Tag Archives: Election

Commentary

Thomas Sowell takes a closer look at the Romney campaign

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His latest column.

Excerpt:

Regardless of what the polls or the pundits say about Mitt Romney’s chances of winning the Republican nomination, the conditions that made him the front runner in the primaries are the direct opposite of the conditions for the general election.

The biggest single reason why Governor Romney is the front runner is that he has had the overwhelming advantage in money spent and in “boots on the ground” running his campaign in states across the country.

Romney has outspent each of his rivals — and all of his rivals put together. His campaign organization has been operating for years, and it has put his name on the ballot everywhere, while neither Santorum nor Gingrich had a big enough organization to get on the ballot in an important state like Virginia.

In the general election, President Obama will have all the advantages against Romney that Romney currently has against his Republican rivals. Barack Obama will have boots on the ground everywhere — not just members of the Democratic Party organization but thousands of labor union members as well.

Incumbency alone guarantees the president plenty of money to finance his campaign, not only from enthusiastic supporters but also from businesses regulated by the government, who know that holders of political power demand tribute. And the mainstream media will give Obama more publicity than Romney can buy.

How does anyone ever defeat a sitting president then? They do it because they have a message that rings and resonates.

The last Republican to defeat a sitting president was Ronald Reagan. He was the only Republican to do so in the 20th century.

He didn’t do it with polls. At one point during the election campaign, President Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan with 58 percent to 40 percent in the polls. So much for the polls that so many are relying on so heavily today.

The question is not which Republican looks better against Barack Obama in the polls today, before the general election campaign begins. The question is which Republican can take the fight to Barack Obama, as Reagan took the fight to Carter, and win the poll that ultimately matters, the vote on election day.

The biggest fighting issue for Republicans is ObamaCare. Can the author of RomneyCare as governor of Massachusetts make that an effective issue by splitting hairs over state versus federal mandates? Can a man who has been defensive about his own wealth fight off the standard class warfare of Barack Obama, who can push all the demagogic buttons against Mitt Romney as one of the one-percenters?

Rick Santorum, and especially Newt Gingrich, are fighters — and this election is going to be a fight to the finish, with the fate of this country in the balance. Mitt Romney has depended on massive character assassination advertising campaigns to undermine his rivals. That will not work against Barack Obama.

I agree with Thomas Sowell. Although I was open to Gingrich as the nominee, I think that Rick Santorum is a more electable candidate in the Midwestern states, because of his blue collar credentials and his strong record on foreign policy and social conservatism. Mitt Romney is the weakest candidate – but that’s being covered up by the massive amount of money he is spending. Mark my words – if Romney is the nominee, Obama will label him as a greed rich Wall Street speculator and we will lose in November.

Mitt Romney

News

Eric Holder wants to brainwash people against legal gun ownership

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Story here from the Daily Caller.

Excerpt:

Attorney General Eric Holder supported using Hollywood, the media and government officials in order to “really brainwash people” into opposing firearm ownership, according to a 1995 C-SPAN video that emerged Sunday online.

Holder, who was then the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was addressing the Women’s National Democratic Club on Jan. 30, 1995. In his speech, he held up anti-smoking campaigns as a model for an anti-gun campaign.

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes,” Holder said.

[…]Holder explained that he wanted to use influential figures like then-Washington, D.C. Marion Barry and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, as well as widely watched TV shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Martin,” to forward his anti-gun campaign. He sought to push that same agenda through public schools as well, “every day, every school, at every level.”

Holder said these resources would be the driving force behind a campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

Consider that the Obama administration has been implicated in a plan to smuggle assault weapons to Mexican drug cartels, so that they could then turn around and push for more controls against law-abiding gun owners who want to defend themselves from criminals.

The revelation that Holder wanted to “brainwash” people into being “anti-gun” appears to be supported by what Congress and the American people have learned about Operation Fast and Furious.

In Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – in a program overseen by Holder’s Department of Justice – sent about 2,000 guns south to Mexican drug cartels. The Obama administration did this via “straw purchasers” who bought guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else.

[…]In a July 2010 email that surfaced in a congressional investigation, ATF Assistant Director Mark Chait asked Bill Newell, his agency’s lead agent in Phoenix to “see if these guns were all purchased from the same [dealer] and at one time.  We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.”

Statistics collected from the program eventually formed the backbone of that new long-gun reporting rule, which the administration implemented after Fast and Furious became a national scandal.

Got that? The Obama administration smuggled guns to Mexican drug cartels, and then turned around and used the gun smuggling they oversaw as an excuse to impose restrictions on legal gun owners who want to protect themselves from criminals – like the drug cartetls.

Also supporting allegations that Fast and Furious was a gun-control stalking horse are comments made by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein during a November 2011 hearing.

“My concern, Mr. Chairman, is there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made, but I think this hunt for blame doesn’t really speak about the problem,” Feinstein said.

“And the problem is, anybody can walk in and buy anything, .50-caliber weapons, sniper weapons, buy them in large amounts, and send them down to Mexico. So, the question really becomes, what do we do about this?”

In his own written testimony in November, Holder complained that Congress “voted to keep law enforcement in the dark when individuals purchase multiple semi-automatic rifles and shotguns in Southwest border gun shops.”

And on Sunday another sign of Holder’s anti-gun advocacy surfaced when the blog The Right Scoop published excerpts from a Washington Post op-ed Holder wrote shortly after 9/11, in which he used the terrorist attacks as a rationale to push for more gun control laws.

Note that the Obama administration’s gun smuggling to Mexican drug cartels got two American law enforcement personnel killed and at least 300 Mexican civilians.

Excerpt:

During Fast and Furious, which was organized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and overseen by the Department of Justice, the Obama administration sent thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels via “straw purchasers” who bought guns in the United States with the intention of illegally trafficking them somewhere else. This tactic is known as “gunwalking.”

Fast and Furious weapons were used to kill Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and at least 300 Mexican civilians.

[Jaime] Zapata was killed with guns that were purchased in Texas by two different traffickers. According to CBS News reports, both of those traffickers were under ATF surveillance without being arrested for a period of time while they were trafficking guns. Both were arrested at a later date.

The only question about this story is how high does it go up? Did Eric Holder order Operation Fast and Furious? Or did it come straight from Barack Obama? How far would Democrats go to make crime safe for criminals by enacting restrictions on legal gun ownership by law-abiding Americans?

News

Santorum campaign relies on donated buses and door-to-door campaigning

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From socially liberal Business Week.

Excerpt:

With minimal campaign organization and less funds than his rivals, Santorum has boosted his campaign with the votes of a network of evangelical Christians, anti-abortion rights activists and home-schooling parents who are resisting frontrunner Mitt Romney. In a March 8-11 national Bloomberg Poll, likely voters who described themselves as “born again” or evangelical Christian backed Santorum by 42 percent compared with 28 percent for Romney.

“Romney’s inability to close out the race has given Santorum a golden opportunity to unite social conservatives behind him, and they are getting in line,” said Keith Appell, a Republican public relations executive who works with social conservative groups.

Parents who home school their children are spreading the message on Facebook. Southern Baptist pastors are promoting Santorum’s candidacy to their members. Anti-abortion rights advocates are boarding the “Rick Bus” for multi-state voter mobilization tours.

Two days before Tennessee’s primary, Santorum attended services on March 4 at the Bellevue Baptist Church, a 7,000- member organization in the Memphis suburbs.

[…]Santorum won the state’s primary.

Such efforts are helping the former Pennsylvania senator compensate for a campaign operation that trails Romney in every measure of strength: money, staff, and organization.

Romney raised $63 million for his campaign through January, compared with $7 million by Santorum. Santorum had spent $148,806 on salaries and benefits through January; Romney’s personnel costs have exceeded $4.5 million. Santorum recently opened a national campaign headquarters in Virginia; Romney’s offices near Boston Harbor have been open nearly a year.

He’s tapping into well organized yet loosely affiliated groups of activists whose leaders consider Santorum one of them. “Santorum has piggybacked on the top of other existing grassroots networks,” said Cleta Mitchell, his campaign counsel. “They’re basically activating their networks on his behalf.”

[…]Romney and a political action committee supporting him ran 64 percent of the commercials that aired in Mississippi and Alabama in the month before the primaries, compared to just 15 percent aired by Santorum’s backers, according to data from New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising.

The article tries to paint Santorum as a social conservative, and he is. But he also has a solid economic plan, that’s targeted to the middle class, and especially manufacturing. Basically, Romney is burning through millions and millions of dollars to buy the nomination. But ordinary conservatives, especially social conservatives, like Rick Santorum best.

Rick Santorum