Erick Erickson's Blog, page 221

Nevada's Largest Newspaper Endorses Sharron Angle

The last time Harry Reid ran for the Senate the Las Vegas Review Journal endorsed him.

Not this time. Nevada's largest newspaper has gone all in with Sharron Angle.

In its endorsement, the newspaper deemed the election a clear choice between Angle, who supports limited government, and what it described as Washington's big spending and partisan bickering.

The editorial says Reid hitched his fortunes to President Barack Obama's "failed" economic playbook.

That's a big score for Sharron Angle who remains tied in the polls with Reid.

John Thune's Tan Is Starting to Resemble Toast

Let's be honest for a minute. John Thune is a great United States Senator from South Dakota. But the only reason people talk about him for President is because he's a good looking guy in a city full of lesser looking people, is tall, and has an attractive wife.

Other than that his greatest accomplishments are doing nothing. But he gives a great talk about biennial budgeting, the topic of choice for establishmentarians who want to show a little leg.

The other day, Thune went on record dinging Jim DeMint for helping conservatives get elected. Thune also sided with Lisa Murkowski on her keeping her Senate seat.

Now comes word that Thune is doing zilch, zip, nada to help tea party backed Senate candidates.

In fact, in a review of Thune's giving:

Thune's PAC gave $10,000 to Shelby (appropriator with no real race) and $5,000 to earmarxist Trey Grayson, but nothing for Rand Paul (anti-earmarker in tough race), even post-primary.
His PAC gave $10,000 to Murkowski (earmarxist party traitor), but nothing to Joe Miller (anti-earmark primary winner).
His PAC gave both Crist and Rubio $5,000.
Thune's PAC gave Jane Norton $5,000 but gave Buck nothing. Update: Thune has now given to Buck and will be doing a fundraiser for him.
His PAC gave earmarxist Bob Bennett $10,000 for a 100% safe GOP seat, but only gave $5,000 to the anti-earmark Pat Toomey who's running in blue PA.

This guy has all the makings of a Presidential candidate . . . in an Aaron Sorkin drama for NBC. That's about it. By every other measure he is toast.

Frankly, the talk about Thune 2012 is a greater commentary on the vapid nature of inside the beltway punditry and Senate egos than on his actual, factual chances. Need we roll the tape on Senate Republicans who've won the White House? Bob Dole will run the slide projector while John McCain serves crow.

B. J. Lawson Might Shake Up NC-4

I've been saying for a while that there are congressional districts out there that'll flip to the GOP in 30 days that were not even on the radar.

Put NC–4 on the radar. Democrat Congressman David Price is running against Dr. B. J. Lawson who is giving Price a run for his money.

Several polls have come out in the past couple of weeks showing the race within points and well inside the margin of error.

Lawson is also trying to reach a goal of $225,000.00 in cash raised as of today and has $5,000.00 to go. This is one of those seats we need to take to take back the House.

Lawson is endorsed by FreedomWorks and others. He looks like a pretty solid guy.

Morning Briefing for October 1, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing

For October 1, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Tom Coburn Has Medicare Fraud in His Sights

2. Dear Thomas Friedman

3. Message for Meg Whitman: Go on Offense. Now.

4. Congress backstabs POTUS on recess appointments.

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1. Tom Coburn Has Medicare Fraud in His Sights

When it comes to solving the multi-billion-dollar challenge of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, Oklahoma Senator (and physician) Tom Coburn has led the way in calling for innovative approaches to fraud prevention. Now he's introduced legislation focused on addressing the problem. It may not go anywhere in this Congress, but expect it to get a lot of consideration early next year.

"This act does several things to target fraud. One of the biggest problems we face is providers and suppliers who are banned in one State, but then just jump to another," Coburn told me in an interview today. "So we're going to give the Secretary [of HHS] the ability share information to a greater degree, so we can track and identify providers and suppliers excluded from participation."

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Dear Thomas Friedman

Dear Mr. Friedman,

I read your column on Wednesday in which you wrote, "The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I'd actually call the "Tea Kettle movement" — because all it's doing is letting off steam."

I suspect you are writing more about yourself than the actual Tea Party Movement. You see, I was sitting across from you on the Acela Express last week from New York to Washington. We all saw and all heard you berate the Amtrak worker for not picking up your trash quickly enough. We all heard you complain that you were trapped in your seat because, heaven forbid, you had your tray table down and couldn't be bothered to move your laptop to get up.

Never mind that the Amtrak employee was actually in the midst of doing his job.

We also all heard you mutter about how the Amtrak employee's failure to pick your trash up quickly enough was a sign of why the country was disintegrating or something or other like that. Yeah, you said that too. We all heard you. You were too busy lecturing to see all the glances back and forth among those around you and the smirks caused by that last line.

Now you are rattling on about tea partiers having "no plan to restore America to greatness."

I guess we need to go ask your buddies the Chinese for a plan.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Message for Meg Whitman: Go on Offense. Now.

The best way past a "scandal" for a Republican is through it. Take a day or two - no more, no less - to think it through, find a line of attack and go on offense. If George Allen had done that instead of trying to plead, ignore and then cower his way past the "macaca" incident, we'd not have the tragedy of both Senators from the Commonwealth of Virginia being Democrats.

On the latest so-called "scandal!" and "controversy" that has all the political talking heads in California running around screaming at the top of their lungs i.e. Meg Whitman's illegal alien former housekeeper; if I were advising Whitman I'd tell her, apart from her offer to take a polygraph test, to call a Press Conference, and go on offense.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Congress backstabs POTUS on recess appointments.

It seems a bit odd that Senate Democrats have agreed to use a rules technicality to prohibit the President from making any recess appointments between now and the election - particularly since Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) seemed to be suggesting earlier this week that a recess appointment for blocked OMB nominee Jacob Lew would be possible if the hold on his nomination was still active. None the less, the prohibition is now in effect: and in exchange, the Republicans gave up…

…nothing.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Dear Thomas Friedman

Dear Mr. Friedman,

I read your column on Wednesday in which you wrote, "The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I'd actually call the "Tea Kettle movement" — because all it's doing is letting off steam."

I suspect you are writing more about yourself than the actual Tea Party Movement. You see, I was sitting across from you on the Acela Express last week from New York to Washington. We all saw and all heard you berate the Amtrak worker for not picking up your trash quickly enough. We all heard you complain that you were trapped in your seat because, heaven forbid, you had your tray table down and couldn't be bothered to move your laptop to get up.

Never mind that the Amtrak employee was actually in the midst of doing his job.

We also all heard you mutter about how the Amtrak employee's failure to pick your trash up quickly enough was a sign of why the country was disintegrating or something or other like that. Yeah, you said that too. We all heard you. You were too busy lecturing to see all the glances back and forth among those around you and the smirks caused by that last line.

Now you are rattling on about tea partiers having "no plan to restore America to greatness."

I guess we need to go ask your buddies the Chinese for a plan. I'm sure they have one. I'm sure they can impose it by fiat. And God knows if you were in China last week, the poor train worker could have been taken out back and shot for not picking up the trash of China's greatest American propagandist.

That's what the Chinese do. They are, lest you forget, communists. If that surprises you, it is probably because you know less about China than you think you do and you sure as hell know nothing about the tea party movement.

Sincerely yours,

Erick Erickson

The Best Thing About the Next Congress Open Thread

As noted on Twitter yesterday, the best thing about 2011 will be a Congress with Michelle Bachmann and without Alan Grayson.

Consider this an open thread.

The Nightmaes in Colorado Remain

Yet another day the long Colorado nightmaes of Dan Maes continues. I think I'm just going to keep beating this like a dead horse every day.

Yes, the time for Maes to go and have the ballot changed has passed. But as long as Maes remains active, some voters will stick with him and not go to Tancredo who has a much better shot.

There is much at stake in Colorado, including the election of Ken Buck.

Dan Maes needs to do the right thing and get out.

McDonald's is the Next to Get Rid of Employee Healthcare

This was not an unforeseen consequence of Obamacare. This was not unknown. This was not unexpected.

It was predicted.

McDonald's is planning to drop the healthcare coverage of 30,000 employees unless the Obama Administration waives certain rules related to coverage.

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn't loosen a requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.

The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.

While many restaurants don't offer health coverage, McDonald's provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald's official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain's insurer won't meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.

This presents a further dilemma. McDonald's is a huge corporation with a lot of clout. But there are many small businesses equally affected by the same regulations who will not have the clout of a McDonald's. How many of them will ultimately go out of business because of Obamacare?

Morning Briefing for September 30, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing

For September 30, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Obama's Generals

2. Matt Taibbi on the Tea Parties

3. The Waxman Net Neutrality bill should move forward

4. Jim Marshall is Worried in Georgia 8

5. Idaho Congressman Misleads Constituents on Repeal…Again

6. The First World War Ends on Sunday

7. Let's Attack Christine O'Donnell's LinkedIn Page!

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1. Obama's Generals

"Obama had to do this 18-month surge just to demonstrate, in effect, that it couldn't be done . . . the president had treated the military as another political constituency that had to be accommodated."

– LTG Douglas Lute, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted in the Washington Post .

The past three days the Washington Post has been serializing the new Bob Woodward book, "Obama's Wars," on the front page of that paper. Though I have been stunned by what I've read I haven't been surprised. That a feckless and un-serious man when elected president would pursue a war in a feckless and un-serious way should surprise no one. What has left me stunned is the fact that Obama never seriously considered whether winning the war in Afghanistan (or sealing the victory in Iraq) was in the national interests of the United States. His lodestar was rather an arbitrary and precipitous withdrawal date in July 2011.

Here you have it in black and white. The surge of troops into Afghanistan was below the number recommended by his military advisers. Obama did not support the surge, he was fixated on an early withdrawal, but he lacked the courage to make that decision. How a president can continue to waste the lives of young Americans in a war he neither believes in or cares about is beyond my comprehension.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Matt Taibbi on the Tea Parties

If sophistication is the ability to understand different kinds of people and grapple with different ideas, Matt Taibbi's latest Tea Party bashing piece in Rolling Stone can best be read as an expose of the provincial unsophistication of Taibbi, his editors, and any readers who take his article seriously. Taibbi's piece is a slovenly mess of leftist tropes, with his usual lazy approach to basic facts. This is a shame. The story of the Tea Party era, in the hands of a more competent writer, is incredibly interesting, breaking all sorts of rules of politics, changing our understanding of base and establishment relationships, and marking a possible turning point in the history of American political movements — but Taibbi is so committed to his predetermined plot, he blatantly ignores –- or in some cases abuses –- the truth along the way.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The Waxman Net Neutrality bill should move forward

If you take one message from everything I write today on technology issues, take this one: House Republicans need to get on board and support Henry Waxman's Net Neutrality bill. The bill urgently addresses the critical issue of the moment, and its passage would avert disastrous regulation of the Internet going forward.

As things stand on Net Neutrality, Barack Obama and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are holding all of the cards. We can debate all we want about the legality or necessity of the FCC's plans to unilaterally regulate the Internet and we can go to court later all we want but without new legislation we can't stop them from trying it and doing the damage anyway.

The Waxman bill is that legislation, and I want every Republican to support this bill to stop the Obama administration from yet another end run around Constitutional process.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Jim Marshall is Worried in Georgia 8

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released an internal poll in Georgia's 8th Congressional District showing Jim Marshall ahead by twelve points. It is exceedingly rare in this election cycle for the DCCC to release an internal poll.

Doing so shows a level of panic about this race and a desire to change expectations. The poll is also disconnected from reality.

Look at Jim Marshall's last two mid-term elections. He beat Caulder Clay by roughly 1% in 2002. He beat Mac Collins by roughly 1% in 2006. In 2008, the high water mark for Democratic turnout with Barack Obama at the top of the ballot, Jim Marshall only beat Rick Goddard by about 14% of the vote.

For a poll to show Jim Marshall ahead of Austin Scott by 12% in an anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, anti-Democrat year in a congressional district that already leans Republican is sheer fabrication. It also does not correspond to any of the non-partisan polls, what few there are, and a variety of other unreleased internal polls out there.

If that's not enough, the Democrats are now trying to push out information about Austin Scott, Marshall's opponent, contained in sealed divorce records — sealed jointly by Austin Scott and his former wife when Scott first ran for the state legislature. The Democrats are going scorched earth.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Idaho Congressman Misleads Constituents on Repeal…Again

Idaho's Rep. Walt Minnick, who voted against Obamacare but refuses to back its repeal, has come up with yet another excuse to confuse his constituents.

A caller to his office was told yesterday that Minnick has a policy of not signing "discharge petitions."

That is fascinating news, because it was only last year, on September 23, 2009, that Minnick signed just such a discharge petition in support of a requirement that all bills receive at least 72 hours of public availability before they can be voted on.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. The First World War Ends on Sunday

This is a random way to start your morning, but it is also something I bet you did not know.

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns fell silent across Europe with the cease fire concluding the hostilities of World War I.

But Germany has continued pay for First World War under its obligations of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

This coming Sunday, Germany will make it last payment under the terms of the war reparations thus fully and finally closing the books on the War to End All Wars.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

7. Let's Attack Christine O'Donnell's LinkedIn Page!

Christina Bellantoni, who I've been told is the most fair person working at TPM, has a real stretch of an attack on Christine O'Donnell today which uses the candidate's LinkedIn page to suggest she lied about where she attended school.

Yet there's a real flaw with this argument. Depending on when O'Donnell created her LinkedIn profile, at one point you could only enter educational programs that were in the LinkedIn system. And even today, you have to hard-code in the text for places like Claremont, which are not recognized Institutions or Companies, but exist only as search terms in their system.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

It is Time for Dan Maes to Go

It is always a tough thing for candidates to do, but sometimes it is necessary.

Dan Maes is running a terrible campaign terribly underfunded in Colorado. He has the establishment Republicans and most of the grassroots doing something no one thought was possible — rallying to Tom Tancredo.

The latest polling in Colorado has Maes at 15%, behind Tancredo and Hickenlooper, the Democrat.

Maes cannot win. There is no way he can make up the ground. There is no money for him to make up the ground.

It is not just improbable. It is impossible.

For the sake of all that is at stake, Dan Maes must drop out. It is not pleasant. It is not face saving at this point. But Dan Maes must go for Colorado to have even a chance of flipping the Governor's Mansion out of the hands of the Democrats.