Moe Lane

That’s the current number of state legislative chambers* that the GOP will be controlling, starting next year: there are still five state legislative chambers still undecided, so the number could go as high as 59 of 99.  That represents a flip of eighteen state chambers (and the gain of both houses in the state legislature in six states) by the GOP; couple that with a  +7 to +10 gain in governorships and it was a good night for the Republicans on the state level.

This is important for two reasons (besides the obvious one that this makes it easier to pass conservative/Republican policies): first, it cuts deeply into the available pool for up-and-coming Democratic legislators who would like to be Federal Congressmen and Senators – or, for that matter, governors.  Second, it neatly spokes the wheel of the Democrats’ long-term project to have control over the redistricting process.  In 2011, the redistricting process will require the maps to be redrawn in eighteen states; and it was always the goal of the Democratic party to have unilateral oversight over that process, the better to eliminate troublesome Republicans via gerrymandering.  Thanks largely to the RGA, that’s a lot less of a problem than it was before: of the eighteen states that are going to gain/lose seats, at least thirteen will have Republican governors, which will help keep the shenanigans down.

In short: Tuesday was a great night for the GOP, on pretty much every level that you would care to name.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Nebraska has an unicameral legislature.

Interesting gambit from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell here.

“Over the past week, some have said it was indelicate of me to suggest that our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office,” Mr. McConnell says. “But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things. We can hope the President will start listening to the electorate after Tuesday’s election. But we can’t plan on it.”

You see, in some ways this is a bit disingenuous; when it comes to killing bad bills and worse existing legislation, Congress has more tricks at its disposal than is commonly admitted*.  Two-century old legislatures usually do.  The question is going to be, will the Senate minority back up the new House majority when the latter uses some of those tricks?  – Because I’ve talked to about a third of the new House freshman Republican class directly, and they have all said the same thing: they have plans when they get to Washington, DC.  Plans that usually involve getting rid of Obamacare.  And I imagine that the rest have similar sentiments.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Mostly involving funding.

(Via @jeffemanuel)  As many people have noted, the Left’s favorite rhetorical game in the whole wide world is the classic These new Republicans are awful, unlike all the good Republicans that we used to have. It’s popular mostly because it’s easily – in fact, continually – adapted to the contemporary era, and nobody in its target audience seems to really notice that they quietly switch out devil figures as the situation demands.  Well, almost nobody: there’s always the fringe dupes who made the mistake of actually believing the agitprop, to the point where their identity and sense of self-worth is inextricably tied up in hating one, specific Republican.  Fortunately for the Democrats, those poor unfortunates generally shrivel up into irrelevancy – and, thirty years later, shouting through battery-operated megaphones for the benefit of local news stations.

But enough with the charming tableau.  The point is that it’s now George W Bush’s turn to be rehabilitated, now that the Left has a Republican House to demonize, and time is not being wasted.  The first real effort along those lines will apparently appear in the Sunday Opinion section of the Washington Post (which is nice rhetorical real estate to get, frankly), and it’s called “5 myths about George W. Bush.”  He’s apparently not a illiterate cowboy, he really did mean it about compassionate conservatism (and liked minorities!) and really didn’t mean it about nation-building, did not let Cheney run the country from behind the scenes, and didn’t destroy conservatism for a generation.

Now, I know that a bunch of people are going to read the previous paragraph and grumble at the sight of the phrase “compassionate conservatism” (because they read it – not necessarily unfairly – as “stealth liberalism”), but that’s not actually the point.  The point is that, like every other Republican president preceding him, George W Bush is now going to have his record and narrative tweaked until it becomes acceptably liberal enough to permit using him to attack current Republicans.  This is noteworthy for two reasons: (more…)

Come Sail Away, Styx

It was on the radio.

Today: Wednesday, November 3, 2010.

You see, for two years I have been saying at every opportunity “Look, we should hold off on even starting to hash out who should be our nominee in 2012 until after the ’10 midterms, OK?”

Guess what?

Moe Lane

People keep sending me things like this.

Damned if I know why.

Moe Lane

PS: I actually liked Commando.

And, like all entertaining wars to the knife, this one has multiple factions. The ‘moderates’ blame the liberals for walking all over them; the liberals blame the moderates for going along with passing bad ideas like the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and Obamacare; the idiots (this may be a subgroup: there’s a bit of an overlap here with the first two groups) are claiming that this entire problem would have gone away with a little more marketing; and everybody blames the President.  Because really, why not?  It’s fairly clear by now that being on Barack Obama’s good side is not exactly inherently valuable.  They’re all right, of course: the Democratic debacle in the House represents a perfect storm of legislative cowardice, political greed, a grotesquely flawed group understanding of proper civic policy, and a White House that routinely demonstrates the organizational and administrative core competency that normally one associates with opium-raddled Victorian expatriate remittance men.  None of which helps them right now, of course; but it’s a lot of fun to point out.

As to solving their problem…  well, even if I wanted to I couldn’t.  Congressional Democrats are only going to be united by one person – the President – and just in case there’s still somebody who hasn’t noticed by now: the President is incompetent at leading people in directions that they don’t already want to go.  Which is not what the Democrats need right now.  So there’s no solution in sight, unless of course the President wants to start learning all of those boring, practical political skills that he should have started picking up a couple of decades ago…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via @davidhauptmann)

“You delivered him to us in 1992. We thought that you might want him back: as you can see, we made a few improvements.”

Come on, guys, it’s a joke. Where’s your sense of humor, Democrats? What’s that? You put it up as collateral to fund your last-minute ad buys? Ah.

(via @lash3)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: No, it’d be kind of silly and childish if the GOP had returned a donkey that had been sneeringly given to them in 2006. Returning one that had been sneeringly given to them in 1992? That’s awesome.

If you want to know who is having a worse day than the DCCC*, the DSCC**, or the DNC***, try the Progressive Change Congressional Committee. You see, last week they issued a pledge in support of net neutrality that was signed by ninety-five candidates.

Every single one of them lost.

(pause)

Oops?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(more…)

While this is hardly an exhaustive list, the below represents my personal congratulations to last night’s winners in the election:

It was great fun to do these interviews, no matter how painfully obvious it was at the time that I was essentially learning how to do them on the fly; and I look forward to doing it again.

Starting next week.

Moe Lane

The House is shaping up nicely as regards to a bloodbath; I see +6 GOP so far, with a good shot at CO, a we’ll-see on WA, and maybe a jumping-the-gun on CA*; and the governor’s races gave us more than we lost (especially when you look at a 2012 map).

And then there’s all the personal satisfactions. Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey; Alan Grayson, Bob Etheridge, Carol Shea-Porter, the goram ‘Blue Dog’ coalition; a lot of Family business got settled tonight.

*And all of our folks successfully defended.

Two minutes of pure, comic genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_23Nt5XumaU

Ironically, I’m given to understand that if John Maynard Keynes was alive today he’d be freaking out at what the Democrats did to his economic theory.

Moe Lane (more…)