Erick Erickson's Blog, page 32
July 17, 2012
Ted Cruz Outraises David Dewhurst. Dewhurst Reponds By Accusing Cruz of Supporting Pedophiles.
”
I have always had a lot of respect for the guys who are running David Dewhurst’s campaign, but I’m starting to see now why Rick Perry had no chance of getting elected President. The same team running Dewhurst’s campaign ran Perry’s Presidential campaign and has stooped to what I thought would be an impossible low.
Contra the headline at CNN.com, David Dewhurst actually raised less money than Ted Cruz. Dewhurst had to pump over $4 million into his campaign to save face and win the media spin that he outpaced Cruz. In fact, Cruz has raised $1.7 million and Dewhurst raised $1.5 million.
So now Dewhurst’s campaign team is accusing Ted Cruz of supporting pedophiles, going so far as to try to tie him to Jerry Sandusky.
Not. Kidding.The scurrilous charge stems from Ted Cruz’s law firm taking on the appeal of a developer in Pennsylvania who had a dispute with an insurance company and had lost in district court. Ted Cruz got the case.
The company was in Pennsylvania and the client was involved in litigation related to a scandal that involved bribing judges to steer juvenile delinquents to the private jail facility his company built. He had previously pleaded guilty to failing to report a felony to the authorities. Cruz had nothing to do with the criminal case or the related civil litigation at all.
Moreso, Cruz’s client seemingly had nothing to do with the scandal involving the kids either. His crime was about not telling the IRS the judges involved had mischaracterized their income. In other words, as Ted Cruz said, his client’s actual victim in the case was the IRS, not kids.
That hasn’t stopped David Dewhurst. David Dewhurst is out with an ad highlighting Ted Cruz + Pennsylvania + kids involved and strongly implying that Ted Cruz supported a pedophile.
He’s using Cruz’s remarks about the criminal case being a tax case and not a case about kids against Cruz to imply Cruz is ignoring victimized children.
It’s ludicrous and it is false. But that’s not stopping David Dewhurst from running with it.
In a campaign email sent late yesterday by Megan Hanson, the Dewhurst campaign wrote,
Ted Cruz was fined the maximum penalty by the U.S. Senate Ethics Commission for breaking the law and failing to submit his Personal Financial Disclosure. Now, Texans are learning what Cruz was hiding. Ted Cruz is representing Robert Mericle, a child-exploiting, judge-bribing felon of the infamous “Kids for Cash” scandal.
The fine was for failing to timely file his disclosures. He missed a deadline. That’s all.
The rest? It’s akin to saying David Dewhurst is a kid toucher because he kissed a baby on the campaign trail. In other words, it is desperate nonsense.
It also is a strong indicator, coupled with Cruz outpacing Dewhurst in fundraising, that Dewhurst really does believe he is losing the race.
Good.
Karen Handel Will Be At the RedState Gathering. Will You?
Karen Handel was the second candidate, behind Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, to get a RedState endorsement in 2009 at our first RedState Gathering.
This year, she will join us in Jacksonville. Karen was the Secretary of State of Georgia before running for Governor of that state. She didn’t make it in that race, but went on to the Susan G. Komen Foundation where she led the fight to end Komen funding Planned Parenthood.
Karen, who had been attacked in the gubernatorial race as not sufficiently pro-life, was willing to lose her job at Komen over funding Planned Parenthood.
At this year’s RedState Gathering, we’ll hear from her and honor her hard work. Time is almost out. Go to www.redstategathering.com to register. I hope to see you there. The event will be in Jacksonville, FL on August 2nd through the 5th.
Morning Briefing for July 17, 2012
RedState Morning Briefing
July 17, 2012
Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. Karen Handel Will Be At the RedState Gathering. Will You?
2. Ted Cruz Outraises David Dewhurst. Dewhurst Reponds By Accusing Cruz of Supporting Pedophiles.
3. Taxpayers Fund White House’s Race-based Direct Mail
4. Law of the Sea Treaty Dead
5. Eight Years of RedState
———————————————————————-
1. Karen Handel Will Be At the RedState Gathering. Will You?
Karen Handel was the second candidate, behind Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, to get a RedState endorsement in 2009 at our first RedState Gathering.
This year, she will join us in Jacksonville. Karen was the Secretary of State of Georgia before running for Governor of that state. She didn’t make it in that race, but went on to the Susan G. Komen Foundation where she led the fight to end Komen funding Planned Parenthood.
Karen, who had been attacked in the gubernatorial race as not sufficiently pro-life, was willing to lose her job at Komen over funding Planned Parenthood.
At this year’s RedState Gathering, we’ll hear from her and honor her hard work. Time is almost out. Go to www.redstategathering.com to register. I hope to see you there. The event will be in Jacksonville, FL on August 2nd through the 5th.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
2. Ted Cruz Outraises David Dewhurst. Dewhurst Reponds By Accusing Cruz of Supporting Pedophiles.
I have always had a lot of respect for the guys who are running David Dewhurst’s campaign, but I’m starting to see now why Rick Perry had no chance of getting elected President. The same team running Dewhurst’s campaign ran Perry’s Presidential campaign and has stooped to what I thought would be an impossible low.
Contra the headline at CNN.com, David Dewhurst actually raised less money than Ted Cruz. Dewhurst had to pump over $4 million into his campaign to save face and win the media spin that he outpaced Cruz. In fact, Cruz has raised $1.7 million and Dewhurst raised $1.5 million.
So now Dewhurst’s campaign team is accusing Ted Cruz of supporting pedophiles, going so far as to try to tie him to Jerry Sandusky.
Not. Kidding.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. Taxpayers Fund White House’s Race-based Direct Mail
President Barack Obama’s delusions of grandeur, his Constitutional misconceptions and his petty racial politics mesh seamlessly in this recently uncovered letter, sent from the White House to an unknown number of recipients for rather dubious reasons.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. Law of the Sea Treaty Dead
Three conservative cheers for Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kelly Ayotte (R–N.H.) for announcing critical opposition to the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). The LOST is a treaty being pushed by the Obama administration that would bind the U.S. to decisions of a United Nations-sanctioned governing body of the world’s oceans. Conservatives worry that U.S. Senate ratification of the Treaty would lead to an attack on American sovereignty.
Thanks to the announced opposition of these two senators, there are now 34 publicly pledged votes against LOST. To pass a treaty in the Senate, the treaty needs a 2/3rds vote or 67 senators if all vote. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has circulated a letter with 31 senators pledged to vote no on the treaty. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) has a statement on his website saying that he will also vote no bringing the number to 32. Add in Portman and Ayotte, and then you have 34 votes against the treaty.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
5. Eight Years of RedState
July 11, 2004, was actually the first live day of RedState with the actual site kicking off July 12th with user content. We went live on Scoop without the logo.
July 16, 2012
Eight Years of RedState
July 11, 2004, was actually the first live day of RedState with the actual site kicking off July 12th with user content. We went live on Scoop without the logo.
[image error]
Within a few months, we had the logo as we wanted and by 2005 had RedHot and ConfirmThem up and going.
[image error]
By mid-2006, Clayton switched us over to Drupal with a new design and we went from RedState.org to RedState.com.
[image error]
In 2008, we moved to WordPress through a series of fits and false starts and have the template you see now.
Coming soon, well, we’re really going to shake things up a bit. Stay tuned . . .
And Happy Birthday RedState!
By the way, if you were ever wondering, our first users were, in order,
Tacitus
Krempasky
Ben Domenech (then Augustine)
Opriest
Walt
Matthew Stinson
Jay Reding
Moe Lane
Paul Cella
Kevin Holtsberry
Thomas Crown
Rick Scott Wins
Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano have cried “uncle”. He is throwing in the towel on a legal challenge against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL).
Governor Scott’s team down in Florida discovered a large number of people on the voter rolls who were not eligible to vote in Florida. They then discovered that more than a thousand of those people had actually voted in Florida elections.
The next step was logical. The Florida state government began removing people from the list of voters who did not belong there. Eric Holder filed a suit to stop it. At the same time, Governor Scott insisted Florida be given access to a federal database that Florida could use to cross reference its voter rolls.
The feds had refused.
Then the feds lost their case against Florida in federal court.
Now the feds have completely caved to Governor Scott.
In a victory for Republicans, the federal government has agreed to let Florida use a law enforcement database to challenge people’s right to vote if they are suspected of not being U.S. citizens.
The agreement, made in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s administration that was obtained by The Associated Press, grants the state access to a list of resident noncitizens maintained by the Homeland Security Department. The Obama administration had denied Florida’s request for months but relented after a judge ruled in the state’s favor in a related voter-purge matter.
Anybody who knows Governor Scott knows he has an unrelenting tenacity. Good for him that he refused to cut a deal or walk away on this. Polling in Florida suggests that this push of his is more popular than he is as Governor. But if he keeps racking up wins like this, I have no doubt his personal popularity will go up too. This is a big win.
Does the President Think The Government Got Him Where He Is Today?
It is a lie premised on Marxism. It really is. It is not hyperbole to say it. Prior to Marx, people did not clearly think of economics as class divided and did not think of the collective overriding the individual. Certainly the thinking was there sociologically, but not crystalized in economics.
As Daniel Henninger noted in the Wall Street Journal recently, “There is no theory anywhere in non-Marxist economics that says growth’s primary engine is a social class. A middle class is the result of growth, not its cause. Barack Obama not only believes in class-based growth but has built his whole growth strategy around it.”
Thus we arrive at President Obama’s very troubling statement in Roanoke on Friday. He told the crowd
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
This begs the question: does the President think government policies got him where he is?
The implication of Barack Obama’s statement is that we owe something to the government. The implication is that people succeed because of the collective conducting its actions via government. Most entrepreneurs would tell you they succeed in spite of the government. Barack Obama views it differently.
He clearly believes we all owe our success to government.
Does he not attribute his success to his parents and, more particularly, his grandparents? What about teachers at his private school? Or was it government policies?
Few people would ever acknowledge it. Most people know intrinsically that it was, contrary to what the President believes, their hard work and ideas that got them were they were. No one denies that others played roles in their lives, but the people who played roles were, in fact, people. The President clearly believes that individuals give back to society by paying into government. But people give back all the time through volunteerism, charitable contributions, raising families, and their own individual work product.
No one denies there is a role government plays, but most people — the President notwithstanding — are more likely to view their lives as their lives, not the government’s. They view their accomplishments as their accomplishments while acknowledging others who helped them.
The President seems to have taken Oscar acceptance speeches literally. Everyone thanks their agents, parents, directors, etc. But it was the actor’s hard work that won them the award. The President seems to think the Oscar needs to be chopped into bits and divided between everyone who played a role or, better yet, handed over to the government to be redistributed.
Henry Ford did not rely on the government. The first roads built in the nation were roads built of necessity, not by government. The Model-T did not come out of DARPA, but a man’s mind. And that man then put his idea to work, employing other people, who made and sold a product, generated a profit, and paid taxes into the system.
President Obama believes the rich should pay more in taxes because, in his mind, they have benefited more from society. The reality is the opposite. Society has benefited because of these people. They have profited not by pillaging society, but by providing good to society. They have given back.
Throughout human history, the pattern repeats itself — men live in squalor and government is corrupt. Good society does not come from good government, but that is the essence of what Barack Obama is saying. He reflects the elite in Washington, DC. He wants individuals to give to government so, as he has practiced, government can give to its choice of winners and losers, with the winners being campaign donors.
Barack Obama’s statement, in fact his whole campaign speech in Roanoke, suggests good society is derived from good government. Truthfully, it is that good government is derived from a good society. And history shows us that the best societies, generating the best governments, are those societies that value private property. Societies founded on a private property right are far more stable than others. What Barack Obama suggests when he says, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” is that you owe more than your exchange of your private property to another for them building your business — you owe government too.
And the net conclusion is the most dangerous bit of government — allowing government, via politicians, to decide what more you must be forced to exchange.
Barack Obama wants to be the arbiter of fairness. And no society long remains either moral or uncorrupt when it lets its leaders arbitrate fairness. They might decide fairness means giving money to Solyndra.
The President should now answer, based on his own statements, the simple question — is he the product of government policies or a life of his own making and interactions with others?
Exit question: does the President regret going to private schools?
Happy Birthday RedState. Will You Join Gov. Rick Scott and Me in Florida?
Josh Trevino posted this on January 24, 2004, at his blog Tacitus. Seven months later RedState.com came online.
We’ve come along way since 2004.
In our fifth year, we started the RedState Gathering. I put up a post without even telling my bosses at Eagle Publishing what I was up to. I just knew some of us wanted to get together in person after five years of knowing each other online. I asked who might be interested thinking 50 or so people would like to meet in Atlanta. Over 200 showed up. We’ve been doing the RedState Gathering ever since.
This year, the RedState Gathering will take place in Jacksonville, FL. Continuing a tradition Governor Rick Perry started in Austin, TX the second year of the Gathering, Governor Rick Scott will have a kick off party and welcome the attendees to his state.
Governor Rick Scott has been at the forefront of fighting socialized healthcare going all the way back to Hillarycare. In Florida, he has been a real leader on privatization, efficiency of government, and conservative transformation. RedState was one of the few sites that was willing to speak up on his behalf when he ran for Governor in 2010 and I am personally delighted he’ll be joining us. He’s a great, great guy.
So please join Governor Rick Scott, me, and the RedState contributors in Jacksonville, FL August 2nd to the 5th. Go to www.redstategathering.com to register. Time is running out.
Morning Briefing for July 16, 2012
RedState Morning Briefing
July 16, 2012
Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. Happy Birthday RedState. Will You Join Gov. Rick Scott and Me in Florida?
2. Does the President Think The Government Got Him Where He Is Today?
3. The Democrats’ Clown War On Science: FDA caught snooping on its own scientists.
4. Bain Kryptonite
5. DCCC covering up stalking videos?
———————————————————————-
1. Happy Birthday RedState. Will You Join Gov. Rick Scott and Me in Florida?
Josh Trevino posted this on January 24, 2004, at his blog Tacitus. Seven months later RedState.com came online.
We’ve come along way since 2004.
In our fifth year, we started the RedState Gathering. I put up a post without even telling my bosses at Eagle Publishing what I was up to. I just knew some of us wanted to get together in person after five years of knowing each other online. I asked who might be interested thinking 50 or so people would like to meet in Atlanta. Over 200 showed up. We’ve been doing the RedState Gathering ever since.
This year, the RedState Gathering will take place in Jacksonville, FL. Continuing a tradition Governor Rick Perry started in Austin, TX the second year of the Gathering, Governor Rick Scott will have a kick off party and welcome the attendees to his state.
Governor Rick Scott has been at the forefront of fighting socialized healthcare going all the way back to Hillarycare. In Florida, he has been a real leader on privatization, efficiency of government, and conservative transformation. RedState was one of the few sites that was willing to speak up on his behalf when he ran for Governor in 2010 and I am personally delighted he’ll be joining us. He’s a great, great guy.
So please join Governor Rick Scott, me, and the RedState contributors in Jacksonville, FL August 2nd to the 5th. Go to www.redstategathering.com to register. Time is running out.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
2. Does the President Think The Government Got Him Where He Is Today?
It is a lie premised on Marxism. It really is. It is not hyperbole to say it. Prior to Marx, people did not clearly think of economics as class divided and did not think of the collective overriding the individual. Certainly the thinking was there sociologically, but not crystalized in economics.
As Daniel Henninger noted in the Wall Street Journal recently, “There is no theory anywhere in non-Marxist economics that says growth’s primary engine is a social class. A middle class is the result of growth, not its cause. Barack Obama not only believes in class-based growth but has built his whole growth strategy around it.”
Thus we arrive at President Obama’s very troubling statement in Roanoke on Friday. He told the crowd
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
This begs the question: does the President think government policies got him where he is and, if so, was affirmative action one of those policies?
Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. The Democrats’ Clown War On Science: FDA caught snooping on its own scientists.
Basic background: some scientists in the FDA have gotten concerned over whether certain approved devices for medical procedures (mammograms, colonoscopies) are actually dangerously radioactive. Said scientists have been making their concerns known; and apparently the FDA decided to monitor the scientists’ communications for confidential or proprietary business information (this will be important later). So far, OK: but then the FDA decided that it was an absolutely brilliant idea to track and keep copies of said communication, including private emails. Note, by the way, that there is currently no indication that the scientists in question themselves revealed confidential or propriety business information.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. Bain Kryptonite
Don’t be silly. Mitt Romney’s not a superhero (not mine, anyway).
But when it comes to the economy, the presumptive Republican nominee is the Man of Steel compared to the Democratic incumbent. So far, the Obama Administration has been a 3-1/2 year experiment to reconfirm that Keynesian Economics is deserving of history’s dustbin.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
5. DCCC covering up stalking videos?
People may recall that Politico published a story several days ago cataloging what appears to be a somewhat alarming trend: to wit, videos showing ostensible ‘tracking’ of Republican candidates by individuals. I say ostensible because the way that the videos come across are as rather obsessive stalking of said candidates. For example: while it is understood that a candidate will be followed around, casing a candidates’s house from several different angles (account name: WI08RawFootage) or deliberately putting another candidate’s address (account name: AR01RawFootage) online, is generally considered to be, well, creepy. And that’s what is happening.
July 13, 2012
Meet Bainers, the New Birthers
First, let’s dispense with the bull shiitake mushrooms. Condi Rice is not the veep pick. She served President Bush for 8 years, has never been elected, and is pro-abortion. It’s not happening. Likewise, much of the fawning the left does over Rice has more to do with her carefully portrayed image as a spoiller to Rumsfeld and Cheney than to her actual, though admittedly impressive, background.
I can’t be the only one to have gotten pretty strong denials from Team Romney about this. A friend of mine speculates that it was a trial balloon so when a less than stellar pick emerges everyone can say, “Well, at least it was not Condi.”
Now, on to more important matters.
The geniuses at Team Obama are showing their complete ignorance of private enterprise, the law, and the one well vetted part of Mitt Romney’s career — his tenure at Bain Capital.
It is well established that Mitt Romney left Bain to go salvage the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. It is also well established that his name remained on some SEC documents. This stems from winding down his partnership interest in Bain Capital. It is a quirk in the law. It has been well vetted. Even FactCheck.org and the Washington Post are unpersuaded by Team Obama’s hyperbole.
Really? A felon? Hey! Let’s accuse Barack Obama of being a foreign born Muslim! There’s about the same validity to both. Meet the Bainers — they are the members of Team Obama demanding proof from Mitt Romney that he is a liar or a felon. Next they’ll ask when he stopped beating his wife.
The Bainers will not take any answer that does not show Romney to be a liar or felon in the same way Birthers will take no answer other than one that shows Barack Obama is not an American citizen. In fact, pointing this out on twitter today I was barraged from both sides that Obama has still never shown his real birth certificate and Mitt Romney has still not shown his tax returns.
That, in fact, is what this is all about. It’s just another attempt to get Mitt Romney to release his tax returns. Guy Benson has a pretty exhaustive look at this nonsense.
The Bainers will become as insufferable as the Birthers. The only difference is that the Bainers’ insufferable stupidity is at the heart of the Obama campaign while the Romney campaign has worked hard to not be tied to Birthers.
Morning Briefing for July 13, 2012
RedState Morning Briefing
July 13, 2012
Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. Meet Bainers, the New Birthers
2. The Divide Between the Black Community and Black “Leaders” Illustrated Yet Again
3. Secret Democratic Political Research Files for Twelve 2012 Match-Ups Found via Google
4. New Poll Has Ted Cruz Up. Conservatives Need to Pony Up Fast
5. Diane Black vs. Lou Ann Zelenik in Tennessee 6
———————————————————————-
1. Meet Bainers, the New Birthers
First, let’s dispense with the bull shiitake mushrooms. Condi Rice is not the veep pick. She served President Bush for 8 years, has never been elected, and is pro-abortion. It’s not happening. Likewise, much of the fawning the left does over Rice has more to do with her carefully portrayed image as a spoiller to Rumsfeld and Cheney than to her actual, though admittedly impressive, background.
I can’t be the only one to have gotten pretty strong denials from Team Romney about this. A friend of mine speculates that it was a trial balloon so when a less than stellar pick emerges everyone can say, “Well, at least it was not Condi.”
Now, on to more important matters.
The geniuses at Team Obama are showing their complete ignorance of private enterprise, the law, and the one well vetted part of Mitt Romney’s career — his tenure at Bain Capital.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
2. The Divide Between the Black Community and Black “Leaders” Illustrated Yet Again
It has often been observed that the difference between the beliefs of the elites and the “rank and file” in a given group are different from one another. The Republican rank and file, for example, are more conservative that the elites. The same could be said for many union members when compared to the leadership.
It has also been remarked by many people, among them Juan Williams*, that the Black community has been dominated by a select number of leaders whose public statements often find themselves at odds with the beliefs of many African Americans.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. Secret Democratic Political Research Files for Twelve 2012 Match-Ups Found via Google
It could be one of the biggest political intelligence coups of the 2012 battle to control Congress. Media Trackers, a conservative investigative watchdog group, discovered nearly three-dozen Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee opposition research notebooks – extensive secretive manuals outlining anything that could be used against a political opponent. Several news outlets have reported that some of the files have been quietly published on the DCCC’s website to facilitate their use by independent expenditure groups. On Thursday, however, Media Trackers published a dozen opposition research books that Democrats have so far managed to keep secret.
The twelve unpublished manuals range in size from a few dozen pages to hundreds of pages, depending on the personal, business and civic record of the Republican target. Incumbent members of Congress, like Florida’s Allen West and California’s Dan Lungren, have long files, whereas the individual Republican candidates in North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District share a single book.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. New Poll Has Ted Cruz Up. Conservatives Need to Pony Up Fast
A brand new poll has Ted Cruz ahead of David Dewhurst. The poll was conducted by Fred Wenzel. He also got the Indiana and Nebraska primaries right.
Here’s the problem. The primary is three weeks away. Dewhurst has millions of dollars in advantage over Cruz. Conservatives need to pony up.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
5. Diane Black vs. Lou Ann Zelenik in Tennessee 6
A little birdie tells me that the Republicans in Washington see Diane Black in trouble and Diane Black’s own internal polling shows the same thing up in TN-06.
This is terrific, terrific news. She’s a terrible congress critter.
Her primary opponent is Lou Ann Zelenik and would be a far, far better member of Congress.
Erick Erickson's Blog
- Erick Erickson's profile
- 12 followers
