Matthew Berry. Not the ESPN guy: the former Clarence Thomas clerk/DoJ/FCC guy. He’s running on a fiscal conservatism/national security/ethics platform; and opposing the infamous Jim Moran, believer in Israeli conspiracies.  His statement about Moran’s blathering* on the NYC show trials works for me:

“It is wrong for Congressman Moran to question the patriotism of the millions of Americans who believe that terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried by military commissions rather than in civilian courtrooms. Furthermore, Congressman Moran’s comment reflects a basic ignorance of American history. Military commissions were used to try war crimes during the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War II. The use of a military commission to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would have been entirely in keeping with American history and tradition.”

For those wondering: VA-08 is a D+16 district that includes Arlington, Virginia, which makes Matthew’s oppositional stance on the hot-button topics of the stimulus, cap and trade, and the health care rationing bill all the more notable.  He’s also supportive of the Tea Party’s objectives of more citizen involvement in government, particularly from a fiscal point of view.  Lastly; Matthew happens to be gay, and is making no attempt to hide his sexual orientation.  Which, given the way that minority conservatives routinely get viciously targeted by the Other Side, deserves particular mention.

The race itself is in its early days; Matthew appears to be the first candidate to declare for the primary (the VA GOP**, while not involving itself in primaries, did note that “it would be of great benefit to the Commonwealth of Virginia if Jim Moran were to lose his seat;” they look forward to supporting the eventual candidate).  All in all, a fiscon and natsec hawk sounds like a definite trade-up to the guy that we have in there now - especially since he reads RedState.  Note to candidates: that is a very, very smart thing to do…

Moe Lane

*Apparently, objecting to show trials in NYC is now somehow un-American.  I’d note the irony, except that I’m more bemused at the irony that a ’show trial’ has become the best possible outcome for this administration.

**Who did a nice job with the last election, by the way.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

In April I blogged about Larry Sabato’s statement that, in the wake of the much-vaunted 2008 Obama realignment, “we’re on our way from being a two-party system to being a party-and-a-half system. And the Republicans are the half a party.”  Sabato was all over the tube last night and today, but I didn’t hear any mea culpas from him about what now seems like a ridiculous prediction.  Nor did I hear any apologies from the many other pundits who made similar predictions.

Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia was the crown jewel of the supposed realignment.  Now it’s a glaring example of how silly virtually every declaration of realignment turns out to be.  As I said in April, such declarations “are appealing in their simplicity and particularly persuasive in the aftermath of a one-sided election.  But, like all analyses based on sample sizes of one or two elections, they’re essentially worthless.”

Now that the elections in NJ and VA are over - and now that there’s going to be some really critical votes coming up on cap-and-trade and health care rationing - I just wanted to greet some members of the two states’ Congressional delegations.

• Robert Andrews, NJ-01 (Burlington/Camden/Gloucester)
• John Adler, NJ-03 (Burlington/Camden/Ocean)
• Frank Pallone, NJ-06 (Middlesex/Monmouth/Somerset/Union)
• William Pascrell, NJ-08 (Essex/Passaic)
• Steven Rothman, NJ-09 (Bergen/Hudson/Passaic)
• Donald Payne, NJ-10 (Essex/Hudson/Union)
• Rush Holt, NJ-12 (Hunterdon/Mercer/Middlesex/Monmouth/Somerset)
• Albio Sires, NJ-13 (Essex/Hudson/Middlesex/Union)

(Link)

• Glenn Nye, VA-02 (Accomack/Northampton)
• Robert C Scott, VA-03 (Charles City/New Kent/Surry/Henrico/Prince George/Hampton/Newport News/Norfolk/Richmond)
• Tom Perriello, VA-05 (Greene/Campbell/Bedford/Albemarle/Nelson/Fluvanna/Buckingham/Cumberland/ Appomattox/Prince Edward/Charlotte/Lunenberg/ Franklin/Henry/Pittsylvania/Halifax/Mecklenberg/Brunswick)
• Jim Moran, VA-08 (Arlington/Alexandria/Fairfax)
• Rick Boucher, VA-09 (Lee/Wise/Dickenson/Buchanan/Scott/Russell/Tazewell/Washington/ Smyth/Bland/Giles/Grayson/Wythe/Pulaski/Montgomery/Carroll/Craig/Floyd/ Patrick/Allegheny/Roanoke/Henry)
• Gerry Connolly, VA-11 (Fairfax/Fairfax/Prince William)

(Link)

Hi!

WE SEE YOU.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

New York’s 23rd Congressional District is, at this writing, too close to call, but it looks like the GOP Establishment’s candidate helped throw the race to the Democrat after the GOP spent $900,000.00 on her. That said, the Democrat’s lead keeps shrinking and there are 10,000 absentee ballots to count. We know for certain that if we combined the Republican and Conservative votes, that team would win.

What we do know for sure, from Virginia and New Jersey, is that in elections without the unusual circumstances of NY-23, is that the voters threw out the Democrats big time.

In Virginia, for the second time in history, the Republican Party swept all statewide offices. In New Jersey, despite multiple campaign trips by Barack Obama and his top pollster flown in to run Corzine’s campaign, Republican Chris Christie trounced Corzine. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic State entrusted its Supreme Court to the Republican Party, which could help the GOP in redistricting next year.

In every state in which Barack Obama campaigned for a candidate, the candidate lost. Too bad he did not make it up to NY-23.

More importantly, according to political expert Larry Sabato, there have only been two occasions when Virginia and New Jersey so thoroughly flipped to the opposite party: in 1993, before the GOP take over of Congress in 1994, and in 2005, before the Democrats took back Congress in 2006.

This signals the potential for great Republican gains in the House and Senate next year.

We also know, based on how Doug Hoffman is trending, that the GOP Establishment, if it continues to turn its back on the conservative base, will keep losing. Had the NRCC not so throughly botched NY-23, we would not be in this particular situation tonight.

It’s going to be late before we know anything about Harmer in CA-10.

As for the rest, it looks like the love affair is over. In 2008, the American public voted for Barack Obama to prove they weren’t racist and in 2010 the same public is voting for Republicans to prove they aren’t socialist.

For the 2nd time in history, the GOP swept Virginia’s statewide races, picking up Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General.

It looks like Christie is going to win New Jersey barring some last minute miracles for Corzine.

It is also looking good for Hoffman in NY-23.

We still won’t know about New Jersey and New York for a while, but the trend lines are good.

UPDATE: RNC Chairman Michael Steele just hopped a plane to New Jersey. Signs are pointing to a Christie victory.

UPDATE 2: Keep in mind on Doug Hoffman that 3 counties will not report their results online and one county, Fulton, has had a machine breakdown and will not report its results until tomorrow.

Results here.

UPDATE [LHW]: ABC calls it for McDonnell. Others sure to follow. At this point it’s about how bad it will be for Deeds and the other Dems.

UPDATE [ML]: Not Larry Sabato is morbidly counting the VA House races. If the Democrats are lucky, they’ll be down six by the end of the night.

UPDATE [LHW]: Total bloodbath for the Dems. Cuccinelli and Bolling cruising to easy victories.  VA Dems hemhorraging state House seats as well. Major Garrett reporting that the Ds are prepared to lose Loudon and Prince William counties by large margins. It is clear, whatever else you believe, that this is not just about Creigh Deeds being a bad candidate.

I’m hearing across the board that things are looking good. It’s early, obviously, but in sampling Democrat and Republican precincts, the GOP precincts are seeing higher turn out that the Democrat precincts in key areas. That suggests GOP enthusiasm is much higher.

Notable too, the Democrats are already pushing out their talking points on how Corzine and Deeds losses do not reflect on Barack Obama.

Just remember this data when Democrats keep saying it does not reflect on Obama. Then ask what they’d be saying by wins.

I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

Josh Marshall says the GOP is going to fire up the vote fraud stories. Of course, Josh Marshall already has logged into the TPM queue mass stories of voter suppression that he will blame on the GOP.

Because, you know, the GOP always suppresses black turn out, but ACORN never commits fraud.

And we know that given what is happening on the ground right now, the GOP just might sweep. New Jersey is going to be close, but then there have already been a few Democrats alleging voter fraud in municipal elections.

In any event, while Josh is waiting for the voter fraud stories he will work overtime to disprove as credibly as he failed to disprove Bobby Jindal’s hurricane story [Note to Josh: Moving the goal posts with every draft is not actually disproving the facts], he’s going to have to work closely with Media Matters and the DNC to also create a flurry of stories about the evil GOP suppressing the vote.

It’ll be a busy night for TPM’s overworked narrative.

The Obama administration and the media are together going to downplay today’s electoral victories for the GOP.

They will, to the mainstream media, not be relevant to or any sign of a rebuke against Barack Obama and his far left agenda.

In fact, the media is already beginning the narrative that we cannot see today as a referendum on Barack Obama.

Consider these facts:

New York 23

• Barack Obama sent Joe Biden to visit.
• Obama’s White House negotiated Dede Scozzafava’s endorsement of the Democrat.
• Scozzafava and Owens both supported and campaigned on supporting the stimulus.

New Jersey

• Obama sent his top pollster to take command of the race.
• Obama visited multiple times, including the day before the election.
• Obama is featured in most of Corzine’s advertising.
• The Democratic Governors Association and DNC all pumped in a ton of money.
• Corzine ran on helping Obama at the state level.

Virginia

• The Democratic Governors Association spent $4 million to get Creigh Deeds elected.
• The Democratic National Committee spent $6 millino to get Deeds elected.
• Obama campaigned for Deeds multiple times.
• Organizing for America sent a mail piece to 300,000 “surge voters”, or voters who voted for the first time in 2008, urging them to vote for Deeds.
• Organizing for America set up phone banks for Creigh Deeds.

The state owned media is going to tell us none of this matters and this was no rebuke of Barack Obama.

Don’t believe it. The facts speak for themselves.

As in, how to shout out a warning without… actually shouting out a warning. In this case, he’s getting just a little worried about his fellow Democrats turning out. To put his findings in handy table form:

The voter numbers are in millions, and the percentage at the end represents the percentage of McCain/Obama voters of 2008 that PPP expects to vote in the 2009 elections. While this is not-precisely-horrible news for Corzine*, it’s not good news at all for the Democrats next year:

Maybe those numbers will improve some over the weekend- and Creigh Deeds and Jon Corzine certainly aren’t the best candidates- but if that pattern continues on into next year Republicans will win back the House.

The reason why is because there are a lot more Democrats in Congressional Districts that McCain won than vice versa: and there quite a few Democrats in districts that Obama didn’t actually win by all that much. It’s going to be interesting to see how the state legislature races in NJ and VA play out this year; the results might possibly be even more of a harbinger than those of the governors races…

Moe Lane

*It would be good news, if more people actually liked Jon Corzine. Or at least didn’t despise him.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Friends, Ken Cuccinelli is being outspent 9 to 1 in Virgina and is still winning.

The Republican Attorneys General Association has for reasons unknown to me not given to Cuccinelli. I’m told the Republican State Leadership Committee gave to Cuccinelli and RAGA’s money was part of that. Still, unions and left-wing interest groups intent on holding the Virginia AG’s office for 2012 are giving the Democrat a lot more. For perspective, the GOP gave Cuccinelli $250K and the Dem equivalent gave Shannon $625K. Shannon ran without a primary or convention, unlike Cuccinelli.

We need to help one of our own — and Cuccinelli is one of our own.

Will you please consider giving to him today. Every penny counts. And with the Commonwealth of Virginia trying to deny the military the right to participate in elections, we need a strong conservative like Cuccinelli in the Attorney General’s chair.

Give what you can. I know money is tight. But Ken really is one of us and he needs our help.

In the October 2, 2009 Virginia Attorney General’s debate, my opponent and I had the opportunity to ask each other one question regarding our top priorities. His top priority - “global warming,” which of course comes along with a raft of legislative and regulatory burdens and taxes. At the federal level, this legislation is called “cap and trade.”

The (so-called) “Cap and Trade” legislation is meant to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from industry, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. A better name for this legislation would be “Ration and Tax.” This is because under this bill, the government would require anyone who uses electricity, who drives a car, or who runs a business to hold a “ration coupon” for his or her emissions, with the number of coupons being reduced every year to force a reduction in emissions, thus producing higher energy taxes for the average citizen. The net effect of this “Ration and Tax” would be economic harm and a loss of jobs for our citizens, and all without having a noticeable positive impact on the global climate. The coal industry, which provides over half of Virginia’s electricity, would be particularly hard hit by this bill.

The economic costs of “Ration and Tax” are well documented. This year’s House bill was estimated by the Heritage Foundation to lose 2.5 million net jobs by 2035. The loss of economic output: $9.4 trillion. The jobs lost in Virginia: 52,700. The report also stated that by 2035, Virginian’s will see their electricity prices rise by $1,031.73 and their gasoline prices rise by $1.31 per gallon solely because of “Ration and Tax”. Peter Orszag, President Obama’s current budget director, forecast the scheme would cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years and $5-$7 trillion through 2050. The fact that the Senate version of this legislation requires an even bigger cut in emissions than the House version means that the negative impact of the Senate legislation is likely to be even greater.

Now, some say that “green jobs” created by “Ration and Tax” are going to offset these losses. However, all of the credible studies show that the NET jobs lost are substantial. A study for the Teamsters and Sierra Club – both allies of those advancing “Cap and Trade” – found: “Wage rates at many wind and solar manufacturing facilities… fall short of income levels needed to support a single adult with one child.” In Spain, the experience has been 2.2 real jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.

Read More →

Remember this? That was embarrassing.

Creigh Deeds needed to find a way to avoid more verbal fumbles. Saying something new revealed a serious weakness for Deeds: he really can’t discuss the substance of an issue without doing fatal damage to his tax-raising campaign. So what’s the solution? Instead of saying anything new, Creigh is just repeating himself:

In a gubernatorial debate that covered little new ground, Virginia Democrat R. Creigh Deeds went to an extreme.

Mr. Deeds, during the candidates’ fourth debate Tuesday night, repeated nearly verbatim the two-minute closing remarks he delivered during their third debate the previous week, even though polls show voters are not identifying with the message…

Read More →

Ouch.

H/T to Jim Geraghty

In the Virginia Attorney General debate, the candidates got to ask each other questions.

Cuccinelli asked a very simple question of his Democratic opponent: Name the divisions of the Commonwealth Attorney General’s office and describe what each division does.

The answer leaves lots to be desired.

He asked for the President; he got the Cubslayer.

Gore coming to Va. for Deeds

Former Vice President Al Gore will be coming to Virginia on Friday to give a last-minute boost to the Democratic candidate for governor, Creigh Deeds, a party source said.

Gore will headline a private fundraiser in McLean at the home of longtime Democratic supporters Al and Claire Dwoskin.

But surely this doesn’t necessarily mean…

Obama in Virginia, But Not For Deeds

President Obama is in Fairfax County today.

But not to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds.

Snap!

Instead, Obama visits the Fairfax County Parkway extension today with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to talk about federal stimulus spending.

Ah.

Well.

Moe Lane

PS: Bob McDonnell for Governor.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The game is not over, but the clock is running out. And signs are starting to point to what we’ve thought all along.

Creigh Deeds is toast in Virginia. Now, the rats are scurrying from the ship.

Democratic candidates for Virginia’s House are subtly distancing themselves from Creigh Deeds’ struggling bid for governor as the top of their ticket faces mounting troubles.

While not denouncing Deeds or supporting his Republican opponent, Bob McDonnell, down-ballot Democrats are downplaying the importance of the marquee race’s outcome and emphasizing themselves as self-contained candidates.

All polls are showing Bob McDonnell ahead of Deeds and a sizable number are showing McDonnell outside the margin of error. Even more disastrous for the Virginia Democrats is that the polls are also showing the other statewide races to be in the Republicans’ favor — Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.

Not since Dathan campaigned against Moses in the the Ten Commandants has a campaign been so disastrously craptacular. Well, there is Kay Bailey Hutchison, but I’m talking the 2009 election cycle and before.

Fortunately for Deeds, McDonnell has no stone tablet to throw at him and the ground will most likely not open up and swallow him whole as it did Dathan.

Still, when the Democrats are asking “Creigh who” when people ask them about Deeds’ campaign, he can’t be happy.

(Via Hot Air) The Democrats in this Politico piece about former Gov. Palin and the VA/NJ races are spouting nonsense about her long term appeal*, of course - they’re aware as I am that she’s going to be very much in demand in Congressional races where the Democratic incumbent is holding down a seat in a district that McCain or Bush won.  Of which there are quite a few; but Democratic strategists can perhaps not be blamed for not wanting to say something along the lines of ‘Well, THAT WOMAN is going to go through all those Southern/Western Blue-on-Red districts like a buzz-saw, so you might as well get used to it.’  The people who need to hear that most will want to hear it least.

That being said, I don’t expect her to participate in the NJ gubernatorial election, although VA’s may yet still see a presence if the McDonnell campaign goes sour.  Virginia’s at best lightly purple, even now; New Jersey’s pretty definitely blue.  Christie doesn’t have a margin for taking chances right now.

Moe Lane

*As might be perhaps witnessed by interest in her book, which is currently at #3 on Amazon after spending over a week at #1. And that was individual pre-order.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

“I hope to God you understand this race is winnable.”
Vice President Joe Biden at yesterday’s fundraiser for VA gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds.

Having flogged the nothingburger story of the 20-year-old master’s thesis of VA Attorney General Bob McDonnell to bloody rags, the Washington Post does and abrupt volte face today and blames the lackluster campaign of Democrat candidate Creigh Deeds on flogging Bob McDonnell’s 20-year-old master’s thesis to bloody rags.

Republican Robert F. McDonnell has taken a commanding lead over R. Creigh Deeds in the race for governor of Virginia as momentum the Democrat had built with an attack on his opponent’s conservative social views has dissipated, according to a new Washington Post poll.

McDonnell leads 53 to 44 percent among likely voters, expanding on the four-point lead he held in mid-September. Deeds’s advantage with female voters has all but disappeared, and McDonnell has grown his already wide margin among independents. Deeds, a state senator from western Virginia, is widely seen by voters as running a negative campaign, a finding that might indicate that his aggressive efforts to exploit McDonnell’s 20-year-old graduate thesis are turning voters away.

Nowhere in the story does it mention that the thesis that is turning away voters in Virginia is the same thesis that generates 572 Google hits within the Washington Post and was regularly featured on the front page and editorial pages of that paper.

If the old saying “success has many fathers while failure is an orphan” is applied here, one could say that Creigh Deeds has just been stuck with paying child support for the Washington Post’s bastard.

I’m not celebrating a victory yet. Election day is still a ways off and as we’ve learned from past experience if anyone can turn a sure win into an abject defeat it is a Republican candidate. Hopefully, regardless of the outcome of this election, the takeaway is that if you use an incident manufactured by the editorial board of the Washington Post as the centerpiece of your campaign, you have no one but yourself to blame when you fail. And the Washington Post will have no but you to blame either.

Promoted from diaries. - Moe Lane.

First, it was a “we’ll see” about whether the President would do any more campaigning for Creigh Deeds. Today, it’s no way:

The White House is stepping back from lending its heft to a bellwether gubernatorial race in Virginia, party strategists say, seeking to conserve its political capital and avoid close association with a candidate who might lose.

And it gets even better. Or worse, if you’re Mr. Deeds:

In Virginia, a race with no incumbents, Mr. Deeds trails Republican Bob McDonnell by an average of 7.3 percentage points, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

Past White House efforts to assist Mr. Deeds haven’t worked too well. His opponent has tried to link Mr. Deeds with the president’s environmental and pro-union stances in a state that mostly runs conservative.

So has the president become as much of a lodestone as Bill Clinton used to be? Perhaps to some degree.

But it is interesting that the President is willing to expend (and lose) political capital on the Olympics rather than use any of it to support a fellow Democrat running for governor in the state right next door.

Then again, Deeds recognizes that any help coming from across the Potomac may be deadly:

“Frankly, a lot of what’s going on in Washington has made it very tough,” Deeds said in a “Battleground Virginia” interview sponsored by ABC 7/WJLA-TV, POLITICO, Google and YouTube. “We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C.”

The noise, yes. But let’s not forget about the policies, either.  And the polls show that independents — who determine the winners in Virginia’s statewide races — are flocking to Bob McDonnell. Why?  As political analyst Charlie Cook noted,  “Obama still has a reservoir of good will with Indies, but they hate Congress something awful.”

So long as that remains so, Creigh “the canary in the coalmine” Deeds will continue to struggle.