Sarah at the Tea Party

This is 40 minutes long, but worth the time.

B. Hussein Obama has awakened a sleeping giant

And filled him with a terrible resolve.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Former Florida legislator Marco Rubio has closed the gap in the race for the state's Republican U.S. Senate nomination and is in a virtual dead heat with Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Rubio, a lawyer who served as Speaker of the House, was once considered a long shot against Crist, who has widespread name recognition and a significant fundraising lead. But with Florida's primary seven months away, Rubio was favored by 47 percent compared with 44 percent who preferred Crist — statistically a tie in the Quinnipiac University poll that has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

The random telephone survey, which included 673 GOP voters, was conducted Jan. 20-24.

"The horse race numbers are not a fluke," said Peter Brown, assistant polling director for Quinnipiac in Connecticut. "Rubio's grassroots campaigning among Republican activists around the state clearly has paid off."

The latest survey marks a stunning turnaround for the 38-year-old Rubio, a conservative who trailed Crist by 31 points in a Quinnipiac survey taken in June.

Yet more evidence that the era when the establishment RINO would automatically be nominated is over.

Conservatives have awakened and are taking control of the GOP once again.

Very soon the Boston to DC corridor Republican establishment is going to have to make a hard choice. Either go ahead and admit that they are really Democrats, like Arlen Specter, or reinvent themselves as genuine conservative Republicans.

What the GOP needs to do

Steve McCann offers some good advice to conservatives going forward to November and then 2012:

The only way to defeat the Left is to stop playing by their rules.

First, it must be understood that the enemy we are fighting, the Liberals or the Left, makes up 20% of the country's population. Moderates are 36%, and conservatives are more than 40%. Based on that breakdown, one might assume that something like 67% of moderates lean to the conservative view. Thus, 64% of the citizenry are potential voters against what is happening in Congress and the White House.

Why does the conservative coalition allow 20% of the people to dictate how or why campaigns are conducted? Why do conservatives still curry favor from the once-mainstream media, who in a marketing death wish choose to appeal to this same 20%? Why, within this alliance, is there so much suspicion among each faction? And lastly, why is it not understood that only by the in-place organization of the Republican Party, under conservative control, can the current tide in Washington be reversed?

Conservatives must discipline themselves to stop being so thin-skinned about what the media, bloggers, and pundits on the Left say about them. These immature and self-righteous blowhards must be ignored and allowed to talk among themselves without any response from anyone on the right. The only response necessary is to correct or rebut immediately and firmly the mistakes and misrepresentations of the once-mainstream media.

The Tea Party Movement, instead of reveling in its declared independence, should immediately either join forces with or take over the local Republican Party establishment in its respective county or state.

Each person has one political or social issue that is of the highest importance to him. Regardless of what it is, everyone must now realize that without individual freedom and liberty, plus a limited government -- all of which are now under massive assault by the Obama administration -- it matters little what that issue is.

In order to overcome the Democrats' misuse of "community organizations" and biased election laws and officials to skew close elections, the members of the conservative coalition must turn out in massive numbers to vote and support one political party.

Everyone must stop the absurd belief that one should vote for the person and not the party. The lesson of the passage of the Health Care Reform Act in Congress should never be forgotten: There is no such thing as a "conservative Democrat" once installed in Congress. There is a major difference between the parties. Conservatives can influence what happens in the Republican Party; they cannot do so in the Democratic Party.

Above all, everyone in the current coalition opposing what is happening in Washington, D.C. must unite behind one theme and put all differences aside. That cause should be this: For future generations, the United States must remain the dominant global economic force able to underwrite being the unrivaled military power in the world. The destructive path the current government in Washington has chosen will relegate our country to long-term economic stagnation and secondary world status.

The upcoming midterm election is one of the most pivotal in history. Despite the current optimism surrounding the outcome of the November 2010 election, the conservative movement will not triumph unless it unites, remains disciplined, and above all, understands and learns from its adversaries.

The overwhelming and unexpected victory in Massachusetts should not be allowed to lead to complacency or overconfidence. The Democrats and the Obama administration will be more determined than ever to hold on to the power necessary to transform the United States into their image.

I have added emphasis to what I consider to be the key elements of Mr. McCann's argument.

First we must stop playing by the left's rules. Conservatives are the majority and should begin acting like it.

Consider this. Rush Limbaugh has more listeners on Manhattan island than MSNBS has viewers in the entire nation. Look at the ratings for the nightly network news broadcasts and look at sales figures for your average daily broadsheet newspaper.

Then look at the ratings of Fox News and conservative talk radio.

What we have been calling the "Mainstream Media" is not, not any longer. What was once the mainstream media has become a niche product serving the left-wing 20% of the population and using its rapidly dwindling reservoir of credibility to make that small minority look far larger than it is and giving them a vastly exaggerated influence on the nation's politics.

The media which is truly "mainstream", that is reflecting the beliefs and values of the majority of the people is now the "alternative media" of talk radio the internet and Fox News.

Conservatives need to internalize this truth and begin to live by it. This doesn't mean shutting out the Old Media the way Obama tried to freeze out Fox. What it means is that when being interviewed by someone from network news or the New York Times you are for all intents and purposes talking to someone from your opponent's campaign and act accordingly.

Then to get your message out you rely on Sean Hannity or Chris Wallace to interview you fairly.

The Tea Party movement does need to explicitly join with the Republican party however that cuts both ways. If the polls in a state or district show that in a three way race the Republican candidate would both get fewer votes than a hypothetical Tea Party candidate then the Republicans need to understand that when the Tea Party folks have been fully brought on board then it is them who will be in charge.

This is so important that I'm going to say it again. In those places (and they are many) where the Tea Party had more credibility than the GOP it needs to be understood by everyone that when the Tea Party has been brought under the GOP umbrella it is for the explicit purpose of putting the Tea Party people in the driver's seat - not to bring the Tea Party under the control of the GOP establishment!

The statement about voting for the party not the man may seem controversial. It goes against what many have always believed was the height of political wisdom. However it is the absolute truth. The parties are so different that the worst Republican will almost always be better than the best Democrat. The only exception to this would be getting rid of a Republican whose voting record makes them hard to tell apart from a Democrat.

Consider this. If the two parties really were the same then Obama's socialized medicine plan would have already sailed through both houses with broad bipartisan support and have already been signed into law. The same would be true of Cap and Trade. And amnesty for illegal aliens. And a great many other things which have not happened because of united opposition from the GOP.

I would also add this point that Mr. McCann did not cover. The GOP needs new leadership. While I am proud of the way Republicans in the House and Senate have held the line against Obama's radical agenda it is not enough to be the party of opposition. We must also present a program for people to vote for in the affirmative sense and the GOP is not doing that in any coherent way.

Right now he leadership of the party seems to be thinking that all they need to do to win in November is sit back and let the Democrats continue to destroy themselves. This may work in the short term to regain the House in 2010 and even the Senate and White House in 2012 but it will not serve to form the foundation of a long term Republican dominance.

When you get right down to it the central theme of Barack Obama's campaign was that he was not George W Bush. Since taking office Obama has governed in a way which is inexplicable unless you understand that the central theme of his government also is that he is not George W Bush.

We see how well that is working out for him.

The GOP must avoid the situation of being elected but without a clear mandate by developing a clear set of goals, publicizing those goals and then running our House, Senate and presidential races on the promise to fulfill those goals.

My advice on exactly what goals we should set would be to concentrate on restoring economic prosperity, securing America's energy independence and defeating the Islamofascist enemy.

We have until November to make the case for a return to Republican dominance in Washington. Please let us not screw it up.

The Great RINO Hunt of 2010

MIAMI(CBS4) -- A new poll has found that Florida Governor Charlie Crist's campaign for the U.S. Senate is currently in deep trouble. The new Rasmussen poll of likely GOP voters found Crist and his Republican opponent, Marco Rubio, are tied with 43 percent of the vote. This is a huge swing from just a few months ago when most experts believed Crist would win in a landslide.

While Crist's numbers have been in an almost free fall, Rubio's name recognition amongst Republicans has rapidly grown. The new poll found 34 percent of GOP voters now view Rubio "very favorably." In the same poll in August, Rubio's "very favorable" ratings were at 18 percent.

On the flip side, Crist's numbers have fallen off a cliff. Only 19 percent of likely GOP voters have a "very favorable" opinion of the governor. According to Rasmussen, that's a double-digit decline since August.

The big story in next years elections will be less about how many seats Republicans win than about what kind of Republicans win them.

The rank and file of the Republican party has had it up to here with RINOs and isn't going to take it any more.

Look for next year to be a blood purge of Republicans in name only as the conservative base of the party rises up and retakes control of the GOP.

National Socialist Health Care passes the House

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democratic-controlled House has narrowly passed landmark health care reform legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard won victory on his signature domestic priority.

Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposing the plan that would expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.

When I heard this morning that the House had passed this with a narrow margin under the cover of darkness I had the strong impression that it was nothing more than a bit of political theater. The impression was strongly reinforced by this article on the Financial Times website.

Many Senate watchers are predicting that the measure will die a quiet death in the upper chamber.

When I heard that the House approved the bill I figured that a deal had been cut with enough of the 80+ Democrats who were planning to vote no on the bill to let it pass. They change their vote to yea and and give the little tin messiah and San Fran Nan their little cockadoodle of victory and in exchange it goes nowhere in the Senate.

The thinking is that by next November the voters will have forgotten who voted for a socialized medicine bill that never became law.

I doubt that it will work. The electorate has been too angered by this latest attempt to deprive them of their liberty and their wealth. Add the shear arrogance of the legislators defying such clearly expressed disapproval from the voters and you have a recipe for another 1994 style bloodletting in 2010.

But there will be one important difference. While Bill Clinton had as his number one priority being reelected so that he could continue to enjoy the perks of the office Obama actually believes his own propaganda about being a messianic figure and will redouble his efforts to transform the nation if he senses that he is losing the public.

How this will play out against a Republican dominated congress (or at least a GOP dominated House) will be interesting to see.

Given that Obama is a Marxist whose heroes are people like Arafat, Castro, Che and Chavez it is not impossible that he could attempt some kind of end run around congress by some kind of declaration of martial law. This could set the United States up for the kind of constitutional crisis that Honduras is currently weathering.

Would it not be amusing to see Obama hold up in the Venezuelan embassy issuing manifestos and calls for his supporters to arm themselves and descend on Washington to return him to power.

You know, the more I think about this the more possible it seems. . .

Can you imagine what a lunatic asylum it would be sealed in with Obama and his loyalists, sort of like the fuhrer bunker under Berlin, but less mature and more delusional.

If you can possibly get to DC tomorrow

Thomas Lifson writes:

Rep. Michele Bachman is leading an effort to bring citizen-lobbyists to Capitol Hill, starting noon Thursday, in anticipation of a possible vote Friday on ObamaCare, Judi McLeod of Canada Free Press reports. Within hours of Rep. Bachman's call for citizens to travel to DC to lobby against ObamaCare, which could come to a vote Friday, The Tea Party Express, the doctors of Take Back America and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the patriots of Tea Party Patriots Live and Resistnet all stepped up.

Mark Levin, author of the important book Liberty & Tyranny (and major talk show host) will there. Readers who able to get to DC Thursday should be there too.

An aroused citizenry is much harder for legislators to ignore when the citizens turn out for face-to-face interaction. This was the great lesson of Town Hall August. Having citizens come to DC for lobbying was a brilliant move on Bachman’s part, and demonstrates the difference between old-line pols, and the new breed of conservative that the era demands.

This is an excellent idea. But it is unfortunate that our elected representatives are incapable of working without close supervision.

How long do you think it will take some Democrat politician to run to a micorphone and start squeaking about how he fees "threatened" by all the common rabble invading the Capitol building?

Consequences!

Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was "absolutely confident" he'll be able to sign one by then.

"Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go," a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.

This may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where officials from the president on down have repeatedly said the health care bill would be signed into law by the end of the year.

"I am absolutely confident that we are going to get health care done by the end of this year, and Nancy Pelosi is just as confident," Obama said Oct. 27 at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi may still be confident -- and her spokesman Brendan Daly said today, "We are going to get our part done" -- but the reason for the delay can be found in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to release the bill he eventually plans to bring to the Senate floor. Reid is still waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to come up with an estimated cost of several possible variations of his bill before deciding which one to introduce in the Senate.

That cost estimate, Democrats tell ABC News, is not expected until next week.

Asked directly by ABC News, "Will you pass health care reform this year?" Reid pointedly did not answer "yes."

Elections have consequences and Washington was watching yesterday's elections closely. They were especially watching Virginia where the race was a straight-up head to head contest between a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat in a state which swung for Obama just last year.

The handwriting is on the wall and Harry Reid, who is currently favored to lose his bid for reelection in Nevada next year, is not going to fall on his sword for B. Hussein Obama - not when Obama's job approval numbers have fallen below 50% among likely voters and his endorsement of Jon Corzine in New Jersey and Creigh Deeds in Virginia were clearly harmful to those candidates.

Also reading the handwriting will be the House's "Blue-Dog" Democrats, who were elected in 2006 from conservative districts, and who now have to choose between ending their careers by supporting the extreme left-wing agenda of Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team or giving themselves a fighting chance of reelection by distancing themselves from the White House and their own leadership.

This is a difficult problem for these Democrats since their party does not tolerate "mavericks" (compare the fates of John McCain and Joe Lieberman) but it is a problem they are all going to have to grapple with in the days ahead.

Victory!

Yesterday voters in Virginia and New Jersey elected Republican governors. The margin of victory in New Jersey where the Democrat, Jon Corzine, was the incumbent - and spent around 40 million dollars of his own money and had Barack Obama visiting the state several times to campaign for him - was 5%. The New Jersey race also saw the participation of an independent candidate, Chris Daggett, who pretended to be a conservative but was actually running with the financial backing of the state's Democrat party in an attempt to siphon off votes from the Republican Chris Christy.

The margin of victory in Virginia where the seat was open was 18%. The Virginia race was also marked by repeated appearances by Barack Obama campaigning for the Democrat candidate, Creigh Deeds, and by the Washington Post's endorsement of the Democrat candidate. This race meant so much to president Obama, who wanted to hold onto Virginia for his party after it went for him in last year's presidential election - voting Democrat in a national election for the first time since the early 1960's - that he even sent his own political operatives to manage the Deeds campaign.

The Virginia race is extremely important because it cast a genuinely conservative Republican, Bob McDonnell, against a liberal Democrat in a one-to-one matchup with no independent or third party candidate acting as a stalking horse for the Democrat.

In the House race in New York's 23 congressional district Democrat Bill Owens was able to defeat Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman with a plurality of the vote of 49% against Mr. Hoffman's 46% and nominal Republican Dede Scozzafava, who had endorsed the Democrat and remained in the race to act as a spoiler sabotaging the Hoffman bid, netting 6% of the vote.

It is unfortunate that there were enough blind party-loyalists in NY23 who were unable to see that their district and party and nation would be better served by not voting for the Republican candidate in this race. However this was only a special election to fill the seat until next year's midterm elections and Mr. Owens is going to join a Democrat majority which is deeply unpopular and under the leadership of Nancy Pelosi has little prospect of improving its standing with the American people.

All in all it was a good night for the nation.

Now on to 2010!

VOTE!

If you live in New York's 23rd district, New Jersey or Virginia it is critically important that you vote today.

These elections will be seen (and, in fact are) a referendum on the Obama presidency. They are being closely watched by all elected officials, especially by members of the House or Representatives, who all must stand for election next November.

Republican victories in these three races will send a loud message to House Democrats that their political futures are in danger if they continue to carry this administration's water on issues like socialized medicine.

GOP victories in these races could literally spell the defeat of the current socialist health care takeover and if it dies this time it will probably be at least ten years before any serious attempt is made to resurrect it.

This will buy Republicans a decade in which to bring about market based reforms like health savings accounts, tort reform and insurance deregulation which will begin to reduce health care costs and greatly lessen the pressure for any renewed attempt at a government takeover.

Another positive effect of Republican victories today will be the way in which Obama will react to them.

Obama is a narcissist who has never been forced to cope with defeat and failure. His response to what he cannot fail to see as a personal rejection will be to fly into a rage and start seeking scapegoats. This will further diminish him in the public's eyes as they see him acting like a punk rather than a president and it will further divide and destabilize the Democrat party.

As Democrats wishing to win reelection come to the full realization that Obama is a liability rather than an asset they will seek to distance themselves from him and his policies.

This will further enrage him and as we have seen in his foolish vendettas against Fox News and Rush Limbaugh he will strike out at what he sees as his new enemies, within his own party.

This will further divide and destabilize the Democrats, setting them up for a historic defeat in 2010.

So even if you looked at the polls and figures that our guys were ahead so you didn't need to make the effort to go to the voting place and stand in line. Even if you are in New Jersey and think that the Republican is too liberal suck it up and go vote.

Because a vote in any of these races is a vote against Obama.

It was worse than I thought

From the Washington Post:

State Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R), who dropped from the special election in Upstate New York yesterday, has now thrown her support to Democrat Bill Owens.

"It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress," said Scozzafava in a statement released moments ago.

Owens said he was "honored" to have won Scozzafava's endorsement, noting: "Now more than ever we need bipartisan solutions to help bring jobs to Upstate New York to get our economy back on track and move our country forward."

It's not clear how much Scozzafava's backing of Owens will change the race. Democratic strategists, who just 48 hours ago saw the race moving back in their direction, have grown pessimistic about their chances in the aftermath of the Scozzafava decision.

Polling conducted by the Siena Research Institute -- and released on Saturday -- showed that more than 60 percent of Scozzafava backers were self-identified Republicans, meaning that the majority of them are likely to back Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

I now withdraw my partial apology to Ms. Scozzafava.

As I've said before when these "moderate" RINO's are forced to choose between left and right they will almost always reflexively turn left.

I wonder if political hack Newt Gingrich will join his chosen candidate and also endorse Owens.

Aaron Gee posted this on the American Thinker Blog:

It is being reported today that Dede Scozzafava is endorsing Democrat Bill Owens. In one fell swoop she proved her detractors right. Her actions also speak to the Republicans that made excuses for her such as Newt Gingrich; they were dead wrong. When Dede withdrew from the race on Saturday, many (including me) thought she was doing the right thing for Northern New York, and the Republican Party. Instead we have been presented with the quintessential example of what the label RINO means.

"Scozzafava dropped out after Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman experienced a late-in-the-game surge. The move was expected to consolidate GOP voters behind Hoffman on Tuesday.

But on Sunday, Scozzafava backed Democrat Bill Owens -- the announcement was made in a statement sent out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."

When the DNC is releasing statements for the former GOP candidate you know something is very wrong. This is a wake up call for the leaders of the Grand Old Party. The party got its hat handed to it in the last election by running the most "moderate" candidate in decades why do they continue in the same vein that didn't work last time?

Listening to voters helped create the contract with America which propelled the GOP into the House and Senate in 1994. It was ignoring those principals that led to the GOP's decline. Instead of listening to Washington insiders the GOP would do better if it listened to the people.

I d0 have one quibble with Mr. Gee. Newt's "Contract with America" did not "propel the GOP into the House and Senate in 1994".

Newt Gingrich's real achievement in that affair was to be the first to get a real sense of how the electorate was going to vote in 1994 and run very fast in that direction yelling "follow me!" at the top of his lungs.

The Contract with America helped crystallize public sentement and it probably was responsible for the GOP winning 2 or 3 seats that it might not have won otherwise, but the House bank and Post Office scandals coupled with the gigantic mess that Hillary Clinton made out of her Stalinist "health care reform" guaranteed a bloodbath for Democrats no matter what Republicans did.

Subsequent events have proven that Newt was more lucky than smart. The Democrat takeover of the legislature in 2006 and the election of Barack Obama seems to have convinced him that the public was taking a sharp turn to the left and he has once again tried to run out in front yelling "follow me!" at the top of his lungs.

This explains his teaming up with Nancy Pelosi to promote global warming hysteria, his attacks on Rush Limbaugh and his endorsment of the left-wing Scozzafava.

However this time Mr. Gingrich has miscalculated. The facts on the ground are all pointing to 2010 being a big Republican year.

This is likely to leave Newt standing all alone out in left field.

Scozzafava steps aside - sort of

ALBANY, N.Y. — Fighting plunging support, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava abruptly suspended her campaign Saturday in the 23rd Congressional District special election that has exposed a rift among national factions of the party.

Campaign spokesman Matt Burns said Scozzafava thinks stepping aside is for the best of the party. He said Scozzafava is essentially withdrawing from the race, although her name will remain on Tuesday's ballot.

"It is increasingly clear that pressure is mounting on many of my supporters to shift their support," Scozzafava said in a written statement. "Consequently, I hereby release those individuals who have endorsed and supported my campaign to transfer their support as they see fit."

The announcement comes after a Siena College poll found she was in third place with 20 percent of the vote in the heavily Republican district that has been safe ground for the party for more than 100 years. Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman and Democratic nominee Bill Owens were too close to call with 35 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

The race has pitted conservative and moderate wings of the Republican Party against each other in a battle of ideology. The special election in New York's rural north has received national attention as big-name Republicans including Sarah Palin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson have thrown their support behind Hoffman. Money poured into Hoffman's campaign from all over the country.

I said on this blog that I didn't think that Ms. Scozzafava would do the right thing and withdraw from the race.

I was partially wrong so I partially apologize.

But I was also partially right. Scozzafava is not officially out of the race she has only "suspended" her campaign. And she is not admitting that the people of her district have rejected her left-wing RINO Republicanism. Instead she is blaming the fact that she doesn't have enough money to "counter what has been said" about her.

Also she has not endorsed her conservative fellow Republican, Doug Hoffman. Instead she has "released" her supporters to do what they see fit.

What we have is a woman who realizes that she cannot possibly win and who doesn't want to waste any more money trying to keep a sinking ship afloat and who doesn't want to harm her political future by being seen as the spoiler who lost NY23 for the GOP.

But she also can't bring herself to do the truly right thing and totally withdraw from the race then do everything in her power to get her supporters to vote for Doug Hoffman. So we have this passive-aggressive "I'm out, but not completely out, because I have been treated so unfairly by the conservatives so I'm not going to tell my supporters what to do about their votes so I'm just washing my hands of the whole thing and going home".

If you happen to live in NY23 get out to a polling place and vote for Doug Hoffman this Tuesday.

The sleeping giant awakens

And is filled with a terrible resolve.

From The Washington Times:

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn't going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes - chapters, anyway - about what the body politic is trying to tell Barack Obama's Democrats.

They're learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can't lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

For weeks, The Washington Post, the house organ of the national Democratic Party, pounded away at Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for having written politically incorrect term papers in graduate school, citing his master's thesis, which decried abortion, gender-bending and radical feminism, as proof that he doesn't like women very much.

Only a month ago, Mr. Deeds, the Post's horse in the race, wouldn't talk about anything but the McDonnell graduate-school thesis - maybe a boon to master's and doctoral candidates who can't get anybody but a professor to read their wit and wisdom, but, as it turns out, a bore to voters in Virginia. The public-opinion polls continue to show Mr. McDonnell ahead, despite all the Post's ineffective deeds, and with a lengthening lead.

Now Mr. Deeds doesn't want to talk about graduate-school scribbling at all, just as leaks from the Post newsroom reveal that the newspaper has a seven-part series ready for publication to prove that Bob McDonnell has had a lifelong hostility to those of the pink persuasion. He once pulled the pigtails of a little girl in the second grade, and as a third-grader he bounced a spitball, aimed at a male pal, off the shoulder of a girl two rows over. These are no doubt serious charges, violence against (tiny) women, sexual harassment and all that, but not likely to turn the tide of a runaway that is building in Virginia.

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he's on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel - not even a Motel 6 - but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The "throng" was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

Didn't they learn anything when Clinton was president? Don't they remember how no one that Bill Clinton campaigned for actually won? Perhaps this was Obama's way of providing a scapegoat for Deeds' inevitable loss. After all the little tin messiah and Deeds were joined at the hip earlier in the campaign when everyone thought that Obama's anointment of a candidate would guarantee victory, but now that Deeds is sure to lose we can't have anything splash back and cast doubts on the deity of The One.

"These polls are either accurate, or they're not," he said, delivering an insight worthy of a Harvard political science professor. "So are the polls right? The answer is yes, no, and maybe." But what else could he say? Dispatched for mortuary duty, Bubba could only sympathize with the preacher called on to say something nice over the grave of the town bootlegger.

Barack Obama himself is offering the mere minimum of presidential support over the past seven days of the campaign, just mailing it in (even if delivering the mail in person). He'll make one last appearance with Mr. Deeds this week in Tidewater. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the president's political aides continue to dish the obsequies over a doomed candidate while pretending to pray for a miracle. So far no one has invoked Harry Truman, patron saint of doomed candidates, but there's still a week to go.

Mr. Deeds' friends are bitter about the anonymous voices peddling the discouraging word from the White House. "These 'anonymous voices' have decided those hard-working [down-ballot candidates] are just collateral damage in their effort to tell the world that if [Mr.] Deeds doesn't win, it is because he ignored advice," Paul Goldman, a former chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, tells Politico, the Washington politics daily. "This isn't change we can believe in, but the same old, same old we voted out of office. Do they really believe their attempts to shield the president from blame is going to distract [Mr.] Obama's critics, much less change the arc of today's politics?"

Of course it won't, and that's what makes the Virginia race so scary for the president's men. Voters will use whatever club is available to "send a message," and sometimes, as any number of pols could tell you, the club is big, rough and means business.

Yes, a message is being sent. Here is another component of that message, from the Club for Growth:

Hoffman Surges Into Lead in NY-23
New CFG Poll shows Hoffman 31.3%, Owens 27.0%, Scozzafava 19.7%

Washington - A poll released today by the Club for Growth shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman surging into the lead in the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district to replace John McHugh, the former congressman who recently became Secretary of the Army.

The poll of 300 likely voters, conducted October 24-25, 2009, shows Conservative Doug Hoffman at 31.3%, Democrat Bill Owens at 27.0%, Republican Dede Scozzafava at 19.7%, and 22% undecided. The poll's margin of error is +/- 5.66%. No information was provided about any of the candidates prior to the ballot question.

This is the third poll done for the Club for Growth in the NY-23 special election, and Doug Hoffman is the only candidate to show an increase in his support levels in each successive poll. The momentum in the race is clearly with Hoffman.

"Hoffman now has a wide lead among both Republicans and Independents, while Owens has a wide lead among Democrats. Dede Scozzafava's support continues to collapse, making this essentially a two-candidate race between Hoffman and Owens in the final week," concluded Basswood Research's pollster Jon Lerner, who conducted the poll for the Club.

It would seem that voters in New York as well are using the vehicle of a special election to send a message to Washington about the direction that the little tin messiah and his Jackass Party are taking the nation.

As far as NY 23 goes Sozzafava is now the spoiler and should withdraw - that is if she truly has the best interests of the Republican party at heart.

But I doubt that she will. RINO's tend to be more hostile to genuine conservative than they ever are to left-liberalism. As the Queen of the RINO's Sozzafava will almost certainly think that denying the Palin wing of the GOP a victory is a more satisfying goal to achieve than denying the Pelosi-Obama wing of the Democrat party one.

Also we can only hope that events in New York will shame Newt Gingrich into shutting his stupid cake-hole.

Finally Rasmussen has more bad news for the Left as the residents of New Jersey (of all places) prepare to send the little tin messiah a message of their own:

With just a week to go in New Jersey’s closely contested race for governor, Republican Chris Christie holds a three-point advantage over incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Jersey show Christie with 46% of the vote and Corzine with 43%. While the margin is little changed from a week ago and the week before, the biggest news may be that support for independent candidate Chris Daggett has dropped four points to seven percent (7%). The number of undecided voters is down to four percent (4%).

The decline in support for Daggett comes in a week when several state newspapers endorsed Christie or Corzine, but none followed The (Newark) Star-Ledger’s lead and came out in favor of the independent candidate. Additionally, Christie began a new ad campaign linking Corzine and Daggett.

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

Of course 2010 and 2012 are a long way off in political terms however in politics trends like this rarely reverse themselves.

Sometimes it takes a Democrat president who is too arrogant and/or too stupid to hide what he and his party really believe to wake the public up and stir them to action. That happened in 1980 after four years of the almost unbelievably incompetent Carter administration and it happened again in 1996 after Hillary Clinton's bumbling attempt to impose a Stalinist socialized medicine scheme (now known as ObamaCare) on the nation made her the national face of the Democrat party.

Things are shaping up now to make 2010 a repeat of 1996 and 2012 an echo of 1980. The only thing that could save the Democrat party would be for B. Hussein Obama to emerge from the narcissistic fantasy world he is currently living in and realize that the "historic" nature of his presidency and his unparalleled skill at reading a teleprompter are not enough to keep the electorate somnolent in an era of double digit unemployment, a dollar in free-fall and growing international threats.

The problem for Democrats is that Mr. Obama is too arrogant to ever come to that realization, too stupid to know the right thing to do even if he did and too lazy to do the hard work to turn things around even if he did have the humility and good sense.

Far more satisfying to jet around the world on "date nights" with his wife, play golf and make speeches to handpicked crowds of brain-dead worshipers.

Doesn't look good for the Jackass Party

From Rasmussen Reports:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13. That’s just a point above the lowest level ever recorded for this President. It’s also the sixth straight day in negative double digits, matching the longest such streak (see trends).

Just 31% of voters believe that Congress has a good understanding of the health care proposal.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Republicans have a favorable opinion of their party’s national chairman, Michael Steele.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

The New Jersey Governor’s race remains a toss-up. Over the past week, both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie lost ground while support independent candidate Chris Daggett grew and so did the number of undecideds. Republicans hold a five-point advantage on the Generic Congressional Ballot. In Illinois, the race for Barack Obama’s Senate seat is a toss-up.

During his term as president Bill Clinton maintained undeserved high approval ratings while the Democrat party suffered severe losses.

Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, suffered well deserved low approval numbers while Democrats managed to retain control of the legislature (except for a 2 year period where the GOP controlled the Senate).

It would appear that B. Hussein Obama is going combine Carter and Clinton's worst aspects (from the Democrat perspective).

Clinton raised taxes, attempted to socialize the nation's health care system and passed the buck on Islamic terrorism ahead to the Bush administration but other than those things his day-to-day governance, especially on economic matters, was more or less center-left.

Clinton stood out of the way of the growing digital economy (rather than heavily taxing it as some of his advisers wanted him to do) and so allowed it to become the engine which drove the 90's economic boom (that the boom turned into a bubble which burst causing a recession is a topic for another day). This economic boom caused people fear "rocking the boat" by seeing Clinton removed from office (by electoral defeat or impeachment) so he enjoyed two terms of high approval ratings.

No matter what came out about Clinton (Monica, selling nuclear secrets to the Red Chinese, "Troopergate") people took their disgust out on the party (which had its own corruption problems) rather than the President.

Carter, on the other hand, governed like a Frankenstein cross between a 70's flower child and a Soviet era Politburo apparatchik managing to get literally everything both foreign and domestic totally wrong.

People saw the nation being made a laughing stock before the world and saw their personal economic situation going down the toilet and attached James Earl Carter's stupidly grinning face to the entire debacle and voted him out in a landslide after one failed term.

So Obama is going to go the way of Carter except that he is also going to be a Clinton-style drag upon his party.

Like Carter he is getting everything both foreign and domestic totally wrong and the almost inhumanly incompetent congressional leadership (Pelosi and Reid) are so joined at the hip with him that they are well within the blast radius of the public's rage.

Even if the Jackass Party does manage to pull off edge of their teeth wins in the deep blue states of Illinois and New Jersey the problems they are having bodes very ill for the party's prospects of retaining control of the House after the 2010 mid term elections.

Good News!

From Rasmussen Reports:

Just 41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and the lowest level of support yet measured.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% are opposed to the plan.

Senior citizens are less supportive of the plan than younger voters. In the latest survey, just 33% of seniors favor the plan while 59% are opposed. The intensity gap among seniors is significant. Only 16% of the over-65 crowd Strongly Favors the legislation while 46% are Strongly Opposed.

For the first time ever, a slight plurality of voters now express doubt that the legislation will become law this year. Forty-six percent (46%) say passage is likely while 47% say it is not. Those figures include 18% who say passage is Very Likely and 15% who say it is Not at All Likely. Sixty percent (60%) are less certain.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Democrats say the plan is at least somewhat likely to become law. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans disagree. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 34% say passage is at least somewhat likely while 58% say it is not.

This is why Obama was in such a tearing hurry to get congress to pass the legislation before the August recess despite the fact that it would not go into effect for years.

He, and/or his handlers knew, that once people got the chance to see exactly what Obama meant by "health care reform" the less they would like it.

The fact that support continues to fall while opposition continues to rise makes it far less likely that enough Representatives and Senators will be willing to defy public sentiment and vote for this legislative turd.

Another good thing about this is that as Obama keeps going out and pushing a plan which the majority of the public has already made up it's mind is bad he keeps losing credibility with the voters. This is reflected in his falling job approval and personal popularity numbers.

Keep it up Barry you're rapidly becoming the GOP's best friend.

We can only hope

(CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said today that the health-care plan that President Barack Obama is pushing in Congress is now dead and will not pass.

Boehner made the observation in an interview this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he appeared after President Obama.

“There’s been no bipartisan conversation on Capitol Hill about health care,” Boehner said in an interview with "Meet the Press" host David Gregory. “At some point when these big government plans fail—and they will, the Congress will not pass this—it’s really time for the president to hit the reset button, just stop all of this and let’s sit down and start over in a bipartisan way to build a plan that Americans will support.”

“So you think the plan is dead?” asked Gregory.

“I think it is,” said Boehner.

I'm not ready to count Obama's Marxist socialized medicine scheme out just yet. After all he has made his ability to inflict this takeover of around one sixth of the American economy upon us the make-0r-break issue of his presidency. If he is seen to suffer defeat on this he is all but guaranteed to be a one-term wonder like Jimmy Carter (who he often seems to be channeling).

Obama is still the president and radical left-wing Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid still run the House and Senate so the totalitarian communists in everything but name still exercise enormous power to move their agenda.

However most congressmen are not ideologues who are willing to sacrifice their careers for "the cause". The outpouring of rage against the policy agenda of Obama, who can't seem to make up his mind whether he wants to be Benito Mussolini or Fidel Castro has many members of the Jackass party deeply terrified. They remember 1994 when the Clintons' attempt to transform us into the USSA caused a congressional bloodletting unlike anything seen since the post-Watergate midterm election of 1974.

The question that those in the legislature, especially the House, must ask themselves is this. Are they willing to risk their seats to prop up a presidency which is already showing strong signs of being an historic failure?

All hail Jimmy the Second!

Jeremy Lott writing on the Politico:

When he ran for president, George W. Bush promised to be a modest reformer at home and a humble representative of the United States on the world stage. The Al Qaeda-organized-and-funded terrorist attacks of eight years ago changed all that. During his presidency, Bush created massive new government bureaucracies, sent troops into two wars and threatened more as part of America’s war on terror.

Barack Obama’s initial approach to the office of the presidency has been as grandiose as Bush’s was restrained. It’s not hard to recall that he ran as a transformative candidate, promising sweeping, though somewhat fuzzy, “change” during the campaign.

For the first several months of his presidency, Obama has labored to deliver on that pledge. He pushed a controversial stimulus bill through Congress to help rev up the economy, turned Bush’s reluctant bailout of Chrysler and General Motors into a giant government auto buyout and appointed a record number of “czars” to help regulate bureaucracies in both public and formerly private sectors.

Then, Step 2. Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental, labor and health care legislation. He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their doctors.

So far, he’s failing miserably. Consider the following:

• Cap-and-trade legislation had to limp over the finish line in the House of Representatives with the help of a few moderate Republicans, who then caught holy unshirted hell from their constituents. Environmental legislation generally has taken a drubbing in public opinion polls when people consider how costly it is.

• The Employee Free Choice Act may be stripped of its “card check” provision in the Senate, which would effectively do away with secret ballots for unionization elections. Even in its watered-down form — which still includes highly objectionable, mandatory, binding so-called gunpoint arbitration and makes no concessions to employers who don’t want to have to prop up teetering union pensions — it might not pass the Senate. And the leadership of the House has refused to touch it until the other chamber has made up its mind.

• On health care, forget the rage set off by private citizen Sarah Palin tweeting about “death panels.” Forget the misleading talk about whether there will be a “public option.” (The ever-evolving plan is one giant public option, folks.) Forget the angry voters who crowded into the town halls during the August recess. Forget that a number of Democratic senators and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are still not willing to sign on to a bill. Right now, even after Obama’s address to the joint session of Congress last week, it’s possible Democrats don’t even have the votes in the House — where they currently enjoy a 77-seat majority.

It’s entirely possible — nay, likely — that Obama will lose on all three big issues. He’ll probably take that personally. As he has pushed for the passage of his reforms, his public approval ratings have taken a beating, and voters have started to trust the Republicans more than his party on a host of issues.

The question that most political handicappers are considering right now is not “Will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?” but “How large will those gains be?”

What all this means is, barring some unforeseeable world event, Obama’s will probably not be a historic presidency. He will have some successes and a lot of failures. His opposition won’t roll over, and his party will refuse to go along with his more costly, and thus risky, schemes. He won’t coast to reelection.

So Obama now has the chance to be the sort of president Bush would have been if the World Trade Center towers had not come down. Here’s hoping he makes the best of it.

From his keyboard to God's ears.

The USA is a conservative nation

(CNSNews.com) - Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

During Republican President George W. Bush’s second term, the number of self-identified conservatives as measured by Gallup dropped, riding at a low of 37% as recently as last year.

According to new data released by Gallup on Friday, conservatives outnumber liberals in all 50 states--including President Obama’s home state of Illinois--even though Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in party identification in 30 states.

“In fact, while all 50 states are, to some degree, more conservative than liberal (with the conservative advantage ranging from 1 to 34 points), Gallup's 2009 party ID results indicate that Democrats have significant party ID advantages in 30 states and Republicans in only 4,” said an analysis of the survey results published by Gallup.

“Despite the Democratic Party's political strength-- seen in its majority representation in Congress and in state houses across the country--more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal,” said Gallup’s analysis.

“While Gallup polling has found this to be true at the national level over many years, and spanning recent Republican as well as Democratic presidential administrations, the present analysis confirms that the pattern also largely holds at the state level,” said Gallup. “Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts.”

It would seem that rather than follow the advice of people like Colin Powell and move the Republican party to the left in order to win elections that we should be seeking ways to appeal to those self-identified conservatives who are not members of the GOP.

I said in a previous post that the greatest threat to the survival of America as a free and prosperous nation is the attitude by many voters that the Democrat party is the party of the "common man". Even people who consider themselves conservative often think of the Republican party as representing only Wall Street and Fortune 500 CEO's - and, to be fair, being more pro-military.

The truth is that Wall Street brokers and bankers are far more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The same is true for executives in very large corporations.

Fortune 500 corporations tend to like the left-wing regulatory state because all those Byzantine regulations and onerous taxes tend to strictly limit competition because only a large and well established company is likely to be able to afford the large number of lawyers and accountants needed to keep ahead of the government paperwork.

They also tend to like affirmative action because a large company with a large number of employees can better afford to create a large "corporate diversity" division and staff it with all the deadwood they are forced to carry in order to meet their diversity quotas. Small start-up companies don't have that luxury.

Rather than altering the GOP's position of issues to make ourselves more like the Democrats we simply need to aggressively frame the Democrats as being what they truly are. Socialists with a desire to drastically limit Americans' liberty and prosperity.

Look at the dramatic fall in Barack Obama's poll numbers after only a few weeks of conservative media shining the spotlight on his attempt to nationalize the health care industry.

More of this kind of truth-telling needs to take place and more elected Republicans need to grow a spine and take the lead in this effort.

If you want an example of how this is done just look at Sarah Palin.

Reaching the boiling point

From Tampa Bay Online:

What was intended to be a town hall discussion on President Barack Obama's health care reform proposal dissolved into a shouting match with shoving and scuffles in Ybor City tonight.

The event brought home to Tampa the recent phenomenon of angry opponents of Obama's proposal disrupting town hall meetings by Democratic members of Congress during the August recess.

This meeting was organized by Democratic state Rep. Betty Reed but was to include comments on the proposal by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a strong supporter.

Castor tried to speak for nearly 15 minutes but the crowd drowned her out, chanting, "You work for us,'' "Tyranny, tyranny,'' and "Read the bill." She ultimately left the meeting early, further angering some attendees.

Why should one sit in silence and listen to someone spout what you know to be lies? Why should an elected official, someone who is not a master of the people but a servant - like the people who mop the floor and clean the toilets - expect to be treated with respect when they stand up to knowingly and maliciously lie to the people they are supposed to work for?

These Democrats who are going out to try and convince their constituents to support their party's socialized health care scheme are attempting to convince the citizens of this nation to accept much lower quality health care which will cost them much more money in the long run and which will enslave them and their children in chains of dependence to a federal government which will have become much more powerful and much less responsible to and responsive of the people. And those politicians know that this is what they are doing.

If they truly believe that the new Marxist health care system they are attempting to build for the citizens of this nation is better than what we have now then why have they exempted themselves and their families from that new system?

You do know that they have built into the legislation an exemption for themselves, don't you? They will not have to go the the same filthy overcrowded clinics and wait in line for hours and hours and hours to see a doctor like the rest of us will. They will not have to spend years on waiting lists for surgery, sometimes living in agony and sometimes dying for lack of treatment, like people in Europe and Canada do. They will not be told that the drugs they need are too expensive. They will not be told that they are too old to make treating them "cost effective". They will not be told that they are too fat or have smoked too much or drank too much to deserve treatment.

But the rest of us will.

Friends, the fact that they have exempted themselves from the system they are trying to impose upon the rest of us proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that they know EXACTLY what they are trying to do to the rest of us!

The fact that they do know exactly what they are trying to ram down our throats and will stand up and lie to our faces about it forever removes any obligation to treat these scumbags with any shred of respect or even civility. They deserve nothing from us but absolute and perfect contempt! They have made themselves the enemies of the American people and they deserve to be treated like it.

And I am profoundly glad to see huge numbers of my fellow citizens coming to agree with me.

The problems began when a crowd of around 500, many of them recruited to attend by interest groups both for and against the proposal, sought to enter the meeting room. The room, in the offices of the Hillsborough County Children's Board on East Palm Avenue, has a capacity of only about 250.

Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway leading into the meeting room. Some scuffled with members of the sponsoring groups who manned the doorway.

One man who said he was injured and intended to file a police complaint, Randy Arthur of Oldsmar, was outside the meeting room with his wife, Kathy Arthur, when organizers tried to close the doors.

She said he was slammed against a wall. He later talked to police officers, his knit shirt ripped and a few scratches visible on his chest.

Among the crowd outside, opponents and a smaller number of proponents got into occasional shouting matches.

After trying to speak, Castor left at about 6:40 p.m., taking jeers as she left.

"They're hiding from their constituents. She works for us and needs to listen,'' said Karen Jaroch, a Tampa homemaker and organizer for the 9-12 Project, set up by TV commentator Glenn Beck, which had recruited its members to attend.

These people, who in their own minds hold a place closer to medieval aristocracy than public employees, are simply unused to being held to account for their actions. It angers and frightens them and their first impulse is to do what some 12th century baron would do and have the ungrateful serfs flogged.

Castor spokeswoman Ellen Gedalius said Castor left because her part of the event was finished.

"We said all along our role was to come and give an update on the bill in Congress,'' Gedalius said, noting that Reed, not Castor, organized and sponsored the meeting. "That's what Betty Reed asked us to do … and that's what we did.''

But Reed said afterward that she encouraged Castor to leave because, "She couldn't get a word through."

Gedalius noted that Castor will have a town hall meeting by telephone on Aug. 13 and that her office has been receiving hundreds of comments on the health care issue.

The meeting was organized by Reed plus the Service Employees International Union, other unions and Organizing for America, a liberal group that grew out of the Obama presidential campaign.

SEIU is a union which violates the law by using member dues for political activities and Organizing for America is an Obama Marxist front organization. Two ultra-left organizations attempt to pack the meeting (one breaking federal law to do so) and yet it is the opponents of the legislation who are accused of "astroturfing".

Some opponents accused the organizers of trying to stack the crowd by allowing early admission to those on their side. Reed denied that, saying those admitted early were organizers setting up the room.

In any case, opponents appeared to outnumber proponents both inside and outside.

Of course they did, all you have to do is check the polls to see that those who are protesting this socialist boondoggle are representing the majority of the people.

After doors to the meeting room closed, some of those outside crowded around the windows of the meeting room, where they held up signs and chanted.

In the last week or so, similar disruptive protests have erupted at town hall meetings in several states.

Democrats, including White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, have said the disruptions were organized attacks aimed at Democrats by conservative, anti-health care reform interest groups. Several protestors at Thursday's meeting in Tampa angrily rejected that contention.

Castor's staff said Reed planned the meeting and invited Castor before the controversy became so heated.

Reed said she set up the meeting because, "I represent a number of people who ask questions about what's going on with health care, so I thought it would be good to put on a meeting and have the congresswoman come in and give an update."

Reed said she was shocked by the number of people who turned out and some of their reactions.

"When you get to the point of possible violence, you've gone over the edge," she said.

When politicians reach the point where they have driven law abiding and patriotic citizens to the point of possible violence THEY have gone over the edge!

In a news conference prior to the town hall, Castor had said, "I do expect some rabble-rousing."

She said the protesters who have been appearing at town hall forums on health care "would have been protesting Medicare … they would never have accepted Social Security."

Medicare and Social Security - two massively expensive federal government programs which the federal government has mismanaged and are now all but bankrupt. They represent tens of trillions of dollars worth of liabilities which the government has no means to pay for. Americans have paid into a system which was supposed to create accounts to fund retirement income and health care in their old age but congress has looted the trust funds in order to pay for vote buying pork projects and now that the Baby Boom generation is nearing retirement age the entire system is threatening to collapse.

This should be all the American people need to consider when contemplating whether the government should be entrusted to take over the nation's health care industry. We are talking about one seventh of the American economy. Do we really want to turn it over to a bureaucracy which will have all the compassion of the IRS, all the customer service skills of the DMV and the fiscal responsibility of, well the federal government (the only entity in the world ever to pay $600.00 for a plastic toilet seat)?

Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said the department was told a couple hundred people would show up and sent a squad of 10-15 officers, two marked cars, two supervisors and some undercover officers.

As the crowd grew, more were brought in – mainly for traffic control, she said, but they also broke up some scuffles.

She said no arrests were made.

All in all very instructive in helping us understand the amount of anger this attempt to royally screw over the American people in generating.

It also gives us a foretaste of what the left will do to support Comrade Obama in his efforts to turn the US into the new Cuba.

Expect criminal organizations like ACORN and the New Black Panther Party (as well as some labor unions) to start bringing in thugs to intimidate and even attack protesters at these meetings (think Hitler's SA attacking rival political party's meetings). Of course the mainstream media will spin this as peaceful pro-health care reformers defending themselves against attacks by right-wing neo-Nazis.

Remember this is all to the good. The public has Obama's measure now and the time when he was trusted is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. The more he works for this the less people are going to like it and the less they are going to like anything else Obama advocates in the future.

Obama is locking himself into being a one-term president and Nancy Pelosi is handing congress back to the GOP in 2010. Hell, even Harry Reid looks to be defeated in his bid for reelection next year.

I made the point last year that sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to make the nation ready for a Ronald Reagan. Well the GOP has three Reagans waiting in the wings. Palin, Perry and Jindal are all capable of doing the jog and indications are that any of them would be willing to step up.

Some good news

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10. Yesterday and today are the only time that Obama's Approval Index ratings have fallen to double digits in negative territory (see trends).

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Democrats Strongly Approve of his performance while 72% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. See other recent demographic highlights.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.

Obama is now seen as politically liberal by 76%. That's up six points from a month ago, 11 points since he was elected, and the highest total to date. Forty-eight percent (48%) now see him as Very Liberal, up 20 points since he was elected (Premium Members can see trends and crosstabs).

The President received generally poor grades for his response to a question about a Cambridge police incident involving a black Harvard professor. However, the results show a huge divide between black Americans and white Americans on all questions.

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove. It is important to remember that the Rasmussen Reports job approval ratings are based upon a sample of likely voters. Some other firms base their approval ratings on samples of all adults. President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters. That's because some of the President's most enthusiastic supporters, such as young adults, are less likely to turn out to vote.

I have been genuinely afraid that the public was going to be so desperate to prove that they were "post racial" that they were just going to stick their fingers in their ears and hum "hope and change" real loud whenever any bad news came along.

It seems that the public is willing to change their minds about the little tin messiah when he fails to deliver the prosperity that he promised.

In another positive bit of news from Rasmussen it seems that Obama isn't doing well in 2012 matchups:

If the 2012 presidential election were held today, President Obama and possible Republican nominee Mitt Romney would be all tied up at 45% each, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

The president, seeking a second four-year term, beats another potential GOP rival, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, by six points – 48% to 42%.

Romney gets an edge right now because he is the one who came closest to beating McCain out for the Republican nomination. This makes him "the one who got away" in some minds.

And in even more positive news:

The health care reform legislation working its way through Congress has lost support over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% of U.S. voters are at least somewhat in favor of the reform effort while 53% are at least somewhat opposed.

Today’s 44% level of support is down from 46% two weeks ago, and 50% in late June.

Opposition has grown from 45% in late June to 49% two weeks ago and 53% today.

As in earlier surveys, those with strong opinions are more likely to oppose the plan rather than support it. The current numbers: 24% strongly favor and 37% strongly oppose.

And finally:

Support for Republican congressional candidates has reached its highest level in over two years as the GOP lengthens its lead over Democrats in the latest edition of the Generic Ballot.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 38% would opt for the Democratic candidate.

Add to this that fact that far more Americans consider themselves to be conservative than liberal and it would seem that a Republican party which can successfully define itself as the nation's stalwart defenders against the radical attacks of Barack Obama and his ultra-left-wing congressional supporters like Nancy Pelosi (San Fran Nan) is well positioned to retake the House in 2010.

A softball pitched in from left field

A left wing reader left this comment on one of my posts about Sarah Palin:

She's done. If you can't finish up your term as Governor, what should we expect as President? Don't get me wrong, I hope she does run.

I was hoping someone would try making that argument so that I could make a few points about the left's little tin god.

B. Hussein Obama -
- Ran for a seat in the Illinois legislature and abandoned it before his first term ended in order to run for the United States Senate.
- Abandoned his seat in the US Senate before serving even two years of his six-year term in order to run for the presidency. In point of fact during Obama's career in the Senate he only bothered to show up and do the job he was elected to do fewer than 200 days total.

So if Mrs. Palin is unfit to be president because she failed to complete her term as governor of Alaska then Mr. Obama is twice as unfit to be president.

I would also point out that Mrs. Clinton promised the people of New York that she would be a full time Senator and would not abandon her job in order to campaign for the presidency and that Mr. Clinton made the same promise to the people of Arkansas when he ran for governor.

I would also like to point out to anyone who thinks that I'm making the argument that Palin is just as fickle and unfit as Obama (actually it would be half as fickle and unfit since she has only done once what he did twice) that there is a critical difference between her actions and his.

When Sarah Palin was elected governor of Alaska she entered a political climate which had been dominated by entrenched political interests for decades. Human nature being what it is those entrenched interests had become corrupt (think of the pre-Gringrich House of Representatives which had been controlled by the Democrat party for 40 years).

Palin made it her mission to challenge that corruption and bring about long needed reforms. She renegotiated the terms of the arrangement between the state and the oil companies which gave the people of Alaska a more equitable share of the oil revenues those companies were deriving from Alaska's natural resources. And she did this in a way which put the money into the pockets of the people of Alaska rather than into the government's pocket where it could be squandered on vote-buying pork projects.

Palin also managed to complete the negotiations for the natural gas pipeline which had been in limbo for years. In doing this she was able to bring Native Alaskan tribes, the state government of Alaska, the government of Canada and multinational corporations to the table and get them all to work and play nicely together in order to bring energy resources to the lower 48.

These two things, taking on the political cesspool of Juneau and completing the pipeline deal were Mrs. Palin's primary reasons for seeking the governorship in the first place. She got them both done with nearly a year and a half to spare.

What great projects was Mr. B. Hussein Obama pursuing when he ran for the Illinois State Senate? Other than building a platform from which to reach for higher office of course? About all he got done of any note was killing a law which would have required that children born alive after a failed attempt to abort them would be given medical care like the human beings they are (That's really something to be proud of).

What did Mr. Obama accomplish during the 180 or so days that he managed to show up in the US Senate? Well he did manage to rack up a record as the most liberal Senator. That is something of note since he managed to beat out left-wing loons like Ted Kennedy who had been there for decades.

Oh, and here's something else while I'm thinking about it. As I mentioned Governor Palin attacked the corruption she found in Alaska's state government. When Obama became active in the politics of the city of Chicago, county of Cook, state of Illinois he encountered a political machine which has held power for more than a century and has reached levels of corruption not seen since the intrigues in the court of Byzantium.

Did Mr. Obama respond to this corruption in Illinois the same way that Mrs. Palin did to the corruption in Alaska?

Hardly. Where Sarah Palin rolled up her sleeves and started fighting Mr. Obama found that he had landed in the company of like-minded men. In the almost unbelievably foul sewer of the Illinois Democrat machine Obama found a place where he was comfortable. Where he fit in and could be himself.

Let us pause here for a bit and give our noses a break by stepping away from the stench rising off of Mr. Obama and his Chicago friends and associates and look at a few more facts about Sarah Palin and her decision to resign her office.

Sarah Palin fought corruption and that earns one enemies, even in one's own party.

She is also the most beloved living conservative political figure in the nation. She has "it" the same "it" that Ronald Reagan had and she has shown ambition to reach for higher office. She has a solid record of accomplishment as mayor and then governor. It was her presence on the GOP ticket which made the 2008 race relatively close rather than a Reagan/Mondale type blowout for Obama.

For all these reasons and more Sarah Palin is the most dangerous person in the world to the political left. They realize that unless they destroy her she could attain the Oval Office with the kind of popular mandate that would allow her to undo vast amounts what the left has managed to accomplish in their goal to ruin and destroy the nation.

This is why Mrs. Palin has been subjected to an endless stream of utterly baseless ethics complaints. Defending against these complaints has cost her family anywhere from half a million to a million dollars and investigating the complaints has cost the state of Alaska over 2 million dollars. If governor Palin stays in office she has nothing but more of these groundless accusations to look forward to, further draining her and her husband's assets and further burdening the treasury of Alaska.

Mrs. Palin has a book coming out which she is going to need to tour to promote. She is also going to be the single most in demand GOP speaker who will need to crisscross the nation campaigning for conservative Republican candidates. Can you imagine what a fertile ground for false accusations of misuse of state funds all that travel would give to her enemies in Alaska if she were still governor? Can you imagine what would be said about all the time she will be spending out of Alaska if she were still governor?

She would be accused of drawing the governor's pay while not doing the governor's job. It would be said that she was abandoning her post and that the honorable thing to have done was resign.

It is also possible that the attacks on Mrs. Palin will take the form of attacks upon the state of Alaska itself. After all if the economy of Alaska can be damaged badly enough it would be bound to hurt her popularity within the state and give her critics grounds to accuse her of incompetence in any national race.

In a recent piece on American Thinker J.R. Dunn had this to say:

Chicago would put Alaska through the grinder, a very easy thing to accomplish from Washington. In fact, it could be argued that this campaign has already begun, with the slow death-by-cuts action against the National Missile Defense center at Fort Greely. Even as the ballistic missile threat from North Korea and Iran grows more urgent, Obama is dismantling the sole serious defense against it. (Am I implying that O would jeopardize the country's safety to assure his political career? Well, what do you think?) In a real sense, Palin's resignation at this time can be viewed as yet another service to her state.

Yes, Barrack Hussein Obama is an utterly corrupt political thug who would not hesitate for an instant to place his nation in peril in order to take out a dangerous - to him - domestic political opponent.

And if he is willing to do that what else might he do harm the people of Alaska in order to make their governor look bad?

Mrs. Palin is doing the honorable thing (something utterly alien to B. Hussein Obama and his ilk) and letting the position of governor be taken up by someone who would be less of a lightening rod. She is freeing herself to serve not only the people of Alaska but the entire nation by helping the GOP regain control of the legislature in 2010 and in all likelihood broadening the base of support she will have for a run at the White House in 2012 or 2016.

In their decisions to leave office before the end of their terms the differences between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are shown to be the differences between doing what is right and wrong, honorable and dishonorable.

P.S. To the person who said "If you can't finish up your term as Governor, what should we expect as President?" Can point us to somewhere that you asked the same rhetorical question about Obama - who couldn't finish either his term as state Senator or US Senator - when he announced his candidacy for president?

Your opinions are already worthless because you are a left-wing moron (sorry, redundant) but now we can add abject hypocrite to the reasons why you are an oxygen thief.