As both parties gear up for the 2012 election cycle, the 26th District of New York could become a preliminary battleground, as the parties vie to replace former Rep. Chris Lee, who resigned last week after an extramarital online flirtation was exposed. (more)
The California Democratic Party is behaving as though controversial Proposition 19, the California ballot initiative to legalize marijuana, does not exist. (more)
The National Republican Senatorial Committee rushed to the aid of Kentucky’s Tea Party favorite Senate candidate Rand Paul with a new ad Monday railing against Democratic candidate Jack Conway. (more)
Sarah Palin has endorsed 56 candidates this election season and had an impact on GOP primaries, but a new poll suggests that campaign visits from the former Alaska governor ahead of the general election could hurt Republicans. (more)
“Tired of being cooped up in the legislative sausage-making factory?” asks “West Wing” actor Bradley Whitford, now sporting a mustache, in a new ad targeting Hill staffers. (more)
In an effort to drive up turnout for the midterm elections in Chicago and other cities, Democrats are aiming a less-than-subtle message at African-American voters: “Our President Needs You.” (more)
Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek on Monday suggested that, if anybody should drop out of the Florida Senate race, it should be Independent Charlie Crist. (more)
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today endorsed West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin’s bid for the U.S. Senate — the first Democratic candidate for the Senate to receive the business group’s support in this election. (more)
It is not exactly the year of the angry man, but it may be something close to that. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found a striking difference in the way men and women say they are going to vote come November. (more)
The man who shocked the political world by becoming a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate has been accused of using anti-gay and racial slurs. (more)
WEST MIAMI, Fla. — First, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was supposed to be the Republican nominee for Senate. Then he seemed on track to be the de facto Democratic candidate. Now, following Rep. Kendrick Meek’s victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, the Republican-turned-independent governor is finally and unmistakably a man without a party. (more)
The race for the U.S. Senate in Florida continues to be all about Governor Charlie Crist and former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, regardless of which Democrat they face. (more)
While a student at Harvard during the sixties, Richard Blumenthal, now the Democratic candidate for Senate in Connecticut, penned a magazine article about a well-known student Vietnam-era protest group, writing that “communism is no longer radical.” (more)
In an affront to the Obama administration, former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday came out in support of Andrew Romanoff, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Colorado who is challenging a White House-backed incumbent, Sen. Michael Bennet. (more)
The South Carolina Democratic Party may have decided to keep Senate candidate Alvin Greene on the ballot for the November election, but that doesn’t mean they plan to support him. An effort is underway to get an Independent Party candidate on the ballot to challenge Greene and the incumbent, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint. (more)
While rumors persist that Washington Republicans are pushing for Rep. Gresham Barrett — the runner-up in Tuesday night’s South Carolina gubernatorial Republican primary — to drop out the race against candidate Nikki Haley, his campaign says he’s “100 percent” in the runoff. (more)
The phrase “angry voters” is redundant in 2010, and we will likely see this on display today in three states. Our sense is that after today there will be a large number of congressional incumbents who will be wishing that they had chosen to retire in 2010. (more)
| —Dairy Queen will hand out free ice cream today in front of the IRS building in Washington, D.C., from noon-1 p.m. The menu probably won’t have Berry Cherry Smoothies, a dish DQ retired some time around 2003 despite evidence that the smoothie craze was just getting started. Chinese glam food chain P.F. Chang’s will cut 15% from your bill today, Dunkin Donuts will give you a free donut, and Starbucks will have free refills. All of these things, if consumed one after the other, supposedly will make you feel better about the interest-free loan you made to Uncle Sam, the poor odds for passage of a smart, job-creating tax reform bill, and the increasing likelihood that your chronic sloppiness led you to make the kind of filing mistake that will result in you being audited for omitting an IKEA receipt. Also, you forgot to turn on the crockpot before you left for work and that chicken is probably going to spoil in this heat. |
| —”More than 85 percent of the construction industry is not unionized,” writes The Daily Caller’s Aleksandra Kulczuga, and the industry as a whole suffers from 25 percent unemployment. Now, thanks to a new White House contracting policy, that second number may get bigger, as non-union construction workers are considered by Pres. Obama to be unfit to work on large government contracts. This is not because non-union workers get less competent as the numbers get bigger–though wouldn’t that be something!–but because a new White House policy “encourages” agencies “to require union labor” on any government contract valued at more than $25 million. This despite the aforementioned unemployment, hard times for everyone but unions, and the fact that the move signals an end to competitive bidding for government contracts. |
| —”If Crist were to file as an independent for the general election, he would get 32 percent of the vote, compared to [Republican candidate Marco] Rubio’s 30 percent and [Democratic candidate Kendrik] Meek’s 24 percent,” report the polling gurus at Quinnipiac. Running as an independent would require Crist to file as one by the end of the month, wear a flak jacket to work for the rest of his term as governor, and find a way to win back the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, because it’s likely that splitting Rubio’s vote would get Crist kicked out of the Tallahassee old boy’s club. |
| —”Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class,” reports the New York Times. While that fact doesn’t seem to distinguish the movement all that much from the GOP, this nugget certainly does: “While most Republicans say they are ‘dissatisfied’ with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as ‘angry.’” It’s like, “Oh, I am very unhappy because now that Democrats are in control I can find no one to hand-feed me peeled grapes,” versus “I am gonna choke you if you don’t stop screwing things up.” How serious are Tea Partiers about bucking the establishment? According to The Hill, “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) were not asked to speak at the April 15 rally in front of the Washington Monument.” SPEAKING OF! If you’re heading to today’s rallies, |
| “—Ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) spent more money to de-ice her private jets than she did donating money to candidates during the first 3 months of the year, according to new filings made with the FEC,” reports Hot Line On Call. “The filings show Palin’s political wing, Sarah PAC, paid a FL-based airplane service company $14K to de-ice a private jet. The PAC spent more than $16K — twice as much as it donated to individual candidates — on hotels from New Orleans to New York City to Richland, WA.” The filings show lots of other things, all of which suggest that the answer to, “Who will give the GOP that little push over the wall in 2010?” is not “Sarah.” |
| —Earlier this week UK clothing store Primark removed padded children’s bikinis from its shelves in response to pressure from parents and other Concerned Citizens. While most reasonable people seem to agree that dressing up an 7-year-old look like a consenting adult could have serious psychological repercussions, the Guardian’s Laurie Penny says otherwise. “In countries where children are routinely well fed, a significant minority of seven-year-old girls have already started puberty, and most foster a natural curiosity about bodies and intimacy. Rather than encouraging healthy sexual exploration or promoting education, campaigns to protect girls from ‘sexualisation’ assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women.” in other news, scientists believe they have discovered why normal people hate journalists. |
Scott Brown’s win is obviously great news that is worthy of celebration. For conservatives, especially after watching the nation embrace a media-created fraud like Barack Obama and make him president with 60 votes in the Senate, seeing Brown win was like suddenly finding an oasis in the desert that has been the political landscape for most of the past three years. Discovering this spring of hope, in of all places, Massachusetts and in the vaunted “Kennedy” seat certainly makes the thirst quenching aspect of this event all that much more satisfying. (more)
