May 10, 2012
May 9, 2012
May 6, 2012
Gary Johnson wins the Libertarian nomination
Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for their presidential candidate. Yesterday, before the vote, Dave Weigel posted this profile of Johnson:
Gary Johnson is late. He’s pretty happy about the reason: too many interviews on the schedule today. That was never a problem when he was running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Now that he’s the front-runner for the less-exclusive Libertarian Party nod, people want to talk to him.
“We started out at Grover Norquist’s meeting,” says Johnson, putting down his iPad to join me at a Dupont circle coffee shop. Norquist’s meeting of conservatives is off the record, but attendees can confirm that they crossed the threshold. “I thought it was a really good reception. Part of being out there, campaigning, talking to people, is being able to read body language. And it was all good. Nobody was dozing off. Nobody was shaking their heads. They were actually shaking their head this way.” He nods vigorously.
We’re talking on the day that Newt Gingrich announced the end of his profound presidential bid, when the Republican Party, supposedly, was learning to love Mitt Romney. It’s a few days before Johnson will claim the Libertarian Party’s nomination, potentially becoming a spoiler for Romney. The heads really nodded this way? No heads shaking that way?
“No, none, zero,” says Johnson. “I really believe I’m gonna take it from Obama rather than Romney. I joke, you know — maybe all those pot-smoking, marriage equality, get out of Afghanistan voters for Romney are going to switch to me. Then, boy, he’ll be in trouble!”
May 3, 2012
Reason.tv: Brian Doherty on Ron Paul’s Revolution
“Ron Paul invented the notion of a populist, activist, modern movement thats transpartisan” says Reason’s Brian Doherty
Brian Doherty sat down with ReasonTV to talk about his new book and how Ron Paul has changed politics in America. Doherty wrote about the evolution of the libertarian movement in his 2007 book “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement”. He has been following and writing about Ron Paul and his movement since then. Doherty examines Ron Paul’s influence in a new book out May 15, “Ron Paul’s rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired”.
Sarkozy’s best chance to win? The DSK effect
John Gizzi on the slim hopes Nicolas Sarkozy has to catch up to front-runner Francois Hollande in the French presidential election:
Before arriving here today to find France braced for its presidential election run-off May 6, I stopped at London’s Ladbroke’s, the world’s most storied of oddsmakers. The odds against Nicolas Sarkozy winning, the bookmaker told me, were 4-to-1, while the odds favoring Socialist challenger Francois Hollande were 1-to-7.
[. . .]
With those chunks of LePen and Bayrou voters, Sarkozy would be in a near-tie with his Socialist nemesis and would need some dramatic event or stumble by Hollande to put him over. As to what this stumble might be, one possibility could have occurred at a birthday party for Socialist politician Julian Drey last Sunday. The big news was who showed up: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose own presidential hopes were dashed in a sensational string of scandals beginning with his arrest in New York last May for allegedly assaulting a hotel maid. The politician known as DSK dodged that bullet, but is now facing more serious charges of his alleged involvement in a prostitution ring in France.
Upon learning that DSK was at the birthday party, 2007 Socialist nominee Segolene Royal (who is the mother of Hollande’s four children) stormed out and Hollande himself canceled an appearance at the party. Incredibly, the party was held at the site of what was once a notorious house of prostitution.
Just the appearance of Strauss-Kahn sent the Hollande camp into fervent denials that DSK would ever be considered for a position in a Socialist government.
May 1, 2012
The Onion: Every Potential 2040 President Already Unelectable Due To Facebook
April 27, 2012
Colby Cosh on the Alberta election results versus the pollsters
Most of the national press live and work in either Ottawa or Toronto. Neither location is a good vantage point for figuring out what is happening in the rest of the country:
One point three. Twelve. Fourteen. Seventeen. Eight, seven, seven, six, eight, seven, ten, nine, nine . . . two.
That’s a word picture of the polls taken in the run-up to April 23’s Alberta election, starting with a Leger survey for which interviews took place April 5-8. The numbers represent the Wildrose party’s estimated province-wide lead over the incumbent Progressive Conservatives. No public poll taken by a respectable firm during the campaign had the Wildrose behind the PCs. All pollsters agreed that at least a narrow Wildrose majority government was likely. Reporters in Eastern Canada dutifully filed “Wildrose wins” copy for the April 24 morning papers, believing that the outcome was certain.
And then came the shocking result of the election itself, arriving at the end of the mathematical sequence like some indecipherable symbol from a lost language:
Minus nine point six.
April 26, 2012
Romney’s biggest challenge in selecting a running mate
Steve Chapman outlines the big issue that Mitt Romney needs to consider while ruminating over who’ll be his running mate this year:
As he begins his search for a running mate, Mitt Romney needs to keep one question foremost in his mind, because the decision could affect us all for years to come. He needs to ask: Will this person be good for American comedy?
The prospective Republican nominee will have a tough time living up to recent standards. It’s hard to imagine a Romney vice president who would inspire a story like the one in The Onion: “Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am In White House Driveway.”
Nobody is ever going to have a run like Tina Fey had with Sarah Palin. The chances are slim that the next veep will accidentally shoot someone in the face.
[. . .]
Dan Quayle instantly became a national joke while riding to victory with George H.W. Bush in 1988. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a major party ticket in 1984, couldn’t keep Ronald Reagan from capturing 55 percent of the female vote.
In 2000, when Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman to be the first Jewish running mate, the Democratic share of the Jewish vote soared to 79 percent — from 78 percent four years earlier. Dick Cheney brought the GOP the shimmering promise of Wyoming’s three electoral votes, which hadn’t gone to a Democrat since 1964.
It’s a rare vice presidential nominee who affects the outcome. Even if Palin hadn’t cost John McCain 2 percent of the overall vote, as one study calculated, Barack Obama would still be president.
April 24, 2012
Colby Cosh on the “Alberta surprise”
From his most recent column at Maclean’s:
An Alberta astronaut returning from Titan and seeing the result of last night’s election would say “Meh, so what else is new? The PCs carried 61 of 87 seats? Kind of an off year for them, I guess.” Yet the ostensibly boring, familiar outcome wrong-footed much of the media and absolutely all the pollsters. Even PC insiders, correctly detecting a last-minute shift away from the Wildrose Party heirs-presumptive, envisioned a much smaller vote share than the 44 per cent Alison Redford’s party achieved. The public polling firms all botched the job, with none forecasting anything but a Wildrose majority even on the final weekend.
The Wildrose Party’s final count of 17 seats must surely leave its braintrust, heavily stocked with Conservative Party of Canada veterans, obliterated with horror. The CPC has built a pretty good electoral machine, but as old Ralph Klein hand and Wildrose supporter Rod Love reminded CBC, the Alberta PC brand is the most successful in the country. He probably could have gone even further afield if he wanted to. (On August 24, 2014, the PCs will officially become the longest continuously serving government in the annals of Confederation.) In 1993 the PCs were in trouble late, but succeeded in outflanking a popular Liberal opposition and running against their own record. They did it again in 2012. Redford succeeded in making herself the “change” candidate — though not without help from the Wildrose insurgents, who suffered late “bozo eruptions” of the sort the CPC itself has long since succeeded in extinguishing.
Update: Even Colby can’t seem to avoid the “Ten things” meme:
1. Proportional representation just won itself a whole passel of new right-wing fans.
2. Alberta Liberal morale remained high throughout an election in which pollsters warned continually of disaster. And the pollsters proved to be almost exactly right about this (if nothing else). Yet even as the mortifying results rolled in, Alberta Liberal morale still remained high. Then their egomaniac not-really-Liberal disaster of a leader, Raj Sherman, won his seat by the skin of his teeth. This means he will not have to be replaced unless an awful lot of people smarten up fast. Alberta Liberal morale after this event? Easily, easily at its highest point in ten years. “Please, sir, may I have another?”
[. . .]
5. Those who did boycott the Senate election seem awfully proud of themselves, because it was a “meaningless” election. Why, one wonders, does it have to be meaningless? The “progressive” parties could have agreed on a single Senate candidate in advance; if they had done so, that candidate would certainly have ended up first in the queue, and provided an excellent test of Stephen Harper’s integrity, which I am told is much doubted.
The problem is that Harper might pass the test, you say? Then what’s the harm? You get some smart, popular left-wing independent speaking for Alberta in the Senate? That’s bad for “progressives” how?
I’m still waiting for the definitive post-election analysis of why all the polls were so far off: I didn’t see a single poll in the last two weeks of the election that didn’t have Danielle Smith’s Wildrose Party in clear majority territory. Nobody was predicting another PC victory in that time period (or if they were, the national media wasn’t picking it up).
April 23, 2012
French presidential voting: on to the second round
For the first time, a sitting French president did not win the plurality of votes in the first round:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is wooing far-right voters after losing narrowly to his Socialist rival in the presidential election’s first round.
Francois Hollande came top with 28.6% and Mr Sarkozy got 27.1% — the first time a sitting president has lost in the first round.
Third-place Marine Le Pen took the largest share of the vote her far-right National Front has ever won, with 18%.
Referring to her voters, Mr Sarkozy said: “I have heard you.”
“There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another — an answer must be given to this crisis vote,” he said.
Pollsters say Mr Hollande is the clear favourite to win the second round on 6 May, a duel between him and Mr Sarkozy, who leads the centre-right UMP.
If Mr Hollande wins he will become the first Socialist president in France in 17 years
[. . .]
Nearly a fifth of voters backed a party — the National Front — that wants to ditch the euro and return to the franc.
Reacting to the Front’s success on Monday both the President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that populist politics was a threat to Europe.
Mrs Merkel said the Front’s “alarming” rise would probably be “ironed out” in the second round. She said she would continue to support Mr Sarkozy.
April 21, 2012
The French presidential election candidates
Conrad Black provides a thumbnail sketch of the first round of the French presidential election:
There are five principal candidates, arrayed very symmetrically, from right to left: The reactionary anti-Europe and anti-immigration National Front’s Marine Le Pen, espousing petit bourgeois know-nothingism, though less rancorously than her father, the party’s founder, did. Next on the ideological compass is the centre-right Gaullist Sarkozy, who believes in the omnipotent French state of Richelieu, Colbert and Napoleon. He has lengthened the work week and boosted the retirement age. He has also raised taxes, and now wants to impose a heavy exit tax, as the wealthy French are again fleeing the country, as they often have before. The French call Sarkozy “the water-bug” and “President Bling-bling” because of his frenetic behaviour and garish tastes.
Then there is the radical centrist Francois Bayrou, who doesn’t really have a party, and departs his farm every five years to take 10%-12% of the presidential vote for a median platform of moderate tax increases and spending reductions.
Moving to the left, there is M. Hollande, who casually repeats: “I don’t like the rich,” and wants to raise their taxes to 90%.
The piece de resistance in every respect is Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the Leftist Bloc, a coalition of Trotskyites, orthodox Communists, dissident socialists, militant environmentalists, vegetarians, nudists and anarchists. Melenchon wants a 100% tax on incomes above 360,000 euros a year, a 20% increase in the minimum wage, and the inability of any profitable company to lay off anyone.
“Alberta appears headed for its fourth change of government in its 107-year history”
Lorne Gunter in the Edmonton Sun on the last public opinion poll numbers before Monday’s election:
Alberta appears headed for its fourth change of government in its 107-year history. The Tories’ 41-year rule seems set to end on Monday.
Wildrose still leads the Tories by 10 points, 41% to 31%.
Wildrose has fallen five points since last week – not surprising, perhaps, given the battering the party took early in the week when two of its candidates badly fumbled issues of gay rights and racism.
What is perhaps surprising, though, is that the Tories have not been the only beneficiaries of Wildrose’s tough week. While Premier Alison Redford and crew rose two percentage points between Week 3 and Week 4, so too did the Alberta Liberals under Raj Sherman. The NDP under Brian Mason also climbed a point.
April 19, 2012
The (richly deserved) end of the Tory era in Alberta
Unless all the polls are way off, the election in Alberta will see the eternal rule of the Progressive Conservatives finally come to an end. But as desperate times call for desperate measures, the Tories have unleashed the last of their secret weapons to hold back the Wildrose barbarians — perhaps the most embarrassing political video ever posted. David J. Climenhaga saves you the pain of watching the video:
If you have any doubts left there are only four more sleeps before the end of the Progressive Conservative Era in Alberta, look no further than the video and website called “I never thought I’d vote PC.”
Whether or not the PCs under Alison Redford had anything to do with this vain effort to encourage hip, edgy young people to vote for the clapped out Conservative party in a last-ditch effort to prevent a Wildrose Apocalypse, there could be no surer sign of the imminent demise of the once mighty Tory dynasty.
I mean, really, telling young voters you understand why they’d “rather gouge their eyes out than vote Conservative” in an effort to get them to vote Conservative is just … embarrassing.
[. . .]
After this pathetic excuse for a Tory campaign, the tattered remnants of the Alberta Conservatives have less dignity left than Saddam Hussein when he was hauled out of his hidey-hole in Tikrit by the soldiers of the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division! This little video squib is just the final excruciating evidence before our eyes notice that the moribund Conservatives’ best-before date has passed.
I’m not kidding about the quality of the video — I couldn’t make it past the first minute before feeling too humiliated on behalf of the folks who made it and I had to shut it off. If you want to watch it in all its cringe-inducing glory, David has it embedded on his site.
