The restaurant owner who expanded his law enforcement discount of 10% off to anyone lawfully carrying a gun said that he has seen a 15% increase in business since the policy was announced.
Month: November 2014
To Win, You First Need Good Candidates
This is a great WaPo article detailing how the GOP came back for the 2014 elections. I think it also hits on an important concept, which I believe is lost on the Tea Party, and probably the cause of a lot of friction between it and the GOP establishment. The Tea Party is big on finding the “true conservative,” and not focused nearly enough on finding good candidates. The article talks about the candidacy of Joni Ernst in Iowa:
Republicans worked to polish Ernst’s presentation and policy platform. “She is naturally disciplined, and I assume that has a lot to do with her military training and her farm-girl roots,†said David Kochel, an Ernst adviser.
Meanwhile, the Braley campaign had problems. With each of his missteps — a gaffe about towel service at the House gym, hostile questioning of witnesses in committee hearings and a local fracas over a neighbor’s roaming chickens — Braley caused heartburn in Washington.
When the chicken incident became public, Reid called and said, “Bruce, look, you just have to be smarter than this — or you’re going to lose,†according to Krone. Schumer, the party’s message maven, called Braley repeatedly to help him become more disciplined.
“Braley listens for a minute and then sort of just continues back on his merry way,†said a senior Democratic official. “He’s not a good politician, which may seem like a compliment but it’s not. . . . He comes across as arrogant, and I think it’s because he is.â€
If you want true conservatives to win, they must first be good candidates, meaning they have to be good politicians. What are the qualities of a good candidate?
- They can fundraise and run a campaign. If they can’t do this, they can’t win. A lot of people in Pennsylvania were really enamored with Sam Rohrer for a while, but he couldn’t fundraise or campaign, and so he never went anywhere as a state level candidate.
- They have to be disciplined. They need to stay on message, and avoid saying stupid things. In the example given of Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, he was formerly a conservative talk radio host. No one who has that much of a paper trail, on transcript trail in his case, makes a good candidate. They’ve said too much over the years, and some of it is going to be stupid. Some of it will be stupid taken out of context, which the opposition is sure to do. This is where Todd Akin fell over.
- They have to be personally likable. They have to come across to low information voters as good people, who care about them, and reflect their values. Standing up for “true conservative” values is fine and well, but if they can’t do it in a way that still maintains likability, they will tank. LIVs aren’t ideological, and there are a lot of higher information voters who aren’t particularly ideological. They want candidates who appear to care about them, and others. If you can’t frame your ideology in a manner that connects it back to voters, you don’t have a chance. This is why Libertarians have never gotten anywhere.
- They have to be good at retail politics. If they are no good on the stump, in debates, at dealing with people one-on-one, or aren’t willing to campaign hard to achieve victory, their campaign could easily end up hopeless. Modern GOTV efforts require candidates that are well-versed, or at least knowledgeable enough to hire people well-versed in technology. Why did Scott Brown do so well as a carpetbagger candidate in New Hampshire? Because he’s very good on this factor.
These factors matter a lot more than ideology. In politics, these factors are the horse. Ideology is the cart. The Tea Party doesn’t seem to understand that. The establishment does, and that’s a big reason the establishment did well in this election. I share people’s loathing of the GOP establishment, but if the Tea Party doesn’t learn not to put the cart before the horse, they’ll continue to struggle and be disillusioned.
More on the I-594 Loss
Caleb has a really good write up on it:
The reason why 594 passing is bad news for gun owners everywhere is because it validates Bloomberg’s strategy. This is a new kind of gun control game, they’re smarter than the Brady Campaign and they have functionally unlimited resources. Yes, they played it smart in Washington. They picked an issue that’s easy to misrepresent in universal background checks; they played that issue to a strong blue voter base, and then they spent a ton of money on marketing and GOTV. That’s textbook “Winning Ballot Questions 101″ and it’s really hard to fight against.
I think Caleb has it right. The reason states with the ballot need to worry is because ballot fights almost always come down to money, and Bloomberg and his other billionaire asshole friends can afford to outspend us in state after state. The amounts involved are big money for us and pocket change for him and his buddies.
It’s mostly the western states that have the ballot. Pennsylvania does not have it, except for Constitutional Amendment, and before that can happen, a measure must pass two consecutive sessions of the legislature. I had hoped that we could get the margin narrow enough to Washington to tamp Bloomberg’s ambition in other states, but I don’t think that happened. This will be tried again, it’s only a matter of where.
This is likely why Alan Gottlieb was so eager to get a federal compromise on this issue. I can understand his desire to do that, even if I strong believe that Manchin-Toomey was the completely wrong thing to push. In the long run, the public largely supports the concept of background checks. Overwhelmingly so. We have to figure out a way to deal with that, and unfortunately, something that’s going to involve losing small over losing big.
So what can you do? The biggest issue is to educate gun owners. This is not about background checks. It’s about backdoor universal registration, and extinguishing the gun culture by eliminating the ability to even shoot with a friend and try each other’s firearms. The restrictions on transfer (not just change of title or sale) in the Washington initiative would essentially make it impossible to bring new shooters into the gun culture. Washington gun owners only hope now is that the authorities won’t actively go after marginal cases. But now, as gun owners, you’ll constantly be at the mercy of prosecutors and law enforcement any time you let someone else shoot your guns outside of the very narrowly defined exceptions.
Everytown for Gun Safety is gathering signatures for a similar initiative in Nevada, and future campaigns are being planned for Arizona and Maine, according to Feinblatt.
So what do we do other than do our best to educate?
Elections 2014: How Did We Fare?
For me the big prize was Hickenlooper, and that race is still too close to call. Same with Malloy in Connecticut. I’m pessimistic, because close races almost always resolve in favor of the Democrat. Still, I’ll take giving them a close shave. Malloy especially, is a deep blue state incumbent Governor. That race should have been a cakewalk for him and it wasn’t. Hickenlooper also should have sailed to re-election. Things are still close in the Colorado Senate race. We won in Maryland, which was an open seat. That was surprising. Cuomo handily won re-election, but that was not a surprise.
We did not do well on the Background Check initiative in Washington. It passed about 60/40. The competing 591 got voted down outright. Billionaire assholes can buy elections folks. That result means they will try that again elsewhere where they have the ballot as a weapon. Oregon gun owners: I’d be getting nervous.
All in all, I don’t think it was a bad night for gun owners, but it was not as good as it could have been, when compared to how the GOP did as a whole. The GOP would do well not to take this election as a mandate. This was a vote repudiating Obama, not a vote for the GOP. They just happened to be lucky enough to be the not Obama.
Good News for PA Voters
This is just a reminder that if Tom Wolf wins, as expected, it is now legal to drink your sorrows away at the local bar. However, you may need to stay closer to sober in order to save your bucks to pay those higher taxes he’s promising everyone.
Regardless of the sorrows you may need to drown, the linked story is an interesting history on liquor sales in Pennsylvania on Election Day. They also note that South Carolina was the last state to legalize the sale of alcohol on Election Day while Alaska and Massachusetts still allow local towns to enact bans.
I think it’s also funny that they feel the need to remind people that you can’t trade liquor for votes. The story also notes that as recently as last year, there have been problems with this with an Arkansas lawmaker who traded vodka and chicken dinners for votes.
A Democratic congressional candidate out in Western Pennsylvania posted photos of herself and volunteers with candy that they were giving out to their voters today. I wonder if there’s a law on that?
Off I Go to Hold My Nose
I’ve been happy with Corbett on the gun issue. If you look at his record, it’s about the only constituency he managed to please. On every other issue, I’m disappointed. He hasn’t really done anything to fix the state’s long term financial problems. The People of Wisconsin will be happy that Scott Walker made some hard decisions now. Even New Jersey is probably marginally better off for having Chris Christie. But Pennsylvania is probably doomed to a serious pension crisis in the not so distant future. Because of the intransigence of the Senate GOP leadership, we couldn’t even get liquor privatization done. But I will hold my nose and cast the vote for Corbett, pretty much solely on the gun issue. He signed enhanced castle doctrine and signed enhanced preemption. He came out after Sandy Hook and put the kibosh on gun control in Pennsylvania, which enabled us to focus federally. Every one of our neighboring states except Ohio and West Virginia suffered attacks and setbacks at the state level, and it was West Virginia’s senator trying to screw us federally. As Republicans go in this state, Corbett has been pretty good on guns. I can’t imagine Tom Ridge holding so firm after something like Sandy Hook.
I’m also very concerned Tom Wolf will be the Jerry Brown of Pennsylvania. At some point, fellow citizens, we need to stick it to the GOP leadership in this state. Pennsylvania has a moderate political tradition of centrist Democrats (except in the cities) and squishy Republicans, so it’s going to be a long road. Wolf wants to fix the state’s finances with more taxes, notably a progressive tax (which is unconstitutional, PA mandates a flat income tax). As a commenter mentioned earlier this morning, this place is going to start looking an awful lot like New York if the state GOP doesn’t start standing for something other than its own power and self-interest. If Wolf wins, the best case scenario is total gridlock, and all that while the clock will be ticking on the state’s pension problems.
In local races, my State Representative, Frank Farry, has been pretty solid on Second Amendment issues, so he gets my vote without question. Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson, my State Senator, went without an endorsement for a while because he tried to screw us on Florida reciprocity. This year he’s got an endorsement again, because he voted with us on Castle Doctrine and enhanced preemption. I’ll vote for him, since his Democratic challenger, Kim Rose, didn’t even see fit to return a questionnaire.
I’m still deciding whether or not I’m going to hold my nose for Mike Fitzpatrick. He took an endorsement from Bloomberg’s outfit, and was one of the few Republicans to support the house equivalent of Manchin-Toomey. If I do, this will be the last year. If Fitzpatrick doesn’t step down in 2016, like he’s promised to do, and fails to draw a successful primary challenger, I’m done with voting for Fitzpatrick as long as he’s going to suck up to guys like Bloomberg. If I do end up pushing the button for Fitz, it’s not really for him so much as to keep the seat in GOP hands in the hopes he steps down like he promised, or draws a reasonable primary challenger. If that seat flips to the Dems, it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to get it back, which would suck if the GOP actually managed to find an acceptable candidate for 2016.
Monday Mini News
Now that I am firmly back from our trip to Oklahoma, I’m sorry to report I still have the client to deal with. That is, however, starting to wind down. So I should have a little more time for blogging, though I’m hoping the news cycle gets more interesting.
No tears for corrupt tyrants: Co-founder of MAIG, Thomas M. Menino dies at 71. I won’t celebrate, but I can’t say I’m sad to see him depart this earth.
Why the Washington State school shooting incident seemed to fade so quickly. Remember that the I-594 vote is tomorrow as well, if you live in Washington State.
Tam laments the destruction of so many M14s. Personally, I think they’d even be safe handing them out with the auto sears still in place and working. I’ve fired an M14 on full auto. About the only thing you’d accomplish firing that rifle on full auto is emptying the magazine quickly.
Good news department: people are giving up on gun control.
More gun control advocates get busted for doing “research” only using Google.
Shooting .22 pellets out of a rifle with nail gun cartridges. Looks like it moves that pellet pretty fast.
Imagine where their movement would be if it wasn’t for rich assholes.
Also, Tom Corbett is probably going to be toast tomorrow. I actually place most of the blame for that on the Senate Republicans, who are wed to the establishment and special interests. The Sandusky scandal certainly is a large factor as well, but perhaps that could have been overcome if Corbett actually managed to accomplish something. He’s been good for gun owners. Wolf will not be. Republicans in this state need to do some hard reflecting, because the establishment here is killing the party.
CSGV Silencing the Voice of our Nation’s Veterans
Both Thirdpower and Miguel have been covering the latest unfolding saga involving the mouth foamers at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. I headed over to their Facebook page, and boy, there is an awful lot of one sided conversations going on in that thread, because the other side has been deleted. At least our veterans forced the CSGV intern to work through the weekend deleting comments instead of doing whatever it is interns do these days. Screen caps are forever though.
They can’t really claim to be deleting flames and trolls, since they seem to be quite content with leaving flames and trolls that agree with their point of view. Remember that these groups were on the ropes before Sandy Hook. Every nut job on their Facebook page is a potential donor, and it’s donors they need to save their phony baloney jobs.
Tomorrow is the Day
This is an unusually good piece with Wayne LaPierre. He often comes across as kind of wooden and teleprompted. But this is pretty good:
And I can’t argue with the message. This election is the first major election where we get to express our disapproval of the politicians who sided with Bloomberg and conspired to punish us for the actions of a madman in Newtown, CT. There’s a good chance we can get both Hickenlooper and Malloy tomorrow, but that isn’t going to happen unless we vote.
Candidate X or candidate Y may not be ideal, but punishment first. We’ll deal with the new boss’s issues in time.