Archive for: February, 2008

The Democratic Primaries: One Republican’s Perspective

Feb 12 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Politics

So throngs of Democrats are off to the polls today to vote in the Potomac Primary (I like that better than Chesapeake Tuesday). At stake are the delegates from Virginia, Maryland and DC. Having been subjected to the water cooler chatter of all my left leaning colleagues, I thought I’d weigh in on their election.

(Note: I could care no less about the battle between Huckabee and McCain, so I have to get my electoral thrills vicariously through the Democrats.)

Our office is pretty evenly split as are most of the delegates in their race. The most interesting conversation, however, seems to boil down to a) experience and b) electability. The Hillary fans claim Obama doesn’t have enough juice to be the Pres – a few years in DC doesn’t qualify him to lead. The Obama folks claim (and I agree) that he has a much better chance against McCain.

The fact is, for all the “can a black man be president” chatter, there is very little corresponding “can Hillary be President” chatter. It strikes me as odd. A Gallup poll almost one year ago asked about a bunch of attributes (religion, gender, race, sexual preference, etc) and found that people were more accepting of the idea of a black President than a woman President. add to that the fact that half of the country would never vote for Hillary Clinton and the current lead Obama enjoys over McCain in a head-to-head, and you have the makings of a disastrous candidacy on your hands.

Looking at 2004, Kerry received 44% of the male vote to Bush’s 55. According to the Hill polling, 56 of men would absolutely not vote for her, so she starts with a larger gender gap with men. Bush got 48% of the female vote. 45% say they would never vote for Clinton. Would the remaining 55% vote as a single bloc? Maybe, maybe not.

Kerry carried 89% of Democrats versus Bush’s 93% of Republicans. Hillary already operates without the support of better than 20% of her party. Being below 80% as a candidate that people know A LOT about is bad news for her. She has to run a major public image campaign to even convince a large chunk of her own party.

Finally, Kerry won 47% of those over 65. Hillary, according to the polls, is viewed as acceptable by only 31%. That’s a huge problem given that these are reliable voters.

Hillary is, by most polling, likely to lose the Potomac Primary today. It is entirely probable that Barack will sweep the three states. Now say what you want about Illinois, Arkansas, or New York being her home. The reality is Hillary has lived for the past 15 years in Washington, DC. These are the people that know her best, and they aren’t pushing the button for her. Why would anyone believe the rest of the country will come November?

The Democratic Party, unless they want to hand the GOP a gift, should really take a good hard look at Hillary and honestly ask if she can be elected. Experience aside, can she actually win? The likely answer to that question is no.

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Who Does The RNC Think Its Base Is?

Feb 11 2008 Published by under Craziness, Politics, Republicans

I just got a ridiculous e-mail from the RNC touting the new Valentine’s Day cards you can send to friends. Make no mistake, they’re all lame, but there was one that really struck me as completely missing the point and at a fair distance from the prevailing view of the majority of Republicans.

RNC Valentine's eCard

At what point did the Republican Party decide that a lot of time in Washington was a GOOD thing? Last I heard, we were still the party that would close the mother down and put locks on most of the doors if we could? Aren’t we the party of Goldwater and Reagan?

‚ÄúI have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.‚Äù – Barry Goldwater

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ – Ronald Reagan

Do either of those quotes sound like the words of men who believe that the length of time you serve in Washington somehow makes you MORE qualified to lead?

Maybe I missed the meeting where they took a vote and decided that a lifetime in the Senate was a net positive. It’s certainly a far cry from the party that included the Citizen Legislature Act in its Contract with America. That bill would have limited the tenure of both Senators and Representatives to twelve years.

So three years is not enough, but twelve is too much? Is that the takeaway?

For the folks over at 310 First Street, you should get out of the building more often and talk to real people who don’t live in DC. You’ll find they’re pretty pissed off at the party for abandoning the tenets of fiscal discipline. I don’t know that they’ll take kindly to the sudden embrace of career legislators.

I’d also like to make two other points about your campaign strategy.

First, the “he doesn’t have enough experience” attack isn’t working too well for Hillary. I hope we have something better in the can for the general election. If not, Obama may well beat us just as he’s beating her.

Second, Reagan had ZERO years service in the Senate, and that was enough to get him a 10-point win and 489 electoral votes. Are we really prepared to place that bet? America hasn’t elected a Senator in 40 years. What makes you think they’ll go with the one who has been there more than half that time instead of the new guy? They clearly don’t have a lot of respect for the office.

My advice, you better be thinking long and hard about a line of attack other than “he’s only been in the Senate for three years.”

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Spend It All! Mitt Breaks Fifty Million Heading To 70?

Feb 06 2008 Published by under Candidates, Craziness, Politics, Republicans

Good lord. I was perusing Mitt Romney’s FEC report trying to get a sense of how much money he has lent his campaign. I traded Tweets with Patrick Ruffini and Soren Dayton about ten days ago and we were ball parking the total amount he’ll loan himself at around $50 million. Now I’m not so sure. I think it may be considerably higher.

Based on his Year-End report, Mitt was writing himself a check for three million dollars roughly every two weeks beginning on November 5. That lasted until December 10 when the pace picked up to every 6 or 8 days. Let’s assume that held constant at three large every 8 days between then and now, he’s just broken the $50 million mark and still no closer to getting the nod. If the rate remains constant between now and the first week of March (when Texas and Ohio vote), he will be north of $62 million in personal loans by then.

If his rate accelerated, or the checks got larger, it could be even greater.

If he’s closer to 3 million every six days, he could be closer to $70 million by March 7. That also assumes that the checks are hovering in the 3 million range. The more likely scenario, given the huge expense of competing in 20 states yesterday, is those checks got much, much larger.

It will be interesting to see the final tally, but this does give opponents of public funding an opening. The argument has always been that public financing was needed to counter the fat-cat billionaire who would decide to simply buy his Congressional seat. This should be evidence that money alone is not enough to buy a race. No matter how much you throw at it, an underfunded opponent with better credentials or better ideas will still beat you.

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The Three-Way Two-Man Race

Feb 06 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Republicans

Where to begin… So Supercalifragilistic Tuesday has come and gone, and now we’re left with fewer answers than questions. For instance, Will Obama sweep Chesapeake Tuesday (stupid name, I know, but that’s what they’re calling it) and drive the nomination fight into March and beyond? Will the Republicans three-way two-man race force a convention floor fight? Or can McCain do well enough in Washington, Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio to lock it all up by mid-March?

Allahpundit at HotAir:

“What does it say that after conservative talk show hosts rail against McCain for a week, we do see a bunch of deep red states go for a candidate besides McCain… but it’s not Romney, but Huckabee?”

Well, it’s interesting that McCain won nine states, but it’s more interesting that he failed to win 11. With Romney picking up six and Huck grabbing five, there is an argument to be made that there is more momentum against J-Mac than with him. However, the GOP’s winner take all system gave McCain a sizeable lead among delegates.

It would be fascinating to see Romney and Huckabee announce a Rom/Huck ticket and combine their 434 delegates. That would at least make it close and give the conservatives something to rally behind. The only problem is whether their giant egos would be able to determine who gets top billing.

The bigger problem for the GOP, though is this:

State Dem Vote Total GOP Vote Total Differential
AL 533521 550573 -17052
AR 278764 202700 76064
GA 1040873 952474 88399
MO 820453 584618 235835
OK 401230 329843 71387
SC 530322 442918 87404
TN 612791 548783 64008

These are all states that the GOP carried in 2004, and yet, with the exception of Alabama, the Democrat turnout in those states was dramatically higher then GOP turnout. If those gaps held constant in the general, and both parties voted for their respective nominee, the Democrats would currently hold a 310 to 228 electoral advantage.

Now all of that remaining constant is unlikely. There are a lot of things that will impact turnout and voter behavior in a general election. This is likely a worst case scenario for the GOP at this point.

However, in a year with a wide open field, it doesn’t bode well for the GOP that turnout by Democrats is significantly greater. Keep in mind, the conventional wisdom says primaries and off year elections generally see higher turnout among the GOP because they tend to vote in every election, rather than just Presidential years and General elections. If the turnout among the Democrats in the primaries is that much greater, I shudder to think what sort of fight the eventual nominee is in for.

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The Continuing Superfluity of the USDA Graduate School

Feb 05 2008 Published by under Craziness, Government, Waste

About a year and a half ago, I posted on the ridiculousness that is the Graduate School, USDA.

[S]urely education initiatives would fall squarely under the Department of Education, right? After all, the department name kind of makes that obvious, doesn’t it?

Not to the guys at the Department of Agriculture, apparently. They operate the USDA Graduate School. “Hey”, you may be saying, “This must be like the DOE thing. There’s a logical explanation, right?”

Not that I can find. If this were some sort of program to teach subsidized farmers how to not grow corn, I could understand it. If it were a program to teach failed farmers how to do other things, I could get that to. Instead, this project seems to be a giant community college for anyone living in Washington, DC that wants to learn such critical life needs as: Creating a Podcast; Conversational French; Mushroom Identification; and Screenwriting.

In the nearly 18 months since, I have received the occasional e-mail or comment from people either chastising me for taking issue with such a noble program or, more recently, asking further questions about it. This comes from a note I received today.

Hi Turk! I came upon your USDA Grad School posts by a google search. Ironically, I was trying to do research on whether they are actually affiliated with the USDA or not. Just for background, the reason that I was trying to find this out is that government agencies can purchase many things tax-exempt at a state/local tax level in the state of [redacted], as states are
not permitted by the US Constitution to tax the US Government. However, [redacted] law does allow for the taxation of private universities from out of state. Naturally, they want to be tax-exempt as a government agency despite not receiving any funding as a government agency.

The author of this note cites a Washington Post article in which the Graduate School extols the virtue of not being funded by the USDA, and yet they tout the fact that the governing board is appointed by (you guessed it) the Secretary of Agriculture. So “funded by” and “controlled by” are two different things. Here are the kickers from that WaPo piece.

“We’re a self-financing organization,” Jerry T. Ice, the school’s executive director, said in an interview. “The folks that work at the graduate school are not federal employees.”

… The school has a staff of 300, an annual budget of more than $60 million and a governing board whose 17 members are appointed by the secretary of agriculture. (emphasis mine)

Sixty million dollars? And yet they want to skip taxes in the states in which they operate? They want to use a technical loophole to claim government affiliation for the purpose of avoiding obligations that apply to every “actual” college, but they want to profess their independence from such groups for the purpose of justifying their existence.

OMG! This is infuriating. It was bad enough when I thought this was simply a ridiculous holdover from some bygone era of retraining milk maids to use typewriters, but this has gotten absurd.

If there is, as the WaPo piece argues, some legitimate good that comes from this school, fine. In that case, get rid of the appointed board, let private companies bid for the right to run it, and privatize what should be a private entity. There is no compelling national interest in this program being run by USDA (or not run, depending on which argument you buy). Spin it off. Make it a commercial entity and let it pay taxes to the government rather than skipping out on its financial obligations while claiming exemption.

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