We’ve seen how upset 28-year Washington veteran Barbara Boxer got one time when a general politely called her Ma’am. (She doesn’t seem to object when others use the term.)

But, after her segment with Wolf Blitzer, I was wondering if she was trying for the Endora look. Jesse, one of our readers disagreed, saying she looked more like Madame:

So, what do you think? Do we call her Ma’am or do we call her Madame?

Just by watching this short video of a segment from CNN last Thursday, you can see which of the two women vying to represent California in the United States Senate could be a more effective advocate for the Golden State in Washington.  One woman is confident and poised.  The other is babbling, almost incoherent, making things up.

I mean, the 28-year-Washington veteran needs Wolf Blitzer to send her a lifeline:

Where do you begin with this?  Boxer has to go back to the Clinton era — when Republicans were a majority in Congress — to talk about balanced budgets she supported.  If Blitzer hadn’t stepped in, the three term Senator may have gone on making up facts.  And on. And on.

Noting how “confused” the career politician gets in this segment, the San Francisco Chroncle‘s Carolyn Lochhead finds “Blitzer straightening out her arithmetic.”  28 years in Washington and she needs a cable news anchor to straighten out her math.  Maybe it’s spending over a quarter-century in the nation’s capital that has given her such trouble with numbers.

Boxer, as Allahpundit quips, has “zero idea what she’s talking about.”  She rambles, is confused, doesn’t seem prepared for the interview, as if she just takes such things for granted.  At a time of great crisis for California, how can such a woman advocate for the Golden State in Washington?

And this isn’t the first time she’s come unprepared to an interview with a journalist.  If she’s so unprepared when the cameras are rolling, how much less focused would she be when no one’s paying attention?

Well, Carly is ready to roll up her sleeves and help tackle California’s problems.  And you can help he out by supporting her energetic, ballsy campaign.

When yesterday, in the “Meet the Press” debate between the two major party candidates vying to represent Colorado in the United States Senate, Republican candidate Ken Buck was asked “by host David Gregory to elaborate on a statement he made in an earlier debate about gays in the military,” he should not have entered the fray on whether or not being gay in a choice.

But, he did and he put his foot into it.  He said it was a choice, adding

“I think that birth has an influence…like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically, you have a choice.”

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Buck sought to clarify his comments.

“I am not a biologist and I haven’t studied the issue, but that’s my opinion,” Buck said. “I wasn’t talking about being gay as a disease. I don’t think that at all and I hope that no one would be that insensitive to try to draw that…I certainly didn’t mean it that way.”

Well, we do have a choice in determining how we act on our emotional and sexual attraction to members of our own sex, but we don’t have a choice in feeling that attraction.

In answering the question, he should have said simply said such issue should not be a matter of federal concern.  But, alas he did not.

It it too soon to tell whether or not this comment will hurt him, but it certainly won’t help him win the votes of fiscally conservative/socially liberal voters in the Denver suburbs — where this race may be decided.  Most such folk believe the state should leave gay people alone.   (more…)

Despite all this equality talk coming from the various gay organizations, seems some gay Democrats don’t want to hold gay relationships to the same standards as straight ones. The unhappy Barney Frank has become the posterchild for this left-wing hypocrisy.

In the 1990s, he assured us there was no conflict of interest while he served on the House committee overseeing Fannie Mae while his then-boyfriend worked for that government-sponsored enterprise.  Now, his current-boyfriend heckles the mean-spirited Democrat’s Republican opponent:

Upon exiting the most recent debate with Barney Frank, located at WGBH studios in Boston, MA,  Republican Congressional candidate, Sean Bielat, gets heckled by a Barney Frank “supporter” while talking to the media.  While watching this video, we realized that we recognized this “supporter”. We received confirmation from two eyewitnesses that the mysterious cameraman was none other than Barney Frank’s pot-growing boyfriend, James Ready.

“Imagine the outrage,” Doug Powers, who alerted me to the story above, quips, “from Camp Barney if Bielat had his wife following Frank around and heckling him during chats with reporters.”

Moe Lane all finds this very amusing:

But what I do find funny is that if you were to take out the names and redo this story in terms of Candidate A has to send Significant Other out to heckle Candidate B because there’s nobody else to do it and asked a bystander which candidate was the challenger, he or she would probably say Candidate A.

This is how long-term incumbents lose, you know: they assume that they’re never going to need to keep a proper campaign staff, so when they turn out to need one they have to hastily improvise, often to unintentionally hilarious results.

And that’s what makes it so much fun to blog about Barney.  You just can’t talk about this guy without laughing at his hypocrisy — and his arrogance.  Not to mention his self-righteousness.

You can support Sean Bielat here.

To show just how ill-suited the man who governed the Golden State in the 1970s is to confront the problems of contemporary California, take a look at what Jerry Brown said Friday at a rally at UCLA:

We have enough wealth to continue to have a great university and get every kid into this school that can qualify. Now when I say every young man and young woman, I mean everyone – whether they are documented or not. If they went to school, they ought to be here. And that will be one of the first bills I sign… Of course I’m not going to sign any bills until we get the budget solved and that may take me a couple of months.

Note the caveat, that he’ll wait until he gets the budget “solved” to sign the bill.  But, the DREAM act he supports would provide financial aid (i.e., tax dollars paid by California citizens) to the children of “undocumented” immigrants, creating future financial obligations for the state, thus threatening to throw our budget out of balance yet again.

It just doesn’t make fiscal sense.

Anyone who’s serious about fixing California would be focusing on generating economic growth and not incurring any future fiscal obligations for our already bloated state government.  Jerry Brown just doesn’t get it.

He’s playing lip service to our state’s budget problems while living in a 70s dream world where government can shower gifts to favored constituencies with costs whisked away by a sprinkling of good will and fairy dust.   And Brown’s not the only Democrat to represent the politics of the past.  Julie Mason recently contrasted Brown’s fellow septuagenarian* Barbara Boxer, also running for statewide office this fall, “the consummate, 1970s-era feminist” with her opponent Carly “Fiorina’s successful 1990s businesswoman.”

The 1970s-era feminist whines how bad the system is for women while the businesswoman shows how with gumption and hard work a determined woman can start off as a secretary and end up as CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  Which one would you rather have representing you at a time of economic turmoil?

You can support Brown’s opponent here while you can help Carly here.

* (more…)

NB: the header on this speech is incorrect. The Gipper did not deliver this speech at the GOP National convention in 1964, but on October 27 that year.

When it comes to the problems facing the (once-)*Golden State, Carly Fiorina gets it.  From Guy Benson’s article on an interview with the energetic candidate:

“Drive around this city and take a look at the economic distress.  It’s tragic,” Carly Fiorina suggests as we wrap up a sit-down interview in sleepy Fresno, California.  “It’s way too quiet here.”  She’s right.  Shuttered windows, closed down businesses, and chained-off, vacant lots litter the heart of Fresno’s downtown district, which stands as an enervated shell of its former bustling self. . . .

“Just look at this situation by the numbers,” Fiorina says.  “Fresno County has unemployment above 15 percent.  Individual communities in the Central Valley have unemployment at 20, 30, even 40 percent (as in the case of Mendota, CA).  It’s just terrible.”   She points out that although the region suffers from the same economic ills plaguing the rest of the state, an additional factor is impeding any chance of recovery from Modesto to Bakerfield:  A crippling water shortage.  Fiorina penned an Op/Ed about the issue in theFresno Bee last year, explaining that this “man-caused disaster” arose by dint of a poorly conceived federal effort to protect a species of small fish called the smelt.  The result, she argues, has been unacceptable human suffering

Fresno is California writ large.  We see the same closed-down businesses here in Los Angeles as well.  In LA County, unemployment ticked up to 12.6 percent in August (the last month for which figures are available) from 12.4 percent in July.

Simply put, the status quo isn’t working.  Fiorina understands that we have to change course in Washington:  ”We need,” she says, “to cut government spending, while prioritizing carefully, and we need to provide smart, targeted tax relief to our job creators.”  And reduce the regulatory burden on said creators. (more…)

Even before reading the most recent poll numbers, I was becoming increasingly optimistic about my gal Carly’s chances to win the Golden State’s U.S. Senate seat.  You see, I find a lot of my fellow Californians are quite enthusiastic for this accomplished woman, including a number of gay men, particularly younger gay men (in their 20s and early 30s).

Meanwhile, Barbara Boxer’s supporters acknowledge that she hasn’t been very effective, but are voting for her, well, because, well, you see, she’s the Democratic candidate and, well, gosh, darn it, they’re Democrats.

To show just how dispirited is the Democratic base, let me relate a reader’s story about conversation he overheard in the heart of West Hollywood.  Of the four gay men at the table, two said they didn’t want to vote for Boxer, with one asking “What has she done for California?” This ticked off the oldest man at the table, leading one (of the two) to concede that he would “still begrudgingly vote for Boxer”. Agreeing that Boxer was a horrible candidate, the other guy didn’t indicate which way he was going to vote.

These aren’t the people who are going to go out of their way to cast their ballots on November 2.

In order to get your base to turn out, Jay Cost writes, “people have to find a reason to care. If they don’t, no amount of mobilizing is going to matter.”  And California Republicans, Patrick Range McDonald acknowledges in the LA Weekly, do seem to care; they “appear more energized than Democrats to vote on Nov. 2.”  He quotes Republican consultant Reed Galen who says, ”The regular dynamics of California politics are out the window this year because of the economy.”

The Reuters poll which showed 28-year Washington veteran Boxer clinging to a one-point also showed that Repubilcans have the edge on enthusiasm: (more…)

The military’s Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) policy is, like many government policies, both gratuitous and counterproductive. It deprives the military of men and women eager and willing to serve our nation, while forcing officials who have better things to do (like defending our country in a dangerous world) to spend time rooting out otherwise qualified (and sometimes even exemplary) servicemembers.

That said, I’m concerned about the recent court ruling.  Like Patterico, I “support the result but . . . hate the way it’s being done.”  As does apparently Defense Secretary Robert Gates:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that abruptly ending the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as a federal judge has ordered would have enormous consequences. . . .

“I feel strongly this is an action that needs to be taken by the Congress and that it is an action that requires careful preparation, and a lot of training,” said Gates. “It has enormous consequences for our troops.”

The defense secretary, who has supported lifting the ban, said that besides new training, regulations will need revisions and changes may be necessary to benefits and Defense Department buildings.

One of the merits of the Obama Administration approach had been to push for legislation which would give the military time to draft new regulations and prepare to implement repeal.  Yet, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to schedule debate on such legislation at a time and in a manner likely to secure passage, they haven’t been able to realize the benefits of this sensible approach. (more…)

Despite the demographics of California favoring the Democrats, despite being outspent nearly 2 to 1 on the airwaves, despite being a political neophyte, Carly Fiorina has now closed the gap with 28-year Washington veteran Barbara Boxer, trailing the Democrat by just one point – in a poll which skews left.  And when you realize that undecideds tends to break for the challenger, this suggests that Carly is now poised to win this seat.

No wonder Ma’am’s been hitting the panic button.  But, my gal Carly needs be prepared, be very prepared, ’cause when Boxer is cornered, she starts rooting around for some dirt in order to smear her rival.

You can help fight Mrs. Boxer’s nastiness by supporting a Republican who, a liberal newspaper acknowledges, has “has campaigned with a vigor and directness that suggests she could be effective in Washington” by clicking here.

UPDATE:  Since the last Reuters/Ipsos poll which had the career politician up by 4, Boxer has spent over $10 million.  So, ten million bucks cost her three polling points?

Ma’am, that’s not a very effective use of your resources.

UP-UPDATE:  Allahpundit thinks Carly’ll soon be able to saturate the airwaves:

If memory serves, Fiorina ended up pulling away in the last few weeks of the GOP primary thanks to a statewide ad bombardment. Boxer’s actually outspent her on TV two-to-one thus far, but I can’t believe that’ll continue when Fiorina’s budget for the race is basically infinite

Let’s hope so.

“In every wave year,” Henry Olsen writes in the National Review, “the winning party ends up grabbing seats that just a short time before the election were on no one’s radar screen.” He adds that with “so many Democratic incumbents on target lists [,] it seems futile to search for the sleepers.”

Perhaps.

Given the number of political blogs and web-sites, most prognosticators have pretty much picked through the House and Senate races to find the potential upsets.  While I’ve long been predicting the unhappy Barney Frank’s downfall, rumors of his impending electoral demise now are commonplace on conservative blogs — and even left-of-center newspapers.  People talk about the defeat now of committee chairmen James Oberstar and John Spratt (as well as Frank) as few, thirty years ago, saw the writing on the wall for Al Ullman.

So, we won’t be that surprised if we see those three career politicians go down to to defeat.

But, will there be any surprises come election night?

Perhaps, if the Democrats manage to limit their losses, some might call that a surprise.

And yet, I’m thinking we might see some surprises in the gubernatorial races, with Republicans perhaps scoring upsets in the Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Hawai’i and Connecticut contests and independent Tom Tancredo possibly surprising in Colorado.  (But will it be a surprise any more?  The latest Rasmussen poll shows him trailing Democrat John Hickenlooper by 4 points, with Republican Dan Maes getting 12.  If just half of Maes’ supporters decide to support the candidate most likely to defeat the Democrat, Tancredo wins.)  While most polls show Rick Perry up in Texas, he has been Governor now for a full decade and maybe Lone Star State voters will decide, come November 2, that it’s time for a change.

So, it’s in those governors’ races where I think we might see some surprises.  Perhaps, you see other races which might stun us 18 days hence.

Today marks a certain special anniversary of Bruce’s 29th!

Given how deep is the animosity in Nevada against Harry Reid (that is, of the slight majority who have a negative opinion of the 28-year Washington veteran), all Sharron Angle, his Republican opponent on this fall’s ballot, needed to do in their sole debate last night was show that she’s not the extremist his camp has made her out to be.

While his nasty ads have upped her unfavorables, such that a majority of Nevadans see her as extreme, those opinions aren’t as deep as their feeling for Mr. Reid.  After all, she’s only been on their radar screen for a few months while he’s been a force in Nevada politics for decades.  It will take longer to reduce his negatives than to cut hers.

The general consensus is that Angle did what she had to do (and then some) last night.  Over at National Journal’s Hotline, Lindsey Boerma and Josh Kraushaar sum it up, “Throughout the Nevada Senate campaign, it was Republican Sharron Angle who looked unprepared for-prime-time. But after last night’s debate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looked more like the gaffe-prone politician as he struggled to make headway in one of the closest and most consequential Senate contests.”

Ed Morrissey puts her debate performance in context with Reid’s strategy:

The problem with a demonization strategy based on voter unfamiliarity with a candidate is that the candidate usually gets a chance to either confirm or destroy the impression before an election takes place.  Harry Reid gambled on painting Sharron Angle as a nut, but in the end it was Reid who struggled to explain himself in the only debate in the Senate race for Nevada.  Veteran political analyst Jon Ralston, no fan of Angle, declares her the winnersimply by showing Nevadans that she was far from the portrait of a lunatic that Reid had painted

Michelle Malkin reports that “channeling Reagan’s warrior optimism,” Angle responded to Reid’s condescension with a smile, asking “for Nevadans’ votes to restore prosperity and freedom and American exceptionalism. Without notes.” (more…)

Noting the number of Republican women running strong races across the country, Jennifer Rubin, a strong and wise woman herself, speculates why some left-wing feminists are freaking out:

And these women are threatening to decimate the professional gender grievants’ notion that “feminism” is coterminous with a liberal, statist, abortion-on-demand agenda. The reason, I would suggest, that the left went so nuts over Christine O’Donnell is not simply because she rendered a vulnerable seat safe for the Democrats or because she showed that Tea Party enthusiasts’ judgment is not infallible. It is because she provided solace to nervous liberal feminists  –”See, this wacky dame is what conservative women are all about.” Sarah Palin has proved to be politically astute, Sharron Angle had Harry Reid on the defensive in their debate, and Carly Fiorina is showing that a pro-lifer can be competitive in California; but not to fear — O’Donnell will discredit them all. Or so the theory went.

In fact, she’s done no damage to the GOP beyond her state’s borders and arguably has taken some of the heat off Angle and others.

No wonder that while “national NOW President Terry O’Neill said that anyone who ‘from here on’ calls a woman a ‘whore” should be fired“, Parry Bellasalma, the head California NOW  ”TPM in response to a question that ‘Meg Whitman could be described as “a political whore.” Yes, that’s an accurate statement.’”

Wow, just wow.  Ed Morrissey expects

NOW to suddenly embrace the “whore” insult as an asexual description of a lack of honor and ethics, which is exactly how it has been meant when used in the political context by all of the people NOW attacked over the years for using the term.  And in doing so, they will have completed their performance-art meltdown and the exposure of their own lack of integrity and honesty.

If, like me and the Gipper, you lean libertarian and believe the basic watchword for any political movement should be “freedom” (or “liberty”), you naturally cringe when you hear of an organization turning to the state to mandate “equality.”  While the ideal of equality is perhaps noble in concept, the historical record of the past century has shown that when the state seeks to promote equality, it does so at the expense of liberty (and oftentimes prosperity as well).

Conservative and libertarian political philosophers have long recognized the tension between the two ideals.  Laws to promote equality often nibble at our liberty.

This thought comes to mind every time I receive an e-mail from “Equality California” (EqCA) touting their legislative achievements.  Given how successful this Democratic group has been at lobbying the Golden State’s Democratic legislature over the years, you’d think that they would no longer need to push bills in Sacramento.  By now, that is, they should have passed enough laws to advance gay equality.

But, the laws keep coming.  EqCA mentioned seven in an e-mail earlier this month, four which the Governor signed, three which he vetoed.

Now, to be sure, some laws do indeed advance liberty (such as a bill downgrading “possession of an ounce or less” of marijuana “from a misdemeanor to an infraction.”)

Three days after receiving that electronic missive from EqCA, I received one from Log Cabin, heralding “pro-equality Republicans.” Four days later, they touted a candidate as advocated for equality while running on a “freedom-based platform”. Were they even aware of the contradictions between that supposed advocacy and his platform?

If Log Cabin wishes to be a genuinely Republican organization, it, like the GOP nationally, must understand what freedom means.  It would be nice if, instead of aping the watchword of the gay left, Log Cabin leaders could craft a real gay conservative agenda, one where the guiding principle is the same one which inspired the founders of our nation  – and our party:  freedom or liberty.

NB:  Tweaked the title to make it more concise.

It’s not a sign of confidence in someone’s leadership when members of your caucus publicly announce that they’re not supporting you.  And now, we’ve got another Democrat running for reelection running away from Nancy Pelosi:

Another Democrat backed off supporting Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Speaker, saying he’d prefer to see a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition in the Speaker’s seat.

Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.) joined the steadily growing ranks of centrist Democrats who have either pledged not to support Pelosi as their party’s leader, or have been noncommittal about their support for the San Francisco lawmaker.

Rep. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.) has also said he won’t vote for Pelosi, even “promoting that fact in a new campaign ad.” Speaking of campaign ads, this Democrat touts endorsements from groups who “wouldn’t have anything to do with a Nancy Pelosi supporter”:

Now, I’m just a-wonderin’, who this fella voted for for Speaker since his initial election in 2002. Given that Mrs. Pelosi has been the Democratic Leader since Marshall was sworn in, she would have been the Democratic candidate for Speaker in each of his four terms in Congress. Did ol’ Jim buck his party all four times?

A number of bloggers I read on a regular basis have been amazed to see 18-term incumbent James Oberstar, Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in for the battle of his life. Not since 1992 has he won with fewer than 60% of the vote. Indeed, that election was the only year his tally was lower than 60%. He first won election in the very Democratic 1974 mid-terms with 62% of the vote.

Two days ago, Jim Geraghty reported, “My old colleague from many years back, Greg Giroux, noticed Oberstar spent $835,000 in the third quarter of 2010, more than 4 times the roughly $200,000 he spent in the same period last cycle.”

Citing polls showing that Obertar’s Republican opponent “Chip Cravaack was giving 18-term Democratic incumbent and porkmeister Jim Oberstar all he can handle in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District”, Minnesota-based blogger Scott Johnson of Powerline has been all over this story, citing in one post a reader who alerted him to to an editorial in the Duluth News Tribune: “Oberstar-Cravaack debate forced into larger venue.”

Despite Obertar’s lengthy tenure, Johnson notes, “Politico reports that Oberstar in fact has precisely one individual resident donor in the district”.

Taking note of Cravaack’s strong showing against the career politician, Michael Barone cites perhaps the most telling number in this race, the district “voted only 53% for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008.”

Now, you see what I see?  Yup, that’s is.  While Barack Obama in 2008 ran ahead of John Kerry’s 2004 tally in most districts across the country, support for the Democratic nominee was virtually unchanged in Minnesota 8.   People in this district didn’t catch Obama fever.  Seems they just voted for him out of party loyalty.

Mark this one in the Republican column.  You can make Cravaack’s path to Congress a little easier by supporting his campaign.

You can’t drive around Los Angeles without noticing how bad things are in the (once-)Golden State.  Storefronts sit empty.  And those that remain open regularly announce sales, trying to do anything to lure in customers so they can stay afloat.

You can’t have a conversation with your friends without hearing stories of lost jobs or reduced salaries (save if they work for the state government).

You can’t open the newspapers, flip on the local news or read an article on the state’s sorry finances without learning that the state is close to broke, with some forecasting it may soon have to declare bankruptcy.

And yet, as Roger Simon notes, the candidates of the status quo retain a lead in recent polling:

. . . Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer are still leading Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina by 5.4% and 3.3% (RCP averages) in a state where unemployment is 12.4% (not including the underemployed and the astronomical number that have already given up), and from which businesses are fleeing like rats from the proverbial sinking ship? Even the storefronts on swanky Rodeo Drive are standing empty.

Nevertheless, a plurality of the voters still want the same old, same old. I thought it was supposed to be the economy, stupid. It’s not as if Whitman and Fiorina are implausible candidates in a time of economic crisis. They’re ex-CEOs.

Crazy, no? How do you explain it? Sure Whitman and Fiorina have made mistakes in their campaigns, but so have their opponents. And with the state nearing bankruptcy, you would think minor campaign flubs would pale into insignificance.

Neither Brown nor Boxer is putting forward any new ideas to fix the state.  Almost the entirety of Brown’s campaign is to reminisce about what he once did, three decades ago, as Governor while promising, in the fall, not to do what he said, in the summer, he might have to do:  raise taxes.  Oh, and then to attack Meg Whitman for, well, for being horrible no good and very bad and little more than a George W. Bush clone in drag. (more…)