Showing posts with label Joe Miller. Show all posts

New Order: Future Members of the Conservative Majority


The Wall Street Journal has profiles of three up and coming conservative politicians whom many in the media and political elite are happy to dismiss as "fringe." Keep telling yourselves that.

Sam Meas was born in Cambodia, escaped the killing fields and is now running in the GOP primary for Congress in MA-5, presently represented by Nikki Tsongas, the widow of Paul (which should give you an idea of how liberals have developed a political quasi-aristocracy):

Sam Meas isn't your typical congressional candidate. For one thing, the Cambodian refugee doesn't know his birthday.

"I tell people I am 38 years old— plus or minus two years." In 1973, Mr. Meas's father was sent to be "re-educated" by the Khmer Rouge and was never heard from again. During the chaos following the regime's collapse in 1979, Mr. Meas was separated from his mother. He never saw her again. Marching night and day toward the Thai border with a cousin, Mr. Meas recalls stepping over corpses and watching bloated bodies float down jungle waterways.

Unsurprisingly for a victim of communism, Meas is a big Reagan fan and a near-fanatic libertarian besides. He is also not expected to defeat the (gag) moderate Jon Golnick, who is Meas' opponent in the primary. Here's hoping Meas comes out on top. The GOP needs about a million Sam Meas, but keeps ending up with an endless supply of Jon Golicks.

Joe Miller is, of course, the Alaskan attorney who "came out of nowhere" (hey, maybe you would have heard of him if you listened to Mark Levin's show once in a while) to defeat Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary for Alaska's Senate seat.

The final vote tally is expected within two weeks, after the state finishes counting 11,266 absentee ballots. With 100% of precincts counted, Mr. Miller currently leads by 1,668 votes. Most political watchers expect a Miller victory, and observers in Alaska and across the U.S. are taking a closer look at a man who, even in Fairbanks, maintained a low profile before he jumped into the race against Ms. Murkowski last April.

"He just came out of nowhere," said Richard Fineberg, an economics consultant in Fairbanks. "Not a lot of people know him."

Mr. Miller attributes his voter appeal to what he calls discontent over expansion of the federal government. "This country is in crisis and doesn't have much time to turn itself around," he said in an interview Friday at his law office and campaign headquarters in Fairbanks.

Mr. Miller—a graduate of West Point and Yale Law School, a combat veteran and former state and federal magistrate—advocates dismantling some federal agencies, saying many of their functions, such as the federal welfare system, should be handled by states. "The age of the entitlement state is over," he said.

OK, we get it. He's "low profile." He is also absolutely emblematic of the sort of politicians voters are screaming for this year: modest, unpretentious, with real-world accomplishments on his resume. Maybe the public would take journalists more seriously if they took candidates more seriously, too, instead of deriding them for being insufficiently prominent in a "been on CNN" kind of way.

There was this odd detail, however:

Meanwhile, he is maintaining some connection to his old life. He was due to appear in a Fairbanks state court Friday for a civil case he is handling, but had to postpone after totaling his Chevy pickup in an accident he said wasn't his fault.

"Just a blip," he said.

Uh, OK.

Jim DeMint has emerged as one of the central figures in the Tea Party uprising, a sitting US Senator who has used his money and position to support conservative candidates, many of whom have gone on to knock off some of DeMint's colleagues, or his colleagues' preferred candidates.

Mr. DeMint's mission is to bring more Jim DeMints to the Senate—that is, people with an unfailing antagonism to big government. But his string of victories, often against establishment candidates, has many of his Republican colleagues grumbling. They say Mr. DeMint is pushing candidates through the primaries who are too far to the right to take back vulnerable seats from Democrats in November. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott recently spoke for many in the party when he said it didn't need anymore "Jim DeMint disciples."

Over the past five years, Mr. DeMint has established himself as the pre-eminent conservative in Congress—he has a near perfect National Taxpayer Union rating—with Tom Coburn of Oklahoma a close second. As we eat lunch at Mr. DeMint's favorite restaurant in his hometown of Greenville, our conversation is often interrupted by well-wishers thrilled to see their senator in person and all with pretty much the same message: "Keep fighting those big spenders."

DeMint is, of course, virtually unknown to the public because the MSM has practically embargoed any coverage of his efforts. Part of that might be personality: DeMint is a soft-spoken modest man, rather than a ranting a**hole. But mostly it's because of ideology. DeMint is unapologetically conservative and quite forceful - but polite - in arguing that Democrats are little more than socialists. Still, DeMint, like Sarah Palin, is beloved where it counts: in the grassroots and the Tea Parties, where he is a powerful force.

And, it must mean something that, in a year when supposedly "no incumbent is safe," DeMint (along with his cohort Tom Coburn) is cruising to victory against an opponent who is literally a deranged liberal. Sounds like some incumbents are preferable to others.

These are the "fringe" people whom Democrats from the President on down claim are trying to bring back the era of pre-Civil Rights Act race relations, who want to turn the country over to the "corporations," who want Grandma to starve for lack of Social Security. You almost have to laugh, but they are serious. Lucky for us, it's no longer 1972.


The Big Murkowski: Another Moderate Loses Their Seat


Jim Geraghty has rightly described the apparent Joe Miller victory over Lisa Murkowski in the GOP primary for the Alaska Senate race as the biggest upset of the 2010 primary cycle. It's not just that Miller was an unknown going up against a scion of one of Alaska's first families. Miller was almost no one's radar screen, and wasn't even polling within 10 percentage points in the last couple weeks before the election.

Of course, polling in Alaska may not be as exact as it is in a wired state like California. One expects that Alaskan "push polling" involves sled dogs at the Iditarod. And, who's to say that Miller was "obscure," which seems to be the take by Murkowski's friends in the media and Senate? Maybe they hadn't heard of Miller, but someone did. Sarah Palin endorsed him, and it's my understanding that she has a certain level of fame in Alaska. More important, the Tea Party Express spent $500,000 on GOTV efforts in Alaska, and Miller's ground game was apparently enthusiastic and hard working. Can't we assume that going door-to-door in Alaska requires a bit more determination and enthusiasm than doing the same in, say, Philadelphia? That's the sort of determination and enthusiasm that wins elections, and which a pol like Lisa Murkowski is congenitally unable to whip up.

What Miller did not have was MSM publicity of his campaign. Even Rand Paul was profiled in a number of articles in the NY Times in the months leading up to the Kentucky primary. But, Miller was treated with the same level of coverage as a fringe candidate like Alvin Greene or Orly Taitz; that is with none at all. Miller is a military veteran, a Yale Law graduate, and a former magistrate judge. In other words, he's a solid citizen with an accomplished record of public service and intellectual achievement. But, he's a Tea Party candidate, and thus "fringe" in the eyes of people who should really know better at this point.

Then again, I knew who Miller was because Mark Levin interviewed him a few weeks ago and continually included Miller in his roll call of insurgent candidates to support in the place of moderate squishes. Now, I realize Levin is a hateful, fear-mongering radio blowhard. But he is also a guy with a nightly audience of 6 million. Levin might not be a member of the MSM, but he certainly is a media figure and political analyst. You would know a lot more about Alaskan politics listening to him than all of the other "smart" talking heads who fill cable and network shows and express befuddlement about how Miller "came out of nowhere."

Murkowski, for her part, seems to be in denial. That's the only possible reason for the talk of her pursuing a third party run. Funny how GOP moderates, whom we are told we *must* elect, are always bolting for the other side or chasing independent bids as soon as they are in danger of losing their jobs. So much for the party loyalty they always demanded from the rest of us.

The fact is that Murkowski is emblematic of the sort of politicians who are in big trouble this year. She voted for TARP. She refused to support the repeal of Obamacare and even said she thought the country needs sort of government health care plan that "works"(?!). She's the sort of Republican Senator - like Bennet and Spector - who could be counted on to make a deal. And that's the thing. After the Obamacare cram-down, we are not interested in any more "deals" with Democrats, at least not the ones presently in office. For Murkowski, the Constitution was an impediment to "comprehensive" liberal legislation from which she could extract booty for her constituents. That's just not going to cut it this year.




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