Call It A Comeback
It appears the Indiana Democratic Party is taking shots at Mitch Daniels by sending out Daniel’s invitation to gay and lesbian voters to conservative legislators and groups. Sort of like South Carolina when Lindsey Graham’s opponent attacked Guiliani’s friendship with gays and lesbians.
Hello guys–we are supposed to be the more tolerant party….
The Log Cabin Republicans (gay Republicans) or a group of LCRs will be protesting the Keyes fundraiser on Thursday at Zela’s
While they obviously disagree on gay marriage, they’ll be primarily protesting Keyes’ language and behavior towards gays and lesbians. Knowing that there will likely be media in attendance, they will be holding up signs in an attempt to humanize their agenda, in terms most moderate voters across party lines would find sympathetic. They realize he is the GOP Senate nominee yet that does not mean a GOP organization should support him. They plan on protesting from approximately 6:00 pm until sufficient media attention arrives.
More information–drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch.
Keyes makes an appearance on a Messianic Jewish TV program that appears on the net and one of my favorite networks for wingnuttery–the Trinity Broadcast Network (I really like the buying slaves thing from Rod Parsley on TBN–sort of ignores the creating the market problem).
The show can be accessed here
The ministry has some real interesting things to say about Catholics–which is interesting given Keyes was a guest and a rather devout Catholic.
I guess this is a site I won’t be visiting again…
Seriously, grow up dude. If you can’t stand the dirt, go comment on basketball or something. You sure as hell don’t belong talking about politics. No matter how much you know, you so obviously don’t have the stomache for it. That, or you’re so rich you WANT Bush to win.Don’t snivel and say you don’t want to win that way. This isn’t a game, winning is everything because losing leaves you with nothing and it leaves too many people unprotected. It’s disgusting that you would sacrifice the needs of so many just to give yourself a more sound sleep at night. That’s not the right thing, that’s the easy thing.
Significant Site Updates–so if you have an Illinois centered blog not linked in the blogroll (check the extended blogroll too) be sure to drop me a note in comments or in e-mail. Or other links that you think should be included including funny or interested Illinois blogs or news sites (some new pages coming). Any state politics blogs I don’t link to are appreciated as well. I’m going to move some of the best to the front page.
Also, while Illinois politics will remain the primary focuse, I plan on dealing with Congressional elections more as well–meaning lots on Bean, Cegelis and Tari Renner. In fact, this Wednesday will be Bean Day! And yes there will be Cegelis and Renner days in the next two weeks. National races will be covered as well with some tie ins to othe sites.
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Rich Miller in his weekly column covers the Syverson in his role in bringing Keyes to Illinois. It’s very funny:
At times like these, it’s human nature to look for someone to blame. It’s tough to blame Keyes because, well, Keyes is Keyes. He was, after all, totally consistent when he moved from saying all homosexuals are “selfish hedonists” to saying that Mary Cheney is a “selfish hedonist.”
Anyone with an Internet connection and a half hour to spare could have predicted this would happen and Keyes would turn out to be a complete embarrassment to the Republican Party and the state of Illinois.
I prefer to blame state Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Rockford). Syverson is the treasurer of the Illinois Republican Party who actively recruited Keyes and then touted him to anyone who would listen.
I happen to like Dave Syverson. He is energetic and bright and his constituents are well-represented, but he really blew this one. He also wasn’t alone.
That’s funny stuff.
But on the front page of the Capitol Fax, he points out another issue–how low can Keyes go in terms of votes.
WORSE THAN ’86? (excerpt) [A] terrible fear is creeping through the [regular Republicans] these days that Keyes will do worse than Koehler this November [former Senator Alan Dixon beat Koehler like a Persian rug, winning 65 percent of the vote and all 102 counties in 1986]. The Cheney comment [by Alan Keyes–that Cheney’s lesbian daughter is a “selfish hedonist”] sent shivers down a lot of Republican spines because the more voters Keyes alienates, the more damage he could do to down-ballot candidates. And if he’ll do something like [make this comment about the VEEP’s daughter] are there any limits to his behavior?
Of course, 1986 didn’t kill the Republicans down ballot because the Democrats had the embarrassment of the 20th Century when 2 LaRouchies hijacked spots on the Democratic ticket thanks to an incompetent primary GOTV operations.
To give you a historical sense of bad defeats here is everyone who fell below 40 percent in US Senate races since 1920:
Year Party Name % of the vote/% of the two party vote
1920 D Waller 26.11/27.89
1924 D Sprague 34.99/35.37
1930 R McCormick 30.73/32.43
1972 D Pucinski 37.35/37.51
1974 R Burditt 37.22/37.46
1986 R Koehler 33.75/34.13
1990 R Martin 34.93/34.93
2002 R Durkin 38.02/38.66
I’m not sure Koehler’s numbers should be the concern–I’d be more worried about McCormick or Waller from 1920 and 1930 respectively. I’m pretty sure Keyes won’t break 30% at this point, but the beneficiary after about 65% of the vote may well be Jerry Kohn. Many Republicans may defect from the ticket, but not to Barack. The humorous watch may well be whether Obama can take on McKinley in 1920 and have the highest percent of support ever for a US Senate Candidate in Illinois
Total, McKinley got 67.48%
Of the two party vote he got 72.11%
From the looks of it, both numbers are reasonable given early polling and continuing eruptions from Keyes. And unfortunately for the Republicans, the Democrats don’t have any LaRouchies around–though Denny Hastert has been doing a decent imitation on news shows recently.
The other number to shoot for is the all time high number of votes for a US Senate Candidate in Illinois. The current highwater mark was 2,867,078 votes by Charles Percy in 1972 against Pucinski. The actual challenge for Obama is getting enough total people out to vote to break that number.
Coming to ArchPundit
10 minutes on the radio–he complains about the media instead of his positions. It’s unclear given how he states his positions that this was good strategically or not.
Berkowitz challenges Keyes on the socialist comment, the transcript follows:
Berkowitz: Let me, let me play devil?s advocate here because I think Barack [Obama, Democratic U. S. Senate candidate] has been on this show [over the years] about eight times, so I think I know reasonably well what he thinks, and he would say he cares about, certainly, improving the quality of education; he cares about jobs, and he understands that it is important– that it is important to have a quality education in order to have jobs here in Illinois. In that, he would say he agrees with you. He differs with you on the methods to maintain jobs.
[KEYES CALLS OBAMA A SOCIALIST]
Keyes: So, I am sure that he [Barack Obama] can easily mouth the words. Cuz, that?s what?
Berkowitz: But, you called him a socialist. Do you stand behind?
Keyes: He is a socialist.
Berkowitz: You, you?
Keyes: Folks like this, even the issue we are talking about?
Berkowitz: [But], he has said on this show that–
Keyes: Even the issue we are talking about. If you look at his stand, his stand says the only way we can get education is with government run, government dominated schools. That is socialism. I say, let?s have schools in which you give parents the choice, which then allows them to both go into a sector where the schools are going to be faith based, parochial schools that are started by private individuals–[or] where they might even be able to get together in their community and start schools for themselves, rather than do it under government domination. That?s the difference between a socialist and someone who really believes not only in free enterprise but in self-government in the community.
Let’s define socialism. From the OED:
A theory or policy of social organization which aims at or advocates the ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, property, etc., by the community as a whole, and their administration or distribution in the interests of all.
That’s a pretty touch stretch. First, kudos to Jeff for getting him to at least answer the question. Someone else did it recently (perhaps Spike O’Dell) too.
No one claims that Obama wants to have public ownership of the means of production, capital, land or property (well maybe Joyce, but again, no one serious). He wants more or different regulations over business, but that goes to the core of the argument between those who argue over the number of market failures. It’s an entirely reasonable argument to say that he thinks the government can fix too many market failures. It is unreasonable to suggest that he wants to control the means of production. It’s especially silly given Keyes likes to tout his PhD in Political Theory.
Education isn’t a socialized market anyway–it is system that has the public dollars go to public institutions and people can ‘choose’ between them and private schools. Jeff thinks that more individuals should be able to take those public dollars and use them in private schools. I’m in limited agreement, but because someone cannot afford a private school, but has public schools made available is hardly socialist.
Because the CTA exists, we don’t call all transportation in Illinois socialist.
The Leader folks are trying to make something about the Trib’s polls. They are claiming they are rigged without identifying how the poll is rigged, but suggesting that one problematic poll at the LA Times is cause for concern.
Of course, given Survey USA had similar results a little bit ago, I’m unclear why the 41 point spread is surprising given the Keyes eruptions (now even worse). Survey USA had a 39 point spread. To be fair, I’m still skeptical of the computer polls Survey USA uses, but given both polls support one another, it’s hard to see what is at issue.
The Trib doesn’t explicitly identify how it obtains it sample (it should–list or Random Digit Dialing. In a Senate race either should be fine, but RDD done correctly is probably my preference. Even with that, 1 in 20 of all polls are simply wrong, but there is no reason to think this one is.
Of course, the Keyes folks could just release a well done internal poll to argue with them….
ArchPundit