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Palin Tea Party Pick Leads Alaska Senate GOP Race
There’s an upset brewing in Alaska where Sarah Palin backed Republican challenger Joe Miller is leading incumbent Lisa Murkowski for U.S. Senate with a third of the precincts reporting.
If Miller’s thin lead holds, it will be a major coup for Palin but a bigger shock to Alaskans who love their politicians who deliver the federal goodies from Washington.
I mean Murkowski campaigned on that great strength of hers which was in tradition of the late Sen. Ted Stevens and the ever faithful pork barreler Rep. Don Young, who was running well ahead of his competition Tuesday night.
The Anchorage Daily News:
This was the first test of Palin’s influence on Alaska politics since she resigned as governor last summer, and the first sign of how influential the Tea Party movement can be in shaping political races in this state. The race was being closely watched as a sign of Palin and the Tea Party’s strength in Alaska, but also because Murkowski is one of the leading Republicans in the Senate.
The winner will likely face Democrat Scott McAdams in the November general election for U.S. Senate.
On a recent campaign swing through Ketchikan, Murkowski reminded voters of the value of incumbency with the legacy left behind by Stevens who died in a plane crash days before Tuesday’s election:
Four decades consistently delivering billions in federal dollars for roads, bridges, ports, pipelines and military projects and almost a “bridge to no where” that transformed the 49th state.
When Stevens died Aug. 9, Murkowski quickly changed her Facebook page to include a photo with Stevens and likened the loss Alaskans felt with his passing to what Americans felt upon the deaths of Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Joe Miller is a decorated combat veteran, former judge and blame-Washington candidate.
Miller, a graduate of Yale Law School and West Point, has never held elective office. He calls Murkowski a late voice to the conservative chorus. For much of her career, Murkowski has been known as a centrist, and Miller notes her history of voting with Democrats.
“She has a very liberal voting record and that also reflects her views of government as being the answer to all ills,” he said. “That kind of perspective isn’t going to pull the nation from the course we’re on.”
(Photo by Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News –Senate Republican candidate Joe Miller, at right, checks his iPhone for results at the Snow Goose in downtown Anchorage as Eddie Zingone and press secretary Randy DeSoto look on. )
What In The World Does John McCain Do For An Encore
What is one suppose to say about John McCain winning the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona after all he’s been through.
The Republicans don’t like him because many figure he’s a sell out to their party principles. After all, the story line says, anyone who teams up with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform must be insane or senile.
The Democrats would like to like McCain because they like mavericks and he would attempt to compromise with them on a variety of national issues.
The thing is, no one really understands McCain for what he is. Here, in his own words, at a victory celebration Tuesday night:
“This was a tough, hard-fought primary,” McCain said at a victory party — and he quickly looked to the fall campaign. “I promise you, I take nothing for granted and will fight with every ounce of strength and conviction I possess to make the case for my continued service in the Senate.”
Beaten in presidential bids in 2000 by George Bush and in 2008 by Barack Obama, McCain now takes no prisoners and is a rattlesnake coiled to take on all comers even though his latest opponent was a mouse.
Last I looked, McCain was leading J. D. Hayworth the conservative with Tea Party support by 58% with 41% of the votes counted and declared victor two hours earlier.
McCain spent $20 million, the most ever in an Arizona election, to humiliate, crush and stomp on his closest rival. He went so far right of Hayworth it made J.D. look like a socialist.
His hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic:
“McCain works harder than anybody I’ve ever seen,” said Bruce Merrill, a veteran Arizona political scientist who has followed McCain’s career since he first ran for the U.S. House in 1982. “He understands the media extremely well. If you go back and look at this race, he took it seriously even before J.D. got involved. He was running negative ads against J.D. before J.D. even entered the race. That’s really pretty typical McCain: he’s got this dogged determination whenever he does thing.”
“When you’re in a Republican primary, against a right-wing candidate, it’s not dumb to me to move more to the right during the primary,” Merrill said. “I think the bigger questions are what is McCain going to look like in the general election and what’s he going to look like after he’s re-elected.”
And what does it feel like having McCain’s boot on your throat?
“I am sick of Washington politics,” said Bill Barnes, a Hayworth supporter at Hayworth’s election night event in Scottsdale. “Something has to change.”
Memo to Mr. Barnes: McCain changes a lot lately.
I revere John McCain for his service to his country, the sacrifices he suffered as a prisoner of war.
But as a politician, Nov. 2, 2010, will be his last hurrah in political campaigns. He is 74 and will be 81 when his last term expires in the Senate.
Those last six years I guarantee he will be somebody’s maverick.
(Tuesday election night photo courtesy of the Arizona Republic)
A Meek Finds His Place With Crist And Rubio In Florida Senate Race
I envy Florida voters who as expected have three decent choices on the Nov. 2 election ballot for their next U.S. Senator. I would be surprised if any received more than 42% of the vote, it’s last close.
The guy I find most intriguing is current governor, former Republican and now Independent, Charlie Crist, both as a candidate and how he would handle himself in the Senate should fate fall his way.
As candidate, Crist unlike his two opponents, can remain true to his personal doctrine of what’s best for him and his constituents. He has no party hacks chaining him to the stake.
But if I were a Florida voter, wise to the ways of Washington, I would cringe at the hopscotch game Crist is playing when asked what caucus he would join if elected.
“The people of Florida are my caucus,” Crist told Larry King on CNN Tuesday night, the same answer as he has given in previous interviews since his self-imposed exile from the Republican Party.
Who’s he kidding? I would urge him to poop or get off the pot. By not committing to either the Republican or Democratic caucus in the Senate, Crist would receive all those wonderful assignments as junior member of the subcommittee on governing Washington D.C. and a host of other meaningless duties dealing in trivial pursuits, none of which would help his fellow Floridians, unless, of course, he is assigned permanent duties as honorary presiding officer where he would become an expert on Roberts’ Rules of Order and all those delightful, archaic Senate rules.
The Republican opponent is American-born of Cuban refugees Marco Rubio, a former state house speaker and one-time darling of the Club for Growth and the Tea Party.
Rubio’s success in November might be the retention of an invigorated Republican base which finds itself holding its nose with a clothespin over the man who has used his brain and life experience to defy the extreme element of his followers who believe in Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law, changing the 14th Amendment to rid “anchor babies” from natural born citizen rights and a host of other hot-button yet insidious proposals.
Rather, in recent weeks Rubio is bucking such claptrap for what he considers offering an alternative, actual solutions to the nation’s economic problems.
Here’s a snippet from a New York Times recent interview:
“The solution isn’t just to paralyze government,” Mr. Rubio said in an interview as he traveled the state last week from here in the Panhandle to Miami. “Vote for us because you couldn’t possibly vote for them? That’s not enough. It may win some seats, but it won’t take you where you want to be.”
His course bears little resemblance to those of other insurgent candidates, many of whom hope to ride a combative streak — and little else — to Washington. Mr. Rubio is increasingly trying to turn his candidacy into one built more on ideas than outrage, which is why he delivered three detailed speeches in the past week alone on education, veterans’ affairs and retiree issues.
The strategy comes from popular former Gov. Jeb Bush who knows Florida politics as well as anyone.
The Democratic Senatorial winner in the primary is Rep. Kendrick Meek, a four-term politician whose only chances of winning are on miracle life support.
This guy will need President Obama, former President Clinton, half the treasury of the Democratic National Party and an as yet avalanche of died-in-the-wool party faithfuls to come out and vote in his behalf.
Meek is no pushover. He overcame challenger Jeff Greene, a billionaire real estate developer who spent almost $23 million in the primary, four times as much as Meek.
Since elected to Congress in 2003, the man missed 296 (5%) of 5,820 roll call votes. He voted for the stimulus act, the health reform legislation and against the federal marriage amendment, the Hyde amendment which restricts federal funding of elective abortions and notification laws for minors who seek abortions.
Florida is a mixed bag of seniors, military, minorities, academics and Gator, Seminole, Hurricane, Jaguar, Marlin and Dolphin fans — all to chose from three choices and no echoes.
(Kendrick Meek photo courtesy Politico)
That Crash You Heard Was The Housing Market, Again
It’s my business to blow peoples’ bubbles to smithereens when they are not focused on the ball in play. Those primary elections and runoffs in five states Tuesday, well, the outcomes don’t mean a hill of beans.
The real news — the stuff that counts — is the housing market continues to collapse if it already isn’t gasping its last breath.
Sales of existing homes plunged 27.2% nationally in July. Mark my word, it will be adjusted downward — meaning worse — as was June and May.
It was April 30 that the government’s stimulus tax credit of $8,000 to qualified first-time home buyers expired that sales turned sour. One way of looking at this is the tax credit was no more than a method of artificial insemination.
Usually, I consider the news affecting the stock market as fickle as a teenage girl experiencing puberty. Today, I’m not so sure. Early reports showed blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 1%, as did the S&P 500, a broader measure of stocks.
The National Assn. of Realtors said that the seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales was 3.83 million units in July, a drop from the downwardly revised 5.26-million-unit rate in June and a 25.5% drop from the 5.14-million-unit level in July 2009.
It was the lowest sales level since 1999. The sales rate for single-family homes — which accounted for the bulk of sales — was at its lowest level since May 1995.
Translation, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:
“From our vantage point, the first-time home-buyers credit pulled forward demand — by definition this is what stimulus measures achieve — however the issue this time is that there was so little demand to be pulled forward, the credit has left no demand for the summer,” Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., wrote in a research note Tuesday morning. “The result is exactly what we’re seeing: a near, if not outright, collapse in housing.”
Sales of existing homes is critical and never in generations has the price been so much in favor of qualified buyers. Many of the existing homes are in foreclosure and interest rates remain at record lows.
I’m having misgivings about the Kensyian style of economics the Obama administration has pursued as well as the tax credits and lower tax cut mantras championed by the Bush administration.
Neither is working as promised.
The popular “Cash for Clunkers” offered a momentary spurt in new car sales as well as removing gas guzzlers from our roads. New car sales, at least, did not return to rock bottom as did the sales of new and existing homes.
But, unlike cars, our homes no longer are our nest eggs and with tight credit no longer are affordable ATM machines.
The rich seem to be sitting on their cash reserves, some acquired by taxpayer bailout funds for 400 banks, because of uncertainties in the future, the excuse being a wait-and-see approach how the rules will be written under the new financial reform legislation.
The stimulus money continues to be a bad rap, targeting state and local government workers without giving them credit for making up a third of our national work force. Unions or not, they spend money into the private economy just as those receiving unemployment checks.
I have seen enough where I no longer agree with the stimulus champions in Paul Krugman and Robert Reich in that the $787 billion was not enough.
What it has done is save, temporarily, state and local government jobs and created artificial demand in some market places. It saved the economy and the major financial institutions from free falling into a Great Depression for perhaps 18 months but now that the stimulus is on its last legs, we are returning to the summer of 2008 when the bubbles burst.
As Robert Redford said in the movie “The Candidate,” “There must be a better way.”
As in the movie, Redford had no answers and neither do the politicians in Congress nor the economic gurus in the White House. Too much of it rests in the hands of the Federal Reserve and they, in the opinion of Ron Paul that I also share, are beholden to Wall Street.
And, certainly not any candidate running for federal office in Tuesday’s primaries.
(Balloon bubble courtesy of dreamstime.com)
The Remmers Report 