GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Archives for October 2010

As election approaches, enthusiasm gap appears to widen

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This is not the way to end your campaign — and a sign of the waning enthusiasm within the president’s party:

The arena where President Obama and Vice President Biden are making their final appeal to Democrats to get out and vote in Tuesday’s midterm elections was far from capacity Sunday afternoon.

The crowd estimate stands at 8,000 in the arena that seats just over 13,000 and a couple thousand empty seats are visible above the stage where Obama and Biden rallied supporters.

Reading about this sparsely-attended rally in the Democratic heartland of Ohio, Doug Powers quips, “The enthusiasm gap’ remains as gappy as ever less than 48 hours before voting begins:”

Having “Poisoned” the Legislative Process, Ma’am Attacks!

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So, after weeks of streaming attack ads to voters across the (once-)Golden State, Barbara Boxer is going on the air with a fluffy ad, attempting to tell us what she’s done in the Senate.  And even in that fluffy ad, she doesn’t talk to us.  Seems par for the course for this 28-year veteran of Washington, D.C.

And Mrs. Boxer’s campaign rhetoric just doesn’t square with her Senate record.

The career politician tells us she’s fighting for our jobs.  Yeah, well, her policies haven’t resulted in new jobs coming to her jurisdiction.  She praises the “stimulus” as “very successful[;] it created hundreds of thousands of job”, yet by her own benchmark (approvingly citing the White House prediction that the legislation would “save or create approximately 400,000 jobs in California” in a February 13, 2009 press release), it has failed utterly.  California has lost 592,300 nonfarm payroll jobs since she issued that release.*

She claims she’s creating green jobs that can’t be outsourced.  Yet, in voting for that “very successful” stimulus, the 3-term Senator voted to send our tax dollars (and those of our children and grandchildren) overseas:

Through one stimulus measure — the Section 1603 Grant Program — developers of renewable energy are entitled to a reimbursement of 30 percent of the cost of building a facility. Since last September, that government program has given out $2.3 billion to developers of U.S. wind farms. About 70 percent of the rebates — more than $1.6 billion in U.S. tax dollars — has gone to foreign developers . . .

Then, Mrs. Boxer touts her leadership in promoting “clean energy” reform.  But, her “leadership” meant that the bill stalled in the Senate, with her own Democratic colleagues losing confidence in the Washington veteran.  After the bill cleared her committee, “Rank-and-file members from both parties dismissed the Boxer bill, coal-state senators were unhappy and many said Boxer’s move to approve the bill without any Republicans even in the committee room had poisoned the process.”

Let me repeat that.  On the signature legislation of her Committee On Environment And Public Works in the 111th Congress, Mrs. Boxer’s leadership poisoned the process.

Is this the kind of woman who should be representing California in the United States Senate for the next six years?

On November 2, let’s just say, “No, Ma’am”: [Read more…]

So, What Are Your “Ballsy” Electoral Predictions?

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Over on Facebook, my friend Matthew Berry, who ran a spirited race for the Republican nomination in Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, is predicting that Republicans will pick up 59 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate.  Of course, if that good man and principled conservative had won his party’s nomination, it would be a 60-seat pick up in the House.

My own predictions is that we pick up 63-67 seats (64-68 had Matthew won), but sometimes I wonder if I’m being too conservative.

As I write this, my main source for news on House races, RealClearPolitics, lists 221 House seats as safe, likely or leaning to the GOP.  (218 are needed for a majority; Republicans now control 179.)  Let’s say GOP splits the 43 tossups (but the likelihood is that we’ll take more than half), that’s 21 (giving benefit of the doubt to the Dems for that half-seat).  Now, say the GOP picks up 5 seats from the 26 currently leaning Democratic, but let’s take away 3 that Democrats may take from seats that appear to be going the Republicans’ way.  (I would allocate more, but when you’ve got a CNN poll (which notoriously skews left) giving the GOP a “10 point advantage in the ‘generic ballot’ question“, looks like seats trending Republican will stay that way.)

So, we have 221 + 21 + 5  – 3 and get 244,  That produces a 65-seat gain.  But, recall, that’s splitting the tossups right down the middle.

So, what are you predictions — and what’s your ballsy prediction?  Mine is that no Democrat wins a gubernatorial contest in New England (recall, I didn’t say Republicans would win them all, only that Democrats would lose them all).  Oh — and that Tancredo wins in Colorado.

A Democratic poll shows the race in Connecticut is trending Republican.

UPDATE FROM BRUCE (GP):  I thought I’d weigh in here.  I think that the Republicans will win 55 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate.  If there is a complete Democrat collapse (still possible, but not probable), then I believe there is the chance for 70 seats in the House and 10 seats in the Senate.  I’m officially sticking with my more conservative projection.

My “ballsy” prediction:  Heath Shuler (NC-11) will lose; Christine O’Donnell will win; and like Dan — Tom Tancredo will be CO’s next Governor.

Obama Democrats’ 2010 Campaign Theme:
Not Hope & Change, but Malign and Vilify

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Recall that it was a Democrat who “popularized” the phrase, the “politics of personal destruction”. Yet, it seems he was talking about his own parties’ tactics:

As you watch this year’s ads — and I’ve been watching all too many lately — you’ll notice a striking difference between Democratic and Republican attack ads: Democrats are attacking over personal issues, Republicans are attacking over policy.

And no, my friends, that’s not from a conservative blog.

So, as you watch some on the left whip themselves into a frenzy about the Tea Parties, accusing activists of all manner of evil and animosities, ask yourself this, which side is talking about issues and which is trying to turn the focus to personalities.

Wonder why the Dems are dodging the issues and focusing on personality.

Jerry Brown’s Gonna Try to Raise Our Taxes!?!?!

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I thought Jerry Brown might have something up his sleeve when I read (in one of  his many mailers) his promise not to enact any “new taxes unless the voters approve them.”  According to his understudy, recently recalled Governor Gray Davis (Brown’s chief of staff for the better part of his gubernatorial tenure), Brown is planning to do just that.

One of LA’s best (and wittiest) reporters, Jill Stewart, has the details:

Gray Davis, is saying that California Governor Jerry Brown, um,probable governor, will immediately set a Special Election to ask Californians to raise taxes. . . .  which is worse? Another special election. Just shoot us all now.

Or another special election to get us to vote for more taxes. . . .   Is Jerry gonna pull this off?  He’s still running those radio ads (on KNX? on KFI? or is it just everywhere?) saying he opposes new taxes “without voter approval.”

Stewart has the details on how Brown flip-flopped on the “fat hikes on the 2009 ballot”.  The Democrat came around to supporting them, even as Californians overwhelming rejected them.  (Read the whole thing–for your edification and amusement.  Jill is a heckuva good writer.)

Let me repeat that for good measure.  Jerry Brown has been promising in his campaign that he won’t hike taxes without voter approval, yet the last time tax hikes were on the statewide ballot, the career politician hemmed and he hawed, but eventually came out for higher taxes.  The voters said no.

California currently has the third highest taxes in the country — and not coincidentally, the third highest unemployment.  Guess Jerry wants us to be Number One.  (And with Nevada and Michigan, the states ahead of us, set to elect pro-business governors, looks like they won’t be in the running for very long.)

We can remove California from the running by not returnig Jerry Brown to the Governor’s office.

Ma’am, What Have You Done?

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Whenever we in California turned on the TV and see an ad from the Boxer campaign, we don’t learn anything about what this career politician has done during her 28-year tenure in Washington.  We don’t see her defend her record in the current Congress — or her most recent Senate term.  She doesn’t mention the “approximately 400,000” jobs she, approvingly citing the White House, said the “stimulus” would create or save in California.  She doesn’t talk about the health care overhaul she so proudly supported

Nor does she mention the climate control bill so near and dear to the hearts of her and so many on her fellow partisans.

All we hear is attacks on her opponent Carly Fiorina.  Barbara Boxer’s been in the Senate 18 years and all she can is what she’s always done, deliver “partisan shots.”  In her TV ads, she refuses to defend her record, choosing instead to attack her opponent.

Perhaps, she doesn’t mention that climate bill because she’s the Senator who dropped the ball in moving the legislation through the Senate.  “Although [Boxer] is chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee,” the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle remind us, “it is telling that leadership on the most pressing issue before it – climate change – was shifted to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., because the bill had become so polarized under her wing.” While we Republicans are grateful for her incompetence as the bill would have imposed increased burdens on job-creators, Democrats are flabbergasted that their three-term colleague Barbara Boxer  is incapable of moving legislation  — even in an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate. [Read more…]

Harry Reid Accuses Sharron Angle of Acting like Barbara Boxer!

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Do hope that if ol’ Harry thinks it’s such a bad thing not to take questions from reporters, he e-mails Mrs. Boxer asking her to start taking questions from reporters:

Friends, this is the kind of ad you run when you’re desperate. Law professor William A. Jacobson who posted on this ad notes that “reporter” Jon Ralston stars in this “Harry Reid’s most outlandish commercial yet“.

“Has any campaign,” Greg Sargent wonders, “ever been quite this direct in claiming that their opponent is, well, a complete whack-job? The Reid team has completely emptied the thesaurus.”

So much for the Democrat wanting a return to civility.

GP ALERT: LIVE VIDEO BROADCAST AT 3:30PM
SPECIAL ELECTION ANNOUNCEMENT

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Stay tuned for a special announcement at 3:30PM Eastern. 

I’ll be broadcasting live (er.. recorded live…) for the first time from GayPatriot Broadcast HQ in Charlotte, NC.

LIVE ELECTION NIGHT COVERAGE FROM FREEDOMWORKS
Anchored by Tabitha Hale, Melissa Clothier and Bruce Carroll

UPDATE:  Dang it, I forgot to mention the most important thing!  If any of you are planning to be at a campaign HQ on Tuesday night, please email me and let me know and we can try to get you on the show as a contributor (iPhone & Skype would help!).

-Bruce (GayPatriot)