Why Ann voted against her old pal Russ Feingold Just a pendulum swing, or something fundamentally new? Will the Tea Party take over the GOP, or vice versa? Matt vs. Ann on Prop 19 Advice for Obama (which he probably won’t take) The GOP’s possibly futile attempt to stop Sarah Palin
3. "I'm more comfortable with Fox," say I, after watching CNN for a while and then switching.
4. Oh, CNN is better. Better graphics. Lots of people saying things. Annoying much of the time, but more detail. Mary Matalin enthusing about Portman winning in Ohio, a state Obama won.
9. It's so sad for the Democrats. They gave us so many things. Gifts. Expensive gifts. That we didn't want. That they bought with our money.
10. Tim Kaine blabs on and on, making a happy face. Eventually, Wolf Blitzer cuts hims off with "It's going to be a long night for you.
11. CNN's music for tonight is the same (or just close) to what was used in the HBO John Adams series. It's about the Framers, no? As the Tea Party clinches it.
12. Drudge says: "REPUBLICANS WIN SENATE SEATS: AL, FL, GA, IN, OH, KY, MO, NH, SC... DEMS WIN: CT, DE, MD... TOO CLOSE TO CALL: PA, IL..." Hey, what happened to California? Earlier he was calling it for Boxer.
13. Manchin. "Huge win" for the Democrats, says Wolf Blitzer, about the hot West Virginia race.
14. The GOP takes the House. It's outside of the margin of error, says NBC. Pelosi is gone. Ding dong. [UPDATE: Now MSNBC is calling that "a mistake." MSNBC is awful.]
15. NBC says Wisconsin is "too close to call," as the polls close.
16. Rand Paul victory speech: "I have a message! A message from the people of Kentucky! A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words! We've come to take our government back!"
17. MSNBC is hilarious. They're near meltdown. Rand Paul will destroy America. The Republicans "salivate at the thought" of worldwide economic collapse.
18. O'Donnell conceding. Very cheerful. Chirpy. I listened to Marco Rubio's victory speech a few minutes ago, which was, by contrast, very mellow.
19. Scott Walker has, it seems, won the Governorship here in Wisconsin. That's supposed to mean — that must mean — no to the high-speed train boondoggle. Also in Wisconsin, Russ Feingold is way behind.
20. Feingold has lost, quite decisively. I'm sorry to see him go. He's a good man. But I should admit that I voted against him. I had to vote for the Party of No.
21. Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin appear side-by-side on Fox News, analyzing the elections, denouncing sexism, and then ending on this adorable, ultra-girlie note:
22. Screen shot:
23. I just thought that was amusing, the way YouTube inserted my face into the Fox News. By the way, did you notice, at the end of the clip, when Geraldine said she wanted to go on "Dancing with the Stars," Sarah said "I'll hook you up"?
24. John Boehner tears up talking about American values, which he's chased all his life. Then, talking about his business, he sobs. Keep it together, Boehnsy!
25. That got a little... weird. I hope Boehnsy is ready to lead. Anyway, here in Dane County, Feingold's campaign manager George Aldrich is not giving up: "Russ is down by 80,000 votes, but...up to 1.4 million votes haven’t been counted." None of the Madison votes were in when he said that: "We are confident that this race is going to tighten, it is going to tighten quickly, and we may be in for a long night here."
26. Charles Krauthammer on Fox News: "The Obama agenda is dead." The Democrats have retained the Senate, apparently, but, looking forward to 2012, they will, self-defensively, distance themselves from Obama — says the Kraut.
Quoting Bob Dylan, he said, "My heart is not weary, it's light and free, and I've got nothing but affection for those who have sailed with me."
It is not clear what he will do next, but Mr. Feingold, 57, told the crowd: "It's on to the next fight, it's on to the next battle, it's on to 2012 and it is on to our next adventure, forward." He raised his fist in the air and left the stage.
The Times misses that "Forward" is the state motto. And maybe that "fist in the air" was posing as the Wisconsin "Forward" statue.
28. Karl Rove exclaims that he's "exhausted." I was just saying he looked tired.
29. Speaking of tired, it's interesting that Harry Reid will be sticking around. There's something so dreary about him. Does his victory cheer Democrats? Or would they have had more fun kicking Sharron Angle around?
So Christopher Hitchens is expatiating in Slate about the dearth of decent political candidates in U.S. elections. He talks about talking to his "hosts in Connecticut" and his friends in Washington D.C., where he's lived for 3 decades. And he casts his eyes about to the states of New York and California. Having thus surveyed the American landscape, he opines that the "enthusiastic and intelligent people" are no longer "willing to give up potentially more lucrative careers" because of the risk to "their career and their family life" and "the incessant barrage of intrusive questioning about every aspect of their lives since well before college." You just can't get "normal" people to run for office anymore.
What about Ron Johnson? Here's Politico, presenting the GOP Senate candidate in Wisconsin as emblematic of the new sort of politician who has emerged from the Tea Party movement:
Until last fall, Ron Johnson was just an intensely private guy with a good business and a nice house on Lake Winnebago. He kept a stack of Wall Street Journals next to his bed, folded just right so he wouldn't forget to read columnist Dan Henninger on this or Paul Gigot on that. A trim, silver-haired businessman, he was rich but unknown, even in this, his hometown, despite big donations to Lourdes High School and his thriving plastics company here.
Running for office never crossed his mind...
The Tea Party of Oshkosh was pulling together a rally for a fall event, featuring Joe the Plumber, the working man who emerged as a folk hero to small government conservatives in 2008. They needed a businessman to talk about what they saw as the scary, Big Brother approach to ObamaCare - and Johnson was happy to oblige. His daughter Carrie was born with a heart defect and saved by two doctors - a story anyone following this campaign has heard many times in ads and speeches ever since. So, he let loose with an attack on the demonization of doctors and, more broadly, the mortal threat to American exceptionalism.
The new law “will destroy our health care system,” Johnson said in an interview. “I am totally convinced of that.”
In hindsight, Johnson, in that speech, was capturing a major mood change in American politics that swept up not only business owners but also anti-government conservatives and skeptical independents. These groups, by late summer of 2009, had turned against the president and his party – and never returned.
Read the whole thing. You too, Mr. Hitchens.
Oh, it's not as if Hitchens didn't think of the Tea Party. After telling us about his elite circle of people who are so smart and informed but disinclined to enter the political fray, he does acknowledge that there is much more going on these days: his observation "may seem to discount or ignore the apparent flood of new political volunteers who go to make up the Tea Party movement." You can see the gears turning in his brain as he tries to get to the end of this article that began so easily, built on what looks to me like dinner-table conversations with his friends. How to dismiss these pesky teafolk of the flyover realms? Ah! He proclaims:
They come from a long and frankly somewhat boring tradition of anti-incumbency and anti-Washington rhetoric, and they are rather an insult to anyone with anything of a political memory.
They are an insult. These people aren't worth talking to or about. Why, they aren't even people at all. They are an insult.
Since when is it truly insurgent to rail against the state of affairs in the nation's capital? How long did it take Gingrich's "rebel" forces in the mid-1990s to become soft-bottomed incumbents in their turn?
Questions. Questions. Speaking of untoned asses, shouldn't you have to get off yours and go out and talk to Americans in places like Wisconsin? One answer is that Hitchens is gravely ill, but he's still pouring out political commentary, and he's not asking for pity or showing any. He's as imperious as ever, and the respect he deserves for that bravery and effort ought to come in the form of serious engagement with his actual words he is... spewing.
Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values. Marvel at the importance of reading the Constitution at an early age and carrying it around all the time. Consider the question whether we should want a millionaire in the Senate. Feingold says it's good to have a nonmillionaire, like him, in the Senate, because the Senate is so full of millionaires and it provides some balance. On the other hand, a businessman who's made millions, like Johnson, has proven something about his ability and his knowledge of how the world works.
ADDED: You can watch the whole debate here. I thought it was interesting to see how well the new guy, Johnson, was able to look polished and competent alongside Russ Feingold.
Gee, it wasn’t long ago that Tea Partiers were a fringe group of astroturf bigots or something. Now it seems like everyone wants to be a Tea Partier! Who on earth could have seen this coming?
The answer, of course, is: Instapundit. I must say, when those tea parties began, I thought they were kind of embarrassing. I didn't get Instapundit promoting them all the time.
[Ron] Johnson associated himself with the movement, and erroneous media reports portrayed him as an Oshkosh tea party founder, creating the false impression he had received a tea party endorsement.
Johnson has fueled the confusion at times, talking about "taking the tea party to Washington" while downplaying his association at other times. The situation created a mini-backlash among tea party folks who knew little or nothing of Johnson, an Oshkosh businessman who entered the Republican primary race in early May.
Now Johnson has told tea-party leaders he will be glad to accept their invitations to attend sessions in which group members quiz candidates on their views....
The Democrat seeking re-election in the Senate race, Russ Feingold, has cast votes against bank bailouts and the Patriot Act that match up with tea party views, his campaign says.
"We're going to fight for every voter in the state," said John Kraus, Feingold's senior campaign strategist. "We have a good record on many of the issues these folks care about."
I like seeing the Democratic Party candidate fight for the Tea Partiers. Republican candidates shouldn't be able to automatically appropriate the energy of the Tea Party movement.
