A Second Hand Conjecture

There’s much going on in the Hoosier state.

We have 4 good candidates stepping up to take on Evan Bayh.

The primaries in Indiana are on May 4th this year.

Let’s make a list of questions we want to hear our future Senator to answer.

More to come…

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Over the past sixty days, Harry Reid has been the most vocal person in the congressional record. The top two words he has used are “Republican” and “Republicans.” Republican Jeff Sessions has been the second most vocal person, using the words “oil” and “energy” most. On the basis of this, a visiting alien might be confused about which party was actually in power in the congress.

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With Obama tapping Ken Salazar for the Interior Department, rumor has it conservative John Elway may step forward to run for his Senate seat in Colorado. This rumor –similar to one for Mike Ditka in Illinois– has come and gone before. This time however, the tectonically altered political environment makes it more credible. Party political defeats don’t tend to alienate good new candidates, but draw them in, as the rapid transformation of the Democratic Party between 2004, 2006 and 2008 demonstrates.

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Hmm. It seems that media reports filed on November 5th explicitly stating that Obama met with Governor Blagojevich to discuss his Senate replacement, are suddenly disappearing from the web.

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He’s actually starting to run against Sarah Palin:

“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month,”
(CNN via Adam’s Blog)

No, no, no. You say: “Sarah Palin? I’ll remind you I’m running for the presidency against Senator John McCain, who I’ve worked with and known in the United States Senate, and who on almost every issue of substance today is critically and completely dead wrong…blah, blah, blah”

Instead he bites the equivalent of a frayed fiberglass lure the dumbest bass in Kentucky would pass on.

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Looks like the Libertarian Party of Kentucky has dumped Sonny Landham, previously their clinically insane pick for US Senate. Good for them. Even if given the psychopathic nature of Landham’s views, I feel a little like I’m congratulating them for breathing.

While the Obama campaign might like to think that the LP could pose a serious threat to John McCain in Georgia, the Landham misadventure only reminds me yet again of the extraordinary amateurishness that seems to characterize almost all Libertarian Party political campaigns. There’s simply no excuse for failing to properly vet a candidate you intend to challenge for the seat held by the Senate Minority Leader.

As a former Hollywood actor and convicted criminal, it wouldn’t have been particularly difficult to uncover Landham’s violent imagination or deplorable associations with rightwing hate groups. A simple YouTube and Google search might have sufficed in fact.

Speaking of which, if you’ve never seen the deranged Bircher-style videos that Landham did while a member of the white supremacist/neo-Confederate organization the ‘Council of Conservative Citizens‘, it’s well worth a watch. The strangely tense and badly rehearsed panel discussion scene seems like something lifted out of a lost David Lynch film: video.

Supplemental: I must say I do appreciate the fact that Landham hasn’t disowned himself and begged for mercy from the mob, in that axiomatic ritual of insincere contrition we’ve all grown accustomed to. His quote to the Associated Press: “My views are still the same, I make no apologies for them.”

If you think about it, that’s quite a rare response. Crazy, but commendable for its candor.

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Taylor Marsh thinks that Obama would have supported war in Iraq on Hillary’s grounds in 2002, even though he’s on record at the time opposing it. A matter well dealt with by Oliver Willis…even if thereby he had to confess his masochism for reading Marsh. Funny.

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(photo: Serguei Kovalev)

Christopher Hitchens once said that the trouble with biographers of Thomas Jefferson, is that there appears to be the collective assumption on their part that the great man was without a penis. I’m reminded of this truth in reading about the very hot water Mr. Al Franken –the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for US Senate in Minnesota– has gotten himself into, over a satirical and sexually explicit essay he wrote for Playboy magazine in 2000. Hot water originating not only from GOP women, but also from within the Democratic Party.

The piece is without doubt salacious, even enormously kinky (naughty NSFW excerpts available here). But one could be forgiven the crime of commonsense in expecting that a writer tasked with composing anything for such a magazine on contract, would tend to produce something somewhat sexually suggestive if he wished to be paid. One might even go so far as to posit that writing something entitled “Porn-o-Rama,” for an unabashedly pornographic publication, isn’t all that shocking. I mention the title because in defiance of reason we are told by Liza Porteus Viana that the title itself (and neither the publisher nor the substance of the essay), is what is most politically objectionable here.

(more…)

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The Anchoress has a splendid post on my very own Representative, Heather Wilson (R-NM), whom I proudly voted for in 2006. While she upsets many conservatives with her McCain-esque positions (NR likes to slam her quite frequently), it should be remembered that Albuquerque –the urban heart of her district– is a politically divided city. Her cross-appeal to female Democrats has often made the difference in defeating strong Democratic challengers. At heart she’s a conservative and is thus enormously infuriating to Democrats who see the 1st District as being naturally theirs. However, I’d like to keep her where she is in the House. Let Steve Pearce take the fall against popular Tom Udall for Domenici’s Senate seat.

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Arnold has to govern liberal California, Rudy had to govern liberal NYC and McCain…McCain is from Arizona. So what exactly is his excuse for his dramatic shift to the Left over time? Lest you think he has one, here’s a very good interview from Kudlow & Company with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who is championing the cause of slashing corporate taxes to induce growth, while his colleague McCain rants about the evils of big business. Just some info in case you’ve ever wondered if like Arnold and Rudy, McCain’s liberal positions are induced by electability concerns in demographically fluid Arizona. Kyl has managed to remain staunchly conservative for years while being easily reelected. On a media note, Kyl’s 2006 reelection is often described as “narrow” by the press. 53-43 isn’t narrow.

H/T: Larry Kudlow

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