Guess that little extra push from Las Vegas unions may have pushed the Nevada Democrat over the top, but, in the rest of the country, people just don’t like Harry Reid:

Positive opinions of Reid have been rather stable since November 2006, but his unfavorable ratings have grown considerably, moving to 30% after the 2008 elections and exceeding 40% in three separate readings this year.

And you wonder why people are upset:

The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

The fast-growing pay of federal employees has captured the attention of fiscally conservative Republicans who won control of the U.S. House of Representatives in last week’s elections. Already, some lawmakers are planning to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to challenge the president’s plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.

How out of touch is this guy?  The economy is in the doldrums.  The federal budget is way out of balance.  Many private sector employees are seeing their salaries cut and the president wants to hike the salaries of those whose income is derived from the taxpayer?!?!?

Read the whole thing to see just how out of joint things are.  Ed Morrissey offers a great analysis, concluding:

Given the tough labor market for workers over that period, the government should have been in a better position to negotiate wages todecrease the cost of its workforce, which gets paid by the sweat of the taxpayers’ collective brow.  Instead, they have become profligate with our money.

Read that whole thing too!

(1) A vote to repeal Obamacare.

(2) A vote to defund Corporate for Public Broadcasting (parent agency of NPR)

In the wake of the 2010 elections, the various gay groups in our nation’s capital, in particular the largest, HRC, can choose to continue as they have and serve as gay versions of the various left-wing advocacy groups or, to shift course and act as non-partisan advocates on behalf of the diverse community of gay and lesbian individuals.  Their current strategy made sense in a Washington where Democrats dominated (as does the partisan strategy of their California counterpart, “Equality California”).

And, to be sure, if you believe big-government to be the means to “solve” the problems facing the gay community, it is entirely honorable to set up shop as a left-wing advocacy group.  The important thing is to be upfront about it.

That said, it’s hard to see how a man of Joe Solmonese’s political pedigree can have any influence in a Washington where John Boehner is now the most powerful legislator.  An ability in the current climate to appeal to Democrats will not help move legislation repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) or recognizing, for the purposes of federal law, same-sex unions.

This is why I’m so gung-ho about GOProud.  They are familiar with the arguments we need make in order to influence a more conservative Congress.

All that said, the 2010 elections should be a wake-up call to the gay groups inside the Beltway that their strategic alliance with the Democratic Party has failed.  It is hard to tell what the future is.  Some Republicans may be willing to move forward on gay issues.  Others may find that by avoiding such issues, they can toss a bone to social conservatives.

Whatever the case, gay groups will have to adopt a new strategy or become gay cheerleaders for the Democratic agenda.  Steadfast, to be sure, in pursuit of their principles, but ineffective in achieving legislative success.

A promo video for Steven Malanga’s book Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer which gets one of the biggest problem facing state governments.

Do wonder about the paucity of news media coverage on the influence of public employee unions on elections, particularly at the state level.

From Glenn Reynolds: Liberal Columnist Urges “Violence” And “Revolution.”

NB:  Tweaked the title.

Log Cabin still doesn’t get it.  In an e-mail sent out last week (full text below the jump), they attempt a new kind of fusion, welding core Republican principles to the gay organization’s elusive quest for equality.  Not once in their e-mail do they mention the animating ahead behind GOP victories in 2010 (and 1994 and 1980 & 1984 as well as 1860 & 1864):  liberty.   Heck, they even call their 501 (c)(3) the Liberty Education Forum.

Well, Chris Barron of GOProud does now how to talk Republican and is unafraid to discuss gay issues in a manner not pre-approved by HRC, NGLTF and Barney Frank.  And it was GOProud who promoted the stat that 31% of gay people voted Republican last week.

Unlike Log Cabin in 1995, they didn’t wait until six months after the House approved the Contract with America to endorse the party’s reforming agenda.  While they have not endorsed the GOP’s “Pledge to America,” they have made clear (as Chris did on CNN), that they support its underlying principles.

I would argue that because ideas similar to those in that pledge defined the GOP’s fall campaign, the party did so well, well, did so well east of the California Coastal Ranges.  The party, by and large, ignored gay issues and captured a majority of the popular vote — not to mention one-third of the gay vote.

Because GOProud’s Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia know how to talk Republican — and have done so in public fora — they should find doors in Republican offices opening more readily to them.  If the leaders of HRC and NGLTF want access to the offices of the majority leaders on the House side of the Capitol, they’d do well to learn how to talk to Chris and Jimmy. (more…)

One reason I was dumbfounded a majority of my fellow Californians could vote to elect Jerry Brown governor, twenty-eight years after overwhelmingly rejecting his Senate bid (at the close of his last tenure as the state’s chief executive).  He was quite eccentric when first he led the (then-)Golden State.  He didn’t earn the nickname Moonbeam for nothing.

But, he didn’t earn the sobriquet for being a team-player either.  As he told the New York Times, “Moonbeam also stands for not being the insider. . . . But standing apart and marching to my own drummer. And I’ve done that.”  Boy has he.

As our reader Bryan, drawing on his own memories, reminds us even though Brown faced a Democratic legislature in the 1970s, the Democrat did not rubber stamp their bills:  he “vetoed the state employees’ request for increased wages and benefits in his second term, and, when the Legislature approved and sent it back to him, he vetoed the bill again.”  Maybe he’ll show a similar resistance to the eagerness of the legislature to hike state employees’ wages this time around.

The last thing we need now is a governor who marches in a lock-step with an unpopular legislature beholden to public employee unions.

Jerry Brown has shown a certain independence in the past, a willingness to part company with the ideology of his party when it served the interest of the state he governed in the 1970s and the city he helmed (Oakland) in the 2000s.  That said, he didn’t really show much independence from his party’s ideology on the campaign trail this fall.

Perhaps, he’ll show his independence when he returns to office in January.

We can only hope.

Via a reader’s Facebook page, I caught this clip of Chris Barron on CNN.  What stands out is what he said at two points, points Bruce and I have been making as long as we have been blogging, indeed, were making even before we started blogging:

Starting at about 1:45, Chris begins by saying that we should be “past identity just for the sake of identity politics.”  Then, commenting on the Iowa judges (who ruled in favor of state recognition of same-sex marriage) being voted out, he pointed out that “a strategy that relies solely on the courts is a flawed strategy.”  Hear!  Hear!  Instead, he says gay groups should do the hard work of changing hearts and minds.

Then, about 3 minutes later, starting at about 4:45, he faults the “big-government” agenda of the gay left, pointing out that conservative reforms benefit gay people.

Been waiting to hear this kind of rhetoric on national television from the folks at Log Cabin for about as long I’ve been following Log Cabin.  And now someone is finally getting it across.  Kudos, Chris, job well done!

This quote in an article about George W. Bush’s record in an article written in anticipation of the release of his book tomorrow may well be too rich for commentary, so I’ll just add some emphasis and a quick thought.

Two new movies dramatize the scandals of Bush’s agonizing second term: the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson drama, Fair Game, and the Jack Abramoff farce, Casino Jack. Both have marquee casts, and the first has Oscar buzz. But neither is generating much popular interest or reflection.

Only to folks in Hollywood (and in certain Beltway circle) are Republican scandals — and what they think are Republican scandals  – really super hot topics.  They may generate buzz in Hollywood, but they don’t generate interest in the heartland.

To borrow an expression, people should move on. No wonder, as per the above article, “Bush’s record matters less than Democrats would like”.

On Friday, I e-mailed some right-of-center bloggers with an idea:

I had a brainstorm yesterday on something we libertarian-leaning bloggers could do to make sure the 112th Congress does not repeat the mistakes of past Republican Congresses.  As you may know, the ethically-challenged,earmark-loving Jerry Lewis (the Congressman not the funnyman) is the Ranking Minority Member of the House Appropriations Committee which means he’ll soon become Chairman.

Unless we stop him.

I thought this was a project which Glenn (Reynolds) and Michelle (Malkin) might embrace.  Well, before I even got the project off the ground, seems that Tennessee-based blogger is already on board.

This morning, he linked a must-read Washington Examiner piece on that very topic:

No chairmanship is more important than that of the House Appropriations Committee, which controls federal outlays. More than anything else, voters want Washington to stop irresponsible federal spending and rein in spiraling national debt, but returning sanity to the federal budget cannot be achieved without a new Appropriations panel head. As former Reader’s Digest Editor-in-Chief Kenneth Y. Tomlinson writes elsewhere in Monday’s Examiner, Boehner’s choice is stark and simple. It would be a horrible mistake to give the nod to either Rep. Jerry Lewis of California or Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky. Lewis and Rogers are both Old Bull Republicans who love earmarks and pork barrel politics. Appointing either would split the House GOP caucus and spark a revolt among conservatives who have been fighting earmarks for years.

I grant that the incoming Speaker has a tough task ahead of him.  It won’t be easy to tell a long-serving member of his caucus who have long salivated over chairing this committee that he’s not eligible for the prize he believes is rightfully us.  But, the difficulty of turning down these Republican porker will be outweighed the by rewards he reaps from the grassroots, particularly the Tea Party.

By refusing to defer to seniority and instead appointing a true fiscal conservative to helm this committee, Boehner would send a signal that he understands the ideas which fueled Republican victories across the country.  At the same time, he’d be taking a step toward cutting out-of-control Washington spending.

The problems California faces are not just the failure of our politicians in Sacramento to balance the budget — particularly given the exorbitant cost of public employee pensions.  We also have an economy that is moribund, with many employers seeking opportunities elsewhere  – or moving their operations (and with them jobs) overseas and to neighboring states.

In her recent column on the (once-)Golden State’s woes, Debra J. Saunders builds on this point, reminding us that “fixing the budget may be the easier half of  [Governor-elect Jerry] Brown’s job“:

Brown has a reputation for talking to people who disagree with him. That’s good, because I didn’t hear a word from Brown on Wednesday that made me believe he understands what he has to do to staunch the flow of jobs, businesses and people with assets from the Golden State.

If he wants dynamic growth, Brown might want to talk to [his vanquished Republican opponent Meg] Whitman, who told me in March that if she had to start eBay all over again, she’d probably locate in Texas.

CNBC recently ranked the Lone Star State as the best state to do business.  In the same survey, California ranked 32nd, yet 49th for business friendliness.  The Tax Foundation ranked California the 2nd worst state to do business.  We need do something to make it a better state to do business, to prevent employers from moving jobs out of the state.  We’ve lost nearly 600,000 jobs just since Congress passed the “stimulus.”

I do hope I’m wrong about Jerry Brown.  And, to be sure, some aspects of his tenure as Mayor of Oakland show that he is aware of the benefits of pro-business policies.  It would be nice if he could talk enacting reforms designed to keep businesses here in California, reforms which would make the Golden State shine once more.

“Has anyone noticed,” our reader Eddie asked in a recent thread,

. . . that the most gay-unfriendly Tea Partiers lost? Paladino, Buck, and Miller at the top of the list (well, Miller hasn’t technically lost yet) Angle and O’Donell? Those are the ones who made comments or had positions that don’t set well with gay people. And don’t get me wrong, I would still have voted for any of those 5 over the Democrats, but I was just sayin’.

First, dispute Miss O’Donnell’s many inadequacies as a candidate, most of her comments that don’t sit well with gay people date back to the 1990s.  I think she would have lost even without having said such strange things way back when.   I do have some evidence that her attitudes toward gays have shifted since then  – only that changed attitude, as far as I know, did not come out in her unsuccessful campaign.

But, Eddie is onto something.  In the two of the three close Senate races where the Democrat prevailed, the Republican had said things that made it seem he (or she, in the case of Sharron Angle) had not accepted the social changes of the past quarter-century.

This should be a reminder to Republican candidates readying runs to challenge some of the many Democratic Senators whose terms come up for reelection next fall.

Best to focus on economic issues, adopting a live-and-let-live attitude on social issues — as well as fiscal ones.

If Democrats accomplish one thing in the lame-duck session of Congress, it should be a repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).   Indeed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, initially appointed to the post by then-President George W. Bush in 2006, said as much:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military’s ban on gays serving openly in the military.

He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“I would like to see the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” but I’m not sure what the prospects for that are,” Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia.

One of the reasons there’s no chance of a Republican Congress repealing the ban is that the various gay groups in Washington have spent little time reaching out to the incoming House majority.   And Republicans have nothing to gain politically by voting for the ban.  (Perhaps that may change now that they realize gay voters aren’t beholden to the Democrats.)

Now, to be sure, with the proper efforts, these groups could change Republicans minds, but that takes time.  GOProud which could be instrumental in this process is only now getting off the ground.  So, it’s up to Senate Democrats to act swiftly on repeal.  No more procedural shenanigans, Mr. Reid, just a simple up or down vote on repeal.

If outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi could get it through the House, the reelected Majority Leader should be able to get it through the Senate.

Until a visiting Thatcher honoree informed me that Prop 19, while legalizing pot in the (once-)Golden State, would also make it difficult for employers to fire someone who toked a bit too much:

Prop 19 failed also because it overreached. One feature attempted to protect the “rights” of employees who get fired or disciplined for using marijuana, including a provision that employers could only discipline marijuana use that “actually impairs job performance.” That is a much higher bar than required by current policy.

Commenting on this, Walter Olson observes

Like so many other developments in employment law in recent years, this would have chipped away at the basic principle of employment at will, which holds that in the absence of a contract specifying otherwise, either party to an employment relation may end that relation at any time for any reason or for no reason at all.

Via Instapundit.  So, while the law may have removed one barrier to our freedom, it created another.  Just as individuals should be free to smoke marijuana, so should employers be free to ensure that their employees don’t.

It seems that the initiative’s authors, like many on the left, only understood the idea of freedom in personal terms, not economic ones.  Let us hope that, in future years, they put forward a proposition which recognizes both an individual’s freedom to toke and a company’s freedom to set its own employment policies.

You gotta give major props to GOProud for promoting the stat that 31% of gay people voted Republican in the 2010 mid-terms.  It seems I can’t open my e-mail box — or check my Facebook without finding a link to some article or post on this supposedly amazing statistic — amazing only to those who assume that there is some genetic link between same-sex attraction and Democratic politics.  Those of us “out” gay Republicans have long been aware that many of our fellows part company from the big-government ideas of the president’s political party.

Many of our fellows are just afraid to talk about it because we fear the recrimination we experience from our politicized peers (when we do come out conservative).

There are a lot of gay people who support small government and find that the ideas of the Tea Party movement resonate.  Indeed, many of us, including yours truly, are delighted by the rapid growth of this grassroots movement.  It has helped return the focus of the Republican Party to the issues which, we believe, should be its focus.

And we finally have a gay conservative organization able to articulate that:

Economics is at the “forefront” of everyone’s mind, said Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud, a conservative gay advocacy group. . . .

“I think you saw this week and this year a campaign that was run on issues of importance to the vast majority of Americans, including gay Americans and the message of the Tea Party resonates with everyone.”

NB:  Tweaked this post to correct some errors.

It is going to take a long time to fully grasp that Californians overwhelmingly elected a man who, when he last served as governor, was widely ridiculed for his eccentricity and decisively rejected when he ran for the Senate after two terms as chief executive of the Golden State.  Memories of his strangeness lingered such that ten years after he left office, California Democrats rejected his umpteenth bid for the White House in 1992.  Even then, he seemed like old news.

But, 18 years later, memories have grown dim and public employee unions more powerful.  ”It could be argued that [Jerry] Brown owes labor big time,” writes Steven Harman in the Contra Costa Times,

. . . after they poured in $30 million through an independent expenditure effort that helped keep Republican Meg Whitman at bay during the summer. That enabled Brown to hold onto his resources until Labor Day, a critical move that positioned Brown for a fall campaign that ultimately prevailed.

Emphasis added.  Wonder why that summer expenditure did not get as much play as Meg’s wealth.  Nor the “Million More Voters” effort in the fall.  Nor the fact that, unlike Meg’s Republicans, Brown’s Democrats didn’t need to pay for a Get Out the Vote effort because the labor unions were providing that free of charge.

Perhaps, in this case, Brown’s eccentricity will serve us well and he won’t see this support as requiring him to return the favor.

I remain skeptical, however, but will give the Democrat credit if he stands up to the interest groups who bankroll his party — and who  seem most relieved by the election returns:

Mostly, labor is relieved they don’t have to face trying to negotiate employee contracts with Whitman, who had vowed to cut 40,000 state employees, said Garcia, whose local, SEIU 1000, led a Latino independent expenditure effort against Whitman.

And wasn’t it Brown’s understudy Gray Davis who hired 40,000 new workers shortly after the took office in 1999?  Not long thereafter, the state, in sound fiscal shape under Governor Pete Wilson through the 1990s, started seeing red ink pouring through the streets of Sacramento. (more…)

Thanks to Jim Hoft for reminding us that “Senator-Elect Marco Rubio [R-Fla] delivered this week’s GOP Weekly Address.”  That fine and fetching Floridian reminded us of the greatness of America and the tasks ahead of the GOP:

This election the American people said enough is enough. That message was loud and clear. We Republicans would be mistaken if we misread these results as simply an embrace of the Republican party. This Election is a second chance. A second chance for Republicans to be what we said we were going to be.

America is the single greatest nation on earth, a place without equal in the history of all mankind. A place built on free enterprise, where the employee can become the employer. Where small businesses are started every day in a spare bedroom and where someone like me, the son of a bartender and a maid, can become a United States Senator.

I know about the unique exceptionalism of our country. Not because I read about it in a book, I’ve seen it through my own eyes. You see, I was raised in a community of exiles, by people who lost their country, people who once had dreams like we do today, but had to come to a foreign shore to find them.

Emphasis added.  Jim emphasized different things than I did.  There is so much in this short address to enjoy and appreciate — and consider.  It is indeed a second chance fro the GOP to stand true to the principles of Ronald Reagan — and 1994.

Republicans can’t just pay lip service to the ideas of small government and individual liberty; they have to act on them.  Do hope Republicans take heed to what this fine — and fetching —  Floridian is saying:

NEW IBD/TIPP POLL: Americans’ Message To New Congress: Less Gov’t, Please.

Just watch this clip:

Despite the fact that his successor has attacked him repeatedly, former president George W. Bush refuses to respond in kind. Read Ed Morrisey’s commentary to see how W “actually knows how and when to play rope-a-dope.”