ArchPundit
ArchPundit
Tin Foil Hats
It’s nice to see Democrats helping the Republican fantasy talking points along:
Last spring Mahoney was a country club Republican believing in none of our values and sharing in none of our dreams. Then Rahm, knowing full well that Foley was an out of control pedophile who might slip up, promised him a good shot at a cushy, lucrative congressional seat. And all he’d have to do would be to make a switch on a piece of paper at the registrar’s office and declare that he’s a registered Democrat instead of a registered Republican. That’s Rahm Emanuel’s kind of candidate.
Let’s remind everyone that there is no evidence that Rahm knew anything about Foley until after the press hit the story–and in fact, Hastert kept the information from even the Democratic members of the committee overseeing the Page program….
Criticizing Rahm is fine. I’m critical of some of his decisions and I understand many who are far more critical. However, doing the Republicans bidding is usually what many progressives argue the DLC is doing. Explain to me how Klein isn’t doing it.
Hastert’s National Numbers Steady
Survey USA shows just abotu the same numbers as in previous days. The issue then being that his numbers are pretty stable and pretty bad and he’s largely sidelined for the campaign.
IA-2 Go Directly There
New Polling, lots of new polling. IA-2 is a dead heat–and David Loebsack has had little support to date.
Majority Watch has a new series of polls coming out and it’s pretty amazing according to Bowers.
Click on IA-2 and see the results:
Loebsack (D) 48%
Leach (R) 47%
1006 surveyed 3.09% MOE
Help Dave out–this race is fully in play. This was a Dem leaning District with a long serving incumbent Republican and Dave has made a race of it on a shoestring. Time to ramp up to bring him home.
IL 6 DCCC Poll
All caveats given it’s from the DCCC, but it looks like good numbers:
IL-06 (Open): Tammy Duckworth (D) vs. Peter Roskam (R)
Head to Head: Duckworth 51%, Roskam 46%. Only 34% of voters in Illinois? 6th district think that the country is going on the right track, while 57% say we?re headed down the wrong track and only 21% give President Bush a positive rating for the job he is doing. [Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 409 voters; October 8-9; margin of error 5%]
The question for this cycle is who has the right voter screens for likely voters, but given the indicators showing Democrats with higher interest, this is a good sign.
That Crack Kerry Team
Dear Larry,
It’s like a meeting of the “no accountability” caucus of the Republican Party. Tonight in Chicago, George W. Bush and House Speaker Denny Hastert will appear side-by-side campaigning for Republican candidates.
And, if you think Republicans can’t dance, wait until you see 2006 candidates waltz away from the dreaded prospect of being caught in a photo op between the President and the Speaker of the House.“Woulda. Shoulda. Coulda.”
That was Denny Hastert’s instinctive response to questions about why the Republican leadership hadn’t done more to protect young congressional pages in the Mark Foley scandal. Those are the words of a politician and a party who have made a habit of ignoring the facts, ducking responsibility, and avoiding accountability.
Woulda stopped the corruption of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, and Duke Cunningham. Coulda forced President Bush to abandon his destructive “stay the course” policy in Iraq. Shoulda cared about something other than cynically holding onto power.
Too late now, Denny. We’ve had enough. That’s why we’ve added John Laesch, your Democratic opponent and a former Navy intelligence analyst, to our October slate of veterans running for Congress.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
What better way to respond to the Bush-Hastert get-together in Chicago than rushing contributions to five veterans running in races that can finally break the Republican grip on power. This isn’t the October Denny Hastert and George Bush had in mind.
They thought they’d have Democratic candidates on the run… burying our hopes in an avalanche of special interest money… stealing our momentum with bogus “soft on terrorism” charges.
Speaker Hastert was planning a victory march from one congressional district to another. That’s until one Republican candidate after another begged him to stay home and not bring the debate about his shameful failures of leadership into their races.
Now, with your help, John Laesch can bring that debate into Hastert’s own congressional race. Make Denny Hastert explain himself to the people of Illinois’ 14th District. And help our four other veterans running in some of the closest, must-win races in the country.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
Don’t just support John Laesch’s run against Hastert. Tell Patrick Murphy in Pennsylvania that you won’t tolerate Republican attempts to “swift-boat” him by disparaging his service to our country.
Tell Leonard Boswell in Iowa that you won’t let him be thrown off course by hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads funded by the Texas millionaire who was behind the Republicans’ 2004 “swift-boat” attack strategy.
Help Lee Ballenger in South Carolina stand up to the flood of special interest money pouring into his opponent’s campaign from powerful oil and gas interests. And help Colonel Mike Weaver continue his surge in Kentucky with a campaign that tells the truth about the Bush fiasco in Iraq.
Rush a contribution to our veteran candidates right now.
Denny Hastert has been the longest-running Republican speaker in history. But in 25 days, we can take the gavel out of his hands — and the smirk off George W. Bush’s face. Don’t back down. Don’t stop working.
Rush your support now to as many of our five veteran candidates as you possibly can.
Together we’ll win.
John Kerry
I think I can name another relevant veteran candidate related to this fundraiser….
Gee, how did this guy lose.
Click on the link above to correct John’s stupidity.
Very Preliminary Reading
I’m presuming Individual B is Chris Kelly. If so, it’s obviously close to the Governor and there is an allegation of extorting campaign cash to get state paid for benefits. However, my very, very initial reading is that this doesn’t get the public much closer than Kelly to Blagojevich and unless Kelly is flipping, there’s nothing in this indictment to suggestion the Governor is in any more trouble than he was yesterday.
Eventually, it reads like a road map to the Governor or someone who is directing the state funding, but as of now, this isn’t much different than the MSI Scandal.
In no way does this mean I think the Governor is off the hook, and obviously consorting with Rezko, Levine and Individual B is bad news, but it’s not that direct tie I think voters need.
And so it continues
It’s probably safe to say that how Fitzgerald lays out the case may well hold the key to the Gubernatorial election. If it’s relatively vague, Blagojevich gets to run out the clock. If it’s specific and there’s a Public Official A highly involved, it gives the press 4 weeks to track down stories.
Will on Hastert
“We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have — in my view have — put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They’re trying to put us on defense.”
It is difficult to read that as other than an accusation: He seems to be not just confessing a coverup but also complaining that the coverup was undone by bad manners. Were it not for Democrats’ unsportsmanlike conduct in putting “this thing” forward, it would not be known and would not be disrupting Republicans’ storytelling.