Posted on 05/09/2010 6:02:57 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
The Bennett lesson: All incumbents beware By: David Catanese May 9, 2010 07:28 AM EDT
SALT LAKE CITY — It's on. The first incumbent of the 2010 election year crashed and burned Saturday, and there's ample cause for alarm for officeholders everywhere.
There was no personal scandal, no whiff of corruption, no silver bullet here.
Republican Sen. Robert Bennett was one of the most powerful and likable members of the Senate, he diligently protected Utah’s interests from his post in GOP leadership and he funneled millions of dollars back to his state as an appropriator.
But Utah Republicans didn't care. In fact, that's exactly why they tossed him out in a humbling second ballot vote at the state party convention.
The circumstances surrounding his downfall were unique to Utah with its state convention process, yet there was an unmistakable message to incumbents on both sides of the aisle: This is no ordinary year, and the ordinary, time-honored methods of winning votes may not be enough.
For Republicans who are measuring the drapes in anticipation of reclaiming power, Bennett’s loss should be sobering. If the anti-Washington and tea party winds keep blowing this strong, some of them could be measuring their own political graves.
To one degree or another, all the national polls reflect the deep-seated unrest. The congressional job disapproval rating registered 72 percent when Gallup measured it last month. In a late April Washington Post/ABC News poll, 57 percent said they were “inclined to look around for someone else to vote for,” compared to just 32 percent who said they were inclined to re-elect their representative. Those results are slightly worse than on the eve of the 1994 election, when the same poll found 56 percent would look around and 37 percent would vote to re-elect.
(Excerpt) Read more at dyn.politico.com ...
A) Bennett isn't a great scholar or thinker, and B) Lee and Bridgewater are eminently qualified. Don't let the door hit you on the ass.
fry them all...
Can not argue with what you say.
Gov. Goodhair sure ain’t the perfect one, but he’s the best we had between KBH and dem white. Texas was lucky medina showed her paulistas nuttiness in time for conservatives to see the real debra (THANK YOU, Glenn Beck!!!).
Sarah, had some obligation to juan mclame and that (thankfully) has come and gone.
Hell I would like to see one that removed stupid laws and regulations...........but I live in a fantasy world.
I really hate it when a elected official says " I passed this law"
Indiana, used to have a republican attorney general who ran for re-election on one topic..............I passed the no call phone list..
That was in his opinion his greatest accomplishment.
I’m in a dilemma over the Montana House of Representatives incumbent Denny Rehberg, he is a conservative, I like him BUT he voted “yes†to exclude the anointed ones to be excluded from the health care we will have forced on us. It really, really bothers me. There is a man, Mark French, that is setting up to run against him for the Republican seat. He’s a “Constitutional Republican†with conservative values I can support. Question is, is Rehberg’s yes vote on exclusion from participation in the forced government health care a reason to vote out a consistently conservative representative? I did write to Rehberg about this, he always answers letters, no answer on this one though. Anyone have thoughts on this?
James Inhofe comes to mind. He has been relentless in his opposition to the enviromentalist whacko crowd and the cynical opportunists like Algore, et.al., who use them to advance their money-making schemes on the backs of taxpayers.
It is good to see Bob Bennett go. Bennett was your typical “George W.Bush” Republican. We need those like we need a hole in the head.
Sorry obviously made a posting error on punctuation, hope you can understand my post.
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RIGHT. Just an old CON-MAN politician who needed to go graze in the grass.
Bennett was/is an old-time bum.
That was only one of the infuriating statements that McCain made during his campaign. He is merely a panderer and has proven over and over again that he lacks discernment and wisdom. He isn't a leader.
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LOL!
What you say is nonsense and moronic.
NOW ..... go take of that silly looking wig.
FLUSH THE JOHN!
Very accurate and hilarious!
Flush the John...Johnny’s GOT to go!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJobkdeho88
I totally agree with your wise sentiments ....... except I'd make it, "excremental socialism".
;-)
I don't think the people's disgust with Democrats is going to help the Republicans as much as many are saying - people hate them, too.
The eggplant Governor of Florida has a very good chance, IMO.
McCain has noticed as he claws to hang on to his nomination. Go JD.
“Hell I would like to see one that removed stupid laws and regulations...........but I live in a fantasy world.” ~ Kakaze
No you don’t. It happened in New Zealand and we can make it happen here. Read on:
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 10:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Forbes Newsletters newsletters@forbes.com
To: [Matchett-PI]
Subject: The Gilder Friday Letter v.429.0
http://www.gilder.com/ | Issue 429.0/May 7, 2010
The Week /CuttingGovernment is All Upside
GILDER TELECOSM FORUM MEMBER # 1(05/05/10):
Marc Farber (Bloomberg): I can tell you, all governments will eventually have to be bailed out in the western world. It’s either going to be through money printing, as I think, or default. They are over indebted, especially if you consider the unfunded liabilities like future pensions, social security, medicare, medicaid and so forth.
It does not add up, they will all default or they will all print money. But the outcome won`t be pretty, that I can assure you.
GEORGE GILDER, Gilder Telecosm Forum (05/05/10): Or someone will try the New Zealand solution, the only real remedy, imposed by a Labor government two decades ago, when they shocked everyone by zeroing out all government programs. The result was an amazing boom, particularly in agriculture, where huge farm subsidies and regulations were abolished and the entire department dismantled. New Zealand moved from being a massive net importer of food to provoking Wisconsin to protect its dairy products from unfair competition from down under. Abolishing government programs turned out to be all upside.
This is not a problem. It is an opportunity. The key to doing it is rescission of pensions extorted from the government by public sector unions, which are unconstitutional self-dealers trading their campaign agitprop and contributions for runaway benefits and absurd early retirements.
GILDER TELECOSM FORUM MEMBER # 1(05/05/10): Any recommended reading on the New Zealand solution?
GEORGE GILDER, Gilder Telecosm Forum (05/05/10): The entire saga was told in detail in a Heritage Foundation tape that I gave to Steve Forbes (and he lost without mentioning). I bet Heritage could track it down and has paper records of the contents. It is the best libertarian story ever told. It is definitely worth chasing down. They zeroed out all the departments and all spending had to be justified from scratch. It changed New Zealand from a Third World basket case into a thriving economy for several decades.
Everybody expected disasters, but cutting government (except defense) is all upside.
Imagine zeroing out the department of agriculture, department of commerce, department of education, department of labor, etc. etc. Think anything bad would happen?
Friday Feature / Washington Possessed
DAVID MALPASS, Forbes.com: My Nov. 10, 2008 column warned that big government was walking away as the knockout winner over the private sector in the financial crisis. But it’s going much further than I’d feared. The federal government has accelerated its takeover of the economy, adding a mega-trillion-dollar health care entitlement, despite the damage to health care and the national debt this will cause. Washington is frenetically cutting unfunded checks. Capital is being channeled away from small businesses toward big government. Looming on the horizon is the bailout of state and local governments, which will concentrate more and more of the nation’s debt onto the diminishing base of federal taxpayers.
Washington’s excess spending is now running $1.5 trillion annually, and both the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are relying heavily on short-term credits for funding. The marketable national debt has ballooned to more than $8 trillion, but wait ... the Obama Administration has budgeted an increase to $20 trillion over the next few years, bringing it to more than 90% of GDP. Even that huge sum—$100,000 for every working-age American—doesn’t include the rapidly escalating debts of Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) or the government’s unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. And to keep the debt estimate down the budgeteers are making wishful assumptions that millions of high-paying jobs will reappear and health care reform will pay for itself.
Every month Congress adds more federal powers and debt, voting as if its allegiance were to Washington, city of cranes, instead of to the voters and taxpayers. The financial services reform bill does little to reopen lending to small businesses but adds huge new federal powers, including the imposition of corporate taxes, to create a giant new bailout fund (think Son of Tarp). And the President’s ten-year $45 trillion spending budget makes crystal clear Washington’s hunger for a value-added tax. After the health care law it’s the next huge step in Washington’s expansion.
Given temporarily low federal borrowing costs, the government can concentrate the nation’s debt onto federal taxpayers without properly recording the cost. This process is stimulative in the short run—more debt for less cost—but is clearly dangerous in the longer term. The government is not only choosing health care treatments and mortgage clauses but also has taken responsibility for allocating credit throughout the economy—this state versus that state, this industry versus that one.
Delaying the day of reckoning, the Fed has committed its institutional credibility to monetary supercharging, as it did in 2003. By arbitrarily pegging the interest rate near zero for big banks and the Treasury, we’re living in a surreal framework in which the more federal debt, the better for GDP. Except that there are three huge losers: savers earning 0%, small businesses not hooked into zero-rate loans and future taxpayers saddled with the debt when interest rates zoom . . .
READ ON:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0510/opinions-david-malpass-current-events-washington-possessed.html?boxes=opinionschanneleditors
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Couldn’t agree more. McConnell’s days are numbered. He is very lucky he is not running in 2010.
LOL! bttt
In speaking of his voting record while in the Senate, he said, "Looking back on them, with one or two very minor exceptions, I wouldn't have cast any of them any differently even if I had known at the time they were going to cost me my career (italics mine)."
Since when .... really, SINCE WHEN, is the temp. job of senator, representative, or any other elected federal position considered A CAREER?????
Perhaps this is the real problem.
These are not "career" positions....they are, at best, temp jobs....or should be.
As "former" Senator Bennet goes, so should go the entire Congress...."a pox on both their houses."!!!
Time for McNasty to sit on the front porch in Sedona and sip a cold brew and enjoy his retirement.
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