Year: 2008

State GOP Can Go to Hell

Apparently the Pennsylvania GOP is unhappy that people will be able to wear whatever they want into the polling booth:

Officials from the state Republican Party Thursday morning criticized a decision from the Pennsylvania Department of State allowing voters to wear candidate T-shirts and buttons when they enter polling stations, saying the paraphernalia could sway voters and force polling officials to act as “fashion police.”

If the Pennsylvania State GOP were half as concerned about the fact that they have a ground game that’s utterly pathetic as they are about what people are wearing on election day, we might just be able to turn Pennsylvania for McCain this election cycle.  GOP Chairman Bob Gleason needs to get back to the basics and stop worrying that people out there might just decide to exercise free speech.

UPDATE: I’ve since been convinced that my position on this issue was not well thought out.  I tend to sympathize first with free expression, but for now I’ll agree that there’s value in a sterile polling area.

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Ohio Preemption Upheld

The Supreme Court of Ohio apparently has thrown out a local ban on guns in city parks.  I hope Hazel Township is listening to what’s going on next door, and will take the hint.

UPDATE: I’d like to thank NRA for giving credit where credit was due in this press release.  Quite often NRA is criticized, often justly, for not giving credit to other groups when they do good work on behalf of gun rights.  This helps.

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Financial Crisis Impact on New York City

Megan McArdle writes:

All of New York’s rebound has been paid for by the taxes on the financial industry–a few hundred thousand people in the industry pay the lion’s share of the taxes for the entire city.  Take them away, and the city will rapidly lurch back towards bankruptcy.

Of course, that’s not the sort of thing that happens overnight.  But the City and State of New York are remarkably business-unfriendly places; they usually end up ranked at the very bottom of the league tables in terms of the ease of doing business there.  That isn’t just taxes, though that’s part of it, but the massive, overgrown regulatory apparatus that can be perilous and expensive to negotiate.

Read the whole thing.  And after that, her post on rethinking regulation is quite worthwhile.

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Alan Gura on Reclaiming Attorney Fees from DC

Alan Gura has a great letter to the editor in the WaPo explaining why the fees being requested are not exorbitant, closing with “If the city doesn’t want to pay civil rights lawyers’ fees, it should obey the Constitution. Freedom isn’t free.”  Damn straight.

Hat tip to SayUncle

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McCain on Gun Rights

Bitter points to an interview in Field and Stream where McCain talks about his positions on guns.  He’s still supporting regulating private transfers, but he’s definitely mellowed on the issue a lot since 2002-2003 timeframe.  The real fear is that a Democrat congress will send McCain a private sale bill and force him into a position where he either has to flip-flop, or piss us off.  Either way, the Democrats win.

I’m actually surprised the Republicans in Pennsylvania didn’t try that with Ed Rendell more in his first term, when they controlled both the Senate and General Assembly.

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Democrats for McCain

This woman is in my Congressional District, and although from a Democratic family, is voting McCain and Manion this year.

I am sure we have quite a few Dems for McCain here. I’m definitely one of them. I obviously still believe in my core values as a Democrat but have grown absolutely sick of what this party has become and how it no longer represents me. The reason I haven’t officially left the party is simple: I want my vote for McCain to be counted as a “Democrat vote for McCain” I was and still am a Hillary supporter. And there are LOTS of us who have come over.

I still basically can’t stand John McCain the politician — I will never forgive him for gutting the First Amendment with his ridiculous campaign finance law.  But politics is never that simple.  The person that heads the party’s ticket is a vessel for holding the coalition together, and getting a winning majority.  The Republicans would have had a harder time finding a better candidate for that purpose in 2008 than John McCain, especially after his Vice Presidential pick.

One of the reasons I haven’t been hating as much on McCain as a lot of people probably has to do with where I’m from.  I’ve spent the last eight years watching George W. Bush destroy the Republican coalition in the Philadelphia suburbs.  Bush’s brand of conservatism is not one that the suburban Republicans can really get behind.  Less intrusive government, yes.  Balanced budgets, yes.  Lower taxes, definitely.  Less corruption?  Sure.  But Bush has largely ignored this part of the coalition, believing that if he just cut taxes, we’d go away and be happy.  He was wrong, and the evaporation of Republican support in the suburbs here is a big part of that.  Supporting Bush here is embarrassing, because he offends nearly everyone.

But McCain is the kind of Republican that Republican leaning people here can feel good about putting a lawn sign out for.  You can say “I support McCain” without people looking at you like you’re from some kind of alien planet.  McCain doesn’t seem to elicit the same kind of visceral hatred from Democrats (at least the sane ones) that Bush does.  McCain’s reputation as a fiscal conservative and a reformer will play well here, and will give Republicans some issues to build a coalition around.  For eight years now, they’ve had nothing.

I’m seeing McCain start to change that, and regardless of whether I’m pissy at him for supporting campaign finance, or ending private transfers of guns, he’ll be a useful vessel for helping rebuild a brand who we desparately need to win in order to secure a lot of things I do care about for the future.  I’m not letting my reservations about McCain’s imperfections get in the way of that.

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Who is Running Patrick Murphy’s Campaign?

The Inky is editorializing against Congressman Pat Murphy because he apparently doesn’t hate guns enough:

It sure looked that way yesterday, when Murphy voted with the National Rifle Association – and against the best interests of cities in his own backyard trying to stem gun violence, including Philadelphia.

Murphy was among 85 House Democrats who joined 181 Republicans in approving a bill that would roll back gun-safety measures enacted by the District of Columbia, after the Supreme Court struck down the city’s 32-year-old handgun ban in June.

I’d be willing to go to bat for Congressman Murphy if he was legitimately having a change of heart on the gun issue, but what does one of his staffers say?

Aides insist the congressman hasn’t changed his stripes. He still favors a ban on assault weapons and supports “reasonable gun laws.” The District of Columbia vote was about “striking the proper balance between constitutional rights and reasonable restrictions.”

Who is running this campaign?  If you want to play the moderate-on-the-gun-issue suburban Democrat, the way Murphy is playing it is exactly wrong.  It’s guaranteed to get him no allies.

I’m angry with Murphy’s support of the so called “assault weapons” ban.  This violates one of our commandments, “Thou shalt not support gun bans!” HR1022, which Murphy has signed on to a sponsor, will ban most of the firearms that high-power competition shooters compete with, including the AR-15 and M1A.  It will ban the Ruger 10/22.  It will also ban all semi-automatic shotguns.  That’s not moderate.  That’s extreme.  Murphy will get no support from us, no matter what he does on the DC issue, if he doesn’t withdraw his sponsorship of this bill.

On the other side of the card, the radical gun control activists in Philadelphia are furious that Murphy is supporting the Second Amendment when it comes to the Heller decision.  Now even the Inky is calling him out for his ridiculous triangulation on this issue.

Patrick Murphy did not win Bucks County in 2006.  He lost it narrowly.  Because Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District includes parts of Montgomery County, and the City of Philadelphia, that was enough to win him the seat. Running on gun control, but only sort of, is exactly the wrong politics to play for this district.  Murphy needs to pick a side, and I think the Congressman would find that truly embracing gun rights would find him a lot more support than gun control.

There are more than a dozen shooting clubs in Bucks County, several of which have memberships in the thousands.  A lot of these guys are union members, and have common cause with the Democratic Party on other issue.  Why is Congressman Murphy throwing these votes away for what measly support he’ll get from the few gun control proponents out there?

Right now his triangulation is ensuring that on the gun issue, Patrick Murphy is losing votes on all sides.  That’s never smart politics.

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Financial Crisis Quote of the Day

From Stephen Green:

In other words, when Congressional oversight of banks forces banks into taking risks they can’t afford, the solution is more Congressional oversight of banks. To put it more plainly: When the boat is taking on water, open up the taps.

Talking about McCain’s hinting that there might need to be some undefined level of increased government regulation to get us out of this mess.

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