Archive for the ‘elections’ Category

…those are the words of Rush Limbaugh and they describe Sarah Palin to a T:

ITEM: Andrew Sullivan continues to exhibit the signs of Advanced Sullivan’s Syndrome whenever Sarah Palin comes up

What you see here is the chart of the Real Clear Politics poll average for the 2008 presidential campaign, showing that by Sept. 8, the McCain-Palin ticket was leading by 2.9 points — with the RCP average for the Republican ticket (48.3) on that date being the highest poll showing of McCain vs. Obama at any point during the entire campaign, even before either candidate had won his party’s nomination.

When Sarah Palin’s name was announced as the GOP vice-presidential candidate on Sept. 29, Andrew Sullivan saw what everyone saw: Here was a potential game-changer.

I remember that numbers game, the democrats were in dead panic, and in my opinion still are.

Item: People are getting violent

The general consensus is that Cowan was a leftist suffering from a particularly bad case of Palin Derangement Syndrome (via memeorandum). The story really doesn’t bear that out, though. I mean, he could have gotten just as enraged had be seen any spoiled politician’s daughter who had wrangled her way into a position that she would never have earned save for her last name.

That’s not to say that Bristol Palin is one of those bratty daughters (let the record reflect that I don’t believe she is), but given the general disposition of politicians’ daughters, you can forgive him just a little for thinking she is. It’s not as if the media has made any real effort to show her otherwise.

Item: Adults are obsessing with a teen girls facebook

“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. This, however, has nothing to do with Willow Palin or the substance of what she said on Facebook. The ‘slur’ used here is one you could hear on the streets of West Hollywood or Chelsea every day of the week. Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader. Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.

“The angry misogynistic left and their accomplices in the main stream media have been unable to take down Governor Palin – no matter how hard they have tried. Unable to take her down directly they now have decided to try to hurt her by attacking the most important thing in her life – her family.

“Any person, gay or straight, who participates in this cheap political smear should be ashamed of themselves.”

Meanwhile Bristol Palin shows more class than those who wish to judge her:

Willow and I shouldn’t have reacted to negative comments about our family. We apologize. On a nicer note, thank you for supporting the great competition in Dancing with the Stars!

And those having no daughters of her own the Lonely Conservative (our guest next week!) asks the relevant question

Lefties are in a tizzy because of some things the Palin girls wrote on their facebook pages. Who, but the deranged, spends time reading teenagers’ facebook postings?

It’s a pretty good question, what would advocates on the left say if it was the facebook of one of the Obama girls?

Item: Panic over a dancing show

“This will be a disaster for the show if Bristol wins,” one TV insider tells me. “Any creditability the show had will be over. It will go from being a dancing competition to a popularity competition where whoever has the most rabid fan base will always win no matter how little talent they have.”

And while it’s true Bristol’s dancing has dramatically improved since the season began, no one with working eyes would put her in the same league as the other remaining stars, Jennifer Grey and Kyle Massey.

Excuse me “Dancing with the Stars” has credibility? It’s a dancing show that has the public voting on who stays or goes, just like American Idol. What kind of credibility do you think it had? Allah Pundit puts it well:

Is there any better proof of how stupid the hyperventilating over Bristol and “Dancing With the Stars” has been than “The Daily Show” feeling obliged to open the program with a defense of the Palins? Even if it is basically just a lead-in to a segment goofing on her new show? This is like flipping over to Maddow’s program and being greeted with the segment, “Maybe we’re being too hard on Jim DeMint.”

Full disclosure. I don’t watch Dancing with the Stars, I have no interesting in Dancing with the Stars, I never will have any interest in Dancing with the stars and I don’t care who wins or doesn’t win, but it is fun to watch the the left go Kryten over this.

Item: Sour grapes

JOE SCARBOROUGH: She’s not going to run. It’s The Art of War. The reason she’s saying this is cause she knows she can’t win. She knows she’s got to keep her name out in the press. She knows her poll numbers are dropping. She knows that she was humiliated in her home state of Alaska. She knows that Christine O’Donnell did not work out well. And so–I hate to say it–it’s about money.

And so, this keeps things ginned up. Because if she wasn’t saying this right now, people would be writing her Dany Quayle political obituary. So, she’s going to stir it up, and get people talking about to get in the mix. Now listen: you can hate me at home if you want to, and Mom, go ahead and write me the email, call me a Marxist. It’s the reality; it’s what’s happening. And it is so patently obvious I’m surprised more people haven’t picked up on it.

Joe I like you a lot, and if my show gets that 2nd hour sometime next year I’d love to have you with or without Mika on but if you think that Sarah Palin has been “humiliated” in the last election and call that reality then you need to have somebody cut the mind altering drugs you are being fed a bit more. Or is it just in the contract of all MSNBC conservatives not named Buchanan that they must dis Sarah Palin to preserve the Niche Market of the MSNBC Brand?

Oh and lets face it it’s you lot that hit depend on Sarah Palin for money, every time you hit her, or put her on the air, or whatever your ratings soar. That’s why you are upset she is not on your show, not because she is a coward, but because she isn’t bothering to punch downwards.

Item: People are getting upset over typos

From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used “refudiate,” we have concluded that neither “refute” nor “repudiate” seems consistently precise, and that “refudiate” more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of “reject.”

Lawrence O’Donnell got wee-wee’d up with the decision, and lashed out against the dictionary for allowing Sarah Palin to ruin the English language, or something. He is also annoyed that for a woman, who he claims will not run for president, gets this much attention. Then why talk about her if she is so irrelevant?

Whatever you might think about Lawrence O’Donnell he is a smart political operator. He doesn’t waste his time on targets that don’t threaten his admitted socialist agenda.

Item: And here comes the old Bush Gravitas question:

The article by Robert Draper was much more fascinating as a snapshot of where the New York Times is at this moment regarding the former Alaska governor.

Now we can take it as a given that the powers that be on 44th Street would prefer China’s Hu Jintao — possibly even Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad — for U.S. president to Sarah Palin. Nevertheless, they have a problem. Is it better to tear down Palin unmercifully now, as was done by most of the MSM earlier, or to give her a pass for the time being, so that she might actually get nominated to be branded later, when it counts, as a dangerous extremist, not to mention an illiterate moron?

As Simon continues the whole book question comes up as the Times

I explained to Palin that in my view, at least, this line of inquiry wasn’t gratuitous — that questions did in fact linger about her “gravitas gap.”

Questions linger… Ah, poor Sarah. So insecure about her intellect. Ah, the “gravitas gap.” What we are we to do?

Let’s leave aside the snide quality of the writing (his and mine), the absurdity that Katie Couric could be the arbitrator of anything intellectual, and even that Draper is simply rehearsing the tired nostrum that Democrats are more educated than Babbit-like Republicans (when the Times itself finally admitted than Bush had better grades than Kerry at Yale) and ask something simple and important that rarely gets asked: What the Hell difference does this make anyway?

Katie Couric would be the laughing-stock of the media for managing to Sink a ship already at the bottom at CBS, but she helped stop the Palin when the one needed it so she will remain in the pantheon of heroes of the MSM and the 44th street crowd.

Item Spencer Baucus the voice of the GOP:

Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus (R) told members of the South Shelby Chamber of Commerce that former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was probably the reason for the GOP’s failure to take control in the U.S. Senate in last week’s election.

“The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware,” Bachus said. “Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate.”

Tell me how much favorable coverage Spencer Bachus has gotten in the MSM before that comment? anyone Bueller? Bueller?

Every republican challenger will be using back benchers like Spencer like this over the next year to hit Palin because they don’t dare attack her openly and risk losing support of those of us who support her. And the media will lap it up.

Let’s bottom line this: Sarah Palin is the person liberals most fear, because of what she means culturally, she makes a lie out of truths they have convinced themselves of for years.

Sarah Palin is also the person the republican establishment fear the most because she means it when she says about change and that threatens their personal prerogatives.

It will not be a boring year.

Syracuse.com via Live at 5 reports that the lawyers are in town:

Cars with Maryland, Michigan and Kansas license plates are parked outside the Wayne County Board of Elections in Lyons, a rural Erie Canal crossroads between Rochester and Syracuse.

Inside, lawyers for U.S. Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt, and challenger Ann Marie Buerkle are seated around a table in the break room with the two elections commissioners and their two deputies. All eyes are on the box of absentee ballots, still in envelopes two weeks after the election showed the 25th Congressional District too close to call.

Democrats understand that the president popularity is unlikely to improve much in the district over the next two years so if they want this seat they have to steal it NOW.

You can help Ann Marie hold them off by donating here.

Following up on my last post I spoke to Ann Marie Buerkle this week:

DaTechGuy: How are the absentee ballots looking so far?

Ann Marie Buerkle: They are looking pretty good absentee ballots are breaking more from areas I’ve done well in.

DTG: So what kind of tactics have you been seeing the other side running?

AMB: Well first of all they asked for a manual count, the Judge has rejected that temporarily. No problems have come up with the machines. The DCCC and the Unions are here in force and their campaign has asked the media to in a memo to hold off reporting on the race. They’ve even been contacting voters at home to find how they voted! (DTG as I’ve reported here)

DTG: Has there been any issues with Military Ballots?

AMB: No they have steered clear of them, so far.

DTG: I guess that is the last resort, What kind of operation are they running?

AMB: The goal seems to be to disqualify as many republican ballots as they can, they are objecting to absentee ballots at a ratio of 3-1 compared to us.

DTG: And what about the congressman himself?

AMB: There has been sign of him, he has not make a statement or an appearance since election night. On Veterans day he didn’t even put in an appearance or a statement, very very unusual.

DTG: Speaking of unusual a lot of people seems to have been taken by surprise by your lead.

AMB: John McCain only took 43% of the vote in this district.

DTG: And there was that poll we talked about during Stacy McCain’s and my visit.

AMB: We worked very hard in Monroe County and took it 55-45. No Republican had ever taken Monroe county before. We did even better in Wayne county with 65% of the vote and I have to mention the grass roots effort in the town of Webster, simply masterful, volunteers knocked on every door and left materials at every house more than once. I can’t say enough about our volunteers.

DTG: And as the count goes on what will you be up to?

AMB: I will be attending the Congressional Freshman Orientation event in Washington.

DTG: Yeah with the current popularity of the president that a losing proposition, no wonder they are all in now. Finally with all the Union and DCCC help against you I presume you could use a few dollars to keep up.

AMB: Yes we need to be able to match them as they try to disqualify enough republican absentee ballots to manage a win.

DTG: And where can people give?

AMB: They can give at our post Election Fund here.

DTG: Ann Marie Buerkle thank you for your time

You might remember Ny-25 as one of the stops on my pre-election road trip. Well strange things seem to be going on over there.

The first strange thing is the absence of media attention, apparently this is a request from the Maffei campaign that has apparently not fallen on deaf ears:

any vote totals reported before every absentee ballot is counted are grossly incomplete and premature, particularly before ballots in Onondaga County are counted…While the media has responsibility to report the daily developments during the recanvass and tallying of absentee ballots, they also have a responsibility to characterize the early steps in this process accordingly.

Please please please reporters don’t report on the count at this time.

And what is going on that they don’t want reported on? Stuff like this:.

While the reasons for this effort are unclear, many agree it could be an attempt by some to identify who each person voted for in an effort to disqualify certain eligible ballots from being counted,” Buerkle said. “I would like the public to know that my campaign is not connected to this current effort. Further, no American — in upstate New York or anywhere — is in anyway under obligation to provide information to anyone on how he or she voted in any election, including my own.”

Buerkle’s statement did not name Maffei’s campaign as the party responsible for the calls, but a spokeswoman for the Maffei campaign confirmed they are calling voters in the district.

Maffei campaign communications director Abigail Gardner said Monday that while she believes they are asking how people voted, the reason for the calls is to ensure all votes are counted.

“It’s totally legal and there’s nothing really shady about it,” Gardner said. “I think we are asking how people voted, but the most important thing is to make sure that, if somebody cast a vote, that it’s going to be counted. There have been some problems.”emphasis mine

I think we are asking how people voted? I think! You don’t know?

Sure a campaign trying to play with the secret ballot? Nothing shady about that at all. Ann Marie Burkle’s campaign put out this statement:

Buerkle calls on voters who are contacted to ask who is calling and not feel that they must reveal how they voted.

“If anyone is contacted in this effort please know that your vote is privileged and under no circumstances should an individual be pressured into revealing how their vote was cast,” she said. “If you are contacted, ask them to provide their full name, for whom they work, why they are seeking this information and if you are required to provide this information.”

I’ve been wondering why this recount hasn’t gotten the attention others like NY-1 have. As the Maffei campaign lawyers up and activists start heading up to the area to try to salvage a seat from the big red wave, I guess we know why.

More to come.

Update: Looks like that count is heading in the right direction

The difference means that Buerkle has now widened her overall lead in the four-county district to 729 votes, according to unofficial election returns.

Buerkle picked up a net gain of 24 votes in Cayuga County (59 to 35 over Maffei) from absentee ballots, according to Cayuga County Election Commissioner Kate Lacey. Buerkle also had a net gain of 18 votes in Monroe County (630 to 612 over Maffei) after absentee ballots were opened from its three towns in the district, according to figures supplied by both campaigns.

By my calculations Maffei needs to win the Absentees in Onondaga county by twice the spread that he won the vote of to come out ahead, that’s not even counting any spread in Wayne county. I think it’s looking good.

Update 2: Added missing link