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Last year I saw Col West at the Pam Geller event, this year he was the Keynote Speaker, but before he gave his keynote he visited bloggers row. (Maureen Dowd was not invited)
There were a lot of people in that room who would love to see this man on a national ticket sometime soon.
update: …particularly if he keeps saying stuff like this.
Within Stacy McCain’s post this on Wisconsin was a link to Stephen Hays that explained an awful lot:
What’s more, Wisconsin teachers pay as much as $1100 each year in compulsory union dues. If the legislation passes, they will no longer be required to pay those dues – returning that money to their own pockets.
The power of labor leaders and the democrats pols they support are based upon compulsorily dues. My wife had to pay them when the nurses were made part of the teachers union. (It didn’t protect her job). It pays for a lot of fun parties and a lot of dem votes but does very little for actual union members who aren’t connected.
This is why the fight is so bitter. Once the compulsion is removed from union dues then the game is up and these guys know it.
Moreover as Stacy points out in his Spectator column:
Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard points out that the average teacher in Wisconsin receives $77,857 in total compensation, when the value of their generous benefit package is added to their salaries. Given that the median household income in Wisconsin is just above $50,000 (and the typical household has more than one wage-earner), this means that the striking teachers are earning substantially more than the people whose taxes pay their salaries.
This is fight that even if they win is going to coin republican votes nationwide. I think the unions actually know this but knowing they can’t survive without forced dues have decided to die on this hill…
…and they will.
Because if you had you might not be saying things like this:
That’s most of the plan. The rest of the plan, as Israel explains, is making life difficult for some of the pro-life Republicans who were swept into Congress last year. The theory is that voters sort of elected them by accident. And they are numerous. At this year’s March for Life, an annual rally against legal abortion, 17 newly elected members of Congress spoke, stretching the speechifying part of the event about an hour longer than scheduled.
The new members include lots of people who took over suburban districts that had been trending more liberal. The Republicans who won, in most cases, didn’t run on abortion. They got pro-life support—the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List endorsed 14 Republican congressional candidates who took over Democratic seats. But Democrats remain convinced that the new class was never smoked out.
Take Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-N.Y., one of the Democrats’ favorite examples. She started in politics as a spokeswoman for Operation Rescue in the 1980s. She didn’t hide this fact, but when she began running, she said she’d “be really careful not to make this a referendum on abortion.” Her opponent, incumbent Rep. Dan Maffei, tried to make abortion an issue. He lost. And when Buerkle got to Congress she immediately became a prominent pro-life advocate. Pro-choice activists can explain all of this, or try to.
Dave Dave Dave, if you read me and the lonely conservative you would know that it was likely the linkage of Buerkle to the pro-life movement that made the difference for her.
But a large portion of NY25′s voters are in Onondaga County. I did some digging and found out that there were 147,332 Catholics in Onondaga County alone in 2000 (Sorry, I searched for hours and couldn’t find any more recent data, or a breakdown of religious affiliation of registered voters.) I’m sure enough of those Catholics are registered voters who could swing the election in Buerkle’s favor. This race hasn’t been about social issues. It’s been about the economy, the direction of our country, and the failed policies of the current administration and Congress. By running this ad Dan Maffei just gave undecided pro-life voters a reason to vote for Ann Marie Buerkle.
And as Stacy pointed out:
See? Buerkle needed a miracle to win and, by highlighting her pro-life record in the final days of the campaign, her opponent gave her that miracle. Out of more than 200,000 votes cast in NY-25, Buerkle won by 657 votes, and how many of those votes were decided on the pro-life issue?
Additionally you might notice that the polls have steadily been trending toward life for years, advances in science and medicine has changed the viability equations additionally democrats haven’t grasped the idea that killing off your own voters for two generations tends to shrink your potential voting base. Additionally the growing Latin population is heavily Catholic and not the Nancy Pelosi flavor of Catholic either.
Like all great Evils abortion will eventually fall, in the end Americans are basically decent people. Dave is betting on the wrong horse.
Update: Stacy Points out that Buerkle is going to need your financial help in the short term.
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