RedMango's blog

The Illinois Republican Party is a joke of a joke of a party.  It is bar-none, the worst state party out of 100 in existence.  Pussified beyond belief, it rolls over for the Dems more often than Lassie did for her owners.  So it is to my surprise to read this article and learn that Lincoln's great-grand bastards are, gulp, OBJECTING to the monstrously corrupt Illinois Dems for backtracking on holding a special election for Obama's senate seat. 

"David Dring, spokesman for House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said Republicans will step up the pressure on Democrats to remove Blagojevich.

"If they won't work with us, you'll probably see some good theater," Dring said.

The GOP also plans to run television ads pressuring Democrats to approve a special election to replace Obama. Blagojevich still holds the power to appoint a new senator, and if he resigned, that power would go to Democratic Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn.

Illinois Republican Party chairman Andy McKenna told reporters the ads will "make the point that this is the people's seat, and the people deserve a special election."

A spokesman said Madigan, who has often clashed with Blagojevich, will discuss impeachment with Cross on Monday.

Franks said Madigan — a methodical man who never rushes decisions — listens to House members and will probably respond to public cries for impeachment. But Franks also said members will not be satisfied with a wait-and-see response."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081215/ap_on_re_us/illinois_governor

I know that there are many paths for the GOP to reform like changing its message to not scaring people, but first and foremost, ALL should be busy in making sure others know that they exist. 

Congratulations to Congressman-elect Joseph Cao, who sent Dollar Bill Jefferson packing tonight, in a D+28 seat. The GOP can win when it runs everywhere. -Patrick

Louisiana's penchant for electing minority Republicans gains steam as Joseph Cao is projected to defeat Rep. William Jefferson in the New-Orleans based 2nd district.  With 391 out of 492 precincts reporting, Cao is comfortably ahead 53-43.  Cao will be the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress.  He is the third Asian-American Republican elected to the House (Saiki-HI, Kim-CA preceeded him). 

http://www400.sos.louisiana.gov:8090/cgibin/?rqstyp=elcms2&rqsdta=120608

www.nola.com

Conservatives are carrying the water for one of the more enduring myths in American politics:  Economic malaise under Carter gave us Reagan and it stands to reason that a bad economy will bring in another GOP president.  As much as I'd like to strangle anyone hoping for a sustained FOUR YEARS worth of recession because it's not only your pocketbook being decimated, but also how such an event would eradicate the Republican Party as well.

Forget about the 1980 election for a moment, and think of other momentous elections in US history.  While Democrats win elections under different kinds of economic environment, Republicans only win during a sustained economic recovery.  By the time the 1994 Republican Revolution came around, the economy had been expanding since 1991 and held on to it during the subsequent boom years.  Bush I win in 1988 was also helped by the Reagan boom.  The oncoming recession of 2000 when the tech  bubble popped, Republicans saw its first losses in the Senate since 1994 and Bush losing the popular vote.  Recessions in the 1950s whittled the ranks of GOP congressional members despite Eisenhower's victories.  Richard Nixon's victories was brought in part by the fact that there were no recessions in the US from 1957-1973.  The sick economy brought on by the oil crisis in 1973 probably exacerbated his declining popularity.  By 1976, the expected happened with a Democrat being elected to take care of runaway inflation. 

What makes 1980 standout is that Reagan carried the election despite the fact that the economy was tanking.  Maybe this was one of the signs that a political realignment was finally complete that voters have abandoned the idea for the time-being that Democrats will protect Americans from tough economic times.

"Protect".  I think that's the reason why voters would rather have Democrats during tough economic times.  At the first appearance of economic downturn, the reaction is to hunker down and look for protection.  The first shock to come in during a recession is unemployment and the lack of future prospects of employment.  Democrats (and to be honest, Bush) will promote policies that are not growth-oriented but protection-oriented such as higher entitlment spending, bailouts, stimulus packages, trade protectionism, stronger union powers, and tax increases for the "rich".  The GOP is stuck with responding with policies that is too future-oriented to resonate with the voting public.  The GOP is there to promote policies to sustain an economic recovery  and to prevent the state from interfering in the people's consumption of the fruits of economic growth (e.g., entitlement reforms, reversal of statist policies, tax cuts, pro-business regulations, free trade). 

I know not to get carried away in using economic graphs to determine people's voting intentions.  Look what happened to all the silly predictions of Gore winning in 2000 and Bush losing in 2004 just because of economic performance.  However, we (conservatives) can not wish for an economic catastrophe under this administration.  It won't bring us a Reagan, just widespread poverty and international embarassment.  It's hard to argue for tax cuts when people are not making enough money to tax. 

You woudn't believe it, but McCain/Palin was able to attract more gay votes this year than in 2004.  Twenty-seven percent of gays voted the GOP ticket compared to 23% for Bush.  Dem's gay vote fell pretty significantly, going from 77% Kerry to just 70% this year for Obama. 

But is it really an incredible result?  McCain is one of the more pro-gay politicians out there (at least for his generation).  The gay blogs were atwitter with gossip when it was found out this summer that McCain's staff chief was gay with some...controversial sexual practices.  Other reasons for this result?  Some of Hillary's gay base (see hillbuzz.wordpress.com) are PUMAs.  McCain also opposed the Defense of Marriage Act and has a long history of fighting GOP homophobia. Tongue-in-cheek, but not unbelievable, Sarah Palin as VP.  She is BUTCH.  A moving roving Subaru Outback from Alaska.  I have a lesbian friend who ADORES her and have become a fierce conservative in little more than two months because of her selection. 

More discussion at Ace.

Seriously.  The tallest candidate have won the presidency almost every time against the shorter candidate.  Hussein will be the 9th tallest president on record.  John McCain was clobbered in the height comparo standing no more than 2 inches taller than Sarah Palin at 5'6".  Don't give me that crap about correlation isn't causation, you can communicate conservative principles stronger and clearer if you are taller than the Demo in your way.  Taller means looking more presidential.  I am not kidding when I say that my choice of the next GOP nominee will be based partly on how comptetitive they are in height compared to Hussein. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_United_States_Presidents_and_pre...

The Dems have been crowing about incredible gains in voter registration lately.  Even if we assume that the 1.3 million voters ACORN registered were all legit, there are reasons that the foreclosure crisis will reduce the effect of Dem registration edge.   Since the end of the Dem primary in June, around 1.3 million homes were foreclosed on according to Realtytrac. More than 2.5 million homes have foreclosed this year alone.  And the pace is not slowing down.

Foreclosures are hitting Dem demographics HARD due to their disprportionate share of subprime loans.  Minorities are the primary recepients of subprime loans. 

"The survey focused on lending to minority urban markets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Charlotte, and Rochester, N.Y. In six of these seven urban areas, high-risk lenders' market share in minority neighborhoods was at least three times the share in white neighborhoods."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2008-03-06-minority-foreclose_N.htm

Since voter registration is residence-based, being run out of one's home makes it harder to vote.  While states do allow a workaround for those who are homeless (permanent absentee status is one), it does not negate the fact that many people who registered as Democrat in the primaries are probably far from their original place of registration and thus, in many cases, unable to vote.  Also, states that performed voter registration clean up may have added to this slow leaking of the Dem registration balloon. 

When you look at the places hardest hit by foreclosures, looking by state is not going to help us much.  One of the changes worrying the GOP the most is the influx of minority and Democrat voters to once solid-GOP counties.  I think subprime loans enabled that transformation to happen where people who can't typically afford to live in the suburbs could do so.   Now that that rug has been pulled under these new set of voters, the GOP has gained that slight sliver of hope.  Due to the mortgage crisis, what was once favorable Dem territory ready for taking, may be solidly Repbulican again.  According to a Census study done in 1999, an individual with same residence after 5 years is TWO TIMES more likely to vote than someone who lives in the same address for less than one year. 

"Homeowners are nearly 40 percent more likely to vote than those who rent or do not own their homes. With a greater length of time at the same residence, individuals are more likely to vote. For example, those who have been at their current address for more than five years are almost two times as likely to vote as those who have lived at their current residence for less than one year."

As the dark clouds gather on the horizon, it may look to Republicans as if a hurricane is about to strike them, but I think that the perfect storm gathering for Democrats may end up to be another SoCal sprinkle. 

The busybodies of the rightwing commentariat have offered some of the dumbest insights of the NO vote I have seen so far and I was at Dailykos!!  Basically, all the stupid turncoat commentaries boil down to this:  Please GOP, rethink your vote, or you might be blamed for the next Great Depression.  Because you know, voters might kick Republicans out of Congress and vote in Nancy Pelosi's menagerie of morons.  Yeah, that sure made Republicans tremble.  The GOP is not going to retake Congress and McCain may head to defeat, there is near-zero incentive right now for them to betray the conservative base who loath the bailout.  If you read nothing but conservative blogs, you think you accidentally stumbled onto Andrew Sullivan's blogroll.  This is the biggest issue this country has faced since 9/11, and the conservative flock has long left the conservative punditocracy plantation. 

 All the tracking polls show that McCain's numbers are headed in the direction this country will definitely take under Obama--down.  Though, I am still heartened that at worst, the leads are in the middle single digits.  

I follow up on international politics because as a conservative, you have to just to escape the depressing series of anti-GOP stories emanating from Manhattan.  Liberals have a lot at stake to make Obama president, because unlike in 2004, Canada is not an option for escape.  Canada has been governed by the Conservative Party since 2006 and on Oct. 14, the Tories are widely expected to beat the ever living hell out of the Liberal Party and finally gain a parliamentary majority.  See bloggingtories.ca to follow up on the Canadian election.  The Tories are ahead by double-digits over the Liberals.  PM Stephen Harper said that Canada has become a conservative country, and he is right.  It's a country that drills, has balance budgets, and beats the US in economic competitiveness.  By the time the Bush-Pelosi bailout passes, Canada can claim to have a significantly less socialized economy than the US.  

The Antipodes disappointed me when they turfed conservative John Howard out of office last year even when the economy was going on its 20-year expansion.  Howard though maybe was around too long, governing Australia since 1996.  Australia's Hawaii, New Zealand, is ready to redeem itself by chucking the unpopular left-wing government of PM Helen Clark.  She is being kicked HARD to the curb by voters with polls showing her down against the conservative National party by 15-20 points.  The election is on Nov. 8, a few days after ours so that gives me time to pack.  Follow NZ 08 at http://www.stuff.co.nz/vote08.

By next year, George Brown's Labour government is set to collapse electorally.  The Conservative Party has leads that are between 100 to 250 points depending on whether the polls was taken by Guardian/ICM or the Telegraph.  

So English-speaking conservatives, cheer up cheerio.  It's time to rack-up those frequent-flyer miles.  It's nice to have friends that aren't Georgia and Saudi Arabia.  

 One of the more surprising things I've come to learn from reading about McCain in this campaign is his reliance on the women of his life to further his political ambitions.  There is no one close to American politics who accept powerful women such as McCain so effortlessly.  We've read the stories before on how McCain pays his female staffers better than Obama.  He also hires more women than men and places them in higher paying positions.  

When he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, his critics cried "tokenism".  But I felt that the decision was in-line with his attitude towards placing women in powerful position.  Only when he started pulling the sexist card out of thin air for his TV ads did I cringe because it felt like it was out-of-character for him to do.  He did admit later on that the attacks on Palin were not sexist.

Ultimately, the number one indicator of his comfort with powerful women is with his marriage with his beer heiress wife Cindy.  By all accounts, she was the one that got him to where he is now.  I don't think there is a male politician in American who can attribute their rise to a woman.  She owns their houses and cars according to reports and he seems to not care about his whole "breadwinner" thing.  Contrast this relationship between the Obamas.  Michelle has now been put away under lock and key.  

Bill Clinton was a feminist hero even though he exhibited such distasteful approach to women.  The same feminists clobber McCain because he picks a woman for a position of power.  I don't doubt that McCain might appoint the first cabinet composed of majority women.  Is this important?  We've come to the point in society that 58% of all college students are women and it's been like that for a little more than 20 years.  There is no dearth of qualified women to take helm of bureaucracies. 

One of the more amusing arguments in the book Freakonomics is that Roe v. Wade led to the steep decline in crime a generation after the ruling.  The book had plenty of moronic spurious arguments but it surprised me how the author restrained himself in asserting that Roe v. Wade didn't also lead to a death spiral in American civic discourse.  

Nothing in my reading of past presidential elections since the 1970s has an election been this ugly.  

This is by far the nastiest election I've ever encountered.  Come to think of it, you have to rewind to the post-Civil War years to find elections this brutal on the candidates.  I've realized sadly that this is just an early phase.  So right now, I am marvelling how it can possibly get worse: Ayers, Whosebastardgate, Secret Muslim, Rezko, Troopergate, Biden plagiarisms, McCain's past, and the general catch-all heading of "Michelle O. Hates America."  Unfortunately, none of the controversies drummed-up for each candidate is going to be resolved by January.  Like Whitewater, they're wounds that will fester and will envelop us all in the same Clintonian drama.  

It just hit me though as I watch Mr. Bush does his press conference on Gustav:  "He's above all this crap!"  I have never in my life watched Mr. Bush complete a sentence but as I watched him, I would have never thought that I wished he was president for a few more months.  The past two years of his administration, he has shown a remarkably adept administration, a COMPETENT administration that was severely lacking in his first 6 years.  He is governing in the best sense of the word.  Right now, with so much mess in this world, he is rock solid as ever, but carries himself with more political savvy.  It's the kind of Bush the "roots" hate because it reminds them of the presidency-in-autopilot of pere Bush.  Without the ravenous GOP Congress, Bush seems to be more at-ease with being president.  

It took 40 years for Truman to rehabilitated.  Bush is going to break that record.