Moe Lane

Rep. Davis is, of course, the former Democratic candidate for AL-GOV who lost his primary when it turned out that Alabama Democrats actually weren’t ready to vote for an African-American for a statewide race. He’s since then been reassessing his options, but seems to be under a misapprehension:

Davis also suggested running as a Republican might be a viable option, but said that the Alabama Republican Party has declined to embrace politicians who have switched parties. He noted that party-switching former congressman Parker Griffith was defeated in a GOP primary last year after leaving the Democratic Party.

(more…)

To formally convert to the GOP, that is.  Partially because Artur Davis probably wants the time anyway; and partially because (and here I speak from personal experience) it takes time to reconfigure one’s basic partisan identification.  While your principles shouldn’t change when you switch political parties – and neither should your worldview – there is usually a whole list of damfool notions that you no longer have to grit your teeth, smile, and nod about; and it takes time to go through that list and cheerfully discard them all*.

But that’s OK: It’s going to be a couple of years before the next statewide elections in Alabama anyway.  Plenty of time for a proper realignment.

Moe Lane

*Unkind people will mutter that you instead have to memorize a whole new list of damfool notions to grit their teeth, smile, and nod about.  But I’m sure that I have no idea what those people are talking about…

Which begs the question: what else did former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis* (D) get wrong?

I’ve changed my mind on voter ID laws — I think Alabama did the right thing in passing one — and I wish I had gotten it right when I was in political office.

[snip]

Voting the names of the dead, and the nonexistent, and the too-mentally-impaired to function, cancels out the votes of citizens who are exercising their rights — that’s suppression by any light. If you doubt it exists, I don’t; I’ve heard the peddlers of these ballots brag about it, I’ve been asked to provide the funds for it, and I am confident it has changed at least a few close local election results.

Bolding mine.  I’d like the former Congressman to expound a little on that part, if he pleases; only this time, with names, addresses, and last known location.  Actually, I’d like him to expound a little on that part even if he doesn’t please.  Because what Mr. Davis is describing are felonies. (more…)

This is why they have Wikipedia, Contessa: it’s so you can look up the people that you’re interviewing (Mo Brooks, AL-05) beforehand – and thus not end up looking like an idiot.

Well. More of an idiot, at least.

Moe Lane

PS: Who here thinks that Brewer just assumed that nobody from Alabama can even spell ‘economist,’ let alone be one?

[UPDATE]: Heh.  Ed Morrissey twists the knife a little when it comes to academic qualifications.  I’m not exactly sure why journalism isn’t an Associates Degree, myself – or maybe vo-tech?

This article by Dick Morris on Alabaman problems with regard to Obamaspill is like Problems With Big Government 120:

According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan — early on — to erect huge booms offshore to shield the approximately 200 miles of the state’s coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms — some weighing tons and seven meters high — to guard their coast.

But … no sooner were the booms in place than the Coast Guard, perhaps under pressure from the public comments of James Carville, uprooted them and moved them to guard the Louisiana coastline instead.

Or possibly it’s a 090 remedial course.  Because it only gets worse from there. (more…)

…of being the Go-To Place for 2010 Political Ads. First up is DALE PETERSON. I’m capitalizing the name because, well, this ad deserves it:

I got nothing to add, except that going from 5% to 28% and pushing out the front-runner is in fact impressive. (more…)

The primary for Alabama is Tuesday, so we checked in with Rick Barber to find out the state of the race:

I also asked Rick (like Hot Air Greenroom’s Laura Curtis) why Alabama’s commercials have been so memorable this cycle. Listen for the answer, of course.

Rick’s site is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Stop laughing: these people don’t get out much.

(Via the Corner) I am not really going to get into the meat of this WaPo article about Alabama candidate for Governor Artur Davis.  If the man is going to run on the admittedly sensible notion that being for health care rationing is political suicide in Alabama, then presumably Rep. Davis was already aware that he’d be more or less called a race traitor for doing so*.  My sympathies are, as they say, muted.

But I wanted to highlight this one throwaway line, because it reveals a certain problem for the Washington Post.

Davis has played down the impact of race in his run but acknowledged that being a Democrat is a challenge in Alabama.

Um.  No, it’s not.  It’s actually fairly easy to be a Democrat in Alabama: Democrats have powerful if not super-majorities in both houses of their state legislature, the current Lt. Governor of Alabama is a Democrat, and up to the point where Parker Griffith flipped they had a 4-3 GOP-Dem ratio in the House.  The reason why that ratio could be 6-1 after the next election is because being a liberal is a challenge in Alabama – which, by the way, accurately describes Artur Davis, Washington Post or no.

This may seem a minor problem, but it’s actually one of the reasons why the newspaper business is in such horrific shape these days: a basic lack of knowledge outside of a very narrow comfort zone.  An editor who happened to know these details about Alabama, or who had thought to look them up (like I did, for some of this), could have easily flipped this story back to the reporter for a quick rewrite.  But the editor was as ignorant of Alabamn politics as the reporter was.  So why are they writing stories on the topic?

Bless their hearts.

Moe Lane

*Artur Davis happens to be African-American.

Crossposted to RedState.

Via POWIP:

Gun in Ala. campus shooting bought 2 decades ago
By DESIREE HUNTER (AP) – 15 hours ago

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The gun used to kill three people during a faculty meeting at an Alabama school was bought for the suspect’s husband two decades ago when he said he was having problems with a neighbor, an investigator testified Thursday.

The investigator told a judge that an acquaintance bought the gun in New Hampshire for Amy Bishop’s husband to skirt a waiting period where the couple lived in Massachussetts.

In no particular order:

1. There’s something going on with the husband.
2. Bill Delahunt should not get off the hook for letting this one back out onto the streets, just because he’s cutting and running from Congress.
3. If Amy Bishop had decided to cook off in MA instead of AL, the restrictive gun laws of the former wouldn’t have done a damned thing to make it harder for her to kill three people.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

There are still quite a few ones to process from CPAC, so here’s Les Phillip. His website is here.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Campaign site here: he’s running for Bobby Bright’s seat.

That’s the last CPAC election video that I had today: I have a full slate scheduled for tomorrow, God help me.

A GOP retention in NH & a GOP pick-up in AL.  The second is probably more noteworthy: until quite recently, it took real skill for a Democrat to lose a state legislature election in Alabama.  Heck, the Democrats still hold a four-to-three advantage there, and their national party has been reflexively attacking Southerners for three decades now.