Massive GOP Win; So, Now What?

Mark Noonan34 Comments

First and foremost, boys and girls: be realistic.

No, there won’t be an impeachment of Obama (and, anyways, even if we could, do you really think we’d want to relieve the Democrats of the Obama albatross at this point?).

No, there won’t be a repeal of ObamaCare: Obama would veto any such proposal (or anything which defunds or otherwise guts the legislation) and we would not have the votes to over-ride.

Just forget about things like that. Obama is still President and still wields awesome authority and influence – that is a problem for another day: we GOPers also let the President get too powerful and that power has to be reduced…but we can’t get there right now. All we can do for the present is remember that Obama is a committed leftist, doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about what the American people think, is more than willing to break the law to get his way and believes that it is his bound duty to destroy anything non-left. We have to work with this, or around this – we can’t get rid of it or destroy it right now. And the MSM will still form a praetorian guard around him, with the only caveat being that they’ll jump on a grenade for Hillary in preference to Obama; they gotta think about the future and Obama is old news.

But there is still plenty the GOP can do. Always keeping in mind that the real purpose is to set the stage for a complete GOP victory in 2016, of course. We’re not necessarily going for enacted reforms – if we get some, great: but the real purpose is to set a reform agenda comprehensible to the American people as a platform for defeating the Democrats in 2016. The best means to do this is to pick about 10 issues which are very popular with the American people and over time pass them out of Congress and send them to Obama. Passing popular reform legislation will give GOPers things to brag about in 2016 and will show our party as being the party of “getting things done”. It will also put Obama in quite a pickle – reforms such as approving the Keystone Pipeline or allowing people to recover their cancelled health care plans will be popular, but Obama will be in a bad position on them. He’ll either have to veto them and anger the American people, or sign them and tick off the liberal base he needs to ensure his agenda is protected in 2016 (and Obama does want a Democrat to win in 2016 – he knows a GOP President in 2016 will undo all or most of what he’s accomplished). To us, it doesn’t matter what he does – if he signs it, then we’ve got good stuff to talk about; if he vetoes it, then we get to campaign on getting a Republican into the White House to move forward with reform.

To be sure, Obama will try to short-circuit such actions. His Presser on Wednesday is enough to confirm that. He will try to do things to outrage Republicans and, in his hopes, provoke a heavy counter attack which he hopes can be used to cast him as the long-suffering reformer stymied by an obstructionist Congress. Hillary wants this, too – she’d like nothing better than to campaign on the concept that she can get Congress to work. We dare not let Obama do this. In fact, its much better at this point that we ignore what Obama wants to do. Let him propose away – just go ahead and pass what we believe is best and let it land on his desk. Once the reforms are there, he’ll have to do something. For the first time in his life he’ll have to take concrete action that he can’t blame on anyone else. He’ll hate it. It will be wonderful

We did very well in 2014. The 2016 electorate will be different – it will be more Democrat friendly, no matter how bad things are going for Obama and the Democrats by then. But it will not be insurmountably Democrat. A program of clear, easy to understand reforms which will directly benefit the American people will show us as the party of the people – and allow our 2016 nominee to campaign on a reform platform against eight years of Obama failure, and the prospect of an Obama Third Term if the Democrats win. This is not the sure path to victory, but it is the path to victory. Let’s go ahead and take it.

Open Thread… What Happens Next? Or……. Massive Gloating Open Thread!

tiredoflibbs13 Comments

To start, I believe Obame will push his executive order for amnesty. He has nothing to lose now. Then the Senate Democrats will remove the nuclear option from the Senate – a 60 vote majority to end the filibuster. Remember, we have to “protect the voting rights of the minority party”. Your thoughts and predictions.

Gloating?

Let’s see what comes to mind…..

“We won, you lost. Get over it!”

“I won, you lost. Deal with it.”

“They could come along for the ride, but they would have to sit in the back.”

on and on and on…..

Now, again, they speak of “bipartisanship”, “cooperation” and “working together” – they were not interested when they held the majorities of both houses and even only the Senate.  Amazing what happens after their policies put them in the predicament they find themselves in.

Also…. both environmental and gun control candidates lose big – both victories for common sense and the 2nd Amendment!

2014 Mid-Terms (RED WAVE!!!!) Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

Ok, so here we go – the Big Day. Or, as Democrats have put it over the last couple days: The Day The Racist, Sexist, Homophobic GOP Doesn’t Really Win Because We Never Cared About This Election, Anyways. So There!

Will it be a blow out? Not sure. The thing to look for if that is happening is a late call in Virginia and/or a Brown win in New Hampshire – if that happens, then things are going rather well for the GOP. Here’s What I think will happen:

The GOP will win on election night the Senate contests in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Colorado. Arkansas and Alaska. We’ll eventually win Georgia and Louisiana, as well, but both of those might go to a run-off. I’ll go out on a small limb and say we survive in Kansas, though the bogus “Independent” Orman might be able to eke out a win as the Republican Governor of Kansas loses, and thus drags down the whole GOP ticket in that State. For those doing the quick math, that means on election night, even with a Kansas loss, the GOP gets to 51 Senators – 53 once the run-offs are done, and Georgia just might be decided on election night. Given that the GOP will almost certainly win an outright majority on election night, even Orman might decide that he likes the GOP just fine for caucusing purposes.

There is still, by the way, a realistic chance for the GOP to pad its total if we pull out the win in North Carolina and surge to victory in New Hampshire. NC is real tight and could go either way while for all of Brown’s vigorous campaign, New Hampshire is further out of reach…but a big GOP wave, if it really shows up, could drag both those States into our column. That happens and after all is said and done, the GOP comes away from Campaign 2014 with 55 Senate seats. A 10 seat gain would be astonishing, but Democrats will still claim it means nothing and now we’re all Ready for Hillary!

For the House, I’m thinking 244 is the eventual GOP total – though a big GOP wave could get the Republicans up to as high as 250.

Governorships – its a bad year for us: we’re pretty sure of losing Kansas, and absolutely sure of losing Pennsylvania. We might also come up short in Florida and even Michigan is looking a little iffy. Walker will win in Wisconsin – and thus make himself the logical choice for the GOP nomination in 2016. State legislatures will fall our way, but the only prediction I’ll make is the Nevada State Senate going GOP – the others I just don’t know enough about (and there’s an outside chance that the GOP will win the Nevada Assembly, as well, though that is longish-shot…but Governor Sandoval has done a great job of rebuilding the GOP in Nevada…I figured him for a run against Reid in 2016, but word I’ve heard is that he’d rather have bleach poured into his eyes than be a Senator…so, he’ll either angle for a VP slot or he might shock everyone by tossing his hat into the Presidential ring).

What do you think will happen?

UPDATE: John Hindraker gives us all a downer to start our day:

…Mitt Romney’s pollsters were famously wrong in 2012. They thought Mitt was going to win because they failed to foresee how extraordinarily effective the Democrats’ ground game would be; therefore, they underestimated Democratic turnout. The great unknown in this year’s election is, how many Democrats will the party be able to drive to the polls, notwithstanding that Obama is not on the ballot and things have gone poorly for the administration and for Senate Democrats over the last two years? The reality is that no pollster knows the answer to that question…

Everything does depend on who actually shows up to vote – we do have some good indicators in early voting that lots of GOPers are showing up, not quite so many Democrats. But this is now Election Day, and if the Democrats have their GOTV on warp drive, things can come out very different from what the polls say. We’ll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE II: Just wow! Happy dance. Might get to 54!

A 680 Member House of Representatives?

Mark Noonan

It is, at least, proposed:

The American public’s dislike of Congress is far from a new development in US politics. However, over the past few years the situation has gotten even worse with public approval of this institution hovering around historic lows.

The vast majority of citizens in this country think most members of Congress have lost touch with the people and don’t represent their interests. There are not many simple answers to remedy this problem but one change that might help bring members of Congress closer to the people is to increase the size of the US House of Representatives to 680 members.
One hundred years at 435 seats

For almost a century the House has consisted of 435 members. This seemingly permanent fixture of American politics often obscures the reality that during the first century of the country’s existence the House was increased almost every ten years after its original size of 65 members was established…

Of course, I’ve been yammering on about this for years. Over at Hot Air, Jazz Shaw reviews the proposal and counters with the idea that it might be better if we just got to some hard-to-game redistricting system. This is a good idea, but I’ve been advised since I was a teenager – and first got a bit outraged at gerrymandering – that there is no system which can’t be gamed by people with the right amount of shamelessness and dishonesty (ie, the general run of any political class).

We do, however, need to do something – quite clearly, regardless of which party is in power, the government and it’s attendant Ruling Class is entirely disinterested in the fate of the American people, and when it gets into the hands of the actually baleful (ie, the Obama Administration), the results can be rather catastrophic. To me, there isn’t just One Answer – there has to be a complete reworking of the system. In service of this, trying to make a harder-than-usual-to-game districting system is a good idea, but we also need to increase the size of the House (my preference these days is for 651 members) because a House member should be (a) someone who can actually be in touch with his constituents and (b), potentially, be someone who can run for the office on a shoestring relative to the cost of a Senate or gubernatorial office. But with redistricting and increasing the size of the House, term limits are a requirement or we’re just spinning our wheels. But here’s the part that will make a lot of people stop in shock – term limits just in the sense of saying “Congresscritter, you can’t be in office after Date X” isn’t good enough. Term limits must also include a prohibition against obtaining a different federal elective or appointive office for a period of time after leaving the current office. I’d say five years is a good time frame. You’re a Representative and coming to the end of your term limit (I’d limit House members to four, two-year terms) – see ya in five years. Until that time has passed, you can’t run for President or Senate, nor be appointed to a federal judgeship, nor take a position within the Executive Branch of government (five years it to make it unlikely in most cases that a person who leaves office will be able to be rewarded with a new federal office by gift of a grateful President). Yes, this does mean that a sitting Senator or such won’t be able to be selected for the Cabinet by the President – this, right there, would have spared us both Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of State Kerry; it also would have spared us President Obama. It would not, however, have spared us President Lincoln nor President Reagan – and for you liberals, it still would have allowed President Roosevelt and President Wilson.

But we can’t stop there. We need to go further and further into this, I’m afraid. We need more States. 50 just doesn’t cut it – especially since at least a dozen of them are not really States, but two or more States rather mashed together as the States were created in the 19th century – when national population wasn’t a third of its current level and the new States, especially, were largely empty of people and hadn’t had time to develope into organic politico-economic units. As I’ve said again and again, just in my State of Nevada it is starkly clear that the northern part of the State is vastly different in needs and outlook from the southern part. There is no reason that the people of Winnemucca should have to put up, for instance, with a Senator or governor elected on the strength of voters in Las Vegas – and vice-versa. Having more States would ensure that the State government are really representative of the people of the State rather than being representative of the large population centers within the States – it would make it so that Senators, especially, represent their States, rather than select special interests within the States (California’s Senators, for instance, are the merest tools of the monied interests in San Francisco and Los Angeles – the rest of the State has, in practical terms, no representation in the United States Senate).

It is, as we have seen, enormously difficult to maintain a democratic Republic – but part of our difficulty is that a great deal of power is held by a very small group of people representing only very narrow interests – and they can do this because the way our system is set up combined with the way our nation has developed from 3 million people on the east coast to 317 million people spread out of over 3 million square miles has allowed too much power to aggregate in just a few areas. California, Texas, Florida and New York have power far in excess of their aliquot portion because they carry far too much weight in Presidential and Senatorial elections…but, worse than that, all four of the States garner their power from just a few metropolitan areas – New York from New York City, California from Los Angeles and San Francisco, eg; in other words, the powerful in those States are wielding power they haven’t properly earned from the totality of the people within the States, because they can safely ignore a lot of the people as long as they please the particular people in the large, urban areas…and then take that excess, unearned power and apply it to the rest of the country. Breaking up the sources of power will allow more people access to the power – and thus to have a say in how things shall and shall not be done. In a democratic republic, political health is only possible if the largest possible number of people and interests have a say in governing. It does, of course, make for lumbering, slow and contentious government, but that is the only way to safety for a people wishing to remain free. It must be that we have to ask everyone’s brother for permission before we move – that way we have the best chance (though still not perfect, of course) of ensuring that national policy reflects the overall desires of the American people.

So, redistricting reform; term limits, increase the size of the House, increase the number of States. That has to be the ultimate plan for the political reform of the United States – if we don’t do this, then we will, as I said, be spinning our wheels. Those who have power right now will not want to give it up – and if the GOP wins on Tuesday, as everyone expects, then all you’ll see is the Ruling Class turning itself to the task of co-opting the new GOP powers-that-be, to ensure that they stay on board with things as they are (this is what killed the GOP revolution of 1994 – eventually, the GOP was captured by the system; for all the reformist zeal of the Class of ’94, they failed to recognize that only fundamental reforms will do – anything less than that, and the Ruling Class will eventually re-conquer).

Remember Obama’s Go To Answer For Everything: “It’s Bush’s Fault!”?

tiredoflibbs11 Comments

You wait long enough, the TRUTH comes out. The TRUTH just slams through the lies and misinformation of the PREGRESSIVE Left.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank released: UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE GREAT RECESSION

Their conclusion? Unemployment remained high because the federal government (all branches controlled by the Democrats) kept extending unemployment benefits – “In particular, our estimates imply that unemployment benefit extensions can account for most of the persistently high unemployment after the Great Recession.”

The left would attack anyone who opposed the extensions. The left said that unemployment payments was the best stimulus for local economies. The report said that continued high unemployment offset any small benefits to the local economy.

“Our results of a sizeable macro effect leads us to expect that the stimulative effect of higher spending by the unemployed is largely offset by the dramatic negative effect on employment from the general equilibrium effect of benefit expansion on vacancy creation.”

Again, extended unemployment benefits kept many out of employment. Extended UNEMPLOYMENT is not “BUSH’S FAULT”, but the fault of the left. That is the reason they lost the House in 2010.

One waits long enough and the TRUTH WE ALREADY KNEW comes out. Obame’s policies are a failure….. and the fact that many are RUNNING away from Obame, his failures and his policies, during their re-election campaigns, is proof.

Obama Losing Yet Another War

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Libya turned out disastrously and, of course, Obama completely threw away the victory President Bush had won in Iraq. We all know the fate of Afghanistan will likely be an Islamist take-over shortly after our final departure and, now, it is clear that we’re not doing nearly what is necessary to beat ISIS:

While it seems ISIS’s advance on the cities of Kobani in Syria and Baghdad in Iraq has been stalled, it is not clear if the Islamic State’s territorial gains can be speedily reversed. The threat ISIS poses to both Iraqi forces and coalition assets, moreover, is increasing.

Video footage released by ISIS fighters in Iraq suggests the fundamentalist militants have now acquired Chinese shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles which might be responsible for the recent downing of Iraqi helicopters. One American official, speaking to The New York Times, characterized the weapons as “game changers.”

There have been many temporary successes in America’s war against ISIS, almost all of them offset by troubling setbacks. Nearly three months into Operation Inherent Resolve, it is not entirely clear what has been accomplished…

Nothing, but that is only because nothing related to ISIS was contemplated – the military action appears to have been no more than a very reluctant action by Obama with a mind towards shoring up his deteriorating poll numbers in the United States. So far, one American military life has been lost in a non-combat incident and while we might think that fortunate, it still doesn’t do much for the man who died. What are we to put on his head stone? Died heroically in an attempt to goose Obama’s poll numbers out of the basement?

The fundamental problem here is that Obama – and all liberals like him – refuse to accept that our world is, in fact, governed by force. The sillier liberals – like Obama – simply hold that this is not the case while more rational liberals (a tiny minority of the whole) believe that not only that it should not be, but can be changed to the point where it is governed by mutually acceptable agreement. It is a staggering failure of intellect for liberals to hold these views, and the disastrous results have been seen now for a century.

Continue reading →

End the Death Penalty, and Life Imprisonment?

Mark Noonan6 Comments

The other day, Pope Francis yet again caused a bit of a stir:

Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a “penal populism” that promises to solve society’s problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.

“It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples’ lives from an unjust aggressor,” the pope said Oct. 23 in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.

“All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment,” he said. “Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.”

The pope noted that the Vatican recently eliminated life inprisonment from its own penal code…

Of course, it was Pope St. John Paul II who first asserted that the death penalty has to go – and I admit that it was this which turned me away from the death penalty. Now, we are being challenged again – but it is a harder pill for people to swallow, even those who oppose the death penalty.

The immediate and rather natural reaction to this is that there appear to be some people who simply cannot live in society – they are so clearly violent and dangerous that no one wishes to risk having them out there to kill again. It is easy to bring to mind people like Ted Bundy and go, “ok, so we won’t kill people like that – but we can’t ever let a man like that out, again!”. This is reasonable. But upon reflection, I’m taking a bit of a different view – and I think I see where the Pope is coming from.

Continue reading →

What Media Bias? Part 199

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Got this over at Ace of Spades:

So yesterday a Hamas supporter drove his car into a pack of people near a Jerusalem train station and killed a baby.

That baby is — was, rather — reportedly an American citizen…

…You will not believe the headlines AP gave to this story.

Take 1: Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem

Yes, they shot the man after he drove his car over a baby and then fled the scene. Odd that AP would find this to be the lede of the story…

The AP adjusted the headline as they went along and eventually conceded that the actual story wasn’t that a man was shot – apparently for no reason – by the Israeli police but, instead, that a terrorist attack had occurred.

One has to wonder: just how do reporters and editors think of these things? I mean, come on: this is a pretty straightforward thing. A terrorist plows into a bunch of Jews in Jerusalem – it is a horrible, terrible crime but it is not at all hard to understand. The Islamists hate the Jews and it is well known that out of this hatred comes a desire to kill, and especially to kill the most innocent and defenseless. This has been going on for a long time – and yet this story crosses the wire and the AP writes a headline which gives absolutely no information on what actually happened. It is as if the New York Times headline on December 8th, 1941 had read “Japanese Pilot Killed by U.S. Sailors over Pearl Harbor”.

It as if Jews are just not allowed to be victims – as the Evil Oppressors of Gaza, no story can be written which indicates why, perhaps, the Jews might want to keep a lid on the people in Gaza, or defend themselves against Palestinians. This was a bit more egregious than most, but you also have to wonder how many stories go through where no one challenges them. Just how many lies are being told these days?

We’re All Victims

Cluster9 Comments

America’s most famous Native American with high cheek bones is on the stump getting traction with the low information voter:

“The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it,”

That’s right folks. After six years of corporatizing health care, driving up premiums, increasing the cost of living, overseeing the decline of the average wage of American families, regulating the life out of the coal industry, refusing Americans the benefits of energy independence, refusing tax reform, growing the federal government, wasting trillions of dollars of tax payers money, rewarding incompetent government bureaucrats, enslaving children in under performing schools, and assisting in increasing the cost of a higher education – the Democrats are playing the victim card and blaming Republicans. I am surprised she didn’t get laughed out of the room, but I think the following quote tells us why that didn’t happen:

“She’s a rock star,”

Where have we heard that line before? These low information voters have not learned a thing, probably as a result of our failing education system, and are once again playing identity politics. Warren is a product of the Harvard faculty lounge, just like Obama, and does not have one day of practical, real life experience. She would in all reality be a far worse President than Obama if you can even imagine that, but experience, results, competence, nor even the truth have any bearing whatsoever on the POTUS candidate selection of the Democratic Party. Hillary is an incompetent liar who also has zero real world experience but she is leading the current Democratic field by a mile only because of her gender, and her womanizing husband.

It’s a sad statement on our society, our political culture and on a good portion of our fellow Americans that someone like Warren gains any credibility whatsoever outside of the far left lecture halls.