Senate
October 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
By my lights, nothing in John Fetterman’s record suggests that he is fit to hold public office. He is both a sponger and left-wing extremist. Having suffered a serious stroke just before securing the Pennsylvania Democrats’ nomination for the Senate, his mental capacity is in doubt as well. Most recently, on MSNBC this past Friday evening, he proved unable to answer the opening question posed by host Chris Hayes without
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September 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan is a 25-carat phony “moderate.” He had the luxury of running a general election style campaign through the primary season, so he has had the time to perfect his act. In just the past two years, however, “he’s voted to federalize elections, admit Washington, D.C., as the 51st state, impose onerous new background check requirements on gun owners, and grant mass amnesty to millions
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September 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Punchbowl News is one of the insider online outlets that facilitates the Democrats’ Gleichschaltung. The founders describe the venture here. I subscribe to the morning newsletter via the Punchbowl home page when they established the site. In this morning’s edition — it can be accessed here at the moment — Punchbowl gurus Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan pass on the the Schuminations of the Senate Majority Leaders speaking to colleagues
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September 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
New Hampshire held its late party primaries yesterday. The only interesting races were on the Republican side and Democrats had a hand in two of them. In the Senate contest to pick a challenger to vulnerable incumbent Maggie Hassan, Don Bolduc faced off against Chuck Morse. Democrats supported Bolduc because he is the less viable candidate. With 87 percent of the vote tabulated, Bolduc leads Morse by about 1300 votes
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September 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Blake Masters is running against incumbent Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly in the upcoming November elections. Running for reelection in a purple state, Kelly impersonates a moderate and may even be one in some sense, although he is reliable Democratic vote at a 100 percent level of certainty. In this he presents a telling contrast with his Arizona colleague, Kyrsten Sinema. Kelly nevertheless holds himself out as Mr. Bipartisan. I
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September 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
On Meet the Press this morning, Kamala Harris said that if the Democrats pick up two Senate seats in the midterms, they will abolish the filibuster, at least selectively. The two additional seats, plus Harris’s own tie-breaker, will be needed to offset the votes of Senators Manchin and Sinema so as to create a majority in favor of altering Senate rules: Harris said, “In less than two months, we are
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September 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin signed off on the absurdly named Inflation Reduction Act in lieu of the full Build Back Broke bill that represented the left’s shopping list. Manchin was reported to have signed off on the bill with a Wimpy deal that recalled Popeye’s friend Wimpy. Wimpy adopted the motto “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Not a good deal. It was a recurring joke
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August 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I may be mistaken, but I believe that Robert Cahaly/Trafalgar Group proved the most reliable Republican pollster in 2020. Yesterday he posted the results of his new Georgia Senate poll on Twitter. It shows Herschel Walker moving into a narrow lead over incumbent Raphael Warnock among likely general election voters. New @trafalgar_group #GASen #Poll (8/24-27) shows #Walker w/narrow lead #gapol 47.5% @HerschelWalker46.7% @ReverendWarnock2.9% @ChaseForLiberty2.9% Und See Report: https://t.co/U7CMEYlIWa pic.twitter.com/zmEa6FW5q4 —
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August 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Wyoming and Alaska held primaries yesterday. Pollsters in Wyoming had the direction of the Liz Cheney-Harriet Hageman race for Wyoming’s at-large House seat right. Cheney was going to lose. But was she going to lose by nearly 40 points? Pollsters vastly understated the magnitude of Cheney’s pending loss. She was not merely repudiated. She was crushed. Hageman beat her by more than a 2-1 margin (below, via RealClearPolitics). Cheney was
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August 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Project Veritas has an excellent story on Lisa Murkowski’s path to reelection. It follows from the ballot measure narrowly adopted by Alaska voters in 2020. The path combines an open “nonpartisan” primary with 19 candidates. The top four candidates in today’s open primary will proceed from the primary to the November election. In the November election voters are then to rank their choices among the four candidates on the ballot.
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August 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
You can’t help but notice that the absurdly named Inflation Reduction Act has been reborn in the press as a health care and climate bill. Performing its usual public relations work for Minnesota’s DFL, the Star Tribune celebrates the faceless Senator Tina Smith. Washington correspondent Hunter Woodall leads his story on the bill this way: After a series of setbacks over the last year, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith’s work on
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August 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The political news of the day is the passage of the shove-it-down-your-throat absurdity of the Inflation Reduction Act. What this country needs is a vastly expanded Internal Revenue Service! (said no sane man or woman ever). Adding to the insufferable stupidity and deceit of the bill’s provisions is the insufferable stupidity and deceit of the media coverage of the bill itself. Feel the excitement coursing through Politico Playbook’s “How it
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August 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Democrats staged one of their classic dramas with their so-called burn pit legislation. The Senate voted last night to pass the bill to expand health care benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits during their military service. The final vote was 86-11. President Biden can now sign it into law. I took it from the appearance of Jon Stewart to act up and promote the bill in Washington that
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July 31, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Sixth District Rep. Tom Emmer is chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. He appears weekly for a segment on Jon Justice’s morning news/talk show in the Twin Cities. Jon let me ask Emmer a question about the passage of the CHIPS bill spenderama with the support of 17 Senate Republicans and 24 House Republicans while the Democrat tax-and-spend Bummer Beyond Belief was still in play. Tom referred to
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July 29, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Kim Strassel observes in her weekly Wall Street Journal column that the $270 billion so-called CHIPS and Science Act served as the predicate of the Schumer/Manchin $750 billion Bummer Beyond Belief light that is now to be moved via the reconciliation process. CNBC drily observes that Senator McConnell had “previously warned that Republicans would not back the China competition bill [i.e., the CHIPS bill] if Democrats continued to pursue an
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July 27, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The ginormous CHIPS Act has grown like Topsy into a $250 billion bill with a little help from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Touted as a benefit to American national security, not just another case of corporate welfare or crony capitalism, the Act is slated to pass the Senate this week. The Free Beacon’s Joe Simonson reports on developments that might affect this assessment: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.,
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July 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The late Herbert Stein was the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Nixon and the author of Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” I wonder if Stein’s Law applies to the madness that has overtaken the Democratic Party, the party’s media adjunct, the United States military, and just about every major American institution. Stein’s Law seems to be running up against (John)
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