Just outside the DC Beltway, in Maryland’s sprawling first congressional district, an electoral battle is underway that exposes unique ideological fault lines beneath America’s political landscape.

The campaign pits freshman “Blue Dog” Democratic congressman Frank Kratovil in a rematch against Republican Dr. Andy Harris. Given the political tilt of the district, coupled with the Tea Party tsunami gathering force this year, one would think that this race should be a slam dunk for Harris.

A tall, affable family man, Harris is an anesthesiologist, Navy veteran, hardcore free-marketer, and constitutional conservative. By contrast, Kratovil, a former attorney, tries to portray himself as an “independent” who distances himself from Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic majority. However, the Washington Post reports that “Frank Kratovil has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 84.6% of the time during the current Congress.” Among his least popular votes since taking office: support for the “cash for clunkers” program, for the near-trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending orgy, and for the hugely expensive “cap-and-trade” energy bill. Plus, of course, his vote to elevate the widely reviled Pelosi to the Speaker’s position.

Yet, despite all that, a recent poll finds Harris holding only a statistically insignificant three-point lead over Kratovil. This, while other GOP candidates are faring much better even in usually “safe” Democratic districts.

What’s going on here?

One of the most infuriating spectacles this election season is supposedly “Republican,” “conservative,” and “pro-business” individuals and groups supporting entrenched liberal incumbents against free-market, limited-government challengers. For many special-interest “insiders,” even on the right, philosophical convictions are far less important than sharing a “seat at the table” with the politically powerful.

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We have come a long way in the last twenty months. The President of the United States, his Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Majority Leader in the United States Senate have done for the Republican Party what no Republican could have accomplished. Just as rigor mortis was about to set in, they brought the old corpse back to life. For their efforts on our behalf, we should be forever grateful.

It is easy to lose perspective. It is easy to forget the dire straits in which the Republicans found themselves in and for some time after November, 2008. On the first Tuesday of that month, they were soundly defeated. The Democrats controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress. In time, when Al Franken was seated and Arlen Specter turned coat, the Democrats would attain El Dorado – a commanding majority in the Senate capable to bringing a filibuster to a screeching halt.

The Republicans initially thought that to get along they would have to go along. Had Nancy Pelosi thrown a little patronage their way when the so-called “stimulus” bill was being put together, had Barack Obama intervened to insist that she include earmarks for compliant Republicans in the House, a great many of them would have voted for the measure. It is to her that we owe their solidarity on the occasion of the vote. She is responsible for the fact that on that occasion they presented themselves to the world as a party of principle. If the Tea-Party Movement, which sprang up in the immediate aftermath of the bill’s passage, was not as resolutely hostile to the Republicans as it was to the Democrats, it was because Pelosi and her minions wanted vengeance, sought it, and got it.

Even when the Tea-Party Movement had emerged, the Republicans were not quick to realize what was in the offing. On 2 May 2009, some six months after the election, Jeb Bush emerged from a meeting with Mitt Romney and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor to announce that it was time for the Republicans to give up “nostalgia about the past” and to leave Ronald Reagan and all that he stood for behind. “You can’t beat something with nothing,” he observed, “and the other side has something. I don’t like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that.”

Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Eric Cantor may have been slow to grasp what was going on, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are dopes. It was not until early August in that year that I was willing to admit to myself that a political realignment in the Republicans’ favor was a serious possibility; and, as I noted in a piece posted in the aftermath of the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in early September, I was even then almost entirely alone. At that convention, I had attended a panel on Barack Obama’s first year as President at which not one of the distinguished students of American politics on the panel had in their prepared remarks even mentioned the Tea-Party Movement. And when I asked a question about it, I received a perfunctory answer. It was odd, my interlocutor remarked, that such a movement had emerged in the absence of institutional support. It was, I thought, very odd, very odd, indeed.

Now, thanks to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, the Republicans appear to be on the verge of an historic victory.

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This week, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell will sign his eighth and final state budget (term limits prevent him from seeking re-election).  The budget passed with no tax increase, and represents $1 billion less than Gov. Rendell requested.  However, the budget merely passes the bill onto future years, and future generations, through accounting tricks and borrowing for egregious pork projects.

The budget relies on $2.7 billion in federal aid, including $850 million in Medicaid funds (FMAP) that has yet to pass Congress.  Indeed, no one believes Pennsylvania will get that much, if any, as the legislation doesn’t have enough support in the US Senate.  Gov. Rendell, along with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, New York Gov. David Paterson and others were in Washington last week to lobby for more federal aid.

The state will use $121 million from Tobacco Settlement Funds for teachers’ pensions, which will then be backfilled, and another $35 million from other one-time sources to balance the budget.   Still unresolved are a projected $4 billion annual pension contribution hike and a $3 billion Unemployment Compensation Fund deficit.

Finally, the budget deal includes increasing the debt ceiling for the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) by $600 million.

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PA Senator Arlen Specter lost his bid for reelection last night. He famously abandoned the GOP because he was worried he wouldn’t be able to win the party’s primary. Turns out he couldn’t win the Democrats’ primary either.

A recap of tonight’s festivities:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter fell to a younger and far less experienced rival in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, and political novice Rand Paul rode support from tea party activists to a Republican rout in Kentucky on Tuesday, the latest jolts to the political establishment in a tumultuous midterm election season.In another race with national significance, Democrat Mark Critz won a special House election to fill out the term of the late Democratic Rep. John Murtha in southwestern Pennsylvania. The two political parties spent roughly $1 million apiece hoping to sway the outcome there, and highlighted the contest as a possible bellwether for the fall when all 435 House seats will be on the ballot.

On the busiest night of the primary season to date, Arkansas Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a potentially debilitating June runoff election against Lt. Gov. Bill Halter in her bid for nomination to a third term. Rep. John Boozman won the Republican line on the ballot outright. (more…)

Polls have closed in Pennsylvania. There are other primaries across the country tonight, of course, but Pennsylvania features a hard-fought Democrat primary for U.S. Senate, where party-switcher Arlen Specter may have finally reached the end of his political career, and a special election to fill the remaining term of recently deceased congressman, John Murtha. Watch for updates throughout the night.

“When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.” Elena Kagan, 1995.

Elena Kagan was correct, judicial nominees, their record, and their judicial philosophy should be thoroughly scrutinized before the Senate awards them a lifetime appointment to the bench.  Despite her public statements that nominees should be rigorously vetted, she has been uniquely circumspect about her own views and judicial philosophy.  What little we know of Ms. Kagan’s positions raises serious questions regarding her fitness for service on the Supreme Court.

Ms. Kagan, an accomplished academic, has revealed little of her own judicial philosophy.  Given the important and complex issues that routinely come before the Court this may not be overlooked.  She has served as Dean of the Harvard Law School and has served both Presidents Clinton and Obama.  While a distinguished academic, her experience is not necessarily relevant to the serious position for which she has been nominated.

Whether in her academic or political career Ms. Kagan has closely guarded her personal ideology.  What little she has revealed should not sit well with the American public.

Ms. Kagan clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall.  In her academic writings she has embraced the statements of Justice Marshall who argued “the Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was ‘defective.’”

While Dean of Harvard Law School Kagan banned military recruiters from using the law school’s career services office.  She objected to the military’s prohibition on openly gay and lesbian individuals serving in the military.  Kagan revealed how strongly she held this belief – she stated that the military recruitment policy caused her “deep distress” and that she believed it to be “a profound wrong — a moral injustice of the first order. And it is a wrong that tears at the fabric of our own community.”

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The people of Pennsylvania, and Americans across the country, will not quickly forget April 28, 2009 – the day Arlen Specter broke the trust of voters and switched political parties in order to save his political career. After telling voters that he would stay a Republican, Specter announced one year ago today that he would switch to the Democratic Party because he was, “…not willing to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Specter’s jump, hardworking Americans can tell Specter exactly what they think of his opportunism by logging on to www.SpecterSwitch.com and making a one-time, one-day-only donation.
American families have paid a steep price for Specter’s switch.

Only five weeks after telling voters that he would remain a Republican because it was critical to prevent Democrats from attaining 60 senate votes (The Hill, 03/17/09), Specter jumped ship and quickly became the automatic 60th vote and a rubber stamp for Harry Reid’s extreme and partisan agenda. In fact, just two weeks ago, The Hill newspaper even called Specter “a model Democrat,” (The Hill, 04/07/10).

Because of Specter’s blind obedience to Harry Reid’s big-government agenda, hardworking Americans will be saddled with trillion dollar deficits, sky-rocketing taxes, increased government control over their health care decisions, and more taxpayer-funded backroom deals.   (more…)

Within our own party, we need to make it clear that from now on there will be a price to pay for abandoning conservative principles.  The grassroots – activists from tea parties to town halls – have sent a message: no more ‘fake-it-until-you-make-it’ conservatives.  The days of merely espousing conservative principles and then, once elected, governing or legislating without principle, are over.

At least one senator has already got this message – Arlen Specter.  In early 2009, after years of distressing votes for big government, Specter’s vote for the stimulus bill provoked an outcry among Pennsylvania’s Republican grassroots.  Having barely survived a 2004 primary challenge from principled conservative Pat Toomey, Specter asked me what he could do to mend fences with conservatives.  I said he needed to stand with us against card check (which abolishes the secret ballot on forming unions) and against the cap-and-trade carbon cutting scheme.

He agreed, publicly declaring himself against those proposals – and soon after, he abandoned the party and became a Democrat.

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Last week,  the Federal Government Ivory Tower trumpeted important news.  One of its illustrious Task Forces has decided that women in their 40’s would be the first to experience “Medical Darwinism.”

The United States Preventive Services Task Force, comprised of 16 appointees, decreed that:

1.       Women in their 40’s no longer need routine yearly mammograms

2.       Women aged 50-74 are to have mammograms only every other year

3.       Self breast exams are no longer to be done at any age

Of note, this Task Force does NOT have even one member who is a cancer specialist or oncologist, let alone a breast cancer specialist. This panel based its recommendations NOT on comprehensive new clinical studies or research, but rather on computer projections of certain data points.  A review of previous recommendations by the same Federal Government reveals that these recommendations are diametrically at odds with recommendations made just six months ago. So, what changed in six months?

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SEIU President Andy Stern, took a couple of minutes to discuss with us recent developments in the Health Care debate, his support for a public option in the bill and the mistakes committed by ACORN.

I did not make the decision to run for Congress lightly. I have never aspired to be a politician, but seeing the direction our country was heading, I had to act. I believe in the bedrock principles that have made our nation great; limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility.  I also think the public is more receptive to that message than ever before. The tea party and townhall movements have awakened the public and reconnected Independents, Democrats and Republicans to the ideals that made our nation, in the words of Ronald Reagan, “the shining city on the hill.”

Unfortunately, some individuals in the GOP leadership forgot their principles and misread the public sentiment. They orchestrated the nomination of a far-left candidate as the Republican nominee. Rather than compromise the principles I believe, I proudly threw my hat in the ring as the Conservative Party candidate.

The GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, has voted for taxpayer funded abortions, higher taxes, more government spending and has regularly sought the support of ACORN’s Working Families Party.  She loudly voiced support for the stimulus bill that has increased our national debt but has failed to improve the economy. She is a vocal supporter of legislation that would force many workers into unions. She is an Olympia Snowe Republican willing to sell out her party and GOP principles of limited government, lower taxes, and more individual liberty.  These are principles I hold strongly.

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