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Posts Tagged ‘2012 Elections’
November 6th, 2012 at 10:39 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Voter Guide
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Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

November 2nd, 2012 at 8:56 am
Podcast: Bay Buchanan Discusses Importance of Tuesday’s Election
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In an interview with CFIF, political analyst and strategist Bay Buchanan discusses the importance of women voters, young voters and the greatest concerns Americans are facing leading up to Tuesday’s elections. 

Listen to the interview here.

May 15th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
GOP Establishment About to Take Another Hit in Nebraska?
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As the 2012 election cycle has progressed, one of the growing memes on the left has been that the Tea Party has lost a lot of the anti-establishment momentum it had in 2010, when it was responsible for electing U.S. Senators like Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, and Florida’s Marco Rubio. The pundits have been a little quick on the trigger finger.

Last week, 35-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar went down to defeat in Indiana at the hands of the Tea Party candidate, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a race that we chronicled at length here at CFIF. Today, voters heading to the polls in Nebraska may deliver a similar shock to the GOP establishment.

The establishment choice, state Attorney General Jon Bruning, has been under fire for exactly the kind of crony capitalism that has come to define Tea Party distaste for business as usual. It was long thought that State Treasurer Don Stenberg — who enjoyed the support of Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Club for Growth — would be the conservative alternative to Bruning. But in recent days, Bruning’s numbers are falling without Stenberg’s rising proportionately.

The reason is a third candidate, State Senator Deb Fischer, who has recently emerged from relative obscurity thanks to endorsements from Sarah Palin and Congressman Jeff Fortenberry. According to recent polling, there’s a very real possibility of Fischer pulling off an upset of epic proportions and walking away with the nomination. And while Stenberg’s supporters aren’t happy to see their man failing to close, they’re already suggesting that Fischer would be an acceptable alternative to Bruning and the business as usual he represents.

We’ll have to watch the polls tonight to see how this thing resolves, but one thing’s for sure: even the worst-case scenario for Tea Partiers (a narrow win by Bruning) would send a powerful message to the GOP establishment in Washington: the Tea Party is here to stay.

April 26th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
With Time Running Out, Lugar Slipping Behind Tea Party Rival in Indiana
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Last month, I posted here about how longtime Indiana Senator Richard Lugar’s bid for a seventh (!) term in the upper chamber was being jeopardized by a strong Tea Party rival (State Treasurer Richard Mourdock) and revelations that Lugar doesn’t seem to actually have a residence in the Hoosier State. At the time, I wrote:

By election day, Lugar will likely be scrounging for every vote he can get. At that point, he may come to regret devoting so much of his energy to dismissing the concerns of conservative voters.

Hate to say I told you so. With only 12 days remaining until Indiana’s primary, Politico reports the following:

Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar has fallen behind state Treasurer Richard Mourdock by five points, according to a new poll released Thursday …

Mourdock’s lead is powered by self-described tea party conservatives, who comprise 36 percent of the GOP electorate.

Among that group of voters, Mourdock holds a commanding 63 percent to 24 percent lead.

The fact of the matter is that, should Dick Lugar lose this election, he will likely not choose to retire back to Indiana. That fact — and the mindset it represents — is reason enough for him to no longer represent the state in the U.S. Senate.

March 20th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Tea Party’s Next Stop: Indiana?
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A little over a year ago, I wrote a column here at CFIF looking at the potential primary challenges facing two veteran Republican members of the U.S. Senate up for reelection in 2012: Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Indiana’s Richard Lugar. Both have grown long in the tooth over decades in the upper chamber; and both are regarded with suspicion by conservative activists who find their sense of principle lukewarm. The difference between the two, as I emphasized then, is how they have approached the challenge. Hatch has been doing his ready best to convince Tea Party activists that he’s an effective defender of conservative values. Lugar, on the other hand, has regarded the resistance with an attitude bordering on contempt.

While neither’s fate is yet certain, both are becoming clearer. As I mentioned on the blog last week, Utah held caucuses on Thursday that determined delegates to the party’s state convention — delegates who would select the eventual nominee for the Senate seat. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Sen. Orrin Hatch, targeted by primary challengers and a tea party-aligned group, apparently has won a healthy share of delegates to the Utah Republican convention. That gives him a good shot at avoiding being defeated at the convention, as a Senate colleague was two years ago.

The news isn’t looking as sunny for Lugar, however. From National Journal:

A new poll … shows Republican Sen. Richard Lugar leading GOP state Treasurer Richard Mourdock by single digits, 45-39 percent.

The poll of likely Republican primary voters shows Lugar’s lead shrinking over his underdog opponent ahead of the May 8 primary. In October, Lugar led Mourdock 48 percent to 36 percent. Fifty-seven percent of likely Republican voters said they would consider another candidate or vote to replace Lugar.

In the last six weeks, Lugar’s faced an onslaught of questions from opponents and the media about his residency. He lives in northern Virginia but is registered to vote in the Hoosier state at the address of a home he sold in 1977. The state has ruled that he is eligible to run for reelection but a county elections board ruled last week that he is not eligible to vote.

This kind of trajectory — with this kind of timeframe (approximately a month and a half until primary day) — looks very bad for Lugar. So do the dynamics moving forward. There’s a natural ceiling on the number of voters who will shift their allegiance because of ideology, favoring a more conservative candidate than Lugar. But many less issue-driven voters will likely be turned off by the residency question (a similar controversy contributed to Elizabeth Dole’s loss in the general election in North Carolina in 2008).

By election day, Lugar will likely be scrounging for every vote he can get. At that point, he may come to regret devoting so much of his energy to dismissing the concerns of conservative voters.

March 14th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Utah Conservatives Looking for an Escape Hatch
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Though you won’t hear much about it in the press, tomorrow will be a big day for the Tea Party movement. That’s because it will be the day that Republican voters caucus throughout Utah to pick their delegates to the state convention — delegates who, in turn, will choose which candidates to put on the Beehive State’s June primary ballot.

This is momentous because there’s a big push by Tea Partiers — with FreedomWorks leading the charge — to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and replace him with a more conservative alternative. This is how Politico frames it:

The group’s tactics are the latest chapter of the debate still hounding Republicans as they try to win a majority on Capitol Hill this November: Should they purge their own to find fresh blood who will be less willing to seek bipartisan compromises by straying from conservative principles? Or should they unite behind the most electable candidate and train all their fire power on Democrats?

Allow me to answer both of those questions: yes.

It’s all a matter of political prudence. One of the lessons of the 2010 midterm senate races was the importance of finding the right candidate for the right jurisdiction — and that means different things in different places. In Utah, for instance, which is the most Republican state in the nation, it was utterly sensible to replace incumbent Bob Bennett (not exactly a liberal, but not really a constitutional conservative either) with Tea Party darling Mike Lee, knowing that Lee could easily carry the general election in the fall. The Tea Party was similarly shrewd in getting behind Marco Rubio in Florida, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rand Paul in Kentucky.

There were a few missteps, however. The hyper-conservative Sharron Angle was a poor choice for the swing state of Nevada, where either Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian (both of whom would have voted as conventional conservatives) would have stood a better chance at defeating Harry Reid. Even less suited for her contest was Christine O’Donnell, the conservative firebrand running in deep-blue Delaware. O’Donnell’s primary opponent, the moderate-to-liberal Republican Mike Castle, would doubtlessly have taken many votes as a U.S. Senator that would have made conservatives squirm — but fewer than the eventual winner, Democrat Chris Coons, who Castle likely would have beaten had he been the nominee.

So what does this principle mean for Utah? Hatch, like Bennett before him, has been an able public servant, who has, most of the time, been in conservatism if not exactly of conservatism. Were he from a swing state where moving to the right could be an electoral death sentence, then that would probably be a sufficient argument for retaining him. That’s not the case in Utah, however. And the state’s conservatives are going to have a hard time turning down the opportunity to elect another senator as consistently principled in his defense of limited government as Mike Lee.

It doesn’t help either that the best argument against Hatch comes from Hatch. I’ll let Politico have the final word:

In Utah, FreedomWorks distributed a 44-page brochure to 37,000 potential convention-goers, highlighting Hatch’s positions over the years on earmarks, the bank bailout and deals with Ted Kennedy over a child health care law.

On the inside page of the brochure is a quote from Hatch during his first campaign in 1976 against 18-year incumbent Sen. Frank Moss: “What do you call a senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.”

January 6th, 2012 at 8:33 am
Podcast: Voter Fraud and the Integrity of Elections
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In an interview with CFIF, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote and King Street Patriots, discusses citizen-led efforts to restore truth and honesty to our elections, secure a fair playing field for candidates and defend the integrity of the 2012 elections.

Listen to the interview here.

November 21st, 2011 at 8:40 pm
GOP Voters Smarter than Kathleen Parker

Washington Post columnist and failed CNN host Kathleen Parker caused a stir this weekend with a piece claiming that the alleged ‘know-nothingness’ of Sarah Palin is infecting Republican primary voters.  The evidence, as Byron York of the Washington Examiner points out, points the opposite way.

So far, there have been three Republican candidates who rose and fell quickly in the polls: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Cain.  Each rose because voters liked some combination of his or her message, experience, and personal appeal.  But each fell mostly for one reason: Republican voters became concerned about whether they knew enough to be president.

Because the GOP base is conservative, and because the candidates each presented a strong conservative message, it’s hardly a surprise that each received a friendly response early in the game.  But once each candidate’s performance in debates or on the stump raised questions about whether he or she had a base of knowledge broad and deep enough to serve as president, Republican supporters began to peel away.  Bachmann now ranks sixth in the RealClearPolitics poll standings, while Perry is fourth.

The candidate who has consistently stayed near the top of Republican polls is Mitt Romney.  There are no questions about whether he knows enough to be president.   The candidate who is rising at the moment, as Parker points out, is Newt Gingrich, about whom the same is true.  And the candidate who has stayed around the middle tier of the race is Ron Paul, who, for whatever problems exist in some of his policy positions, has not faced questions about his knowledge of the issues.  At the bottom tier of the race, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman have also not faced such questions.

Somehow Parker styles all of this — informed candidates rising, uninformed candidates falling — as a “tide of know-nothingness” engulfing the Republican party.  If that were really the case, wouldn’t it be the other way around?

As J. Robert Smith of the American Thinker reasons, Parker’s position on Palin and the GOP is less about sound analysis, and a heckuva lot to do with her tack to the left as she’s ascended the media ladder from National Review to the Washington Post.  Parker might want to stop by the offices of George Will and Charles Krauthammer to hear how her fellow Post columnists kept their principles and their audience.  After all, conservatives don’t need another David Frum telling them how out-of-touch they are.

September 30th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Tea Party Express Backs Lugar’s Primary Challenger

According to Roll Call, it’s official: there will be at least one incumbent Republican senator having to defend his record against Tea Party criticisms next year.  The Tea Party Express, a group known for helping challengers Sharron Angle (NV), Joe Miller (AK), and Christine O’Donnell (DE) win Republican primaries, is backing Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock’s bid to replace Senator Richard Lugar.

Though Mourdock presumably appreciates the support, he probably wants a better finish then the three mentioned above.  All lost in the general election.

August 20th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Tea Party to Back Scott Brown Over Elizabeth Warren?

Though Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) hasn’t exactly been the reincarnation of John Adams, some Bay State Tea Party leaders are weighing whether helping reelect the moderate Brown is better than sitting back and letting him duke it out with Harvard professor and Obama protégé Elizabeth Warren next year:

“Elizabeth Warren is a game-changer,” Varley said. “Elizabeth Warren is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive. We can say we may not be thrilled with Sen. Brown, but we certainly don’t want Elizabeth Warren.”

Unlike other GOP moderates like Senators Olympia Snowe (ME), Orrin Hatch (UT), and Richard Lugar (IN), Brown will likely get a pass in the primary, and have uber-liberal Warren to show as a much worse alternative.  Between now and November 2012, hopefully Brown gives Tea Party voters something to vote for.

H/T: FoxNews

July 22nd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
The NRSC’s Hush Money Angers Tea Party

The fight between the Tea Party and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is heating up again.  The Daily Caller says that the group quietly gave money to Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Dick Lugar (R-IN), and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), among other incumbents.

Tea Party activists are claiming the NRSC is once again trying to influence GOP primaries that are likely to be contested between establishment types and newer blood fiscal conservatives.  But although Lugar has an official Tea Party opponent (Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock), no official challenger has filed paperwork against Hatch and Snowe.  (Though Rep. Jason Chaffetz is widely expected to compete against Hatch.)

The complaints of NRSC favoritism have more sway in Lugar’s case since Mourdock is actively campaigning against him.  If the Tea Party wants to make its point heard in the other cases, it better get challengers like Chaffetz to get off the fence and into the race.

July 21st, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Dominoes About to Fall for Texas GOP

Roll Call reports that Texas Republican Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has entered the race to replace retiring Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX).  The field is already crowded, with former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, an ardent conservative, angling to be the Lone Star version of Florida’s Marco Rubio.

Dewhurst’s substantial personal wealth and four statewide electoral victories (3 as Lt. Gov., 1 as land commissioner), are prompting some to say he’s now the frontrunner.  With Governor Rick Perry mulling a bid for president, this could signal a major shake-up of Texas GOP politics as two of the state’s highest profile jobs come open for the first time since 2002.

June 27th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Tea Party Clash with GOP Establishment Will Continue in 2012
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You would’ve thought that the leaders of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the Senate GOP caucus’s in-house mechanism for supporting candidates for the upper chamber — would have learned their lesson in 2010. Rather than waiting for Republican nominees to emerge before throwing their support behind them, the NRSC intervened in primaries throughout the nation, opposing such strong conservative candidates as Florida’s Marco Rubio and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey. It should have been a source of public shame. Yet it doesn’t look that way, based on a report in the New York Times’ Caucus Blog:

A group of placard-waving Tea Party activists converged on the headquarters of the National Republican Senatorial Committee early Monday afternoon, demanding that its leaders refrain from supporting incumbents facing primary challenges, and serving as a reminder that the intraparty fight over party purity continues…

One reason the activists are angry with the Republican senatorial committee is that it is holding fund-raisers for [Utah Senator Orrin] Hatch — they waved signs reading “Retire Hatch.” But more generally, they want the committee to withhold political or financial support from any incumbents in the primary.

“It’s like they haven’t learned the lessons of the midterms,” said Brendan Steinhauser, an organizer for FreedomWorks who urged on the marchers.

And indeed, the committee has heard this tune before, particularly in the 2010 Florida primary for United States Senate, when the committee initially backed Charlie Crist, then a popular Republican governor, over a scrappy challenger, Marco Rubio. Mr. Rubio did so well in polls that Mr. Crist abandoned the party, ran as an independent, and lost, badly, to Mr. Rubio, a Tea Party darling.

Of the 47 Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate, none is as likely to someday become president as Marco Rubio. And his ascendancy was nearly extinguished at the hands of the NRSC. If that isn’t a sign that they shouldn’t be weighing in during primaries, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

June 27th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Perry, Paul, and Bachmann: The Tea Party Trinity

The New York Times reports of a “completely unscientific” voice-vote poll of about 100 Tea Party activists gathering at the D.C. offices of FreedomWorks.  The top vote getter for president was Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) who announced her (formal) candidacy today.  Texas Republicans Governor Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul were close seconds.

Each of the three has a unique mix of conservatism to attract Tea Party and larger GOP support.  All agree on fundamental themes like American Exceptionalism, low taxes, the free market, and traditional values.  Each differs, though, in the formula for achieving those goals.

That is a good thing.  Conservatives can – and should – differ about means, but not ends.  Goals are a matter of principle.  How we get there should be the subject of vigorous debate.

The reporters conducting their poll may think the results were “completely unscientific,” but they needn’t worry.  The boos for Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Jon Huntsman (R-UT), and the indifference toward Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), show that the media’s favorites are in real trouble with the people who will decide the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

June 16th, 2011 at 10:18 am
London Likes Santorum

No, not London, England.  Herb London, one of the wisest and truest conservatives in the conservative movement, goes against the “Romney vs. Bachmann” storyline of the week to suggest that the man conservatives really should embrace for president is Rick Santorum: “I can assert with confidence that if he is the nominee, the Republican party flag will wave with pride. A genuine patriot and a fiscal conservative will give the faithful a real shot at winning the highest office in the land.”

Interesting perspective.

June 13th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
‘Major Problem’ for Dems being Serious about the Budget

Former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine (D-VA) is having to face reality and run from his party in hi quest to be the next U.S. Senator from Virginia.  Kaine, a former governor, agreed during an interview that the Democratic-controlled Senate’s complete failure to pass a budget for over a year is a “major problem” for the party.

It’s also a major problem for candidates like Kaine trying to convince voters that the party of profligate spending, special favors for unions and – yes – crony capitalism – is serious about fiscal matters when it can’t muster the courage to pass a budget.  The failure to pass a budget is to fail at the most basic aspect of governing.  Either Senate Democrats need to get serious about passing a budget – and the debate that goes with it – or they should adjourn until further notice.  At least that would save taxpayers money for keeping a spate of non-working buildings running.

May 14th, 2011 at 10:40 am
Ryan’s Senate Run Would Correct Kemp’s Mistake

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) owes a lot to the late Jack Kemp, Ryan’s former boss at Empower America.  In a published remembrance of Kemp, Ryan said that while Ronald Reagan motivated him to get into politics, Kemp inspired him.

Indeed, Ryan’s “Roadmap to America’s Future” and “Path to Prosperity” budget resolution are models of Kemp’s supply-side thinking about incentivizing economic growth through government policies.  It was thought that, at most, Ryan might entertain becoming the 2012 GOP presidential nominee’s running mate if the right candidate asked.  Much like Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ryan is a methodical politician of substance who is purposefully navigating his career trajectory.  Unlike others, Ryan and Rubio seemed committed to establishing a real record before running for higher offices.

But reality may be pushing up Ryan’s time frame.  With the surprise announcement that Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) will not seek reelection next year, Ryan has an opportunity not unlike Jack Kemp faced as a rising New York congressman in the late 1970’s.  Then, Kemp decided not to challenge liberal Republican incumbent Jacob Javits in the 1980 GOP primary.  Had he done so and won, Kemp would have significantly increased his national profile by holding a statewide office at the beginning of the Reagan era.

Of course, to run Kemp would have had to split time between promoting his Senate candidacy and his landmark Kemp-Roth tax cuts – the soon-to-be centerpiece of Reagan’s economic recovery plan.  Like Kemp, Ryan has a game-changing economic program to fight for this next cycle, but unlike his former mentor, I think the odds are very good that Ryan will decide to run for the Senate.  If Democrats are going to make Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” a major campaign theme next year, why not see if Wisconsin voters are ready to promote their state’s best presidential contender to statewide status?

May 6th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
CFIF’s Weekly Liberty Update
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Center For Individual Freedom - Liberty Update

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Hillyer:  To Run DNC, Wasserman Schultz Be Illin’
Ellis:  Gunrunner Scandal Beating a Path to AG Holder’s Door
Lee:  U.S. Tipping Point: 51% of Households Now Pay No Income Taxes
Senik:  Bin Laden and “The End of the Beginning”

Freedom Minute Video:  Justice, At Last
Podcast:  Early Predictions on the 2012 Presidential Field
Jester’s Courtroom:  Momentary Baby Switch Not Grounds for Lawsuit

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

May 3rd, 2011 at 2:30 pm
New Congress, Same Kucinich

The Daily Caller confirmed that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is seriously contemplating a move to Washington State to run for Congress.  Kucinich’s current Cleveland area seat is rumored to be on the chopping block since the 2010 Census revealed Ohio losing two seats due to population decreases.

Interestingly, Kucinich’s communications director says that the anti-war congressman has received requests to move and campaign from groups in twenty states; including Washington which will gain a seat in reapportionment.

Kucinich is already visiting the state to gauge his chances.  If successful, he’ll almost be as far to the left geographically as he is politically.

April 29th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Video: Obama Gives Us the Jimmy Carter Blues
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In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how today, just as in the 1970s under President Carter, Americans are worried about the nation’s future. And just as in the 1970s, our current president doesn’t seem to grasp that his policies are causing the anxiety.  Giachino explains, “The American people need a pick-me-up in the short term.  In the longer run, we’ll have to wait for the ultimate mood enhancer: The 2012 election.”