There would have to have been one...

Ed Markey Can’t Remember A Single Tax Increase He’s Ever Opposed

"Data the Romney Campaign is Looking At"

Rich Lowry has a slew of tea leaves that the Romney camp are apparently reading, and they're all positive. Truth or spin? Probably some of each.

Offered anyway...

Franchise exercised

Down to the polling place, this morning, waiting in line for the door to answer.  Eighteen year old daughter voting for the first time.  (So is the nineteen year old son, who is in the service and stationed out of state, so voted absentee two weeks ago.)  My wife fed the first ballots into the machine.

The first three votes cast in my precinct went to Mitt Romney for President, and for Scott Brown for the US Senate. 

I doubt that either will win that precinct, but there it is...

Election day

A couple of thoughts as we head to the polls...

• If the electorate is as Democratic as it was in 2008, Barack Obama will win a second term.  Many of the polls are suggesting that that will be the case.
• I can't believe it.
• Either way, I'm more than ready for it to be over.
• We really have two different electorates in this country, with very different assumptions and expectations.  Someone is going to be not only disappointed, but shocked tomorrow morning.  Certainly, there are many on the right who have looked at all of the data and really believe that Romney will win.  And I get the impression that many of Obama's supporters have not even considered that possibility.
• The polls cannot all be right.  Maybe none of them are.  But for the past month, or more, they've been telling two different stories.  With the topline results, they've been saying that it's a very tight race, with Romney possibly slightly ahead in the popular vote and Obama clearly ahead in the electoral college vote.  But the internals have suggested that Romney has a huge lead with independent voters.  Those two stories are only reconcilable if there is a massive majority of people voting who claim to be Democrats, a bigger Democrat majority than we actually saw in 2008.  Given what's happened since then, how likely is that?  Well, it's obviously preposterous.  
• And, as much as I hate - hate! - to be in the position of arguing that the polls are wrong (I'd much rather my candidate had a big lead than to be arguing that the polls are wrong, which feels like sophistry and rationalization [and the next time I engage in either of those won't be the first]), there's another part of it.  The response rate on political polls is actually down to 9%.  That is, for every 100 houses or phone numbers that a pollster chooses as part of its sample, it ends up with just 9 valid responses.  Even if they are doing a perfect job of choosing their initial dataset, there's just no way of knowing how representative of the actual electorate the final response set is.  They've got all kinds of techniques and data to weight the results, but all of the results rest on assumptions that may or may not be true.  Are there some kinds of voters who are more likely to be missed?  Are the 6% that the pollsters reach that won't answer the questions more likely to support one candidate than the other?
• There's a possibility that Obama's Sandy-related photo-ops actually changed the trajectory of this campaign.  In which case, his re-election would qualify as an act of God, because there's nothing he could have done to change it on his own.
• My emotional investment is more than adequate evidence for me that the Federal Government is far too big and obtrusive. If the Federal Government were kept within its Constitutional boundaries, the average citizen should have little to no contact with it from year to year.  Instead, it is a constant, overwhelming presence, influencing all that we see and do.

I've been hesitant to make a prediction.  Yes, I've been telling people for months that I expected Romney to win an election that ended up being not particularly close.  But I'm so emotionally invested that it's difficult for me to tell where the analysis ends and the wishful thinking begins. 

But here it is anyway...

Romney wins the popular vote 51-48.  And the electoral college vote 315-223.

Romney states that are likeliest to be lost if Obama wins:  OH, PA, WI, IA
Obama states that are likeliest to be won if there's a Romney landslide:  MI, MN, NV, OR

The Democrats’ bad presidential choice

There's been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the perceived weakness of the Republican primary field, but Frank J. Fleming notes - correctly - that all is not sweetness and light for the Democrats, either...

The primaries are supposed to be to find the strongest candidate for the general election, but that route is simply failing for the Democrats this time. The Republican primary field has at least offered a few options people can imagine doing a decent job as president, but the reason for Obama’s easy success so far in the Democratic primaries (the fact that he’s the incumbent) means no one will be able to imagine that about the Democratic nominee.

Democratic voters must be looking to the Republican field with envy. Having a few potentially bad choices certainly beats having just a single horrible one.

No hypocrisy here, nosirree...

Q: What do you call a rich lawyer who supported "big insurance" in its efforts to reduce payments to workers who got cancer from working with asbestos?
A: Democratic "dream candidate" for the Senate!

...the Harvard professor also has a potential deadly political sin in her background. Maybe it is the reason President Obama didn’t nominate her to head up the consumer agency. It is not a secret that his administration believed Lizzy couldn’t survive the Senate confirmation process.

One of the Harvard professor’s many well-compensated part-time gigs included consulting for Travelers Insurance...What did Lizzy do to earn $44,000 in compensation from the insurance company? She made it harder for claimants to collect. Warren helped establish the bankruptcy strategy for companies to avoid crushing lawsuits. In short, go bankrupt to avoid paying victims.

It's amusing how often past activities that would cause shrieks of "principled" outrage on the part of the left if found in a Republican candidate's background produce, if found in a Democrat, the sound of crickets...

Santorum: Romneycare "disqualifies" Romney

As quoted by Katrina Trinko at The Corner.

But, in his appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning, he also disputed that it was the “social conservative” vote that was splintering, saying “a lot of conservatives have concerns about Gov. Romney’s record on the economy, and obviously, Romneycare is a real scarlet letter here.”

“We can’t have a nominee,” Santorum continued, “that takes away the most important issue in this election, which is an explosion of the federal government and robbing of people’s freedom on the federal level with Obamacare, and Romneycare, which was the predecessor to Obamacare, just disqualifies him in his ability to go out and aggressively go after this top-down approach to health care.”

While I don't agree that it "disqualifies" him, I've made clear on several occasions that I believed it would prevent Romney from winning the Republican nomination. What that position assumed, of course, was that someone else would show up who could win it.

That's clearly not happened. That's clearly not going to happen. So, since I haven't commented recently on this, let's get this out there now.

The race for the Republican nomination for the Presidency is over. Mitt Romney is going to be the candidate. Huntsman, who was never a viable candidate, is gone. Ron Paul is not a viable candidate. Newt Gingrich is not a viable candidate. Rick Santorum is not a viable candidate. And Rick Perry, who looked like a viable candidate when he entered the race, has been a dreadful candidate. Yes, they still have to have primaries, and count votes, and add up delegates. But it's all mechanical now. The race is over; Mitt's won.

An early Christmas present...

...for the entire country. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank will not seek re-election

Longtime U.S. Rep. Barney Frank won’t be running for re-election in 2012 ending an often controversial but always outspoken tenure.

Frank, 71, has served in Congress since 1980. He will take questions about his decision to relinquish his seat at 1 p.m. today at Newton City Hall, his office told the Herald.

Earlier would have been better, of course, as Frank's fingerprints are all over the housing bubble that is largely responsible for the crash of 2008, but hey - better late than never. If there's one thing that the US body politic desperately needs, it's fewer and better Barney Franks...

Anecdotes from the campaign trail

Romney flies coach

As word spread that the leading challenger to President Obama was on the flight, ground crew members and baggage handlers streamed up the stairs from the tarmac into the plane to get Romney’s autograph. They treated him like a rock star, one after another. Anyone who has followed the airline’s labor history at the Philadelphia hub knows that the local Philadelphia union is among the most belligerent in the entire commercial aviation industry, nearly wrecking the airline with “sick outs” one holiday season. If Romney gets the nomination, and the same reception in Philadelphia next November among these Reagan democrats, Obama is in trouble.

I don't know that this means much, but it's a good opportunity to make my position on Romney clear.

1. I like Mitt.
2. Obviously, he'd be a vast improvement over the current occupant of the White House.
3. He's got some issues, of which the most significant is the Romneycare that he continues to refuse to disavow, despite the fact that a) Obamacare is a huge issue and b) Romneycare has been a disaster.

Everything that he's done in this campaign thus far has been aimed at beating Barack Obama. (Well, maybe not everything. He continues to defend Romneycare which doesn't help in either the primary or the general. I don't understand, at all, why he does it.) He's running to the center, though, essentially running a general election campaign during primary season. Because of this, he will not be the Republican nominee. I don't know who will be. Rick Perry, maybe, or Tim Pawlenty or Herman Cain. But not Romney.

If I'm wrong about that, though, I'm right about this, anyway - if Mitt Romney wins the Republican presidential nomination, he is the next President of the United States.


[UPDATED - It previously said that he "continues to disavow" which is, of course, exactly not right, and not what I meant.]

"like watching your parents do the Macarena..."

Yup...

Now he’s come out in favor of global warming not when it was actually happening (over a decade ago) but two years after the peer-review hit the fan in East Anglia, Copenhagen, and at the IPCC.

This is like watching your parents do the Macarena: It’s embarrassing and it’s dated.

Mitt had a lot going for him last time round, but he seems determined not to learn from experience. And the least that voters are entitled to in a time of crisis is a presidential candidate who’s one step ahead of the conventional pieties, not someone so out of it that he orders his political positions from the remainder bin.

Mark Steyn, who is absolutely right.

My take on it? Mitt's trying to position himself for the general election, but in ways that pretty much guarantee that he won't be a part of it. And I've been a Romney supporter all along. If I'm telling you this, you know that there's no chance...

Why 2012, despite Barack Obama's fevered dreams, is not like 1996

More from that John Fund piece I quoted earlier:

President Obama has apparently decided to borrow some political plays from Bill Clinton, who after his party's defeat in the 1994 mid-term elections began running ads attacking Republican plans to reform Medicare. At the same time, Mr. Clinton focused on a series of granular policy initiatives—promoting school uniforms was one memorable example—that were politically safe and popular with independent voters. Mr. Obama appears to be following the same strategy—offering little in terms of policy substance, remaining disengaged in budget negotiations and waiting for Republicans to present a target for him to shoot at.

One can understand the Obama White House leaping to this analogy, grasping at it like a drowning man clutching at a life preserver. But the differences between the two situations are different enough that the comparison doesn't really work.

1. Obamacare - Hillarycare was defeated, Obamacare passed. Bill Clinton didn't have a massive government program hanging over everyone's head, being fought over in the courts, causing costs to rise, and great difficulties for many, with benefits for few. Obamacare is a cudgel that the Republicans can, and will¹, use against Obama in 2012 that they did not have against Clinton in 1996.
2. The stimulus - Not only was the economy not terrible in 1996, it appeared to be better than it had been in 1992, that is, that "Clintonomics," however one wants to define that, was working. Obama is going to face re-election in an economy that's not only down, it will have been down significantly for his entire first term, with a massive increase to the debt that was supposed to have fixed it and in fact made it worse. (Even worse for him is that, in addition to making the economy worse, it appeared to make the economy worse. Politicians can get away with doing things that hurt the economy but appear to make it better or even things that help the economy while appearing to make it worse, but the stimulus failed on both counts.)
3. The deficit - The Federal budget deficit was a problem in 1994, and helped the Republicans get elected, but it was an addressable problem at that point. Social Security was still a net positive (shouldn't have been, but that's the way they used it) and things were close enough to in control that two years of a Republican Congress could get it headed in the right direction on a reasonable trajectory. It's an order of magnitude worse now, and the problems with entitlements are now 18 years further along and more intractable. And the public awareness of it, and concern about it, has multiplied over that stretch, as millions of people "took to the streets" at Tea Party rallies to fight against Leviathan in Washington.
4. Unemployment - Clinton took office as the Bush recovery was taking off, and it increased when the Republicans took over in 1994. When Americans went to the polls in November of 1994, the unemplyment rate was 5.4% and dropping. When they go to the polls in November of 2012, the optimistic projections are that it will be 7.7%.
5. The Congressional opposition - In 1994, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. And they let it go to their heads. Newt Gingrich is a very smart guy, but he's bombastic and easily caricatured, and mis-read the extent of the "mandate" that the Republicans had. That's not the case this time. Boehner is a low-key adult. The leadership has idea men, but no bomb-throwers. And they have the historical perspective that wasn't available to Gingrich.
6. The Presidential opposition - Bill Clinton ran against Bob Dole. Whoever gets nominated in 2012 is not going to be Bob Dole.
7. The President - This is the big one. Bill Clinton was likable², with a passionate need to be liked, warm, friendly and hands on. Barack Obama is historic, aloof, cold, distant and detached. Bill Clinton understood that, regardless of what he would have liked to do, philosophically, with the Presidency, he was going to be better liked, and re-elected, if the American people were happy with the economy and the country's situation. Barack Obama is intent on re-making the country. Clinton's reluctance to do big things abroad caused problems down the road, but he was hands on, and managed to keep big negative things from happening. Obama has allowed the narrative to take hold that he's utterly clueless about what's going on.

It's easy to understand why the White House would look to the 1996 election as a model for their 2012 re-election campaign. But it's also easy to see that that's a model that is unlikely - extremely unlikely - to work...






¹ - This is the single biggest obstacle to a Romney presidency. And I'm a guy who likes Mitt, and thinks he may be just what we need in this situation. But if he doesn't completely disown Romneycare, "it was an experiment in the state, it was an attempt to do something, it failed miserably at the state level and is even worse at a national level," he'll never get out of the primaries.

² - Not by everyone. I can't stand him. But by enough. And he certainly qualifies for the label "likable."

Why good - even great - isn't good enough...

Jim Geraghty - "It’s the biggest Republican gain in two generations — and yet, because of a few key races, it feels a little disappointing."

That depends on where you're sitting. I'm thinking that New Hampshire Republicans and Wisconsin Republicans and Pennsylvania Republicans are all pretty happy. But I'm sitting here in Massachusetts this morning, and "disappointed" doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling. It may have been the "biggest Republican gain in two generations" but there wasn't a single pleasurable minute for me last night.

Part of this is expectations. We see this every quarter when companies report good results and stocks drop anyway, because the good news was "already baked in" - it was expected and, therefore, not news. Well, I called the Republicans taking back the house a year ago. Essentially, everything good that happened last night was "baked in" as far as I'm concerned. There was not a single upside-surprise reported last night (well, to me, anyway - I'm sure that there were some races that went to Republicans that weren't expected to, but not one that I was following.) One of the key elements of a really enjoyable election night is two or three big races where you hoped, but didn't really expect, to win, and there wasn't a single one yesterday.

Good news?

• Marco Rubio won, as I expected him to.
• Ron Johnson beat Russ Feingold, as I expected him to. (This race has given me pleasure over the last month, because I didn't thing Feingold could really be in trouble a month ago, but by last night, it was clearly over.)
• Kelly Ayotte beat Paul Hodes, as I expected her to.
• Pat Toomey beat Joe Sestak, as I expected him to.
• Mark Kirk beat Alexi Giannoulis, as I expected him to.

All of that was baked in. So was a 70+ seat Republican takeover in the house, which they may not have quite reached.

So there's no great result, no "wow, that was fantastic" feeling associated with any particular race. Nothing exhilarating.

On the other hand

• The voters in Massachusetts saw fit to give Deval Patrick four more years in the Governor's office.
• The voters in Massachusetts' 4th district saw fit to send Barney Frank back to Washington, and I thought Sean Bielat might beat him.
• The voters in Massachusetts' 5th district saw fit to send Niki Tsongas back to Washington, and I thought Jon Golnik might beat her.
• The voters in Massachusetts' 6th district saw fit to send John Tierney back to Washington, and I thought Bill Hudak might beat him.
• The voters in Massachusetts' 10th district saw fit to send Bill Keating to Washington, and I thought Jeff Perry might beat him.
• The voters in Massachusetts saw fit to not cut the sales tax.

In fact, all of the incumbent statewide office holders were re-elected. As were all of the incumbent congressmen. And a Democrat won the one open congressional seat. There may have been a national wave, but it missed Massachusetts entirely. The legislature is still overwhelmingly Democratic, the Democratic imcumbents in the state legislature overwhelmingly won, and nothing changed other than a large bucket of cold water poured on the heads of Republicans who had hoped, after Scott Brown's victory in January, that they were making progress.

And moving outside of our borders

• The voters of Maine sent Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud back to Washington (and, as a native, this has more impact on me than the results in neighboring NH, or anywhere else.)
• I expected Richard Blumenthal to beat Linda McMahon, but thought it would be closer, and that there was a possibility of an upset.
• I expected John Raese to beat Joe Manchin.
• I expected Sharron Angle to beat Harry Reid.
• I expected Carly Fiorina to beat Barbara Boxer.

Obviously, objectively speaking, it was a great night for the national Republican party. Holding the house gives them the ability to begin to impose some fiscal discipline on the US government, if they're willing to do it. (And if they're not, then the fact that they won is meaningless, and they're in the process of becoming extinct.) And the victories were, in many places, deep. They took over up to 16 different state legislatures, and several governorships, which puts them in excellent position for the upcoming redistricting.

But from my vantage point, the evening wasn't a "little disappointing" - it was a huge disappointment.

Public Policy Polling: Obama a big drag

Public Policy Polling: Obama a big drag

If this election is a referendum on Barack Obama then o boy are Democrats in trouble. In our final round of 18 polls we found the President with a positive approval rating among likely voters in only 1 state- Connecticut. Even there only 46% of voters expressed support for the job he's doing. He's slightly under water in some of the bluest states out there- California, Washington, even his home state of Illinois.

As Ace said, "well, duh."

But this part of the analysis is preposterous.

There's a lot of good Democrats tonight- both incumbents and challengers- who are going to lose and it won't be because of anything they did wrong. It's just hard to overcome an incumbent President of your party being so unpopular with the people most motivated to vote.

Did those "good Democrats" vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker or Harry Reid for Majority Leader? Yes, they did.
Did those "good Democrats" vote for the stimulus bill? Yes, they did.
Did those "good Democrats" vote for Obamacare? Yes, they did.
Did those "good Democrats" go along with the reconciliation farce to force the Obamacare monstrosity through? Yes, they did.
Did they support the "Lousiana Purchase" and the "Cornhusker kickback"?  Yes, they did.

So why in God's name would someone say that they're going to lose and "it won't be because of anything they did wrong"? There's not a one of them for whom I feel a shred of sympathy. They're going to lose precisely because they've done everything wrong.

I voted.

Did you?

24 hours...

... until polls start closing.

It's our turn - don't blow it...

Les Miserables - One Day More

One Day More

Tomorrow is the judgment day,
tomorrow we'll discover what our God in heaven has in store.
One more dawn,
one more day,
one day more...

You know who you are.  You know what you need to do.  Tomorrow, the citizens get to stand up and say, "we're citizens, not subjects."

Do you hear the people sing?  Singing the song of angry men,
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again...

"...rejection of a bipartisan political elite that's lost touch with the people..."

Key advice for Republicans from Scott Rasmussen:

...None of this means that Republicans are winning. The reality is that voters in 2010 are doing the same thing they did in 2006 and 2008: They are voting against the party in power...it is a rejection of a bipartisan political elite that's lost touch with the people they are supposed to serve. Based on our polling, 51% now see Democrats as the party of big government and nearly as many see Republicans as the party of big business. That leaves no party left to represent the American people.


Voters today want hope and change every bit as much as in 2008. But most have come to recognize that if we have to rely on politicians for the change, there is no hope. At the same time, Americans instinctively understand that if we can unleash the collective wisdom and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, there are no limits to what we can accomplish.


In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that their team didn't win, the other team lost. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

It isn't just the wise thing to do - it's the essential thing to do. It is clear that the economic policies of the political class cannot be sustained, and it is clear that the American people now recognize that. The Democrats may or may not win the elections of 2012, but if the Republicans think that they're going to continue playing politics as usual for the next two years, they're definitely going to lose...

Good piece, read it all.

"I promise that I won't fix Social Security, but my opponent might..."

I am not certain whether I'm more amused or frightened by how many Democrats are running ads promising to not do ANY of the things that might actually "fix" the already bankrupt Social Security system. Actuarially and demographically speaking, the math just doesn't work. People retiring and taking full benefits at age 65 are taking far more out of the system than they ever paid in, and there are fewer workers supporting more retirees every year. If something can't go on indefinitely, it's a good bet that it won't go on indefinitely, but there's a lot of advertising out there promising that it will...

(Yes, I'm looking at you, Barney Frank, and you, Chellie Pingree, and you're not alone...)

God and Man in Minnesota Politics

As Glenn Reynolds keeps saying, the "D" stands for Desperate.

Kathryn Jean Lopez notes an extremely distasteful mailing from the DFL (Democrat-Farm-Labor) party in God and Man in Minnesota Politics:

I think it’s safe to say it’s unholy politics. That’s a bipartisan problem for sure. But there is reason for bipartisan, ecumenical offense here. It’s an insult to suggest there isn’t some convenient anti-Catholicism here. But more so, it’s an insult to intelligent debate. Tim Pawlenty doesn’t “Ignore the Poor,” and I don’t know many men of the cloth who do either.

And it's an insult to intelligent debate to claim that the there's no anti-Catholicism in that ad.  Take a look for yourself:

So they're using imagery that's insulting to Catholics in order to impugn a Republican candidate who happens to be an evangelical pastor.  Nice job, guys.

The Barney Shuffle

The Barney Shuffle



Go Sean Bielat.

If I had the power to choose one house race that I got to decide the result in, it would be this one, which isn't even my own. But there may not be a better representative of the Democrats' feckless fiscal policy and arrogance while implementing it than Barney Frank, and he's the one member of the House that I'd most like to see gone.