Snowflakes in Hell

Goes to Bruce, on a story about a man indicted for voting twice last election:

There isn’t a soul alive so enamored with John McCain as to vote for him twice. Most of us had a hard enough time voting for him once.

Amen.

Apparently Facebook worked to get the Republican Party on board with using their site for their 2008 election efforts, and there was no interest.

Howard Nemerov has done some great research on the election.  Part one gives an insight into how interest groups use endorsements as a political tool.  Part two covers how much of a factor guns really were in this electoin.  The final part three takes on the Brady notion of “sensible gun laws”.  Howard concludes that the Brady Campaign has been greatly overstating its influence on the Democratic victory of 2008.

It’s worth noting that while NRA hasn’t let loose all of the grassroots force through an alert calling for specific action on Holder, they haven’t been silent.

Since he was nominated, I have received at least three stories from them via daily emails with warnings for members about Holder’s positions. They are at least educating, even if they aren’t calling for action. Elections have consequences. You can’t realistically expect the incoming President with the most anti-gun record in history to appoint pro-gun people.

There have been minor grumblings by some of the left about Obama’s cabinet picks and moderation on some issues post-election. But it’s rather quite shocking to see some of fury unleashed when he announced the man who will lead the Inauguration prayer. But it was Jim Geraghty’s comment that made me smile when thinking about Obama’s rhetoric and approach during the election versus the reality now.

Maybe this is a reflection of a disappointing second term for President Bush, but I’m more or less used to politicians disappointing me. The Right pushed hard to reelect the guy in 2004 because they didn’t want an economic liberal, and four years later we’re hearing, “I have abandoned free-market principles in order to save the free-market system.” Henry Paulson was supposed to be the most savvy treasury secretary in ages; now he seems to be making up the plan as he goes along. Two disastrous cycles for the GOP in Congress, and they keep the same leadership in both chambers. John McCain took only a few weeks to start complaining about unfair tactics from the RNC again. Every politician fails to live up to expectations in one form or another — even Reagan gave conservatives only one-and-a-half good Supreme Court justices out of three opportunities.

Yes, I do think that Bush has been responsible for quite a few conservatives being disappointed, disillusioned, or otherwise bitter about politicians.  However, I also realize that Obama’s broad messages – not the few attempts at talking policy – were designed to allow voters to make of him what they wanted.  They recoiled at our suggestion to look more closely at his background and actual votes because his message about hope and change was vague enough so that they could interpret it to match their views.  It would be like telling them to question their own personal histories.  In all honesty, even though he initially pledged not to run because he was too inexperienced, I really wonder if he didn’t have to run now in order to keep his record as short as possible so he could use such lofty ideals without being so easily called out on it.

But back to people being disappointed.  They feel mislead.  I would say it’s really their own fault, but I also view Obama’s message as similar to a very successful ad campaign.  Since his base really hates that kind of stuff, they may just now be opening their eyes to see that while they weren’t actively lied to, they did buy into a message that left all the icky stuff out.  And rather than hating themselves for not looking into it more closely, they’ll hate him for it.  But I think most of them will get over it.  I think we’ll see the farther left members of Congress do just enough to make them happy and they will forget about this affair.  However, if Obama doesn’t come out as a strong advocate for their causes at some point (he was a community organizer, you know), then they may redirect their energy to the Congressional and state candidates who don’t leave them with less buyers remorse wondering, “Where’s the hopechange?”

Gun sales are up, and most gun dealers consider it bittersweet because they know that the risk of new gun control is very high.  They might enjoy brisk sales, but not with the knowledge that more gun control will likely be coming down the pike.  But one major gun shop/range owner in Virginia is swimming in the dough from increased sales and then giggles like a school girl when he admits that he supported Obama in the election.

Blue Ridge Arsenal is a pretty big range and gun store in Northern Virginia.  I wonder how many of their customers know that the owner helped lay the foundation for possible future gun bans.

For those of you looking for a place to shoot in the DC area, I would suggest the NRA Range in Fairfax.

Looks like Tom McClintock managed to pull it out in California’s 4th.  McClintock is a great friend of the Second Amendment, and of conservative causes in general.  Unlike a lot of other politicians, he walks the walk.  So this is also a nice silver lining to an otherwise ominous dark cloud.

Saxby Chambliss received 49.8% of the vote on November 4th.  His Democratic rival, Jim Martin, received 46.8%, with 3.4% going to the Libertarian candidate Allen Buckley. Last night was the runoff election between Chambliss and Martin, which both sides dumped a lot of resources into, including NRA into helping Chambliss retain his Senate seat.  Chambliss defeated Martin 57.4% to 42.6%.  Between November and now, he increased his lead by 13 percentage points to sail to re-election in a landslide victory.

Aside from preserving a filibuster for Republicans, it will also serve as a warning to Democrats that their victory may be a lot more pyrrhic than they might like to imagine.  Without Obama’s coattails to ride in the midterm election, Democrats might find themselves in serious trouble in 2010 if they overreach.  The Republican Party is down, but not out, and Pelosi, Reid and Obama govern to the left at their peril.  A third effect this will likely have is to decrease the likelihood the Democrats will up the ante in the Coleman/Franken election, since with Chambliss’ victory, it doesn’t matter as much now.

This is a good victory.  A shot across the bow of the Democrats from the people of Georgia.  We are down, but not out.  On to 2010.

There’s going ot be a runoff election on December 2nd in Georgia to determine who’s going to be the winner of the Senate seat there.  The incumbent is Republican Saxby Chambliss.  The NRA is backing him in this election.  Personally, I don’t care what Jim Martin’s stance on guns is at this point — his party is anti-gun, and if we don’t preserve a filibuster for the Republicans, there will be no opposing Obama’s gun control plans.

If you’re in Georgia, Election 2008 is not over, and it’s not lost.  Now is the time to volunteer.  Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out information for your local EVC.

These people aren’t stupid, this is pretty clearly media produced ignorance:

On topics the media actually covered, people have knowledge, but the media just ensured the people have no idea what they just voted for.  We can’t have a functioning system with a media that doesn’t do its job.

Bruce Asks, “I’m still trying to figure out the how those who declared Sarah Palin unqualified to hold the office of Vice President can say, with a straight face, that it would be in the best interest of our country to put Al Franken in the United States Senate.”  The recount happens today, I believe.  Let us wish Mr. Coleman luck.  With Stevens being defeated in Alaska, we don’t have much of a filibuster left.

From Bruce, on the fact that Obama is going to get away with campaign finance shenanigans, because the FEC will be too busy auditing McCain’s publicly financed campaign books:

Ain’t that a sweet kick in the ass? How’s that campaign finance reform horseshit working out for now, John? Would you like some fries with that irony?

Kevin Baker has a few questions for the President Elect.

This article in The New York Times focuses on my local district, and of course the gun owner has to be the racist one:

Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and a National Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined.

[...]

“For a long time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was black, if you know what I mean,” Mr. Sinitski, the heating and air-conditioning technician, told me. “I’m not proud of that, but I was raised to think that there aren’t good black people out there. I could see that he was highly intelligent, and that matters to me, but my instinct was still to go with the white guy.”

But he voted Obama anyway.  As much as I want to blast the New York Times for pointing this out, it’s a fact that many of the NRA members in this area are working class tradesman and Union members.  It’s also a fact that many of them reflexively and habitually vote Democrat.  In this area, it makes my job very difficult, because I have to appeal to them to vote on the gun issue.  I’ve had difficulty getting cooperation with clubs, because, if you can believe this, supporting NRA endorsed candidates is controversial, because here they are pretty much universally Republican.  In a place like Texas, this might not be so appalling, but here, Democrats running at the federal level, and in the Southeast at the state level, are typically reflexively anti-gun.  I can bet you that Joe the Racist here voted for Patrick Murphy too.

If you want to understand why Pennsylvania, which has a per-capita gun ownership rate that is close to Texas, and who issues 1 million hunting licenses per year, and 600,000 concealed carry licenses, can consistently vote for anti-gun Democrats at the federal level, I give you Joe Sinitski.  It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth, and it makes the life of gun rights activists in this state very difficult.  Particularly in my area.

This article in the Missoulian quotes me:

“I don’t think Dan’s ousting is fair or right, it just is. I didn’t ask for people to call for his ousting. I did tell people to write Cooper Firearms and express displeasure, and encouraged them to not purchase the company’s products. It was Cooper Firearms and the Board that ousted Dan in response, because they felt that was the best thing to do for their business. Both sides in this case were acting separately in their own self-interest.”

Read the whole thing.  Bob Ricker is still saying the NRA boogeyman is behind this.  Having once worked for NRA, you would think Bob would know that NRA has difficulty moving at Internet speed, except that he has a vested interest in painting this picture.

One interesting thing is it looks like Cabelas and Sportsmen’s Warehouse cancelled orders with Cooper Firearms.  They said that was a business decision though, because the rifles weren’t selling.  I’m wondering, at this point, if perhaps we just gave the Board of Directors of Cooper Firearms the excuse they needed to get some better business management at this company.   Read the whole thing.

Mike McCarville goes over the numbers:

Currently, 42% of voters nationwide Strongly Approve of the way that Obama is handling his new role as President-elect while 26% Strongly Disapprove. The number who Strongly Disapprove is down six percentage points since the night after the election (see trends). Overall, 56% of voters somewhat or strongly approve of Obama’s performance so far while 39% disapprove.

24% of voters think the nation is headed in the right direction.  That’s up from 14% before the election.  Apparently it’s change that only 10% of us believe in.

UPDATE: Apparently that’s up from 41% approval yesterday.  I guess change.gov getting flushed down the crapper went over well.

California is a strange, strange place:

It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks.

This is backlash for the defeat of Proposition 8 in California, which banned gay marriage.  Blacks and Latinos voted heavily for the proposition.  It’s apparently been quite a wake up call for a lot of the gay community that Blacks and Latinos are, in fact, quite socially conservative.

As I’ve told my gay friends, there’s a huge generation gap on the gay marriage issue. In a generation, it will be possible to pass gay marriage through legislatures.  Right now gay marriage is 0 for 30.  This has largely been a backlash against the attempt to accomplish this through judicial fiat, which is difficult to sustain when the population is overwhelmingly against your proposal.

I am not threatened by or opposed to the state recognizing marriage between same sex couples, but I think it needs to be accomplished legislatively, when society is prepared to have that debate.  Right now they are not.

Second Amendment scholar and civil rights lawyer Prof. Joe Olson weighs in on the election of Barack Obama.

If one of my friends made the joke, I might think it’s funny, but I think this is a bit unpresidential:

When asked if he has spoken to former Presidents, Obama stated that he had spoken to all of those who were living.  After a pause, he said he made that distinction because he didn’t want to get into any Nancy Reagan seance situations.

Bill Whittle knocks one out of the park:

“The army’s whipped!” he cried.

“You are, but the army isn’t,” growled Sheridan, who then put the spurs to a horse who’s back was taller than he was and rode to the scene of the disaster, shouting, “About face, boys! We are going back to our camps! We are going to lick them out of their boots!”

His men were not beaten. They just needed leadership.

Read it.  It will make you feel better.

Hope/Change is soliciting feedback.  Be sure to give them some.  Polite, reasonable, feedback.

Bruce tells us how shovel and mason jar manufacturers are going to be helped out by the Democrats.  Hey, they are already doing wonders for the firearms industry.

Via Instapundit, on the markets tanking, and China’s fear of a retreat from free trade principles:

If even the Communists worry about Obama’s violation of free trade principles, I think it’s reasonable to put failure to assuage the fears of those who expect and rely upon a free market squarely on his shoulders.

Even the communists are nervous :)   Strange times indeed.

The time to start thinking about 2010 is now.  Dr. Helen is off to a good start.  Sadly, her commenters are decending into a fever swamp.  Dr. Helen asks:

Perhaps if conservatives and libertarians work together to defeat a few Democrats and keep Republicans in place, 2010 will be a more welcoming place for us. Anyone out there with any concrete ideas on how to go about doing this–other than the obvious such as putting up and running websites like EvanBayhwatch.com etc?

I think most of the Democrats up for Senate are pretty safe, unless the next two years are an unmitigated disaster (which they could be).  We should probably focus our energies on The House.  What libertarian/conservative folks need to be doing is getting the two magic keys to relevance in politics: money and votes.  There has been talk about growing a “Rightroots” movement.  I will have more thoughts on this later.  I do think the blogosphere needs to get more involved in political action.  If all the right blogosphere ever does is highlight news, and bounce ideas around between ourselves, we’ll just be chattering while the progressives are destroying the country.

If we want people to listen, if we want to be relevant, then we have to work.  No one will listen to you if all you can offer are ideas.  Ideas are like assholes, everybody has one.  Votes and money are a different thing.  If you can bring those to the table, politicians will listen.

McCain did himself a favor when he selected Palin as his running mate.  The base immediately fell in love with her, but the subsequent media lynching, I think, subdued the enthusiasm, particularly on the heels of some poorly thought out interviews she pretty clearly wasn’t ready for.  I think the base still adores Palin, but she needs to gain a bit more expeirence under her belt before she returns to national politics.

You can blame Bush for this one, but Republicans, and center-right Independents have spent the last eight years having to carry the White House’s water on the Iraq War, because the White House was not able to competently handle mistakes, missteps, and difficulties.  We also spent the past eight years watching a President not only fail to articulate and make the case for conservative values, but one who wouldn’t deliver them either.

But McCain’s biggest gaffe, I think, was in the debates.  The debates were all scripted talking points, which tended to work in Obama’s favor.  Obama is comfortable when he’s able to work off of talking points.  Conservatives wanted to see McCain go after Obama, articulate against his policies, and make the case for conservatism.  I think McCain largely failed on that count, and not in a small way.  Conservatives, faced with the prospect of another soft, inarticulate candidate, seem to have decided to stay home in relatively large numbers this election.  The next Republican candidate will need to be able to carry the message.  Obama is popular among the left and center-left because he can do that with great skill.  Reagan was popular for largely similar reasons.  I have to wonder how many conservatives actually saw McCain as just another inarticulate non-conservative, and decided to stay home.