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Meanwhile, Rand Paul has this to ask of The Donald:
WSJ | Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky pointing out this week that Donald Trump was a registered Democrat until 2009:
“I’ve come to New Hampshire today because I’m very concerned. I want to see the original long-form certificate of Donald Trump’s Republican registration.”
Throwing his name into the 2012 potential runners, Ron Paul announced in Iowa his formation of an exploratory committee. The difference between Paul and the long list of those seeking the GOP nomination is that Paul aligns with the majority of Americans on almost all issues. Namely on the economy and the ever expanding federal government. And, while he has said that he would like to end the fed, his most sought after slogan could come to reality if he were to be elected: Audit the Fed.
The LATimes | With an eye toward tapping “tea party” votes, Ron Paul said Tuesday he was forming a presidential exploratory committee for a second try at the Republican nomination.
The Texas congressman built a passionate following in 2008, raising more than $35 million but failing to win any caucuses or primaries. At a news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, he said the country has changed, with “literally millions of more people now concerned about things I talked about four years ago,” including excessive government spending.
His announcement came one day after Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour announced he wouldn’t run. It leaves Paul as the most prominent critic of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan in the Republican field.
Paul, 75, was the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988. He faces competition for votes from Gary Johnson, a former two-term New Mexico governor who recently entered the Republican contest on a libertarian platform. He’ll also be competing with other conservative candidates for tea party support.
The father of tea party favorite and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the elder Paul promised a final decision soon about a 2012 run, probably before June. He said he entered the exploratory phase in order to qualify for the first debate of the campaign, scheduled for May 5 in South Carolina.
Paul said he was filing papers with the Federal Election Commission but none had been received late Tuesday.
Over the past couple of months, maybe even over a year, things in Russia have certainly been interesting to try to follow. As in the United States, Russia will be facing presidential elections in 2012. But it seems that there may be a face-off with current President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for the top spot.
WallStreetJournal | Head to Head in Moscow Power Play
As much as anything can be sure in the world of Russian politics, there is no likelihood of Mr. Medvedev running off in open competition against Mr. Putin in next year’s presidential elections. The men are political intimates and have been for a decade. There is a bond of trust between them that would be remarkable in any country’s leading politicians.Another thing that is not changing is Mr. Putin’s seniority in the partnership, at least not immediately, and not to any degree that makes a jot of difference to the safety of foreign investments in Russia.
There is, probably, also no change in the relative realities of power and office in Russia. Mr. Putin, for the past four years, has not needed to be in the Kremlin to exercise effective supreme power. Whether, after 2012, Mr. Putin is in the Kremlin and Mr. Medvedev is in the White House, or the other way around, is of limited importance. They will continue to exercise real power.
The only change that one can be truly sure of is a generational one, and this will be a very gradual one.
Russian political cycles have tended to be longer than those in western Europe. Its transition from centrally-planned, autarkic and dysfunctional empire to a more pluralistic, modern and dynamic element of a multi-polar world is lasting decades.
Even if it has been inevitably buffeted by external events and retarded by misjudgments and creeping venality, that process is Mr. Putin’s life mission.
The census numbers were released and it wasn’t as pretty as the democrats had anticipated. It was a blow in more than just a power loss. It was a silent protest against taxes that sent many packing to states that had no state taxes. Which are republican leaning states.
Census: Fast Growth in States With No Income Tax | by Michael Barone
For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau Director Robert Groves announced yesterday the first results of the 2010 Census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.
The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That’s an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 Census — the smallest proportional increase than in any decade other than the Depression 1930s but a pretty robust increase for an advanced nation. It’s hard to get a grasp on such large numbers. So let me share a few observations on what they mean. Continue reading . . .
No doubt that Wikileaks hit it big with the newest dump of documents. Which leads many to question what the real purpose is. Was it sabotage? We may never know.
But, what we do know is the old addage of, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Meaning there is real reason to why Obama chose Clinton to be Secretary of State. He needs her there to show experience, but the million dollar reason why is to hope she fails big time. And with a great deal of the dumped documents deal with foreign policy, it puts Hillary’s reputation on the line.
Her reputation is important, especially for her hope at another presidential run for 2012. And, with the hope off stealling the light, Obama has been looking for any reason to take that opportunity away. With his approval numbers at all time lows, anything to boost his standing instead of his closest opponent is needed to give any hope at all for a re-election bid.
by Terry Paulson
P. J. O’Rourke said it best, “This is not just about an election – It’s going to be a RESTRAINING ORDER!” Just what does the Republican landslide mean to America, to Washington politics, and to you?
Elections have consequences. Voters make choices. But a campaign is like dating—it’s the sales phase of the relationship. Once an election is over, citizens are watching to see how candidates live up to the promises they’ve made. Will the “love” and “trust” be earned and re-earned month after month?
This vote was more a rejection of President Obama’s changes and failure to right the economy than it was an endorsement of the Republican Party. The last time Republicans were in control of Congress, they spent more than the Democrats in the previous administration. America will be watching to see if Republicans have learned their lesson and have the backbone to live the principles they so frequently espouse.
The media will harp on the importance of “getting along” and working together to find “non-partisan” solutions. President Obama will call for compromise, but you’ve promised those who voted for you smaller government, lower taxes and a return to the Constitutional principles. Compromise on these promises is not what America needs or voters expect.
Continue reading . . .
by Ken Connor
The results are in, and in the words of former President George W. Bush, it was a thumping. What this nation witnessed on November 2nd was not merely a wave election, it was a tsunami. The obvious beneficiary of the voter’s frustration this time around was the GOP, but as many have emphasized, it would be a huge mistake to interpret the outcome of this election as a mandate for the Republican establishment to carry on with business as usual.
As I cast my ballot on Election Day, it was difficult to shake feelings of trepidation and cynicism, despite the energy that has animated my fellow conservatives in the past several months. According to a new poll, I wasn’t alone. A record 75% of voters surveyed prior to the midterm elections feel that things are not going well in America. Now that the suspense is over and the dust has settled, many questions remain. Is the uncertainty and doubt that has characterized the mood of the American people something that the new crop of reformers can overcome? Are these newly elected agents of the people ready to do the work, take the chances, and make the sacrifices necessary to bring about real change in the way our government does its business? Will the American people’s vote of confidence be rewarded, or betrayed?
In the immediate aftermath of an election, it’s difficult to tell whether or not the campaign pledges that landed a winning candidate in office will go on to guide their service, or be left on the cutting room floor. For the next couple of months, the winning candidates will bask in their victory and recover from the rigors of the campaign trail. But come January, the American people will be anxious to see if their representatives meant what they said.
Continue reading . . .
by Michael Barone
Let’s try to put some metrics on last Tuesday’s historic election. Two years ago, the popular vote for the House of Representatives was 54 percent Democratic and 43 percent Republican. That may sound close, but in historic perspective it’s a landslide. Democrats didn’t win the House popular vote in the South, as they did from the 1870s up through 1992. But they won a larger percentage in the 36 non-Southern states than — well, as far as I can tell, than ever before.
This year we don’t yet know the House popular vote down to the last digit, partly because California takes five weeks these days to count all its votes (Brazil, which voted last Sunday, counted its votes in less than five hours). But the exit poll had it at 52 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic, which is probably within a point or so of the final number.
That’s similar to 1994, and you have to go back to 1946 and 1928 to find years when Republicans did better. And the numbers those years aren’t commensurate since the then-segregated and Democratic South cast few popular votes. So you could argue that this is the best Republican showing ever.
Nationally, Republicans narrowly missed winning Senate seats in heavily Democratic Washington and in Nevada and California, where less problematic nominees might have won. As in all wave years, they missed winning half a dozen House seats by a whisker (or a suddenly discovered bunch of ballots).
Continue reading . . .
by Charles Krauthammer
For all the turmoil, the spectacle, the churning — for all the old bulls slain and fuzzy-cheeked freshmen born — the great Republican wave of 2010 is simply a return to the norm. The tide had gone out; the tide came back. A center-right country restores the normal congressional map: a sea of interior red, bordered by blue coasts and dotted by blue islands of ethnic/urban density.
Or to put it numerically, the Republican wave of 2010 did little more than undo the two-stage Democratic wave of 2006-2008 in which the Democrats gained 54 House seats combined (precisely the size of the anti-Democratic wave of 1994). In 2010 the Democrats gave it all back, plus about an extra 10 seats or so for good — chastening — measure.
The conventional wisdom is that these sweeps represent something novel, exotic and very modern — the new media, faster news cycles, Internet frenzy and a public with a short attention span and even less patience with government. Or alternatively, that these violent swings reflect reduced party loyalty and more independent voters.
Nonsense. In 1946, for example, when party loyalty was much stronger and even television was largely unknown, the Republicans gained 56 seats and then lost 75 in the very next election. Waves come. Waves go. The republic endures.
Continue reading . . .
by Michelle Malkin
Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It, Democrats
On the eve of a historic midterm election upheaval, President Barack Obama tried to walk back his gratuitous slap at Americans who oppose his radical progressive agenda. “I probably should have used the word ‘opponents’ instead of ‘enemies’ to describe political adversaries,” Obama admitted Monday. “Probably”?
Here is an ironclad certainty: It’s too little too late for the antagonist-in-chief to paper over two years of relentless Democratic incivility and hate toward his domestic “enemies.” Voters have spoken: They’ve had enough. Enough of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s rhetorical abuse. Enough of his feints at bipartisanship. Whatever the final tally, this week’s turnover in Congress is a GOP mandate for legislative pugilism, not peace. Voters have had enough of big government meddlers “getting things done.” They are sending fresh blood to the nation’s Capitol to get things undone.
Just two short years ago, Obama campaigned as the transcendent unifier. “Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states,” he proclaimed. “We have been and always will be the United States of America.”
It’s been an Us vs. Them freefall ever since.
Continue reading . . .