Posts Tagged ‘Elections’
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014
You may have noticed that all the usual media outlets and liberal extensions of the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) falling in line to attack the Koch brothers, as I’m sure has been decreed by either the DNC or whatever passes for the resurrected JournoList
Never mind that the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation outspends the Koch Brothers by a good margin. The real reason Democrats hate the Koch Brothers is that their network is kicking Democrats’ collective asses.
Take some of their most recent ads, for example. Here’s one against Michigan Representative Gary Peters:
And here’s one against Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu:
And don’t forget the video that has Julie Boonstra receiving death threats:
(Hat tip: Moe Lane, I think, though damned if I can find the link just now…)
Tags:2014 Election, Democrats, Elections, Gary Peters, Koch Brothers, Mary Landrieu, Media Watch, Moe Lane, video
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, video | No Comments »
Friday, March 21st, 2014
Enjoy your complimentary Friday LinkSwarm, and be sure to tip your waitress!
Fourteen different ways you can you can avoid the ObamaCare tax.
Joaquin Castro to boycott Buc-ees? He should have almost as much luck in Texas boycotting air conditioning and football. Hey, when Castro can offer outstanding fudge and the largest, cleanest restrooms in the state, let me know…
Democratic Senators decide they’d like to avoid committing political suicide by voting for Obama’s gun-grabbing Surgeon general nominee.
Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall proves once again that taxes are for the little people.
Democrats recruit the perfect candidate for congress: an 86-year old ex-felon.
Rich liberal environmentalist Tom Steyer is 100% opposed to Keystone pipeline. Well, except when endangered Democratic Senators are involved.
What liberals are leaving out of their hagiography of Cesar Chavez: he opposed illegal aliens and would have hated amnesty.
Liberals hate the Koch brothers so much they freak out even when they’re donating money to a hospital.
How dare some racist Americans call some Muslims pedophiles just because they want to marry 8-year olds?
America could hurt Russia by lifting natural gas export restrictions.
Swell story of resurrecting a badly damaged B-2. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
It’s gotten to the point I can no longer tell liberal ranting from parody of same.
More Yelp hilarity for the Backstreet Pub and Grill owner who went out of his way to insult gun owners.
Supporting Neil Young and Scarlet Johansson against the Israel haters.
“Set in a futuristic dystopia where society is divided into five factions that each represent a different virtue….” Yeah, that’s pretty much where I stopped reading.
Solider adopts dog. Dusty room ensues.
Tags:2014 Election, amnesty, B-2, Buc-ees, Cesar Chavez, Crime, Democrats, dogs, Elections, Energy Policy, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Joaquin Castro, Keystone Pipeline, Koch Brothers, Media Watch, Military, Neil Young, ObamaCare, Russia, Scarlet Johansson, Tom Steyer, Ukraine
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Texas, video | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014
There’s a lot of time before November, but Democrats are freaking out early and often:
National Democrats are in a near panic — if the media’s highly-attuned panic detectors are any indicator — with a “poisonous” president unable to use his popularity to sway voters, a “screaming siren” warning about mid-term turnout, and Republicans on the offensive on Obamacare. There are a long eight months until November, but Democrats seem unlikely to get much sleep over the interim.
Maureen Dowd expands on the theme:
So now Democratic panic has set in.
With the health care sign-up period coming to an end this month, Democrats in Congress are looking over at the White House and realizing that the president is not only incapable of saving them, but he looks like a big anchor tied around their necks.
That may be why incumbent Senator Kay Hagan is running from answering questions.
You tears, E. J. Dionne! Let me taste them! “Obama and his party are in danger of allowing the Republicans to set the terms of the 2014 elections.” Along with the usual Dionnean mush about Republicans are uniquely negative, evil, etc. He and Dowd both push the “It’s the evil Koch brothers! Evil I tells ya!” Meme of the Week. He also says to embrace ObamaCare.
That same “embrace Obamacare” advice is also offered up by Bob Shrum, and who are we to gainsay the keen tactical insight garnered from working on eight losing Presidential campaigns?
Columnist Eugene Robinson also says to defend ObamaCare. Hmmmmmm.
No wonder Democrats are freaking out. The tanks are converging on their position, crushing all before them, and their commander is telling them to be calm and fire back with their rifle. Those with even half a brain (asking a lot, I know) should remember back to 2010, where supporting Obamacare cost incumbent Democrats an average of 5.2% of the vote. The result was Democrats lost 63 seats in the House. This time it looks like Democrats’ embrace of ObamaCare will cost them the Senate.
Who can blame them for freaking out?
And what better music for a freakout than Austin’s own psychedelic pioneers, the 13th Floor Elevators?
Tags:2014 Election, Democrats, E. J. Dionne, Elections, Kay Hagan, Maureen Dowd, ObamaCare, video
Posted in Democrats, Elections, ObamaCare, video | No Comments »
Monday, March 17th, 2014
Will Franklin has dug even deeper in to the primary voting statistics and they are, if anything, actually worse than previously reported (which were already plenty bad).
A few examples:
Her vote totals were down in the Rio Grande Valley when compared with Bill White.
Bill White’s two Hispanic opponents in 2010 received 2.83% and 4.95% of the statewide primary vote, compared to Davis Opponent Ray Madrigal pulling in just under 21% despite no fundraising and minimal campaigning.
“Despite Wendy Davis’ massive, hyped, well-funded, all-star staffed voter registration effort with Battleground Texas and millions of dollars from out-of-state, today there are 45,000 fewer Texans registered to vote than in November 2012.”
“In Texas’ 5 most populous counties, there were 12,897 fewer total Democratic votes than in 2010 and 62,469 fewer than in 2002.”
“In a practically uncontested primary, Wendy Davis spent more than Bill White in a contested primary, to achieve poorer primary results.”
The total vote margin Greg Abbott received in Harris County alone is almost double the vote margin Davis earned in the five largest counties she won more votes than Abbott in.
Read the whole thing.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Battleground Texas, Bill White, Democrats, Elections, Texas, Wendy Davis, WILLisms
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2014
Republican David Jolly beat Democrat Alex Sink in a special election for Florida’s 13th congressional district. CD13 is a swing district that voted narrowly for Obama in the last two Presidential elections.
One district does not an election make, but a close look at the tea leaves suggests that the outlook for Democrats in 2014 is looking very dim, thanks to the albatross that is ObamaCare:
DNC was hoping Sink’s campaign would be “a blueprint to display public support for Obamacare”. Oh, I think it did a mighty fine job of showing how much the public supports ObamaCare…
The Tampa Tribune says that “David Jolly’s victory Tuesday in the U.S. House District 13 special election represents a clear repudiation of Obamacare.”
Even the Washington Post says Jolly’s win “illustrated the political toxicity of the law known as Obamacare.”
Well, guess what? seven competitive Senate seats are in states more heavily Republican than the district Jolly just won.
you know what’s less Democrat-friendly territory than this R+1 swing district? The states of West Virginia (R+13), North Carolina (R+3), Louisiana (R+12), South Dakota (R+10), Alaska (R+12). Arkansas (R+14) and Montana (R+7). Those are all currently Democrat-held seats. And there are seven of them.
If last night’s result means that a halfway decent Republican candidate can win on Republican-leaning territory by hammering away at Obamacare… then the odds of the GOP winning the Senate look very, very good.
The message of Sink’s defeat for Democrats? “‘Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
All this may be one reason Sean Trende now gives Republicans an 80% chance to win the Senate.
Of course, Trende also wrote not to read too much into the Florida CD13 special election. But he also thought Sink would probably win…
Meanwhile, a service workers union is talking about going on strike due to health care contract changes resulting from ObamaCare:
Culinary members have long enjoyed health care that is fully funded by employers, but the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has increased medical costs to the point that many companies can no longer afford to pay full freight. The hotels want workers to pick up some of Obamacare’s new costs, a demand the Culinary won’t agree to.
Of course, Obamacare is the law because of the Culinary’s political activism. The Culinary and the rest of organized labor poured untold millions of dollars and thousands of volunteer hours into the election campaigns of President Barack Obama and the Democrats who wrote and passed Obamacare, and the unions championed the reboot of American health insurance.
Then they realized Obamacare’s critics were right. The law is wrecking platinum-plated union health plans, not to mention health insurance for tens of millions of people.
Unions opposing Obamacare, Hispanics opposing unlimited abortion; that Democrat coalition is started to look more than a little frayed…
Tags:2014 Election, abortion, Alex Sink, David Jolly, Democrats, Elections, Florida, Hispanics, ObamaCare, unions
Posted in Democrats, Elections, ObamaCare, unions | 1 Comment »
Friday, March 7th, 2014
When last we checked, Glenn Hegar was on the edge of winning the Republican nomination for Comptroller outright, but he ended up garnering a frustrating 49.99% of the vote.
Thankfully, primary opponent Harvey Hilderbran has aceeded to reality and announced he’s withdrawing from the race, saving everyone a lot of money and effort for contesting a race that was already a foregone conclusion.
Hegar will face (and most likely obliterate) Democrat Mike Collier in November.
Tags:2014 Election, Elections, Glenn Hegar, Harvey Hilderbran, Republicans, Texas
Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014
Will Franklin has an interesting piece up detailing just how poorly Democrats did in primary turnout on Tuesday, noting that both the Democratic Party total, and Wendy Davis’ numbers compared to Bill White, were down significantly from 2010. By contrast, “Abbott received 1,219,831 votes, or 91.50% in a four-way primary race. 1,333,010 Republicans voted in the 2014 primary.”
For all the money BattleGround Texas is pouring into the state, Democrats are doing worse than they did in 2010.
Although Franklin doesn’t go into the 2012 numbers, I’d also like to note that overall Democratic votes are down from 590,164 in 2012 to 546,480. Normally a presidential election year will have higher numbers, but there were no big-money, hotly contested races at the top of the Democratic ticket that year. Turnout should have been up this year. It wasn’t.
More Will Franklin:
In short, there is a partisan enthusiasm gap in Texas, and Republicans are winning it. Democrats have years of soul searching and retooling to do before they’ll even sniff winning their first statewide race since the early 90s. Anointing someone known almost exclusively for filibustering on behalf of elective late-term abortion post 5 months of pregnancy may have set the Democrats’ plan back at least one full election cycle, if not more.”
Read the whole thing.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Bill White, Elections, Greg Abbott, Texas, Wendy Davis, WILLisms
Posted in Elections, Texas | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014
A very brief look at last night’s primary results:
John Cornyn won, but couldn’t break 60% against a field of underfunded challengers.
The Democratic Senate runoff is going to be between the big-spender David Alameel and the LaRouche candidate Kesha Rogers.
As expected, both Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis won their gubernatorial primaries. But Abbott garnered 91% and over 1.2 million votes, the most of any candidate for any office. By contrast, Davis got 432,000 votes and won 79% of the vote against underfunded challenger Ray Madrigal, indicating a distinct enthusiasm gap despite Davis’ nationwide MSM cheer-leading corps.
Dan Patrick’s early lead over incumbent David Dewhurst in the Lt. Governor’s race held up. Patrick pulled in 550,742 votes for 41.5% of the vote, while Dewhurst got 376,164 votes for 28.3%. Maybe Dewhurst can carpet-bomb the runoff with money, but that’s an awful big gap to make up. We knew that Dewhurst losing to Cruz in 2012 hurt him; now we know how much.
Ken Paxton takes the lead into the runoff with 566,080 votes over Dan Branch’s 426,561.
Glenn Hegar is hovering right at the threshold of beating Harvey Hildebran outright in the Comptroller race.
George P. Bush garnered 934,501 to win the Land Commissioner primary…or over twice as many votes as Wendy Davis.
Sid Miller (410,273) and Tommy Merritt (248,568) are heading for a runoff for Agricultural Commissioner, leaving Joe Straus ally Eric Opiela out in the cold.
All the Ted Cruz-endorsed Supreme Court incumbents won their races.
Super-tight runoff in U.S. House District 23 between Francisco “Quico” Canseco and Will Hurd to face Democratic incumbent Pete Gallego. Canseco held the seat before Gallego, and whoever wins the runoff has a good chance of taking the swing seat back.
Katrina Pierson was unable to unseat Pete Sessions in U.S. House District 32, garnering 36.4% of the vote. As I feared, Sarah Palin’s endorsement came to late to truly capitalize on it in fundraising.
Matt McCall did even better, where he and another challenger kept Lamar Smith at 60.4% in U.S. House District 21. Though they won their primaries, Sessions and Smith might be vulnerable to further challenges in 2016.
As far as I can tell, every U.S. or statewide incumbent Republican either won or is leading their race. Except David Dewhurst.
Tags:2014 Election, 2014 Governor's Race, Dan Branch, Dan Patrick, David Alameel, David Dewhurst, Elections, Eric Opiela, Francisco "Quico" Canseco, George P. Bush, Glenn Hegar, Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, Katrina Pierson, Ken Paxton, Kesha Rogers, Matt McCall, Pete Sessions, Republicans, Sid Miller, Ted Cruz, Texas, Tommy Merritt, Wendy Davis
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, March 3rd, 2014
Since I live in Williamson and have received a ton of flyers on local judicial races, I should probably get together some semi-coherent thoughts about the race and post them here.
Fortunately, Holly Hansen has already done the heavy lifting.
County Court at Law Judge Doug Arnold has been challenged by GOP newcomer Tallion Taylor (Taylor used to vote Democrat, but recently switched to the Republican party).
Three candidates have filed to replace retiring Williamson County Treasurer Vivian Wood: Leander City Councilwoman Michell Cantwell, Jerri Jones, and Ralph Pruyn. As I’ve previously written, Jones is an alleged Republican who publicly supported a Democrat for District Attorney in 2012.
Indeed, I emailed Taylor to see if he wanted to deny reports of formerly being a Democrat. He never replied.
And now the tl;dr recommendation from Holly:
Let me also state my skepticism of those who still view the Michael Morton case as a universal “get into office free” card. Yes, it was a miscarriage of justice. No, that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore your past record of supporting Democrats or lack of conservative credentials to vote for you. In fact, from now on I’m going to vote against those using the case in their attack mailers just on general principle. That means you, Ryan Larson.
Tags:2014 Election, Austin, Doug Arnold, Elections, Holly Hansen, Judicial Elections, Ryan Larson, Tallion Taylor, Texas, Williamson County
Posted in Austin, Elections, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »