The Virginia Republican Massacre - The Plot Thickens

I blogged here on the decision of the Virginia State Board of Elections to certify Ron Paul and Mitt Romney for the ballot in the Va. Republican Primary, but to exclude Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich on the grounds that their submissions, both of which were in excess of 11,000 raw signatures, did not meet the requirement of 10,000 valid signatures. Neither Ron Paul's submissions nor Mitt Romney's, both over 15,000, were subject to any review. Funny that. We learn more on this today from Moe Lane.

Prior to November, 2012, any Republican turning in over 10,000 raw signatures was considered to have met the Virginia state requirements for inclusion on the ballot. At some point in November, the State Board of Elections made a change to their internal rules. The minimum number of required signatures was kept at 10,000 but the Board decided that the cut-off for automatic qualification would be changed to 15,000. Ostensibly, this was done in response to a law suit against the Election Board that is unrelated to the Republican primary. Moe Lane adds:

As for the implications… well, I think that John Fund’s general comment is correct: this is going to go to the courts. John was not discussing this specific wrinkle, but his larger point that Virginia’s ballot access policies have systemic problems gets a big boost when it turns out that the state party can effectively increase by fifty percent thepractical threshold for ballot access – in a day, and in the middle of an existing campaign. The VA GOP still retains ultimate control over who gets on the ballot, of course. But then, they always have – and under the current system they could in fact brazen it out and certify Gingrich and Perry anyway. Of course, that would probably mean another lawsuit anyway; but then, there really isn’t a path out of here that doesn’t involve lawsuits.

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The Virginia Republican Massacre

Just what the hell is going on in Virgina? As it stands now, the ONLY people on the Republican ballots for the Super Tuesday primary will be Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have been disqualified from the Virginia primary ballot. This is the death of democracy by bureaucratic chainsaw massacre. "Virginia’s 49 delegates, handed out proportionally based on election results, make up more than 10 percent of the 475 delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday." The ultimate effect of this could be to give Romney, who was not leading in Virginia polls, a huge and unfair boost towards winning the Republican nomination. This stinks like a cesspool in 100 degree heat.

Both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich provided signed petitions of over 10,000 people in order to be included on the Virginia ballot. I will assume for this post that they complied with the additional specification that at least 400 of the petitions came from each of Virginia's 11 Congressional districts. Yet in the past 12 hours, the three member Virginia Board of Elections, chaired by Charles Judd, with Kimberly Bowers as Vice Chair and Don Palmer as Secretary, has ruled that neither Perry nor Gingrich presented enough valid petitions to qualify for the ballot. They have not announced any of the specifics underlying their decision.

None of the other third tier candidates, Huntsman, Bachman or Santorum, bothered to turn in petitions before the deadline. Thus their failure to be on the ballot is not at issue. But in the space of a few hours, reviewing the combined 23,000 plus petitions of Perry and Gingrich, both get the axe? This stinks to high heaven. It is time for some enterprising reporters to give a full rectal exam to Mssrs. Judd, Bowers and Palmer as well as taking an electron microscope to the reasoning behind the axing of both Perry and Gingrich. I want to see the hanging chads.

Update: So indeed it does appear that there is much more to this story. Moe Lane has the story here. Prior to November, any candidate who turned in 10,000 signatures on a petition was deemed to have met the requirements without further checking. An internal change to the rules in November kept the 10,000 signature requirement, but made the cut-off for checking the signatures for validity 15,000. Indeed, neither the Romney nor the Paul campaign were subject to any review of their signatures, nor have they requested such a review. As Moe comments:

I think that John Fund’s general comment is correct: this is going to go to the courts. John was not discussing this specific wrinkle, but his larger point that Virginia’s ballot access policies have systemic problems gets a big boost when it turns out that the state party can effectively increase by fifty percent the practical threshold for ballot access – in a day, and in the middle of an existing campaign.

I say again, this stinks like a cesspool in 100 degree heat.

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World Class Dumb and Even Dumber Still

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World Class Dumb - Michael Steele

This mensa reject played the race card on Republicans over criticism that boils down to the fact that he is burning through money faster than he is bringing it in - which, as RNC Chairman, is failing at his primary duty. (Update: See this from Another Black Conservative: "To date, Steele has done nothing to regain the confidence of conservatives like myself. If anything his constant missteps has pushed conservatives further away.")





- & Even Dumber Still - Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell . . .



. . . who announced "Confederate History Month" in Virginia, then tried to explain why it didn't involve racism. Here is a hint Bob - if you have to explain why the imagery involved in your act is not really racist, you have completely lost the issue.

Do either of these two bozo's have a clue how they have played into the narrative of the left's race baiting industry, that racial animus is at the core of the Republican party and opposition to Obama. In normal times, these acts would be plain dumb. But we are in a situation today where the left is throwing race cards out like candy, doing their gutter best to smear the right in general and Tea Party advocates in particular as racist in order to end all debate on Obama's profligate spending and destructive policies. That takes the above acts from simple dumb to a world class absolutely numb-nuts level of dumb. With people like these in leadership positions, we really could see Republicans yet again pull defeat from the jaws of victory.

It should be noted that these remarks come on the heels of today's honest report from CNN's Shannon Travis who travelled with the Tea Parties:

[H]ere's what you don't often see in the coverage of Tea Party rallies: Patriotic signs professing a love for country; mothers and fathers with their children; African-Americans proudly participating; and senior citizens bopping to a hip-hop rapper. ... It is important to show the colorful anger Americans might have against elected leaders and Washington. But people should also see the orange-vested Tea Party hospitality handlers who welcome you with colorful smiles.

There were a few signs that could be seen as offensive to African-Americans. But by and large, no one I spoke with or I heard from on stage said anything that was approaching racist.

Almost everyone I met was welcoming to this African-American television news producer.

A salute to Mr. Travis. Now, which of the above narratives do you expect to play across the MSM?

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If At First You Don't Succeed, Campaign, Campaign Again

Obama's poll numbers are tanking - as are the poll numbers for his signature legislative effort, universal Obamacare. Obama's coattails are not merely short, but after Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, apparently non-existent. Unable to fathom how he has gone from being the hope 'n change Messiah during the campaign, carrying the Democratic party with him to electoral victory, to someone who makes Jimmy Carter look like a model President, Obama has decided to go back to his comfort zone - campaigning - in a big way.:

After last week's devastating defeat in Massachusetts, President Obama ordered a review of Democratic strategy and has decided to bring back some of the key people who helped him win the presidency, hoping they can work their magic on troubled Democrats. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, the president is taking greater control over party strategy and is bringing back his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee congressional and governors' races in hopes of preventing a Democratic massacre in November. . . .

The reality is that Obama does not seem yet to have left the campaign mode. Some might think that a detriment in a sitting President. Not Obama and his clique, however, whose response to the problems or governance is to campaign more and harder. Who are we to judge? Oh, that's right. We're the electorate. That's our job.

At any rate, Plouffe, he of campaign magic, is apparently equally as clueless as to the reasons for Obama's downfall. Plouffe has has outlined a sure fire strategy to change Obama's fading fortunes in an op-ed at the Washington Post. Democrats will survive a November massacre if they just "do what the American people sent them to Washington to do." Given that Obama campaigned to the center during the general election, I would have to agree with that. But what Plouffe means is actually to do what the far left base of the Democrats wants them to do. That means, explains Plouffe, first and foremost, immediately passing health care.

One wonders if Plouffe bothered to turn on a t.v. covering the Massachusetts election for TED KENNEDY'S ANCESTRAL SEAT. Apparently not. That said, there might be more to this than meets the eye. Plouffe adds a "P.S." that "[h]ealth care is a jobs creator." Who knew? We can solve all of our problems at once. Given that health care bill would create over 100 new bureaucratic entities, Plouffe's probably not even gilding the lilly with that one. Pass health care and solve our unemployment problem all in one fell swoop. Genuis. No wonder the left feels that they are meant by birthright to govern we, the unwashed masses, by fiat. And if we don't understand that, well, they'll just make a greater effort to explain it to us in the future.

Second on Plouffe's list is that "[w]e need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them." Top down job creation is not how a capitilist system works - or at least not if the goal is the creation of permanent jobs. Government funded jobs from a spending bill are by definition temporary. Of course, it may well be that Plouffe is only concerned about jobs lasting from October to mid November of this year.

On a related note, just on Sunday, the left took credit for creating a whole bunch of jobs - the only problem was that none of the President's staff doing the Sunday talk show circuit could agree on how many. The numbers ranged from "thousands" to "1.5 million" to "2 million." Quite a spread there. Plouffe might want to start out his effort to convince the electorate of the veracity of Obama's job creation claims by making sure that whatever number Obama's speech writer dreams up while on a "fairy dust" bender is the same one used by the rest of the Obama Administration in public.

Plouffe does note, rightly, that "full recovery will happen only when the private sector begins hiring in earnest." What he doesn't explain is why, then, did the Democrats only allocate 2.6% of the $787 billion stimulus bills to helping small business - the hands down best engine of new job creation in America - with another 10% for infrastructure improvements. Well, at least Obama and Plouffe can point to public sector jobs. They did very well from the stimulus.

Unfortunately, as a high school student could probably have explained to Obama and Plouffe, the public sector itself creates no wealth. Public sector employment is wholly dependant upon tax receipts from . . . the private sector (or money borrowed from China which has to be repaid by private sector tax receipts, as the case may be). While public sector functions may be necessary, paying for them is a leech, not a benefit, to the economy. So Obama pissed away close to a trillion in borrowed money for virtually no return on investment. Since Plouffe glosses over those facts, I guess he is taking a mulligan on that one.

Plouffe's ultimate solution is to tell America not to be fooled by Republican criticism as the Bushies are responsible for all of Obama's ills. Apparently Obama was never inagurated and Bush is a year into his third term. If only.

And Plouffe, lastly, calls on Democrats to loudly trumpet their many achievements during the past year. He cites as one of them the great "transparency" instituted by Democrats. Whatever else you may say about Plouffe, the guy obviously has a world class sense of humor.

I am sure the return to a campaign mode that Obama, in reality, never left will work out well for Obama and the Democrats. Indeed, I applaud them for doing so as an alternative to governing and would remind them that, should they fail, not to give up hope. The answer is just to campaign, campaign ever harder.

You know, if this wasn't so deadly serious for our nation, it would be fun just to sit back with some popcorn and watch. These jokers are caricatures - of themselves.

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