Ramirez from IBD

Did Congressman Bob Ethridge (D-NC) commit a tort with his unlawful touching and grabbing of a student trying to film him?

There is an impending vote in the House tomorrow for a Puerto Rican referendum on statehood.  This is under the radar, to put it mildly.  I had forgotten about this proposal until Beck mentioned it this morning.  What’s the problem with a U. S. territory getting a chance to vote on their future?  Simple–the vote is clearly rigged to produce the outcome of statehood.  [Edit:  The path to statehood would still be rough and far from certain, but I'm referring here to the choice of that path in Puerto Rico itself.]

Here’s how it works:

According to the legislation, the island’s residents would first be asked to vote on whether they want to retain the status quo. If they opt for change, a second ballot would then be held to determine if they want to pursue statehood, independence or a loose association with the U.S.

The problem is the use of two separate votes.  There is not a plurality for statehood in Puerto Rico, so the first vote is designed to present a false choice:  for or against the status quo.  This will form a rough coalition of various factions favoring everything from complete independence to U.S. statehood.  If the vote goes against the status quo–not, you will note, in favor of statehood–then territorial status is taken off the table for the second vote.  Statehood then wins in the absence of its most formidable alternative.

I can’t believe the Republicans haven’t mobilized people more effectively against this vote.  That’s precisely what the Democrats’ blitzkrieg strategy is designed to achieve:  attempt everything in a narrow window and force Republicans to choose their targets.

Of course, Republicans are hesitant to appear anti-Hispanic for yet another media cycle, but this is a pro-Puerto Rican issue.  The Democrats are rigging the Puerto Rican vote to thwart the demonstrated will of the Puerto Rican people.

Update:  More from Hans von Spakovsky in The Corner:

As Ramesh notes, no majority is required to win this second vote, just a plurality. So Puerto Ricans could be forced into statehood (or independence) even if only a minority of voters are in favor of it. And the vote is further rigged by specifying that anyone born in Puerto Rico will be able to vote — even if they are not residents. There are more expatriate Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. than there are in Puerto Rico. According to ProEnglish, the cost of additional federal benefits and entitlements to Puerto Ricans if the island becomes a state would be more than $7 billion a year.

Robert DePosada, a senior adviser to the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, says that if the NPP gets what it wants in the plebiscites, it will then elect senators and congressmen and send them to Washington to “demand” their seats the same way Tennessee did in 1796 (this is in the party’s platform). The party’s leader and former island governor has said that members of Congress will then be forced to support statehood to “avoid being accused of bigotry against Hispanics.” So the plan is to rig an election and then extort approval from Congress of Puerto Rico as the 51st state.

According to Senator Leahy, being from a monastery is apparently a bad thing. We don’t want judges from the judicial “monastery” on the Supreme Court:

“I would like to see more people from outside the judicial monastery, somebody who has had some real-life experience, not just as a judge insulated,” Leahy said last year, even before Sonia Sotomayor was selected.

The last time I checked, monasteries were a place of intense study and prayer. His other works notwithstanding, Thomas Cahill makes the quite compelling argument in How the Irish Saved Civilization that monasteries saved Western Europe. The monasteries and their monks preserved and advanced learning; they did not destroy it. I’m all for bringing people from the judicial monastery to the great temple of the supreme Court. So long as their from the right kind of monasteries. Not all monasteries are equal. Leahy’s ignorance on one level is amusing; on another, it’s quite disturbing. That’s ok. He probably went to public school and learned that the Middle Ages should be called the Dark Ages, they are anything but dark, I can assure you.

Via my other groupblog, American Creation, which deals with religion and the American Founding [and all here gathered are invited there to participate]:

Congress Becomes Madison’s “Overbearing Majority“ from The Weekly Standard.

Let’s cut to the chase. Madison:

“[M]easures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority…By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community…”

The usually worthy Volokh blog recently made a hash of “democracy” vs. “republicanism.”

What the Georgia legislature was trying to get at, I think [and they did it poorly as well], is that a “republic” implies much more than majoritarianism, which would be a strict reading of “democracy.” [The introduction in the Volokh discussion of "representative" also gummed things up.]

A republic requires and effort toward consensus, hence the Electoral College, and even moreso the Senate: the smaller states are not at the mercy of the larger ones, and indeed in the Senate have equal say.

From the official Senate website:

A key goal of the Framers was to create a Senate differently constituted from the House so it would be less subject to popular passions and impulses. “The use of the Senate,” wrote James Madison in Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787, “is to consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” An oft-quoted story about the “coolness” of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. “Why did you pour that coffee into your saucer?” asked Washington. “To cool it,” said Jefferson. “Even so,” responded Washington, “we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it.”

[Our republic also places limits on majoritarianism via the Constitution, although I doubt the Obamacare legislation will be found unconstitutional in any significant way.]

But the disposition towards consensus instead of mere majority has a long history as the American political ethos. Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Acts passed with a significant number of votes from both parties. Indeed, the American Creation blog had a behind-the-scenes controversy recently, and the “winning” side was actually the minority.

Good faith requires such things, and good faith is essential to the smooth running of a republic. This is the essential truth that was lost in the recent Congressional controversy. The parties just can’t take turns steamrolling each other—that threatens stability.

We all don’t have to agree, but agreeing to disagree only gets us halfway there.

We have to agree to agree, despite our reservations. That’s the heart of “consensus,” and of this American republic.

It’s sort of—if I may—like “love, honor, and obey” in a Christian marriage:

As a nation, we “love and honor” each other quite seldom, like how we responded to being attacked by The Axis in WWII, and even for a brief time after 9-11.

But who, in any decent marriage, doesn’t “obey” their husband or wife when push comes to shove in a Big Decision, no matter who’s “stronger” or weaker?

As citizens of a republic, we obey each other. That’s how it works. Sometimes majority rules. Sometimes the majority obeys the minority, out of respect for the other. This is good will, and good faith, because no republic, no marriage, can survive without both.

I think even the congressional Democrats realize now that they steamrolled their fellow Americans on this Obamacare thing, in pursuit of what they honestly thought is good for the country. And regret it, because it wasn’t right and it was disrespectful to the rest of us.

They didn’t get a single GOP vote. They ignored the polls. They made no effort at consensus. It was un-republican [small "r"], and it was un-American.

And his job description? Because apparently (and quite embarrassingly) Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey, 2nd District, does not….

The gotcha moments of Youtube are telling and quite informative.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) had this to say today, as they consider ‘passage’ of the most transformative legislation in the past thirty years:

“There ain’t no rules here, we’re trying to accomplish something. . .. All this talk about rules. . . .When the deal goes down . . . we make ‘em up as we go along.”

And they wonder why people are angry with this sham of a process. There is going to be hell to pay.

HT Daniel Foster in the Corner

Update:  Here’s the full transcription.  Somehow the fact that Edison was in a lab, while Hastings is on the Rules Committee, matters not to the venerable Congressman.  Edison at least was constrained by the laws of physics and the need to produce things that actually, well, worked.

I wish that I had been there when Thomas Edison made the remark that I think applies here: “There ain’t no rules around here, we’re trying to accomplish something.” And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make them up as we go along.
Update II via Drudge:

Do not be idle – join the fight for your children and grandchildren.

Scott Brown is getting serious traction in the late stages of his run for Ted Kennedy’s old seat.  I just got an email from the Brown campaign.  They not only met their goal for today’s fund drive–$500,000–but they are going for $1,000,000 by midnight tonight.  To put that in perspective, he was under two million dollars for all of 2009.  You can donate and read more about Scott Brown here.

If he wins, Brown will be the most national senator in Washington.  He’s getting small donations from across the United States and folks everywhere are signing up to make phone calls on his behalf.  My only worry is that this might be seen as meddling by the notoriously cranky Massachusetts voters.  I think, however, that what they are really cranky about is the impending disaster of Obamacare.

With the Senate poised to ram through a horrendous, arguably unconstitutional piece of legislation that will do irrevocable harm to our country if eventually signed into law, it might seem a bit odd to muse on the success of Framers’ constitutional design.  But when you take a step back, you realize that the intent of the Framers to slow down the machinery of government continues to thrive today.

A year ago Barack Obama was elected president.  He has complete control of the Executive branch of government.  Democrats widened their majority in the House, and obtained a super majority in the Senate, ending up with a filibuster proof majority by the middle of this year.  Meanwhile, the federal judiciary remains somewhat divided as our Supreme Court is essentially a 4-4 split with the Nation’s legal balance at the mercy of Anthony Kennedy’s mood.

So the Democrats have complete control of two of the three branches of the federal government, along with control of a majority of state governments.  Yet this year they have accomplished little in the way of meaningful long-term legislation.  They rammed through a stimulus package that costs taxpayers near a trillion dollars and expanded our federal debt without doing much in the way of actual stimulus.  But this was a one-time only piece of legislation that does not create a new federal entitlement program.  Meanwhile, cap-and-trade legislation passed the House of Representatives, but it is stalled in the Senate, and it is fairly unlikely that any substantial bill will ultimately get passed (though the EPA could act).  And despite huge legislative majorities and a seemingly favorable political mood for reform, at least at the beginning of the year, Democrats have only managed to get some kind of reform near passage through heavy compromise, cajoling, and outright bribery, and it’s still only a 50/50 proposition that President Obama will ever get any legislation to sign.

So despite this considerable numerical advantage, Democrats have not been able to enact the sort of radical “reforms” their supporters believed were imminently on the horizon.  There are numerous factors – the economy made environmental reform less palatable, significant public support for health care reform never materialized, Blue Dog Democrats remained reluctant to sign on to change – but, ultimately, we can thank the constitutional design of the Framers for making radical innovation difficult to achieve.  The Framers did not intend to make change impossible – that would have been manifestly wrong – but they did seek to create a system that limited the power of the government to act swiftly thanks to mechanisms such as checks and balances and the separation of powers. The country has changed in myriad ways, and the constitutional system has been altered considerably especially over the past 80 years.  But the Constitution still has a strong heartbeat, one that is stronger than even the more pessimistic among us realize.

In my last post decrying the shameless legislative prostitution of congressional call girls legislators Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson I was taken to task by one of our liberal readers for my naivete regarding run of the mill legislative “log rolling.” Apparently, only a uninformed boob would object to legislators who, having previously carved out a position based on a highly publicized moral position, cave on that self same position once they are offered enough money. Wow, I thought all this “log rolling” was to be a thing of the past in the new transparent age of Obama who, after lowering sea levels and global temperatures, would bring a new tone to Washington.

While our associates on the left may have made their peace with corruption I have not. I remain disgusted at the performance of our legislature regarding healthcare reform. If this issue is as important as they say then why the artificial deadline of getting this thing done before Christmas? Why not take the necessary time to get this thing done right? Why do we have to rush this thing through?

Reelection. Thats it. These high priced whores in D.C couldn’t care less about the welfare of the nation. Its all about them and the retention of political power. Their shameless self promotion at the cost of the fiscal health of the public purse disgusts me to no end. Apparently, certain liberal readers believe such thinking is hopelessly naive. For them I offer the following clip:

Absolutely right. “When statesmen abandon their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

I think Oliver Cromwell’s rebuke of the House of Commons is particularly applicable to our legislature today.

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

AMEN!!!!!!

From Politico:

POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican.

According to two senior GOP aides familiar with the decision, the announcement will take place this afternoon in Griffith’s district in northern Alabama.

Griffith’s party switch comes on the eve of a pivotal congressional health care vote and will send a jolt through a Democratic House Caucus that has already been unnerved by the recent retirements of a handful of members who, like Griffith, hail from districts that offer prime pickup opportunities for the GOP in 2010.

The Senate passed its health care bill last night and in doing so did not exactly cover itself in glory. The numerous high-profile payoffs and shameless sellouts used to secure the bill’s passage were enough to make one lose all faith in representative government. Rep. Cantor hit the nail on the head when he stated, “They’re allocating taxpayer dollars as if those dollars belonged to the senators. It borders on immoral. Just look at the way Senator Landrieu put her vote up for sale. Senator Nelson did the same.”

Michelle Malkin breaks down who got what in “Cash for Cloture.”

As my fellow Alabamian pointed out below:

“But when  you express moral opposition to a bill and that moral opposition suddenly evaporates when your state gets enough money – that is a whole different matter.  In Alabama, we have a word for a person who sells his self for money – a whore.”

Sen. Nelson, Sen. Landrieu, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for extra Medicare funding?

While I do support a playoff for division-I college football, I’m probably not alone in thinking that this is none of Congress’s business.

Federal legislation that could lead to a college football playoff tournament will move a step closer to reality on Wednesday in a hearing before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection will consider a bill that would allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to prohibit any bowl game from calling itself a “national championship” unless the game is “the final game of a single elimination post-season playoff system.” The subcommittee is expected to vote on the proposal on Wednesday after a line-by-line consideration of the bill.

Joe Barton (R-Tex) is leading the charge, and is backed by Bobby Rush (D-Ill).  Hopefully both gentlemen will find themselves out of a job come January 2011.

One would think that Congress should have more important priorities, though I don’t necessarily mind them being momentarily distracted from destroying our country via serious legislation. Sadly, there are actual citizens group promoting this junk.

“We’re pleased that Congressman Barton’s bill is moving forward because it will require the BCS to choose — either make college football’s championship a competitively earned honor or admit that it’s currently the equivalent of being elected homecoming king,” said Matthew Sanderson, a founder of Playoff PAC, a political action committee aimed at electing members of Congress who favor a playoff system.

Seriously?  There are people who came together to form a frakking PAC dedicated to this issue?  How lonely and sad is your life that you actually decide to lobby Congress to create a college football playoff?

It is a joke, to be sure, but it’s also another indication that too many people think it is the federal government’s business to involve itself in every sphere of human life and correct all ills.  We have a long way to go to eradicate this disease of thought.

The Wall Street Journal has a story about obstacles in the way of Democrat plans to tap the unused TARP money for an expansion of their slush funds.  Unfortunately for Dems, TARP was passed back when we thought 700 billion dollars was a significant sum, and the funds are restricted to the purpose of stabilizing the financial system.

Of course, the Democrats are going to give it the old SEIU try.  The Journal’s paragraph describing the President’s appeal is telling:

Much of the president’s presentation will be general and will focus on Washington’s obligation to help Main Street as well as Wall Street. The president is expected to outline ideas for job creation such as aiding cash-strapped state governments, using tax credits to spur home energy-efficiency improvements — the so-called cash-for-caulkers proposal — and offering employers a tax credit for new hiring.

“Ideas for job creation such as aiding cash-strapped state governments”? Yup, that’s always Number 1 on my list of ways to fire up the the engine of American entrepreneurialism.  Let’s make it possible for legislatures and governors in progressive states to maintain their bloated budgets.

As to the third item, why not just deliver a tax cut for small businesses?  Or address the real problem:  the uncertainty over the future costs of Obamacare and Cap and Tax.  No, I think a one-time tax credit that will do nothing toward the future costs of employment should do the trick.

So, anything happen this weekend?  I guess not – it’s not like the US Congress ever conducts business on the weekends.

Oh, I guess there was that vote (or pair of votes).  I’m sure Harry Reid is just thrilled.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s time to get too worked up.  There’s no way this version of the bill passes the Senate, so we have a long way to go yet.  But there is one aspect of this worth commenting on.

The lone Republican to vote with Nancy Pelosi was Joseph Cao, who represents the Louisiana district formerly represented by William Jefferson, who is now facing jail time.  The district is majority black, so Cao is facing a difficult re-election.  Quin Hilyer comes to Cao’s defense here.  He notes that Cao said he’d vote for the health care reform bill if a pro-life amendment passed, and that he’s otherwise been a strong voice against Communism and for the right to life.  Then Quin adds:

He also represents a district that is fundamentally liberal. Congressmen have two roles: they are delegates, meaning their voters delegate to them the ability to use their judgment on complicated policy matters; and they are representatives, meaning they are there, specifically, to represent the will of their constituents. Serving in Congress is often a balancing act: When your district slightly favors one course of action but you strongly favor the opposite, you do what you believe and try to explain to your constituents why you bucked their wishes. That is being a delegate. But when you are ambivalent about an issue, even slightly against a course of action but only slightly, and your constituents STRONGLY favor the course of action, then your responsibility is to accurately reflect — to REPRESENT — the will of your constituents and vote in favor.

Sorry, no.  First of all, if you are ambivalent about a major piece of legislation, then you need to find another line of work.  After months of debate, the Hamlet act doesn’t fly.

More importantly, a representative’s primary job is to represent the best interests of his or her constituents, not simply vote the way 50% + one of them would have you vote if you’re “undecided.”    This gets to the heart of the debate about the definition of representation, and while I concede that an elected representative  ought to listen to his constituent’s concerns, he is supposed to be better informed about the issues than those who sent him there.  That’s certainly the theory held by those who framed the Constitution and who wrote all those essays I have been commenting on.  If a certain bill would  have disastrous consequences for the people you represent, then you have an absolute obligation to vote down the legislation even if 90 percent of them disagree with you.  They will have the opportunity to vent their frustration with your choice at a later date.

Which brings me to another point.  We’ve heard about all those Blue Dog Democrats and how concerned they are about voting for something which will lead to their defeat next November.  Well, if you  happen to think that health care reform is vital for the  future of the Nation, and this is potentially a magical cure-all that will transform the country for the better, then aren’t you obligated to vote for this piece of legislation?  If you go down to defeat at the next election, so what?  Is being an elected member of Congress so important to you that you will defy your better judgment all for the purposes of perpetually being re-elected?  Are you so hard up for cash that you treat your position not as a public service, but as a paid permanent mode of employment?

That leads to something that I’ve always lamented, and that’s the modern notion that representation is a semi-permanent thing.  A true representative would think not of his re-election but of serving the best the interests of his constituents.  But with the modern class of politicians obsessed with returning to DC every two years, doing the right thing becomes a secondary (at best) consideration.    So if you’re a Democrat who thinks this reform package is the bees knees, then vote for the darned thing,  whatever the consequences.  And if you’re a Republican who knows that this will bankrupt the country, then you must vote against, even if it means – HORRORS! – losing the next election.

Perhaps Cao did what he thought was best for his constituents.  Based on his record, I think he might actually have been motivated by doing what he thought right and not by a desire to be re-elected.  My issues here are with some of  Quin Hilyer’s ideas on representation.  And again, if Joseph Cao is as much of a neophyte as Quin describes him as being, then he should just remove himself from all future votes of this magnitude.

Addendum: I realized after I hit publish that I was a bit unfair to Quin.  In his post he clearly acknowledges the “delegation” aspect of representation, but the wording of my comments made it appear that he did not.  I still disagree with him on his assessment of Cao, but I wanted to make clear that he’s not fully advocating the “mirror” theory of representation.

The Cash for Clunkers program cost approximately $24,000 per vehicle, according to an Edmunds.com analysis.   Edmunds used the sensible approach of asking not how many cars were sold, but how many were sold that would not have been sold otherwise (based on the sales volume of models not eligible for the program in the same period).

Twenty-four grand apiece in order to send a bunch of perfectly functional vehicles to the shredder.  Might be nice to have those available when you’re unemployed and can no longer afford the Lexus.  Why not just send those who apply a new MINI Cooper?  It would be cheaper.

The papers this morning are over-joicing that somehow the Democrats have found a way to save money by spending money through the Baucus health care bill. The problem? Unicorns likely exist more than this bill; the only thing we have are  a bunch of expert summaries of what the bill will likely look like but no actual legislative language (i.e., fancy words for “a bill”), so says Volokh’s Jonathan Adler: (more…)

TIME's Man of the Year?

On Sept. 14 the Senate overwhelmingly voted to cut off all federal funds to ACORN, and the U.S. Census Bureau severed its ties to the organization. This followed Beck’s masterly promotion of a series of videos made by two guerrilla filmmakers who posed as a pimp and prostitute while visiting ACORN offices around the country. ~ TIME Magazine

Now the House has pulled the plug on ACORN.  TIME credits Beck with much of the left’s current heartburn. More here.

(I’ve been hogging the posts here lately and will lay low for a while. My apologies for being so “active” lately.)

(Warning – F bomb not censored.)

Keep the pressure on.

James O’Keefe claims to have at least 2 more videos exposing ACORN. One source says there may be as many as 4 more videos. The 4th in this spine-tingling series will be released at 4 PM this afternoon. In the 4th video, (filmed on location in beautiful California!) the ACORN worker names politicians with whom they are in regular contact, Senator Boxer for example; and all Democrats, by the way. Of course, ACORN is non-partisan.  Once again, Glenn Beck broke the latest update on his radio program, along with Breitbart and O’Keefe. Here’s the latest news.

I understand President Obama recently had a private meeting with former President Clinton. Hmmm . . . I wonder why?

**Update: Senator Shelby just called for Congressional investigations into ACORN.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for congressional hearings and IRS audits of ACORN following the release of three videotapes that show the group’s employees offering advice to a “pimp” and a “prostitute” on how to skirt the law.

Story here.

For ACORN employees? ACORN investigation video #3 here.

I’ve recently posted some comments about Glenn Beck and his increasingly aggressive investigations of corruption tied to the Obama administration and the current Congress. The events over the last few days have been breathtaking, when considered as a whole.

Though a couple of Republicans had earlier attempted to cut off funding to ACORN and expressed concern about the corrupt practices related to voter registration, their efforts were fruitless. Their powerless status in the current Congress, along with their sickening timidity, were mostly laughed at by the likes of ACORN and the hyper-radical left.

They’re not laughing any more. In less than one week, Glenn Beck, in partnership with the much-respected Andrew Breitbart and two 20 something guerilla-warfare videographers by the names of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, have done what the neutered Republicans in Congress have been unable (or unwilling) to do since Obama’s election. Let’s recap what’s happened since last Saturday night, September 6th:

1. Obama czar and self-avowed communist Van Jones, resigns after being hammered relentlessly on Beck’s radio and TV show.
2. Acorn fires 2 workers after Beck breaks and airs the investigative report from James O’Keefe exposing numerous crimes in the Baltimore ACORN office.
3. The Census Bureau severs ties w/ACORN after the video goes viral on the internet, talk radio, and cable news. (ACORN was one of the “volunteer organizations” who were going to be helping with the census in 2010. No word yet as to whether or not they had planned on counting 13 year old prostitutes from El-Salvador).
4.) A second ACORN video is brought to light by Beck with many of the same crimes being committed in the Washington DC ACORN office.
5.) ACORN fires 2 more workers.
6.) Respected WSJ writer Charles Krauthammer gives the story more legs and credibility by writing about it in the WSJ and discussing it on the Hugh Hewitt show. WSJ writer John Fund follows with demands funding be cut off immediately.
7.) Two Republican members of Congress (Bachmann and Boustany) are making new calls for a Congressional investigation and cutting off funds. I suspect that chorus will grow.

That’s one helluva week my friends. Beck, Breitbart, O’Keefe, and Miss Giles deserve our congratulations, support, and prayers. They are doing what real journalists and reporters in America used to do. They are patriots. Thank God for them. Anyone out there still think Beck is “harmless?” I can assure you ACORN, Congress, and the Obama administration don’t think so. I can’t wait to see what next week brings.

(You can follow all this here.)

The second shoe has dropped. Congress must cut off funding now and call for hearings. Beck scores again.  And it’s going viral. The stenographers aren’t happy. Is O’Keefe the new Drudge of Youtube?

He is now promising a news story that will send government officials to jail. I’m betting he’ll be right again. How about you? How many readers will go on record here? Place your bets suckers.

George Will, I think, captures eloquently the sagacity that everyone can admire in Kennedy:

In the Senate, as elsewhere, 80 percent of the important work is done by a talented 20 percent. And 95 percent of the work is done off the floor, away from committees, out of sight, where strong convictions leavened by good humor are the currency of accomplishment.

Convictions. Humor. Hard Work. That’s the key formula for success that anyone who wishes to make a mark on this world must learn.

In the wake of the electoral nightmare that took place last November, Republicans attempted to comfort themselves with the idea that the party would bounce back in the midterm elections.  Visions of a repeat of 1994 danced in their heads.  Barack Obama and his Congressional minions would overreach, and the American public would soundly reject the onslaught of socialism.  Personally I did not have such an optimistic outlook and thought it just as likely that the Democrats would further entrench their power in the coming years.

As things stand now, the optimists look like they may have been right.  President Obama’s approval numbers are sinking to where is favorability index is now at -14, and the outlook is grim for Democrats in many House and gubernatorial races.  And here’s Dick Morris suggesting that the Dems could lose a hundred seats next year:

Unfortunately the clip cuts off just as he makes the comment about the hundred seats, so I have no idea if he qualified that, and I’m sure he did.  But I can’t locate a full transcript right now.

Undoubtedly things look bad for the Democrats, but let’s keep the champagne on ice.  We are fourteen months away from the mid-term elections.  That is several lifetimes worth of time in an election cycle.  At this time last year only 2 months out from the election it seemed possible if not likely that John McCain would prevail over Barack Obama, and then the bottom fell out of the economy.  Anything can and probably will happen, and it is the height of folly to try and predict what will happen at such a distance out.

That being said, I do think that the Democrats will probably lose a significant number of seats.  Even if the economy improves dramatically, a lot of moderate Democrats will be in electoral trouble.  Republicans, unlike the past two election cycles, have recruited well, and I think that they can sway enough right-leaning voters to oust some of the Blue Dog Democrats.

But that leads me to the main cause for concern: we’re talking about the Republican Party here.  If there is any political entity in the world capable of shooting itself in the foot, arm and face, it’s the GOP.  Somebody will do or say something incredibly stupid and erase all of the potential gains.  Luckily, we seem to have an even bigger idiot in charge on the other side for once.

(Cross-posted at Crankycon)