The Rock is back and he is now the Gov. of Virginia!

Let’s identify why Mick Staton, a good man with solid principles, lost today’s election in Virginia’s 33rd Senate District.

The conventional wisdom in Virginia is that low turnout favors Republicans, because they can do a better job turning out the base. That was true in the 1990s, but the GOP got lazy towards the end of that decade and has since failed to do effective or coordinated voter identification. At the same time, two factors came into play that would benefit the Democrats.

In the first case, Virginia’s population took off and we had a lot of new people move in. This antiquated all the old voter id efforts. (While knocking on doors and making phone calls for Staton you wouldn’t believe the number of people who moved… sometimes two or three owners again.) While I am not yet sold that a majority of the new people are left of center, the GOP is clearly not identifying those who are right of center.

In the second case, Mark Warner and the Democrats learned to do effective voter identification and GOTV. In 2001, he spent $1,460,000 on “GOTV/Election Day Activities.” His opponent, Mark Earley, spent $36,140. So the Democrats whipped the GOP in voter id, the basis for effective GOTV efforts. This doesn’t explain the entire Staton-Herring debacle, however.

IMHO, I’d also hazard a guess that money and party unity played a significant role. In plain speak, Mark Herring raised $156,280 and Mick Staton raised $36,500. Yet where the money comes from is telling.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) Democrat Mark Herring received $96,750 from his party’s state, local, leadership, and campaign committees. If you include individuals listed as Democrats, that jumps to $100,200.

In contrast, Mick Staton received only $10,000 from the GOP. The GOP party establishment provided less than one-tenth the support to their candidate that the Democrats did to theirs.

This funding disparity has larger implications. As party moderates frequently speak about the need to run moderates to win, they set up those conditions by failing to support conservatives. This is particularly true in the Virginia State Senate.

Two questions now arise: how should conservatives punish the establishment for failing to support their candidates, if they should at all, and how do we go about repairing the rifts in the party’s wings.

It’s something I’ll have some thoughts on later. For the time being, I simply want to assert that Staton lost not because of his ideology, but because the party is both dysfunctional and failed to support the candidate.

I thought it would be cool if we had an open thread of the State of the Union so those of us who are watching can live blog it in the comments section.

Though the story is old news, here’s something from the Washington Times:

Legislators in at least five states are proposing bold anti-abortion measures as the Bush administration reshapes the U.S. Supreme Court, a report said.

With the goal of challenging the Roe vs. Wade ruling that ensured a woman’s right to an abortion, lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee propose banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is in danger, Stateline.org reported.

It’s as predictable as the sun rising that lower courts would strike down such state bans, said Americans United for Life Director Clarke Forsythe.

It would be better to pass legislation “that can be enforced,” such as parental notification requirements and fetal pain warnings, the constitutional lawyer told the state issues organization.

Now people, I’m as pro-life as the day is long, but Forsythe is 100% correct. Without a reason for believing that SCOTUS will uphold sweeping bans like these, all we are doing is setting ourselves up for failure. Worse yet, it could greatly deflate our efforts to reach the point where SCOTUS is changed in a meaningful way.

I would offer the following potential consequences:

• Having just fought for two new SCOTUS appointments, pro-lifers are optimistic for the future. Now the court turns around and smacks them down. Deflated, they question why all their efforts mattered.
• Chief Justice John Roberts decides against the sweeping ban. (He was not as clearly originalist as Alito and there’s some legitimate questions on how pro-life he is, though I’m optimistic.) Pro-lifers now question the quality of the nominees.
• Additional precedence is built-up for Roe.
• It provides an opportunity to fundamentally reshape abortion jurisprudence and throw out the “undue burden” criteria. Yet its a gamble: will we be better off, or worse off?

Sorry if I sound pessimistic, I’m just wary of trying to pick this fight when we know the landscape is against us.

Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Allard (R-CO), Yea
Allen (R-VA), Yea
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Nay
Brownback (R-KS), Yea
Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Burns (R-MT), Yea
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Chafee (R-RI), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Nay
Coburn (R-OK), Yea
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Yea
Dayton (D-MN), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Yea
DeWine (R-OH), Yea
Dodd (D-CT), Nay
Dole (R-NC), Yea
Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Nay
Ensign (R-NV), Not Voting
Enzi (R-WY), Yea
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Nay
Frist (R-TN), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Not Voting
Harkin (D-IA), Not Voting
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Jeffords (I-VT), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Yea
Kennedy (D-MA), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Nay
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Yea
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay
Leahy (D-VT), Nay
Levin (D-MI), Nay
Lieberman (D-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lott (R-MS), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Menendez (D-NJ), Nay
Mikulski (D-MD), Nay
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Nay
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Nay
Reid (D-NV), Nay
Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Santorum (R-PA), Yea
Sarbanes (D-MD), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Nay
Sessions (R-AL), Yea
Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Smith (R-OR), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Sununu (R-NH), Yea
Talent (R-MO), Yea
Thomas (R-WY), Yea
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Wyden (D-OR), Nay

So says Barbara Lerner today on National Review Online. I couldn’t agree more with her central thesis that we cannot apply a one-size fits all policy toward the Middle East. Do we honestly think that if Saudi Arabia held national elections tomorrow, we would get anything less than Wahabis sympathetic to al-Qaeda?

Lerner writes:

Bush and Rice are right to champion democracy; they are wrong to insist that support for democracy automatically translates into support for elections. In reality, supporting democracy in the Middle East means supporting democrats there, the way we supported democrats like Walesa, Havel, Sakharov, Bukovsky, and Sharansky during the Cold War. In countries where such men speak for substantial numbers of their fellows as Walesa and Havel did, it makes sense to press for elections. In countries where they are more akin to lone voices, crying in the wilderness, it does not.

Hitler, after all, was elected, and elections — especially free elections — in places like Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories are bound to produce similar monsters. Recent elections in Egypt and among the Palestinans only confirm what the polls predicted: huge gains for the Brotherhood and Hamas. But to decry Hamas victories over Fatah as losses for democracy is to miss the point. The Palestinian parliamentary election of January 25 was a contest between competing Islamofascist terrorist groups. I predicted a Hamas victory, but Hamas is just Fatah without the figleaf.

Lerner seems to hit the Aristotelian mean between a “neocon” excess that borders on democratic utopianism and the “realist” deficiency that supports regimes that are breeding grounds for terrorism and enable terrorist organizations.

Well Senator Lincoln Chafee has decided to be a traitor to his party and vote against confirming Alito to the Supreme Court. I see two things here, one this is just more proof (as if we did have enough) that Chafee is a RINO and second, Chafee has primary challenge and just ensured himself a defeat. So I guess we may come out ahead.

…according to the Corner. I say it’s time we fire up Laffey’s campaign and torch Chafee’s. What sayest the Joeseph McCarthy’s of the world?

The House GOP will meet later this week to vote on a new majority leader. So make a call and let the GOP know you support the only conservative in the race John Sadegg of Arizona.

WASHINGTON - Republicans John McCain and Tom Coburn say they’re putting their colleagues on notice: They will challenge special projects that senators insert into spending bills until the practice stops.

McCain, of Arizona, and Coburn, of Oklahoma, say recent congressional scandals stem from lobbyists’ ability to persuade lawmakers to designate favored projects in big spending bills, sometimes in secret.

In a letter to fellow senators, McCain and Coburn said the practice — known as earmarking — gives lobbyists too much influence and is growing worse.

“The unsavory practice of inserting such provisions at the last minute stifles debate and empowers well-heeled lobbyists at the expense of those who cannot afford access to power,” they wrote.

They said they plan to challenge “future violations of Senate rules” and offer proposals that would make it harder to bury projects without vetting them in public first.

Coburn will offer one amendment for every earmark in an appropriations bill, meaning every earmark would have to be voted on, said Coburn spokesman John Hart. Coburn has also notified Senate leaders that he will try to hold up any spending bill that comes to the floor before members have had 72 hours to read it.

Associated Press

I know McCain is in partner with this, but it makes you wonder if this would even be happening if it weren’t for Tom Coburn. How imperative it is that we get more senators like him.

Check out this amazing piece of literature from our friends at Daily Kos concerning the Alito confirmation. In it, “Armando” claims that the media are the Democrats’ enemy (!) and that the Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee didn’t realize this while questioning Alito. The most astonishing part of this scholarly post is here:

To me the ugliest moment of the entire process happened yesterday:

Mr. Byrd said his constituents had told him they were “appalled” by the harsh questioning Judge Alito received from the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearings, calling them “an outrage and a disgrace.”

Outrageous statement from Byrd. Despicable in fact. Byrd is certainly entitled to his view on Alito, and I criticize him for that, but do not condemn him for it. But I do condemn for his lies about the hearings. There was nothing outrageous about the questions put to Alito. The only disgrace here is Byrd’s slander and lie.

Moreover, Byrd’s speech was the epitome of sophistry and delusion. Deluding himself or us, I do not know. [Empasis mine]

Of course Armando would know more than Byrd, an experienced Senator, concerning traditional practices of the Senate. Of course this ultraleft-wing crazy finds Byrd “despicable,” because the Senator has committed the grave crime of sounding logical. But I digress.

As Mike pointed out in the comments section the other day about the gruesome and disturbing Kos post on abortion, one wonders how an illogical person thinks and how they can possibly justify what we all know is insanity. Here is another fine example.

Excellent piece on Ken Blackwell and his gubernatorial bid in Ohio. Can you believe it? He’s running as a true Conservative. GASP!! (And he’s winning)

Right now, Ken Blackwell stands at a pivotal point in American politics. He’s taken an early lead in the race for governor of a state that was key to reelecting George W. Bush and that may well be even more crucial in picking the next American president. Moreover, Blackwell has built his early lead not by tacking toward the center of this swing state but by running on an uncompromisingly conservative platform that’s won him grassroots support from both Christian groups and taxpayer organizations—a novel coalition that makes the old-boy network in his own Ohio GOP as uneasy as it makes the state’s Democrats, who have begun a “stop Blackwell” campaign.

Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus with the power to shake up American politics. For Blackwell is a fiscal and cultural conservative, a true heir of the Reagan revolution, who happens to be black, with the proven power to attract votes from across a startlingly wide spectrum of the electorate.

Ken Blackwell represents the only chance the Republicans have in Ohio,” says Paul Weyrich, who headed the Heritage Foundation, where Blackwell was an analyst in 1990. Weyrich, who calls Blackwell one of the few extraordinary individuals he has met in 50 years of public service, says that, without him on the ticket, Ohio Republicans “are going down the tubes big-time for what they’ve done there.”

What they’ve done since capturing the statehouse more than a decade ago is to engage in a flurry of taxing and spending that has left the state’s budget swollen and its economy deflated. Under GOP rule, state and local government spending from 1995 through 2004 rose nearly 20 percent faster than the personal income of Ohio’s residents—almost three times the national growth rate. To pay for such splurges, current governor Bob Taft, in conjunction with the Republican-dominated state legislature, heaped on some $350 million in tax increases in 2001, then followed with a host of new levies the following year, prompting the Cato Institute’s annual survey of governors to deplore his “disastrous fiscal record” and award Taft a failing grade. “About the only good news to report is that Bob Taft is term limited and cannot run for office again,” the Cato report declared.

Tax and spend Republicans in Ohio? I thought only the Republicans in my state of Pennsylvania were like that. Having previously lived in Ohio, I can attest to the ugly economic climate the RINO party has created there. Clearly, Blackwell must win in order to rescue the Republican Party in Ohio. Ohio is too important and too pivotal for the people there to distrust the GOP in 2008.

–It looks like Sen. Kerry is trying to get the filibuster bandwagon moving on Alito. If not a filibuster, expect shennanigans.

–I was skeptical about Stephen Harper until Al Gore took a swing. I’m loving what I’ve heard about the Alberta firewall plan too.

–Helen Thomas is crabby, apparently Pres. Bush doesn’t treat her as nicely as Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, or Clinton did.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd yesterday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term.

John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise and reduced regulation, among other issues. “What I’m going to run on is a rebirth of capitalism,” he said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee heralded the filing by Mr. Raese, a former state GOP chairman who has sought office before.

Though four other Republicans are running in the party primary, the GOP committee called Mr. Raese “the first financially credible opponent Byrd has faced since 1982.”

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06026/644782.stm

“US congressman takes Google to task on China”
…
“Google will be called to task in Washington next month following a controversial decision by the internet search engine to launch a China-based version of its website that will censor results to avoid angering the country’s Communist government.

The decision by Chris Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey who chairs a House subcommittee on Human Rights, to call for a February 16 hearing to examine the operating procedures of US internet companies in China, represents the first signs of what could become a serious backlash against Google and other internet companies in Washington that are perceived as capitulating to the Chinese government.”

Erstwhile Time columnist Joel Stein has bravely come out swinging against the American soldier. Here is a Yahoo! News story on it, and here is the original column.

Photo is of Prince Harry, who may be deployed to the front in Iraq.

Remember a couple weeks back when Google rejected a Department of Justice request for a random sampling of search queries in a government pornography probe. Well there are obvious free speech issues. Google was right in stating they would vigorously fight the probe.

But when it comes to emerging markets Google is more than willing to filter results as directed by the Chinese government. When money is on the line Google proves it will compromise its posistions.

Today, Reps. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Charles Bass (NH) officially endorsed Rep. John Shadegg for House Majority Leader. CNN has the story. Though Flake was already in the bag, having these two declare endorsement together is significant considering that Flake is conservative while Bass is moderate, and these are the same two legislators who pushed for new leadership elections earlier this month.

Concerning Rep. Blunt’s attempt to claim victory:

“The numbers don’t add up,” Flake said. “This is very much still a contested race. Anybody who goes into a situation with a secret ballot, who claims to have it wrapped up, ought to hear footsteps.”

Seems to me that those footsteps are getting louder. John Boehner, of course, couldn’t help but attempt to direct some of their thunder to his own camp:

Boehner said he agrees with Bass and Flake that the contest should focus on reform.

“As a legislator who has never asked for a single pork-barrel project for his congressional district, I look forward to working with them as majority leader on earmark and budget reforms so we can change the way Congress does business,” Boehner said.

Though Boehner may have more public endorsements than Shadegg, his comments seem more and more desperate as Shadegg bags key legislators’ endorsements. He is tripping over himself trying to constantly be supportive of Shadegg’s entrance into the race, yet at the same time attempts to (nervously) promote himself. Could he drop out and endorse Shadegg? Some of his comments, plus the increasing momentum that Shadegg is gathering that Boehner lacks, seem to indicate that possibility.

Remember to call your representatives.

According to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), his vote against Judge Alito to become Justice Alito is an attempt to prevent Bush from “packing the court.” Spewing out a great deal of doom-and-gloom fire and brimstone, invoking secret NSA wiretaps and even the loss of OBL at Tora Bora, and stating that Bush has a consistent goal to minimize the rights of Americans, Leahy made the astounding remark that Bush is trying to stack the Supreme Court so that it will not hinder his policies.

Quite frankly, Sen. Leahy, right now some Originalist SCOTUS packing is exactly what we need. The SCOTUS recently demonstrated its departure from its duty to protect the Constitution in the horrific Kelo vs. New London ruling. According to the wise old sages on the SC, a local government cannot only declare privately held property to be eminent domain for public use (infrastructure, etc), which is allowed for in the Constitution, but can also deem it condemned over the private owner’s objections simply because another private entity wants to build something that will bring in more tax revenue. I fail to see why that doesn’t outrage you, Sen. Leahy.

In 1973, the Supreme Court trampled the Founding Fathers’ Federalist intentions by overruling all 50 states’ rights and giving women everywhere, despite what their respective states believed, the right to have an abortion - a right that was not derived from the Constitution, but from mere judicial fiat. Read the Constitution - it isn’t in there. Even pro-choice scholars agree that Roe v. Wade was an abysmal ruling by legal standards. I don’t care what you think about abortion, Sen. Leahy; you claim that this court is “mainstream” when it shows disdain for private property and for Constitutional Reserved states’ rights. Some movement to the Right is exactly what this court needs. To claim that it is currently mainstream is a joke.

Read this. Cry. Repeat.