Saturday, November 22, 2008

Thursday, November 20, 2008

For The GOP, Now Is Our Moment


The first opportunity for the GOP to re-stake its claim as the party of small government and free markets has presented itself earlier than anyone could have expected.

A major U.S. industry is on the verge of bankruptcy and despite the fears of a short-term impact on the economy, Republicans must oppose a bailout of Detroit in order to set the auto industry on a path of self-reliance in coming decades.

Barack Obama ran against Washington-as-usual and it worked. One of the things that people across the political spectrum say they hate the most about the government is special interest influence in policy making, and throughout the campaign Obama claimed that he hated it as well.

That being said, Obama relied heavily on Union support and support from the United Auto Workers union in particular, for both money and organization in both the primaries and the general election.

The proposed government bailout, which Obama supports, would provide taxpayer money to an industry that have been losing money hand over fist, quarter after quarter for years. The government cash would prevent them from having to layoff their unionized employees, keep the assembly lines running and keep their CEO’s flying in private jets until the next time they get into trouble.

A long-term solution is what is needed and for the Big Three and bankruptcy is the first step in the long rehabilitation process.

Now, bankruptcy doesn’t not mean that Ford, GM and/or Chrysler will just disappear, never to be heard from again. What it does mean is that the auto companies will be forced to change the way they do business in order to survive and once again become profitable.

Most importantly, they will have to renegotiate contracts with the unions so that they can once again compete with overseas companies like Toyota, which are currently kicking their butts all over the marketplace. In addition to this, once the bankruptcy occurs, the government can use its new leverage to give Detroit real incentives to adopt new technology in the vehicles they produce.

Even though they claim to love hybrids, most Democrats are so beholden to the unions that they would support them regardless of the long-term environmental benefits associated with forcing the car companies to restructure from the bottom up.

The GOP, however, has nothing to lose. The House GOP was adamantly opposed to the original $700 billion bailout package, but went along with it in the end, essentially out of hope of preserving John McCain’s chances in the November election.

Without the electoral albatross around their necks, the GOP can stick to their guns and put immense pressure on Democrats in swing districts to kill a handout that the American people are almost certain to oppose.

Bailing out our financial institutions is one thing. Millions of investors and businesses relied on the money that was at stake in the preservation of the gatekeepers of our nation’s private wealth.

If the Big Three fail, jobs will be lost, the market will lose more of its value and the economy in the affected regions will assuredly suffer. However, letting the companies fail and rebuild from the bottom up (which they almost certainly will, not wanting to abandon their infrastructure) will have a long-term positive impact in that it will force a 20th century industry to adapt to a 21st century world.


When the bailout comes to the desk of President Bush, I am confident that he will veto it. When the same bill comes to the same desk before President Obama, he will be forced to either hold true to his campaign rhetoric, in which he billed himself as a new kind of politician, or risk losing the support of one of the special interest groups that helped him get elected. Not a good position for a president to find himself in only weeks into his presidency.

With the abdication of political power comes the ability to return to ideological purity without the threat of electoral repercussions.

With this opportunity also comes a chance to regain typically Republican voters who abandoned John McCain and the GOP for Libertarians like Ron Paul and Bob Barr. These voters are largely young males whose votes wouldn’t have made much of a difference for John McCain at the polls. But the energy and fierce loyalty they exhibited during the long campaign is exactly what we need to counter the Obama youth’s celebrity-driven dedication to their candidate.

Either way, this is the line in the sand that we as a party need to draw in order to reinvent ourselves and for the auto industry to reinvent itself.

-Dan Joseph

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Polar Opposites-Hold Off On Holder


I guess it's poetic justice that the left would crucify AG Alberto Gonzales for approving the "torture" of terrorists and then not make a sound when Barack Obama nominates a man whose claim to fame is approving pardons for them. This guy isn't getting confirmed without a lotof noise from us.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Obama's Base



UTICA, New York -- Just 2% of voters who supported Barack Obama on Election Day obtained perfect or near-perfect scores on a post election test which gauged their knowledge of statements and scandals associated with the presidential tickets during the campaign, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Only 54% of Obama voters were able to answer at least half or more of the questions correctly.

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film "Blocking the Path to 9/11" and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.

"We stand by the results our survey work on behalf of John Ziegler, as we stand by all of our work. We reject the notion that this was a push poll because it very simply wasn't. It was a legitimate effort to test the knowledge of voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama in the Nov. 4 election. Push polls are a malicious effort to sway public opinion one way or the other, while message and knowledge testing is quite another effort of public opinion research that is legitimate inquiry and has value in the public square. In this case, the respondents were given a full range of responses and were not pressured or influenced to respond in one way or another. This poll was not designed to hurt anyone, which is obvious as it was conducted after the election. The client is free to draw his own conclusions about the research, as are bloggers and other members of society. But Zogby International is a neutral party in this matter. We were hired to test public opinion on a particular subject and with no ax to grind, that's exactly what we did. We don't have to agree or disagree with the questions, we simply ask them and provide the client with a fair and accurate set of data reflecting public opinion." - John Zogby



"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign. An answer of "none" or "Palin" was counted as a correct answer on the test, given that the statement was associated with a characterization of Palin.

Obama voters did not fare nearly as well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

In addition to questions regarding statements and scandals associated with the campaigns, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey also included a question asking which political party controlled both houses of Congress leading up to the election -- 57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Palin Survived The Liberal Smears



Palin for president

She helped the GOP ticket more than McCain.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The week before the election, the Obama campaign ran a television commercial attacking the Republican candidate for vice president. To my knowledge, this had never been done before.

Within days of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's selection by John McCain to be his running mate, there was speculation in the news media that maternal neglect was the cause of baby Trig's Down Syndrome; that Trig was really daughter Bristol's baby; that Sarah was a fundamentalist who believes dinosaurs and humans coexisted; that she once belonged to a secessionist party; that as mayor of Wasilla, she tried to have popular books banned from the town library.

None of this was true, but this was how the news media introduced Ms. Palin to people in the lower 48. No vice presidential candidate has ever been subjected to such a torrent of abuse.

This was a woman with no family money and no famous name who took on a corrupt Republican governor and beat him, then swept to victory in the general election against a popular former Democratic governor. This was a reformer who in her first year as governor got through the legislature a bill her predecessors had sought unsuccessfully for 35 years -- to build a natural gas pipeline to the rest of the country -- as well as a landmark ethics reform bill. She was by far the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating in the low 80s.

A star athlete and beauty contest winner who hunts moose and worked as a commercial fisherman, Sarah Palin has a remarkable personal and political story. But it's a story the news media largely ignored in favor of spreading malicious gossip.

Given the constant portrayal of Ms. Palin as an ignorant hick, it's not surprising that only 38 percent of those who voted thought she was qualified to be president. The conventional wisdom among those who consider themselves her social superiors is that she was a drag on the ticket.

"By picking Palin, McCain simultaneously eliminated his own best argument against Sen. Obama -- the limited experience of his opponent -- while compounding his own most negative image, that of someone who is erratic and out of control," said Julian Zelizer of Newsweek.

This view is at variance with the facts. Of the 60 percent of voters who told exit pollsters Sarah Palin was an "important factor" in their decision, 56 percent voted for Mr. McCain. Those who said she was not an important factor voted for Barack Obama by a 64 percent to 33 percent margin.

In a Rasmussen poll taken the day before the election, 71 percent of Republicans said Ms. Palin was the right choice for vice president, but only 65 percent said Mr. McCain was the right choice for president.

Ms. Palin drew much larger crowds than Mr. McCain did when he campaigned alone, and much, much larger crowds than Democrat Joe Biden could attract. People left her rallies more pumped up than when they arrived.

She gave a boffo performance in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention and she performed better in her debate with Mr. Biden than Mr. McCain did in his first two debates with Mr. Obama.

Sarah Palin's appearance on "Saturday Night Live," where she had been lampooned mercilessly, brought that show its highest ratings in years.

"Her politics aren't my politics," said SNL's executive producer, Lorne Michaels. "But you can see that she is a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

Mr. McCain got 7 million votes fewer than George W. Bush did in 2004. If Sarah Palin hadn't been on the ticket, that deficit would have been much greater.

Sarah Palin is a rare political talent. I think that's why liberals have tried so hard to define her negatively before Americans could get to know her. Whether she has a national political future depends on her own wishes and Barack Obama's performance. But if she should choose to run for president in 2012, she'll have my enthusiastic support.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Four Important Races

I know that many of you have decided to take a nice long break from politics after the crazy presidential election ended on the day it was supposed to. But keep in mind that several key senate races have not yet been decided and one important Governor's race is just starting up. Here's the rundown:

Georgia: Saxby Chambliss didn't quite make it to the 50% mark that he needed to hit in the general in order to avoid a run off. I'm not really worried about it though. Chambliss will likely add to his margin over Jim Martin due to the fact that Obama's young foot soldiers and black supporters are unlikely to come out again for the final vote.

Alaska: It's unfortunate that a bad guy and convicted felon like Ted Stevens had to be our nominee. But he was and it looks like he will eke out a victory in his race for a 33rd term. Ironically, the reason that he will probably win is contrary to basic GOP principles. He has provided so much pork to his state that relatively everyone in the Final Frontier has benefited from the job he's done in Washington.

If he holds on, there is a very good chance that he will be expelled from the Senate leaving the door open for Governor Palin to appoint his successor.
Note To The Governor: Looking for a perfect replacement? Look in the mirror.

Minnesota: This one is really troubling because Norm Coleman is a great guy who has done a terrific job for the state. But the crazies up in the Land Of A Thousand Lakes have come very close to putting a real hater in the Senate in comedien Al Franken.

Anyone Minnesotan who voted for Barack Obama in hopes of unifying the nation and also voted for Franken is a hypocrite. Franken has said things in his career as a left-wing talk show host that would make Howard Dean blush. He is the exact opposite of what America needs at a time when political reconciliation and a change in tone are what Americans so desperately desire.

With additional votes magically appearing for Franken, it is becoming clear that someone is up to no good. We need transparency in the recount procedure so that Norm Coleman is returned to the Senate per the voters wishes.

Virginia: Finally, not only is it important that we turn Virginia red again after Obama's big win last Tuesday, but it's equally important that Democratic shill Terry McAuliffe is not installed in the governor's mansion. He has spent his entire career making money for his friends in Washington D.C. Virginia needs someone who is working for...you know...Virginians. we need to send Attorney General Bob McDonnell to Richmond in 2009. Virginia is where the second Republican Revolution will begin. Now is the time to shift our focus The Old Dominion.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Good Dog!


Damn Liberal Media!

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

What Prop. 8 Says About America

In the first presidential election since social networking sites like Facebook and My Space came to be, it was obvious that two things were of the utmost importance to these new participants in the political process.

The first was obviously getting Barack Obama elected. The other non-stop topic of online conversation among my friends on these sites was gay marriage. So it really shocked a lot of them when the state of California voted for Obama by 24 points and still passed Prop.8, which overturned CA’s ban on gay marriage.

Now, I’ve never had much use for the issue of gay marriage at all, on either side.

One side is trying to convince people that acceptance of Gay marriage will lead to the downfall of the traditional family. There is of course no evidence to support this.

On the other side, gay rights advocates argue that gay marriage is a “civil right”. This isn’t quite true either, since gay marriage is a right that is denied to everyone, not just to some. Legally speaking, the fact that you want to do something and you legally cannot, may be unfair and make some folks unhappy, but it doesn’t make the prohibition of that thing unconstitutional.

Really the entire debate is one of semantics regarding the definition of the word “marriage”. That’s not meant to insult anyone, but with civil union and domestic partnership laws increasingly giving the same rights to same-sex couples as traditional couples, this topic remains very much an emotional one.

Either way, the argument has raged over the last few days, but the really interesting part of the Prop. 8 result was that was it was so far off, from the otherwise lopsided victory of Barack Obama in the Golden State.

What this tells me is that while Obama’s victory was significant, last night’s election was not a realignment as some have suggested.

Obama’s victory was primarily a rebuke of the Bush administration, however the reason that folks were upset with Bush had nothing to do with the basic conservative principles that the party has run and won on over the last 30 years.

The President’s unpopularity stems primarily from a mismanaged war, the response to Hurricane Katrina and an economic crisis which had nothing to do with any policy that Bush has ever signed into law or promoted. These failures were not the products of traditional Republican ideology by any means.

Prop 8’s passage as well as the passage of several other gay marriage bans across the nation, shows us that while folks are discontent with the way things are going right now, they still favor traditional values, at least when it comes to social issues.

Barack Obama would be wise to keep this in mind, since he ran as a centrist. If he moves too far to the left, especially on issues such as this, he risks losing many of the voters who supported him on Tuesday.

Fair or not, America remains center-right, and like it or not these issues have a history of pushing the voters even further in that direction.

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Disgrace

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?
By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.


APAccording to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."


To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004

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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

44


No Experience Necessary.

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Prepare For a Rough Night

Tonight looks like it's going to be a bad one for Republicans. Here's my electoral prediction:
<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

The Senate doesn't look much better. I'm guessing that the tight races will go as follows:

KY - McConnell- Hold
VA - Warner - Dem +1
NC - Dole - Hold
OR - Merkley - Dem +2
NH - Shaheen - Dem +3
MN - Coleman - Hold
NM - -Udall - Dem +4
AK - Begich - Dem +5
GA - Chambliss - Hold
CO - Udall - Dem + 6

This Senate scenario may be a bit optimistic. It's going to really difficult losing New Hampshire's John Sununu, who's one of the smartest guys in the Senate but it seems like a done deal given the states big swing towards the Democrats this year.

If Al Franken wins in MN my faith in the people of that state has officially reached 0%.

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I Swear, I'm Not Related To This Idiot.

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Monday, November 03, 2008

Too Little, Too Late

Here is the ad that McCain should have been running since March:

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Sunday, November 02, 2008

Who Is This Guy?

In the tank for Obama
The media have done too little to explore this mystery candidate
Sunday, November 02, 2008

By Jack Kelly, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"After all this time with him, I still can't say with certainty who he is," wrote Peter Nicholas of the Los Angeles Times Tuesday about Sen. Barack Obama, with whom he's spent roughly 18 hours a day for most of this campaign.

Mr. Obama rarely engages in banter with the reporters who travel with him, and typically is in "robo-candidate mode" on those occasions he does speak with them, Mr. Nicholas said. "Ironically, those of us who were sent out to take his measure in person can't offer much help in answering who he is, or if he is ready. The barriers set in place between us and him were just too great."

Less is known about Barack Obama than about any major party candidate for president in modern history. His public resume is thin -- eight years in the Illinois Senate, four in the U.S. Senate, with two of them spent running for president.

And no candidate for president has had more problematic associations. Barack Obama's first major financial backer was Antoin "Tony" Rezko, currently awaiting sentencing on corruption charges. For nearly 20 years Mr. Obama attended services where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached hatred of the United States, and of white people. The radical group ACORN has been committing voter registration fraud on a massive scale. Mr. Obama taught classes for ACORN organizers, and represented the group in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois. The most significant managerial responsibility Barack Obama has ever had was as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a project conceived of by unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers.

These associations have been less explored by the mainstream news media than has Joe the Plumber's divorce and a tax lien against him.

Mr. Nicholas' colleague at the Los Angeles Times, Peter Wallsten, wrote a story in April about a testimonial dinner Mr. Obama had attended in 2003 for Rashid Khalidi when Prof. Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia University. Mr. Khalidi and his wife, Mona, had worked for WAFA, the propaganda arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He later co-founded the rabidly anti-Israel Arab American Action Network. Among the contributors to a book of testimonials presented to Mr. Khalidi at that dinner were Sen. Obama and Mr. Ayers.

Mr. Wallsten's account of the event was based on a videotape of it supplied by an anonymous source. That videotape could answer some relevant questions. What exactly was said at the dinner? How did Mr. Obama respond? Were Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn there? But the L.A. Times -- which thought it newsworthy to put a video clip of Sarah Palin competing in the swimsuit competition in the Miss Alaska contest in 1984 on its Web site -- has refused to make the tape public.

Times Editor Russ Stanton said the paper would not make the video public because "it was provided to us by a confidential source on the condition that we not release it." That's the fourth different explanation the newspaper has offered.

Michael Malone, one of the country's leading technology writers, said he's embarrassed to admit he's a journalist because "the sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling."

The problem hasn't been the tough reporting on Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, Mr. Malone wrote for the ABC News Web site Oct. 24. It's been the virtual absence of such reporting on the Democrats:

"Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview?" Mr. Malone asked. "All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up?

"If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (at least who will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography," Mr. Malone said.

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Saturday, November 01, 2008

Some Things For Republican's To Keep In Mind

A few thoughts as we enter the last few difficult days of what has been a steep uphill climb for all of us in the party.

1. We need to remember history and understand that it was working against us from the very beginning. Over the last 60 years, only once has one party maintained the White House for more than 8 years.


R - Eisenhower:8

D- Kennedy /Johnson: 8

R - Nixon/Ford : 8

D - Carter: 4

R - Reagan/ Bush: 12*

D - Clinton:8

R - Bush II: 8

It would appear that the American people’s recent inclination is to give the party out of power an opportunity after two terms of GOP or Dem leadership.

If McCain comes close it would be amazing given the circumstances.

2. I’ve heard a lot of people on both sides grumbling about the lack of a clear message and deficient candidacy of Sen. McCain as he moves closer to what appears to be at least an electoral college defeat.

I disagree. John McCain knew from the beginning that he was going to have to run a very different kind of campaign and take a lot of risks if he was going to have a chance. He has remained competitive despite the fact that every single political factor is working in his opponents favor.

He has tried every angle and has found that absolutely none of them work in this climate.

A clear traditional GOP message in this election similar to the standard Democratic message that Barack Obama has run on, would never work right now due to the GOP’s unpopular standing seen in the generic polls.

3. The left has been quick to tell us that Sarah Palin has been a disaster for McCain. I don’t think that’s accurate either.

If you look at the polls, McCain is in the same position right now as he was before the Palin pick. That was also before the October Surprise of the financial crisis.

She undoubtedly botched a few questions in the interviews, but she has also been an effective rallying point for the base. The unfair smears aimed at her involving pregnancies, banning books, rape kits and creationist fear mongering on the left have hurt her among people who don’t know how to differentiate fact from fiction, and that’s a lot of folks in an election year where young college students and comedy news shows have played such a big role. Not to mention the hate filled left wing blogs like Kos and HuffPo.

Palin is anything but vapid. Being pulled out of Alaska on such short notice she didn’t have time to adequately prep for a national stage. My guess is that this will change.

She’s a gifted politician and will likely be in the U.S. Senate very soon. I’m guessing that one way or another she will end up in the seat now held by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in 2010. This will give her a high profile spot in the party and a chance to really make her mark in American politics.

4. I was listening to the musical HAIR while in the shower this morning and the song “The Flesh Failures/Let the Sunshine In” came on. In the song the flower children sing of “facing a dying nation” and lament the imminent decline of the American empire due to Vietnam. Listening to it, I couldn’t help but think of the similar ‘sky is falling’ attitude peddled by alarmists on both sides over the last few years.

Of course those of us who understand just how amazingly well the American experiment has gone over the last half a century understand that whether the next president is Obama or McCain, the nation will survive and thrive, not because of the federal government, but because of the optimism and innovative nature of the American people. Their spirit and faith in American exceptionalism, whether they admit it or not, always wins the day.


-Dan Joseph

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The Video

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