Politics Blog

Remember that entertaining ad the Club for Growth started running against Dean in Iowa a few days ago? You can watch the video at the Club’s web site.

— PoliPundit

The Note’s got a Saturday edition. Will they have a Sunday edition too?

UPDATE: Yep!

— PoliPundit

The Washington Post’s Dan Balz has a good piece on how Democrats are going all out for Iowa Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV.)

As I noted weeks ago, Dean isdispatching an army of thousands of Deanie weenies, while Gephardt is relying on his union backers to trudge through the snow.

Some novice campaigners are not used to the Iowa winter:

Kat Woodruff, for example, had seen snow before - from inside an office in Washington, D.C. - but the 24-year-old woman from Long Beach, Calif., had never traipsed through the stuff until she arrived in Iowa to volunteer for Howard Dean.

Her impressions of Iowa?

“Ummmm . . . it’s very, very cold,” she said.

“There have been lots of things that I never took into account, like driving in it and getting ice stuck on my car. I’ve fallen on the ice a couple of times.”

Woodruff and two other California natives tried to get to The Des Moines Register’s candidate debate in Johnston.

“We didn’t make it,” she said. “We ended up in a ditch.”

— PoliPundit

I don’t know which is more disgusting - Weasel Clark’s position on abortion or his typical weaselly retraction.

First, here’s Weasel Clark’s “pro-choice” position stated in all its glory:

[Joseph W. McQuaid, publisher of The Manchester Union Leader]: Let

If you ever doubted that Democrats cheat to win elections, read this piece by Byron York on the vote fraud in South Dakota that cost John Thune a Senate seat by 524 votes in 2002.

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Most people supporting the president’s suicidal immigration “reform” plan claim they’re doing so because there’s no way to deport the 8-12 million illegal aliens already here. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a simple, cheap, easy, two-step solution to solve the problem:

Step 1: A fake Social Security number is necessary to get a job. Implement a computerized system for employers to check if a Social Security number is valid and matches the name provided by the employee.

Step 2: Crack down on employers who employ illegals. Once you throw a few high-profile executives in jail, employers will become sticklers for checking Social Security numbers using the new computerized system. That’ll force illegal immigrants to “deport” themselves because they’ll be utterly unable to find work.

So why isn’t this solution being implemented? Because, the last time the Social Security administration sent out letters to employers listing invalid Social Security numbers, there was an uproar from employers who depend on cheap illegal-immigrant labor.

In solving the problem of illegal immigration, what’s lacking is not the means, but the will. There is a cheap, simple, easy, effective solution. But it isn’t being implemented by Republicans beholden to business interests and Democrats looking to grow their vote base.

— PoliPundit

If you ever doubted that Democrats cheat to win elections, read this piece by Byron York on the vote fraud in South Dakota that cost John Thune a Senate seat by 524 votes in 2002.

— PoliPundit

Most people supporting the president’s suicidal immigration “reform” plan claim they’re doing so because there’s no way to deport the 8-12 million illegal aliens already here. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a simple, cheap, easy, two-step solution to solve the problem:

Step 1: A fake Social Security number is necessary to get a job. Implement a computerized system for employers to check if a Social Security number is valid and matches the name provided by the employee.

Step 2: Crack down on employers who employ illegals. Once you throw a few high-profile executives in jail, employers will become sticklers for checking Social Security numbers using the new computerized system. That’ll force illegal immigrants to “deport” themselves because they’ll be utterly unable to find work.

So why isn’t this solution being implemented? Because, the last time the Social Security administration sent out letters to employers listing invalid Social Security numbers, there was an uproar from employers who depend on cheap illegal-immigrant labor.

In solving the problem of illegal immigration, what’s lacking is not the means, but the will. There is a cheap, simple, easy, effective solution. But it isn’t being implemented by Republicans beholden to business interests and Democrats looking to grow their vote base.

— PoliPundit

“[Bush’s] political gurus are obsessed with trading his most reliable friends for the prospect of winning minority voters. They want to clear out the big tent to make it available to those who don’t yet want a place in it.”

– Wesley Pruden, editor of the Washington Times, on the president’s suicidal immigration “reform” proposal.

— PoliPundit

The Iowa caucuses are going to see some high-tech strategery this year:

With candidates required to win at least 15 percent of the voters in each precinct to survive, strategists assume a number of candidates will fall short – freeing their caucus voters to support other campaigns.

Several campaigns are developing ways to swing support in some of the 1,990 precincts on caucus night – to benefit their own candidate or to hurt someone else.

At headquarters for Howard Dean, advisers are working on an automated system that would let precinct captains dial in early tallies. Knowing how Dean is faring statewide would allow the campaign to advise its supporters to throw Dean votes in some precincts to another candidate.

Where the supporters of the low-performing candidates wind up, and whether the leading candidates have spare delegates to throw to other campaigns, depends entirely on how the numbers break in the first round of voting.

Dean voters, for instance, could be directed to shift to Senator John F. Kerry as part of a strategy to knock Richard A. Gephardt out of contention and create a more competitive race in New Hampshire.

…

If the Dean campaign does put into effect an automated phone system, his strategists will be able to assess their standing much earlier than usual. They could then call supporters around the state and tell them how to influence who comes in second and third, potentially determining who has enough momentum to move on to the next contest.

The best scenario for Dean is for Kerry to have a second-place showing in Iowa, which would knock Gephardt down to third. Kerry, having exceeded expectations in Iowa, could sweep into New Hampshire with fresh buzz – enough to blunt the effectiveness of Clark, Dean aides hope, but not enough to come in first place on Jan. 27.

– PoliPundit