Sebastian – Page 1050 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Looking Ahead

The time to start thinking about 2010 is now.Â Dr. Helen is off to a good start.Â Sadly, her commenters are decending into a fever swamp.Â Dr. Helen asks:

Perhaps if conservatives and libertarians work together to defeat a few Democrats and keep Republicans in place, 2010 will be a more welcoming place for us. Anyone out there with any concrete ideas on how to go about doing this–other than the obvious such as putting up and running websites like EvanBayhwatch.com etc?

I think most of the Democrats up for Senate are pretty safe, unless the next two years are an unmitigated disaster (which they could be).Â We should probably focus our energies on The House.Â What libertarian/conservative folks need to be doing is getting the two magic keys to relevance in politics: money and votes.Â There has been talk about growing a “Rightroots” movement.Â I will have more thoughts on this later.Â I do think the blogosphere needs to get more involved in political action.Â If all the right blogosphere ever does is highlight news, and bounce ideas around between ourselves, we’ll just be chattering while the progressives are destroying the country.

If we want people to listen, if we want to be relevant, then we have to work.Â No one will listen to you if all you can offer are ideas.Â Ideas are like assholes, everybody has one.Â Votes and money are a different thing.Â If you can bring those to the table, politicians will listen.

Gun Nutty Election Night

I don’t care who you are, this is hilarious.

History News Network on the NRA

This is a pretty good article on why the National Rifle Association was founded:

To him, what counted was accuracy: Soldiers needed to learn how to hit their targets with the minimum number of bullets. This wasn’t just about being able to hit a bullseye at 300 yards with a rifle. Such marksmanship went hand-in-hand with other typically American virtues. Good shots required coolness under fire; steely self-discipline; familiarity with such high-tech implements as telescopic sights, windage indicators, and ballistic instruments; a determination to improve themselves by constant training; and independence of thought and action. In Europe, where the ideology of mass-firepower had long held sway, soldiers were still treated as dull, disposable automatons and subjected to fearsome discipline to flog out any remnants of individual initiative. Civil War generals had fallen beneath the European spell; Church wanted to “re-Americanize” warfare.

Yes.Â This is still a gun blog :)Â Â Read the whole thing.

Where McCain Went Wrong

McCain did himself a favor when he selected Palin as his running mate.Â The base immediately fell in love with her, but the subsequent media lynching, I think, subdued the enthusiasm, particularly on the heels of some poorly thought out interviews she pretty clearly wasn’t ready for.Â I think the base still adores Palin, but she needs to gain a bit more expeirence under her belt before she returns to national politics.

You can blame Bush for this one, but Republicans, and center-right Independents have spent the last eight years having to carry the White House’s water on the Iraq War, because the White House was not able to competently handle mistakes, missteps, and difficulties.Â We also spent the past eight years watching a President not only fail to articulate and make the case for conservative values, but one who wouldn’t deliver them either.

But McCain’s biggest gaffe, I think, was in the debates.Â The debates were all scripted talking points, which tended to work in Obama’s favor.Â Obama is comfortable when he’s able to work off of talking points.Â Conservatives wanted to see McCain go after Obama, articulate against his policies, and make the case for conservatism.Â I think McCain largely failed on that count, and not in a small way.Â Conservatives, faced with the prospect of another soft, inarticulate candidate, seem to have decided to stay home in relatively large numbers this election.Â The next Republican candidate will need to be able to carry the message.Â Obama is popular among the left and center-left because he can do that with great skill.Â Reagan was popular for largely similar reasons.Â I have to wonder how many conservatives actually saw McCain as just another inarticulate non-conservative, and decided to stay home.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Bitter and I canvassed several neighborhoods for free.Â To these people, I say equal pay for equal work:

“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

So much for civic duty.

Philadelphia Metro Area Breakdown

I’ve been analyzing the election results for Philadelphia and its suburbs.Â It paints a picture of low Republican turnout, a gradual eroding of the Republican base over the last four years, and huge gains in Democratic registration which seems to have rather obviously helped Barack Obama.

Votes for Party Candidates for President							Difference
Year	County	Democrat	Republican	Year	Democrat	Republican	Difference Dem	Difference Rep
2004	Philadelphia	542,205	130,099	2008	574,042	113,034	31,837	-17,065
	Delaware	162,601	120,425		179,949	109,766	17,348	-10,659
	Bucks	163,438	153,469		178,345	149,860	14,907	-3609
	Montgomery	222,048	175,741		249,493	163,030	27,445	-12,681
	Chester	109,708	120,036		135,150	112,266	25,442	-7770

Voter Registration Statistics
Year	County	Democrat	Republican	Independent	Year	Democrat	Republican	Independent
2004	Philadelphia	796,033	175,434	90,879	2008	799,663	145,387	86,063
	Delaware	131,317	213,030	42,327		157,301	188,924	39,031
	Bucks	173,803	208,639	69,513		185,407	181,701	60,496
	Montgomery	214,223	268,755	81,704		247,881	237,880	76,187
	Chester	98,765	170,419	55,961		113,315	146,956	46,598

Registration Difference
County	Democrat	Republican	Independent
Philadelphia	3,630	-30,047	-4,816
Delaware	25,984	-24,106	-3,296
Bucks	11,604	-26,938	-9,017
Montgomery	33,658	-30,875	-5,517
Chester	14,550	-23,463	-9,363

Looking at the numbers, Philadelphia actually did not have phenomenally high number of newly registered Democrats.Â But turnout was higher, but not much higher, than in 2004.Â One can also see that Republican turnout was depressed in several suburban counties, and in Philadelphia.Â Only Bucks managed to turn out in comparable numbers to 2004, but it wasn’t enough to sway the county.Â This strikes me as a group of voters who are just particularly not excited to be Republicans, and to get out to support Republican candidates.Â Pretty clearly, we had Republicans voting for Obama in larger numbers than we could afford.

This also shows the suburbs are bleeding Republicans.Â In many cases, Republicans switched registratoin to vote in the primary, but it doesn’t seem like they are planning to come back to the party, or that they voted for McCain.Â The GOP is in a lot of trouble in the Philadelphia suburbs, and if we don’t start getting more registered Republican voters, we’re finished as a traditional Republican stronghold.Â It might already be too late.

The Palin Effect

The Campaign Spot shows us numbers that indicate Palin delivered for the Republican ticket, and talks about her future in politics.Â Â I would like to see her stay on the national stage, so we can get to know her better.Â I have my disagreements with her on some social issues, but I don’t think she’s the kind of social conservative who will want to shove her social values down everyone else’s throats.Â I’m hoping she can develop into the kind of political personality that can hold the base together, and appeal to more conservative independents.

Bad Day for New York Gun Owners

It was a bad election day for New York gun owners.Â Tom King says:

I expect to see the following proposed legislation in both houses of state government shortly after the start of the 2009 legislative session Smart Gun, expanded COBIS, Micro Stamping of shell casings, an expanded assault weapons ban, reduction of magazine capacity, mandatory storage/insurance and renewable pistol licenses with very limited concealed carry. It is not a pretty scenario but it is not untenable.

Gun owners in New York State are going to need some help.Â One thing I would encourage of New York gun rights activists is that it is possible to work within the Democratic Party.Â We have some very anti-gun urban Democrats in Pennsylvania too, but we also have a lot of pro-gun Democrats, who are good on our issue.Â Unfortunately, one of them is John Murtha, but on guns, Murtha has been on our side.Â Sometimes you have to work with the political circumstances political fortunes stick you with.

Common Sense in the Bay State

In Worcester, of all places:

However, the public and lawmakers should not, on the basis of an extraordinarily rare accident, rush to enact new laws that may not advance gun safety.

Reacting to the tragedy, Rep. Michael Costello, D-Newburyport, declared his intention to file a bill to ban anyone under 21 from firing an automatic weapon. That proposal is absurd on its face: Young men and women, after all, enlist in the nationâ€™s armed forces and use automatic weapons

The rest of it is equally reasonable.Â I’m glad the Telegraph is above hysterics.

Coalition By The Numbers

There’s been a lot of talk in the comments about how Republicans need to do this or that so that their political outlook will match up perfectly with whatever pet issues the commenter finds appealing.Â This is no way to build a coalition.Â The question at hand is what the Republican coalition looks like now, and how to build it back to a majority coalition.Â Right now, the Republican Party is a coalition of:

Religious and value voters
Nationalist conservatives, or national greatness conservatives
Sportsmen
Fiscal conservatives who want smaller government.

Each of these categories is, itself, contain a bunch of subcoalitions.Â But these are the basic categories I’ll enumerate for this exercise.Â Jettison one, you no longer have a majority.Â Bush essentially lost the coalition by catering heavily to 1 and 2, throwing a few bones to 3, and doing his level best to pretend 4 isn’t that important.Â Bush basically cut taxes, and then told 4 to take a hike.Â The other problem is that 4 are often not keen on 1’s social agenda, and many have migrated to the Democraic Party, no real bastion for 4s issues, but when 4 sees no difference between the parties, they will vote on social issues.Â This is how Republicans have lost the Northeast and the coastal West.

But here’s the rub: the folks in 1 vote, in huge numbers.Â Their turnout machine is unparalleled.Â Mike Huckabee was a long shot, but with basically only the religious vote, he managed to take several southern states in the primaries.Â John McCain is a solid 2, and for those that think paleoconservatism is the path to the future, McCain won the nomination with pretty much only the 2 vote, and enough 3 and 4 who are still left, because Romeny didn’t really inspire.Â You don’t win elections without 1 and 2.Â So to quote SayUncle: It’s time to put on our big boy pants, and come up with a platform that keeps the coalition together.

The religious voters in the Republican party need to understand that they live in a secular country, and that younger voters aren’t as religious as their parents.Â Those are just the breaks.Â You can’t legislate your way out of that.Â Amending constitutions isn’t going to fix it.Â But by the same token, the 2s, 3s, and 4s of the coalition need to accept some value issues in the Republican platform in order to get the religious vote to turn out and work for the coalition.Â If the 4s want to build a coalition without 1s, they have to create a turnout machine that surpasses that of the religious vote.Â Unfortunately, that requires more work than most 4s are willing to put in.

Once you get involved in electoral politics, it becomes readily apparently why libertarians have no seat at the table: they don’t bring anything to it.Â That’s what has to change if they want a bigger voice.