Kay Hagan declines to lose *another* Senate race in North Carolina.

Via Hot Air comes this refreshing bucket of icy sea water on Democratic fever dreams: “Former North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan will not be mounting a challenge to her former GOP colleague, Sen. Richard M. Burr.” Not surprising that Hagan bowed out though, really. It is not the easiest thing in the world for a former Senator who was tossed out of office to come back and win a new election, particularly when it is against an incumbent.

Alas for the Democratic party, recruiting people who have intimately known the bitter lash of electoral defeat is the lynchpin of their 2016 Senate strategy. Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania… shoot, the next Democratic nominee for FL-SEN might very well be Alan Grayson, who rather famously got smacked down in 2010, to the point where he had to go running to a safer district.  A lot of retreads, in other words. A lot of retreads.  Which is fine if you think that the electorate is regretting its previous decisions; but what if they’re not?

Moe Lane

The hopefully soon-to-be-infamous “Elbert Guillory: Send Hagan Home” ad.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: even if this doesn’t actually work there’s still something deeply satisfying about hearing it being said. Partially because it’s all true – African-American voters are getting screwed over by the Democratic party – and partially because the liberal, mostly white, Democratic hyper-partisans are right now discovering that there’s only so much that you can do to a minority Republican politician when he or she is reasonably certain of getting the Republican vote generally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyVM1SVLh2k

And make no mistake: Elbert Guillory has ambitions higher than smacking white Democratic politicians right in their bloated senses of condescension and entitlement. Which is fine by me. I do so enjoy seeing a man go about the business of doing well by doing good.

Moe Lane

PS: As to the effectiveness of the ad? Beats me: but here’s a cheery thought. The basic message of that ad is not Republicans are swell! or Let me spend the next twenty minutes telling you about the arcane details of regulatory reform or even Here, have some free stuff.  It is, instead, one of the most classic of American principles:

Don’t get mad.  Get even.

The advantage of a message like that is that the aforementioned principle is very, very easy to implement in this case.  Want to send the Democrats a message?  Easy: just don’t vote for Kay Hagan.  …And that’s it.  It’s elegant.  I like elegant, particularly when it’s this… stripped of non-essentials.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

Sen. Kay Hagan (D, NC) shows us how to pocket $115K of taxpayer money! YOUR money!

This is almost impressive.

JDC Manufacturing, a company co-owned by Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband Charles “Chip” Hagan, lowered the total cost of a 2010 stimulus-funded energy project…

Yeah, let me interrupt this, really quickly: turns out that Kay Hagan is materially profiting from that trillion-dollar raid on the Treasury that the Democrats staged in 2009.  Like you do.  Or, more accurately, like cash-obsessed Democratic Senators do when the money is just sitting there, right out in the open.

…but kept all of the savings, sending none back to taxpayers who had funded the stimulus grant.
The company’s original application stated the total project would cost $438,627, and said JDC would contribute “leveraged funds” amounting to $187,983, or 43 percent of the total. As the project reached completion, however, JDC revised the total budget downward by $114,519 and applied all the savings to its share, keeping all the taxpayer funding.

Continue reading Sen. Kay Hagan (D, NC) shows us how to pocket $115K of taxpayer money! YOUR money!

LA Times: It may not be entirely inaccurate to suggest that @barackobama is radioactive in North Carolina.

The funny part about this LA Times article is that the article was in full apology mode for Barack Obama.  Which makes this… the best that they can do about Obama’s travails in North Carolina (and, more importantly, Kay Hagan’s):

… it’s not difficult to find evidence of Obama’s sunken stature here. After month of news about the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act, it is easy to find conservative Democrats who bemoan the core of the law — the individual insurance mandate — and it is even easier to find Obama supporters quick to express disbelief that the president botched his signature law.

“They bungled it! They bungled it! They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!” said Erv Portman, owner of an airplane parts manufacturer in Apex, who welcomed Obama to his plant in 2011.

Ouch. Of course, it couldn’t happen to a nicer political party, bless their hearts.

QotD, That Was The Verbal Equivalent Of A Poisoned Dagger Between The Ribs edition.

From the Free Beacon comes this time-delayed, epic slam:

A GOP Senate aide told the Free Beacon [Democratic Senator Kay] Hagan’s decision to jump out early in support of Manchin-Toomey was “a testament to her skills” as a politician.

I assume that we all understand why, yes? – Because I have to go pick up my kid, now.

Moe Lane

Via:

Kay Hagan demonstrates that there is no such thing as a conservative Democrat.

Speaking as a same-sex marriage supporter, I am going to call bullsh*t:

Sen. Kay Hagan (N.C.) on Wednesday became the latest Democratic senator to announce her support for same-sex marriage, as the Supreme Court weighs two landmark cases on gay rights.

[snip]

“I know there are strong feelings on both sides, and I have a great deal of respect for their opinions,” the North Carolina senator said. “But after much thought and prayer on my part this is where I am today.

Based on the ongoing update to Allahpundit’s gay marriage “pool” post, I’m going to guess that what happened here was that the DSCC – or Obama – did a selective email blast and laid down the law: support same-sex marriage, or you can forget about getting campaign money from the Democratic party.  Personally, if I were still a Democrat I’d be worried that I can’t trust all of these Senators to flip back if they saw the advantage in it.  I certainly don’t trust any of them now.

There is no such thing as a conservative Democrat.  They crack every time the polls on an issue slip below 50%.  This is a thing that happens.

Moe Lane

“Shut up, she explained.”

While I agree with Ed Morrissey that seeing Senator Jim DeMint make Senator Kay Hagan admit several times that there was a double standard in the way that they killed his call for a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve (a very popular House initiative) while not applying the same rule to their own pet clauses, I also agree that it was prefaced by what some might consider somewhat dry (but necessary) exposition. So here’s a cut-down version:

Very quickly: Sen DeMint of South Carolina is trying to put in an amendment calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve into a bill, so that it can be voted on. Senator Nelson of Nebraska promptly pops up and calls for the amendment to be removed, as not being germane: Senator Hagan of North Carolina promptly approves that call. DeMint then goes on to mention specific other clauses that would also apply, in order to get Hagan to a) admit that they fall under the same rule and b) highlight the fact that they won’t be removed, too. The fact that I think that this is funny no doubt says awful things about my sense of humor, after going on eight years being involved in following politics; but it never hurts to highlight hypocrisy.

We will now pause for the inevitable “You guys were just as bad!” ‘response,’ which is of course a code phrase for I must immediately attack anything that threatens to destroy my faith in the inherent virtue of the Democratic Party. Given recent polling, I have hopes for some truly entertaining exercises in denial.

Moe Lane

PS: Senator DeMint will be at the RS Gathering, by the way.

Crossposted to RedState.

Senator Hagan suddenly not looking to replace George Holding after all.

Sunlight.  Disinfectant. Not that I am suggesting anything, of course.

You may remember from Sunday about how the Democrats were quietly planning to remove a somewhat… inconvenient… US Attorney from his position before he was through investigating a former North Carolina Democratic governor. Now, via Geraghty, via Kaus, we find out that nothing of the sort is going to happen.

Now.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan said today that the U.S. Attorney in Raleigh, George Holding, should stay on the job as top federal prosecutor until investigations of former Sen. John Edwards and former Gov. Mike Easley are completed.

Hagan said she has consulted with the White House on the process for replacing Holding — the decision on a replacement is ultimately up to President Barack Obama — and said it will go much slower.

“I don’t feel it’s in North Carolina’s best interest to replace someone who is investigating these two very high profile people,” said Hagan, a Democrat who plays a key role in the process because any replacement requires Senate confirmation. “I just think that with investigations going on, he ought to have the opportunity to complete the investigations.”

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to hear that neither the President nor Senator Hagan had any intention of shutting down a corruption investigation for crass political reasons. That’s such a relief, really.  And I’m sure that the fact that this was announced mere days after the rather pointed article in the local paper that brought this up got national attention had nothing to do with the switch in focus.  Of course not.  Complete coincidence.  Although I am curious: why did this Locke Clifford fellow leave the Governor’s replacement screening panel Tuesday? And why was he at former governor Easley’s house on the same day?

Golf game, perhaps?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Democrats set to remove meddlesome anti-corruption prosecutor.

Elections have consequences.

(Via Instapundit) No, not Fitzgerald: Illinois is a little too prominent right now for that kind of shenanigans. North Carolina, on the other hand…

Democrats fix sights on GOP prosecutor

John Edwards admits federal investigators are asking him questions. Federal subpoenas were issued Friday related to Mike Easley.

As the separate federal probes into a former senator and the former governor are emerging, Democrats are taking steps to replace the Republican prosecutor who is spearheading the inquiries about the highest-profile North Carolina Democrats of the past decade.

All the nearly 100 top federal prosecutors across the country serve at the will of the president. Any replacement for U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding, a Bush appointee who has kept a priority on public corruption cases from Raleigh to the coast, will be subject to U.S. Senate confirmation.

The process gives a key role in the decision to U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat who was in the state Senate leadership for several years until she unseated Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in November. Already, Hagan has formed a panel to screen candidates. It is led by Burley Mitchell, former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court who now works at the Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice law firm.

They’re claiming that this screening process is ‘coincidental’ to the investigations, of course.

Of course. Continue reading Democrats set to remove meddlesome anti-corruption prosecutor.