nh-01 – Moe Lane

#rsrh Carol Shea-Porter on course for another humiliating defeat.

It’s quite exciting, really: with the dropping out of… somebody or other; I don’t follow New Hampshire politics that closely; besides, it’s just a Democrat anyway… Carol Shea-Porter is on track to challenge Frank Guinta, the incumbent that beat her 54/43 in 2010.

Now, there’s some argument that Guinta’s going to have a tougher time in a rematch, and that’s almost certainly true – the polls mentioned in the first link above have Guinta with Shea-Porter tied in one January poll, and ahead-but-not-at-50% in a later one – but you have to look at Shea-Porter as an actual candidate, too. Her win in 2006 was a 51/49 squeaker upset, and in 2008 – a great year to be a Democratic incumbent – she managed a 52/46 win in her rematch. Shea-Porter is also a notable hypocrite with the political instincts of a tasered marmoset whose standard progressive (and antiwar rhetoric) got her in trouble time and again. And, oh yeah: she thinks that she was taken down by the Chinese government. Which is better than thinking that it’s all a Jewish plot, so at least Shea-Porter has that going for her. Continue reading #rsrh Carol Shea-Porter on course for another humiliating defeat.

#rsrh Carole Shea-Porter running again.

Because God loves me and wishes for me to be happy, that’s why. He knew that I was so busy going after all the other Democrats on my private list that I did not have the chance to give her shellacking – and 42% of the vote for an incumbent qualifies as ‘shellacking;’ so He, in His infinite benevolence, has given me a second bit at that particular apple.

Seriously, this is going to be a blast. I cannot wait to hear how a rabid antiwar candidate justifies President Barack Obama’s neocon-driven war for oil in Libya. I simply cannot wait. I don’t know which will be more fun: the grudging words of praise, spit out like so many ashes; or the bitter eyes as Shea-Porter watches herself slowly strangle her own self-respect* for the sake of a seat in Congress…

Moe Lane

*Futilely, of course.

Carole Shea-Porter… BROUGHT DOWN BY THE PRC?

That’s the implication, at least: Ms. Shea-Porter is going around telling people that the reason that she lost was because of all that dirty, dirty (and apparently foreign) special interest money. The quote: “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere, and it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.*”

Let us leave aside for the moment the minor detail of why the PRC would want to topple a fellow-leftist: has the woman no understanding of campaign disclosure rules? It’s not as if the money’s being delivered in paper sacks: we are actually able to know who contributed to various campaigns. For example – and to use her own election race as an example – incoming Congressman Frank Guinta raised a total of 1.53 million this cycle, 21% of which was via PACs (and none of it from, say, the US Chamber of Commerce’s PAC). Ms. Shea-Porter? 1.64 million, 30% via PAC money. Business/ideological in Guinta’s case, labor/ideological in Shea-Porter’s: all perfectly obvious, and all reasonably transparent.

What’s actually bugging Shea-Porter, of course, is that the aforementioned US Chamber of Commerce happened to allocate 149K worth of negative campaign ads against her in the last two weeks of the race; probably not all that necessary (her polling was terrible), but it certainly didn’t help the incumbent much. It nonetheless does give a crumb of rationalization to any progressives out there not yet ready to face objective reality; which is why the soon-to-be-former Representative is implying as overtly as she dares that her election losses were all the fault of the Godless Chinese Hordes. It’s a more appealing narrative to the left than the truth, which is that being an open progressive in the wild is an excellent way to lose one’s election by double digits. Continue reading Carole Shea-Porter… BROUGHT DOWN BY THE PRC?

Ah, Carol Shea-Porter. Dear, dear, deeply off-message, Carol Shea-Porter. #rsrh

I couldn’t improve on this Ed Morrissey post, no matter how hard that I tried. So just watch the video:

…and privately chuckle at how expanded the New Hampshire Democratic party’s Maalox budget must be, these days. Ach, well, nobody held a gun to their head and made them run a howling progressive for Congress.

Carol Shea-Porter (D, NH) in trouble.

There’s a lot of good news in this WMUR Granite State poll (as of this moment, we’re looking at retaining Gregg’s seat, and picking up both House seats), but Shea-Porter’s numbers are the most immediately interesting. 35/40 approval/disapproval (the worst she’s ever had); and she loses to all four hypothetical candidates:

In a race between Shea Porter and her best known challenger, Frank Guinta, 43% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Guinta, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 2% prefer some other candidate, and 22% are undecided.

In a matchup with Rich Ashooh, 36% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Ashooh, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 3% prefer some other candidate, and 28% are undecided.

In a matchup with Bob Bestani, 36% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Bestani, 33% would vote for Shea Porter, 2% prefer some other candidate, and 30% are undecided.

And in a matchup with Sean Mahoney, 39% of likely 1st CD voters say they would vote for Mahoney, 32% would vote for Shea Porter, 1% prefer some other candidate, and 28% are undecided.

“Shea Porter does not break 40% against any of her challengers a sign that she faces an extremely difficult challenge to keep her seat,” said [Andrew Smith, Director of the UNH Survey Center].

Continue reading Carol Shea-Porter (D, NH) in trouble.

It’s a miracle Shea-Porter didn’t talk about cooking her colleagues’ dinners.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: when I read this title (“Shea-Porter: Send the men home and Congress could pass health care reform”) I assumed that it was just some garden-variety nonsense about the war. Rep. Craol Shea-Porter is a Democratic Member of Congress who was active in the antiwar movement, so she’s going to be saying stupid things about national security at pretty much the same rate that you or I emit carbon dioxide. This is hardly acceptable, but it’s a situation that exists. People get used to it.

But no. No, Rep. Shea-Porter actually just fell out of the Stereotypes about Women tree, and hit every branch on the way down.

Apparently, the reason why we don’t have health care rationing is because all the MEN (from both parties) in Congress are keeping all the WOMEN (who are all automatically nurturing caregivers) in Congress down. And the WOMEN in Congress are being kept from doing anything about it because the MEN won’t listen to them. And the WOMEN don’t complain about it because the MEN… I’m not sure what Rep. Shea-Porter thinks that the MEN are doing to keep the WOMEN down, although I have my suspicions at what she thinks what it’d take. And how does Rep. Shea-Porter know all of this? Because she talks about it with other WOMEN. In the bathroom.

In. The. Bathroom.

162 years since Seneca Falls, and we’ve come this far.

Moe Lane

PS: Rep. Shea-Porter has two potential Republican opponents: Frank Guinta and Bob Bestani.

Crossposted to RedState.

Now Carol Shea-Porter (D, NH-01) wants to be anti-stimulus.

Everything from January to September comes from what will no doubt be the single most potent anti-Shea-Porter site in 2010: I refer, of course, to her own House website. Watch the ‘evolution’ of a Beltway Bandit:

January, 2009: “Low-income seniors could really use this money right now,” said Shea-Porter. “Extending the tax rebate to seniors is not only the fair thing to do, but it’s also one of the best ways to stimulate the economy. This helps all of us.”
February, 2009: “Congress has passed an economic stimulus package to provide much needed aid to American families and small businesses,” said Congresswoman Shea-Porter.
March, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that New Hampshire will receive a $25,827,000 grant for the State Energy Program and a $23,218,594 grant for weatherization projects. These funds, totaling $49,045,594, are through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
April, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that New Hampshire will receive $4.6 million in funding for airport infrastructure. These funds were made possible by the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “
May, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that the Portsmouth National Passport Center will receive $2,570,000 for facility renovations. This funding is provided through the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
June, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that the North Conway Water Precinct will receive $8,190,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development’s Water and Environmental Program. … The funding comes in the form of a $4,255,000 grant and a $3,935,000 loan made possible by the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
July, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that $558,591 would be sent to New Hampshire to provide employment-related services to dislocated workers affected by layoffs and closures from eight manufacturing companies around the state. … This funding is through the National Emergency Grant (NEG) from the Department of Labor and is made possible by the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
August, 2009: [Rep. Shea-Porter took the month off.]
September, 2009: “Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that the University of New Hampshire will receive $487,350 to research internet safety materials used by Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces. … This grant is provided by the United States Department of Justice and is made possible by the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
October, 2009: Rep. Shea-Porter walks back from the stimulus. (H/T: Instapundit)

For somebody who thought that the stimulus was such a failure, she was certainly happy to see all that money. And she certainly wasn’t shy about assigning it to non-infrastructure projects, either.

Now, I can understand not wanting the money, and not taking any of it. I can also understand wanting the money, and taking it. I can even understand not wanting the money, but taking it (whether because it’s been effectively forced on you, or because you figure that you should make the best of a bad situation). What I can’t understand is how somebody can want the money, take the money, then pretend that she’s against how the money was given to her in the first place – and still be taken seriously as a elected representative.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: Frank Guinta for Congress. Because this embarrassment has gone on for long enough.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Cops = Thugs to Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D, NH).

Oh, Carol. Why does she keep making us point out her lies?

Portsmouth PD: Shea-Porter was removed from Bush town hall by two police officers

Two officers of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Police Department removed Carol Shea-Porter and Susan Mayer from a February 2005 town hall event hosted by then-President George W. Bush at the request of the owner of the property, a spokesman for the Police Department tells NowHampshire.com.

The revelation contradicts statements made by Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter as recently as this week that she was not removed from the event.

“[T]here were no disruptions and no rudeness and I wasn’t removed. If it happened, don’t you think there would have been photos or video or news stories from that day? There aren’t because it didn’t happen,” Shea-Porter told the Portsmouth Herald this weekend.

Or because they went quietly enough, and weren’t notable enough then, to justify either. The ‘thugs’ comment mentioned later in the article is more of a problem; it’s just not credible to imagine that Rep. Shea-Porter would not have recognized police officers as being police officers, given that this statement is an official one from the Portsmouth PD. So: either Shea-Porter was lying (being also unaware that the police keep records of this sort of thing), or she thinks that cops are thugs. Given her affiliation with the antiwar movement, I’m going to assume the latter.

Now, it’s not just affecting Rep. Shea-Porter, or her crony Mayer (who, as the article notes, is now taking in about 70 grand a year on the taxpayers’ dime*), or even the people who are stuck with trying to explain away every contradiction and evasion that Shea-Porter makes. It’s affecting the people of New Hampshire’s First District, who honestly don’t deserve this kind of amateurism from their Member of Congress.

So: Frank Guinta for Congress.

Moe Lane

*This antiwar thing worked out great for those two, didn’t it? Personally, that is.

Crossposted to RedState.

Guinta now within MoE of Shea-Porter.

Now! Hampshire (H/T: Instapundit) reports that Shea Porter has gone from 43/34 in April against Frank Guinta to 46.3/43.4 in polling. Better still, Shea-Porter now has an unfavorable rating of 48%. Needless to say, it’s directly related to August:

“Frank Guinta has two things going for him right now,” said Steve DeMaura of Populus Research. “We’re seeing a general swing toward Republican candidates on the generic congressional ballot. And Carol-Shea Porter’s negatives have shot through the roof as a result of a calamitous August recess.”

Shea-Porter spent much of the August recess avoiding direct engagement with her constituents. She refused to hold traditional, New Hampshire-style town hall meetings until pressured into doing so last Saturday by Republicans and state media.

Two things:

There’s something fun about seeing the word ‘calamitous’ used about the Other Side’s political fortunes.
You’d have thought that the last eight years would have taught a self-avowed member of the antiwar movement that cutting and running DOES. NOT. WORK.

Moe Lane

PS: Frank Guinta for Congress.

Crossposted to RedState.

Carol Shea-Porter (D) has the political instincts of a tasered marmoset.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. I’m not exactly sure what it means, either – but it was just somehow satisfying to write.

[Further UPDATE]: Sorry, folks: via The Campaign Spot, original story here.

So Rep. Shea-Porter wants proponents of health care rationing to try to convince the majority otherwise. OK. She wants them to go talk to the folks at the town halls, presumably because they’re the most engaged in the issue. Also fine. And – gasp! – she thinks that her side needs to soften their words! Truly, the Democrats have reached a place where they can see a new, cleaner level of discourse in the distance.

And then she wrecks it.

“Find those tea-baggers who don’t like the idea of this and talk to them.”

Not to burst Rep. Shea-Porter’s balloon or anything, but the Tea Party people have long since been made aware of the obscenity that lurks behind that epithet. And until the Other Side gets it through their head that we can actually tell when people are sneering at us, they might as well not try to hide the hate, if only for the sake of their blood pressure.

Moe Lane

PS: Go Frank Guinta.

Crossposted to RedState.