Good news: Crist isn’t giving that money back.

This is good news…

Gov. Charlie Crist told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on April 30 that he would “probably” give refunds to donors who don’t approve of him leaving the GOP. Some donors to his U.S. Senate campaign were told before the switch that they would get their money back or pro-rated refunds.

No more. A couple of hours before Crist officially becomes an NPA voter, campaign spokeswoman Michelle Todd said there will be no refunds. Asked whether that amounts to a flip-flop, she said, “We have never made an official statement before. It is now the official statement. They donated to the Charlie Crist for U.S. Senate Campaign, and it’s still the Charlie Crist for U.S. Senate Campaign.”

…for three reasons: Continue reading Good news: Crist isn’t giving that money back.

The implication of the House Rules Committee.

The House Rules Committee. People usually call this one of the most important House committees out there, which is in my opinion untrue: it simply is the most important House committee. The reason that I say that is because the Rules committee has ultimate control over how and in what way a bill is presented and debated; add that to its ability to dictate appropriate amendments leads to an effective result of Rules being the gatekeeper for House legislation. The membership is deliberately skewed heavily in favor of the majority party (currently over two-to-one), and majority party membership on that Committee is at the discretion of the Speaker of the House.  In other words, if a Member of Congress disapproves of the way that the Rules Committee operates, the only way to show disapproval is to vote for somebody else for Speaker of the House.

The Democratic vote to re-elect Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House for the 111th Congress was 255 For, 1 Not Voting.  Every action – and every flawed piece of legislation – that made it past the Rules Committee since then is thus the responsibility of those 255 Members of Congress who authorized giving control of the American legislative agenda to Speaker Pelosi.

And that is why there is no such thing as a “conservative” Democratic politician.  That first vote defines all the rest.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh In which I solve the NRA’s dilemma for it.

Said dilemma being, as Jim Geraghty put it, that the organization will have to make some hard choices this election on whether to endorse Republicans or Democrats: fortunately, it’s actually easy to solve.  All you have to do is remember this:

Democratic politicians lie.

Democratic politicians lie.

Democratic politicians lie.

Glad to help!

#rsrh Arlen Specter (D, PA) catches a break…

…the President will not be campaigning for him.

And while the White House has backed Mr. Specter in the primary, making good on a pledge made when he switched parties just over a year ago, Mr. Obama seems unlikely to make a campaign visit for Mr. Specter before the primary, Democrats said. They said the White House is not eager to be embarrassed by having the president make a last-minute visit on behalf of a candidate who goes on to lose, as happened in the Massachusetts Senate and New Jersey governor’s races.

Aww, they left out Virginia.  They’re also acting as if those losses were despite the President’s presence, rather than because of them; which is a contentious thing to say, but then, the man has a really, really bad track record with these tough races…

Via Jim Geraghty.

Moe Lane

PS: TOOMEY.  By the way?  Joe Sestak’s pro-TARP, pro-‘stimulus,’ pro-Obamacare, pro-cap-and-trade, 100% NARAL, and a gun-grabber.  Yeah, that’s going to fly well in 2010’s Pennsylvania.

‘So, Moe, how’s your election cycle going?’

Let me put it this way: below (in no particular order) is my Top Ten List of Democratic Members of the 111th Congress Whose Presence There Personally Offends My Sense of Civics.

David Obey
Jack Murtha
Alan Mollohan
Eric Massa
Charlie Rangel
Russ Carnahan
Carol Shea-Porter
Alan Grayson
Jim Moran
Patrick Kennedy

It’s going great. Thanks for asking!

Moe Lane

News media starting to get ornery over Kagan thing.

Not that the White House cares.  Or do most of the people reading this, except in a theoretical, pass-the-popcorn sense, I suppose:

The White House today posted on its website a video allowing Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to speak “in her own words” about her personal history and perspective.

In the interview, conducted by a White House staffer who produces videos for the administration, Kagan discusses her childhood, parents and professional career. At one point she jokes that people get confused between her job as solicitor general arguing cases before the Supreme Court and the attorney general, who puts “the labels on the cigarette packages.”

While the White House seems to believe the American people deserve to hear from Kagan, it has not made her available to reporters. That prompted some consternation at today’s White House briefing.

As most folks involved with the VRWC will happily tell you, this is a totally-expected and unsurprising gambit in the administration’s ongoing move to turn the media’s 2008 infatuation with the President into whole-scale neutering. The White House’s logic is compelling, in its way: they know what they want Kagan to say, they have no intention of letting her say anything to the media that is off-message, so why even bother with the formality of an outside interview? There are plenty of people in the Executive branch of government who know how to operate a video camera, so get one of those, do the interview, hand it to the media, and tell them to get it on the nightly news. That’s how it worked in the campaign, right? Doing it this nakedly is just more… efficient.

It will be fascinating to see whether this ends up being the Obama administration’s War of Jenkins’ Ear moment. Particularly if the White House ends up playing the part of the Spanish…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.