Right Pundits

Following the 2008 election, there were 54 Democratic members of the House who called themselves Blue Dogs. Basically, they were more moderate than their party leadership and hoped to influence public policy toward the center within the Democratic Party. Following this month’s elections, there are only a baker’s dozen remaining. Where did they go and why?

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In 2010, voters decided to throw out the Democrats in the House and greatly reduce their majority in the Senate. In 2012, voters re-elected President Obama by a wide margin, and added Democrats in the House and Senate. Did the voters change their minds so drastically? Or is there some other reason for these contradictory events? Comparing the exit polls from 2012 to those from 2010 provides the answer.

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Exit polls are important because they look at actual voters, and the choice that they made. As the name suggests, exit polls are those that take place right after voting, in contrast to the barrage of polls that took place for the past year. Here, we will concentrate on the issues that were important to voters; we can then see how these issues helped frame people’s decisions. Hopefully, these polls will help our understanding of the issues that played a part in the voters’ choices.

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Interestingly, the deep blue state of Illinois sent a Republican Senator to Washington. His name is Mark Kirk. Sadly, Senator Kirk was felled by an ischemic stroke over the weekend, an affliction that necessitated emergency surgery on Sunday night.

On Saturday, Senator Kirk, 52, checked himself into Lake Forest Hospital after feeling dizzy. Diagnosed with a stroke Kirk was quickly moved to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for surgery to remove a section of his skull to allow the pressure on his brain to be relieved.

Kirk’s doctors have reported that the Senator will likely have difficulty moving his left arm and leg, but that his speech should not be affected as the part of his brain in which he suffered his stroke does not affect speech.
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Last week I wrote about a corporation that was formed merely to give Mitt Romney a one million dollar campaign donation, only to fold up shop not long after the donation was done. At the time that the incident was reported no one knew who this million dollar donor was. Now we do.

the mystery donor was a fellow named Ed Conrad, a former top-man in the famous private-equity fund Bain Capitol.
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Conservatives and Tea Party folks are mad at House Republicans for not cutting enough. I feel for this ire, to say the least. The fact is that cutting $60 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions that Obama has put us in debt for.

But… yes, there is a “but.”

John Boehner is also right in that the GOP simply does not have the power to make massive all-at-once changes in the budget. As Boehner has said, the GOP only controls one half of one third of the federal government. House Republicans simply do not have the power to compel either the president of the senate to acquiesce to GOP demands.
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For WisconsinWatch.org, Kate Golden tells us, “Gov. Scott Walker was right: The angry crowds in Madison didn’t tell the whole story of how Wisconsinites felt.” She says that because an analysis of the emails that Governor Walker received over the scaling back of government unions shows that emails received by the governor was 2-1 positive.

Imagine that, eh? The silent majority wasn’t so silent and the union thugs parading about the capitol did not represent the majority of those interested enough to send the governor an email about his efforts in Wisconsin.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) brought a vote to repeal Obamacare to the floor of the Senate late this afternoon. The measure failed strictly down party lines setting up the debate once again for the 2012 election cycle.

McConnell’s repeal measure failed in a 51 to 47 vote with every single Democrat voting against repeal. The measure needed a 60-vote supermajority to pass.
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