Newt Gingrich leads the polls in Virginia, but Michael Krull, his national campaign director, actually compared the “set-back” to the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The Gingrich campaign naturally plotted a counter-attack–an aggressive write-in campaign–but that will be of limited success because Virginia law bans write-in votes in primary elections. Not one write-in ballot was counted in 2008.

For now, Gingrich is left to grumble about the “system” of authenticating signatures in the Virginia primary. He may have a point.  Candidates are required not only to collect over 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot but have to have at least 400 from each of the state’s eleven congressional districts. Both Perry and Gingrich cleared the first hurdle by at least a thousand signatures, but it appears they may have stumbled on clearing the second. We don’t know this for certain — the Va. GOP hasn’t explained why Gingrich and Perry failed to qualify– but this seems likely.

Gathering enough signatures from enough of the different districts proved too tricky. In at least one district that’s a tall order. Virginia’s 3rd and 8th congressional district, for example, are among the most Democratic in the country, with a PVI score of D+20 and D+16, respectively. Woody Allen may be right when he said 90% of success is just showing up, but it is hard to show up when there is effectively no Republican party in some congressional districts.

Worse yet, Virginia’s House of Delegates complicated matters further when voters may not know which congressional district they live in thanks to an ongoing state-wide fight over redistricting. Virginia Republicans submitted a map in April 2011, but Virginia Democrats seemed insistent on pushing the matter to January 2012 and then to federal court if they don’t enough black–and therefore Democratic–congressional districts. They would sue the state under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and toss the matter of redistricting over to the federal courts.

It’s the prerogative of any state party to set up the rules that govern its primary but it sure seems short-sighted to disqualify two candidates that fulfilled the 10,000 signatures requirement, especially given how much Virginia GOP could benefit from a renewed focus and all that earned media attention on the Old Dominion.The usually reliable red state broke for Obama in 2008, by six points over John McCain. Indeed Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia voted for Obama in 2008, making it the first time since 1964 that the state broke for a Democrat, but these gains were reversed when Attorney General Bob McDonnell crushed Democratic senator Creigh Deeds in the gubernatorial race by seventeen points.

If only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney run in the GOP primary, it’ll mean that the ideas of a resurgent Republican party won’t be discussed in all their permutations about the party activists and loyalists who make up the primaries and the door-to-door campaigners on Election Day. Doesn’t the Virginia Republican Party want to continue being relevant to the national discourse?

Instead it appears we’ll get a match up between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, an outcome that seems likely to break decisively in Romney’s favor. This is good news for Romney, who knows that the longer the race for the GOP’s nomination goes the more likely it is that he’ll lose it. Organization favors him early in the game, but as the number of states voting increases and the race gets progressively more Southern, he’s likely to get into trouble. Romney won only four of seventeen primary contests his last go around in 2008. With Virginia, with sixty delegates available, he’ll be able to argue that if he can be organized enough to win that crucially important state in the primary, he’ll be able to win it in the general.

Organization matters in life, as in primary contests, and the success of the Romney and Paul campaign owes a lot to the discipline and focus with which both camps have pursued their goal of being elected to the nation’s high office. It seems likely that the kind of candidates or campaigns that can master the details of the campaign can master the details necessary to be president.

From Gov. McDonnell’s letter:

There’s much more separating Richmond and Washington than just 100 miles of interstate.

It’s a Tale of Two Cities.

In Washington they’re bogged down in red ink, spiraling debt, expanding government and overspending – all while the difficult decisions are left to future generations.

Here in Richmond, for the second straight year, we’ve reached the end of our fiscal year in the black —with a surplus this year of more than $500 million.

What does it take to create jobs and bring economic development to Virginia?

It’s really common sense and a focus on getting results, something that is in short supply in Washington.

Businesses want consistency and a level playing field, low taxes, reasonable regulation, good schools and a world-class transportation system.

We are unapologetic supporters of Virginia’s Right-to-Work laws and fighting off the union excesses that is hurting businessmen across the United States.

We’ve kept taxes low on businesses in Virginia.

We’ve worked to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses here in the Commonwealth.

Contrast that with how Washington does businesses.

In Washington, the Administration is using unelected people in appointed boards to do what Congress can’t, like using the NLRB to prohibit companies like Boeing from relocating some of their workforce to Right To Work states.

In Washington, a national healthcare plan was passed which explodes the cost of healthcare that employers must pay, and places an estimated $2.2 billion unfunded mandate on Virginia over the next 10 years.

In Washington, the Democrats beat the redistribution drums for increased taxes on job creators and wealth generators.

What business wants more than anything else from government is to make sure there is certainty and a level playing field —and then get out of the way.

When we took office in January, 2010, we were greeted by a massive budget shortfall, our rest stops were closed, and we were facing outgoing Governor Tim Kaine’s proposal for a job-killing $2 billion tax increase to solve our shortfall.

In the worst economic times we’ve had since the Great Depression, the worst thing we could have done is passed a $2 billion tax increase!

But we do things differently in Richmond than they do in Washington.

Instead of raising taxes and increasing spending, we worked with the legislature to pass a balanced budget by cutting spending. We reduced state spending to 2006/2007 levels. We focused government on its core functions.

In the past 90 days, we’ve seen some of the results:

• In Covington, MeadWestvaco announced plans to invest $285,000,000 in their operations
• In Dinwiddie, Spiniello Co. will establish its first operation in Virginia
• In Halifax, ABB, Inc. will expand its operations, invest $4,600,000
• In Charlottesville, the CFA Institute will invest $24,500,000 to establish its operations center
• Also in Halifax, Presto Products Company will invest $6,000,000 to expand
• In Chesterfield County, Emerson Ecologies will open a distribution facility
• In Staunton, Cadence, Inc. will invest $15,900,000 to expand its operations
• Safety Technologies will invest $5,890,000 to open a manufacturing facility in Lunenburg County
• ITT Excelis announced plans to invest $5,000,000 at its new headquarters in Fairfax County

In the past year and a half, we were also successful in attracting the corporate headquarters of Fortune 100 company, Northrop Grumman, brought new jobs to Southwest Virginia by recruiting DirecTV, Convergys, ATK and Phoenix Packaging, and facilitated a significant $500 million investment in Mecklenburg County by Microsoft.

At the end of June, CNBC named Virginia the “Top State for Business” in the United States, giving Virginia the highest score in the country in their survey. A few weeks ago, Polina research survey did the same.

When vou recognize that it’s private enterprise and the free-market system that creates jobs, vou win.

In Washington, where the Administration believes that it’s the government’s mission to spend more to try to create jobs, you’ve got it backwards. [sic]

[Even Virginia has its roadblocks]

We have had some challenges in getting some of our reform agenda passed in the Virginia Senate.

In this past legislative session, we pushed to support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the United States Constitution, doing our part to get Washington D.C. to live within its means, like we do here in Richmond.

We also pushed for a “Repeal Amendment,” which would restore some much needed balance to our federal system of government by strengthening the 10th Amendment rights of the states.

We pushed to have our job-creating Right To Work status made a constitutional protection for hard-working Virginians – and also ensure that workers voting in union elections get to cast their vote in private, a basic right we all deserve.

We worked to enact substantive reform to the state pension system to tackle our $18 billion unfunded liability and tried to create a modest school choice scholarship bill for needy children.

All this legislation was killed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

McDonnell’s letter makes it clear:  a state that embraces the free market by granting employees and employers freedom from coercive unionism and fluctuating regulation succeeds in many ways.

It is time for Congress to wrest control of our economy from unelected Obama administration bureaucrats, right the ship of state, and set sail on a course towards free enterprise.

The portents have been there for a very long time. It all began on 19 February 2009 with a rant on CNBC on the part of Rick Santelli, which struck a nerve and occasioned the birth of the Tea-Party Movement. That the tide might be beginning to turn was made evident in mid-April of that year when the adherents of that movement successfully mounted demonstrations across the entire country, and the Democrats and their minions in the media began denouncing them as Astroturf, Nazis, racists, and tea-baggers. And to anyone who cared to notice, the seriousness of the opposition and the depth of their concern was made manifest that August when constituents confronted their Senators and Congressmen in town halls throughout the land and shouted them down. It was on 2 August 2009 that I first suggested that, if the Republicans embraced the Tea-Party Movement and articulated the grievances that had occasioned its emergence, a genuine political realignment might be in the offing.

As it happened – and it was by and large an accident – the Republicans were well-positioned to take advantage of this political opening. In January, 2009, many of the House Republicans and not a few of their colleagues in the Senate would have been willing to cooperate with the Democrats in promoting the agenda of the Obama administration. In 2008, they had received a drubbing at the polls, and they were appropriately cowed. But, campaign rhetoric aside, no one on the Democratic side was seriously interested in bipartisan accord. They had won the election; they persuaded themselves that they had a mandate; and though President Obama had presented himself to the voting public as a moderate, he and his fellow Democrats had not the slightest intention of seeking the middle ground. In the House, it would not have taken much to swing a sizable group of Republicans behind the Democrats’ program, but Nancy Pelosi was intent on revenge. So, when the so-called “stimulus” bill came up for a vote, she made sure that there were within it no earmarks for the Republicans, and out of pique nearly all of them voted against the measure.

The country owes Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, and Reid a great deal. They put backbone into Republicans who never knew they had one; they ripped the masks off Democrats who had always posed as moderates, displaying the radicalism of the party’s agenda for one and all to see; and they pursued their ends by means ruthless, transparently corrupt, and tyrannical. Bills were put together in the middle of the night and jammed through the House unread. Corrupt bargains were negotiated in the Senate and awarded colorful and memorable names; and when the public in due course learned of Gator Aid (sometimes called the Florida Flim-Flam), of the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Connecticut Compromise, and the like, they erupted in fury.

Already in November, 2009, it was evident to anyone willing to pay attention that for this there would be hell to pay – for on the first Tuesday of that month, one year ago today, the citizens of Virginia and New Jersey, states that had voted for Barack Obama in 2008, elected Republicans Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie governors with comfortable margins. Then, two-and-a-half months later – after one version of Obamacare had passed the House and another, the Senate – came the Massachusetts miracle on 19 January 2010, when Scott Brown wrested Ted Kennedy’s seat from the Democrats in that left-liberal state by campaigning against Obamacare.

The Democrats had ample warning. On Christmas Eve in 2009, William Daley, brother of the Mayor of Chicago, former Secretary of Commerce, and mastermind of the Chicago machine, emerged from the shadows to tell his fellow Democrats that “the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.”

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year’s off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents — many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower — 41 percent — among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup’s generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

Alluding to Parker Griffith’s defection to the Republicans and to the Democrats who had decided to retire, Daley concluded, they are “the truest canaries in the coal mine.” But, of course, no one listened; and, after Scott Brown took his seat in the Senate, Pelosi and her associates jammed through the House the Senate version of Obamacare and thereby sealed their party’s fate.

No one knows just how big the Republican wave will be today, but there is excellent reason to think that it will dwarf every electoral shift that has taken place since the Second World War. Yesterday, the Gallup organization, which has an impeccable track record in this particular, released its final pre-election generic ballot poll results. They show the Republicans ahead among likely voters by 15%  –  a greater margin, with the sole exception of the post-Watergate Democratic wave in 1974, than either party has attained in the sixty years in which the Gallup organization has been collecting this sort of information. What this suggests is that the guess I advanced on 2 September and later reasserted here and here – that the Republicans would pick up between 70 and 100 seats in the House and gain a majority in the Senate – was on the mark.

Today is Judgment Day – and it is easy to see why President Obama plans to leave tomorrow for an extended sojourn abroad. For before he departs he, his administration, and party will be judged by the American people and found wanting.

There are pollsters out there who are playing games, as a glance at the polls for the Senate race in West Virginia should make clear – and, of course, it is easy to play games. If one wants to encourage the Left and discourage potential Republican voters and donors, all that one has to do is to base one’s poll on the presumption that the percentage of self-described Democrats within the voting public in 2010 will be equal to the percentage in 2008.

Sabato and his associates and Rasmussen are not, however, among the gamesters. Both are aiming at accuracy. Sabato and company have a reputation to uphold (and, in the academic world, that is all-important), and Rasmussen is a nonpartisan pollster who attracts clients by way of demonstrated precision. Neither outfit can afford to make a fool of itself.

I nonetheless think that both are greatly underestimating the size of the Republican surge. Both have reason to be cautious. For understandable reasons, neither is going to climb out on a limb; and both are basing their estimates on recent electoral history. If something is in the offing that exceeds the range of political oscillation in recent decades (including, notably, 1994), if we in American live in something other than normal times, they will miss the size of the surge.

It is good to remember that not a single Sovietologist predicted the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet regime. History has a way of lulling us into sleep. What has been in recent times we tend to think will be in the foreseeable future. Then, every once in a while, suddenly, out of nowhere, a political earthquake arrives – and only in the aftermath do the experts notice that there were ample warning signs.

Here are warning signs that nothing in recent experience has prepared the experts to assess adequately.

First, there is the Tea-Party Movement. It is like nothing that I have witnessed in my lifetime – a spontaneous outpouring provoked by a single remark made by Rick Santelli on CNBC on 19 February 2009. Two months later, on 16 April – the day Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift was released – I was in Washington, DC for a book launch at the Heritage Foundation. On that day, to my amazement, there were major demonstrations in our nation’s capital and lesser demonstrations all over the country. It was, I argued in a series of radio interviews that day, a phenomenon that no one understood better than Alexis de Tocqueville. On his visit to the United States in the early 1830s, as I had explained in my book, he had witnessed a movement that had grown up spontaneously in the late 1820s outside the two political parties then emerging – which had forced them to repeal the so-called Tariff of Abominations passed in 1828.

Tocqueville’s point was that the Americans had mastered an art that the French knew nothing of – “the art of association” – and he contended that this art and the sense of civic agency attendant on it insulated them to some degree against the danger that he dubbed “soft despotism”: the very danger posed by the programs proposed and partially adopted under the New Deal, the Great Society, and Obama’s ominously named New Foundation. What we were seeing, I contended, was a rejuvenation of the American spirit. And, ironically, hardly any of the Republicans in the opposition saw this as an opportunity. The regulars feared the Tea-Party Movement even more than did the Democrats. Almost no one recognized its significance.

That this was the case was doubly evident in August, 2009 – when Senators and Congressmen, persuaded that the Democratic Party was still on a roll, held town meetings all over the country and were shouted down by well-dressed attendees who were no less angry about the prospect of Obamacare than Rick Santelli had been on 19 February about the so-called “stimulus” bill. On 2 August, I posted a piece entitled The First Step Forward, suggesting that, if the opposition to Obama were to revive the rhetoric deployed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt against the Republicans in the mid-1930s, a political realignment might be in the offing. Six days later, in a post entitled The Great Awakening, I explained what I had in mind in further detail:

Now, as citizens flock to town meetings all over the country to confront their Senators and Congressmen, we can see the consequences. And the White House and the Democratic Party have responded to the spontaneous organization of opposition to their endeavors in a manner that is reminiscent of the governments in Tocqueville’s France – by insulting their fellow citizens, by charging them with conspiracy, by locking citizens out of putatively public meetings, by bringing in union toughs to intimidate the opposition, and by illegally collecting the names and contact information of those who have exercised their First Amendment rights in a manner unfriendly to the proposals advanced by the current administration – apparently with an eye to future retribution.

We should be grateful to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Rahm Emanuel. For, in their audacity, they have done what their predecessors feared to do; and, in the process, they have made the tyrannical propensities inherent within the progressive impulse visible to anyone who cares to take notice. What Franklin Delano Roosevelt falsely charged in 1936 is visibly true today. “A small group” is intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.”

The only question is whether the Republicans have the wit to take full advantage of the opportunity that Barack Obama has handed them.

Next to no one paid any attention to what I said at this time. To my shock and dismay, the political pundits who gathered in early September, 2009 at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association thought it plausible to analyze President Obama’s first few months in office without making any mention of the Tea-Party at all.

To their credit, however, after some hesitation and hand-wringing, the Republicans did grasp the nettle. In November, 2009 – a mere year after the landslide that had given the Democrats control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency – Bob McDonnell was elected Governor of Virginia and Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, and neither race was a squeaker. This was for the Republicans a wake-up call, and next to no one missed the significance of the trend in mid-January, 2010 when Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts and did so handily.

The polling data began to suggest that the Democrats were increasingly vulnerable, and, in time, there came to be other straws in the wind. Republican incumbents who seemed the least bit soft came under attack. In May, Democratic Congressman Alan B. Mollohan – who, together with his father, had occupied a congressional seat for forty-two years – was ousted in a primary in West Virginia. In late August, Joe Miller and, in mid-September, Christine O’Donnell came out of nowhere to knock off Lisa Murkowski and Mike Castle in Republican Senatorial primaries in Alaska and Delaware.

To sum up, in the last twelve months, we have had surprise after surprise – the emergence of the Tea-Party Movement, the confrontations at the town-hall meetings, the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the election of Scott Brown, the defeat of Mollohan in West Virginia, the purge of a number of putative RINOs in the course of the Republican selection process, and the nomination by the Republican Party of a host of Tea-Party candidates. As isolated incidents, these events might be dismissed. Taken together, they portend an electoral upheaval without recent precedent.

Finally, we have the polling data. As Jay Cost has recently observed, the quite considerable disparity in that data turns on a crucial question: “the partisan composition of the electorate remains the critical unresolved issue of this cycle. Every pollster is making a guess as to what the electorate will look like, and these guesses are at least as important as their final numbers.” In fact, one might add, these guesses determine their final numbers.

Where do we turn for guidance? I would suggest that we look at the grand-daddy of all the polls: the generic ballot data that the Gallup Organization has been collecting for almost sixty years. If one assumes a turn-out on 2 November of about forty percent of the registered voters, a percentage ever so slightly higher than the record in midterm elections since 1974, Gallup tells us that the Republicans will have an advantage over the Democrats of something along the lines of seventeen percent. If the turnout of registered voters reaches fifty-five percent, the Republicans will be ahead by about eleven percent.

What does this mean? There can be no doubt that Republicans will turn out this year in record numbers. That is revealed by every poll that bothers to ask. It is by no means clear that the Democrats will turn out. Many are disaffected. Even more are indifferent. If the Democrats do turn out in good numbers, the overall turn-out will exceed forty percent. Will turn-out reach fifty-five percent? There is no reason whatsoever to think so.

What this suggests is that the Republican advantage will exceed eleven and may well exceed fifteen percent. Even if their advantage turns out to be as low as Rasmussen’s current estimate of nine percent, this is unprecedented, and the Republic victory will be larger than Rasmussen and Sabato forecast.

Let me suggest a simple rule of thumb. Lou Cannon once observed that, in assessing Ronald Reagan’s prospects, the polls were always wrong. In every race, he received roughly five percent more than the polls forecasted. I think that something of the sort will turn out to be true this year. Take the most accurate of the polls – those of Scott Rasmussen; then, give the Republican candidate an additional five percent.

I predict that the Republicans will take between seventy and one hundred seats in the House and that they will take control of the Senate by sweeping at least five of the so-called “toss-up” races, taking Senate seats in California, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, West Virginia, and, if the dead and the as-yet unborn do not turn out in numbers too large, perhaps even Illinois. Moreover, I predict that – if the Republican leadership eschews earmarks, sticks firmly to the principles announced in the Declaration of Independence and embedded in the Constitution, and insists on a repeal of Obamacare, on there being no new taxes, and on serious budget cuts – there will be additional good news for them in 2012, especially, in the Senate. This country is in for a rough ride, but it may well emerge stronger than ever.

In fact, donors may find it easier to channel funds in the direction of liberal activists who describe themselves as community organizers now that the sullied name has been dropped, they suggest.

Shortly after ACORN’s leadership announced that it was dissolving on April 1, national and state affiliates repackaged themselves under generic sounding descriptions. ACORN Housing, for example, became known as the Affordable Housing Centers of America.

“Anyone who celebrates the demise of ACORN has celebrated prematurely because they are not going away,” Anita MonCrief, a former Project Vote/ACORN employee, said in an interview. “The network is repositioning itself so it can receive new donations.”

ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now, has received over $53 million in federal funds since 1994, federal records show. Although the U.S. Supreme Court turned away a legal challenge to last year’s congressional ban on public funding, there does not appear to be any concerted effort on the part of lawmakers to have it reimposed.

Moreover, it is worth noting that only four Democrats joined with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) to oppose an amendment that would allow organizations with a criminal history to receive funding. The amendment was submitted as part of a mortgage bill several months before the videotape scandals broke.

“There’s a real boldness on the part of Democrats who want to keep funding ACORN,” Rep. Bachmann said. “They are incredulous about the possibility of losing their majority and they know which side their bread gets buttered on and ACORN is their friend.”

Even so, only a small-percentage of ACORN’s overall financial support comes from the government, MonCrief, explains. “The rest of the money comes from left-leaning foundations and there is no indication these funding sources will dry up,” she said. “There are also individual donors and you also have to include organized labor.”

MonCrief indentified Wellspring Advisors, Vanguard Charitable Endowment, the Rockefeller Fund and the Tides Foundation as the major conduits for facilitating anonymous donations.

“If someone wanted to contribute directly to ACORN without having their name attached to it they could give a  check to Wellspring Advisors, they can give to Vanguard Charitable Endowment, they can give to Tides Foundation,” she said. “There are so many ways ACORN can obtain money through these anonymous donors  and some are connected to the Rockefeller  Fund.  So long as there is an agenda they are going to make sure that money is funneled to them anyway they can.”

Wellspring Advisors is the critical component in this equation, she emphasized.

“Donors were able to give anonymously to Wellspring so the money would not be traced back to where it was coming from and Wellspring would then cut a check from Vanguard,” MonCrief continued. “That’s one way it happened.”

Sandy Newman, who founded Project Vote, operated as a conduit between Wellspring and the ACORN affiliate, MonCrief points out on her blog.

“ It’s interesting that Wellspring is one of Project Vote’s major donors and Sandy Newman steers other money in Project Vote’s direction,” she wrote. “Newman founded Project Vote along with Zach Polett, who was also head of ACORN Political Operations. ACORN voter registration drives are intentionally partisan undertakings with the intent to replace elected officials with ACORN friendly candidates. This is once again the “wink, wink” approach to doing business. It all seems so legal on the surface.”

Other former insiders such as Ronald Sykes, who served as treasurer for the Washington D.C. ACORN affiliate, have raised questions about Citizens Consulting Inc (CCI), which was the major accounting arm for the national group and its allied organizations. A report from the House Oversight Committee concluded that CCI was largely responsible for misappropriating and comingling funds.

“Money was funneled through Wellspring, from there it went into various bank accounts controlled by CCI,” MonCrief said. “CCI had dozens and dozens of accounts. Some were Project Vote and some were ACORN.”

MonCrief, who testified against ACORN in 2008 as part of a voter registration fraud case in Pennsylvania, said the Project Vote affiliate was closely interlinked with the national organization’s operations.

“It is laughable to say Project Vote was in any way separate because it functioned as one cohesive arm with ACORN,” MonCrief explained. “Project Vote could not exist without this support because it doesn’t have the field capacity to run voter registration programs.”

ACORN remains the subject of voter registration fraud investigations in at least 14 states and MonCrief  anticipates that the same network will find a way to remain active in the 2010 midterm elections and beyond. The political operatives that continue to stand behind the renamed affiliates are very shrewd in the sense that they will target areas where elections are close and where they have sympathetic local election officials, MonCrief warned.

Despite the publicity that followed various criminal investigations, there is much about ACORN that remains hidden from public view, Matthew Vadum, a senior analyst and editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC) suggests.

“We really don’t know how much ACORN has received from its aggressive corporate shakedown efforts,” Vadum observed. “The renamed network could remain well-funded thanks to liberal foundations and high dollar donors such as Herb and Marion Sandler.”

An intrepid researcher and investigator, Vadum has kept careful tabs on the rebranded ACORN entities. Most recently, he reported on the lobbying efforts of the rebranded D.C. affiliate.

As public attention dissipates and the ACORN name fades, foundations that pulled back in the wake of negative press attention last year may find they have more flexibility and dexterity to re-establish their support. This would be a significant development as ACORN drew in millions of dollars from foundations in the span of just a few years.

The lead ACORN organization registered in Arkansas and New Orleans has received $3 million from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, $821,000 from the Robin Hood Foundation, $595,000 from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and $65,000 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, according to CRC.

Other foundations have contributed to ACORN’s affiliates.

Project Vote has received $4,047,500 from the Rockefeller Family Fund, $1,460,801 from the Tides Foundation, and $2,643,100 from the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, financial records show. ACORN’s American Institute for Social Justice (AISJ) has received almost $30 million in foundation grants, since 2000, according to CRC.

Other generous benefactors to AISJ include the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which donated $5,125,000 and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which donated $4,130,000, CRC research shows.

In previous reports for CRC, Vadum has also called attention to the Woods Fund of Chicago, where President Barack Obama and former Weather Underground leader William Ayers sat as board members. The Woods Fund has donated about $190,000 to the ACORN network, according to financial records.

The corporate shakedown efforts, which have also been lucrative for ACORN, were largely funded by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), according to the testimony MonCrief delivered in Pa.

One of the most aggressive and successful joint SEIU-ACORN nationwide campaigns known as “Muscle for Money” targets corporations and top officers who resist union demands, MonCrief has explained.

Even in the teeth of ongoing scandals, ACORN and its affiliates received over $1 million from organized labor in 2009 including over $220,000 from the Change to Win coalition, U.S. Department of Labor financial disclosure forms show.

The 2009 LM-2 disclosure forms show that SEIU Local 32 donated $25,400 to the national ACORN organization, Local Union 1 donated $32,791 to the ACORN Community labor Training Center and the national SEIU donated $37,878 to the ACORN Labor Partnership.

All told, organized labor has contributed over $10 million to ACORN, since 2005 with SEIU contributing about $8.7 million of this sum, according to Labor Department records.

In 2009 gubernatorial races, ACORN was active in attempting to swing the New Jersey election in cooperation with SEIU, according to other press reports. However, the network was less visible in Virginia where Republican Bob McDonnell won by a large margin.

As it turns out, Gov. Chris Christie’s margin of victory over the Democratic incumbent in N.J. was large enough to avoid a recount.  But there is a lesson here for Republican operatives in that community organizers who were supposedly setback by on-going scandals still found expression where they could most be effective; in close-competitive races where it is possible to maximize the influence of organized labor.

Thousands of  emails leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom appear to substantiate a growing body of research that questions the idea of man-made global warming. Climate-gate has the potential to emerge as an unexpected gift to Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections. But there’s the rub.

With the exception of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), and a handful of other elected officials, Republicans have been reticent to engage and debate the dubious claims of human induced global warming, laments Steve Milloy, editor and founder of JunkScience.com.

“Too many of them don’t understand the issue and the extremism that stands behind green activism,” he observes. “They are afraid of being labeled as anti-environment and are just not well-equipped or well informed enough to confront policies that could result in an unprecedented expansion of government power.”

At the very least, 2010 Republican challengers could invoke the email scandal to demonstrate how research has been falsified and distorted to advance a political agenda at odds with the economic well-being of many Americans. This in turn could open the way to a larger discussion of global warming science and the role of the United Nations.

Waxman-Markey (H.R. 2494), which passed the House last year by a 219-212 vote in June, calls for reducing total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. The legislation would impose a “cap and trade” regime that limits the amount of carbon dioxide that could be released into the atmosphere. Companies exceeding their prescribed limit would have to buy “carbon allowances” in a government-contrived system.

At least six Democratic senators are now urging the White House to back away from pushing “cap and trade” in the midst of an election year. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) are among those who have expressed reservations.

Virginia’s Bob McDonnell very deftly turned Waxman-Markey back against his Democratic opponent in last year’s race for governor. His landslide election victory should encourage other Republican candidates looking to capitalize on economic concerns.

“Cap and trade is opposed by most employers in Virginia because they see what it’s going to do to the cost of goods and services,” McDonnell explained in an interview. “It is strongly opposed by the coal industry, for instance, which is vitally important to Southwest Virginia. Cap and trade is just bad policy and the more citizens understand that it’s going to increase their electricity rates over time the more they are going to oppose it.”

Nationwide data measuring the impact of Waxman-Markey in a new study commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) yielded the following results:

• Cumulative loss in gross domestic product (GDP) up to $3.1 trillion (2012-2030)
• Employment losses up to 2.4 million jobs in 2030
• Residential electricity price increases up to 50 percent by 2030
• Gasoline price increases (per gallon) up 26 percent by 2030.

The NAM/ACCF study includes data on all 50 states.

In Virginia, for example, the NAM/ACCF study estimates that at least 41,400 jobs could be lost by 2030 as a result of lower industrial output that would follow from higher energy prices. Virginia residents would also see their disposable income reduced by $103 to $235 per year by 2020 and $608 to $1,096 by 2030 as a consequence of Waxman-Markey.

There’s no question that industrial states stand to lose the most and this should become a point of contention in 2010, just as it was in the Virginia governor’s race. But free market advocates who are looking to unseat cap and trade proponents now have the added benefit of climate-gate.

Even as cap and trade stalls in the U.S. Senate, the Obama Administration now appears poised to use the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) endangerment finding on Co2 to make an end run around democratic channels.

This maneuvering suggests that the economic arguments standing alone will not be sufficient over the long-term and must be co-joined with scientific data that can be included in litigation challenging the endangerment finding. But Republican candidates should get started now in exposing anti-scientific research that underpins alarmist positions on global warming.

In their messaging to voters they can draw from the expertise of numerous, well-credentialed skeptics who have found expression for their own research, despite the best efforts of the scientific establishment.

Over 31,000 scientists, including over 9,000 Ph.Ds, have signed off on a petition circulated through the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine that states human activity is not responsible for causing catastrophic disruption of the earth’s climate system. Moreover, over 700 scientists have now endorsed a U.S. Senate minority report that questions man-made global warming.

Charles Dunn, dean of the Regent University School of Government based in Virginia Beach, Va., sees opportunities for Republican candidates running in parts of the south and the mid-west especially. As it turns out, these are some of the same states that would be disproportionately affected by cap and trade.

Liberal media organs and Democratic operatives sought to make an issue out of McDonnell’s connection with Regent University during the campaign. In the end, Dunn suspects this coverage may have actually benefitted the Republican candidate in that it further heightened his esteem among social conservatives. Consequently, McDonnell was better positioned to make an issue out of energy policy because his base was already solidified, he surmises.

Throughout the campaign, McDonnell emphasized his support for expanded nuclear power and for offshore drilling. That’s what the public likes to hear and Republican candidates in other states can build on this approach by asking their Democratic counterparts to account for the junk science that constrains American ingenuity.

Mixed results you say?  If so, is there anything to be learned from these elections?  The answer is no, because we should have learned these lessons already.   In case they have been forgotten, however, here they are:

5.   Off year Elections Are Hard on the President’s Party.  The President’s party loses 20 seats, on average, in the House in the mid-term elections.  When President’s approval rating is below 50%, that number doubles.  So it can be of little surprise that voters dealt the Democrats losses this November.

4.  Deficits Worry Voters.   Ross Perot made a 3^rd party career out one issue back in the 1990’s – deficits.  Polls show deficits worry voters to this day and weighed on the minds of these voters.  As the former Democrat Governor of Virginia Widler said: “This is no time for the spending that they’re doing.”

3.  The Number One Issue In Virtually Every Election is the Prosperity issue.  Long before James Carville said it was “the economy stupid,” the state of people’s fortunes was the number one determinant of their vote.  Hoover didn’t lose to Roosevelt over their looks – it was the state of the economy.  In this case, the “in-party” was subject to a bit of a backlash because they are the party in power during bad economic times.

2.  Higher Taxes Really Bother Voters.   Taxes remain an enduring issue – from the original Tea Party to today’s.  New Jersey imposes the highest tax burden in the Nation on its citizens and Democrat Gov. Corzine held out the threat of more.  He lost.  The Democrat candidate for Governor in Virginia waffled on new taxes.  He lost.  Heck, even the voters of Higley Unified School District in Arizona turned down the continuation of a school parcel tax estimated to be only $59.50 per household.  Oh, and Nancy Pelosi offered a bill right before the election featuring higher taxes -  not to mention the impending threat of the same from Obama.

So with those time-honored factors working against the Democrats, why were the results just mixed?

Because of the #1 lesson.

1.  Without A Clear Agenda – Republican Gains Are Limited.  Ask yourself how many times the Republicans have taken the Congress WITHOUT A CLEAR AGENDA during the 60s, 70s, 80S, 90s and 00s?  Of course, the answer is not once.   Keep in mind, during that time, the Democrats had some really bad or troubled Presidents, i.e.  Lyndon Johnson refused to stick out a re-election run and don’t forget a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter.   The Republicans even had a great President, Ronald Reagan and didn’t take back the House and the Senate.

Why is that?  Because Republican voters are far more finicky than Democrat voters.  Democrats will vote for (D) by the name of a candidate with far more regularity then Republicans will do for a simple (R).   Quite plainly, Republicans demand more of their candidates.

In 1994, that demand was answered with the Contract with America, i.e. a clear agenda standing in sharp contrast to where the incumbent President and his party were taking the country.

In 2010, because of the poor policies of the Obama Administration since it took over, unemployment will be above 10% and the deficit could well be in the $2 trillion range.  The conditions for Democrat candidates will not be good.  No doubt – Republicans will pick up seats.

By clearly standing for something, they can do more than that.  They can lead the nation and take back the Congress.