Moe Lane

As expected, Republican Jason Smith crushed Democrat Steve Hodges in this R+13 district.  For those scoring at home, this is the third special election held this election cycle, and – like the other two – has resulted in the incumbent party keeping the seat.  I note this largely because, prior to 2010, you couldn’t have a special election without some earnest Democrat type telling you brassily that his party had a magic formula for always winning those particular contests.  I wonder what happened to those people? …No, wait, that’s a lie: I really, really don’t.

Congratulations to Rep.-elect Smith.

It’s a special election, and one that’s highly unlikely to be an upset (it’s a reliably Republican district in an election cycle where the Democrats are the ones scrambling for footholds), but remember this: I don’t care how ‘conservative’ Democratic nominee Steve Hodges claims to be.  He will caucus with the Democrats if elected, and he will vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House if that’s what it takes to get her in, and he will betray whatever conservative principles that he might have if it’s a close vote.  This is the way of things; there is no real sense in pretending otherwise.  And we have plenty of evidence to justify my cynicism.

Jason Smith is the Republican candidate in this election. Calibrate accordingly.

Advice that I’m going to heed: because while I am a hammer, at least that I know that I am a hammer (and thus think that everything that I see is a nail).  This is why we keep some of the subtle people about, and thank God that we do.  Division of labor, and all that.

Via @bdomenech.

If you’re a Democrat, then the latest poll from Mason-Dixon should not be combined with alcohol and/or used in conjunction with heavy machinery: she’s not just losing.  John Brunner beats her 52/41; Sarah Steelman, 49/42; and Todd Akin 49/44.  And that’s registered voters.  These are the kinds of numbers that you’d expect to see from a challenger; an incumbent that far underwater needs an exit strategy, quick.  Guess the Democrats guessed wrong on how quickly McCaskill was going to fade.

Mind you, the person who should really be worried right now is Missouri governor Jay Nixon.  The Democrats have written off the state in the Presidential election; Claire McCaskill is starting to swirl the drain; and the DCCC seems to have decided not to really push at the three first-term Republican incumbents this cycle.  Nixon’s looking very, very alone right now.  Such a shame…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Via @TookieW)

PS: Primary’s August 7th.  McCaskill is, by the way, running unopposed in the primary.  …Oops?

While the showdown between rival Democratic incumbents Russ Carnahan and Lacy Clay – in what promises to be one of the most vicious internecine battles of the 2012 primary season – may be the most public news coming out of Missouri’s First District, it remains true that the seat will be contested in November by the Republicans.  We spoke a couple of days ago with Martin Baker, who is running in the August primary: and he wants to take this district away from the Democratic party.

Martin’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Although seeing her out on the shaking tree limb like this is funny.  Anyway, no, I don’t want Obama campaigning in Missouri because we don’t need him there to win Missouri; I’d prefer that he spend time in states where his presence would rebound to a practical benefit for the Republican party.  Like, say, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

And maybe Colorado, depending on whether the administration messes up their disaster reaction response to the wildfires in that state.  Personally, I hope that the administration does not mess that one up – my fellow Americans are having problems over there right now – but if the President brings his reverse-Midas touch to the situation in classic fashion then I am not really required to be too forgiving of the man.

I was half-tempted to let this news pass without real comment – after all, it’s hardly news that Democratic politicians are finding their national (and Obama-dominated) convention to be about as congenial as a leper colony, and for roughly the same reasons – but I couldn’t let this bit of half-hearted apologia get away without taking a slap at it:

The aide stressed that McCaskill did not attend the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when she was running for governor of Missouri.

Indeed.  2004.  The year where the Democratic nominee was a pumped-up cipher with no meaningful accomplishments in his political career, a rhetorical style often miscalled ‘eloquent’ but really ‘grandiose,’ and whose stale, recycled faux-populist message merely ensured that his opponent got a majority of the popular vote.  Can’t imagine why Claire’s seeing parallels to that…

Moe Lane

PS: A certain amount of inherent cruelty requires me to point out that McCaskill lost that election in 2004.  Too.

Sarah Steelman is one of the candidates running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Missouri – which is, of course, a prime nomination to have, considering that sitting Senate Claire McCaskill is widely expected to be a prominent member of the next wave of Democratic politicians slated to die the political True Death for the greater glory of Obamacare.  We spoke for a bit at CPAC about the race, and about the fact that it was Sarah’s first CPAC:

Sarah’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

It’s official: the last remaining ostensibly politically viable member of the once-powerful Carnahan dynasty has decided to not seek a third term.  I say ‘ostensibly’ because it was actually unclear that Robin Carnahan was ever going to recover from her humiliating shellacking at the hands of Roy Blunt in last year’s MO-SEN race (13 points is pretty bad).  And I say ‘last remaining’ because her brother Russ Carnahan is, metaphorically speaking, a dead man walking: the Missouri legislature took the opportunity offered by redistricting to excise Carnahan’s seat in a heroic act of political eugenics.

As you may have guessed from the above, I am not particularly enamored of the Carnahan dynasty.  Truth be told, I mistrust any American political dynasty that doesn’t have John Adams as a primary genetic ancestor: frankly, they tend to turn to the bad by the third generation*. So you can imagine that the news that Robin is not going to wait around to be tossed out of office is a pleasant one for me… particularly since it means that Tom Carnahan has a little bit of a patronage problem now for his wind boondoggle business.  As in, a little bit of a lack of patronage problem. (more…)

“If it’s Kansas, Missouri, no big deal. You know, that’s the dance of the low-sloping foreheads.”

Let’s see:

Kansas
Former Governor, current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

Missouri
Governor Jay Nixon
Attorney General Chris Koster
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan
Treasurer Clint Zweifel
Representative William ‘Lacy’ Clay
Representative Russ Carnahan (OK, I’ll give him this one)
Representative Emanuel Cleaver
Senator Claire McCaskill

I’m trying to imagine what the reaction would be if I referred to any of these people – besides Russ Carnahan, of course – as being ‘low-sloping forehead’ types. Something memorable, I’d imagine. But then, I’m not a writer for the New York Times, so possibly people just simply require me to have basic social hygiene.

Moe Lane

[Oops! HT: Hot Air Headlines]

This could very well be the prettiest redistricting map that you’re going to see this cycle:

You see, Missouri is in an interesting place where the state is: losing a Congressional seat; just coming off an election cycle where they flipped a seat to the GOP (making the current ratio 6 GOP / 3 DEM) ; and in possession of an almost veto-proof Republican legislature. So, Missouri Republicans decided to handle the situation by creating a 6 GOP / 2 DEM district map that cut up Russ Carnahan’s district and forced him to compete in a heavily African-American district (as per the Voting Rights Act) against incumbent William Lacy Clay. They also more or less left Emanuel Cleaver’s seat alone – Rep. Cleaver does not represent a majority-minority district, by the way; this will be important later. And then the legislature sent the map to Democratic governor Jay Nixon, who promptly vetoed it.

Oddly enough, when it came to the override, four Democrats crossed over to vote for the map, thus overriding the veto! Oddly enough, all four are African-Americans (who readily admitted that they were protecting Clay’s and Cleaver’s seats)! And oddly enough, Russ is not taking it well! And by ‘not taking it well’ I mean ‘engaging in profanity-laden, bitterly sarcastic invective,’ although I’m not entirely certain that Russ can actually spell any of those words*. It’s probably not helping that the Carnahan name may be a bit… colored, in Missouri African-American eyes… by virtue of past history.

(more…)

He’s not fully joining the fight against Obamacare – Koster has issued an amicus curiae brief in modified support of the Florida Obamacare lawsuit, instead of joining it – but he’s easily the most prominent Democrat on the state level to break with his party on Obamacare.  This is partially probably due to Missouri’s emphatic rejection of Obamacare last year (in the form of Proposition C), and partially probably due to Koster’s own desire to survive politically; Koster switched parties in 2007, when it looked like the promised forty-year dominance of the Democratic party in America might actually last, well, forty years.  As it stands, Koster is up for re-election next year, and as it’s promising to be a bad year for Missouri Democrats who like Obamacare… well.

Do read the brief, as it represents the Democratic party’s somewhat frantic desire to resolve the problem that they’re having with Obamacare right now.  To wit: the individual mandate is clearly unconstitutional, given that it requires people to engage in commerce, whether they want to or not.  Unfortunately, the same Geniuses From Beyond Space And Time that put that provision into Obamacare also neglected – willfully – a provision that explicitly stated that the various parts of Obamacare are severable from each other; so if the individual mandate goes it’s well within the court’s purview to declare the whole thing unconstitutional as well.  That would be… problematical for Democrats, given that they wasted a year on Obamacare in the first place.

(more…)