Saturday, December 20, 2008

‘09 Battlegrounds:  Bob McDonnell runs with United Virginia GOP

by W. T. Howes

Virginia and New Jersey are scheduled to be the top two battleground states in 2009.  Viriginia will hold statewide elections.  At the top of the ticket for the GOP is Attorney General Bob McDonnell.  Bob McDonnell is running at the head of a united GOP, which will enable out-of-state stars like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal (pictured left) to visit the Old Dominion on his behalf.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

‘09 Battlegrounds:  Another Dem Indicted in New Jersey

by W. T. Howes

The Conga Line of corruption in New Jersey has been leading more and more Democrat elected officials first to the court room, then to the GreyBar Hotel.  Yesterday, the Conga Line grew by one as the New Jersey Attorney General announced the indictment of a sitting New Jersey Assemblyman for using his legislative office to obtain, view and distribute child pornography.  The question for Republicans is convincing the public that they are not just more of the same.

Over the past seven years, New Jersey residents have watched one public official after another caught and convicted of public corruption, forced to resign their office in disgrace, then shuttled off to prison.  The Garden State has seen the conviction of such leading lights as Sharpe James, mayor of the state’s most populous city and a powerful state senator; Wayne Bryant, a powerful south Jersey state senator and holder of more public jobs than he could count; John Lynch, former state senate President and patron of former Governor Jim McGreevey.

Indeed, former Governor Jim McGreevey himself resigned in 2004 under a cloud of scandal.  His stated reason for resignation was the revelation that he was a “Gay American”.  However, his resignation coincided with the revelation that McGreevey was an unidicted co-conspirator in a corrupt land deal in his home county.

Despite the very public prosecution of these high profile Democrats and a host of lesser Democrat crooks in Essex, Hudson, Camden, Atlantic and Bergen Counties, the Democrats remain the majority party in New Jersey.  The Democrats hold the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature.  Democrats occupy both U.S. Senate seats and have upped their majority in the House delegation to 8-5.  They have taken control of county governments in the former GOP strongholds of Bergen County and Monmouth County, and consolidated their control in other counties.

Why is it that they can continue to make the state more and more blue each year? 

Answer number one is money.  Former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine ran successfully for U.S. Senate in 2000.  Since that time he has used his personal fortune to underwrite liberal causes, local Democrat organizations and local Democrat candidates across the state.  He has invested as much as two hundred million of his own dollars in the New Jersey Democratic Party.  The Corzine investment has made the organization flush with cash at all levels.

Answer number two is demographics.  New Jersey’s demogaphics have changed dramatically.  Its population has been in decline both in absolute numbers and in numbers relative to the rest of the nation.  New Jerseyans are moving out of the state to the west and the south.  Those emigrants tend to be more conservative and affluent.  New Yorkers are migrating in.  Those immigrants tend to the Democrat side.  Further, the Hispanic and Asian communities have coalesced around the Democrats.  The result is that the Republican base has shrunk in New Jersey.

Answer number three is cynicism.  There are many voters in urban areas who have a Machiavellian approach to corruption:  “Sure, my politician is corrupt, but who cares?  He/she gets things done for us.” Others dismiss claims about Dem corruption with the answer that the Republicans are no different.

Answer number four is politics.  Republicans held the majority from 1991 through 2001.  They ran on the core conservative principles of lower taxes, less government and more family, then gradually abandoned those principles.  Where the New Jersey Dems were the tax-and-spend party, the New Jersey GOP became the borrow-and-spend party

New Jersey will be one of two or three marquis races nation wide next year.  New Jersey Republicans have an opportunity to score an upset, thanks to the fiscal nightmare that has continued on the Dems’ watch and to the Conga Line of corruption.  New Jersey Republicans must unite around the candidate who wins the primary, and must also rally around the conservative principles that make the party great.

Monday, December 15, 2008

To the Freep:  A Southern Man Don’t Need You Around Anyhow!

by W. T. Howes

The last resort of the incompetent is sheer prejudice.  Last week, the Detroit Free Press resorted to rank bigotry to explain the defeat of the automaker bailout bill in the United States Senate.  The guilty columnist relied on one of the greatest non-PC prejudices in the nation:  Anti-Southern.  The image of the Southern conservative as an ignorant bigot looms large in the liberal psyche.  I doubt that Southerner are worried.  To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd (see You Tube Below), a Southern man don’t need you around anyhow.

I was looking for the some objective indication that the following passage was intended to be satire or some tongue in cheek delivery to lighten the serious mood surrounding the temporary defeat of the automaker bailout, but there was no such objective indication.  RON DZWONKOWSKI of the Detroit Free Press wrote the following analysis of the defeat of last week’s cloture vote on the auto bailout bill:

“I mean that a handful of senators from former Confederate states could so summarily sign a death warrant for the Michigan economy. A bunch of self-serving Republicans who will now go around blaming the United Auto Workers for killing the auto industry rescue plan.

Convenient excuse for something they never had any intention of passing. It’s just a coincidence, of course, that they all come from states with non-union auto plants owned by the foreign competitors of GM, Ford and Chrysler.

A former colleague who grew up in the Deep South once told me, “Where I come from, there’s not much difference between union and Union Army.”

Certainly this defeat was payback for the UAW’s traditional support of Democratic candidates. But maybe it ran even deeper, back to 1861 when President Abraham Lincoln exclaimed “Thank God for Michigan!” as 798 men from this state arrived in Washington to defend it against advancing southern troops early in the Civil War.

Thursday’s Senate session gave this southern cabal a chance at long last to say, ‘To hell with Michigan!’”

OK, thanks for setting me straight.  Now I understand that defeat of the cloture vote in the Senate was revenge for the War Between the States.  It couldn’t be that some Republicans stood by their principles and mustered enough votes to prevent a damaging and ridiculous plan from becoming law.  It couldn’t be that several thinking Democrats joined those Republicans in standing for free market-smaller government ideals.  No that just couldn’t be.  That does not fit the MSM’s template.  To the MSM, Republican ideals don’t work.  And the MSM wouldn’t want the Republicans to get the idea that Republican ideals will work and they will sell.

So, enter the stereotype.  It is a stereotype that is widely accepted in liberal wonderland.  This stereotype says that White Christian Southern Men are racists who want to see their wives barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, who want to reinstitute slavery and to oppress the poor.  This stereotype says that White Christian Southern Men love their guns and their football to the exclusion of education.  This stereotype says that White Southern Christian Men are ignorant and violent.  Terms like redneck, hick and cracker are acceptable parlance.  A liberal thinks nothing of comparing White Southern Christian Men to KKK bullies.

And this stereotype is accepted as gospel by libs and the MSM.

Funny, though, that the biggest and best supporters of Governor Sarah Palin are from the South.  Sarah’s most vocal supporter of late has been Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss.  Her best results were in the deep South and among men and regular churchgoers.  That’s right, the same people who want to see women barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen want to see an Alaskan woman in the White House. 

Never mind that the South has established the finest set of state universities in the nation.  Top students from the North are flocking to the Universities of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida - if they can get in.

The fact is that someone has to be blamed for this latest liberal failure.  There has to be a bogeyman.  Pass the crackers, please!