November 2010 – Page 12 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Ask Our NRA Lobbyist

On Friday we had some interesting comments in my thread about Castle Doctrine being dead. I spent a few hours at the end of the day on Friday and on Sunday talking to some folks at NRA about how they could communicate better with opinion leaders in this issue. Not wanting to just hurl criticism, I offered to do a Q&A session with John Hohenwarter, NRA’s Pennsylvania Liaison, and they agreed.

The way is will work is I’ll open the comments for readers to ask questions, and I’ll compile the best ones, add a few of my own if need be, and send them to John. My only request is to keep the questions limited towards issues we’re facing in Pennsylvania, rather than federal or general issues. Other than that, the field of questions is wide open. I’ll let this thread go for a few days before compiling the questions.

Twitter Issues Fixed

For those who follow this blog on Twitter, I have finally gotten around to updating the plugin so it works again. Generally speaking I won’t tweet every post, but try to do about three or so a day, in addition to any other things that might come up that I don’t think warrant a whole blog post. If you’d like to follow us on Twitter, the link is on the sidebar.

Health Care Hurt the Dems

Megan McArdle links to a well-researched piece that basically makes that argument, despite what a lot of other pundits are saying about health care not being the big issue. I have to wonder how much of a role polls, showing Americans are most concerned about the economy are playing into this. I myself have been polled in regards to issues this election, and also answered the economy was my chief worry. I’m always reluctant to answer this way because I don’t think government is a magic jobs fairy, that can correct our economic woes if they would just do X, Y, and Z. A better question might be “What has Congress done this session that’s pissed you off the most?” My answer there would definitely be passing the health care monstrosity.

Anecdotally, the Health Care issue would seem to be a big issue in Pennsylvania. It was a bloodbath for Dems that voted for it. Sestak, Dalkemper, Carney, Kanjorski, and Murphy all voted for it, and all went down to defeat. Demcorats Jason Altmire and Tim Holden voted against it, and all held on to their seats. Pennsylvania Democrats also tried to make Corbett’s joining the lawsuit against Obamacare an issue in the election, and Corbett won overwhelmingly. I think people were more angry over health care than pundits are giving them credit for. I think this was an anger driven election rather than a concern driven election.

You Either Trust the People, or You Don’t

Bill Whittle opines on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

Quote of the Day

Cemetery, upon attending a high-end antique gun show:

One thing that annoyed me, was the sense of elitism.Â Iâ€™m not talking about the hoity-toitiness of balls out antique collectorâ€™s, but the sense that somehow *theyâ€™re* safe, since theyâ€™re not involved with scary *assault weapons*.Â Sorry to tell ya bub, they were assault weapons in their day, and if gun was to come, those $50k rifles would be heading to the smelter to become rebar.

It doesn’t matter what you shoot. The real question is whether you can be drawn away from the pack and preyed upon individually. That’s what the whole “assault weapons” business was about. Antique gun aficionados should recall that back before the last redistricting, around 2000-2002 timeframe, the GOP redistricted Congressman Joe Hoeffel out of a seat. Hoeffel was a proponent of a bill that would treat antique firearms the same as any other firearm. Let’s not also forget New York State’s attempts to do the same.

Anyone who shoots anything, that projects anything downrange at paper breaking velocities, thinks they are safe at their own peril. We are all most decidedly in this together, or our opponents will try to break us apart and kill us separately. That includes hunters too.

Follow the Money

Anyone curious as to where Americans United for Safe Streets is getting and spending it’s money need to look no further than here. Glenn Reynolds has noted they are an astroturf group. He’s not kidding. Look at the donation numbers and tell me that group isn’t Mike Bloomberg donating his money and doling it out to favored New York and DC based consultant and advertising firms. Look who else is giving too. Abby Spangler, 500 dollars. Colin Goddard’s Dad, 200 dollars. Josh Horwitz, 200 dollars.

What faith and dedication these people have in their cause! Mayor Mike is willing to donate serious money, but the rest of the gun control intelligentsia? I think it’s a testament to their lack of faith, I could raise more money for our cause by providing a link to NRA’s political efforts here, and encouraging people to donate 30 bucks. I have to question whether Mayor Mike is the only one who has any faith in the future of gun control. And even then, I’m pretty sure half a million to Bloomberg is the equivalent to change under the sofa cushion for most of us. We win because our third stringers are more dedicated than their first stringers.

All the Mayor’s Men

Bitter does a rundown of how gun control advocates fared this election in Pennsylvania.

UPDATE: Bloomberg’s group AUSS is similar to the Bradys, in that they areÂ declaring victory.

SAF Looking for Blog Love

I am positively anal about keeping my theme clean, and in the proper color scheme, which is why you don’t see too much in the way of side bars or icons on this blog. But in response to SAF’s request I have added a link to the side bar, which I actually already thought was there, but I never look at my links.

The Stupid Party

I don’t understand how a man who may have the record for knocking on the most doors in a Pennsylvania election* can choose to ignore an NRA questionnaire when he’s a Republican running in a district with lots of working class or union middle class Democrats that borders two districts with huge gun clubs and in an area that supports lots of gun shops and even some commercial ranges.

Things we know:

Kevin Glasson did not respond to any of NRA’s mailings. Â This landed him with a big ? next to his name and resulted in no assistance from NRA in the way of a postcard mailer.
He lives right next to a district where the now incumbent state rep – who ran a similar uphill campaign in 2008 – actually ran into a man who brought his NRA magazine out of the voting booth and declared that no one with a ? gets his vote.
*He personally knocked on 13,000+ doors, so he’s definitely got the man of the people thing going for him.
He’s a firefighter in the community. Â That’s always a good thing in a race like this.
We already know that Democrats in the area were angry and more than happy to vote against their party. Â It was such a dramatic turnaround that even the NYT covered the shift.
He only lost by 301 votes.
Challengers benefit the most from NRA backing.

Of all the types of Democratic demographics in this area (NJ transplants, rich liberals, working class guys, union diehards, etc), his district probably has the most of the type who would be willing to cross over on something like the gun issue. Â By refusing to respond to NRA’s questionnaire, he didn’t even give them a choice between the two candidates. Â Yes, this election is all about the economy and jobs, but there are still folks looking for information on other issues. Â I had at least half a dozen union guys out of Philly and our district call me to tell me they would vote against their union this year and go all GOP. Â They just wanted to make sure their Republican choices were all pro-gun. Â I have to believe there were many more waiting on their NRA magazines to drop to find out about their local races in that district. Â Just imagine what the reaction might have been if it turns out he was actually pro-gun and received an endorsement and orange postcard. Â I wouldn’t be shocked if he could have found the 302 votes he needed that way.

If Glasson had won, it would have been nearly impossible to hold the seat through the next few election cycles. Â However, he would have been in for redistricting votes and hopefully to help us move Castle Doctrine along. Â I don’t want to pretend that the NRA endorsement is the magic bullet that will solve all of your election woes. Â But, in a county where about 20,000 people have licenses to carry, it’s not unreasonable that 300 votes could have been swayed by an NRA grade. Â But, that’s what you get with our local GOP folks. Â This isn’t the first year that Republicans have refused to even communicate with NRA, and it won’t be the last. Â If they are smart, they’ll learn. Â But I’m not sure I give them that much credit.

Down Goes Dino

National Review is reporting that Dino Rossi has conceded, and Murray was declared the winner. A real squeaker of an election, but I thought this comment at NRO pretty much captured it:

Rossi never gave the electorate a compelling reason to vote for him rather than Murray. He didn’t embrace the tea party, he didn’t exude energy and passion. He went negative throughout the campaign, and his attack ads complained about Murray’s attacks. Moreover, the Democrats just had to polish off their third edition of the how-to-defeat-Dino manual, which took about five minutes. There were even stories about how it was going to be such a sacrifice for theÂ comfortable Rossi family to go to DC. I wanted someone who was chomping at the bit and foaming at the mouth to get to DC to knock some heads, not somebody who says, “sigh, well I really need to do this for the sake of the country, I guess, but I’d rather stay home.” The only county in Washington State that matters for statewide office is King County. If you can’t get in the high 40s in King County, don’t run, period. We have to find a Republican who is willing to go into that lion’s den and change some minds.

That sounds about right to me, though I can’t say I know Washington that well. It’s always seemed to me to be a bit like Pennsylvania, only with King County being a good bit more dominant in state politics than Philadelphia County. One things for sure, you have a squeaker of a loss once, I’m open to the idea of running a candidate again. Lose twice that way you’re probably not viable. The GOP in Washington State would seem to need to rethink its strategy. I think the GOP needs to rethink its strategy for every blue state.

My idea would be to run sane libertarians in blue states, people who are fiscally responsible but socially liberal. But will the GOP listen? Probably not.