Friday Afternoon Roundup - Sore Losers and Sore Winners

The midterm elections of 2010 have come and gone. It would be easy enough to fall into gloating, but the truth is that while we have come a long way since 2008, we're not nearly where we need to be. The Republican party has been forced into the realization that they can't win as the party of big government, but for all the red meat being tossed out there by Boehner, that doesn't mean that they have actually internalized it as a discipline.

The Democrats are struggling to find their message now, but their fallback has always been to blame Republicans for everything. The public refused to buy that when congress and the white house were in their hands, but it may be more willing to hear the message when the media continually focuses on Republican congressional victories.

2010 has been a major roadblock for Obama, but the road still goes on. It's our job to cut off that road all the way in 2012.

The Democrats have shown themselves to be petty and hateful in both victory and defeat. Sore losers and sore winners both. A startling number of Democratic winners have refused to even accept calls from their opponents. And their number includes Barney Frank, Andrew Cuomo and Jim Moran.

Now all three of these are major scumbags already. Barney Frank is well... Barney Frank. Cuomo refused to actually run a campaign, instead used the media to slime and destroy first Governor Patterson and then Palladino. There's no question he's high on the list of the creepy evil politicians list. Jim Moran finished his campaign, the way he ran, low, vindictive and petty. But it still characterizes a party where even the winners are sore winners.

The Democratic barely survived the 2010 elections, but Pelosi will still try to soldier on. And Harry Reid, reelected thanks to generous portions of voter fraud, will be back to serve as a dusky light for the Senate. But the GOP nevertheless lost too many elections that could have been won.

The obvious jabs will be taken at Tea Party backed candidates losing in the Senate, but then how do you explain well funded "moderates" like Fiorina losing? There are nonetheless some lessons to take home.

First, a divided Republican party is more vulnerable. Particularly if you have more than one Republican or ex-Republican in the race. Rubio finessed a difficult election. But had Meek dropped out, the results might have been different. In Colorado, the same template produced a disaster. And the Alaska results still aren't quite in.

But even without multiple candidates in the race, primaries that get very ugly, make it all too easy for the Democratic opponent to just pick up where the Republican primary attacks left off. That's what happened in Delaware, when the state Republican party showed that it would rather have a Democrat, than a Republican they don't control in office. And they got what they wanted.

Second, electable candidates are important. Electable candidates are articulate, sympathetic and understand the issues. This election saw too many grass roots candidates with limited public speaking skills, which is natural when you're working from the bottom up, but elections these days run through the TV screen. We also saw too many wealthy executives with all the personal appeal of a cold fish. Both ran into big trouble.

Third, to win as a Republican, you have to win by a large margin to offset voter fraud. I strongly suspect that Dino Rossi and Sharron Angle both won, but they didn't win big enough. And when you don't open up a large enough margin early on, it becomes all too easy for the Democrats to hide some of your ballots and discover some of their own. And of course there are the illegal aliens and the mental patients and all the rest who get taken to the polls.

Fighting voter fraud should be seen as a key element of securing victories for conservative candidates. Because if you can't win the election, policy proposals alone will go nowhere.

On November 4th, 2008, after the election, I wrote a piece titled, The Battle is Over, The War Begins

The battle against them must be twofold, first to limit the damage they can do while in power, and secondly to plan and prepare to retake Congress and then the White House in a coherent and orderly manner without the chaos and backbiting that has characterized the last year of this campaign. It will be all too easy to fall into the blame game and to let it devour us, too much of the conservative movement and the anti-jihad blogsphere is already fractured. The goal now must be to heal those fractures, to create unity around a single purpose, to liberate America again.

It will not be an easy struggle. The Obama years will make the worst of the Clinton years look mild by comparison. We have seen the thuggish abuses of power that brought Obama into office, but that is only a taste of what an Obama administration in control of the Federal government will be able to do... But that is also our best hope. Obama's only real calling card has been an empty promise. Now he will have power and responsibility and we know he will abuse them. Arrogance was and remains his Achilles heel and the Achilles heel of his backers. And when their revolution runs into the reality of voter expectations, there will be the opening to begin the political downfall of this government.

Unsurprisingly we have seen much of this takes place. Obama abused power once he had it. Arrogance proved to be his Achilles heel. And his revolution ran into the reality of voter expectations.

On the next day I wrote another piece, titled, "Dissent From Day One",

And what has Obama won? He's won a chance to be responsible for the economic mess that his own backers caused and that even the threat of his pro-tax policies is already prolonging. He has won the chance for sovereign rule with a Democratic congress whose ratings are already in the toilet and sole responsibility for the looting and corruption that will inevitably follow. Simply he has won the chance to go down and take his party down with him. And we can help.

And we did. We have come a great distance in these last two years. Now another two years remains. And those two years will be the truly crucial ones.

This is the logo I created back then.



Thankfully the logo has held up. Dramatic victories were scored. And we took a lot of the country back. But the hard work is only beginning.

Meanwhile the fallout continues within the Democratic ranks. But MSNBC suspending Olbermann is not part of that. Olbermann wasn't suspended for contributing to Democratic candidates, like Rick Sanchez, he made the mistake of falling afoul of Jon Stewart. Which made him an embarrassment. The suspension is MSNBC's way of warning Olbermann to cool it.

The media establishment insists on pretending that Jon Stewart is some kind of informed critic of how news should be reported. We saw the consequences of that with Crossfire, now with Rick Sanchez, both times CNN deferred to Stewart. Now MSNBC has too.

In the roundup, Boker tov Boulder has some of the more outrageous examples or Rahall's corruption.

If my calculator hasn't blown a fuse, that's about

$102 MILLION

in just the three and half months leading up to the election... in one District.

At the Ori Zion blog, some thoughts on Betrayal in the West

At Charging Elephant, CAIR heads to save Sharia law from the people of Oklahoma.

Lisa Graas asks, whether in the wake of the Baghdad attack, some Bishops are also hostages as well

Doc's Talk points out how once again Israel's internal enemies prove to be more formidable than its external enemies

Sam Hindu asks how long humanity can co-exist with Islam?

No! Violence is NOT“shared characteristic” of humankind. People become violent when exposed to violent teachings. Yes, violence does also have psychological components, such as greed, envy, anger, etc. all byproducts of low self-esteem. However, crowds have a psychology of their own and they can become violent through external influences. We do not expect to see violent behavior among a crowd coming out of a church, a synagogue, a Hindu or a Buddhist temple, or a Zoroastrian or a Baha’i gathering. But if I see a crowd coming out of a mosque towards me, I will run as fast as I can.

Non violent people can become violent when they believe in violent teachings. If religion had no effect in how we humans behave, then what is the point of having religion at all? The very purpose of religion is to influence people and make them do things their way. If their way is peaceful, the believers are likely to behave peacefully and if it is violent, the believers will act violently.

The Atheist Conservative blog notes that the US has now been dragged into fighting Al Qaeda in Gaza.

But why is Al Qaeda in Gaza? The left will of course issue its one word reply, Israel. If asked for a second word, they'll throw in, Occupation. Not quite true though.

You see, terrorists compete by going to extremes. When Hamas won in Gaza, they created a new paradigm. Al Qaeda followed them into Gaza. And according to Abbas, Hamas and Al Qaeda are allies. The "Free Gaza" crowd are working together with Al Qaeda's allies. Not that this will bother them in the least.

But the best available explanation of this phenomenon comes from Latma's Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage