Archive for November 7th, 2008

This happened in North Carolina. The subtitles are in Scandanavian but the audio is in English.

While I’m surprised the remnants of the Ditch Mitch! crowd hasn’t screamed to the top of their collective lung about this piece from the Richmond Palladium-Item, it goes without saying “you win some, you lose some”. Those are the breaks.

“A company that could have brought more than 300 jobs to Richmond has decided to locate elsewhere. Officials of the Economic Development Corp. of Wayne County learned Wednesday that the unidentified company will move to Ames, Iowa.”

It bears mentioning that Iowa is a “Right to Work” state. Indiana, though a bill to make Indiana “Right to Work” is always introduced and never passes the General Assembly thanks to Democrats beholden to the organized labor syndicates, is not.

Business and commerce groups many times claim more business would move here if Indiana would stand up to Big Labor and pass a right to work law. It will only get worse as businesses could leave the state for other Right to Work states if Congress and the new POTUS pass their “card check” law. This will allow unions to forcibly sign employees to unions, presumably under duress. Nothing like concrete filled boots to make your point.

For all the moderate haters of Sarah Palin and the conservatives in the GOP, Rasmussen speaks:

From Nov. 4:

Republicans are happier with their vice presidential candidate than their presidential nominee, while Democrats feel good about both candidates on their ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Republicans say John McCain made the right choice by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate…

From today, Nov. 7:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.

Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

These findings echo a survey earlier this week which found that Republicans were happier with their vice presidential candidate than with their presidential nominee. Seventy-one percent (71%) said McCain made the right choice by picking Palin as his running mate, while only 65% said the party picked the right nominee for president.

So just in case you were thinking Palin was a drag to the ticket (and this part goes out to the lefty trolls as well), the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s VP actually enhanced his chances of winning. If he had chosen someone different, one could postulate that McCain could have performed far worse on election day.

Last night I had the great fortune of attending the 19th Annual Indiana Chamber Awards dinner.  The featured speaker was Newt Gingrich and what an event that was.  Should the rumors of Gingrich seeking the RNC Chairmanship indeed be true and should he attain it, our party will be much the better for it.  We won’t be out of the wilderness, but would have a dedicated leader for our conservative cause who could potentially lead us out of the wilderness and keep the Obama Administration and the Democrat controlled congress on it’s toes.

He didn’t spend the evening talking about Republicans vs. Democrats, however.  He spent the evening talking about what makes good business sense and how to get our economy out of the doldrums.  He talked about the successes of small business and the failures of a bloated government.  He talked about solutions that makes sense and lauded praise on President-Elect Obama for his historic victory.

He injected humor and candor in his speech that he gave without notes.  He gave us all, as it were, fatherly advice, and left us with so much to think about.  One portion of the evening did stick out to me, that he mentioned also happens to be on youtube.  He was talking in practicalities about how small businesses make some of the most difficult tasks look simple, yet the Federal Government takes the simplest task and makes it exceedingly difficult.  He used the illegal immigration as an example.  And since I was in no position to take notes, the least I can do is share the video.  Maybe you’ve seen it, maybe you haven’t.  Either way, it explains why Newt Gingrich is a voice that conservatism needs again.

After you’re done watching the video, check out the Indiana Chamber blog for their take on the evening.

A friend of Hoosier Access had this to write about the turnout on Election Day for a precinct located within Center Township, Marion County, Indiana.

I was in my precinct from an hour before opening until the Inspector left with my Judge to turn-in the stuff. We had 602 votes cast of 1700 on the rolls, 35.41%. Unofficially the tallies were Obama - 470, McCain - 116, Barr - 8 and write-ins - 5. Between the Special Election in March and this election, there were only 150 new registrations. If we can trust the poll book, every new voter, and there were only a few, ponied up the additional identification required. We used only three provisional ballots and they are likely to be disqualified by the Election Board for various reasons.

It appears that 10% of non-democrat voters went for other than McCain. If this held true throughout the State, we conservatives gave Indiana to Obama. I believe it would have been worse without Palin.

I made a comment to this individual asking if he thought Marion County’s 53% turnout means that we conservatives did not turn out, as liberal Democrats had every reason to turn out and they did, or is 47% of the voter rolls garbage and filled with unpurged dead voters

As to the rolls, since my precinct picked up, geographically, most of another during the 2008 reduction, and that precinct’s polling place was in the same place as mine, I had a very good idea of comparative turn-out. Considering that we now have two polling places in my location rather than the previous three, yet the geographical area is the same, this turn-out was not remarkably larger than previous Presidential elections at my polling place and did not include a lot of new voters. I am not sure if 47% of the voter roll is garbage; but, it is a larger percentage than it should be. White has not used the information available to her to purge the rolls as have other counties.

On a cheerful note, we have done well electing our Governor, and others on the State level. Marion County continues to fail.

Isn’t it a bit ironic to warn against pointing fingers and infighting, and then engage in a steaming load of it yourself?

Where to begin.

Vice presidents do not win or lose elections, and experience was not a winning message in a year like this. Hillary Clinton can tell you how well experience worked as a campaign argument.

Ultimately, at the bottom of the “blame Palin” phenomenon is the assumption that things would have been better with a different nominee. Who, I ask, would have been a better nominee?

(Read more after the leap) (more…)

Tuesday night was not a good night for Republicans, with Barack Obama winning 52% of the popular vote and winning the Electoral College in a landslide. This was not a surprise to me, after the Republicans nominated a moderate who has frequently clashed with the Republican base. And while some might want to argue that Sarah Palin hurt John McCain with moderate voters, the elections results in California serve as evidence to the contrary.

Obama obliterated McCain in California, 6,219,123 to 3,777,314. But Californians voted to ban homosexual marriage, 5,376,424 to 4,870,010, according to CNN’s election website. That means a significant number of Obama supporters also voted to prevent government from recognizing homosexual marriage. Keep in mind that Barack Obama was opposed to the California ballot initiative. A ban on homosexual marriage also passed in Florida, 4,717,753 to 2,883,847. While a moderate Republican lost convincingly nationwide, socially conservative ballot initiatives did well.

The results in California are encouraging to those of us who have been working against efforts to radically redefine marriage to something other than the union of one man and one woman. Even in a very liberal state known for sending Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer to represent them in Washington, voters were not willing to see government recognize homosexual marriage. It is also significant that the vote invalidated any “marriages” that took place after the California Supreme Court ruled that a previous state law approved by the voters was unconstitutional. With the ban on homosexual marriage now part of California’s constitution, that is no longer an option.

(Read more after the leap) (more…)