Alaska’s Republican primary caucus will be held on March 6, 2012, otherwise known as Super Tuesday. Other primaries that day include Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

In preparation for Alaska, Mitt Romney launched a steering committee, which includes less than conservative favorite, Senator Lisa Murkowski. The full list is available at Romney’s website. There are 27 delegates at stake.

Mitt Romney may be taking a whipping from the far right flank of the Republican Party this week — first, across the Midwest in the Colorado and Minnesota primaries, and continuing currently at CPAC 2012 — but he’s already looking toward Super Tuesday and the bevy of delegates up for grabs in March, including those of Alaska.

Romney on Thursday announced members of his Alaska Steering Committee. And there a few major league Alaska politicians and other civic leaders going to bat for the former Massachusetts governor.

Romney won Alaska in 2008, receiving 44% of 14,000 votes cast for a total of 12 delegates. Senator John McCain finished last behind Huckabee and Paul, who is said to still have strong support in the state. Romney won it as the not John McCain, which suggests there’s no guarantee that he’ll win it again this year as the current GOP moderate and supposed front-runner.

Alaska’s delegates are poised to play a surprisingly big role in the 2012 race. The 49th state’s true-blue Republicans were faithful to the party leadership’s nominating schedule. And while the majority of Alaskans identify as independents, Alaska still maintains a sizable Republican voting bloc and a center-right electorate. In party politics, all these things play well for Alaska.

(more…)

When asked about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in October, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren praised it to the hilt. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she told the Daily Beast. Yet when pressed in November on the OWS adherents’ increasingly violent tactics, she told a Boston TV interviewer: “Everybody has to follow the law. There’s no exception on that.”

But Warren’s apparent disavowal of the tactics of OWS and like-minded community organizers may not be shared by Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren designed. Cordray has long supported ESOP, formerly known as the East Side Organizing Project, an Ohio housing advocacy group that has distinguished itself by storming into banks and launching plastic “shark attacks” on the lawns of private homes. ESOP’s leaders brag about what they call their “organized hits” on banks and other targets, which have included the home of the late Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

As Ohio treasurer and attorney general, Cordray lobbied for state and federal funding for ESOP and publicly praised funders of the group as “the real heroes.” And in a highly unusual move for a nominee awaiting confirmation, Cordray returned to Ohio in October to be the keynote speaker at the group’s gala dinner.

Since his nomination in July to head the bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, Republicans have held fast against confirmation. But largely, they haven’t made Cordray’s state record an issue. They have focused instead on structural defects in the agency’s design, such as the massive new powers the bureau will have to ban financial products it deems “abusive” and its lack of accountability to Congress.

These criticisms are valid, but they may not be enough to hold Senate Republicans together without criticism of the nominee’s merits. Just before Thanksgiving, Scott Brown (R-Mass.), facing a tough reelection challenge from Warren, became the first GOPer to commit to voting for Cordray. The Democrat-controlled Senate plans to hold a vote on his confirmation this week, possibly as early as Tuesday. Human Events‘ Neil McCabe reports that in addition to Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, other GOP targets for Cordray supporters include Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and Cordray’s home state Senator Rob Portman of Ohio (though Portman seemed to reaffirm his opposition in a statement to Human Events last week).

But Cordray’s support of ESOP needs further scrutiny, particularly since as head of the bureau, he will have the power to help funnel federal support to ESOP and like-minded community organizers with virtually no oversight by Congress. And a report by Bloomberg News suggests that Cordray specifically blessed ESOP’s “organized hits” on banks and homes.

(more…)

When Scott Brown upset the Massachusetts Democratic establishment by winning the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for a generation, he ran as a Republican. This cycle, facing the “founder” of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Elizabeth Warren, he appears to be running away from conservative principles.

Brown’s most recent capitulation is his support for a floor vote for President Obama’s nominee for the uber-regulatory agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Brown’s announcement undercuts not only his Republican colleagues who are fighting to limit the power of this new government agency but of the principles of limited government he professes to support.

Unfortunately, Brown may not be alone. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) is purportedly seeking a deal with the White House to get fellow Ohioan Cordray confirmed despite ethical questions about his behavior as the state’s Attorney General. Insiders are always concerned about the Maine Senators and Alaskan Lisa Murkowski. If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Portman, Collins, Snowe and Murkowski need to buck up and support their colleagues.

(more…)

Republicans were in an “Internet uproar” last week over a false report that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had called them “jack-booted thugs.” Meanwhile, deeply troubling statements that EPA officials did make have hardly stirred a ripple in the blogosphere.

At a recent hearing before a House oversight panel, three Obama administration witnesses — National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, EPA Assistant Air Administrator Gina McCarthy, and EPA Transportation and Air Quality Director Margo Oge – denied under oath that motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards are “related to” fuel economy standards. In so doing, they denied plain facts they must know to be true. They lied to Congress.

House Government Oversight and Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) put it more diplomatically: “Your statements under oath misrepresented the relationship between regulating greenhouse gases and regulating fuel economy.” By “obstinately insisting” that regulating greenhouse gases and fuel economy are “separate and unrelated endeavors,” the officials “impede the Committee’s important oversight work.”

Why did they “misrepresent” and “impede”? Had the officials answered truthfully, they would have to admit that California’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle emissions law, AB 1493, which EPA approved in June 2009, violates the Energy Policy Conservation Act’s (EPCA) express preemption of state laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy. The officials would also have to admit that EPA is effectively regulating fuel economy, a function outside the scope of its statutory authority.

Strongly Related

That greenhouse gas emission standards implicitly regulate fuel economy is evident from the agencies’ own documents. As EPA and NHTSA acknowledge in their joint May 2010 Greenhouse Gas/Fuel Economy Tailpipe Rule (pp. 25424, 25327), no commercially available technologies exist to capture or filter out carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from motor vehicles. Consequently, the only way to decrease grams of CO2 per mile is to reduce fuel consumption per mile — that is, increase fuel economy. Carbon dioxide constitutes 94.9% of vehicular greenhouse gas emissions, and “there is a single pool of technologies… that reduce fuel consumption and thereby CO2 emissions as well.”

(more…)

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski – R, has hired former CBS 11 lead political reporter and anchor, Matthew Felling, as her Communications Director.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska has announced Alaskan broadcast journalist Matthew Felling as her new Communications Director.

Felling comes to Sen. Murkowski’s office after being lead political reporter and anchor for CBS 11 News Anchorage. He joined CBS 11 News after a decade of news reporting, commentary and analysis in Washington, D.C — becoming the only TV reporter on the Washington Post’s “Best State-Based Political Reporter” list.

What the article doesn’t say is that CBS 11 is actually KTVA. As reported by both Big Journalism and Big Government back on October 30, 2010, several members of KTVA staff were caught conspiring against Murkowski opponent Joe Miller in a saved voice mail message to Miller campaign spokesperson, Randy DeSoto.

Given that Felling seems to have followed Murkowski from DC to Alaska and now back, again, he almost looks as much like a traveling companion, as he does a journalist and now new employee. Furthermore, the move would not have been possible had Murkowski not won the election. Given Felling’s role at KTVA and that two KTVA employees were fired as a result of the October incident, the ethics issues here are glaring. It’s fair to ask if Felling isn’t nowbeing rewarded for helping to steer CBS 11’s coverage Murkowski’s way during the November election.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

The Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision in the disputed U.S. Senate race, saying the state correctly counted write-in votes for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

It is now up to Republican Joe Miller to decide if the election is finally over.

The court said in its ruling that it found “no remaining issues raised by Miller that prevent this election from being certified.”

(more…)

After first receiving a tip from a reader regarding a warning issued against the Alaska Public Employee Supervisers Union for their improperly campaigning against Senate candidate Joe Miller, a call to Robert Pearson of Alaska’s Department of Administration produced a copy of the offending email, see further below.

This first communique was sent in response to “several” complaints from Alaska State workers regarding the improper union communication.

From: Commissioners Office, DOA (DOA sponsored)

Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 3:06 PM

To: SOA All SU Union members
Cc: Ludwig, Bruce (DOA sponsored); Brooks, Kevin A (DOA); Beecher, Carol L (DOA)

Subject: Election Email Follow-up‬

Dear SU Member,

Several of you wrote expressing concern about an email that was sent by your union on Thursday, October 28, 2010 with the subject line “Vote Tuesday November 2nd!” Article 9.12 of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) stipulates that union emails regarding pending legislation or in-progress partisan election campaigns shall be non-positional. The State’s position is that the email violated this article of the CBA.

I asked Deputy Commissioner Kevin Brooks to meet with union representatives to explain the State’s position. He did and advised the Business Manager that further infractions could result in restriction of access to the State’s email system. It’s important that you know we follow the CBA in resolving these issues and I appreciate those who brought the matter to light.

Annette Kreitzer
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

While Alaska’s public employee collective bargaining agreement allows for the SU to use email for purposes of political communication, said emails are not to be positional in nature. Given the dynamics of the 2010 Alaska Senate race, it was the Department of Administration’s opinion that the following communication, sent out to approximately 2,000 state supervisers, violated the union’s collective bargaining agreement.

(more…)

The Senate campaign of Alaskan Republican, Joe Miller, claims the Alaska’s Division of Elections failed to meet its responsibilities today with regard to the transparent handling of what is sure to be a closely watched ballot counting process. They say they were surprised to find out that the Absentee Ballot validation process began today at 10 a.m.

The Miller Campaign was told of the news from a Republican Party member who was informed of the decision this morning. In response to this news, Joe Miller said, “Our goal is to uphold the integrity of the voting process. Every vote that is cast correctly should be counted. All Alaskans deserve a free, open and fair election. Unfortunately, the State Division of Elections has decided to call that process into question with the constant maneuvering of dates and procedures.”

(more…)

Based upon current laws and regulations, there is a reasonable path to victory for Republican Joe Miller in the contentious U.S. Senate race in Alaska; however, with a very pro-Murkowski Lt. Governor, Craig Campbell, operating much like a state Secretary of State, a liberal court system and Murkowski tapping members of Bush’s Florida 2000 legal team, it’s unlikely to be as straightforward as it should be.

According to recent numbers via the Washington Post, there are 83,201 write-in votes which, if all were legitimately cast for Murkowski, she would lead Miller, who stands at 69,762, by 13439 votes. Citing a late nineties race for Governor in which the Republican backed nominee ran as a write-in candidate, as much as 5% of all write-in ballots could be invalid. Were that percentage to apply here, as many as 4,000 potential Murkowski votes could be invalidated, bringing Murkowski’s presumed advantage down to under 10,000 votes.

Additionally, the Division of Elections has received 26,306 absentee ballots still needing to be counted and 10,645 questioned ballots. It’s also possible that some double voting occurred given that some votes believe to favor Murkowski may have been sent into the wrong precinct, while some number of those voters may have also had their votes counted in their home district. A careful final counting should address any issues there.

(more…)

It was a rough weekend for the corrupt bastards at KTVA Channel 11 in Alaska.

Now we have exclusive video from behind the scene in the coffee room at Channel 11. This was captured shortly after the story broke this weekend that their butt-call to Joe Miller was caught on tape:
(Warning on language)

(more…)

The following brief statement has been released from the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Joe Miller regarding audio posted on Big Government and Big Journalism last night:

Now the media has gone from trying to create stories to openly lying. The audio was pulled directly from the voicemail message. Nothing was altered. “Everything that was recorded on my phone is what we released without change,” said Randy Desoto.

Neither Big Government, nor Big Journalism altered the audio before publication, either.

Both Politico and the Washington Post appear content to embarrass themselves by pushing a response from CBS-KTVA which Ed Morrissey termed “absurd,” in addition to some propaganda and an attempt at obfuscation from the Soros-funded Media Matters in its weak attempts to attack the messenger, be that Breitbart, Inc., or former Governor Sarah Palin.

We stand fully behind the original posting and view KTVA’s response as unserious, amounting to little more than, who are you going to believe, us or your lying ears?

(more…)

“That’s sick. Those are corrupt bastards, Chris.”

Sarah Palin told Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday this morning that “we have the tape that proves it” of the “corrupt bastards” in the media conspiring against Joe Miller.

Sarah Palin weighs in on the corrupt bastards in the Alaska media:

“Just last night it was revealed that the rally that I had for Joe Miller on Thursday, it was revealed and we have the tape to prove it, that the CBS reporters, the affiliate in Alaska, conspired to make up stories about Joe Miller. We have the tape Chris, and I can’t wait until it busts out all over the nation, that shows what it is that we… kinda what I put up with for two years now from the media… but what Joe Miller is faced with in someone like Lisa Murkowsky who feels so entitled to that seat, that she and some of her people including some complicit in the media will do anything, they will stop at nothing, to allow Lisa Murkowsky to get back elected.”

(more…)

If you’re an Alaska resident and qualified to run for Senate, Big Government wants you to take action today to highlight the chaos brought about by Lisa Murkowski’s seemingly unending quest for power with her write-in campaign. But you must act today.

Early yesterday, Alaska Superior Court Judge, Frank Pfiffner followed the rule of law, maintaining that Alaska’s voting regulations can not suddenly be changed in an ad hoc manner at the last minute to benefit Murkowski’s write-in campaign.

Dealing a setback to the write-in Senate campaign of incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska superior-court judge ruled today that election workers can’t provide lists of write-in candidates to voters on Election Day, calling it a “clear violation” of Alaska regulations.

In its 50 year history as a state, Alaskan election workers have never been allowed to provide lists of write-in candidates on election day. But late yesterday, the Alaska Supreme Court stayed his order, allowing for the unprecedented practice to proceed.

While it remains unclear how the court may ultimately rule, there is something qualified Alaskans can and should do today to let those in power know you are paying attention to how they use it.

(more…)

All the while, Lisa Murkowski’s campaign has been engaged in a smear campaign against Joe Miller. Now, out of the blue, Democrats come out and call her an outright liar?

It was troubling when Murkowski broke her word to voters and refused to abide by the results of the Republican primary as promised. If these accusations are legitimate, all in all, it does not speak well of Lisa Murkowski’s character. And character does matter. She has invoked the name of the late Ted Stevens on her behalf. He can’t speak for himself. However, it appears some individuals Murkowski has claimed endorse her candidacy can – and they are flatly denying it.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA-CBS 11 News) Alaska Democrats are calling Sen. Lisa Murkowski a liar, after a mailer went out to many Anchorage residents claiming notable Democrats would be voting for her.
In a statement Murkowski’s campaign manager Kevin Sweeney says the mistake was the campaign’s fault, saying they forgot to change the headline.

The mailer’s banner states: “Alaskan Democrats Who Are Voting for Lisa Murkowski — and not Scott McAdams.” Below the headline are several quotes from politicians including Democratic gubernatorial candidates Ethan Berkowitz and Bob Poe, who dropped out of the governor’s race.

Alaska Democratic Party Chair Patti Higgins says some of the quotes used about the sitting senator are from the past, and many of the candidates have openly stated they will be voting for Scott McAdams.

(more…)

Scott Rasmussen now predicts that the Republicans will pick up fifty-five seats in the House. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia still has the pick-up at forty-seven but says that, if forced to tweak the numbers right now, he would increase his estimate of Republican gains by single digits – which is to say, he agrees with Rasmussen.

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

A lot has been written on this site and elsewhere concerning the Pledge to America that the Republicans unveiled on Friday. For the most part, bloggers have been critical. Some have argued that it will not do the Republicans any good in November. Others dismiss it as milquetoast. Emily Esfahani Smith has done a good job collecting the comments.

I think the critics are wrong, quite wrong – and for two reasons. First, those who drafted the Pledge took great care to ground everything that they had to say in first principles. They drew the attention of the nation to the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution. Then, they pointed to our departure from these principles in recent years, asserting that the Democrats bear prime responsibility for this, but acknowledging Republican failures as well.

And, finally, they spelled out the corrective measures that are most pressing – a repeal of Obamacare (not a collection of minor adjustments); a reduction of federal expenditures (apart from those devoted to national defense) back to the level of 2008; and an extension of the tax cuts introduced by George W. Bush.

Should they have gone further? Perhaps, perhaps not. This is a document devised for three purposes. It is aimed at winning an election, at preparing a party now in opposition for legislative hegemony, and at initiating an enduring partisan realignment. In such circumstances, two things are necessary. A simple straightforward set of principles needs to be announced, and the most pressing concerns need to be directly addressed.

(more…)

Can we trust the current polls? I do not mean to level any accusations. I think that, with rare exceptions, the pollsters are doing their best to assess the trends. If nothing else, they know that accuracy pays off – that a pollster who gets things right will get a lot of business down the road.

What I have in mind is something else. I suspect that there is something afoot which the pollsters do not yet know how to measure. There is evidence that seems to me to be dispositive. No one predicted Joe Miller’s victory in the Alaska primary; no one predicted Christine O’Donnell’s defeat of Mike Castle – and let’s face it: in neither case was the margin of victory small. My bet is that in November the Republicans will take every single race – for the House, the Senate, or at the state level – in which the pollsters (including Rasmussen, the best of the lot) report that the race is even remotely close.

On 2 September, I posted a piece suggesting that the Republicans would pick up more than 70 seats in the House and would take the Senate. I now think that they will do even better than this – at least in the House. As Peter Wehner and Paul Mirengoff have noted, when Glenn Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies ran a survey recently for the American Action Network, he made a discovery of great interest:

The generic ballot shows Republicans leading 44%-39%. Besides all of the usual regional crosstabs, we also broke it out by the type of district. We looked at the sample in the 66 Democratic INCUMBENT districts that Charlie Cook lists as either toss-up or leaning Democratic at the time of the survey. In that key crosstab of Swing Democratic Incumbent Seats, the Republican lead grows to 49%-31% on the generic ballot. That is a very powerful crosstab that says the wave is coming.

Among the remaining Democratic districts (Likely/Safe Dem, and open seats), the generic ballot is an unsurprisingly 33% GOP/51% Dem — a sign that the historically safe Dem seat will remain so, while the swing seats will be a bloodbath. By the way, in all of  the GOP held seats, the generic is the reverse of the base Dem seats — 52% GOP/32% Dem. Very few, if any, Republican incumbents will be defeated.

Likewise, President Obama’s numbers with likely voters are similar to the national average — 46% approve/51% disapprove. However, in the Swing Democratic Incumbent Seats. he has a much worse 40% approve/57% disapprove. (Keep in mind, many of these Swing Seats are held by Democrats despite the fact that John McCain either won the district in 2008, or, even if losing, outperformed his national result.

On 2 November, there is going to be an electoral revolution. I doubt that it will exceed the shift which took place in 1894 – when, in the wake of the Panic of 1893, Grover Cleveland’s Democratic Party split between its goldbug Bourbon wing and the populists who would later unite behind William Jennings Bryan and, in the midterm elections held that year, the Democrats lost 125 seats and the Republicans had a pickup of 130. But it may exceed the largest shift in the 20^th century, when 101 seats changed hands in 1932.

(more…)

In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson, Francis Cianfrocca and Ben Domenech talk about the latest housing numbers, controversy in Alaska’s Senate race, the decline of the Clinton political coalition, and who’s going to have Obama’s ear on economic policy with his evaporating policy team. We’ll also chat about a list of the decade’s top movie villains, which shockingly doesn’t include the ship computer from WALL-E. You’re listening to Coffee and Markets, brought to you by the New Ledger, for Friday, September 24th, 2010.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates. We’d also like to let you know that we’ve set up a standalone site at CoffeeandMarkets.com for easier browsing of our past broadcasts.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Politico: Jim DeMint chides GOP senators for protecting Lisa Murkowski
Morning Jay: Goodbye to the Clinton Majority, Those Lucky Dems, and More!
Strassel: Why Business Bashing Has Flopped
Idler: The decade’s best in film villainy
TNL: 150 Movies You Really Ought to See