleaned up by now.

Though that’s the biggest half-truth Sen. Obama said, it certainly wasn’t his only whopper:

John McCain said that George Bush’s economic policies have led to “great progress” over the last seven years, and so he’s promising four more years of tax cuts for CEOs and corporations who didn’t need them and weren’t asking for them; tax cuts that he once voted against because he said they “offended his conscience.”

Sen. Obama knows that Sen. McCain isn’t “promising four more years of tax cuts for CEOs”; Sen. McCain is advocating making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Sen. McCain is advocating that because he knows that letting the tax cuts expire is a huge tax increase.

Let’s also draw a contrast between President Bush’s economic policies and the policies that Sen. McCain is advocating. Sen. McCain is committed to eliminating earmarks. He’s threatening vetoes to bills with lots of wasteful spending. President Bush didn’t veto an appropriations bill until after Democrats regained control of the House and Senate. Here’s another portion of the speech that’s worth laughing at: (more…)

Last week, John Judis wrote about his misgivings about Sen. Obama. Today, he’s asking if Sen. Obama is the next McGovern. Here’s what Mr. Judis wrote on the subject:

Indeed, if you look at Obama’s vote in Pennsylvania, you begin to see the outlines of the old George McGovern coalition that haunted the Democrats during the ’70s and ’80s, led by college students and minorities. In Pennsylvania, Obama did best in college towns (60 to 40 percent in Penn State’s Centre County) and in heavily black areas like Philadelphia.

Its ideology is very liberal. Whereas in the first primaries and caucuses, Obama benefited from being seen as middle-of-the-road or even conservative, he is now receiving his strongest support from voters who see themselves as “very liberal.” In Pennsylvania, he defeated Clinton among “very liberal” voters by 55 to 45 percent, but lost “somewhat conservative” voters by 53 to 47 percent and moderates by 60 to 40 percent. In Wisconsin and Virginia, by contrast, he had done best against Clinton among voters who saw themselves as moderate or somewhat conservative.

Without scrutiny, Sen. Obama crafted the image he wanted. Now that he’s scrutinized, that moderate image is history. It’s difficult to say that you’re a uniter when you attend a church pastored by a racist. People won’t buy the notion that you’re commander-in-chief material when you’ve got connections with an unrepentant terrorist. People won’t buy the fact that you share people’s goals when you’re an elitist. (more…)

Barack Obama had better hope the superdelegates didn’t pay attention to tonight’s Pennsylvania primary. He’d better hope they don’t check the map in western and rural Pennsylvania, where he got thoroughly thrashed. This county-by-county map tells the tale of how thoroughly Obama got thrashed.

Of the 68 counties in Pennsylvania, Hillary won 23 counties with 55-65% of the vote and 29 more counties with 65-75% of the vote. Fayette County went Hillary with 79%. Sen. Obama won only 7 counties, with Philadelphia being his best county with 65% of the vote.

The only logical conclusion we can draw from that is that Sen. Obama’s statement at the San Fransisco fundraiser hurt him badly. That said, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Mary Mitchell complains that the Clintons counted on racism to win: (more…)

The American Prospect is going where no other pundit will go. In fact, Terence Samuel’s prediction is the opposite of what Sen. Obama is predicting. First, here’s what Obama said on the radio Monday:

Obama on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh this morning:

“I’m not predicting a win. I’m predicting it’s going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect,” he says (audio).

Clinton began the Pennsylvania primary with a lead of more than 16 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average; her lead now stands around 5 points.

Here’s the opening to Samuel’s column:

That creaking noise you hear is the sound of me going way out on limb to predict that Barack Obama will win the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday, finally ending Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. (more…)