Redstate

Posted at 5:09pm on Jan. 4, 2008 No need to "Unite against Huckabee"

By gensec

Some Huckabee opponents seem in a panic that the rest of us have to immediately stop dividing our votes between the other candidates, otherwise Huckabee will cruise to victory without a unified opposition. I don't buy that at all.

There's no justification for apocalyptic visions that Huckabee will win the nomination if we don't hurry up and unite around an alternative. Super Tuesday will determine the leading alternative to Huckabee (if not earlier), and that candidate will be the Republican nominee.

Let's see why there's no need to panic about Huck ...

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Posted at 9:52pm on Sep. 9, 2007 Does Fred know how to fight Democrats?

By gensec

I started writing this as a comment in the Fred Thompson, my unelectable President thread, but it strayed too far off topic for that. What I noticed about that blog, like other posts supporting Thompson, is it was largely devoted to criticizing the other Republicans, and the comments there were largely a debate about Giuliani. This supports the observation that much of Fred Thompson's appeal is as the "none of the above" candidate, the man who's going to be everything that people dissatisfied with the other serious candidates see lacking in them.

I'm not a big fan of the 11th Commandment; I think it's a good thing for Giuliani, Romney, or anyone else with a chance of winning the nomination, to take some harsh slings and arrows in the nomination contest. Part of my judgment who's fit to be the Republican nominee is how they handle the heat. What I find noteworthy about Thompson's support though, is that the criticism of other Republicans (fine with me) is accompanied by so little talk of Thompson's accomplishments.

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Posted at 7:44am on Aug. 29, 2007 Deja vu all over again - Clinton and campaign contributor cut outs

By gensec

Well surprise, the Clintons are at it again, getting more than the maximum legal amount from a single contributor because the fat cat routes part of his contributions through cut outs. I was surprised that this Wall Street Journal story Tuesday didn't stir more conversation here:

Six members of the Paw family, each listing the house at 41 Shelbourne Ave. as their residence, have donated a combined $45,000 to the Democratic senator from New York since 2005, for her presidential campaign, her Senate re-election last year and her political action committee. In all, the six Paws have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, election records show.
...
It isn't obvious how the Paw family is able to afford such political largess. Records show they own a gift shop and live in a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for $270,000. William Paw, the 64-year-old head of the household, is a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service who earns about $49,000 a year, according to a union representative.

So how did they have that much spare cash? Read on...

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Posted at 10:55pm on Feb. 25, 2007 How do Mexicans prounounce Chutzpah?

By gensec

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a Congress half as concerned about the ongoing violations of American sovereignty as the Mexican legislature is about their country's.

Mexican legislators said they had photos and video showing U.S. workers and equipment crossing about 10 yards into Mexico on Monday.

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Posted at 12:49pm on Oct. 18, 2006 I drank the "We'll show them!" kool aid in 1992

By gensec

I'm one of those Republicans who threw away my vote in 1992, because I believed Bush 41 was betraying the Reagan Revolution.

In the current election, we see some comments on this site about voting third party or staying home, to express dissatisfaction with the Republicans' obviously less than stellar performance. Yesterday skymuse posted a blog on the damage done by this kind of attitude resulting in Clinton's 1992 election. I look at a different angle, arguing that even if you believe letting Clinton win in 1992 was appropriate given G.H.W. Bush's capitulations to the Democrats, that kind of reasoning can't justify letting the Democrats win in this election.

Read on ...

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Posted at 2:10am on Sep. 6, 2005 O'Connor's final gift of Supreme Court confusion

By gensec

Sandra O'Connor's tenure on the Supreme Court has been an Alice in Wonderland journey of logical incoherence, and now with her Constitutionally questionable conditional resignation, "effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor," she leaves on the same note. I thought we would escape the risk of this Constitutionally questionable conditional resignation, but now Rehnquist's passing and Roberts' nomination to Chief Justice means we're in it.

On the legalistic side, I have to wonder about the constitutionality of nominating and confirming O'Connor's successor. Is there really a vacancy on the court, which the President can nominate someone to fill? I suppose we have to let that one go; if Supreme Court justices don't worry about such considerations, the executive and legislative branches have to deal with the situation.

On the practical side, this opens a political can of worms down the road. In the current case, O'Connor's continued presence on the Supreme Court pending her replacement may be a minor distraction. She'll sit at legal arguments if her successor isn't confirmed by then, but the decisions on the cases typically aren't voted until next year. Assuming the Senate can get a nominee confirmed in a few months, she won't cast any votes that matter.

However in future situations, this form of "resignation" offers opportunity for serious mischief. For example let's say there's a "moderate" or "centrist" justice who wants to retire, while there's a Republican majority Senate and a Democratic president with two years left in his second term (or reverse the parties - same issue). If this moderate wants to improperly influence the choice of his successor, he resigns like O'Connor conditional on the confirmation of a successor. The Republican majority leader tells the Democratic president to nominate a "moderate" like the one resigning; if he nominates a liberal like he wants, they'll stonewall the nomination through the next election, when a hopefully Republican president will appoint a real conservative. With the Supreme Court having all nine justices, the Senate doesn't take political heat for leaving the court with an unfilled vacancy, so in this weakened bargaining position the Democratic president has to settle for a less liberal appointment than he could otherwise get confirmed. Now depending on whether it's a Democratic senate doing this to a Republican president, or vice versa, you might like the end result of who gets on the Supreme Court in a particular case; but as a matter of process, this compounds the political gamesmanship and will result in more drawn out nomination battles.

To people with the views common at this site, O'Connor's illogic may not have been as frequently obvious as that of Souter or Ginsburg, because often she came down on "our side" of issues as the swing vote; but even when her extralegal motivations led her to reach the same end result as a faithful application of the Constitution, that was just a fortunate coincidence.

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