GOP’s Specter Plans to Switch Parties

Veteran GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of PA will switch parties, confirmed his run for re-election as a Dem in 2010, w/c would increase the number of Senate seats Democrats control to 58, an almost filibuster-resistant majority. Our anti-pork GOP candidate Pat Toomey´s (from Club for Growth) winning numbers in the polls and Arlen´s support of Obama Spending Bill precipitated this. The Rasmussen poll puts Toomey ahead 51% to 30%.

Specter’s real problem started with the Democratic presidential primary in 2008. With the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama still raging last April, hundreds of thousands of moderate Republicans in Pennsylvania switched registration to vote in the Democratic primary. Most of these people normally voted for Specter. Now they are officially Democrats. With a big primary looming on the Democratic side in 2010, probably most of them will remain Democrats to vote in the Democratic primary. Thus the center of gravity of what is left of the Pennsylvania Republican Party has moved far to the right–towards Toomey and away from Specter. Under far less favorable circumstances, Toomey came within 1.7% of beating Specter in the 2004 senatorial primary. Now with the wind at his back and Specter unpopular with the right wing of the Republican Party for his occasional roll call votes with the Democrats, Toomey has an excellent chance of winning the nomination. Unfortunately, he has almost no chance of winning the general election against any of the numerous Democrats trying for their party’s nomination. He is simply far too conservative for a state Obama carried by 11 points. Thus a Toomey win in the primary means that Pennsylvania will very likely flip and give the Democrats their 60th seat in the Senate (assuming Franken is seated by January 2011). Let us hope that this doesn´t happen and that the Tea Parties are doing smarter strategies.

The move gives Democrats control of 59 votes in the Senate, leaving them one shy of 60 needed for procedural control of the chamber. One senate seat remains unfilled, in Minnesota, where a close recount remains tied up in court. But analysts say Democrat Al Franken is favored to win that legal battle in the coming weeks, giving Democrats the majority they are seeking.

A Republican who is close to Senate GOP leadership said Republican leaders still hold a glimmer of hope to hold off Mr. Specter’s party switch. But it isn’t likely.

Mr. Specter, who provided President Barack Obama the critical vote for his $787 billion stimulus plan, faced a powerful challenge in 2010 from former Rep. Pat Toomey, who hoped to unseat Mr. Specter in a Republican primary. Vice President Joe Biden had been openly courting his old friend and colleague from the Senate Judiciary Committee, making the case that he could breeze to re-election as a Democrat.

Why have Pork loving candidates around, anyway? Time to clean up GOP. Good riddance!

2008 U.S. Presidential Elections Synopsis Part 1

Fourty-eight days to January 20, 2009, before the spectacular fanfare of the historic 44th United States Presidential Inauguration, when an African-American takes center-stage and recite the oath on first entering office specified in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect,  and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The theme for the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama is “A New Birth of Freedom,” which honors the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. People scrambling to get the hottest “non-existent” tickets in town. Yes, “non-existent” because they are not issued yet and there are scammers selling them for $1000+ already. So if you contemplate of buying them through the web, STOP IT NOW.  These tickets are FREE and you get them from any U.S. Congress and Senate Officials and usually they are only allotted with a couple of hundred tickets depending on their constituents. Some public officials have even started doing lottery to be fair. You cannot get these if you are not American constituent in that district that the particular elected official (or ask your American friends).

Washington D.C. is expecting about 1M visitors and a massive planning is taking place to keep the city in order. All this hysteria because people want to hear the man who used a Kennedy-King-Lincoln-esque platform and echoed throughout his campaign:

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” Excerpt from A More Perfect Union

 

Electoral Vote tally

We sat with astonishment to the meteoric rise of this obscured Arab-cheered Messiah 46-year-old political virgin to become the first African-American to capture DNC nomination. (Thanks to the Iowa Caucus and Obama´s brilliant grassroots strategy through David Axelrod´s brainchild, he surprisingly rose above Clinton) Weeks later, he wins an overwhelming mandate of 365 Electoral votes versus the 173 that McCain  got.  World Leaders like Merkel, Sarcozy, Brown (pro-Americans to Obama´s advantage) reacted warmly and  with expectations,  tests and warnings. 

2008 U.S. Presidential Elections County by County Results

The 2008 U.S. Elections cracked a lot of ceilings. Both GOP and DNC parties made historical marks with their two women, Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) and Gov. Sarah Palin (AL). The former proving to be a formidable candidate with 18M behind her and the latter, a female maverick that became GOP´s first female for top ticket. Then you have the massive money that got poured in through Obama´s internet fundraising, garnering aroung $650M in total which afforded him to release a 30 minute infomercial in all major networks. 

The RESULT: The longest, historic, exciting, most expensive U.S. Election ever!

Republicans WILL Rise from the Ashes and Emerge Stronger

If ever there was an election that was not worth winning, it was the contest of 2008. While it was hard-fought on both sides, had McCain won, it might have spelled the end of the Republican Party. As it is, the party is well-situated to come back in 2010 and in 2012, if it learns the lessons of this year.

Simply put, all hell is about to break loose in the markets and the economy.

The mortgage crisis will likely be followed by defaults in credit card debt, student loans and car loans. We will probably be set for two years of zero growth, according to economists with whom I talk. And the federal efforts to protect the nation from the worst of the recession will probably lead to huge budget deficits and resulting inflation. We are in for stagflation that could last for years.

Had McCain won, he would be the latter-day Hoover, blamed for the disaster that unfolded on his watch. Now it is Obama’s problem. With the Republicans suffering a wipeout in congressional elections (although not as bad as they feared), the ball is now squarely in the Democratic court. Good luck!

If Obama raises taxes, the situation could get even worse. With a liberal Congress on his hands, he will be constrained to move to the left, if he needs any pushing.

When Clinton was elected in 1992, the Democrats in control of Congress gave him a clear message: Either you govern within the four walls of the Democratic Caucus or you won’t get our support. Crossing the aisle to get Republican votes, even including the GOP in negotiations, was a no-no for which the president would pay dearly if he transgressed.

The result was predictable. Moderate initiatives like welfare reform were scrapped, the Congress passed tax hikes and legislation became festooned with liberal amendments.

Faced with the need to round up every last vote in the Senate and House Democratic caucuses, Clinton had no choice but to load up conservative bills like an anti-crime measure with liberal pork (like a provision for midnight basketball courts in urban areas) to get unanimous caucus backing.

Obama will have to move left to appease his caucus. He will become their hostage, and they his jailers.

This dynamic will produce extreme-left-wing governance, which the Republicans can blame for the continuation of the recession and for any worsening. The party will recover, fed by anger at Obama’s policies, and will emerge from this defeat stronger than ever.

But the Republicans must learn the lesson of MoveOn.org. Founded in the bleak days of the Clinton impeachment, MoveOn developed a grass-roots Internet base. Building up its e-list of activists and contributors, MoveOn laid the basis for the incredible Internet appeal of the Obama campaign. At last count, Obama has 4.5 million donors, most online.

Conservatives cannot count on the Republican Party to fight their battles for them, and certainly cannot count on them to win. The right needs to develop cyber-roots conservative organizations to rival the power of groups like MoveOn.org.

The stellar efforts of Newsmax.com and its ally, GOPtrust.com, illustrate the power of such efforts. Together, these groups raised $10 million for an independent expenditure on media in swing states featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American bombast.

And their efforts worked.

Virtually all the polls agreed that Obama would win 52 percent to 53 percent of the vote, but the surveys varied in the amount of undecideds they found.

On Election Day, virtually every undecided voter went to McCain, and Obama’s final vote share was no more and no less than the 52 percent to 53 percent the surveys had predicted. This unanimity among undecided voters is attributable to the endgame of groups like GOPtrust.com and Newsmax.com.

These groups have to lead the way in running media to battle against the leftist legislation that will undoubtedly emanate from the Obama administration and the liberal Congress America has just elected. Then they can become the basis for a Republican resurgence, just as MoveOn.org was this year for the Democrats.