Politics – Page 178 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Poll Standers

Looks like everyone needs poll standers this year. What is a pole stander? Basically, someone who hands out literature to folks coming into the polls. Yes, there are people who are walking into the voting booth, that aren’t firm on who they are going to vote for, or who can’t quite remember the name of that person, running for some office, who they are planning to vote for.

The purpose of the poll stander is to get those few extra votes as folks head into the polls to make their small contribution to the future of our Republic. The unfortunate thing is campaigns always need them, and the even more unfortunate thing is I can never find people willing to do it when I ping my volunteer list. I can understand why no one wants to phone bank, because a lot of people hate getting phone calls, and don’t want to do it to other people, or just plain hate talking to people on the phone. Poll standing generally just requires handing out campaign materials people can peruse while waiting in line to vote. It may involve talking to people some if they have questions, but that’s not the majority of the job.

I think I’d have better luck recruiting poll dancers some days. Maybe I could do that for heavily Democratic areas, and then hopefully a lot of the men at least would never make it in to vote.

At What Point Do You Just Walk Away?

I know I asked this just a couple of weeks ago, but why on earth is Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato even trying at this point? It really just makes him look a little more pathetic that he’s trying so hard and actually slipping in the polls. Two polls released late last night & today put him down 14 and 15 points, respectively. The money race hasn’t changed much, either. Corbett is outraising & outspending him, and still has more left in the bank.

If we didn’t have to worry about how tight the Senate race between Toomey & Sestak has been lately, then it would just be comedy gold. Unfortunately, we gun owners can’t take any votes for granted this year. And, as much as I’m gloating about Onorato’s failing campaign, there’s still nearly a week left, and voters are fickle and pissy this year. There are still too many races around Pennsylvania and the rest of the country that are too close to call.

Of course, I would argue that Corbett’s campaign could still use some help. There’s a good chance that these double digit leads won’t stay that large until Election Day. But, because Onorato has embraced a strategy of pushing gun control as a key component of his campaign, we need his campaign to fail miserably. We need him to lose and lose big. We need to remind Ed Rendell & his buddie in Philadelphia that we still outvote them, and gun control still pisses us off.

Renaming Rhode Island

Apparently renaming a state is on the ballot this November. See, the official state name is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. They want to drop the Providence Plantations part, since plantations is a code word for slavery, or something, even though Rhode Island never really participated in that kind of slavery.

Hat Tip to Cam Edwards.

Political Violence

Much hay is being made of this incident at a Rand Paul rally:

It’s temping in political discourse to think your side is better than the other, but it’s self delusion. I don’t care if your issue is saving puppies, I’d estimate at least 5 to 15% of your fellow activists are complete assholes. So save me the lefty moral outrage. Personally, I don’t think either the stompers or stompee in this case can claim to be without wrong doing in this particular incident, though only one side bears any legal wrong.

So I do condemn the men who unlawfully restrained and stomped the MoveOn employee, but I also condemn the immature actions of the MoveOn employee that stoked this fire.Â The Other McCain in his analysis of what’s going on:

When I wasÂ covering the big rally in Searchlight, Nevada, I remember Sarah Palin being hustled through a phalanx of security without time to say â€œhelloâ€ or shake hands with her supporters. Even with a press pass dangling around my neck onÂ a lanyard, I was careful not toÂ make any moveÂ that Palinâ€™s security might interpret as potentially threatening.

Now imagine ifÂ some crazy woman at SearchlightÂ had come shoving through the crowd wearing a blonde wig and carrying a sign mocking Palin.

You see what Iâ€™m talking about? Iâ€™m not advocating, endorsing or defending the stomping of heads. Iâ€™m just saying that this mob scene in Lexington was exactly the sort of situation whereÂ these kinds of incidents happen. Itâ€™s unfortunate and wrong, but it is ridiculously misleadingÂ to politicize this incident as if it were somehow typical of those â€œcrazy right-wingers,â€ which is what Boehlert, et al., are attempting to do.

That’s why I can’t totally forgive her actions even as I condemn what the two individuals did to her. There were police present in the video if you look closely. One of the stompers is chastising police for refusing to do anything about the woman, but what were they going to do? It’s not illegal to wear a wig in public with a sign. They couldn’t have done anything until she did something illegal, and that something has to be more than approaching the candidate through the crowd, which last I checked was legal. If she had a weapon in her hand, this would have been completely different, but she had a sign. She actually would have been completely justified in using force against the people attempting to unlawfully restrain her.

CeaseFirePA Attacking Corbett

So implies CeaseFire PA, who I can’t imagine has the cash to actually air this video:

Ryan Hacke was killed in 1997, four years before Pennsylvania entered into a reciprocity agreement with the State of Florida, under a different Attorney General than Tom Corbett. His death was certainly a tragedy, but it has exactly nothing to do with the issue being touted.

What you never hear about is Vaughn Mathis, the criminal that murdered Ryan Hacke. We give kudos to Allegheny County for actually prosecuting criminals, which is more than you can say for Philadelphia, but in 1993 Mathis plead guilty carrying without a license and having a firearm with an altered serial number, a first degree misdemeanor and second degree felony respectively. He received probation, though at this point it was illegal for him to purchase or possess a firearm, or get a license to carry in PA or Florida.

It’s worth noting that if he had gotten the maximum allowed under law for the initial weapons charge, he never would have been on the streets to murder Ryan Hecke. But it doesn’t stop there. Mathis was out on bail awaiting trial for rape charges, terroristic threats, and aggravated assault when he committed the murder. The crimes he was out on bail for were committed in 1995, and two years later the state had not yet gotten around to trying him. He was only tried on that arrest after the Hecke murder.

In all this talk of loopholes, guns, our opponents are forgetting about the piece of human debris that pulled the trigger, and the justice system that failed to keep him behind bars and off the streets.

Silly Season Weather Forecast

One thing we’re paying careful attention to is weather. Weather is one of those things that affect election turnout. When the weather is bad, it typically benefits the side on the motivated side of the enthusiasm gap. This year, that’s going to be the evil tea party sympathizers. We would absolutely love a giant cloud hanging out over the city of Philadelphia, pouring down rain there and nowhere else on election day. But that’s not very likely.

Still, I’m pleased that the forecast seems to be calling for rain in the Northeast. Granted, forecasts out this far aren’t much more scientific than a wild assed guess, but we’ll keep hoping.

Another DCCC Attack Ad

This one is incredulous that these dangerous tea party types actually believe the federal government’s powers are limited to those constitutionally enumerated:

This is running in Colorado. These people are utterly incredulous that anyone would have to audacity to tell them their power is limited. We need to beat these totalitarians roundly next week.

DCCC Running Anti-Gun Ads for Lentz

If I were a Pennsylvania blue dog, I’d be livid that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was running this ad. This was run during the Phillies game on Saturday. This goes to show that we absolutely have to make sure that Lentz doesn’t win a congressional seat:

Interesting they show a submachine gun as an assault rifle, isn’t it? And interesting how the supposed loophole has nothing to do with either assault rifles or submachine guns. But when has the truth ever been an obstacle for gun haters like Lentz?

If you want to help the Meehan campaign, and please do, you can donate here, or volunteer here. He needs help. We have to win this one.

UPDATE: You know, this isn’t even a federal issue. This is a state issue. But how many people realize that?

Magic Bullets

Generally speaking, I’m skeptical of Â folks who sell easy fixes to complex problems. For example, there are some who argue that if we just repealed the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) then we’d restore the checks and balances necessary to get a smaller government outcome. I’m skeptical of that claim, and tend to be of any solution that just seems too easy.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t look for magic bullets myself. One conclusion I’ve come to is that we honestly make it way too easy for people to vote. That sounds kind of crazy on the surface, because we revere the act of voting in our country. I wouldn’t argue for a return to the days when only wealthy landowners voted, or we denied the franchise to people based on gender or race. But I would argue that people who want better and smaller government should generally resist efforts to get more people voting.

This weekend I was calling mostly soft Republicans and Independents, meaning they tend not to vote in primaries, and often skip elections. These are usually people campaigns ignore, but this year the hard Republicans are fired up, and the federal campaigns are going to do a better job of making sure they turn out. While I was encouraged at the level of support we had among these soft voters, I was surprised that a week out from election day how many people did not know the candidates, hadn’t made up their mind, and had no issues that the could name that they were concerned about.

My feeling is our Republic would be better off if we made these people go through a little extra effort to be able to vote, in the hopes that the casual, uninformed voter won’t bother. Even if they do end up getting to the polls and punching the ballot for our guys, I’m not comforted by the fact that I’m pretty sure their voting choices are going to be made by something not much more rigorous than a coin toss. I if the corrupting influence of money in elections is something you worry about, consider that the vast sums of money campaigns spend for expensive media buys are aimed at these voters.

But that’s not to say I have much in the way of specific proposals. One thing I thought of is that if you miss more than two general elections, you get automatically purged from the voter rolls, and have to renew your registration. That would certainly make the jobs of volunteers easier, because casual voters generally get more angry about being called or visited by campaigns vying for their votes, whereas regular voters are usually more polite, and more interested in talking about issues.

So how would this help liberty? Well, I’m not sure it’s any more of a magic bullet than repealing the 17th Amendment, to be honest, but a big component of electoral politics involves political activists manipulating the casual voters to come out for their guys. Given that liberty generally doesn’t bring activism to the table in any tangible way (at least not before the Tea Party movement), having a voter pool that’s more engaged and less prone to manipulation would hopefully hamper those pushing for big government than it would pushing for smaller government. Think about soft voters as the “soundbite voters,” and decide whether you agree with me that liberty would be better served if we made these people jump through a few more hoops to be able to cast their ballots?

UPDATE: I should make it clear, everyone would have to jump through the same hoops. The idea is that motivated and informed voters will.

Running From His Record

You want to know what’s awesome? Waking up on Sunday morning to find this kind of endorsement in the local paper:

[Patrick] Murphy enjoys a significant advantage over Fitzpatrick in financial resources, and he’s utilized his war chest to denigrate his opponent at every turn. Rather than stand on his own record since January 2007, Murphy’s strategy has been to berate Fitzpatrick for his performance in Congress in 2005-06 during President Bush’s second term. He’s even bashed Fitzpatrick for his service as a county commissioner, an office he vacated in 2004.

In one very telling episode, Murphy spent virtually his entire endorsement interview with our editorial board taking shot after shot at the challenger while answering none of our questions. It was, in a word, a “terrible” performance.

And really, it gets no better than their succinct summary of what’s on the line in this race – surely not something that will help Patrick Murphy’s chances:

When you get beyond the nasty rhetoric and innuendo, what you have is this: Murphy, a loyal soldier in Barack Obama’s Democratic army who has voted consistently to advance the president and his party’s agenda, versus Fitzpatrick, who believes that agenda is wrong for America and promises to vote to undo a lot of it.

The choice for voters should be simple: If you agree with what the Democrats have done and plan to do, then there’s no stronger advocate in Congress than Patrick Murphy. On the other hand, if you don’t like what Congress is doing, then Fitzpatrick is your guy.

Well that certainly explains why he’s avoiding his own record. As Sebastian said when I read him that piece today, there’s no way that Murphy will try to run on his record because as soon as people figure out he’s not really the moderate he promised, they’ll vote him out. It certainly looks like that might happen.

Oh, and you want to know their big complaint against Mike Fitzpatrick’s campaign?

Fitzpatrick hasn’t been a choir boy in all this, either. While several of his mailed campaign pieces feature a smiling Mike on one side, the other side shows unflattering pictures of Murphy as if he were some sort of demon.

Yes, we have an incumbent who is too scared of voters to actually talk about any of the policies he has supported that have kept us in a state of economic uncertainty and reduces hiring, and the other guy uses some less than flattering photos. Seriously, if that’s all they’ve got, then they really need to get a life.