Getting Below the Surface

San Bernardino County to have special primary election in February
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced a special Primary Election for February that would give Democrats the opportunity to pick up another State Senate seat should someone decide to run. Republican State Sen. George Runner Jr. resigned from his position after winning a seat on the State Board of Equalization in the 2010 Midterm Elections. Runner currently represents the 17th District, which cuts across portions of Kern, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Runner’...

20 Democrats and Republicans to watch in 2011
Each year, there tend to be a few politicians that garner a fair share of the political headlines. Some based on their position like President Obama and others based on their comments like former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. There are good and bad reasons that elected officials generate those headlines. 2011 will be important in two regards: 1)it will be a year where the results of 2010 will be reviewed and election outcomes will produce legislative consequences and 2) 2011 will set the stage fo...

GOP presidential hopefuls paying attention to Nevada
Nevada was a political afterthought for Republicans in the 2008 Presidential Election. Caucus votes were nonbinding, meaning delegates could change their minds about whom to support, so Candidates focused on other more influential states rather than risk wasting time and money in Nevada. But that strategy seems to be changing, with the state GOP deciding to make caucus votes binding. Now that Nevada can boast real political juice, Republicans toying with the idea of presidential bids are scoping...

Jim DeMint: Sarah Palin Akin to Ronald Reagan
South Carolina Republican Senator and Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint recently paid Sarah Palin the highest compliment in conservative America: Palin has "done more for the Republican Party than anyone since Ronald Reagan." Republicans, especially ambitions ones, usually clamor for the Reagan analogue. Palin has had it bestowed on her by a Senator with Tea Party credentials.  DeMint made his comment to Politico while assaying probable and potential Republican 2012 Presidential Candidates...

Top 10 Political Gaffes Of 2010
It was a doozy of a political year, making it hard to narrow the gaffes down to 10. But here they are: The Top 10 Political Gaffes of 2010. (1) Pelosi on ObamaCare : When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Obamacare: "We have to pass it, to know what’s in it," it was a gift to Republicans, many of whom used it against their Democratic opponents in their midterm-election campaigns. The remark reminded voters both of the arrogance of the Democratic leaders for ramming the unpopular health-c...

Tea Party Dominates Google's Top 10 Politicians In 2010
Google released its list of the top 10 politicians who were most searched by Americans in 2010, and the results reflect the ups and downs of an important election year. “We aggregate billions of searches that were done over the year to try to get an indication to get what the United States was interested in the past 12 months,” said a spokesman for Google of the Zeitgeist 2010. “The lists help better identify what’s new, what’s interesting, what people are more cu...

Charles Krauthammer: GOP must cap spending but force cuts on Democrats (Video)
Krauthammer thinks the  midterm voter message that swept away the Democrat House majority was  "rein in government, a smaller government, Limited Government and a government of enumerated powers." I think the  Republicans  learned a lesson from what happened with the Gingrich revolution in 1994.  The Republicans were so heady in those days. They thought you could govern from Congress; and they had control of the House and the Senate and they could not. They were defeated...

Californias new primary system will eliminate Republican candidates from ballot
W hen the founders considered the form of government that would replace the English monarchy, two examples of representative government led the lists: Democracy and Republicanism. Reasoning that a representative republic led by informed citizens with a stake in the nation’s well being would be more stable than a direct Democracy subject to volatile emotions of a public fired up over the issue du jour, they opted for the republican form of government. California, in its state constitution, ...

Tom Slade weighs in on RPOF chair race
The ever-quotable Tom Slade, former chair of the Republican Party of Florida, is weighing in on the race for RPOF chair (a contest in which he doesn't get to vote). Here's a letter he's sending out to Republican Executive Committee members in support of Jefferson Committeeman Dave Bitner, a Lobbyist and former legislator. My dear fellow Republicans: In Florida, the GOP has worked hard for our successes: all four cabinet seats and historic, Veto-proof majorities in the state legisla...

Feds probe Christine O'Donnell's campaign spending
Source: SF Gate via AP (12-29) 18:20 PST Baltimore (AP) -- Federal authorities have launched a Criminal Investigation to determine whether failed U.S. Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person familiar with the investigation. O'Donnell, the Delaware Republican and Tea Party favorite who scored a surprise primary victory this year only to lose badly in the November General Election, denied the charges and suggested t...

Feds probe Christine O'Donnell's campaign spending (AP)
Baltimore – Federal authorities have opened a Criminal Investigation of Delaware Republican Christine O'Donnell to determine if the former Senate Candidate broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to protect the identity of a client who has been questioned as part of the Probe. The case, which has been assigned to two Federal Prosecutors and...

Christine O'Donnell, crook
By Michael J.W. Stickings Yes, she's back in the news. Not as a self-aggrandizing liar or an evolution-denying fool or an anti-sex fanatic or a self-aggrandizing liar or an anti-gay bigot or a clueless anti-American theocrat or a self-aggrandizing liar or an anti-Chinese warmonger or a shameless panderer or a moronic and supremely unqualified Candidate for Senate but as a criminal: Defeated Tea Party Candidate Christine...

Christine O'Donnell campaign spending under investigation by Feds
Baltimore -- Federal authorities have launched a Criminal Investigation to determine whether failed U.S. Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell broke the law by using campaign money to pay personal expenses, according to a person familiar with the investigation. This Story Christine O'Donnell, ex-Senate candidate, subject of federal campaign funds Probe Despite record spending, politicians still have $400 million in campaign funds Big Bank Accounts In 2012, Democrats plan to fight cash with cas...

Advocates call for public defibrillators
By Sarah Bruyn Jones SALEM Ken McCauley knows he is lucky to be alive. And his doctors agree. On Dec. 3, McCauley, 53, was at a spin cycling class at the Salem YMCA. "I was feeling pretty good," he said. It was the 5:30 a.m. class that McCauley had been attending every Wednesday and Friday since the beginning of the year. An avid runner, McCauley began taking the class after his knees started bothering him. He still ran four days a week, and completed a half marathon in November. The c...

Priorities
Priorities by digby Yikes: State Legislators in 25 states (see list below) planned to introduce SB 1070 clones in upcoming legislative sessions, according to Immigration Impact. Of course, not all — or even most — of these laws will pass. However, Republicans picked up the most seats in the modern era of State Legislatures in 2010 — more than Republicans did in 1994 or Democrats in the post-Watergate wave of 1974. Republicans hold both houses and the governorship in fifteen states (sixt

Neb. abortion ban eyed well past state lines
LINCOLN, Neb. — Mike Flood, the 35-year-old speaker of Nebraska's Legislature, had a problem: He wanted to stop the state's well-known Abortion provider from offering late-term abortions. A long line of U.S. Supreme Court precedents seemed to stand in his way. But Flood believes that a 2007 decision offers hope for him and other State Legislators looking for ways to restrict abortion. Using that decision as a road map, last spring Flood wrote and won passage of Legislation that bans abor...

More states following Arizona in push for tougher immigration laws
WASHINGTON — Arizona’s get-tough approach to illegal Immigration has sparked court challenges likely to take years to resolve. Randy Terrill, a Republican state lawmaker from Oklahoma, won’t be waiting to see what judges decide. Terrill is among dozens of State Legislators drafting measures that match or go further than the Arizona law, which requires police to check the Immigration status of people stopped for questioning. He is readying Legislation to allow Oklahoma authorit...

Big and Bloody Political Map Game Ahead in 2011
As 2010 comes to a close and 2011 opens a new legislative year for many state assemblies, politicos, hacks and Strategists on both sides of the aisle prepare for a bloody exercise in politics called redistricting which will reflect the latest population shifts from the recent 2010 Census. It’s an exercise that occurs every ten years but that few outside of political circles pay any close attention to.  Next year’s reapportionment will be notable considering Republicans made huge...

The 2010 census: Tilting rightwards
The constitution requires fair representation in Congress. After a decennial count of the population, therefore, Congressional Seats are divvied up among states accordingly, a process called reapportionment. One politician’s gain is food for another’s neuroses. In 1920 rural politicians felt so threatened by the burgeoning cities that they held back reapportionment until the next count, in 1930. This year’s Census had its share of Controversy. From the right, Glenn Beck of Fox...

Right Turn: Liberal fixation with Palin continues
Ezra Klein glances at the Gallup Poll showing that there is no single Republican figure around whom the base has "coalesced." Yet he declares: The closest thing the GOP has to a Bob Dole or a Newt Gingrich -- both of whom were credible national voices in 1994 -- is Sarah Palin, whose interests and messages frequently diverge from those of the Republican Party and who polls very poorly among the broader populace. Ezra does not point to any empirical or anecdotal evidence to support ...

Affirmative-Action Rule Complicates RNC Chair Race
How do you run a campaign when you could be disqualified, through no fault of your own, moments before balloting begins? That's a question a number of contenders are weighing as they vie for co-chairman of the Republican National Committee. The possibility that the GOP may elect a woman as national party chairman for just the second time in its history is raising that prospect for Candidates for the party's often-overlooked No. 2 post. That's because RNC rules require the co-chairman to be of t...

The emerging Democratic majority vs. the oncoming train
One of the nice things about the 2010 Midterm Election was that we were largely spared triumphalist punditry about political “realignment.” After all, sentiment among Conservatives and Tea Partiers was consistent with the polling data suggesting that the 2010 results were much more about stopping Pres. Obama and the Democrats than any great enthusiasm for or trust in the Congressional GOP. Nevertheless, there have been some Dems bitterly clinging to the “emerging Democratic maj...

The emerging Democratic majority vs. the oncoming train
One of the nice things about the 2010 Midterm Election was that we were largely spared triumphalist punditry about political “realignment.” After all, sentiment among Conservatives and Tea Partiers was consistent with the polling data suggesting that the 2010 results were much more about stopping Pres. Obama and the Democrats than any great enthusiasm for or trust in the Congressional GOP. Nevertheless, there have been some Dems bitterly clinging to the “emerging Democratic ...

Steele's Re-election Hopes May Ride on Guam, Virgin Islands
Guam stretches 30 miles from end to end and is home to just over 180,000 people. But when it comes to GOP intraparty politics, the tiny Pacific island carries as much weight as California. Indeed, places like Guam could make or break Michael Steele's bid for a Second Term as Republican National Committee Chairman. The RNC's 168 members—three from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five island territories, including Guam—are scheduled to elect a chairman on Jan...

Heart-Ache: Moonbat Dem Dennis KucinichLikely to Lose His HouseSeat After Redistricting
(CNN) - The state of Ohio will lose two Congressional Seats thanks to the latest U.S. Census figures, and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich is worried his seat is on the chopping block. In an e-mail to supporters Wednesday, the seven-term Democratic congressman and two-time Presidential Candidate says the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature is likely to eliminate his heavily Democratic Cleveland-area district. But Kucinich says he’s not just going to stand by while that happens. &...