The snubbing of Iowa GOP candidates

October 13, 2008 by 6 Comments

To snub… to treat with scorn or disdain.

Sounds like here in Iowa, there is more than enough snubbing to go around! First Christopher Reed and David Hartsuch and now other candidates.

Listening to David Hartsuch (Rep. Candidate for US House of Representatives, District 1) on Jan Mickelson this A.M. really got me going on the ‘snubbing’ part of politics. A Google search of “McCain snubs” revealed 250,000, so I tried “Obama snubs”- 313,000, and finally “Iowa GOP snubs”… 15, 700. I was starting to get the picture. Then I happened upon the article that I am sharing about Kathy Potts and her snubbing experience.

My inclination to believe that there is snubbing going on in the Iowa GOP has been confirmed. The leave it up to the “big boys” such as Rants and Paulsen has reached the radar screen of Iowa Defense Alliance. How many candidates will we watch be sent down the river because party leadership has deemed them not worthy of being elected?

For one thing, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to put themselves and also their families under such stress as to run for public office. And when we get candidates who will put themselves up for scrutiny and long hours of campaigning we have the “big boys” just around the corner to undermine and cause havoc.

I suppose there are those reading here who still believe in political etiquette and thou shalt not openly criticize party leadership. Garbage. We are almost at the bottom of the heap with how voters feel about party leadership. Let’s get things out in the open and work to improve the GOP lot in life.

We can start by standing up for our candidates. Let’s not leave them hung out to dry. Enough snubbing.

As someone said on Mickelson this morning: “Leadership is out of sync” with American voters.

Here is the article. I wish Kathy Potts the best, with the party leadership in the GOP, she is going to need it.

http://iowaindependent.com/5663/local-gop-candidate-says-party-leaders-snubbed-her-ahead-of-mccain-rally

Local GOP candidate says party snubbed her ahead of John McCain Rally

By Lynda Waddington 9/17/08 9:55 PM

At least three Cedar Rapids-area Republican candidates for state office have been snubbed by GOP leadership in an opportunity to share the stage with Arizona Sen. John McCain Thursday, according to one of the candidates.

Republican Iowa House candidate Kathy Potts

Kathy Potts, Republican candidate in Iowa House District 33, said she has been excluded from the event. She said Emma Nemecek, Republican candidate in House District 29, and Joe Childers, who is running in Senate District 18, had also been told that they would not get to appear with McCain.

“Christopher [Rants] and Kraig [Paulsen] are in charge of the event tomorrow with McCain,” said Potts. “They do not want me on stage. They said that I and Emma Nemecek and Joe Childers are losers and that they only want Renee [Schulte] and Nick [Wagner] on stage.”

Rants, a Republican from Sioux City, is House Minority Leader. Paulsen, a Republican state representative from Hiawatha, is Minority Whip. Schulte and Wagner are both Republican candidates for Iowa House.

Nemecek confirmed to the Iowa Independent that her party planned to deny her a prominent position at the event, but said she was able to convince the campaign to give her a seat on stage. Rants, Childers, and Paulsen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Potts said she contacted Gentry Collins, the McCain campaign’s Midwest regional director, to ask to participate in Thursday’s rally.

“Gentry e-mailed me late last night that he was trying to get me on the stage at the event,” she said. “He told me that Kraig and Chris didn’t want him to put me there. I wrote him back and said that I thought McCain was running his own campaign.”

From Collins’ e-mail, which Potts read over the phone:

“The initial schedule was set according to local event protocol, where the national campaign refers to the legislative leadership on candidates whose campaigns will be most positively impacted by the limited speaking slots available.”

According to Potts, while she would have liked to speak at the event, she mostly just wanted to be recognized on stage with McCain and Palin as a local Republican candidate. “I did fuss enough that I was told that maybe they would put some bleachers behind the stage,” she said, but the campaign did not make any guarantees.

“It comes down to the fact that those two boys – Christopher Rants and Kraig Paulsen – don’t like me at all,” she said. “There was even an article in the [Cedar Rapids] Gazette where Rants said that I didn’t have a chance [of winning] and that I wasn’t popular and that I haven’t lived here long enough.”

Potts said the rift between herself and Republican leaders began when she was elected as chairwoman of the Linn County GOP. After looking over the party’s books and getting unexpected calls about the party’s unpaid bills, she ultimately filed an ethics complaint alleging misconduct.

“Sure, they praise McCain and Palin for being mavericks,” Potts said. “But look what happens when Kathy Potts in Linn County speaks up and tells leadership that there’s corruption in Iowa. Then all they can say is, ‘Sit down. Shut up. We need unity.’”

“This is all just unbelievable,” she said. “The Democrats don’t have to fight us – the Republicans themselves are doing a good enough job.”

When Nemecek heard that she, too, would be excluded from the rally, she said that she lobbied the campaign to obtain a slot.

“I called up the folks in charge and made a case for myself and my campaign,” Nemecek told Iowa Independent by phone Wednesday night. “I told them that leaving me out would be wrong because my race is equally important as all the other races.”

Nemecek, who is seeking a vacated seat in the legislature, knows she is being outspent by her Democratic opponent Nate Willems. She also knows that when she pursued the seat in 2006 against then incumbent Ro Foege, she garnered 40 percent of the vote.

“I am working hard – really working hard,” Nemecek said. “I’ve been working with my supporters to publicize and build participation for this event. Given how hard I’m working both on my race and on this event, I should be there. That was my argument, and I plan to attend and be on stage.”

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Bill Kristol on “Fire the Campaign”

October 13, 2008 by 1 Comment

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I have long paid attention to the opinions of William Kristol. Kristol has been on FOX News to give his views on the McCain campaign and has written the article posted below. It must be hard for Kristol to take such a stand about McCain. For one thing, Kristol is a huge fan of Sarah Palin. Watching the McCain poll numbers go down must give many a feeling of helplessness, especially Bill Kristol. Yet, at least Kristol has some advice. It remains to be seen if McCain takes it.

Oh- and I do like the advice. Could not have said it better myself!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/opinion/13kristol.html?ref=opinion

Op-Ed Columnist

Fire the Campaign

By WILLIAM KRISTOL

Published: October 12, 2008

It’s time for John McCain to fire his campaign.

He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama’s. The Obama team is well organized, flush with resources, and the candidate and the campaign are in sync. The McCain campaign, once merely problematic, is now close to being out-and-out dysfunctional. Its combination of strategic incoherence and operational incompetence has become toxic. If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed.

He may be anyway. Bush is unpopular. The media is hostile. The financial meltdown has made things tougher. Maybe the situation is hopeless – and if it is, then nothing McCain or his campaign does matters.

But I’m not convinced by such claims of inevitability. McCain isn’t Bush. The media isn’t all-powerful. And the economic crisis still presents an opportunity to show leadership.

The 2008 campaign is now about something very big – both our future prosperity and our national security. Yet the McCain campaign has become smaller.

What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads – they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.

And let McCain go back to what he’s been good at in the past – running as a cheerful, open and accessible candidate. Palin should follow suit. The two of them are attractive and competent politicians. They’re happy warriors and good campaigners. Set them free.

Provide total media accessibility on their campaign planes and buses. Kick most of the aides off and send them out to swing states to work for the state coordinators on getting voters to the polls. Keep just a minimal staff to help organize the press conferences McCain and Palin should have at every stop and the TV interviews they should do at every location. Do town halls, do the Sunday TV shows, do talk radio – and invite Obama and Biden to join them in some of these venues, on the ground that more joint appearances might restore civility and substance to the contest.

The hope for McCain and Palin is that they still have pretty good favorable ratings from the voters. The American people have by no means turned decisively against them.

The bad news, of course, is that right now Obama’s approval/disapproval rating is better than McCain’s. Indeed, Obama’s is a bit higher than it was a month ago. That suggests the failure of the McCain campaign’s attacks on Obama.

So drop them.

Not because they’re illegitimate. I think many of them are reasonable. Obama’s relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is, I believe, a legitimate issue. But McCain ruled it out of bounds, and he’s sticking to that. And for whatever reason – the public mood, campaign ineptness, McCain’s alternation between hesitancy and harshness, which reflects the fact that he’s uncomfortable in the attack role – the other attacks on Obama just aren’t working. There’s no reason to think they’re suddenly going to.

There are still enough doubts about Obama to allow McCain to win. But McCain needs to make his case, and do so as a serious but cheerful candidate for times that need a serious but upbeat leader.

McCain should stop unveiling gimmicky proposals every couple of days that pretend to deal with the financial crisis. He should tell the truth – we’re in uncharted waters, no one is certain what to do, and no one knows what the situation will be on Jan. 20, 2009. But what we do know is that we could use someone as president who’s shown in his career the kind of sound judgment and strong leadership we’ll need to make it through the crisis.

McCain can make the substantive case for his broadly centrist conservatism. He can explain that our enemies won’t take a vacation because the markets are down, and that it’s not unimportant that he’s ready to be commander in chief. He can remind voters that even in a recession, the president appoints federal judges – and that his judges won’t legislate from the bench.

And he can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism.

At Wednesday night’s debate at Hofstra, McCain might want to volunteer a mild mea culpa about the extent to which the presidential race has degenerated into a shouting match. And then he can pledge to the voters that the last three weeks will feature a contest worthy of this moment in our history.

He’d enjoy it. And he might even win it.

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Pettiness in Davenport

October 13, 2008 by 10 Comments

Just when many people were just starting to warm up to John McCain, he says or does something to shoot himself in the foot. McCain has been rising in the polls with some polls indicating just four points between himself and Obama. But I know expect that gulf to widen after some recent actions and comments that he has made to work themselves around the internet.

The first action that I found to be questionable was at his Cedar Rapids rally. At this rally many candidates from Iowa were allowed to speak, mostly statehouse candidates. However, 2nd Congressional District candidate Marianette Miller-Meeks was allowed to speak at this rally. Republican US Senate candidate Christopher Reed was in attendance at this event but did not speak. At first I thought that it was simply an oversight on the part of the McCain campaign.

Then Senator McCain supported the bailout, which is quickly becoming known as The Great American Sellout. His support of this bill greatly places the spotlight on McCain’s alleged conservatism. After all, this bill had nothing to do with fiscal conservatism and everything to do with corporate welfare.

Then there were the numerous little things that he stated in the second presidential debate. Little things like purchasing the bad mortgages and bailing out homeowners that overstepped there financial resources.

Add to this the recent snubbing of 1st Congressional District candidate David Hartsuch. Apparently two years ago Hartsuch questioned McCain’s position on traditional marriage. Apparently McCain doesn’t like someone pointing out that he differs from the base of the party on one of their most important issues. So in retaliation McCain refused to let him speak at a rally in Davenport.

All these little things add up to one big question mark. Where is Senator McCain’s conservatism? Sure he picked Sarah Palin as a running mate, but that doesn’t make McCain himself any more of a conservative than he was before. I must say then that my support for Senator McCain is wavering as a result of his childish and petty antics. I don’t want Barack Obama to be President, but by the same token I don’t want someone that will act in such a petty and destructive manner.

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Books For Soldiers

October 13, 2008 by 2 Comments

Thanks to Art over at the Conservative Reader for making us aware of this noble cause. Books for Soldiers is a non profit that provides books and reading materials for our serviceman oversees. Unfortunately, according to Art, this worthy program is in trouble. They have been unable to raise the amount of money needed to prolong operations. So if they do not receive this funding they will shut down by December 1st of this year. Please make a donation to this charitable organization. Please help them continue to help out our soldiers who put themselves in harms way so that you don’t have to.

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America needs another Paul Revere

October 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment

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What America needs… are more citizens like Paul Revere. From research I have done, Revere was an average guy. He was a craftsman who worked hard to support a large family. When needed Paul Revere got on a horse and communicated the way it was done back in that day. He rode all night and delivered the message in person. Revere did what needed to be done and his efforts helped get us through the American Revolution.

Fast forward to 2008. New kinds of communication but the continued need for the average American citizen to step up and be counted. In the part in the poem I am sharing the phrase that really jumps out at me is “a cry of defiance and not of fear”. Americans, this is what we need today- some boldness – some rebelliousness. The media and even our elected officials have us all running scared. We have sat back and let others make decisions for us. Mostly gone is the defiance that put Revere out on his horse going from town to town in the middle of the night. We have gotten too comfy.

I have been waiting for someone to step up, speak out and give us something to listen to that will inspire us to get motivated before America is lost as we have known it. Maybe the trouble is that there are so many speaking. Pundits and others yelling over each other to get their points across. Campaigns that have been going on so long that we are very “sick and tired” of almost everyone and everybody. Americans who are busy being mean and nasty in what they think, write, and do. It is easier to criticize and whine than to do something.

So, I wait, still hopeful for a modern day Paul Revere. Wouldn’t it be great if someone emerged who just decided to make a difference and not care what all of the experts think, how he or she would be treated by the media? Someone with great character and a grasp on leadership skills.

I know – it is a different place. It is a different time. We sure need someone and soon. We sure could use someone like Paul Revere: “a patriot in the name of freedom”.

Paul Revere’s Ride   by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,--
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere."

http://www.theamericanrevolution.org/ipeople/prevere.asp

“An obituary in the Boston Intelligence commented, “seldom has the tomb closed upon a life so honorable and useful”.  This seems an accurate representation of the life of one of the more modest and trustworthy men who ever walked the face of the earth.”

Yes, we need someone “trustworthy”, “honorable”, and “useful” like Paul Revere.

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“Porker of the Month”: Carl Levin (D- Michigan)

October 13, 2008 by 1 Comment

In my life before Iowa Brigade I did not pay attention to such things as ‘watch dog’ groups. Now that I am a more enlightened and involved citizen I will do a better job of caring about the work that so many others are doing on my behalf. May you find this information from Citizens Against Government Waste to be informative. I would think in this day and age that the group would have a hard time deciding upon the recipient of their “Porker of the Month” Award. But chose one, they did. I share it here.

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_porkerofthemonth

Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

CAGW Names Senator Carl Levin Porker of the Month

Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) its September Porker of the Month for attempting to give earmarks contained in committee reports the force of law.  The provision is included in S. 3001, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

Currently, earmarks listed in committee reports do not have the force of law; only those included in the statutory language have that status.  Traditionally, members of Congress have included earmarks in committee reports knowing they are not the law, but have expected federal agencies to treat those spending items as if they had the force of law.  President Bush issued an Executive Order on January 29, 2008 instructing government agencies not to fund any earmarks contained in report language, or based on any non-statutory source, such as phone calls from members of Congress.

This means that beginning with this fiscal year’s authorization and appropriation bills, agencies would be under no obligation to fund earmarks contained in committee or conference reports.  In a brazen attempt to gut the executive order, Sen. Levin inserted a provision (Section 1002) into the defense reauthorization bill that would incorporate the earmarks listed in the committee report into the statute itself, making the earmarks “a requirement in law.”  The earmarks would be “binding on agency heads in the same manner and to the same extent” as if they were written into the bill.

This provision continues a practice of using committee reports to hide earmarks and make them difficult to eliminate by offering amendments to authorization and appropriations bills.  It certainly does not qualify as “reform” of the earmarking process.  It would prevent open debate and votes on earmarks and reduce transparency and accountability.  The “incorporation” language sets a precedent for other fiscal year 2009 legislation.  If it is not removed from the bill, it would demonstrate that the Democratic leadership of Congress has no intent of ever getting earmarks under control.

Considering Chairman Levin’s history of requesting earmarks, his bill language is not surprising.  In fiscal year 2008, Chairman Levin requested 255 earmarks for a total of $301.4 million, which made him the eleventh biggest porker in the Senate.

The earmarks in S. 3001 total $5.9 billion, and include the following:  $6.5 million for expandable light air mobility shelters, $5 million for a hydrokinetic power, and $2 million for thin film amorphous solar arrays.  While earmarks generally are a waste of tax dollars, they are most outrageous when included in a bill that is intended to defend the national security of the United States.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) had planned to offer an amendment to strike Section 1002 and preserve the current status of earmarks in committee language so they will continue to be just that language, not the law.

For attempting to circumvent the January 29 Executive Order and make it easier to earmark the taxpayers’ money, CAGW names Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) its September 2008 Porker of the Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.  Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

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