Patrick Mara for D.C. City Council At-Large

While I am obviously a Virginia blogger, I do pay at least some attention to politics in the nation’s capital (or, to differentiate it from federal politics, The District).  Six City Council seats are up for election in the District, including the only Republican on the Council: At-Large member Carol Schwartz.

There was a time when Schwartz was the embodiment of the beleaguered Republican Party in the District.  She is the only Republican candidate for Mayor to ever win more than a third of the vote (she did it each of the four times she ran).  She won 42% in her second try (1994 against Marion Barry).

However, Ms. Schwartz has lost her way.  She sponsored an egregious bill that mandated paid sick leave for nearly all workers in DC, including part-time workers (Washington Post).  It was one of the reasons the Service Employees International Union (just about my least favorite union in the country) is endorsing her in the DC Republican primary on September 9.  Under DC election rules, one of the two At-Large seats is reserved for someone outside the Democratic party.  Even in DC, that makes the Republican nominee the favorite for the “other seat” (it’s the seat Schwartz has held since 1997).

This year, however, Schwartz has a challenger in the GOP Primary: Patrick Mara.  Mara is young, energetic, and determined to bring economic sanity to the District.  He is backed by both Americans for Tax Reform and the Greater Washington Board of Trade.

Mara would be the voice for change that Carol Schwartz once was.  He can also bring the values and ideas of limited government to a place that has never heard it before.  Lest anyone think cities are not fertile ground for this sort of thing, remember that they said the same thing in New York until Rudy Giuliani came to town.

It’s time for a change in the DC Republican Party.  It’s time for Patrick Mara.

They say the best revenge is living well . . .

. . . but it certainly helps when the rival who pushed you out is plummeting through the floor.

So certainly, Tony Blair is enjoying himself as he reads of his successor’s woes tomorrow (Iain Dale):

The Telegraph has an incredible poll tomorrow. You can see the full results HERE. But here are some highlights – or lowlights if you are Gordon Brown (RWL Note: Brown is the Prime Minister who as Finance Minister pushed Blair out), David Miliband, Jack Straw and especially Ed Balls!

* Conservative 47%, Labour 25%, LibDems 16%
* 15% say GB (RWL Note: that’s Brown) is up to the job
* 65% say GB is a liability, up from 25% in June 2007
* 44% say Labour’s prospects would improve without GB
* 9% say GB “is in touch with people like me”
* With David Miliband as leader Tory lead increases to 23%
* With Jack Straw as leader Tory lead is 21%
* With Ed Balls as leader the Tory lead is 33%, with Labour behind LibDems in third place

In other words, there is no one left in the British Labour Party who can even come close to stopping the Tory juggernaut – except one:

* With Tony Blair as leader the Tory lead would be 9%

Ouch!  That has to hurt, eh Gordon?

And they wring their hands about American bloggers

The next, oh, fifty-eight times I hear someone complain about the state of political bloggers here in Virginia (or anywhere else in the US, for that matter), I will remind myself of this post by Iain Dale (WARNING: the post is – at the least – PG-13, but drop-dead funny).

Anyone who doesn’t think Barry’s playing the race card . . .

. . . might want to go back about five weeks or so when he, well, played the race card (Chicago Sun-Times, emphasis added):

The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?

So for all of you furiously tapping at your keyboards insisting I’ve somehow misinterpreted the Audacity of Hype, save the bandwith.

Barack and the “other presidents” on the dollar bills

The Audacity of Hype played the race card, and then issued a denial so weak it would need steroids to compete with all of his other denials, flip-flops, and general switcheroos.

Riley over at VV has the details:

Looks like Barry Obama is first to raise the issue of race openly in the general election campaign –

Yesterday in Missouri, Obama predicted McCain and the GOP would use racially tinged attacks against him.

“What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. ”You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” 

An Obama spokesman denied that the line about “dollar bills” was related to the Democrat’s race.

So, if the line Obama uttered about “dollar bills” wasn’t about race, what was it about? 

“What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

This is disingenuous for his campaign to claim that isn’t what Obama was talking about without providing a feasible alternative explanation and this one just doesn’t hold water.

Riley then goes into detail on just how thin this reed is:

For the record (and for Barry so that he doesn’t get all confused again as he did when he claimed there were 57 states or that presidents could serve 10 years in office), the “other presidents” (did I miss an election and inauguration somehow?) who appear on current dollar bills are: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Jackson, and Grant.  None of them spent “decades in Washington” before becoming president.  Even among those who appear on bills no longer produced — McKinley, Cleveland and Wilson — none of them spent decades in Washington, either. 

Actually, not even Riley does this nonsense justice.

Of all the presidents on bills in circulation, not one spent a decade in the nation’s capital before achieving the Presidency:

• Washington ($1): Less than three months in Philadelphia for the first Continental Congress of 1775 and roughly four months as President of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  Total time in the capital: Less than one year.
• Jefferson ($2): Fifteen months in Philadelphia for the second Continental Congress; Secretary of State for four years and three months (New York and Philadelphia); Vice President for four years (Philadelphia and Washington).  Total time in the capital: nine years, six months.
• Lincoln ($5): Member of Congress from 1847 to 1849.  Total time in the capital: two years.
• Jackson ($20): Member of Congress for nine months (December 1796 to September 1797), U.S. Senator (September 1797 to April 1798 and from March 1823 to October 1825).  Total time in the capital: three years, eleven months.
• Grant ($50): Commander of the U.S. Army; stationed in Washgton from April 1865 to March 1869.  Total time in the capital: three years, eleven months.

In fact, even of the Presidents on bills no longer in circulation, none spent even two “decades” in the nation’s capital.  McKinley was a Congressman for 13 years, while Madison’s tenure in the Continental Congress, Constitutional Convention, Federal Congress, and State Department came up just short of twenty years.

Moreover, everyone who made it on to a dollar bill was considered an outsider during his political career except for McKinley and Madison.

So either Obama is ignorant of our nation’s history, or he’s hoping we are.

Gallup: McCain gains eight points in four days

Remember when Gallup had one poll with McCain up four and another with Obama up 8?  Well, only the latter was a tracking poll, but it’s been trying to catch up with the former ever since.

The day before the tracker had Obama up 8, it actually had him up 9.  Today?  McCain has cut it to one (Gallup).  The Audacity of Hype has to be wondering what it will take to get rid of this guy.  Then again, a bunch of former Republican aspirants have asked themselves the same thing over the past year.

Obama’s energy policy is just a bunch of hot air

Don’t take my word for it; take his (Jim Geraghty):

The RNC is chuckling over Obama calling for voters to make “sure your tires are properly inflated” because “we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling if everybody was just inflating their tires.”

RNC spokesman Alex Conant responds, “Obama’s solution to America’s energy crisis is inflating tires?! Maybe he’s been out of the country too long.”

Geraghty himself has the best response:

So it would indeed be nice if Americans pumped up their tires sufficiently, and we started seeing some of that 4.9 million to 6.5 million gallons saved per day. But why it has to be an either/or in regards to the 1.6 trillion gallons of gasoline in the OCS (not even getting into ANWR), as Obama insists, is not clear.

John Brownlee on the issues

For those who wonder why yours truly continues to be concerned about John Brownlee’s “absence of a public record” (as Chris Obenshain put it over at BD), I offer this from Brownlee’s Issues Page:

Let’s not forget, Brownlee annouced his candidacy more than two months ago.

Hopium (and the syndicate that deals it)

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune has an absolutely fantastic column on reaction to the Audacity of Hype.  He even gives it a name: “hopium.”

You really need to read the whole thing (it’s that good), but here are a few choice excerpts:

It’s America’s most powerful drug. Once on hopium, you won’t care if Iran has nukes or if taxes are raised during a recession or whether Obama keeps flipping and flopping on everything from foreign wiretaps to withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Who cares? Relax. Hopium is your friend.

. . .

Obama hopium was so powerful, that that first rush of it, well, it sent a tingle up my leg. Or down my leg. Then up. So now, when I read newspaper stories about Obama’s political history, like a recent gooey, puffy profile in the Washington Post and it didn’t mention Obama as a willing member of Chicago’s Daley machine, well, I didn’t get angry.

Not anymore.

Why? Because I’m a hope-head.

Now, I don’t get upset when foreign and national journalists fail to mention Tony Rezko, or the Daley boys, or how the Chicago machine plans to staff the Department of Justice, and the new Department of Homeland Casinos.

Who cares? I’m numb with hopium.

The last few paragraphs actually hit on a point that hasn’t really been addressed.  Whatever anyone may think Obama is; we know he’s a product of the Daley machine – one of the last big-city Democratic organizations that combines patronage, public contracts, political chicanery, and popular tolerance of shady government to create an occasionally efficient but thoroughly corrupt political system.  The machine managed to wrest control of Illinois from the GOP in 2002, and within six years (thanks in no small part to Rezko), they’ve managed to bring state politics to a new low (quite a feat considering that the pre-2002 Republican regime was itself shot through with corruption).

Now, with Barack Obama leading the way, the machine wants to do to America what it did to Chicago and Illinois.  That’ll take a lot of Hopium.

I beg your pardon, Chris? (UPDATED AND CORRECTED)

Chris Beer (Mason Conservative) is a blogger I enjoy and respect; he is also a friend.  However, I have serious issue with his Bearing Drift post on the AG race.  Actually, the Bearing Drift post in question came from Chris Obenshain – mea culpa.  Chris O. is also a good blogger, but I’ve never met him.

Chris is not happy with some of us Cuccinelli supporters (we know how we are) who have sent criticism in John Brownlee’s direction.  Chris even went so far as to call them “personal attacks.”

Let’s take a closer look at this.

All of this began when Shaun Kenney insisted John Brownlee isn’t as pro-life as Cuccinelli is (Bearing Drift).  That is, in point of fact, true.  Brownlee tried to respond, and got his facts wrong.  I called him on it.  If that’s a “personal attack,” then the English language underwent serious revision while I was asleep last night.

As for Bronwlee’s top donor, once again, none of that is in dispute.  Chris may question the relevance of the information, but to call that a “personal attack” is, again, to stretch the language.

Chris himself seems to acknowledge this when he notes “that the candidates not be vetted completely.”  Yet what we call vetting, he calls something else:

. . . it strikes me as bizarre that when a person who has held a position of trust for as long as Brownlee has and, by all accounts, has acquitted himself admirably therein, the first reaction by some Republicans is to immediately disbelieve everything he says based, not on a record that contradict those statements, but rather upon the absence of a public record.

First of all, we have good reason to take issue with what Brownlee says when he makes such a dramatic mistake.  Secondly, in the aforementioned “absence of a public record,” we have no choice but to look to other factors that might normally be given less credence.  This is especially true given that the Attorney General handles a great deal more issues that Brownlee is discussing (thus his word obviously falls short on issues left unaddressed), and that Brownlee’s “Issues” page remains – as of 2:15PM on July 30, 2008 – completely blank (ditto).

The issue here isn’t whether or not Brownlee would make a better AG than whomever the Democrats nominate.  Of course he would.  But a better AG than Ken Cuccinelli?  No way.