Politics – Page 89 – Shall Not Be Questioned

What Pennsylvanians Have to Be Looking out For

We’ll be dealing with Kathleen Kane for the next four years. It’s a safe bet all our reciprocity agreements with other states, if not pulled out from entirely, will at least be revisited to deal with the issue of Pennsylvania residents being able to carry on a foreign license. This will destroy most of our potential carrot for dealing with the problem of Philadelphia abusing its discretion preemptively.

Here’s the other catch: we have two years to fix any issues that come out of the Attorney General’s office. Corbett is wildly unpopular. Unless he pulls a rabbit out of his hat, he’s toast in two years when he’s up for re-election. The Democratic Party has abandoned any pretense of being for gun rights in this state, and is highly unlikely to put up a pro-gun candidate for Governor unless there’s a strong internal push from pro-gun Democrats to moderate the left-wing of the party on this issue.

It gets worse. As many of you may have heard, Kim Stolfer is very sick, and while I expect FOAC to continue, Kim is a tireless bulldog for the issue, and not replaceable. In addition, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsman’s Clubs, another group that’s traditionally been able to turn people out to Harrisburg when needed has been in disarray since Melody Zullinger got married and moved out of state. We also continue to shed hunters in Pennsylvania, and a lost hunter is often a lost gun owner. I know Gun Culture 2.0 people like derisively label hunters as “Fudds,” but any time I’ve been to Harrisburg, it’s hunters who show up. Fewer hunters means fewer advocates.

So where does that leave us? It is my contention that our lines have been broken. While we are not in retreat currently, we soon will be. The question is whether we do a tactical retreat, fall back, regroup and push forward again, or it ends up being a rout. That’s largely going to depend on what we’re willing to do, and how many people are willing to step up. Writing your reps is well a good, but it will take more to push back what’s coming. Defending gun rights in a deep blue state with a major city full of leftists will not be easy, but it can be done. Just ask folks in Washington and Oregon. But will we? Or will we become New Jersey?

Ten Reasons Romney Lost

I think Ace nails it. Especially number 8.

Stocks Rally on Election Outcome

Believe it or not, I don’t actually get excited by this news.

I saw an awful lot of reasonable folks on Twitter last night talking about how they are going to the gun store to stock up or just getting a gun for the household. These aren’t crazy or bad people, they are just concerned about the continued state of the economy and how, should the well of other people’s money dry up, there could be a rising crime rate. They are also concerned about the future of the courts and how many gun control laws are coming now that Obama doesn’t have to be accountable to voters anymore.

So, yeah. Still, it says what it says. The folks investing in these companies are in it to make money, and they clearly see at least a short-term future for making money in guns. (h/t to Peter for the tip to look up the stock prices)

Looking Ahead to 2014

The Democrats have a lot more uncertain seats to defendÂ than the GOP. I see a potential Dem pickup in Maine, but there are a lot of Southern Dems who will be up in 2014, in states that will likely, by then, by in no mood to be kind to the Democratic Party. We also know the Obama turnout machine doesn’t work for midterms. I get to take 2014 off from Senate races here in Pennsylvania, but there’s plenty of work to do out there. In honor of the perpetual campaign, I guess it’s time to create a 2014 Election category, but hopefully we won’t be using it much until it comes time.

Speaking of election work, I was a bit of a deadbeat this election. A combination of relatively safe local races, just not having the time I did in previous elections, and the feeling of working harder for less money just didn’t put me in the silly season spirit. I also kind of felt like Roger Simon of PJ Media, who notes: “I have to admit something. Unlike most of my PJM colleagues and many in the right punditocracy, deep down I never thought Mitt Romney would win.”

I started looking getting a bit of optimism after Mitt appeared to have momentum, but Sandy dominated the news cycle, which offered a natural advantage to Obama. Chris Christie fawning over the President didn’t help things either. But the fact is that unseating an incumbent president is a herculean task. Only 8 of 44 Presidents have failed to win re-election. While the comparisons of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter are not without merit, Mitt Romney is not, and was never going to be, another Ronald Reagan.

Turnout Analysis

Chris Byrne takes a look at the numbers. I’m seeing similar conclusions from other election analysts as well. In the end, Romney didn’t seem to motivate people to get out for him. I actually think Romney ran a decent campaign, and did a lot better than I would have given him credit for before things got started. Certainly it was an improvement over McCain’s 2008 fiasco. But at the end of the day, I don’t think Romney was that strong of a candidate, though he was probably the strongest of the choices we had in front of us.Â Obama has a phenomenal GOTV machine. The big question is can he pass that along to other candidates.

Culture Wars

The only culture wars conservatives need to be fighting is destroying the legacy media. We have some pretty strong evangelical, socially conservative voters in the family, and even they are more worried about the fiscal cliff we’re heading off of rather than whether it’s legal or not to cut a fetus out of your body. One thing is clear: The GOP coalition can no longer win, and it’s time to rethink it. Jim Geraghty made a good observation about this election I didn’t think about:

Ari Fleischer points out the silver lining is that so far, Romney is winning independents. That’s not a silver lining, that’s worse news: Democrats don’t really need independents anymore.

We Weren’t Imagining Things

Late last night, I wondered how on earth what we saw at the polls could be so radically wrong. The primarily Democratic line was 1/3 of the size as 2008. The primarily GOP side was marginally bigger. I know we didn’t imagine that.

Waiting for all of our county returns to come in very late into the night, I checked the numbers from 2008 against this year and our county really did go more red. In fact, it’s the only Pennsylvania county that only barely went Obama – it was a one point race. Every other county that went for Obama went by anywhere from 5-20+ points.

Obama actually lost nearly 20,000 votes in our single county. Romney managed to get more than 5,600 more votes than McCain. Add that loss and gain together, and this was a Philadelphia suburban county that went Obama by only 3,700 votes.

Quote of the Night

From Dave Kopel, who was tracking how the 2nd Amendment fared during this election:

As Barack Hussein Obama, the Juan Domingo Peron of the 21st century, leads America to fiscal collapse, you can at least keep your guns.

All I have to say is: Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy… is there a health club membership we can buy for you? Feeling OK about your health care? We can help!

I am not in an optimistic mood tonight. I think we lost, and we lost big. Americans want America to be a European style social democracy. Maybe with a Second Amendment, but maybe not. It is not yet written. But one thing is written that that European social democracy is running out of other people’s money, and we will soon as well. Regardless of Romney’s loss, that fact does not change. Germany can bail out Greece for a while, but no one can bail out us. When we hit rock bottom, it will be epic, and with Obama re-election, I think it is coming. Be prepared.

Blocking Out the Media

This is the point where I stop paying attention to election coverage, because to be quite honest, I just can’t stand it. Looking at this video from the 1960 election, however, I see our current media coverage environment is nothing new:

I’m particularly amused by the use of the brand new whiz bang RCA 501 computer, which takes the place of the media pundit in the 1960 election. The amusing thing here is your iPhone or Android phone has many orders of magnitude more processing power than the all knowing RCA 501. I guess it was a lot easier to impress people back then.

h/t to Volokh Conspiracy.

Partisan Voting: Yay or Nay?

Pennsylvania is the first state I’ve voted in where I ever recall seeing a button that will vote for all members of one party. In 2010, I was pissed off enough to use it. But this year, I didn’t press that button. Why? I still voted only for Republicans today, but I have decided after trying it that I really don’t like the concept.

Here’s a look at a ballot for a precinct near us and you can see the partisan voting buttons at the top:

I realize I’m overly idealistic in thinking that it would be nice if people were at least minimally informed voters in every race. The fact is that it just won’t ever be true. However, I don’t think that the state needs to make it easier for uninformed voters to blindly cast ballots. Perhaps not having a partisan button would make them hesitate before casting a ballot in a race where they admit to knowing nothing about the candidates, or perhaps even the office.

Most low information voters would still likely cast ballots for one party or the other, but at least they’d have to make a bit more of an effort. To me, it’s just a matter of making elections a little more principled and a little less about party politics.