With the midterm elections now just six months away, are Democrats’ prospects improving? Not really. For every hopeful sign they get, several others — usually the more telling ones — point the other way. . . .
This month could provide important clues about whether the Republican storm is still gathering force.
On May 18, Pennsylvania will hold a special election in its 12th Congressional District to fill the House seat of the late John Murtha. This is the only congressional district in the nation that went for Republican John McCain in 2008 after backing Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
It is a swing seat long held by Murtha for his party, but this part of the Keystone State is showing signs of going Republican. A Democratic loss would underscore the narrative that Democrats are in serious trouble heading toward November. . . .
Somewhat less surprising than if Charles Johnson or Conor Friedersdorf had endorsed him, but surprising nonetheless:
Crist continues to lead the polls. I expect that lead to fade as Republicans rally to Rubio and independents question the grounds for Crist’s candidacy. I hope that translates into a Rubio win, but I worry that a Rubio candidacy will be a tougher and harder fight than a Crist candidacy would have been: I don’t share the view that the conservative future belongs to Rubio’s hard-edged style of politics, especially not in a state like Florida. But all that is past helping. The GOP nomination race has a presumptive winner and Republicans of all stripes have a new standard-bearer.
Not exactly a full-throated “Wolverines” war cry, but probably the best we can expect from a Harvard-educated Canadian. Contrary to Frum’s worry-wart concerns, Crist is toast. Nobody respects a two-faced crapweasel, and I expect the backstabber to be a non-factor Nov. 2. As Allahpundit says, Sorry Charlie’s speech was repulsive:
Crist’s campaign staff has resigned en masse, which raises the question: Why did they hire on with that worthless political whore to begin with? I know we’re in a recession, but even GOP campaign operatives should try to maintain some shred of personal dignity . . .
Murtha’s ghost looms large over the 12th District, which sprawls in a bizarre gerrymander over a predominantly rural area stretching from the southwestern corner of the state up to Ebensburg in Cambria County, a three-hour drive away. The crab-like geographical outlines of the erstwhile dominion of Murthadom, however, are no more bizarre than the political landscape in a district where Democrats hold a 2-to-1 registration advantage — John Kerry carried the 12th in 2004 — but John McCain beat Barack Obama in 2008.
This is the part of Pennsylvania whose small-town residents Obama infamously described at a San Francisco fundraising event two years ago: “It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Democrats seem to be banking on the “anti-trade sentiment,” a genuine phenomenon in a Rust Belt region where the unemployment rate — as high as 13.5 percent in Fayette County, and well above 10 percent in other 12th District counties — would be even higher, were it not for the fact that for decades, ambitious young people have been moving away in search of better prospects elsewhere. The DCCC attack ads portray Burns’s signature on a no-tax-increase pledge as favoring “tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.”
That kind of accusation is transparently intended to appeal to surviving adherents of the arcane ideology of Murthanomics, wherein the keys to prosperity are protectionism and pork-barrel federal spending. Republicans may laugh at Murthanomics as a misguided nostalgia for the days of Smoot-Hawley, but at least a third of the audience at Wednesday night’s forum at Westmont Hilltop High applauded when Critz pledged to bring home the budget earmarks just like his late boss used to do. . . .
The preview strikes a personal chord. As with these candidates, there is a feeling that I have to blog. My motives differ strongly from those of Stacy McCain, who’s trying to make a living. For me, there is the notion that I have been blessed and equipped to stand athwart history in the ranks of the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Chorus, and would face judgement if I merely sat about and watched while Rome burns and a Progressive fiddles.
Right to Laugh looks good, too:
Disclaimer: Evan Sayet’s 2009 Heritage appearance was what prompted Stacy to recruit me for this gig, so I’m biased in favor of the fellow.
Heh: Charlie Crist’s flip-flop makes John Kerry look like the Rock of Gibraltar.
And. . .
Just a month ago, he was proud to be a member of the party of Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan. Now, suddenly, he can’t associate with them any longer because the system is broken.
Marco Rubio’s already got an ad out using Crist’s own words against him. If Crist thinks he has a prayer of winning this as an independent, then he is delusional, baby.
Well if he won’t listen when Mamma Cassie tries to talk to him and tell him how to live, he can always return to his punk roots:
It’s been a very good week for Burns, who was featured Tuesday on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and got a big push Wednesday from Newt Gingrich. Polls have shown the PA-12 contest “neck-and-neck,” as Burns campaign manager Tadd Rupp said, but Palin’s online endorsement Monday turned up the energy and focused national attention on the western Pennsylvania district. USA Today and the L.A. Times have both featured the race in the past 24 hours.
Burns’ staffers were in a celebratory mood after a candidate forum last night at Westmont Hilltop High School, where Democrat Mark Critz — a former Murtha staffer — apologized for a misleading TV ad run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. FactCheck.org labeled that ad false last week, saying, “For Democrats, misrepresenting an opponent’s anti-tax position as an anti-jobs position is getting to be a bad habit.” . . .
You can read the whole thing. Unfortunately, local news reporters didn’t seem immediately to catch the significance of the Critz apology, but I just got off the phone with the Burns campaign, which expects to have video online this afternoon highlighting what one source called a “huge blunder” by Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked candidate.
When the question was put to them, would [you] like to vote for someone like John Murtha or would you like a fresh start, the fresh start won 63-34, not a good sign for the Democratic contender who used to work for Murtha.
But it’s still neck-and-neck going into the home stretch, and it will take an all-out-effort for Republicans to beat the Pelosi machine in this Democratic stronghold. Learn more at TimBurnsForCongress.com.
UPDATE II: Here’s the clip of Mark Kritz apologizing:
Note the weasel-word method here:
So I want to take this opportunity, that if I’ve misstated Mr. Burns’s position on something, that I apologize. I didn’t mean to do that. It was my understanding that he did support the Fair Tax, and if that’s wrong, I apologize.
Beyond the two “ifs” which render the whole thing conditional, what Critz is apologizing for is not what he actually said previously during the debate, nor does it cover the distortions of his attack ads. It makes no difference whether or not Burns supports the Fair Tax. In his own ad, Critz portrays Burns’s signature on an Americans for Tax Reform no-tax-increase pledge as a job-killer (????), and the DCCC ad — called “quite misleading” by FactCheck.org — presents Burns as supporting a “23% national sales tax on just about everything” without mentioning that the proposed Fair Tax would eliminate all federal income taxes and abolish the IRS.
A cynic might suspect that Critz’s hypothetical “apology” is a clever attempt to prod Burns into denouncing the Fair Tax.
It always starts rather innocently, doesn’t it? Somewhere around “There oughta be a law” or “I have a cunning plan”.
Is that a sandwich, or a metaphor for Congress?
And then what happens? Some jacknut sees that mitigated disaster of an idea and says “What the world needs right now is an unmitigated disaster”
Awww yeah. . .KFC Double Down on peanut butter toast.
Now, while it’s a good thing that the American people elected a Hawaiian, let us hope that Congress doesn’t discover the Loco Moco, or what is merely a bad situation now could become worse than a Taco Town Taco.
