Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged by Mitt Romney’s improvement in battleground state polls. They also frown as they watch Republicans trail in many winnable Senate races. And they shake their heads as DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz claims the Obama administration put out wrong information about the consulate murders in Benghazi but insists it did not put out false information.
Archives for October 2012
‘Paul Can Handle It’
Thursday night is the only vice presidential debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, and the newest face in the race will be ready.
That’s the assessment from Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry about his House colleague, close friend and 1998 freshman classmate Paul Ryan. Terry says he is looking forward to this debate because he’s well aware of Ryan’s command of the most important issue of the day.
“Paul really knows his stuff,” said Terry. “He is an expert at budgets and numbers and tax policy. There’s no doubt that people are going to look for him to win this debate.”
Terry admits a couple to factors could play to Vice President Joe Biden’s advantage, including a heavy focus on foreign affairs.
“Foreign policy is not an area that Paul is really engaged in,” he said. “He knows it well enough. He attends all the classified briefings that we get. I’m sure they’ve worked with him, but it’s one of those areas where that does fall to Joe Biden’s expertise.”
The congressman says another advantage for Biden could be the third person on the stage. ABC’s Martha Raddatz is the moderator and many on the right have suggested Raddatz has a conflict of interest because she hosted President Obama at her first wedding back in 1991. Ryan says he’s not concerned about that but Terry isn’t so sure.
“I got to tell you I’m a little worried that (the moderator) is a friend of Barack Obama’s and she’s the foreign correspondent. They seem like they’re going to be loading up on the foreign policy questions.”
Biden’s habit of putting his foot in his mouth provides some reassurance for Rep. Terry.
“Joe Biden is kind of like attending a NASCAR race,” said Terry. “You just kind of sit there and wait for the wreck.”
Biden has promised to be more aggressive in this debate than Obama was in last week’s first presidential debate. Terry says Rep. Ryan will be just fine in that environment.
“He is ready for that,” said Terry. “That’s the other talent that Paul brings to this. He’s gone into the lion’s den and argued for these economic positions. He’s already taken every shot possible that Joe Biden can bring to the table.”
Terry says he is sensing a definite surge in enthusiasm in his “classic swing district” surrounding Omaha. President Obama narrowly carried Terry’s district in 2008 and picked up an extra electoral vote as a result. Terry predicts that won’t happen this time around.
Affirmative Action & The Supremes
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in the latest battle over racial preferences in the college admissions process.
The case at hand centers on Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas but claims her grades and extra-curricular activities were far superior to those of students chosen ahead of her. Why? Fisher says it’s because she is white and was a victim of the university’s preference toward minority students. School leaders do not deny using race as a criterion but will not say how much of a factor that is in their admission decisions.
Last decade, the high court ruled that race could play a factor in law school admissions but could not be awarded a specific point value. That decision stemmed from a case at the University of Michigan.
Horace Cooper is Co-Chair of the Project 21 Black Leadership Council. He is also a former constitutional law professor and served as general counsel to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. He says the University of Texas deliberately thumbed its nose at the earlier court decision.
“The University of Texas decided, even though the case law showed for law schools you were given some leeway but for undergraduates you weren’t given that same leeway, decided to try it anyway and it is that the Supreme Court is going to be taking a look at,” said Cooper.
He is not certain which way the court will decide this case following today’s oral arguments. He expects the verdict to fall along the usual lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the deciding vote. Cooper expects a bit of a mushy decision. He predicts Kennedy will “tell Texas that they shouldn’t have adopted this policy but I still think he’s going to allow for the concept of it to continue, at least in law schools.”
Cooper says the provisions put in place to prevent racial discrimination against blacks in the 1960s were absolutely necessary because qualified students were being denied access to higher education based on race. he says the same thing is now happening in the opposite direction.
“This is social engineering,” he said. “It’s the same kind of social engineering that led to Jim Crow. Government thought it knew which racial groups should go to school and which racial groups should not. It was wrong then. It’s wrong now.”
Double Voting? No Problem!
New Project Veritas videos show Obama campaign volunteers ready to assist in voter fraud by helping people cast ballots in multiple states.
The bulk of the new video centers on the Organizing for America (OFA) office in Houston, as an undercover videographer tells regional field director Stephanie Caballero that wants to vote in both Texas and Florida. She claims she’s all set to vote in Texas and is registered to vote in Florida but isn’t sure how to get a Florida ballot.
After some initial hesitation, Caballero not only laughs and calls the idea “cool” but she prints out a Florida absentee ballot request form and then advises the woman to play dumb if she gets caught voting in multiple states.
“The director actually gave an out-of-state absentee ballot (request form) and actually encouraged her to lie, encouraged her to say she didn’t know what she was doing when the director makes it pretty evident that she does know that it’s illegal and she wants her not to get caught,” said O’Keefe. “I think the expectation here is that she just says, ‘No, you can’t do that. I’m not going to help you with it,’ not go ahead and encourage her to lie about it.”
Later the video shows men in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut approaching Obama campaign workers and specifically asking for multiple voter registration forms so they can vote in two different states. They meet no resistance.
When others later claim to be Republicans simply wishing to register, the Obama campaign workers are very reluctant to part with “valuable” registration forms.
“So that was an interesting distinction,” said O’Keefe. “Say you want to commit fraud and you get all the forms you want, say that you just want to vote and the forms become valuable.”
He says this scenario played out in almost every encounter across the nation. O’Keefe has several more videos planned for release in the days to come.
Three Martini Lunch 10/10/12
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Mitt Romney surging in every major poll and even taking the lead in the Real Clear Politics average. They also cringe as the administration line on the terrorism in Libya changes again but they applaud Congress for digging deeper on the matter. And they wonder why conservatives are so upset about Martha Raddatz moderating the vice presidential debate just because President Obama attended her wedding in 1991.
‘Absolute Political Correctness’
California’s new law banning any counseling that discourages acting on same-sex attractions is now facing an intense legal fight in federal court. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the ban last week, saying the idea of counseling people away from their homosexual inclinations ought to be relegated to the “dust bin of quackery”.
Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver is gearing up for the impending legal battle. He says a Democratic state lawmaker proposed the bill after watching an MTV program that featured counseling of a person not to pursue their hormonal urges towards the same gender. Staver asserts the premise of the new law is unprecedented in it’s assault on liberty.
“This particular bill essentially says that no counseling at all to reduce or eliminate or even not to act on your same-sex attractions is not permissible effective January 1,” said Staver. “The only kind of counseling that can be done is counseling that affirms or says it’s okay to act on or continue to participate in your same-sex attractions. It’s the first time in history that the government has come into counselors and said, ‘You can counsel on this subject matter but you can only express this viewpoint.'”
Staver notes that the law not only ties the hands of counselors but also patients who sincerely want this type of therapy and to be rid of unwanted homosexual attractions. He used one of his clients in this case as an example of why he believes the state is way off base.
Staver says this young client “has had unwanted same-sex attractions, has had anxiety, self-esteem issue and identity issues and relationships with the family but now has gone into counseling” with noticeable results. “The family relationship is well on the way to being repaired,” said Staver. “The anxiety level has ultimately been addressed and this person is appreciative of this counseling and wants to resolve his value system so that he does not act on same sex attractions that he has experienced. That is his right as a client. That is the right of a counselor to provide that type of counseling or refer to counseling that would help him. Under this new law, neither the clients nor the counselors can provide or receive that kind of counseling.”
Without a court injunction against the law, Staver says counselors will face a Catch-22.
“If this law were to go into effect, the counselors the counselors that we represent and many, many others will face disciplinary matters no matter what,” said Staver. “If they counsel someone that they’re currently counseling or someone who seeks counseling they’ll violate the law that goes into effect. If they don’t counsel them, they don’t refer them, they don’t provide them alternative information, guess what? They violate the ethical codes.”
Staver firmly believes this is the latest alarming step along a very slippery cultural slope.
“It’s absolute political correctness and immoral behavior and immoral and just bankrupt thinking that has led to this,” said Staver. “They are legislating a specific kind of morality and that morality is only that homosexuality is good and that same sex attractions are nothing to ultimately be resisted. Even if you don’t want them, even if you don’t want to act on them, so what? Too bad. You’ve got to be counseled to act on them anyway. That’s just absurd. If anything is quackery it’s the quackery of the California legislature and the governor that ultimately has the audacity and the hubris to think that they can interfere between a client and the counselor’s relationship.”
Staver says he expects the injunction hearing to take place sometime in November because there needs to be a decision before the law takes effect in January. The legal action challenges an impending state law but Liberty Counsel is mounting this challenge in federal court.
“It raises federal constitutional issues with regards to the right to the freedom of speech. We also mention the California state constitution, which gives frankly a broader protection of free speech rights than even does the federal one,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 10/9/12
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are thrilled to see Princeton economist Harvey Rosen say the Obama campaign is wrong to use his study to slam Mitt Romney’s tax plan. In fact, Rosen says it’s easy to see how Romney could cut taxes and make them revenue neutral. They also urge caution on some of the recent polls that show a monster surge for Romney after the first debate. And they unload on the new Obama ad attempting to mock Romney for wanting to remove government funding for PBS.
I Just Don’t Know What We’re Doing
Scores of U.S. troops have been killed by supposed allies within the Afghan military and police forces. These green-on-blue murders prompted the Pentagon to suspend joint patrols. Retired U.S. Marine Bing West has been embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan on many occasions and just returned from going on a series of patrols.
He says there really isn’t more that can be done to screen the Afghans going on these patrols so our current strategy seems pretty pointless. “I just don’t know what we’re doing anymore,” said West. “If your degree of trust has gone away, I don’t know what you’re accomplishing when people tell me that we’re partnering. If you think your partner may kill you, there’s something wrong with this as a strategy.”
West says it’s time to close up shop and let the Afghans fend for themselves. “We have come to the end of what we can do with our conventional troops in the field, said West.
“We should quietly accelerate bringing them home. We should basically say to the Afghan leaders at every level, ‘Look, we’ve had it with you as a country. We do not trust you. We believe many of you continue to be corrupt. And if you end up swinging from telephone poles, it’s because you screwed up.'”
West says troops are confused about the strategy in Afghanistan and there is a very real dread that the U.S. is just running out the clock until the withdrawal takes place in 2014.
“President Obama should never, never have come out and said, ‘Well I’m gonna send some troops in there but we’re all leaving by 2014,'” said West. “Everyone knows the clock is ticking down and that changes what everybody does.”
West says Obama exited Iraq in a very bad way and we’re seeing a repeat in Afghanistan.
“I think President Obama did a great disservice to our country by leaving so abruptly from Iraq and causing chaos when he left that way and now saying he’s going to do the same thing in Afghanistan,” said West. “I do believe that we have to leave but we don’t need to trumpet it from the top of the roof.”
West suggests the morale of the troops is suffering as a result of the lack of direction from their leaders. He says he was asked to address the troops following his embed mission. He shared what he told our men and women in uniform.
“You have done your best for this country. You have volunteered and you have put your life on the line. And you can take enormous pride in what you did and for the rest of your life. When somebody says, ‘Did you fight in Afghanistan?’ you can say, ‘Yes, I did.’ And you’ve also had a heck of an adventure and you volunteered for it. That doesn’t mean politically everything is always going to work out well. But we’re used to life. We’re used to things not working out exactly right. That doesn’t mean that any of you cannot say, ‘I did my job,’ because you did do your job.”
‘A Sacred Trust’
Two months ago, Missouri Rep. Todd Akin was riding high. He had just won a very competitive U.S. Senate primary and was comfortably ahead of embattled Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
About two weeks later, all of that changed when Akin took heavy fire for saying that women’s bodies have a natural mechanism for preventing pregnancy in the case of “legitimate rape”. That triggered a swing in the polls and prompted scores of Republicans to call for his withdrawal from the race. Ultimately, Akin decided to stay in the race. And despite the pressure, he says the decision was an easy one.
“Many people in politics make the mistake of saying ‘Can we win?’ or ‘How do we win?’ instead of ‘What’s the right thing to do?’ said Akin. My sense of this was it was really pretty straightforward. There had been eight people who’d been involved in the primary for about 16 months. When it was all done, Republicans in the state of Missouri selected who they wanted to run against Claire McCaskill. It turned out that it was me. ”
Akin says winning that primary carries a very special responsibility, regardless of controversy.
“Now there’s people that want me to step aside so they can appoint someone else, he said. “I don’t really believe that it’s even a moral thing for me to do. You’ve been given, in a sense, a sacred trust to try to take back the Senate for the Republicans.”
Akin says his initial instincts were confirmed a few days later when national Republican leaders asked him to drop out of the race, the same people who gave the cold shoulder to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in his Senate race against Charlie Crist in 2010 and who also tried to knock off Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul that same year.
“I’m not going to play their game,” said Akin. “The people of our state chose me because of the beliefs that I have and what I have to offer. I’m not going to allow a couple of party bosses to chase somebody out and name who they wanted to replace him.”
Akin says his withdrawal would have triggered chaos as different camps jockeyed for their preferred candidate to be the new nominee – without the blessing of Republican voters in the state. He also asserts that he made the right decision, regardless of the outcome in November.
Right now the race appears to be very tight. Akin cited two polls showing him ahead between one and three percentage points. Two other polls show Sen. McCaskill up five to six points. Akin insists that the uproar over his comments is not distracting him or the voters of Missouri. He acknowledges the media and Sen. McCaskill are attempting to keep the focus on his abortion comments but he says it’s a tactic that won’t work.
“Claire McCaskill is going to try to make the race about all kinds of little things. It’s a distraction to get away from how she voted. They want to make it about how (Akin) thinks or what he said or what somebody else thinks or what they said about what he thought that she thought that he said,” mused Akin. “Anything but her voting record, which is just a disaster for the state of Missouri and a disaster for her politically.”
Akin says McCaskill has to answer being the deciding vote for the Obama health plan despite 71 percent of Missourians voting against it in a statewide referendum. Akin also slams McCaskill for voting for the stimulus plan, and in the process cutting programs for education and veterans while managing to insert a million dollars of taxpayer dollars for her family’s business.
Akin is not impressed by the drop in the national unemployment rate to 7.8 percent in September.
“I don’t know how anybody who really knows anything about business or our economy could be very impressed with where we are,” said Akin.
The congressman echoed the Romney campaign in pointing out the number does not calculate the millions of workers who have dropped out of the labor market because they can’t find work.
“There are policies that we have put in place and that Obama has built up over the last four years that are highly destructive to job creation,” said Akin, citing the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world and an onslaught of federal regulations that have small business owners terrified.
Akin believes he will win the Senate race in four weeks for one overwhelming reason.
“We have a senator who has gone to Washington, D.C. and scooped up a whole lot of Washington and brought it back to Missouri and dumped it all on us,” said Akin. “You’ve got Obamacare, the stimulus and all the bailouts and all these other things. It seems to me that the exact opposite should be the job of a senator from Missouri. Let’s take the common sense from Missouri and take it back to help the people in Washington.”
Why Romney Won the Debate
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert says Mitt Romney won the debate because he had command of the facts and President Obama simply cannot defend his record.
“In fairness to the president, it’s easier to debate if you have got a strong record behind you and he just didn’t have a whole to defend,” said Gohmert.
The congressman also said Romney proved he understood the energy industry by pointing out the plans Obama claims will clamp down on Big Oil will actually do very little to hurt the biggest firms but will crush scores of independent oil and gas producers.
Gohnert is also not buying Obama’s repeated accusations that Romney is far too vague on how he would address tax reform, repealing Obamacare and more.
“Consider the source,” says Gohmert. This “comes from a president who ran around the country spending millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars, flying around telling people to pass my bill right here, right now, right today. He didn’t even have a bill.”
Some conservatives were a bit alarmed at the number of times Romney vowed not to cut certain government programs, including education. Gohmert says he hopes to convince Romney that federal cuts in education are OK and states can handle the job that they do best.