Archive for: March, 2006

50 States, One Bad Idea

Mar 31 2006 Published by Turk under Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Politics, Republicans

PoliticsThe Hotline On Call has an interesting take on the Dean/DNC 50-state strategy.

[Dean's] argument was this: While the DSCC and DCCC’s role is rightfully incumbent protection, Dean, on the other hand, was elected chair to tend to overall health of the party. And that includes his responsibility to hundreds of non-federal candidates as well. His investment in state parties, Dean promised Reid and House Min. Leader Nancy Pelosi, would pay off and the benefits would accrue to Democrats at all levels.

Though the DNC has raised a record amount of hard money for an off-year cycle, it trails the RNC by several car lengths. Overall, the GOP will have more to spend on its races in the fall as the DNC has sent much of its money to state counterparts. (It’s not as if the money is going into a hole (emphasis mine). The DNC organizers are using it to find new voters and to update voter files and prepare coordinated campaigns for 2006.)

Actually, it’s exactly as if it’s going into a hole.

You see, the Dean strategy of sending all of his limited federal funds to states (who can still use non-federal funds to help those “non-federal candidates”) means they have very few federal dollars left to help the federal candidates.

Deans notion of what the DNC should be doing was exactly right in a pre-BCRA world. Post-BCRA, however, it’s a monumentally stupid thing to do. You have limited federal funds to spend on federal candidates, and you’re sending them all to Topeka, Kansas for party building. There are a couple of problems with that.

1. You’ll never have enough resources to counter the prevailing mood of Kansas and elect Democrats in a state that red.

2. Now that you’ve blown all of your money in Topeka, when the GOP nominees, the NRSC, the NRCC, and the RNC begin beating the hell out of your candidates in Ohio and Florida, you’ve got nothing to counter that attack. Your field operative in Topeka, with his shiny new voter file and additional voters is going to do you precious little good against an air-war in a swing state.

Reid is right to be worried about the midterms for that reason. Joe Trippi was right when he told Dean a 50-state strategy is a really bad idea. Unfortunately, Dean didn’t want to hear it then, and still isn’t listening now.

No responses yet

Strange Bedfellows

Mar 31 2006 Published by Turk under Candidates, Democrats, Politics, Self-Promotion

PoliticsShameless Self-PromotionI posted this over at GOPBloggers, but I thought I’d put it up here as well. Hypocrisy makes me nuts (I include my own bouts of hypocrisy in that, not just others’). I just couldn’t let this one go without comment…

In odd news out of Connecticut, the guy liberals love to love – Barrack Obama – appeared at a fundraiser for the guy liberals love to hate. Not Bush. That would be too much. It’s Lieberman.

If any Republican is seen with the President, lefty bloggers automatically label them a neo-con, hard-right, fringe-dwelling whack job, even if their voting record or personal belief system prove otherwise.

Let’s see if they spaz out on this one. Let’s see if they scream about the betrayal and demand Obama distance himself from the gentleman from Connecticut. Let’s see if that standard applies to their hero from Illinois. Let’s see if they decry the loss of their golden boy.

No responses yet

Stop The Insanity

Mar 30 2006 Published by Turk under Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Politics

PoliticsIt would suck to be a Democrat donor. Hell, it sucks to be a Republican donor who signed up for Democrat lists just so I could see what they’re saying. All they ever say is “Give me money, now for the love of god!”

In the last 24 hours, I have received e-mails from John Kerry, Evan Bayh and about a half dozen others – not to mention two each from the DSCC, MoveOn and Hillary. Their unsubscribe rates have to be phenomenal. If I didn’t have a bloodlust for the train wreck that is political e-mail, I’d drop off myself.

Here’s a message to the Democrat donors – your candidates view you as nothing but an ATM machine! Sorry!

For the Democrat candidates, committees and affiliates, with all the web has to offer in personalization, localization, and democratization, is an endless stream of fundraising appeals really the best you can do?

UPDATE: The DNC broke the streak. An e-mail I received last night asked me to volunteer with their door-to-door canvass program. This is the same program I wrote about last week when they sent their appeal for cash.

Apparently they’ve finally decided to take a play from the RNC book and are trying to use this Internet thing to actually organize people. Wow! About two or three years late, aren’t you guys? Thinking like this might have come in handy in 2004.

No responses yet

The Internet’s Not Fond Of You Either

Mar 30 2006 Published by Turk under Celebrities, Pop Culture, The Internet

The InternetCelebritiesHarrison Ford hates the Internet.

The Internet, upon hearing the news, said, “That’s ok. I fuqed Calista first.”

No responses yet

DeLay, Terry Nelson, and Reality

Mar 30 2006 Published by Turk under Candidates, Democrats, Elections, In The Beltway, Politics, Republicans

PoliticsI was talking to a friend and former colleague on the phone a few minutes ago and we discussed the increasingly vile depths to which the Democrats will sink in their quest for political victory. Specifically, we were discussing the fact that the Democrats seem to be spending more time looking into the operatives that work on campaigns, and are spending considerably less time trying to carry out policy debates or formulating sound strategies for solving the country’s ills.

A couple of days ago, I ran across a story about John McCain’s acquisition of Terry Nelson as a campaign advisor. Unlike most of the articles I had read about the deal, this one came from a blog. Unlike just about all of the other articles I had read, this one wasn’t very complimentary. In fact, it was downright hostile.

Two things struck me about this article. First, it greatly exaggerates the “crime” of which DeLay is accused and Terry’s role in it. Second, it fails to accurately capture the real world of campaign politics.

Terry’s situation with regard to the DeLay case falls into the jumbled morass of campaign finance laws. To erase the half-truths and outright lies of the left, let me explain the world of “legal money laundering” that existed in campaigns until the passage of BCRA.

Under the previous legal regime, parties were allowed to raise two types of money: federal and non-federal. They’re also referred to as hard dollars and soft dollars, or clean dollars and dirty dollars. It was a goofy system created in response to the abuses of the pre-Watergate era and rife for manipulation.
Continue Reading »

One response so far

Older posts »