Tag: redstate

RS Interview: Gov. John Kasich (R, OH).

As it happens, this Wall Street Journal article discussing Ohio’s (among other states’) credit upgrade by Standard & Poor – and Ohio’s fairly dramatic drop in unemployment in a year – came out the same day that I spoke with Governor Kasich about his budget and labor union reform successes.  The latter (SB5, which was in many ways an even stronger reform package than Wisconsin’s) is up for ratification again by the voters, in the form of Issue 2; needless to say, the Democrats are particularly desperate to reverse it, pretty much for the exclusive benefit of their Big Labor cronies.  The need to keep reform alive in Ohio was thus prominent in the below interview:

The primary pro-Issue 2 website (“Building a Better Ohio”) can be found here.  I encourage folks to check it out.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

RS Gathering 2011: Adam Hasner (R CAND, FL-SEN PRIMARY).

Adam Hasner was one of our speakers at the RedState Gathering, and he was available for a few moments for comments.  You may recognize the backdrop; it’s from the Teddy Roosevelt painting, and I’d like to note that I think that campaigns looking for nice backgrounds from which to do their videos could do worse than use Steve Penley’s stuff.

Adam’s site is here.  I liked talking with him; nice guy.  The phony-moderate Democratic Senator named Nelson that Adam’s running against is Bill, by the way: Ben Nelson’s the phony-moderate Democratic Senator from Nebraska.  Keeping track of which one is which is an annoyance; but with any luck and a good bit of work, it’s an annoyance that will abruptly end, starting January 2013…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh Geraghty’s back.

Good line on the entire Obama-is-Job thing: “So This Would Make the 2010 Midterms a Landslide of Biblical Proportions, No?”

Also, check out (ahem) RedState’s analysis of the theology involved in the (absurd) original comparison. We were fortunate to have access to an actual theologian; it’s not something that we would normally consider necessary, and I’m just a little annoyed that The New York Times felt it acceptable to drag laughingly bad religious arguments into what should be a straightforward policy debate…

Moe Lane

#rsrh The Chamberpost ups the ante.

They’re not even remotely happy that we over at RedState outed the secret agenda of the Chamber of Commerce. I understand that lawyers will be involved.

Still, please note that they’re tacitly admitting to the Steve Gutenberg thing. And here we thought that we’d have to resort to discovery…

Moe Lane

PS: What is this odd sensation that I am having while contemplating this year’s elections? It’s kind of relaxing and soothing; vaguely rejuvenating, and accompanied with a general sense of well-being and cheerful forbearance towards others.

Oh, right.

This is happiness.  Been a while since 2004, hasn’t it?

#rsrh The Other 95 and faux-populism.

Looking at RS colleague Erick Erickson’s deconstruction of supposed ‘grassroots’ site The Other 95 to reveal yet another Left-astroturf 501(c)(3) organization (in this case, Democracy in Action), I am struck with an errant thought: this must be exquisitely frustrating for professional Lefty operatives.  They have almost everything that they need.  They have a solid majority in both Houses of Congress; an Executive branch run by a Democrat and which contains all sorts of people willing to quietly do them favors; a media that largely takes their claims at face value; a plethora of funding; and even a broad outline of goals.  They have all these things, but they lack one thing – one thing – and that’s actual warm bodies.  They can’t even fill a coffee house reliably, let alone a field.

The really funny part?  They’ve never needed to pack the room or the field before; because the Right. Doesn’t. Do. Protests.  We bragged about it: “We have jobs.” So they never had to worry about that, until now.  And it turns out that being able to bring out the people is actually an absolutely vital prerequisite for having a successful populist movement.

Go figure.

Moe Lane

Michael Williams (R Cand, SEN-TX) wants to talk about race.

The problem with this essay on race by Texas Railroad Commissioner and Senatorial candidate Michael Williams is that you really need to read the whole thing: there are too many good bits to cram into just one snippet. But a taste:

What grieves me most, however, is not that false cries of racism shortcircuit our debate, but that it makes legitimate concern about pockets of racism impossible to hear among the majority of Americans where it truly exists. Racism does still exist in America today – on both sides of the political spectrum. Now it will be that much harder to expose because the real cry will be impossible to distinguish from the false one, much like the boy who cried, “wolf.” Racism exists, but so does opportunity, and I can personally attest to the fact that there is far more opportunity than racism.

We have rid our institutions of government of the practice of discrimination; if only we could rid our political discourse of the ugliness that ensues when we ascribe discriminatory motive to statements with no obvious discriminatory aspect. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd couldn’t help hearing a missing word in Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech to Congress. The Congressman yelled, “You lie.” Ms. Dowd couldn’t help hearing, “you lie, boy.”

While Congressman Wilson started a fire, Ms. Dowd poured fuel on it. The greater ugliness is not the inappropriate outburst, but Ms. Dowd intentionally injecting a word loaded with a history of racial condescension to label a whole movement of opposition.

Continue reading Michael Williams (R Cand, SEN-TX) wants to talk about race.

Hey, I made the New York Times. Sorta. Kinda. Not really.

Didn’t mention me by name, didn’t get my actual status on RedState quite right,* didn’t link to the original piece (or, indeed, to the the site itself), and for all I know it’s website-only** – but my wife seems to think that getting quoted still counts.  Even if it was sort of out of context.

Yeah, I know: overly fussy of me.  Particularly since a couple of people are probably grinding their teeth right now over the Old Grey Lady referring to RedState as ‘popular.’

Moe Lane

*They called me a ‘commentator’ instead of a ‘site moderator’ – or, as it says on my business cards, ‘Chief Protocol Officer.’  Although, honestly?  The correct title would probably be more like this.

**It’s rude to go through a paper at the store and see if an article made the print section.  As for buying a New York Times… well, what would I do with one, once I had it?  I don’t own a canary.

Crossposted to RedState.

Help a guy out?

[UPDATE] Now unstickied.  Thanks to everybody who contributed.

[UPDATE] Caleb’s also put up a post here about what he hopes to do in the next stage of all of this.  Check it out.

(This post will be up on top for a while.)


This isn’t for me: this is for one of my colleagues over at RedState. He’s Caleb Howe/ “absentee,” and he’s the guy who caught Don Fowler laughing at Hurricane Gustav’s impact on New Orleans… Continue reading Help a guy out?

An entertaining update to the Cape Wind matter.

The Cape Wind matter is one that I mentioned here – essentially, Ted Kennedy is enthusastic about wind farms, except when they’re within view of his luxurious Nantucket estate – and, via RedState diarist Vladimir (be sure to check out his Louisiana coverage) we get the report that one of President Bush’s last acts was to green-light said project… thus giving the new President a subtle, nasty, and frankly quite deserved headache.  More on it here: it should be quite amusing to see the fallout on this one.