Archive for the ‘elections’ Category

Haley Barbor’s real crime: “We paid more attention to the girls than to King”

Posted: December 21, 2010 by datechguy in elections
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Ah 2011 is only 10 days or so away, so tis the season to hit one of the most qualified republicans in the likely field as racist:

The Citizens’ Councils were, right in the state of Mississippi where Barbour is from, the respectable face of white supremacist political activism.

Hmmm now what did Barbor say about the Citizen’s councils back then when he was 16 in that interview:

Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so.

“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”Emphasis Mine

So in other words, if you were Klan in Barbour’s town you lost her job, unlike the democratic party (who with apologies to Dave Weigel who considers this sentence “standard republican deflection”) give their ex Klan Members the job of President Pro Tempre of the Senate until death as late as 2010.

I’m not a southerner, and anyone who thinks the citizens councils of the Jim Crow south believed in racial equality is deluding themselves, but that not what the question was. The questions were “why there was no violence” and “what he remembered as a 16 year old kid” who ( as we will see later) had other priorities. So lets see if the statement in question is supported:

Tom McGuire examines the case:

I don’t think Barbour claimed the Councils were led by integrationist progressives on the right side of history; I think he claimed they helped keep the peace. Two sources say they did, against which we have to weigh Matt’s shock and awe.

He quotes noted segregationists David Halberstam Neil McMillen (and yes I’m being sarcastic).

Meanwhile as we also seen in the interview Barbour attended MLK’s rally in his town …

“I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in ’62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white.”

Did you go? I asked.

“Sure, I was there with some of my friends.”

I asked him why he went out.

“We wanted to hear him speak.”

but had (ahem) other priorities:

I asked what King had said that day.

“I don’t really remember. The truth is, we couldn’t hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do. We paid more attention to the girls than to King.”

As you might guess on the left this is all over this (Journolist redux) over at Ace’s spot some good points are made:

First, both Barbour and Yglesias can be right. Based on the profile it’s clear that many people in Barbour’s home town (including his brother Jeppie, the then Mayor) held beliefs that simply were reprehensible about blacks but none the less managed to take a relatively benign course of action in integrating the community.

That’s very true, again; that is the question that was asked.  Meanwhile shades of a double standard:

Obama skated by on Bill Ayers by saying he was a child when Ayers was bombing buildings and killing people. Of course Ayers past wasn’t the issue, it was his unapologetic defense of it and the wisdom of a presidential candidate associating himself with such a man in the present.

Barbour was 8 years old when the 1955 campaign to intimidate supporters of school integration Yglesias cites was conducted. What’s the relevance of that to Barbour or his memories of integration efforts in the 60’s?

If Barbour were associating with men who still believed in segregation or defended their role in opposing it back in the day (as Ayers does about his terrorist past and continued belief in violence as a political tool), I’d be the first to say he has a disqualifying problem. But that’s not the charge, is it?

Oh and if supporting segregation is disqualifying (and again no one is claiming Barbour did any such thing, then or now), then I’d like liberals to explain their on going love affair with Jimmy Carter.

Drew M also points out that if you are from the North you have a particular view of the south drummed into you. When it came to Southerners I was rather bigoted and self righteous at one time and it took some years to get over it. Meanwhile Stacy McCain who is a Southerner provides some education about the “solid” south:

I don’t care how many times liberals invoke “The Southern Strategy,” that still doesn’t make it true. The Democratic Party remained a viable and even dominant political force in the South for three decades after the end of segregation.

Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 and Southern Democrat Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. The Democratic Party maintained control of the Georgia state legislature until 2003 and it was not until this year — let me check my calendar, yeah, it’s 2010 — that Republicans gained a majority in the Alabama state legislature.

As much as it may flatter the vanity of liberals to think that the Democratic “Solid South” ended in 1964 — and that the success of the GOP in the Sunbelt is therefore somehow attributable to redneck bigotry — it simply is not true.

And I’m sick and tired of pious lectures from arrogant fools whose moral horizons can be summarized in two words: “Vote Democrat.”

Even today’s uninformed “students” of history can use the net to find that out, but of course our scholarly friends of the left who think that C. S. Lewis is a mere children’s author may not know this.

So lets review the facts briefly:

  • The Citizen’s councils in Yazoo City kept out the Klan and kept violence out of the city.
  • The members of the citizen’s councils of the south in the 60’s were (like Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and Margaret Sanger) not believers in the equality of races.
  • If you were 8 years old in 1955 and lived in the south odds are your parents, grandparents and neighbors were all people whose views on race were likely not the same as our views today.
  • Given the choice between caring about race or girls, 16 years olds, even those who will grow up to be pols like Haley Barbour, will choose girls over Martin Luther King every time. (Does he read rule 5 Sunday?)

And the final rule as told by Hotair

If he’s the nominee, Democrats will spend six solid months shrieking about racism in order to deflect attention from Obama’s record.

Mitigating factor: That’s actually their game plan no matter who the nominee is.

That’s pretty much it.

Why we fight

Posted: December 18, 2010 by datechguy in congress, economy, elections, politics, tea parties
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Yesterday I was exchanging tweets with Melissa Clouthier and this rather surprising story was being discussed:

CNN is teaming up with the Tea Party Express for a first-of-its-kind presidential primary debate, both organizations announced Friday. The Tea Party debate, featuring 2012 Republican presidential candidates, is scheduled for Labor Day week 2011. It will take place in Tampa, Florida – the site of the 2012 Republican National Convention.

As a person who ever so briefly rode the tea party express I was tickled pink. Although Melissa knows some of the folks as well she had this to say:

I wasn’t happy with what happened in Nevada, though. Shoulda left that race well enough alone.

Quite a few conservatives say the same about Christine O’Donnell but (via Glenn) Kevin Williamson makes an excellent point:

Say what you like about Christine O’Donnell and her incompetent nut-cluster of a campaign, she showed the Republican establishment that the Tea Party, and the fiscally discontent at large, are willing to run a kamikaze candidate against any RINO target of opportunity. And not all of the challengers are going to be O’Donnell-type buffoons. Sharron Angle was a much more serious candidate and ran a much more serious campaign. Pat Toomey chased Arlen Specter out of the Republican party and then put the smackdown on his Democratic opponent — a retired admiral, let’s remember, not some wild-eyed hippie — in the general. Pat Toomey scares the old guard. They do not want to see a dozen Pat Toomeys showing up in Republican primaries next time around. Kay Bailey Hutchison does not want some Stetson-wearing Toomey showing up in her backyard.

This is the real reason why the GOP is holding the line on spending. Those primaries that ousted the GOP rinos (you know the No labels crowd) can easily be repeated and establishment candidates who know Tea Party supporters can muster both cash and votes in primaries have no desire to find themselves as an occasional commentator on a CNN panel rather than in the halls of power.

It would be nice if they did the right thing because it is right but if they do it out of fear that’s fine too.

No winners + No Originality + No Transparency = No Credibility for No Labels

Posted: December 14, 2010 by datechguy in elections, internet/free speech, opinion/news, politics
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On Morning Joe they are pushing the whole No Labels story but Ann Althouse was not impressed

Every couple of months we get something like this, don’t we? It’s the “Coffee Party” all over again — isn’t it? — an attempt by elite Democrats to create the impression of a grass-roots movement. It never works. [Remember “One Nation”?] And “No Labels” is such a silly… uh… label. It has a certain nostalgic 60s vibe: I ain’t lookin’ to… analyze you, categorize you, finalize you or advertise you…. But I came from the 60s, and I’m sick of that vibe when it’s used to advertise to me.

Well its a new moment I’m sure it is not unoriginal is it. Well Nice Deb says not so much:

NL: We are frustrated and concerned about the tone of politics.

CP: Critical policy discussions are subjected to a perpetual cacophony of misinformation designed to breed cultural resentment.

NL: We are passionate about addressing America’s challenges.

CP: We believe that by talking and learning together – we can take action to solve the problems facing our nation

NL: We are Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

CP: …we are non-partisan

NL: We believe hyper-partisanship is destroying our politics and paralyzing our ability to govern.

CP: The ugliness on television, on talk radio, and on blogs and conspiracy emails is alienating to the vast majority of Americans.

Hey it’s just a coincidence, I’m sure they aren’t stealing logos or anything from other organizations. Gateway Pundit:

The RINO-Leftist group “No Labels” completely stole their logo-design from a New York website “More Party Animals.”

Don’t worry Ben Smith has it covered:

No Labels designer Dave Warren, a Madison Avenue vet whose firm is FLY Communications, said the similarity is just a clip-art driven coincidence:

Well this is a new group and it is all about doing things the right way so I’m sure they are very public about their sources of funding…or maybe not Says Salon:

No Labels, the new centrist pro-“common sense” advocacy group that launched at a high-profile New York conference today, will not be revealing to the public who is putting up the money for the effort.

Salon asked No Labels spokesman Adam Segal if the nonprofit group, which has reportedly raised at least $1 million so far, would reveal the sources of its funding now or in the future. Segal declined to comment on the record. That $1 million has already paid for the big conference at Columbia today, a flashy website, a new logo, and a P.R. guy. The Wall Street Journal did report the names of three wealthy donors last month (more on this below), but it’s unknown how much they gave and who else is involved.

No Labels is organized as a 501(c)(4), which means that it is not legally required to release the identities of donors. You may remember that designation from the midterm elections, when similarly organized groups spent millions of anonymously donated dollars on campaign ads.

You mean the same folks who derided the hidden money in politics is hiding something? Amazing! Well politico mentions who is involved:

And its speakers—who ranged from Republican moderates like ex-Virginia Rep. Tom Davis to liberal Democrats like New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand—sang the praises of cooperation and compromise.

But the only Republicans present at Columbia University’s modern, square Alfred Lerner Hall seemed to be those who had recently lost primary races, such as South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis and Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, or former Republicans like Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No other senior elected Republican officials were in attendance,

All of these people are folks who lost and are part of the establishment, it’s as bi-partisan as I am (and I’m NOT), so what is it all about? Stacy McCain who writes for money and doesn’t pretend otherwise has the answer:

All of which is to say that this is an outright scam, and the only question you really need to ask about this kind of political hustle is: Cui bono?

Who benefits here? What’s the bottom line? Where’s the payoff, who’s paying and who’s getting paid? Before we identify the sow, let’s see which piglets are sucking the teats:

It’s something of an odd conceit, given the decentralized way powerful grass-roots movements generally come together these days. After all, MoveOn.org and the Tea Party groups sprang up organically and in a decentralized way, embraced by angry citizens circulating online petitions and holding rallies.
By contrast, No Labels was created by two Washington consultants, the Democratic fund-raiser Nancy Jacobson and the Republican image-shaper Mark McKinnon, and its slick opening event featured throngs of journalists, free boxed lunches and a song written for the occasion by the pop sensation Akon.

Ding! Ding! Ding! This scam is funded by Democratic money and scripted by the man whose name is a synonym for everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party.

So this No Labels operation is a stealth-Democrat ripoff perpetrated with the help of two-faced RINO backstabbers.

Or to put it another way, it is an attempt by consultants to stay relevant and keep making money and stay relevant because if the actual grass-roots are put in play, then their ability to suck money off of taxpayer dime is kaput!

I make my living selling myself and my radio show. When people buy from me they meet me and know exactly what they are getting. These people are selling a wisp of smoke that doesn’t really exist.

Will they be able to fool enough people to change elections? Likely not, but they might manage to keep themselves in other people’s money for a while, and that’s what it really is all about. It’s the time share media all over again.

Memeorandum thread here.

Update: Doug Powers at Michelle’s has a new logo for them. Somehow it looks familiar

Mitt Romney bravely follows behind Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin!

Posted: December 14, 2010 by datechguy in elections, politics
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Last week I had a meeting with a pol who will remain nameless. We talked for a while on a lot of subjects and election 2012 came up.

He is an unabashed backer of Mitt Romney, called him one of the smartest guys he ever met, said he understood economics like few others, and said that during a crisis or an emergency he is at his best. Fantastic at solving problems.

I’ve talked about my meeting with Romney and how unimpressed I was, but this is a fellow whose opinion I respect so I resolved to give Mitt a second look.

My primary objection to Mitt is that he is not a leader and this simply reinforces that impression:

Thus did Mitt cover his ass ahead of the 2011 primaries, where support for the new porkier tax cuts compromise will no doubt be a litmus test for grassroots righties.

and of Course Allahpundit ever ready to hit Palin is forced to make this concession:

I know our resident Palinistas can’t wait to point out that she was leading on this issue while Mitt was holding back until the very day of the Senate vote, so go on. Gloat. You know you wanna.

It’s not a question of “wanna” its a question of fact.

As far as his actual piece it’s here and he does make some good points:

In many cases, lowering taxes can actually increase government revenues. If new businesses, new investments and new hiring are spurred by the prospects of better after-tax returns, the taxes paid by these new or growing businesses and employees can more than make up for the lower rates of taxation. But once again, because the tax deal is temporary, a large portion of this beneficent effect is missing. What some are calling a grand compromise is not grand at all, except in its price tag. The total package will cost nearly $1 trillion, resulting in substantial new borrowing at a time when we are already drowning in red ink.

Part of the tax deal is a temporary reduction in payroll taxes. The president was insistent, however, that only the employee’s payroll taxes be reduced — the portion paid by the employer is to remain the same. Again, the president is looking to get more money into the hands of the consumer to boost near-term spending. But by refusing to lower the cost of hiring a new employee, he fails to encourage what the American people want even more than lower taxes — more good jobs. Like the income tax deal, the payroll tax deal will add to the deficit.

It’s a fair point but with the new congress this can be addressed, I suggest reading it. His points are certainly legit and one can come to that conclusion without being phony but again it is very interesting that he makes his point at the moment when it involves the least risk for him, Palin and Limbaugh have come out against, and there are already senate republicans against but not enough to stop the bill.

Assuming the gentlemen I talked to is correct I suspect Mitt is being over managed. If that is the case I have this advice for the Governor. BE YOURSELF Lead! Get away from your handlers and make your case. You are a man of faith, trust your faith and your God and don’t worry about the occasional mistake, everyone makes them.

There is every possibility that Governor Romney will be the next president, (I’d prefer comer’s or treasury sec) if that is the case then learn to be the best leader you can be.

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