Doing the Right Thing
By Leon H Wolf Posted in 2006 — Comments (47) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I wrote yesterday that I hoped that George Allen would not kick up an inordinate fuss if the absentee ballots and any automatic recount procedures showed him behind by a slim margin. Last night, it became clear that all the absentees were counted, and Allen still trailed by around 7,000 votes. By way of perspective, that's over four times the margin that Bush finished with in the larger state of Florida. I expressed hope privately at that time that Allen would just go ahead and concede today, since it's clear that 7,000 votes can not realistically be found for him in Virginia. I am glad to learn that he plans to do exactly that at 3pm Eastern today.
Allen's campaign has been almost inexplicable for months, and especially since the "macaca" incident. Since that time, the Allen campaign seemed to struggle to find sticks to poke in the eyes of Webb, rather than dealing with any substantive issues, or Allen's record at all. This is not the first statewide rodeo for Allen, and he should well have known better. And now, thanks to the most fantastically inept campaign in recent memory, the Republicans have lost the Senate.
It appears that this afternoon, at last, George Allen will make a right call during the course of his campaign. It's a pity that it had to come after all the votes were cast.
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Maybe John Warner will retire and he can win that seat.
Allen may have run a textbook example of a bad campaign, with further drag by the Republican SCC and their "1806" ad campaign. The relentless refusal to talk issues was nearly inexplicable.
The thing that gets me is how the Anti-Gay Marriage amendment is carried by a huge margin, but Allen can't find enough votes among those voters to maintain an incumbency that, a year ago, was a foregone conclusion.
When all else fails, simply revel in the absurdity of it all.
I don't know what they could have done differently, but Rick Santorum's team spent $26,000,000 to finish about 60,000 votes ahead of Lynn Swann, and at the same place favorables-wise as he was at the start of 2005.
Joe Lieberman's primary campaign gets a nod here, but not Lamont's general -- I don't know that the race was winnable once Schumer/Dodd/etc decided not to shove Lieberman out of the general election.
And then there's Katherine Harris.
All of the people you mentioned were, as of one year ago, long shots to win. I don't have any idea of what Rick Santorum could have done differently, apart from being someone else. He was just doomed.
Lieberman, of course, shouldn't have coughed up that primary loss, so I'll grant you that one, but he turned it around in the end, so his overall campaign was pretty successful.
The problem with Allen is that this seat should have been a lock - not just because he's an incumbent, running in a state tilted to his favor, but because running statewide in Virginia was not even close to a new experience for him. Ugh.
"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments
Since that time, the Allen campaign seemed to struggle to find sticks to poke in the eyes of Webb, rather than dealing with any substantive issues, or Allen's record at all.
Not only is this insinuation ridiculous, it's flat-out false. I can only assume the author does not live in Virginia.
I don't, in fact, live in Virginia, and was basing my impression from several people who do and who followed the Allen campaign pretty closely.
So please, share with us your impression of how he managed to lose.
"We could find a speck of dust and scribble down our life stories..." - The Refreshments
For 20 years. I notice everytime I go back to visit my folks the liberal creep from the northeast corridor in the general population and in the newspapers. Virginia is still a Republican state but there is no doubt democrats have made great inroads there.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
I live in VA, and I agree with the initial assessment. Allen approached this as if it was his first campaign - I really have no idea what he was thinking. I voted for him, but with nowhere near the enthusiasm as I did in 2000. He threw negative attacks at Webb, never coherently responded to the attacks against his own gaffes, and never really gave anyone a positive reason why they should vote FOR him. I'm still stumped. I can only hope that no conservative who wishes to go on to higher office hires ANYONE who directed Allen's campaign - they failed miserably.
As for 2008, if Warner retires, I'm hoping Allen does NOT run for his seat, unless he is able to majorly re-invent himself. Personally, I'd like to see Mark Obenshain run for the seat. He's a big name here in the Valley, as his father was running for the seat Warner currently holds when he died in a plane crash. Warner obviously went on to win the primary and the Senate seat. Obenshain's wife is head of the state party, and knows how to get his name out there to people who may not yet know him. Aside from all that, he's a solid conservative who doesn't appear to have any skeletons in his closet.
Notice how the Dems (and others have pointed this out) were preemptively screaming about voter fraud, stolen elections and disenfranchisement... or was it just carryover from the elections they lost? Anyway, contrast the Dems with how Reps take a defeat - with dignity and class. No litigation, no cries of foul, rigged elections or fraud designed that is designed to embolden a simple-minded part faction and breed resentment... we get our ticket punched and go home - honoring the electoral system.
There were diaries on this site alleging Democratic fraud in my hometown as well.
If races are tight enough, there ought to be a recount -- on either side.
we dont cry foul as a matter of course. The Dem message is that if they lose it MUST be because the Reps cheated - thereby disrespecting (and eroding confidence in) the electoral system.
Fraud should never be tolerated - but no election will ever be perfect and there are harmless errors.
is the only way to go. A contrast with the Left which will go unnoticed by most Americans and unmentioned by the Drive By Media. A heartbreaking result, but turning VA into Florida 2000 revisited would be Democrat-like. Good for Senator Allen. We live to fight another day.
...Although it's a bit apples/oranges to make that comparison - the initial smaller margin in Fla was out of some 4 million votes cast, if I remember right, and the Fla vote counting process was primitive compared to Virginia's - the potential for fraud/mistake was much higher in Florida, and the relative vote margin was much less.
So although it's nice to attribute Allen's capitulation to "class", it's honest to admit that if he were in those circumstances in Fla in 2000, we'd be screaming for a recount (at least one, not two) just as loudly.
...are very straightforward under the election statutes. We just went through this last year with the Attorney General's race. The statute doesn't allow for the sorts of county-by-county shenanigans that we saw in Fla., excruciating parsing of hanging and dimpled chads and all that BS. And, more to the point, most votes in Va. are cast electronically, so there's not much to "recount" other than verifying the tabulations from all the machines and getting all the absentees and provisionals in. The chances that there would be more than 7,000-vote error in tabulation and that the errors would all break in Allen's favor are virtually nil.
In the AG's race last year, the election night leader, Rob McDonnell, turned out to be the winner. The margin on election night was in the hundreds, not thousands, of votes. Allen did the right thing once the absentees were accounted for.
Republican politicians always look for a way to quit. In fact I don't buy for a minute that the loss of the election had anything to do with ideology. It was incompetence and lack of effort. The Republican leadership did even try to do the basic functions of the politicial side of their jobs:
Set a clear agenda
Communicate
Protect themselves from political attack
Trash the Democrats politically
Instead it ended up being the Hell's Angels vs. the Boy Scouts. The Democrats won by default, because the Republicans weren't even trying to play politics.
There was a report today that a Democratic leader has asked permission to speak directly to the Republican caucus (of House or Senate members). No doubt this is to convince them to be nice quiet bipartisan losers, not raising hell trying to get back in power like the Democrats just did. They want us to be a nice, quiet permanent minority like the 40 years before 1994.
From the Untouchables movie:
They are playing by the rules. Chicago Rules.
You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way
...In fact I don't buy for a minute that the loss of the election had anything to do with ideology.
I'd agree.
...Instead it ended up being the Hell's Angels vs. the Boy Scouts. The Democrats won by default, because the Republicans weren't even trying to play politics.
On the contrary, politics were played as much as any other election. Our Mr. Rove was called apon, and he served once again.
But there was a vastly different particular circumstance this time, and the reason for the loss can be summed up thusly:
It's the war, stupid!
That quote about the war proves my point. Bush was right in fighting the war, but didn't communicate it. The Democratic wing bat charges were all false, some of them wild conspiracy theories, but since Bush and the Republicans never defended themselves, and didn't attack the Democrats, the false Democratic stories won by default.
Likewise the Democrats did research in order to release information about scandals a few weeks before the election. Republicans didn't even capitalize on the scandals they knew about, like the Democratic congressman with stolen cash stored in his freezer.
Here's the Democratic approach, according to a supposed capitol hill source. As I said, they are the Hell's Angels motor gang compare to the Republican politician boy scouts.
Democratic Party sources said as House Speaker, Ms. Pelosi plans to block moves that would place hawks into important chairmanships. The sources said a key casualty would be Rep. Jane Harman, a six-term member of Congress who has cooperated with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
"Nancy Pelosi wants total party discipline," a source in the Democratic Party leadership said. "If you played ball with the Republicans during this session, then you're not going to be given an important chair in the next session."
Pelosi and Harry Reid are the toughest Democratic leaders in a long time, as tough as any Republicans from the Gingrich era. Even in the past, Pelosi supposedly had a rule that no Democrat signs onto Republican legislation without permission from her. So for good or bad, I think they'd rather go over the top and be too tough.
Also, Pelosi and Reid think that they will trash the Republicans so badly politically, that the freshman will not have any trouble and in fact will be joined by a new "permanent majority" (quoting a Republican phrase). There will be endless investigations of the Republicans by congressional committees, both of the President and of members of congress by ethics committees. They also think that by using the budget they can beat Republicans bloody.
that at least it's Jim Webb who is taking Allen's seat?
From a politically partisan standpoint, obviously a loss is a loss, but from our country's standpoint, we could do a lot worse than Webb.
I have high hopes that he's going to be an excellent Senator, and make all of us (Democrats and Republicans) proud.
With Webb as the 51st Dem. vote. I wouldn't at all rule out a party switch (or a Jeffords-esque "independent" status) if the Dems. get too frisky for Webb's liking. After all, we've been down this road before. Precedent from the Senate of 2001-2002 is that Cheney can break the tie when it comes to organizing the Senate.
I have to admit I've always sorta liked Jim Webb. How he can throw in his lot with the likes of Levin, Durbin, Kennedy and Kerry is a bit of a mystery.
...he was the one who bet that he could get the Democratic nomination; and that Virginia Democrats were sufficiently horny to win that they'd carefully ignore the fact that their chosen candidate has cordially despised the Democratic base since Vietnam. And, hey! He was right, on both counts.
And now he's your problem. :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
Moe post + sip of coke in mouth = new keyboard :)
Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints - Sympathy for the Democrats
and I'll show you a loser! I agree that we should not go Democrat and cry foul for its own sake, but there are fouls out there and we all know it. The D controlled cities and the Blue States generally are cesspools of electoral fraud and corruption. We have Republican AGs in the Red States with Blue cities and we have the USDOJ. I'm convinced that the Ds in Congress will be unrelenting in their attempts to slime Republicans and there is a way to extract a terrible price from them. I propose a methodical campaign to go after their vital electoral machines in the cities, the unions, the non-profits etc. If a Democrat Prosecutor can take out Tom DeLay for "money laundering," a Republican Prosector can take out the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney and his counterparts all the way down to the local level, likewise the 527s could be made to spend some quality time with the IRS. We have lots of ways to throw shoes in the machine and we should not be reticent to use them. But, I ain't holding my breath.
In Vino Veritas
The suggestion you make is in direct opposition to the main point of this thread - accepting an electoral result with class.
How is doing what you propose different than what the dems did in Fla ('00) and almost did in OH ('04)?
as they did. The genuine article is out there in abundance and I advocate using the power we still have to go after it. The AFL-CIO just spent $40MM, a huge percentage of it illegally converted dues money, itself collected in Constitutionally impermissible dues schemes. Many non-profits go way over the political line and maintain their non-profit status
In Vino Veritas
Besides the things that are actually illegal, I'm surprised that Republicans don't make a big deal about ActUP being paid for by Soros and others. It has been revealed in the media, yet the republican leaders just let the impression grow that those are grass roots people doing everything, when they are paid professional protestors, etc.
This was the Act I was thinking of, or at least I think I was thinking of:
Last year, Berger made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together (ACT), a 527 group that was dedicated to defeating George W.Bush in the presidential election, according to politicalmoneyline.com, a Web site that tracks fund-raising. According to records released by the Internal Revenue Service on Monday, March 21, 2005, and obtained by NewsMax.com, Soros Fund Management/George Soros gave the group a whopping $7.5 million in the 2004 election cycle.
Here's a little more from one article:
According to The Hill newspaper, Republican researchers have connected Soros, members of pressure groups posing as "government watchdog groups" and loaded with Democrat activists, and top Hill Democrats in the attacks on DeLay and the House Ethics Committee.
"The research shows that members of these groups’ boards have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and political organizations and several of their staff members have previously worked for Democrats," The Hill reported, adding that they "have also accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Open Society Institute, an organization founded by Soros, who spent millions trying to defeat President Bush in last year’s election."
The latest revelations came in the wake of a series of talking points issued by the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week which named four liberal pressure groups as having "close ties to left wing leaders like George Soros.”
According to The Hill, the GOP research efforts are part of a Republican attempt to put a damper on what the paper described as "a media feeding frenzy" surrounding DeLay and allegations of his alleged improper conduct.
Illustrative of the media's massive coverage fanned by liberals and Democrats, the Hill reported that over a five-day span:
"TV and radio stations and print publications from around the country featured at least 290 stories either about a controversial junket DeLay took to Scotland in 2000, his response to criticism about the propriety of that trip, or his offer to discuss the matter with the House ethics committee," a survey showed.
Articles about DeLay by The Associated Press, Reuters, Knight Ridder and The Washington Post were picked up by news outlets around the country.
"The DeLay scandal is getting to the point where House Republicans just won’t be able to withstand much more,” a Democrat aide bragged to The Hill. "With every story that is written, it becomes more clear that House Republicans are risking their political futures by associating themselves with him. When literally hundreds of stories about the GOP leader’s shoddy ethics are appearing in nearly every local and regional paper across the country, you can’t blame voters for painting them all with the same brush."
I agree. The House Republicans were in the minority for 40 years because they lost with class, lost with dignity, and just plain lost. It wasn't until they decided they would do anything to win, and started raising hell under Newt Gingrich's leadership.
I would much, much rather that we were a little less classy by trying too hard as compared to just being passive losers election after election.
This victory didn't just fall in the Democrat's lap. They worked their bottoms off, even during those elections they ended up losing. They used detectives and inside sources to get the scoop on those scandals which they revealed as October surprises.
Is anyone investigating all those leaks? It seems like a possible way to have some scandals against the Democrats themselves.
I've been a George Allen watcher since he first ran for Congress, back in 1991. Our local congresscritter in Charlottesville, D. French Slaughter, resigned and Allen won the special election to fill his seat. I remember Allen making several "off-color" and just plain odd remarks during that campaign. Nothing serious, but enough to make you wonder if the brain and the tongue were always connected up right. He went on to the governorship and his famous "knock their soft teeth down their whiney throats." A lot of people loved that sort of moxie, but sometimes there's a fine line between moxie and being just plain mean, to wit: "macaca."
Anyway Allen didn't take Webb seriously until it was too late. Moreover, he let one gaffe throw him off balance and he couldn't change the tone of the campaign. The Wash Post beat the "macaca" drums for weeks.
He should have hit Webb hard on his weird latter-day strange-bedfellows alliance with the party of Dick Durbin and Teddy Kennedy, but Allen didn't. Instead he and the RSCC tried to paint Webb as a kook by hitting Webb with the Naval Academy thing and over passages in his novels. This was just dumb, and turned off a lot of conservatives and libertarian leaning Republicans. Many conservatives agreed with Webb over women at the Academy back then. Some of them *still* agree with Webb's stance back then. Trying to run to Webb's left was dumb, and an utterly transparent pander to the women's vote. It showed in that the "base" either stayed home or rolled the dice with Webb. Allen's support on Tuesday was very soft downstate, where he should have run very strong. It goes without saying that he got clobbered in Northern Virginia.
It's a pity that it had to come after all the votes were cast.
Out of close to 2,800,000 votes, with many coming from absentee military voters, a margin of 7000 votes, and the control of the US Senate in balance, I find it rather disturbing that you think he should have conceded any sooner than it took to be absolutley sure of the accurate count. We are talking about less that 48 hours.
There has never been any threats of 'lawyering up', protests over voting anomolies or criticisms of the process from Allen. He ran a poor race, one that was his to lose, but given the stakes I am proud of him for verifying the results before conceding.
Just FYI, elections here in VA with under 1% difference are entitled to a full recount after certification in late Nov. He was well within his rights to ask for one, but opted not to sparing the US from 45 days of waiting.
Furthermore, just what do Republicans have to prove to the Dems (or anyone) about post election ettiquette? After the garbage they put us through in 2000 and 2004 they were still elected in 2006. This year, they openly warned that they had 10000 lawyers waiting to flood any close district if they thought they could change the election result in court.
Apparently nobody really cared about all that.
Cut the guy just a tiny bit of slack.
Cannot believe that even on his way out Chafee will not support Bolton.
The "weakest Linc" (hat tip Mark Steyn) is the walking embodiment of everything that's wrong with the culture of the Senate: clubby, elitist, ideologically vacuous, heriditary seat swapping, you name it. It's a pity the RSCC spent so much time and money propping up this loser. Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out, buddy. I suppose we're going to hear that about Susan Collins in '08, how we have to suck it up, hold our noses and support her for the sake of the "team." As with Specter and the Weakest Linc, when it comes to taking one for the "team" the traffic is all one-way.
The campaign is over, so we do need to start to rebuild. One way is to differentiate ourselves in our manner as well as in our policies. If roles had been reversed, the Democrats would have dragged out the recount until 2008--and I hope this point will be obvious or driven home.