Moe Lane

This is a race that has recently hit the radar, largely because Tom has seriously narrowed the gap between him and incumbent Senator Bob Casey – and if you don’t like a Republican-leaning pollster’s +2, well, there’s always Quinnipiac’s -3, or Morning Call’s -2.  Heck, even the Democratic-leaning PPP had to struggle to get Casey at 50: amazing what you can get with a D+11 sample, huh?  Anyway, we at RedState had spoken with Tom earlier in the year, and we are just as happy to check up with him on the state of the race now:

Tom’s site is here.  Check him out.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

The Hill: “Senate Republicans are furious the Obama administration rebuffed their attempts to learn details of the Benghazi attack, only to give the coveted information to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.”

Me: What goes around, comes around.

What in blazes is going on in Connecticut? Quinnipac polled the McMahon/Murphy CT-SEN race, and it found the same results for that race as did Rasmussen: 49/46 for the GOP candidate.  The Q-poll is also showing Obama over Romney… by seven points, which as Hot Air notes is actually awful news for the President; he should be up by double digits there.  All in all: this is not yet an upset situation… but it is becoming a bit evocative of the Johnson/Feingold WI-SEN race in 2010.

Or it could just be another state moving away from the Red State / Blue State metaphor that we’ve all been using since the 2000 election.  It’s easy to forget that as recently as 2006 Connecticut was a state which voted Democratic in Presidential elections, but was more than happy to elect Republicans to other offices; in that year Republicans held the governorship, and the majority of the state’s Congressional Districts.  Admittedly, most of those Republicans were what has been diplomatically called Northeastern Republicans, which is a term of art that covers a good amount of intra-party awkwardness; but a seat is a seat*, and rebuilding the GOP in New England will pay dividends down the line. (more…)

That’s a rhetorical question: but since Senate Majority Leader apparently has enough free time to advocate this kind of trivial legislation then I think that it’s long past time that Harry Reid started doing his job.  Which is not ‘ignoring the Constitution.’

No, honest to God, it’s not.  I understand that the Democratic leadership act like it is, but that’s because they’re all yutzes far over their depth.  If we were in their shoes, the Democratic leadership would have been shown the door in 2011.

The primary is today in Texas, and as the title says: I have some suggestions for you.  I’m putting them here because although I do not expect that RedState would particularly object to the first two, I am in point of fact making a recommendation in a Democratic primary, and RS has a policy of not helping out liberal Democrats unless we really, really need to.

Anyway: (more…)

Essentially, that they’re not really all that, well, volatile.  Here’s a partisan breakdown of what RCP considers to be the most at-risk House and Senate races:

RCP also ranks this year’s gubernatorial elections, but there are only eleven of them anyway (thus making a Top Ten list kind of meaningless).  So, let’s look at the Congressional results: (more…)

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)

Ted Ctuz is an old friend of RedState, of course: so we made sure to spend a couple of minutes talking about the race, how the ongoing redistricting dispute in Texas is making everybody’s elections difficult, and about CPAC generally.  And if you’re wondering why a Texas federal Senate race would be affected by redistricting, it’s because nobody really wants to have three primary dates this year.  Anyway, we chatted for a bit:

Ted’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

This particular interview with Richard – we’ve talked with him before about the race – is of interest for another reason: Dave Weigel of Slate happened to reference it in his day-in-the-life article about Richard Mourdock at CPAC.  I don’t have any actual beef with Weigel’s reporting of anything that I was involved with – I did ask those questions, more or less, and I was ready to get started on the entire interview rodeo – but it may prove instructive to see the difference between the interview, and the way Dave described it.  Nothing pernicious, but interesting.

Said interview is below:

…and Richard’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

One of the interesting things about CPAC is, of course, that you can meet a whole lot of different candidates.  Below was my conversation with Dan Bongino, who is a former US Secret Service agent now running for Senate in Maryland against Ben Cardin – and if you don’t remember who Ben Cardin is, don’t worry. Cardin’s an amazingly generic Senator who, on his good days, aspires to be as memorable as Herb Kohl.

Anyway, Dan and I talked a bit about CPAC and the race below:

Dan’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

CNN is just now reporting that the President plans to recess appoint Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Such a recess appointment was previously assumed to be impossible, given that: the assumed minimum length of time is three days; and the Senate is deliberately meeting every two days in order to prevent recess appointments during that time period.  The Hill helpfully notes (via @RBPundit) that the three-day limit is actually from the Clinton era: they also note that Obama’s then Solicitor General noted the three-day rule during Supreme Court arguments (Politico gives the case as being New Process Steel, L.P. v National Labor Relations Board).  That his administration is now going to reverse themselves on this should come as a surprise to nobody; neither should it be a surprise that this administration apparently has absolutely no awareness whatsoever that their actions will have consequences that will make Democrats curse this White House for the next thirty years.

That’s pretty much it, except for one final note: ever hear of “unanimous consent,” Mr. President?  No?  Well, you will.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Here’s the background: the current hot topic of conversation in domestic politics right now is whether or not to extend a temporary payroll tax cut.  It’s currently an object of some controversy on the GOP side, largely because it would involve effectively another 180 billion in spending; Democrats were in fact kind of gleeful about that, given that it promised to give Republicans a bit of a problem between specifically choosing between less spending and lower taxes (two things that have been long-term fiscal conservative goals).  Unfortunately for the Democrats, they aren’t the only ones that can give their opponents uncomfortable choices: Speaker John Boehner made a deal where the tax cuts would be bundled up with provisions towards hastening the development of the ethical oil Keystone Pipeline.  This reportedly will ensure that the tax cuts will pass the House.

The problem here is that the White House has decided that it would rather pander to homophobic, racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic conflict oil regimes abroad – and those regimes’ radical progressive allies at home – than to produce jobs for working class Americans (even the ones that work for private sector unions).  The White House has thus announced that it will veto the bill (via @davidhauptmann) if it passes the Keystone jobs program language.  Speaker Boehner has already made it clear that he’s aware of the threat, and is not allowing it to affect House business. (more…)