Poll: Rocky road seen ahead for Obama

At Politico:

Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected, even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and 13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.

Get full poll results.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42737.html#ixzz10pIpRmrY

For Republicans, the Moment for Reform Has Arrived

From Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) at Real ClearPolitics:

For Republicans, the most important question leading into November is not how many seats we might gain, but what will we do if we gain them. Having lived through the rise and fall of the 1994 Republican Revolution I'm convinced that if the Republican Party does not reform itself this time, it will die. It will no longer exist and I won't be a part of it.

Our mandate, should we gain seats, will be simple: stop wasteful spending and slow the growth of government. Call it the contract to live within our means. 

Read it all.  Senator Coburn spells out three core priorities the GOP must set in order to bolster their credibility. -SP

The Last Best Hope

Watch this and get goose bumps - then send it around to all those who share our concerns over this coming election.  REMEMBER - WE ARE THIS COUNTRY'S LAST BEST HOPE!!! -SP


From RedState via Hot Air:

FactCheck.org Calls Baron Hill’s Ads False And Misleading

From the Todd Young campaign:

Independent watchdogs are calling Congressman Baron Hill’s recent spate of negative attacks on Republican challenger Todd Young false and misleading.
 
In a new report, Factcheck.org, a non-partisan organization that monitors accuracy in U.S. politics, says Hill’s television ads, designed to scare seniors about the future of Social Security and Medicare, are“incorrect” and “without evidence.” 
 
This comes on the heels of Hill citing the Louisville Courier-Journal to claim that Young is not a deputy prosecutor. Contrary to Hill’s claim, the paper, in fact, clarified that “Young is a sworn deputy in the Orange County prosecutor's office.”
 
Baron Hill has been in Congress for 12 years. And yet his case for reelection rests not on his accomplishments, but exclusively on telling lies about his opponent.
 
Why? Because his record includes voting for the $1 trillion stimulus, the cap and trade energy tax that would double Indiana utility rates, and President Obama’s government takeover of health care that will cut $500 billion from Medicare. And since Hill returned to Congress in 2006, Indiana’s unemployment rate has increased 121 percent.
 
Baron Hill is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. And now amount of dishonesty can obscure his disastrous record.     

In Service,

Friends of Todd Young

A Nation of Peasants?

From Victor Davis Hanson at RealClearPolitics:

Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. The more your neighbor earns, the less someone else gets. Profits are seen as a sort of theft. They must be either hidden or redistributed. Envy rather than admiration of success reigns.

In contrast, Western civilization began with a very different ancient Greek idea of an autonomous citizen, not an indentured serf or subsistence peasant. The small, independent landowner -- if left to his own talents and if his success was protected by, and from, government -- would create new sources of wealth for everyone. The resulting greater bounty for the poor soon trumped their old jealousy of the better off.

We seem to be forgetting that lately -- though Mao Zedong's redistributive failures in China, or present-day bankrupt Greece, should warn us about what happens when government tries to enforce an equality of result rather than of opportunity.Citizens of ancient Greece and Italy soon proved more prosperous and free than either the tribal folk to the north and west, or the imperial subjects to the south and east. The success of later Western civilization in general, and America in particular, is testament to this legacy of the freedom of the individual in the widest political and economic sense

Even after the failure of statism at the end of the Cold War, the disasters of socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and the recent financial meltdowns in the European Union, for some reason America is returning to a peasant mentality of a limited good that redistributes wealth rather than creates it. Candidate Obama's "spread the wealth" slip to Joe the Plumber simply was upgraded to President Obama's "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

The more his administration castigates insurers, businesses and doctors; raises taxes on the upper income brackets; and creates more regulations, the more those who create wealth are sitting out, neither hiring nor lending. The result is that traditional self-interested profit-makers are locking up trillions of dollars in unspent cash rather than using it to take risks and either lose money due to new red tape or see much of their profit largely confiscated through higher taxes.

No wonder that in such a climate of fear and suspicion, unemployment remains near 10 percent. Deficits chronically exceed $1 trillion per annum. And now the poverty rate has hit a historic high. We are all getting poorer in hopes that a few don't get richer.

The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax -- or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who managed to scheme to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health care and income taxes -- together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital gains and inheritance taxes.

That limited-good mind-set expects that businesses will agree that they now make enough money and so have no need to pursue any more profits at the expense of others. Therefore, they will gladly still hire the unemployed and buy new equipment -- as they pay higher health care or income taxes to a government that knows far better how to redistribute their income to the more needy or deserving.

This peasant approach to commerce also assumes that businesses either cannot understand administration signals or can do nothing about them. So who cares that in the Chrysler bankruptcy settlement, quite arbitrarily the government put the unions in front of the legally entitled lenders?

Health insurers should not mind that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just warned them to keep their profits down and their mouths shut -- or face exclusion from health care markets.

I suppose that no corporation should worry that the government arbitrarily announced -- without benefit a law or court ruling -- that it wanted BP to put up $20 billion in cleanup costs for the Gulf spill.

What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics. In other words, a newly peasant-minded America is willing to become collectively poorer so that some will not become wealthier.

The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

Indiana Law Grad Asks President Obama: 'Is the American Dream Dead for Me?'

From the TaxProf Blog:

National Law Journal, Young Attorney: Obama Didn't Answer His Question:

A growing number of disgruntled law school graduates have taken the to Internet to anonymously vent their frustrations about high debt and poor job prospects.

Not Ted Brassfield. The recent Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington graduate took his concerns to the most powerful person in America: President Obama. Brassfield, 30, laid out his financial problems for the president during a town hall meeting about the economy held Monday in Washington, televised by CNBC. Brassfield explained that he's drowning in law school debt and doesn't have the means to contemplate getting married or starting a family. "I was really inspired by you and your campaign and the message you brought, and that inspiration is dying away," Brassfield told Obama. "What I really want to know is: Is the American dream dead for me?"

Brassfield's question has prompted plenty of pontificating in the media. The National Law Journal spoke with Brassfield, who lives in Washington and does temporary document review jobs and other non-legal jobs to pay his bills, about the town hall meeting and his legal aspirations. His answers have been edited for length.

• Above the Law, Disgruntled Law Grad Brings Student Loan Woes to Obama’s Attention
• New York Times, Disappointed Supporters Question Obama
• Washington Post, At CNBC Town Hall, Obama Is Asked: 'Is the American Dream Dead?'

Andrew Breitbart Forces President Obama’s Protesters to Fold Up Shop

From Big Government:

On Saturday, September 18th, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart headlined an event entitled “Right Nation 2010,” held just outside of Chicago, Illinois.

As you will see in our video report from the scene, when Andrew Breitbart arrived at the Sears Centre, he was met with an angry mob of protesters who were calling for an ‘end to hate’ while also hurling expletives and homophobic slurs toward the targets of their enmity.

In the following dramatic video, Breitbart brings the protest to a complete halt by cleverly asking sign holders to do the impossible:  explain the placards they were carrying. In the end, the frustrated organizers abruptly end their protest and leave.

Warning: Some content possibly NSFW:

FYI.  There are a couple more videos at the link.  Check them out to get a true picture of what we are dealing with from the"other side". -SP

America's future: Liberty or dependency?

A GREAT editorial from the Manchester (NH) Union-Leader:

In the 1980s, fewer than a third of Americans received some sort of government benefits. That figure has risen to about 50 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. At the same time, 45 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes.

If these trends are not reversed, we can kiss the United States of America goodbye. We will soon reach a point at which most of the people have their standard of living subsidized by the earnings of a quarter, or maybe a fifth or fewer, of the rest. No nation can sustain the economic and cultural strength that has graced the United States while transferring so much wealth from so few to so many.

Amazingly, the agenda of the current administration and its allies in Congress is not to reverse this unsustainable trend, but to accelerate it. They want to make more Americans dependent on government aid while taking more money from the "wealthy," a term they will continue to define down to as low a level as they can.

We cannot be both a land of liberty and a land of dependency. We have to pick one. Our choice, once a foregone conclusion, is no longer guaranteed.

Bad News For Baron

From the Todd Young campaign:

With his votes for the $1 trillion dollar stimulus, the cap and trade energy tax and President Obama’s government takeover of our health care system, Baron Hill turned his back on the people of southern Indiana.
 
Now, in a fitting twist of irony, Hill is being abandoned by his friends in Washington.
 
According to National Journal’s Hotline on Call, in what the publication describes as a “significant blow” to Hill’s hopes for the fall, House Democrats are pulling out of Indiana and cancelling their advertising in Indiana’s 9^thDistrict for part of October.
 
This news comes two weeks after the New York Times wrote that House Democrats were planning a “brutal triage” of their incumbents that would result in the more vulnerable members and candidates being left to fend for themselves mid-September.
 
Apparently Democrats see the writing the wall: After years of being ignored and insulted by their congressman, Hoosier voters are ready for a representative who shares their values, not those of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
 
And with his recent string of misleading, unsourced and unfounded attacks on Republican challenger Todd Young, it’s clear Hill hears the call for new leadership as well.
 
No wonder he’s so desperate. But thousands of lost jobs and $13 trillion worth of debt later, Hill only has himself to blame.
 
You, with your hard work and generous support, have helped us get to this point. But now is not the time to let up. This race is far from over and Hill will soon ratchet up his negative attacks.
 
We have to be ready and we have to fight back. The only way we can do this with your continued support. Help by contributing $1000, $500, $100, $50, or whatever you can before the filing deadline on September 30.
 
Baron Hill is on the ropes. Please help us put him down for the count!  

In Service, 

Friends of Todd Young


I challenge any of you who are reading this to CONTRIBUTE TO TODD YOUNG NOW!  I have just contributed another $100, I challenge you to do the same (or send whatever you can)--TODAY!!-SP

A snapshot of the Tea Party movement in Rochester, N.Y.

A great perspective at YahooNews:

 This city in upstate New York is not a hotbed of conservative politics. It is an academic community with a strong union base. It elects liberals, such as Rep. Louise Slaughter, to Congress.

That said, the Tea Party movement is strong here. Starting in early 2009 and continuing to the present, rallies are boosting interest.

I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. I do not hurry to read every conservative blogger each morning. I am well-educated in civics and how our government operates and how it was supposed to operate. I am nominally a Republican, but I'm from the Sarah Palin portion of the party. The Tea Party movement is not just about me and my beliefs -- it has room for me and my beliefs. No other political movement allows that diversity.

It started for me in the wind and cold on March 11, 2009. Forty Americans gathered for the first Tea Party event held in Rochester. It was among the first in the nation, as the Tea Party movement was about to explode onto the American political scene. We were there because N.Y. Gov. David Paterson was speaking at the convention center a block away.

I found myself at a political rally for the first time in 30 years. As a college student in the late 1970s, I had grown disenchanted with the people I saw running the show. Politicians had little commitment to principles. For three decades I've watched, and little has changed in Washington or Albany. Then, like a brushfire that becomes a firestorm, the Tea Party movement has come along. Other people feel the same way that I did. We have a voice.

Read it all to get a better idea of where the TEA Party folks are coming from and what they are concerned about.-SP

UK Proposes All Paychecks Go to the State First

At CNBC via Drudge:

The UK's tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

Given the propensity of the Obama Administration to praise all things European, look for someone to float this "Big Brother" idea here! - SP

Restoring Madison’s Vision

From Rep. Eric Cantor at NRO:

Two hundred twenty-one years ago, James Madison was elected to Congress from Virginia. I have been reflecting recently on what the “Father of the Constitution” might have to say if he could sit in on today’s Congress. The structure and function of the Congress — the House, the Senate, the use of Jefferson’s Manual to guide deliberations — would be familiar to him. But what would Madison think about the type of legislation we are considering and the debate surrounding these proposals?

It was Madison who, seeking to calm those who feared an all-powerful central government, wrote, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” Let me repeat that: “few and defined.” Notwithstanding Madison’s clarity, today Congress considers and routinely passes legislation regulating virtually every conceivable human endeavor and enterprise. The concept of regulating interstate commerce and levying taxes has been so distorted that a health-care law was enacted that actually requires individuals to purchase a product (insurance) approved by the government. And members of Congress and the president defend this as a constitutionally permissible exercise of Congress’s power!

In a rare moment of forthrightness, the Senate architect of the new financial-regulation bill announced that the legislation “deals with every single aspect of our lives.” Did the constitutional limits on Congress’s power ever even enter into his thinking?

If one looks through the federal government’s $3.7 trillion budget and the legislation passed by Congress and regulations created by dozens and dozens of federal rulemaking agencies, one has to wonder whether there is any real limit left on the powers of the federal government.

Over the past several decades, conservatives have made a concerted effort to argue that indeed the Constitution places limits on the powers of the federal government and that those limits need to be recognized and enforced by the courts. And we have had some modest success.

But not everyone is willing to concede that Congress’s powers are limited. During her confirmation hearing, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was asked whether she thought it would be constitutionally permissible for Congress to enact a law that says that Americans have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day. Kagan was willing to call the fictitious law “dumb,” but she wasn’t willing to say that it might be unconstitutional. Madison might logically conclude that this Supreme Court justice rejects his view that Congress’s powers are “few and defined.”

It is clear that we cannot rely just on the courts to uphold the Constitution. Congress — and each of its members — must take seriously its responsibility to legislate only within the few and definedpowers of the Constitution.  But for that to occur, appeals to the Constitution during legislative debate have to become more than just another rhetorical tactic.

My colleague John Shadegg of Arizona has proposed that every bill include a section that cites the specific constitutional authorization of the proposition. I commend John and think we can even go a step further. When there is a question about a bill’s constitutionality, we should set aside time during debate to focus on that question first. We shouldn’t proceed with legislation until we have resolved its constitutionality.  Unlike our Supreme Court nominees, all members should be on record as to where they stand on the limits of congressional power.

Madison argued that electoral accountability was one of the bulwarks against tyranny embedded in our constitutional structure. He stressed in Federalist 57 that the frequent elections for the House of Representatives would ensure that representatives “maintain a proper responsibility to the people.” Today, millions of Americans are demanding that Congress not only live within its means but begin adhering to the Constitution. The tea-party movement is appropriately vowing to hold elected representatives to account. I hope that by forcing debates and votes in the House on the limits of constitutional power we strengthen the hand of the American people in that endeavor. I think Madison would approve.

– Eric Cantor of Virginia is the House Republican whip and represents the congressional district once represented by James Madison.

Getting The Message?

Tea Party’s already won

From A.B. Stoddard at The Hill:

Even before Christine O’Donnell handily defeated Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) in an epic upset Tuesday night, the Tea Parties, all of them, had already won. No matter what happens in the midterm elections on Nov. 2, the Tea Party has moved the Democrats to the right and the Republicans even more so, and President Obama’s agenda is dead.


Read it all!=SP

4 Things to Know About Delaware

From Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics:

An awful lot of ink has been spilled on Christine O'Donnell's monumental upset of moderate Republican Mike Castle in the Delaware primary on Tuesday. Far too much, in fact. So let's cut to the chase. There are really only four things you need to know:

1. Yes, that is almost certainly the end of GOP prospects for this Senate seat.

If anything, the PPP (D) poll showing O'Donnell trailing New Castle County Executive Chris Coons by 16 points was only surprising because the lead was so small. After the divisive primary battle, the revelations about O'Donnell, and her lack of ideological synchronization with the state, one would expect Chris Coons to be able to climb above 50 percent in a state where 62 percent of the voters voted for President Obama in 2008.

Regardless, it is still difficult to imagine that this is Coons' high point. Some conservatives have emphasized that there were 57,000 voters in the Republican primary, far more than expected. This is true. But the 2008 Democratic primary for Governor drew 73,000 voters, and Joe Biden drew 257,539 votes in his 2008 victory over O'Donnell. Tom Carper got 170,567 in 2006. In other words, even if O'Donnell gets all of the Castle primary voters (a dubious proposition at best), she still has an awful lot of Independents to convince.

Conservatives also like to point to Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ken Buck, Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle, and Ron Johnson as examples of candidates who were derided by the establishment as too conservative, and whose nominations drew groans. First, let's remember that none of these candidates have won yet. Angle and Johnson are no better than 50-50 shots to win right now, and all of the rest, save Miller, are just now opening up significant advantages.

More importantly consider these numbers: 38, 41, 51, 54, 55, 55, 56. These represent, respectively, the vote shares for President Obama in each of the states in which the above candidates are running. In Delaware, he received 62 percent of the vote. And O'Donnell starts her race with much more baggage than any of these candidates, with the possible exception of Angle. In other words, O'Donnell is the weakest nominee of this group, running in the least hospitable state. It is not a powerful combination.

2. This doesn't hurt the GOP's chances of the taking the Senate all that much.

The idea that the GOP just frittered away its chance at a majority is at the very least problematic. Yes, their hill got steeper. But remember, RealClearPolitics rated this race as "Leans Republican" even when it looked like Castle would win. Castle is a Delaware institution, and he was polling below 50 percent against Coons. He wasn't likely to lose, but neither was this seat the "gimme" for Republicans that many described.

Moreover, the GOP still has enough seats to play with to win control this cycle. It will be very difficult to sweep WA, WI, NV and CA (or bring WV and/or CT into the fold), but it isn't impossible. And I'm not sure it is that much more difficult than winning three of the four. These races are not completely independent of each other - many of the same factors that make victory possible in Washington will make victory possible in Wisconsin. In other words, the odds of the GOP winning all four of those states aren't that much different than winning three of them.
3. Still, the GOP will regret not having Castle's vote someday.

But the real concern for the GOP, at least in the short run, isn't 51 seats. In the Senate, unlike the House, the difference between 50 and 51 seats isn't all that great. It isn't insubstantial, either (witness Harry Reid attaching the DREAM Act to a recent defense appropriations bill). But the GOP will still have more than enough opportunity to gum up the works for the Obama Administration's agenda at 50 seats.

The real goal for the GOP is the Presidency and 60 seats in 2012. And that is where this gets tricky. In 2012, there will be eight Democrats running for re-election in states that George W. Bush carried, and another four in states George W. Bush will come close to carrying. The sixty seat majority is certainly do-able in 2012, but the Republicans will need every seat to make this happen. If the Republicans really want to repeal, say, the Democrats' health care bill, they will almost certainly need sixty votes to do so.

"Ah yes," you will hear, "but Castle was a RINO, and really wasn't that different from a Democrat in the seat." This is just false. Castle has his departures from GOP orthodoxy - or else he wouldn't have been elected twelve times in Delaware. But the American Conservative Union has given Castle a 52% lifetime rating. Over the past few decades he voted for most of the Contract with America, "no" on requiring background checks on gun owners, yes to end the estate tax, yes on the Bush tax cuts, no on the stimulus, no on the health care plan, no on a timeline for troop withdrawals from Iraq, and yes to impeaching President Clinton.

The fact of the matter is that Ben Nelson drives Democrats crazy, but when the chips were down, they were able to squeeze him into voting for health care reform. They would not have had that leverage if they had primaried him in 2000 or 2006 and a Republican had won the seat, and the bill might have been stopped. Similarly, there will come a time in the next ten years where Republicans will greatly regret not having Castle's vote -- either the Democrats will pass something the Republicans hate by a vote, or Republicans will want to pass something and be one vote short. And the conservatives who are supporting O'Donnell will probably blame the establishment.

4. No, this doesn't mark the end of the GOP.

Some pundits seem to have been transported back to November, 2008, when it was all the rage to opine about how the GOP was a shrinking cesspool of conservative anger, capable of winning only in a few states in the South. See Tunku Varadarajan here. Or Jon Chait here. Or John Tabin here.

There are two problems here. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that the Republicans are currently positioned to win the most House seats that they've won in an election since 1946. Republican candidates for the House are running away with races in evenly-matched swing districts. They are competitive in House districts in Maine that are typically 3-8 points more Democratic than the country, and in a Central Valley district that is five points more Democratic than the country. And if Republicans are competitive in CA-20, what does the polling look like in the 116 districts Democrats occupy that are as or more conservative than that district? There is also a chance for the GOP to win the most Governorships in 130 years - numbers that don't support the view of a party in decline.

Second, there’s a lack of historical perspective.  The GOP base has been at war with its establishment since (at least) the 1960s.  We saw this fissure in the epic primary battles between Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater in 1964, and Ronald Reagan versus George H.W. Bush in 1980.  At the Congressional level  Charles Sandman’s primary of New Jersey Governor William Cahill in 1973, Jeffrey Bell’s primary of New Jersey Senator Clifford Case in 1978, Kenneth McMillan’s primary of Thomas Railsback in 1982, Oliver North’s primary of Jim Miller in 1994, the trifecta of Allard, Brownback, and Salvi in 1996.

What’s different this year is the depth and intensity of the anti-establishment anger.  The same forces that ended Mike Castle’s career are the same forces that are propelling the GOP toward historic midterm election gains. In other words, some pundits aren’t seeing the forest for the trees. When historians look back on the 2010 elections, O’Donnell’s win over Castle is likely to be nothing more than a footnote in a broader story of what will likely be a very good GOP year.

The REAL Baron Hill

Here is a new website from the Indiana Republican Party!  Check it out and find out who is the REAL Baron Hill!!  You will see here that Baron does NOT truly represent the voters in the 9th District. -SP

http://www.realbaronhill.com/

Who Does Baron Hill Work For?

From The Indiana Republican Party:

It's the Spending, Stupid

From Daniel Heninger at The Wall Street Journal:

The most important and startling number in American politics today is Congress's approval rating: 23%. This is a no-confidence vote. The second branch of government is losing the country. Surely it's about the spending. What else? That Congress hasn't spent enough?

If voters give control of the House to the GOP, the party desperately needs to establish credibility on spending. Absent that, little else is possible. Independent voters now know that the national Democratic Party, hopelessly joined to the public-sector unions, will never stabilize public outlays.

In a sense, the GOP's impending victory is meaningless, a win by default. If the Republican rookies entering Congress next year don't do something identifiably real to stop the federal-spending balloon, voters two years from now will start throwing the GOP under the bus. Absent action, the political rage and cynicism on offer in 2012 could make this year's tea parties look like, well, a tea party.

Read it all-SP

Rush: Maybe Rove should have gotten this excited about Democrats

At Hot Air:

POSTED AT 1:36 PM ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2010 BY ED MORRISSEY

“Let’s go balls to the wall for Christine O’Donnell,” Rush Limbaugh implored listeners on his show today, but Rush knows that his listeners are the choir to which he is preaching. It’s the party establishment and the center-right commentariat that needs to hear the message, and in that vein, Rush took on Karl Rove on today’s show. Rush demanded to know why Rove and other establishment figures want to make Christine O’Donnell’s character the issue, when it’s the character of the current administration and Democratic leadership in Congress that should get the focus. Instead of issuing self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, shouldn’t the Republican establishment start fighting for wins in Delaware? The Right Scoop got the video:

Matt Lewis joins the fray in warning Republicans about the impact of snubbing O’Donnell:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee and Castle — who withheld his endorsement of the winner — were wrong to behave as they did. Though an NRSC spokesman issued a terse congratulations to O’Donnell, word quickly leaked that the NRSC would not fund her general election race. This was a silly thing to do. Fortunately — and wisely — NRSC Chairman John Cornyn on Wednesday morning agreed to donate $42,000 toward O’Donnell’s campaign and to evaluate future funding at a later date. This was smart damage control, but to many conservatives, the damage had already been done.

Moreover, the GOP has not just offended O’Donnell but has gone out of its way to offend her Tea Party supporters across the nation — folks who were already highly skeptical of the party establishment.

Similarly, Castle’s decision to withhold his endorsement was unchivalrous, and the fact that his staff continues to throw stones, referring to O’Donnell as a “con artist,” is inexcusable.

It’s not just inexcusable, it’s inexplicable. It’s as if everyone forgot why we have primaries in the first place. This has been a gut-check moment for Republican leadership, and with a few exceptions, they have failed it.

Hubris

A new campaign ad from Todd Young, Republican candidate for the Indiana 9th District Congressional seat, running against current incumbent Baron Hill: