Moe Lane

Let me tell you the real reason that Rep. Chellie Pingree isn’t running for Senate in Maine, and never mind what WaPo stenographer Greg Sargent wrote:  she isn’t running because Republican operatives everywhere were rubbing their hands together at the prospect of having Pingree to work with.  Let’s just say that the woman has… entitlement… issues.

No, let’s just say that.  For now; we can revisit it all in the general election.

I’ll be hitting this story about possible legal shenanigans involving Senator Olympia Snowe tomorrow – it’s a bit late to work on it now – but let me note this: if it’s true then I’m hearing that it may be awful news for a certain Member of Congress whose own spouse’s financial activities might not stand up under any kind of similar scrutiny.

Annnnnd that’s all I’m going to write until I have more information.

Hey, guess what? Elections matter!

A voter fraud investigation triggered by allegations made earlier this week by the head of the state Republican Party will be combined with an inquiry also looking at identity fraud, Maine’s top elections official announced Thursday.

Secretary of State Charlie Summers Jr. also said he’s asked the state attorney general to work with his office in the investigation.

The voter fraud investigation began following allegations Monday by state GOP Chairman Charles Webster, who said he’d uncovered more than 200 cases of possible election fraud and asked that his information be reviewed by Summers’ office. The 206 cases cited by Webster focused on nonresident students in the state university system who had also registered to vote in Maine last year.

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At least, that’s how it looks from this Politico article.  It’s at the point where Snowe is openly feuding with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (much to the pleased bemusement of Senate Republicans):

It started in 2009, when Snowe lamented being shut out of Democratic negotiations over the health care bill, continued as Reid bashed her in a 2010 magazine interview and culminated in recent weeks when the two engaged in a rare public spat on the Senate floor.

The two sparred over a noncontroversial small-business reauthorization bill, with Reid accusing Snowe of “killing” the bill and Snowe saying Reid reneged on a promise to bring up her amendment.

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That’s the plan, at least.  The current situation in Maine is as follows: people don’t have to belong to a union to work, but non-union employees (both private and public sector) may still have to pay the unions a ‘service fee.’ This supposedly represents the recouping of the cost of unions ‘representing’ non-union members in labor disputes – whether or not the non-union members wanted to be part of the labor dispute in the first place – and it’s a common feature in contract negotiations in Maine.  There’s legislation going through the state legislature right now to close that loophole; new Maine governor Paul LePage (R) is enthusiastically supporting it.

Whether this will work or not will largely be up to the Maine grassroots.  Maine is currently majority-Republican in both houses of the state legislature, but it’s, well, Maine: I found LePage to be pretty tough-minded, but there’s a limit to how much he can do without legislative backup.  And, needless to say, the unions have already begun the usual reactionary Koch conspiracy theorizing.  Everybody involved is expecting a fight; and the impression is that Governor LePage, at least, is looking forward to it.  Interesting times ahead…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

OK, it scans, but it really should be explained better. The short version is that the Maine GOP – which has been eating its Wheaties lately – has a somewhat ‘brutal’ ad out…

…if you define ‘brutal’ as ‘accurate,’ which these days most Democratic politicians do. For those without video access, the ad takes issue with Pingree’s anti-Wall Street rhetoric, given that she’s received tons of special interest money from Wall Street hedge funds, is accepting favors and assistance from Wall Street entities, and is flying around on a private jet owned by her Wall Street hedge fund boyfriend.  Which is in fact not particularly bad… UNLESS YOU ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY PRETENDING TO BE SOME SORT OF POPULIST, ANTI-WALL STREET REFORMER.  In other words: it’s the hypocrisy, …Pingree.

Meanwhile, there’s Dean Scontras.  Oddly enough, he doesn’t have access to a private jet…

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

Paul is the Republican candidate for Maine’s gubernatorial race – and the one holding onto a honest-to-God lead there right now. We had a talk on why he’s running, and what he wants to do as Governor:

Paul’s website is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

According to RCP, we’ve got primaries in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia.  The news has been dominated by California’s, Nevada’s, and of course South Carolina’s – but they’re all important, so if you’re a voter in that state, hie yourselves and any reliable Republican voters within reach to a polling station.  You can let the Democrats in your life sleep in, particularly in New Jersey and Virginia.

Also: KEEP YOUR VIDEO CAMERAS HANDY, PARTICULARLY IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA.  Anti-reform opponents of Nikki Haley and Bill Connor may be now past the point where their shenanigans can shape public opinion in time for the actual primary election, but there’s plenty of things that you can do to illicitly affect an election.  Fortunately, sunlight is an excellent disinfectant – and, remember: as Mark Steyn notes here, Helen Thomas was taken down by a flipcam.  There’s a reason that both Instapundit and I keep harping on this…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Yes, Ezra Pound’s from Idaho it’s actually Walt Whitman, and I’m an idiot.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

It must be admitted that when I read this particular article:

In a move that seemed to surprise many members of Maine’s Republican Party, a group of tea party-style activists redefined the party platform at the convention Saturday.

After the vote, in which a vocal majority supported a wholesale replacement of language worked on by the party establishment since at least January, a string of delegates congratulated Horatio “Ted” Cowan III, a retired marine electrician from Rockland who wrote the adopted amendment.

…I mostly snickered at The Outrage over what happens to be a fairly straightforwardly party platform that should have a good deal of appeal to conservatives, libertarians, and populists. I personally would have argued the hard line on illegal immigration and same-sex marriage, but the former is an argument over tactics and 53% of the voting population of Maine disagrees with me on the latter anyway.   So, really, business as usual, nice to see that the Ron Paul people were actually participating in local party structures like we had been asking them to do throughout all of 2008…  and, yeah, Maine’s lost to conservatism, so let them have their fun.

Then I read a few more details of what actually happened. (more…)

Unfortunately*.

Voters in Maine on Tuesday overturned a law allowing same-sex couples to wed, dealing a fresh setback to the U.S. gay marriage movement in a race that attracted national attention.

The law was approved by Maine’s Legislature in May but was not implemented after opponents gathered enough signatures to put the issue to a “people’s veto.”

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, votes to reject the law were running at 52.75 percent to 47.25 percent, according to unofficial tallies from the Bangor Daily News.

Owing to the lack of convenient Mormons to demonize, John Aravosis is actually off complaining about OFA and the DNC for not supporting efforts to defeat Proposition 1. He even says he wants an explanation, which is something that I frankly doubt. I think that Aravosis knows why the two groups in question – both of which are fully-own subsidiaries of POTUS, Inc these days – didn’t help; he just doesn’t want to think about the implications, or the way that the current leaders of the SSM movement have more or less permanently made enemies of mainstream conservatives for the ultimate benefit of the Democratic party.

Moe Lane

*I wish that they hadn’t succeeded, but it’s their state.

Crossposted to RedState.

(via @seanhackbarth) For the very commonsense reason that you can’t trust the people who would be pulling the trigger. No, really: that’s what she said.

A moderate Republican who has previously broken with her party to support President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill said Sunday that she does not support the idea of using a so called “trigger” on the public health insurance option as part of health care reform legislation.

Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if the use of the trigger would make inclusion of the public option more acceptable, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, unequivocally replied “no.”

“The problem with trigger is it just delays the public option,” Collins told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough, want the public option.”

Note that this doesn’t mean that Sen. Olympia Snowe is going to take the same position (although it doesn’t mean that she’ll be taking a different one, either); but Sen. Collins’ position on this does make it clear that the ‘public trigger’ scenario for a government option in health care is not actually bipartisan. Please also note that Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D, NH) apparently needed only eight months as a Senator to forget how to answer straightforward questions in a straightforward manner:

New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen refused to answer directly when asked whether Collins’ position indicated that President Obama should either not fight for inclusion of the public option in the final bill or, alternatively, pursue a legislative strategy that relied solely on Democratic votes for health care reform.

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