In case you missed the President’s State of the Union address, it was a masterpiece of political speech.  The speech was neatly divided into three parts, which can be nicely summarized as follows:

Part 1 - I’m a fiscal conservative.

The President opened his speech by staking out a position that normally would be held by a Ronald Regan conservative: cut spending, eliminate waste, only spend what you can afford (of course, if you look at the results, not even Ronald Regan was actually a Ronald Regan conservative when it came to spending).  Despite my ingrained distrust of a man who has kept precious few of his campaign promises, I was kind of digging what he was saying in the early going.  If he holds true to those values espoused during the first twenty minutes of the State of the Union, I honestly could be voting to reelect Obama in 2012.  That’s a big ”if”.

Part 2 – It’s all Bush’s fault.

President Obama continued his ongoing campaign against President Bush, despite the fact that he was elected over a year ago and that he never actually ran against Bush (remember old John McCain?).  The economy is Bush’s fault.  It would have been worse, except for the sage actions of President Obama.  The wars are Bush’s fault.  They would be worse now, if not for the wise and decisive action of Obama.  Even your distrust of the government is Bush’s fault.  You just don’t get how wise and wonderful Obama has been in the last year.

Part 3 – I am the king, and the king can do no wrong.

Also known as the great chastisements, the third section of the speech was a delightful assault on everyone in sight.  It reminded me of the scene in Taledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby where Ricky thought that you could insult someone in the most awful way as long as you said “with all due respect” first.  The Supreme Court is wrong, the Democrats are lost and spineless, the Republicans are obstructionists who do nothing but stand in his way.  Obama let loose on anyone and everyone who ever crossed him or who may consider crossing him at some hypothetical point in the future.

Good speech.  Good political theater.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

We here at Camp Campaign are not unwilling to admit when we’re wrong. It’s just that it never has happened before. So, it is with humble hearts and full disclosure that I admit that I was wrong about Scott Brown.

Last week I wrote that Brown could not win in Massachusetts. I was convinced that the people of the Bay State were toying with the pollsters, just like their cousins in New Hampshire did two years ago. I was certain that the bluest of the blue states would not hand over the seat that the beloved brother of the more beloved brother of the most beloved brother held for almost half a century. In fact, that seat has been held by a Republican for exactly six years since 1926.

I was wrong.

Brown won, and convincingly. All sorts of theories abound – his populist image resonated with voters, Coakley’s unlikable stiffness cost her the race, Coakley wouldn’t listen to the DNC, the DNC wouldn’t help Coakley, George Bush’s Global Warming melted the brains of the Massachusetts electorate. Any or all of those may have contributed (OK, not the last one), but in the end, this was a referendum on the universal health care.

In fact, no one seems to have much to say about Brown himself. I heard a lot about why people didn’t like Coakley, I heard even more about why people wanted to derail the Democrat’s smug domination of the national discourses. But I didn’t hear much about what makes Brown the ideal Junior Senator for the blue bloods in Massachusetts.

Now, reporters and political junkies are asking if Brown has presidential aspirations. Really? He hasn’t been sworn in as Senator yet, and we’re jumping that gun already? My advice to conservatives is this: Don’t Obamatize Scott Brown. Don’t get so far ahead of yourselves that you’re pushing an untested, unready neophyte into the most powerful position on earth. We’ve got a rock star president now. In three short years, it will be time to trade in the rock star for a statesman.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

The biggest story in politics this week is the race between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakely to become Ted Kennedy’s replacement in the Senate. This story is huge for two reasons. First, it shouldn’t be a tight race. This is a special election to choose a replacement for Massachusetts’ dearly beloved late senator. His party’s hand-picked replacement should be a shoe-in. At first blush, you would think that the Republican candidate, although he’s not particularly conservative, would not stand a chance. And yet polls show Scott Brown in a very tight race with Martha Coakley.

The second reason that this is such a big deal is that Coakley’s election would guarantee the Democrats a filibuster-proof super majority in the Senate.  That would mean that the Democrats could continue to force through any legislation that they choose without regard for the opposition’s stance.  Which is kind of funny, considering the utter lack of achievement one year into the Era of Democratic Dominance.

A Brown victory, by contrast, would enable the Republicans actually to participate in the process of crafting legislation, to a degree.  They still would not be able to actually propose any legislation that did not meet the approval of the Democratic machine, nor would they have enough votes to deny the Democrats any bills that they set their sights on.  The only power the Republicans would gain is the ability to filibuster until the Democrats either gave up or caved in.

No less than President Obama himself is stumping for Coakley.  He knows, his advisors know, everybody knows that this election is bigger than just the claim to be the Junior Senator from the great state of Massachusetts.  This is a referendum on health care.  This is a proxy battle for the direction of the country.  This is big.

And the Republicans don’t have a chance.  We’re talking about Massachusetts after all.  Polling doesn’t mean much in New England.  Did we all forget New Hampshire a year ago?  This race was over before it began.  The best the Right can hope for is the moral victory that comes from keeping the race closer than anyone would have thought possible.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Can you imagine the uproar if a Republican had used the word “negro” in any context related to President Obama? I know, the Internet is full of posts decrying the inexcusable bias of the main stream media. You’re aware of it, and either you care or you pretend it doesn’t exist.

Still, this one gets to me.  Because it was a shot at the Untouchable One.  Because it involved a variation of the Unspeakable N-Word.  Because the same media that made a maelstrom over a non-issue with Rush Limbaugh’s supposedly racist comments overlooks a truly racist remark when it suits their agenda.  Because it is such a brazen double standard.  Because they’ve given up even the pretense of impartiality.  It merits one more mention.

The rich, bigoted elitists who control the media don’t care about you.  They don’t care about racism or poverty or fairness or any of the other things that they want you to think are important to them.  They care about controlling the system and getting even richer.  They care about embarrassing the Republicans at every opportunity, simply because they hate the Republicans.  They probably don’t even know why, they just do.

I’m sick of it.  I’m swearing off the major news networks.  I’ll get my information from the web and my local paper (until the death of print takes that option away).  I’m tired of the Obama Age already.  I’m tired of the Fairness Doctrine and runaway spending (which, I’ll admit, was alive and well during the Bush Presidency).  I’m tired of a government that is no longer for the people or by the people.  Year after year we choose the lesser of two evils, and we feel powerless to do anything about it.

Harry Reid makes an utterly inexcusable racist comment.  A year and a half later, we find out about it.  Now, we’re supposed to just ‘get over it’ and move on.

Then again, this is the same Harry Reid who once rejoiced in the fact that he was far enough removed from the people that he no longer had to ’smell the tourists’.  Maybe he’s not a racist.  Maybe he just hates us all equally.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Remember when President Bill Clinton famously told us, “I feel your pain”?  It was a deceptively simple, yet powerful, statement to show his empathy with the working man and our plight in tough economic time.  With just four words, President Clinton effectively communicated the heart of the time-tested Democratic message that more recently has won the party the White House and control of both houses of Congress.

The current Democratic President, He-Who-Can-Do-No-Wrong, could learn a thing or two from his predecessor.  And I just don’t mean in the picking up chicks department.  Or the getting aforementioned chicks to keep their mouths shut department.  I’m referring to the showing empathy for the working man department.

While we are mired in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, The Wise and Benevolent Ruler of the USA is living large in a $4,000 a night beachfront rental home in Hawaii.  It’s his right, I suppose.  He’s a very wealthy man (I’m not sure how that happened, unless being a community organizer pays much better than I think it does), and he can spend his dough as he sees fit.  He even can spend a good chunk of our hard earned tax dollars at his discretion.

I’m not accusing the All Knowing One of doing anything wrong (I know many of you Democratic party faithful think him incapable of doing any wrong anyway).  I’m just saying that it may not send the right message at this time.  The folks who just scrimped through Christmas because they’re living on one income in a two income world, the families who are wondering how they’ll be able to make their next mortgage payments, the small business owners hoping that they can stay afloat for a few more months – it will be a tough sell for the Great One to convince them that he feels their pain when speaking from a veritable palace in Maui.

President Obama should take a lesson in empathy from the Secretary of State’s husband before his free pass runs out.  The mid-term elections are just around the corner, and We The People may have a thing or two to say to him at that time.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Tergiversate (verb) – to abandon a party or cause

Representative Parker Griffith is a freshman senator from the state of Alabama. This week, less than a year into his first term, Rep. Griffith tergiversated from the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party. It is unusual, but not unheard of, for a politician on the national stage to switch parties while in office. Arlen Specter did it earlier this year.
The big difference is that Specter switched from the minority party to the majority – a move that brought the potential for rewards to be handed down from the party leadership that controls the Senate. Specter’s switch gave the Democrats the filibuster-proof majority that they needed to push through things like… oh… the health care bill.

Griffith went from the majority to the minority. His move did nothing to change the balance of power in the House, where Democrats still hold a 257-178 majority. So solid is the Democrat’s majority that Griffith can’t even anticipate that the GOP will regain power in the next election. There just doesn’t seem to be any personal upside for Griffith.

Which brings me to my point. Could Griffith have made the move because he is convinced that the Republican Party better represents the ideals that are best for the country? Could a politician in Washington actually have done – gasp – the right thing without regard for his personal gain?

I don’t know much about Rep. Griffith. I don’t live in Alabama. His name hasn’t come up for doing anything spectacularly good or bad during his brief stint in office. I just can’t help but wonder if this is a rare case of one of our elected representatives putting principle first.

Of course, the Republicans will trumpet the move as such. Just as obviously, the Democrats will try to paint the move as being somehow self-serving. Each party will take the opposite of the stance they took on Arlen Specter’s tergiversation less than a year ago. And so the finger pointing and blame game will continue unabated. But maybe, just maybe, this one time I can believe that it was the principle of the thing.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

A report on CNN recently caught my eye because of the catchy headline, “The Lie of the Year”. Knowing that CNN is rudderless without a Republican president or Congress to attack, I took a peek to see what Conservative they were going to lionize with their ‘award’.  It turns out that the award is not CNN’s, but a group called Politifact.

The lie of the year, according to this group, belongs to… Sarah Palin.  No real surprise.  Her comments have been more thoroughly vetted than any other politician in modern history, and she’s technically not even a politician at the moment.

But I’ve got to give some credit where credit is due.  While I expected to find just another Democrat-water carrying site, Politifact.com actually delivers some interesting analysis.  The folks behind this Pulitzer Prize winning project (according to their site, anyway – I didn’t fact check the fact checkers) have broken down Candidate Obama’s campaign pledges into 513 distinct  promises and are running ongoing tallies on his performance.

By their numbers, President Obama has kept 72 of his promises.  By my math, that’s an abysmal 14%.  Another 9 promises are listed as “Broken”, with 18 more listed as “Compromise”, which to me sounds a lot like “Broken”.  If he compromised on doing what he promised, then by definition, he didn’t do what he promised.

I’m a statistics guy, and this site got me excited because I saw it as an opportunity to run some numbers on President Obama’s record.  However, it didn’t take long to realize that any statistics drawn from their analysis would be useless because of one glaring number: 182.  That’s the number of Obama campaign promises that are labeled as “Not Yet Rated”.  If the good folks at Politifact have yet to rate 35% of the promises, and I have no way of knowing if they have an agenda behind WHICH 35%, there is nothing to do but look at their ratings on an individual basis.

All considered, it is an interesting site with what appears on the surface to be factual and unbiased ratings.  I’ll keep my eye on this one and keep you updated if they ever get to the point where all 513 promises are considered.  Then we’ll have some fun with statistics.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Harry Reid is the senior Senator from Nevada and the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. He first was elected to the Senate in 1986 after four years in the House of Representatives. According to the biography on his official website, Reid has been in politics since the tender young age of 28, when he first joined the Nevada State Assembly waaaaaay back in 1968.

All that time, he presumably enjoyed his rise in stature from rookie State Assemblyman to powerful Senate Majority leader. Now, I wonder if he wishes he could go back to the anonymity of being just another senator from one of those states out West. Being the face of the party carries with it certain unpleasant realities. Most notably: people pay attention to everything that you say and do, and they’ll let you know if they don’t like it by voting you out of office.
After winning his previous three elections rather handily, Senator Reid is suddenly the underdog after just one term in the national spotlight that comes with being the Senate Majority Leader. Maybe it’s heightened expectations. Maybe it’s backlash against his party or against healthcare reform. Maybe it’s his insulting and bewildering comments comparing opponents of the health care bill to supporters of slavery. Maybe it’s the way he tries to cancel planned work days in the Senate, so they can’t interfere with his trips to lavish fundraisers in Louisiana.

Why does the Senator from Nevada need to raise money in New Orleans, anyway? Shouldn’t those Louisiana donors be ponying up money for their local politicians? Can’t the Democratic voters in Nevada support his reelection campaign without outside help? Or has he lost all support from within his home state, forcing him to go elsewhere to load up the coffers?

Senator Reid has gotten everything he ever wanted from a political career. He’s moved to the highest position of power that the Senate has to offer. We won’t know how the story ends until next November, but it looks like all his success has earned him a one way ticket out of politics.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

I know this has been covered by everyone with an outlet and an opinion, but I’ve got to chime in on our new plan for Afghanistan.  To sum it up: we’re going to send more troops to Afghanistan to route the enemy once and for all… as long as it can be finished by summer of 2011.  Otherwise, we’ll just… what?  Take our ball and go home?

I’m not a military expert.  I’m not in the know on the hush-hush plans.  But I am smart enough to know that if you tell your enemy in advance when you’re going to leave, then all they have to do is hide in their little hidey holes until that time.

I don’t know exactly how smart the Al-Queda / Taliban goons in Afghanistan really are.  I do know they’re dumb enough to pick a fight with America and smart enough to find very good hidey holes.  I think that makes them smart enough to figure out that they can just stay hidden until oh, say, summer of 2011.

How can this be the plan, the BEST plan, that our government came up with after months of deliberation?  After countless meetings and discussions with dozens of top military advisors, this is the plan:  Fight ‘em until we decide not to anymore.

In defense of the President, maybe he was going for a wisdom of Solomon kind of thing.  He did manage to find the perfect middle ground that angered everybody.  Liberals hate the idea of sending more kids to fight overseas.  They voted this guy in to get us OUT of the Middle East.  Conservatives, on the other hand, hate the idea of setting a withdrawal date (and pretty much anything else the Democratic President might say or do), so they’re none-too-happy with this temporary war, either.

This is shockingly bad policy wrapped in shockingly bad public relations.  This goes beyond political infighting and ideological turf wars.  Forget about Republicans and Democrats.  If actually implemented, this plan cannot end well for America.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Thanksgiving is the time we set aside each year to give thanks for the many blessings in our lives. Here at Camp Campaign, we thought it might be a good idea to list those things related to politics for which we are thankful this year.

I’m thankful for Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the reality show wannabes who crashed a state dinner at the White House this week. Without there well-publicized party crash and subsequent attempts to sell their story for hundreds of thousands of dollars, we wouldn’t know how lame the security around our president is, how desperate people are to get on TV (the balloon boy evidence notwithstanding), or just how greedy people can be when they get their 15 minutes of fame.

I’m thankful for Sarah Palin.  She’s so good for politics.  She’s just so different than anyone else on the national stage.  She’s hot.  She’s folksy.  She’s not running for anything (at the moment).  She can kill a moose with her bare hands.  She’s like the anti-Nancy Pelosi.  Did I mention that she’s hot?

I’m thankful for the numerous and lengthy recesses taken by Congress each year.  Every day that they’re in recess is a day that they can’t screw anything up.  Maybe we could convince them to take an extra month off each year to celebrate Groundhog Day.

I’m thankful for the 10th amendment.  I’d be more thankful if the Federal government would honor it.  It’s good stuff.  Look it up.

I’m thankful for Fox News.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you’ve got to admit that they’ve changed the political discourse in this country.  You know things just aren’t right when the White House declares war on a news network but decides to leave Iran to work on their nuclear bomb in peace.

I’m thankful for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the Internet.  The three working hand in hand are a beautiful thing.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post