Searchlight Serenity.
Fresh glimpses of the gathering outside of Searchlight, Nevada, last Sunday 28, when Sarah Palin led the cheering before a crowd of several thousand self-identified Tea Party followers. Moms and dads and the curious, all quiet, respectful, suited up for a stroll in the desert sun. The landscape is otherworldly. The serenity and July 4th barbecue atmosphere are recognizable for fireworks, or a travelling carnival, or a school fair. The Democratic partisan plan to smear the Tea Party as violent extremists or 1950s-style racists has stumbled and stopped with the facts. Mr. and Mrs. Frugal America.
Healthcare Wave for Recruiting.
Spoke John McArdle, CQ-Roll Call, re FL 16 and FL 24 to learn that the Democratic challenger against Congressman Tom Rooney (above) drops out of the race suddenly after failing to attract money. Also, that the GOP has recruited a well-to-do CEO of Ruth's Chris Steakhouse to challenge the precarious Yes vote of Kosmas in the 24th. Both these CDs reflect the change in the fortunes of the Democrats and the GOP after healthcare and other partisan aggression on the Hill. Much stranger, the 14-term Democrat Alan Mollahan of WV-1 is challenged by a Democratic State Senator because Mollohan, no progressive, is not conservative enough for his state. The Democrats are flabbergasted, and this softens up the district for the winner of the GOP primary. All energy CDs are in play because of the cap and trade vote in the House last year and the prospect of the Democrats' moving the bill in a new Congress. The Yes vote continues to expose the Democratic Yes votes to odd events and to discourage recruiting and money-raising in unpredictable ways.
Murtha's Pa 12.
The most fun of the evening was speaking to Tim Burns, a charming, youthful first-time political candidate who is the Republican choice in the special election for Jack Murtha's PA-12 seat. The CD is gerrymandered crazily, touching nine counties spread around Johnstown and Uniontown in Western Pennsylvania. The whole of Greene County (below) is included, and this is an energy-rich coal county that is heavily anti-Democratic because of the cap and trade bill. Tim Burns also tells me that the conservative Pro-Life Democrats who supported the colorful Murtha for decades are unhappy and despairing of the healthcare Yes vote as well as of the burgeoning Federal spending for the banks, the bail-outs, the programs. Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, tells me that the Democrats have no energy or muscle for the status quo ante candidate put up, Murtha's district manager, Mark Critz. The race is a fast-foward six weeks, and it will attract all eyes as an indicator for the GOP case to November. Recruits like Tim Burns are mightily convincing that the GOP wave has far to go.
The Obama administration's effort at painting tea partiers et al as deranged, racist psychopaths is obviously not working. The competition among the talking heads of the mainstream media as to who can use the word 'Christian' most often in a single sentence is hilariously obvious. But don’t make the mistake of thinking we can now simply coast into the midterm elections on the empty promise to overturn health care legislation?
There are still those 34 House Democrats who were given permission by Pelosi to vote ‘no’. Are their seats now safe? Or will every Democrat be summarily swept out, no matter how he or she voted? Conventional wisdom has it that the latter will be the case.
Americans have become familiar with the process. They’ve become aware of how they’ve been manipulated all along. Republicans are the clear alternative at the moment. But it is seen as a desperate alternative – a ‘Hail Mary Pass’, if you wish. Republicans have done a poor job of defining themselves; cleaving a clear distinction between themselves and what is seen as an irredeemably corrupt Washington political class. In addition, the people are wary of once again subjecting the nation to one-party rule.
The health care hysteria will pass and cooler heads will prevail; that is, provided Obama will not inflict yet another divisive issue on the nation.
Increasingly, people are toying with the idea of supporting a third party. The thinking is emotionally sound: sweep them all out and start over. Practically, however, it can’t be done. Ross Perot proved that a third party will only serve to split the opposition. Introducing a third party into the mix now would guarantee continued Democrat dominance.
There are many who (rightly) believe that a third party would require several election cycles to take root; that it would work only in the long term. The opposing view argues that this country cannot afford a second Obama term; that the nation needs to be admitted to Republican ICU now. This is clearly what Republicans are banking on.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
A third-party challenge from the right would have a tonic effect upon the body politic.
After several disastrous election cycles, the Republicans would either find themselves forced to choose between extinction (the outcome I most favor) or their reluctant embrace of a saner, less imperialistic foreign policy as well as an end to their support of policies that promote the demographic replacement of the American people by Third World immigrants.
"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
"A third-party challenge from the right would have a tonic effect upon the body politic."
That's sarcasm right?
We did that experiment already and it got us Bill Clinton.
I'd much rather have two are three third party candidates running on the left. One could promise free marijuana handed out on the streets. Another could promise abortion on demand, free, and a million dollar malpractice claim granted if anything goes wrong or you change your mind in the first 6 months. I know we already have a perfect new healthcare system, but a lefty candidate could improve by offering every American (legal or not) free life-support to keep your brain waves going indefinitely into the future until they invent a cure for whatever you are about to die from. Slogan: Immortality. It's a RIGHT!
Oh, yeah, Ralph Nader and Lyndon LaRouche should run too.
That bunch and any half-way decent Republican team and the Dems will get about 2 votes.
A party is just infrastructure, a factory that produces whatever those in charge want it to produce. If everyone in the tea party movement were to become active (activity being the key) in the Republican party, they could control the party product. It's there for the taking, the numbers are such that the current Republican establishment could not stop them. Why start from scratch?