Today was the first day of oral arguments over ObamaCare at the Supreme Court. Here’s a roundup of some of the coverage:
First Day of ObamaCare Arguments Roundup
March 26th, 2012Blogroll Addition: The Texas Public Policy Foundation
March 26th, 2012Today I added The Texas Public Policy Foundation to the blogroll. TPPF is the leading Texas think tank on both state and national issues, including the budget, education, and ObamaCare. Take, for example, this piece by Mario Loyola explaining why the individual mandate cannot be separated from the rest of ObamaCare.
In addition to Loyola, TPPF has snagged an impressive array of fellows, including Richard Epstein, Arthur Laffer, and William Murchison, among many others. (Current Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz also worked at their Center for Tenth Amendment Studies.)
If you care about the deeper implications of today’s policy controversies, the work TPPF is producing is well worth your time and attention.
Texas Senate Race Update for March 23, 2012
March 23rd, 2012Wednesday night I finally got a chance to interview Craig James, so I hope to have the video of that up next week (though I have to warn you in advance that the technical quality is not as good as it could be, as the location (the Rudy’s on south 360) was less than ideal for filming, sound-wise). I also hope (if he has the time) to post an email mini-interview with Ted Cruz specifically focused on the Supreme Court taking up the ObamaCare case.
On the Way Out, Kay Bailey Hutchison Demonstrates Why She’s On the Way Out
March 23rd, 2012Proving that she’s become part of the problem, Kay Bailey Hutchison took Planned Parenthood’s side in the current funding dispute. It’s an object lesson in why, even if she hadn’t retired, Hutchison was no longer going to be a Senator after January 3, 2013. As Texas has gotten more conservative, Hutchison has gotten more liberal. And her argument that Planned Parenthood is vital to the Texas’ Women’s Health Program is bunk.
Not only should the U.S. government not be providing taxpayer funded abortions, they shouldn’t be subsidizing family planning services period, because it’s not the proper function of the federal government. The idea that Uncle Sam should dispense abortions and condoms is a recent one, and panders not only to big government feminism, but also (speaking of debunked) neo-Malthusian thinking and religious environmentalism. Defunding Planned Parenthood and its ilk should be an easy decision for both economic and religious conservatives. The fact that Hutchison is far more concerned with hoovering up federal dollars just goes to prove Rick Perry’s assertion in the 2010 gubernatorial race that “Washington changed Kay.”
There has long been grumbling about Hutchison not being conservative enough, but only in her last term did it become loud enough to ensure that somebody would launch a primary challenge against her; her suicidal attempt to bring down Perry in 2010 just hastened the process. (Why both she and another moderate Republican woman, Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn, both felt such burning animus toward Perry that each destroyed their careers in futile attempts to take him out is an interesting topic I don’t have enough insight on to address.)
Both Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann have proven that it’s possible to be elected as a strong conservative woman. It’s just a shame that Texas doesn’t have one as a U.S. senator.
Democrat Paul Sadler: Texans Don’t Understand How Awesome Obama Is Because They’re Racists
March 22nd, 2012It should be no surprise that Democratic senate candidate Paul Sadler supports the the whole liberal checklist of Obama initiatives. However, what’s surprising is how easily he plays the “Obama’s opponents are racist” card on his fellow Texans:
“If he had an ‘R’ behind his name—and unfortunately, in some parts of this state, if his skin color was different—they would hail him as one of the greatest presidents of this country.”
I’m sure Texans are absolutely delighted to hear they’re racists for opposing Obama’s failed Blue State model of big government, out-of-control spending and higher taxes. The Race Card used to be the last refugee of black liberal scoundrels. Now it seems to be the first refugee of even white Democrats.
Later on he mentions that “fundraising isn’t going too well.” Imagine that.
The Two Year Anniversary of ObamaCare
March 21st, 2012Today is the two year anniversary of the passage of ObamaCare. Note that Republicans are marking the anniversary of Obama’s signature achievement, while the White House is not. Even Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer admits that it’s an electoral liability for Democrats.
That might have something to do with its stupendous unpopularity, not only among Republicans, but also among Democrats. Obama says that’s because of attack ads against it. Charles Krauthammer says that’s bunk:
There’s a widespread understanding that ObamaCare isn’t good for anyone, especially young people, and it’s a budgetary disaster.
And next week the Supreme Court will hear arguments on its constitutionality. Many are suggesting that a decision in ObamaCare’s favor will actually damage Obama’s reelection chances.
It wasn’t supposed to work out this way. Liberals thought ObamaCare would get more popular after passage. Instead, it was one of the biggest factors in the historic wipe-out Democratic House members experienced in 2010.
More specifically, eight out of the eleven “Stupak Block Flippers” (i.e., the theoretically staunch pro-life Democrats who swore up and down they would never, ever, ever vote for ObamaCare if it included taxpayer funding for abortion, right up until they voted for taxpayer-funded abortion) went down in electoral defeat. At the time, the insistence for public funding for abortion seemed like a tactical error on the part of liberals. After all, why bother with that tiny sop to feminists when you’re busy nationalizing one-sixth of the economy?
But since then, the fervor with which Democrats have pursued imposing this mandate on Catholics (part and parcel of their contempt for religion), their white hot fury at Rush Limbaugh’s (admittedly foolish) remarks, and the continuing overheated, drama queen “war on women” rhetoric coming from the left side of the blogsphere suggests that yes, that was what ObamaCare was really about, and they’re willing to remain a permanent political minority to maintain it.
So be it. If forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions is the hill they want to die on*, I suppose we should let them. (Though not at the cost of failing to mention Obama’s failure on the economy, on creating the conditions for private industry to create jobs, Fast & Furious, or his naked cronyism.) As Mickey Kaus has noted, this issue is a serious political loser for Obama, and we should keep hammering away on it, not despite the shrieks of outrage from liberalism’s feminist amen corner, but because of them.
*”Violent, eliminationist” military metaphor offered up as free rhetorical bonus!
LinkSwarm for March 20, 2012
March 20th, 2012Had a busy day working and keeping track of contractors laying sod in my back yard, so here’s another LinkSwarm:
Up Real Soon Now: Hopefully an interview with another major Texas Senate candidate…
Gun Owners of America Endorses Ted Cruz
March 19th, 2012The Ted Cruz campaign announced today that he had been endorsed by the Gun Owners of America.
This is a significant pickup for the Cruz campaign, since David Dewhurst was previously endorsed by the NRA for Lt. Governor. Thus far Dewhurst has gotten a the lion’s share of business group endorsements, split social conservative groups with Cruz, and essentially garnered none of the economic conservative or Tea Party endorsements, which Cruz has been dominating. The Gun Owners of America is a big win for Cruz, since Texas has lots of gun owners. My guess (and it’s just a guess) is that the NRA will either issue no endorsement in the race, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they could endorse Dewhurst. (How the NRA does endorsements is a somewhat murky area I don’t fully understand, especially when they candidates in question have no legislative record.)
Gun Owners of America is a smaller and newer organization than the NRA, and have been far-stauncher in support of issues like concealed carry that the NRA was initially more cautious on. It’s a good endorsement for Cruz, and one that will solidify his position as the candidate most likely to be in a runoff with Dewhurst.
Texas Senate Race Update for March 15, 2012
March 15th, 2012It’s been a very quiet week in the Senate race. I suspect that some of the candidates had already scheduled vacation or break time following the original March primary date, so I expect things to pick up shortly. But Both Ted Cruz and David Dewhurst released ads mentioning their fathers:
You Can’t Beat Something With Nothing
March 14th, 2012Now that all the post-redistricting filings have been finalized, I thought I would take a look at Texas U.S. congressional races to see where either the Republican or the Democratic party has failed to field a candidate. While districts are usually drawn to protect incumbents and minimize the chances of the out-of-power party, it’s usually best to contest all possible races, for a variety of reasons:
Unexpected opportunities arise, but you can’t take advantage of them if you don’t have a candidate in place.
With that in mind, let’s see how well Republicans and Democrats have done in finding candidates for all 36 Texas congressional races:
U.S. Congressional Races Where Democrats Failed to Field a Candidate
So that’s seven U.S. Congressional races where Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee National Chair for Recruiting and Candidate Services Allyson Schwartz, and, well, whoever the hell it is at The Texas Democratic Party in charge of recruiting candidates, were unable to find a single person out of approximately 688,488 citizens in each of those districts to run for the United States House of Representatives. Say what you want about Alvin Greene running for Senator in South Carolina, but at least he showed up, which Texas Democrats couldn’t even manage to do in almost one-fifth of U.S. Congressional races this year.
By contrast, Republicans only fell down on the job in one congressional district:
U.S. Congressional Race Where Republicans Failed to Field a Candidate
U.S. Representative District 29: Democratic incumbent Gene Green gets a pass. In a district that went 62% for Obama, any Republican was going to have an uphill race. But given that there are five districts even more heavily Democratic (the 9th, 16th, 18th, 33rd, and 35th) where Republicans fielded a candidate, this seems like a lost opportunity, especially for a Republican Hispanic candidate in a Hispanic district headed by an old white guy. (Granted, this didn’t work for Roy Morales in 2010, but I would have preferred that Morales file again and run a token campaign over no one running at all.)
All in all this is good news for Republicans. If I were a Democrat, I’d be mad at how thoroughly the state and national party fell down on the job of recruiting candidates.
A suggestion: All six Republican incumbents who haven’t drawn an opponent should each hold a fundraiser for Republican Incumbent Francisco “Quico” Canseco, who figures to have the toughest race of any incumbent this time around.