Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Category
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
Two days before Thanksgiving! Here’s a swarm of links from what should be a slow news week:
Tags:deficits, Democrats, Estonia, LinkSwarm, New Madrid Fault, Republicans, Thomas Sowell, waste
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Economics, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Republicans, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
Blake Farenthold is now officially the next congressman from Texas’ 27th Congressional District. That brings the Republican totals up to a 62-seat pickup for 2010, with possibly as many as 64, and at least 241 seats in the House, the most Republicans have controlled in 60 years.
(Hat tip: Instapundit)
Tags:Blake Farenthold, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Solomon Ortiz, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 22nd, 2010
You may have noticed that the race for Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives is getting hot and heavy. So it’s no surprise to see current Speaker Joe Straus campaigning to retain his role. However, I must say it was something of a surprise to see him advertising (via Google ads) on Powerline. Here’s a capture of the ad I saw there (no doubt triggered by the fact my IP address is inside Texas):
The irony is that there are numerous voices in the Texas conservative blogosphere complaining that Strauss isn’t conservative enough:
Ken Paxton seems to be the choice of most conservatives who have chimed in on the race.
I was going to say that I had not studied the issue enough to be for or against Straus. But then I came across this Austin-American Statesman piece praising Straus for being “nonpartisan” and “moderate,” which is pretty much the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned, and a solid reason to vote for someone else as speaker, advertising on Powerline not withstanding.
Tags:Joe Straus, Ken Paxton, Texas, Texas House of Representatives
Posted in Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 20th, 2010
Time for another LinkSwarm, with a good dollop of Texas political news:
- Waiting for word on the Solomon Ortiz-Blake Farenthold recount? You’ll have to wait until Monday, since they stopped recounting for the weekend. Farenthold still leads by just under 800 votes.
- Things are getting a bit hairy down on the border.
- A look at congressional redistricting, with a good bit about Texas:
This state gains four districts. The Republicans used their mid-decade redistricting to create extremely Republican districts, forcing longtime Democratic incumbents out. They will probably relax these districts a bit now. With population trends, two districts will have to be in Houston, one in Dallas, and one in Austin; the growth is in heavily-Republican areas. The only real questions are how much they can shore up Blake Farenthold in the 80 percent Hispanic 28th, and whether they try to go after Democrat Lloyd Doggett in Austin, who had a surprisingly close 2010 race.
- On the other hand, the Washington Post notes that Republicans already dominate the Texas congressional delegation so extensively that gaining more than one or two additional seats will be very difficult to do.
- Not only are Democrats poised to lose Senate seats in 2012, but some of the seats they are most likely to lose are those of their least liberal Senators.
- The difference between how Ireland and Iceland handled their respective bank problems.
Tags:Blake Farenthold, Border Controls, Iceland, Ireland, Lloyd Doggett, Mexico, PIGS, Redistricting, Solomon Ortiz
Posted in Economics, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
Most of the recount is finished, and the vote total of has only fluctuated by a few votes. Unless Ortiz has a few magic ballot boxes up his sleeve in Nueces County, Republican Blake Farenthold is the new U.S. Congressman for Texas’ 27th Congressional District.
Tags:Blake Farenthold, Corpus Christi, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Solomon Ortiz, Texas
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Another week, another roundup of the World of jihad:
- Arabs would evidently prefer to see a little Arab boy die rather than have his life saved by an Israeli ambulance
- Jihadists try to blow up airplanes by stuffing dogs with bombs. Killing the dogs in the process. Angries up the blood, it does.
- My congressman, Rep. John Carter, wonders why the Pentagon still has not acknowledged that “radical Islamic terrorism” was the cause of the Ft. Hood rampage. (At some point I should put up pics from Carter’s picnic. He got a lot of pictures with my dog…)
- The Turkish media seems happy to keep their own citizens in the dark about what really happened with the Peace and Happiness Flotilla earlier this year.
- Reza Aslan is one of those “moderate Muslim spokesman,” who, when you actually examine their words and deeds, turns out not to be so moderate after all…
- Pope: Hey, how about some religious freedom in Islamic countries? I wouldn’t hold your breath…
- Especially in Hamasistan, who have declared that they’re not going to let any of those filthy, stinking Shi’a into their country, much less Christians, Buddhists or (ha!) Jews. (Which, of course, won’t prevent them from taking money from the Shi’a theocracy in Tehran.)
- The latest group of racist, bigoted Americans to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque: Muslims.
- A Somalia sex-slave ring is operating out of: A.) Mogadishu, B.) Cairo, or C.) Minneapolis?
Tags:Ground Zero Mosque, Hamas, Islam, Israel, Jihad, John Carter, Michael Totten, Palestinians, Reza Aslan, sexual slavery, Turkey
Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Republicans | No Comments »
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Another LinkSwarm of sundry sundries:
- More reasons to be thankful Paul Kanjorksi is gone.
- “Much of what this Democratic Congress did, or tried to do, was like throwing Molotov cocktails at business.”
- Top Ten Upsets of the 2010 Election. (Warning: slide show.) Some of the surprises were the Democrats that didn’t lose (such as Harry Reid), but several (Ortiz, Oberstar, Wilson, Gene Taylor) were upsets I predicted.
- The RNCC has put up a page (with donations links) for the eight house races still up in the air.
- The question isn’t whether Blake Farenthold beat Solomon Ortiz, the question is whether the win is “outside the margin of ACORN.”
- Need an example of the above? Try this: “The Bean campaign approached the Cook County Clerk’s Office, requested and received a list of all outstanding absentee ballots with name, address, and phone numbers. As alarming as that was, they also asked for and were provided an exact image of a blank absentee ballot.”
- Study after study have shown Republicans are more generous than Democrats. This year’s election just proved that the same applies to the Texas congressional delegation. “The 20 Texas Republican incumbents, none of whom faced serious opposition, gave an average of $100,000 each to Republicans. Texas Democrats, meanwhile, provided relatively meager support for endangered Democratic incumbents. They averaged $26,000 in donations to other candidates in their party.”
- The Democrats have a Rust Belt problem: “The drop-off in Democratic support among older voters and white voters from the last midterm election is remarkable. In 2006 Democrats lost white voters by 4 points in House races, which are a fairly good indicator of party preference, and they tied among voters 65 and over. This year they lost whites by 23 points and lost older voters by 21 points.”
- “Many Dem Staffers on Capitol Hill Face Tough Job Market.” Perhaps they should check with IBM. I hear they’re working on a nanoscale violin construction program that might be appropriate for them…
Tags:ACORN, Blake Farenthold, Charles Wilson (Ohio), Chicago, Democrats, Elections, Gene Taylor, James Oberstar, Joe Walsh, Melissa Bean, Paul Kanjorski, Republicans, Solomon Ortiz, voting fraud
Posted in Democrats, Economics, Elections, Republicans | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
Another day, another bucket of post-election links for your clickity goodness:
- Liberals admit what they really want.
- Rick Perry wins not despite skipping newspaper endorsements, but because of it. I’m glad to see Republican politicians finally picking up on this. “When in doubt, vote against the Statesman and Austin Chronicle‘s endorsements” has long been part of the standard operating procedures among my friends…
- Dick Morris on why Obama’s last minute appeals to the Democratic base partially blunted the Republican tsunami. A few salient points:
- Singles, under-$25,000-income voters, and voters 18-29 all decided late and broke for Obama, indicating the “rally the base” appeal partially worked.
- Blacks cast only 10 percent of the vote and Latinos only 8 percent in the 2010 elections. In 2008, they cast 13 and 10 percent, respectively.
- Union members broke evenly, with 49 percent backing Democrats and 47 percent voting Republican.
- Voters under 30 constituted only 11 percent of the vote, and those 18-24 were just 3 percent. [Insert generic geezer anti-Facebooking, Twitter, Pabst-Blue-Ribbon Swilling Anti-Hipster Get-off-My-Lawn rant here.]
- This year was pretty bad for Democrats, but 2012 isn’t looking much better: “Short-term trends look dismal for congressional Democrats. Even if Democrats turn their political fortunes around, they’re still likely to lose seats in the Senate and will be hard-pressed to make inroads in the House, thanks to factors entirely out of their control.” The reasons include Democrats playing defense on more Senate seats in red and battleground states, Republicans controlling redistricting and, of course, Nancy Pelosi. “Obama wasn’t the reason we lost. It was because of Pelosi. She was a turnout machine – for the other side.”
Tags:Democrats, Dick Morris, LinkSwarm, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Rick Perry
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
National Journal updates the state of play in the House races that still haven’t been decided yet.
Short version:
- California 11: Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney holds a 628-vote lead over Republican David Harmer, but not all ballots from Republican-leaning locales have been counted yet.
- California 20 Republican Andy Vidak leads Democratic incumbent Jim Costa by a mere 145 votes.
- Illinois 8: Republican Joe Walsh leads Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean, which should hold up unless Cook County cooks up some fraud (and when has that ever happened?).
- Kentucky 6: Democratic incumbent Ben Chandler leads Republican Andy Barr by 649 votes, recanvass starts next week
- New York 1: Republican Randy Altschuler leads Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop by either 392 votes or 383 votes.
- New York’s 25: Republican Ann Marie Buerkle leads Democratic incumbent Dan Maffei by 659 votes, but there are still ballots to be counted.
- Texas 27: Republican Blake Farenthold leads Democratic incumbent Solomon Ortiz by 792 votes, with only 736 overseas and provisional ballots left to count. Ortiz wants a manual recount.
Tags:Andy Barr, Andy Vidak, Ann Marie Buerkle, Ben Chandler, Blake Farenthold, Cook County, Dan Maffei, David Harmer, Democrats, Elections, Jerry McNerney, Jim Costa, Joe Walsh, Melissa Bean, Randy Altschuler, Recounts, Republicans, Solomon Ortiz, Tim Bishop
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »