Republicans Start from Behind in Election by not Challenging Seats Held by Dems

Yesterday, Jim Geraghty from National Review joined Cam Edwards on Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. to talk about what’s at stake in this year’s elections.  Cam noted that there is a troubling sign from Republicans: the large number of seats currently held by Democrats that aren’t even being contested. He rightly pointed out that you can’t win if you’re not even competing, and before a vote is even cast Democrats and gun control advocates are already halfway to their goal of 51 seats in the House of Delegates. Jim Geraghty pointed out that if gun control groups are successful at flipping Virginia’s legislature, you can be certain they’ll take their game plan to dozens of other states in the 2020 election cycle.  Take a look at the interview below.

What Current Polls Can Tell Us About the Midterm Elections

Remember that polls are simply a snapshot in time but National Review's Jim Geraghty has shared the enterprising work of Sean Trende of UVA's Center for Politics that looks at the likelihood that a candidate with a certain percentage lead in the polls at this point in an election will go on to win.  Jim then looks at what Trende's chart tells us about the close races and the chances the GOP will send Harry Reid packing his office and moving to the minority leader's office in the Capitol.  First the good news:

Let’s start with the good news for Republicans.
In Arkansas, Tom Cotton is enjoying a 5.5 point lead. 86 percent chance of victory!

In Colorado, Cory Gardner has a 4 point lead. 91 percent chance of victory!

In Alaska, Dan Sullivan has a 4.3 point lead. 91 percent for him, too!

In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell has a 4.4 percent lead.

In Iowa, Joni Ernst has a 2.5 point lead, right between 2 and 3. Oooh, a 70 to 77 percent chance of victory!

(In Louisiana, Bill Cassidy has a 4.8 percent lead in a head-to-head matchup, but that race is almost certain to go to a runoff. Put that one aside for now.)

In case you were wondering, in South Dakota, Mike Rounds has a 9.8 percent lead in the RealClearPolitics average, but it would be 3.5 if you only used polls conducted in October. So you can interpret his odds of victory as either 97 percent or 91 percent if you round up to 4.

Here’s the kind of intriguing news for Republicans: In Kansas, “independent” Greg Orman’s lead is eight-tenths of a percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average. Rounding that to one, we find on the above chart that Orman has… a 44 percent chance of victory. Yup, somehow having a one-point lead 13 days from Election Day is actually a bad sign. However, by 12 days, the chance of victory with a one point lead jumps up to 88 percent; by a few days later, it’s down to 68 percent.

Georgia Michelle Nunn’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average is 0.4 percent. So she’s not even on the chart. Bump her up to one point for the sake of argument, and she’s in the same spot as Orman.

Then he looks at the not so good news:

In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan has a 1.6 point lead, which we’ll round up to 2 points. Bad news, Thom Tillis, that’s a 70 percent chance of victory for her!

In New Hampshire, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen also has a 1.6 point lead, which comes to a 70 percent chance of victory. Considering how steadily Scott Brown has closed these past weeks, you have to wonder if this is one of those 30 percent cases.

Every other Senate race has a 6 percentage point margin or higher.

This is a nice but not quite ideal scenario for Republicans. Assuming neither Georgia or Louisiana are resolved on Election Night, let’s assume Republicans lose the seat in Kansas and gain seats in Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado and Iowa. That’s a net gain of six seats! But as great as that sounds, it would give Republicans 50 seats and Democrats 48. If Democrats win both runoffs, they could keep control of the chamber by having Vice President Biden break the ties. If Cassidy wins the December runoff, Georgia’s January runoff becomes moot to control of the Senate.

If you are not a political junkie, then it probably doesn't matter to you whether we will be following run off elections through Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But it matters which party controls congress.  We know what Harry Reid has done to gun owners.  By changing the rules of the Senate, he has allowed Obama to pack the federal courts with anti-rights judges.  It is in the best interest of gun owners that Harry Reid and his band of cohorts are sent into the minority, thus making it harder for Obama to appoint more anti-rights justices to the courts.  And the only way to do that is if all gun owners in states with U.S. Senate races turn out and vote for the candidates who support our rights.

Cantor Loses Primary , Democrats Find 11th Hour Candidate for 7th District

Back when everyone thought Eric Cantor was a shoe-in for re-election, the 7th District Democrats decided they would not run a sacrificial lamb.  But it appears the 7th District Democratic Committee had second thoughts and nominated John "Jack" Trammell two days before the GOP primary.  Trammell is an associate professor at Randolph-Macon College, the same place that employs Brat.

Reading news clips and listening to talk radio this morning, much is being made of the "historic" nature of Cantor's loss.  There is also a lot of talk about Brat's Tea Party connections and how the "Tea Party Roared."  It's likely less due to the Tea Party and more along the lines of what an unnamed "GOP strategist" told the Roanoke Times last night during a conversation at the Cantor election party wake and reported by the Times this morning:

“This is what happens when you don’t tend the weeds in your backyard,” the strategist said. He went on to question Cantor’s decision to go on television — a strategy that may have raised Brat’s profile and let more voters know about the race. “Six weeks ago, Brat was an unknown. The question will be: Did the campaign overreact?”

Something happened between 2012 and 2014.  Jim Geraghty noted on the Campaign Spot that in 2012, Cantor took 79of the vote in his primary.  He also notes turnout wasn't the issue.  It was higher than 2012:

Cantor and his allies can’t blame low turnout for this one. My old colleague Derek Willis noted that the 2012 primary turnout was surpassed with only 71 percent of the precincts reporting. “People who ran David Brat’s turnout operation are gonna be getting some phone calls, methinks.” 

A perfect storm appears to have been created in the last year that led to last night's surprise upset.  In full disclosure, I have known Cantor for years.  I also personally know many of the former Cantor supporters who were supporting Brat and, who in my opinion, made this more personal toward some of the players than it should have been.  And, I know Cantor's consultant.  Cantor became the target for the anger caused by events that began in the run-up to this year's GOP mass meetings and state nominating convention, orchestrated by Cantor's consultant, and likely with the approval of Cantor.  They were tactics that were regularly used in the 80's when I was cutting my teeth in politics.  They served only to tick off people and had for the most part been tossed in the waste can, until this year.  Bearing Drift does a good job of explaining those events in this post.  In short it can be summed up like this:

Don’t piss off the grassroots.

John Fund confirmed this when he wrote on National Review Online:

Primaries are often criticized for low voter turnout. But they are also expressions of the grassroots sentiments of political parties. The lesson tonight is that establishment candidates ignore their most ardent voters at their peril. As political analyst Stuart Rothenberg put it tonight: “The GOP establishment’s problem isn’t with the Tea Party. It’s with Republican voters.”

So, Brat is to be congratulated on his win.  He energized grassroots and it paid dividends.  But now he has to figure out how to raise money for a general election because you can bet the Democrats would love to try and make this a race.  The district is drawn to favor the GOP, but if you can't raise money to get your message out, that advantage may evaporate.

Is Mark Warner Wishing the Old Filibuster Rules Were Still in Effect?

Last Thursday, Jim Geraghty was doing his weekly appearance on NRANews' Cam and Company. During the discussion on the demise of President Obama's nomination for Surgeon General, Geraghty raised the question of whether endangered Democrats wished that Harry Reid had never imposed the "Nuclear Option" for Obama appointees.

It made me wonder if Mark Warner is one of those who might be second guessing that vote to do away with the 60 vote threshold for moving certain items through the Senate.  Warner has spent a lot of time since 2000 remaking himself from the anti-gun left of center liberal chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia to the "radical centrist" Democrat that supports the Second Amendment, balanced budgets, and bipartisanship. As Governor, he never vetoed a pro-gun bill and in 2004 signed 17 really good pieces of pro-gun legislation.  That earned him an NRA "A" rating in 2008 (but no endorsement as his opponent was also a former governor with an "A" rating that also happened to be an NRA Board member).  Warner probably was just looking for the "A" rating anyway.

Even though Warner has tried to portray himself as bipartisan, he has voted with President Obama and Harry Reid 97% of the time over the last five years.  Most recently, thanks to losing the cover of the filibuster, Warner voted to confirm Debo Adegbile, President Obama's pick to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department and an advocate for cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.  This wasn't a case of a defendant needing an attorney to defend him at his original trial.  Adegbile took up the cause of this dirt bag decades after his original conviction for the execution style killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.  Reid miscalculated and was abandoned by the Democrats who are considered endangered this year.  Warner apparently feels confident enough about reelection that even having to vote for the advocate of a cop killer did not cause him to break with Reid and the President.  We likely won't know how he would have voted on the gun ban advocate Surgeon General nominee as Reid did a better job of counting votes than he did with the Adegbile nomination and has pulled it from consideration.

We do know that last year Warner voted for the Manchin/Schumer/Toomey amendment that would have criminalized private transfers of firearms, created a national gun registry and had other negative impacts on gun owners, and he voted to confirm both Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor voted against our rights in the McDonald case. Kagan has not had the opportunity to vote on a Second Amendment case since joining the court but is not considered friendly to our rights based on her time in the Obama administration.

As Governor, Warner had to work with a Republican House and Senate.  He was able to carefully cultivate the bipartisan appearance under such circumstances.  Since joining the Senate, he has voted in a more partisan manner.  It remains to be seen if his yet to be determined GOP opponent will be able to capitalize on this more partisan record and give Warner a run for his money.

Why Yesterday's Decision in Peruta V. San Diego is Important

National Review's Jim Geraghty has a piece this morning that goes to the heart of yesterday's decision with some help from the Cato Institute's Walter Olson.  After sharing some of Olson's analysis, Geraghty notes:

We’ve had a generation or two of lawmakers – at first in both parties, then increasingly concentrated in the Democratic Party – who believed that the Second Amendment was optional. Increasingly, courts are informing them otherwise.

And it is interesting to note that the two judges on the side of gun owners are Clinton appointees.  If judges on the infamous 9th Circuit get this, how long before other circuits who have ruled against gun owners on the same issue of carrying outside the home will come around to this way of thinking? Heller figured prominently in the decision released yesterday.  California Second Amendment attorney Chuck Michel also talked about the importance of the case with Cam Edwards on NRANews' Cam and Company yesterday.

The Myth of the Independent Minded Mark Warner

Virginia Senator Mark Warner has tried to nurture the portrait of the "bi-partisan I can work with both sides to get things done" politician since he ran for governor in 2001.  He had no choice during his term as governor because the state legislature was firmly in GOP hands.  As governor,  Warner threatened to shut down state government if he did not get his way on a tax increase to deal with a budget gap.  As the end of the fiscal year approached, he convinced a handful of GOP moderates to go along with Democrats in the House (Senate GOP Leadership was made up almost entirely of (RINOS) to pass what was at the time the largest tax increase in state history.

Warner continued the "bi-partisan" posture when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008 against an underfunded former governor, Jim Gilmore.  Gilmore had ticked off the state's GOP establishment the final year of his term by standing firm on his "No Car Tax" initiative, and was further damaged when he barely escaped the nominating convention against Delegate Bob Marshall.

Now, Warner is running for a second term in the Senate.  It looked like he was going to coast to a second term.  Likely because of the way he markets himself, he regularly polls as the most popular elected official in Virginia.  His announced opposition prior to the beginning of the year were several candidates with no elected experience and likely less ability to raise money.  Then, former RNC state and GOP Chairman, and George W. Bush alum, Ed Gillespie, announced he would run.  Warner again trotted out his bipartisan talking points:

“I am asking Virginians to rehire me to keep fighting for bipartisan, common sense solutions to create jobs, get our fiscal house in order, and ensure that all Virginians have a fair shot at economic opportunity. I am proud of my record of working across party lines to put Virginia and our nation first. Whether it is protecting our veterans and military families, putting forth a bold plan to fix our debt and deficit, or fighting for jobs in rural Virginia, I am committed to working tirelessly to help all Virginians. I look forward to putting my independent, bipartisan record up against whichever candidate the Republicans nominate at their convention in June.”

Now, elected officials on both sides of the aisle show off their "bipartisan" credentials by highlighting all of the legislation they have sponsored with high profile members of the other party.  But is that the real measure of bi-partisanship?

Jim Geraghty shared this little tidbit via the National Republican Senatorial Committee in today's Morning Jolt:

Last week, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) sent out a press release with a peculiar new message:"At a time when all voters are sick of Washington partisanship, independence and willingness to put the state ahead of national party are among the most important attributes for successful candidate," they wrote.

Geraghty then shared the percentage of times some of the most vulnerable Red State Democrats have sided with the President's position.  Here is the total for Mark Warner:

Alleged independent-minded Mark Warner of Virginia? 97 percent. Heck, even Bernie Sanders of Vermont only hit 94 percent!

So,  when Mark Warner talks about how "bipartisan" he is and babbling about a "bold plan to fix our debt and deficit", maybe voters should ask him why he has sided with his party 97% of the time, including running up the largest amount of national debt of any President in history.  While you are at it, ping on on that vote for Manchin/Schumer/Toomey that would have criminalized private transfers of firearms.

Narrative Being Written On How Democrats Win on Gun Control

With just a little less than a week to go in Campaign 2013, the left is already writing the narrative on how Democrats can use the results of the Virginia election to win on gun control.  Eleanor Clift starts of with this piece in the Daily Beast.  From the story's lead-in:

From governor to attorney general and state House, Democratic candidates are campaigning on guns—and painting their opponents as extreme. This cycle, the strategy looks like a winner.

Never mind that Terry McAuliffe all but avoided the issue of gun control until two weeks ago.  But Clift believes that a victory for McAuliffe will mean a big sea change on the issue of gun control in Virginia.

The massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007 is still fresh in people’s minds, and with the recent shooting at the Navy Yard, which is geographically in Virginia’s backyard, voters are more open to hearing politicians talk about gun safety. The same Washington Post poll that has McAuliffe up by a dozen points found that 86 percent of those surveyed support background checks; just 10 percent oppose, with 4 percent undecided. On the campaign trail, McAuliffe emphasizes that he is a hunter, that he owns guns, and that supporting measures that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill does not interfere with the rights of hunters.

Clift notes that a large percentage of the public supports background checks.  But I bet that the Post did not carry the question to the next step, and ask if those people believe we should have to perform background checks on friends that we have known for 20 years or fellow gun club members that we have known for similar amounts of time, or on family members before private citizens transfer their private property.  I'd bet a completely different response would be received.  .

There is a reason that Bloomberg has targeted Northern Virginia voters in both the statewide races and House of Delegate races - because that is the only part of the Commonwealth where the NRA is not viewed as favorably as in the rest of Virginia.  So, in the end, if McAuliffe wins, it will not be because there has been any great change in the dynamics of the gun issue in Virginia.  It will be because Terry McAuliffe, spent like a drunken sailor to define Cuccinelli:

Courtesy of Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt

...and, as Jim Geraghty put it this morning in the Morning Jolt, Cuccinelli's "whistling past the graveyard" thinking because he had always been outspent, that getting clobbered by a 2-1 margin would not make a difference.

Grassroots Trumps Bloomberg's Money on Colorado

What many expected to be a split decision in the Colorado recall elections turned out to be a clean sweep last night when the final numbers came in, and the race that most thought would be the hardest to win - Senator Angela Giron's district, was the one that lost by the widest margin - 12%.

The big loser - Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $350,000 in this losing effort. NRA donated a little over $361,000 to the recalls. But the real story is that this was not started by NRA, but by what State Senator John Morse derisively referred to as an "unemployed plumber".

'Not bad for an unemployed plumber' man says in passing after news of PW library numbers. #PuebloRecall

— Nick Bonham (@NickBonham1) September 11, 2013

And Victor Head, a the plumber in Pueblo who borrowed money from his grandmother to start the recall against Senator Giron had a message for Morse:

'And I have a message for John Morse ... Who's unemployed now?' -- Victor Head, Pueblo Freedom & Rights. #PuebloRecall #COpolitics

— Nick Bonham (@NickBonham1) September 11, 2013

Virginia can take something away from last night's victory in Colorado. The victory in Colorado was started by the grassroots. NRA did not start it and only got involved when it picked up steam. The signatures for the recall petitions were collected by the grassroots, with over a 90% validity rate to boot. They were out spent by those supporting the incumbants, but they won, and won big in a district that Barack Obama carried handily last year.

This year in Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli is being out raised by Terry McAuliffe by a margin of 2-1. But Colorado proved that if you have committed grassroots, they can trump big money. For some reason, Cuccinelli his having problems firing up his base. There is still time to change that. Hat tip to John Lott.

Update:

Here is the breakdown of the pro-and anti-recall spending via the Denver Post yesterday by way of Jim Geraghty.

Pro Recall

•NRA: $360,000
(Note: updated total for the NRA $361,703 on the two recalls)

•I Am Created Equal: $56,800

•Colorado Citizens Protecting Our Constitution: $29,800

•Victor Head, Pueblo resident: $5,800

•Dianna Harris, Colorado Springs resident: $4,500

AGAINST RECALL

Total raised: $3 million

Itemized donations in Colorado: $1.5 million

Itemized donations outside of Colorado: $1.5 million

Some top donors

•Taxpayers for Responsible Democracy: $620,000

•Michael Bloomberg: $350,000

•DLCC Unincorporated Individual Acct: $300,000

•Eli Broad: $250,000

•Mainstream Colorado: $211,800

So, if my math is correct, the pro-recall grassroots was out spent 6-1 and still won a decisive victory.

Do You Need Another Reason to Support Cuccinelli?

Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt led off with "Why the Cuccinelli vs. McAuliffe Race Matters to You, Even If You Don't Live in Virginia."  You can also find the piece here on NRO's Campaign Spot.  The basic thrust is, if you believe that the GOP need only nominate a true conservative candidate instead of a "squish," to win, the Virginia campaign for Governor is your opportunity to prove it.

If Ken Cuccinelli – Mr. Conservative Record – loses against a flawed competitor like Terry McAuliffe, in a purple state like Virginia . . . and simultaneously, Governor Hug-Obama-After-a-Hurricane-and-Move-Left wins in a landslide up in New Jersey . . . the message to the rest of the Republican party will be pretty clear. What you fervently believe – conservatives win, moderate squishes lose – will be refuted in the eyes of many Republicans.

But it seems that conservatives are not engaged yet if you use Cuccinelli's fundraising as the baseline. Geraghty points to this Bloomberg News article for the numbers:

Cuccinelli, 44, had $2.7 million in cash as of the end of June, compared with $6 million for McAuliffe, 56, the former national Democratic Party chairman and fundraiser. While McAuliffe had been expected to out-raise Cuccinelli, the Republican is lagging behind where McDonnell was at this point in his 2009 race, when he had $4.9 million in cash on hand. 

It's true that Erick Erickson of Red State cranked up his fundraising efforts last week but much more it needed.  While money does not necessarily win campaigns, it's not helpful to be out gunned two to one in fundraising.  So, if you don't want to see this in Virginia after 2013:

Please give a little time to the Cuccinelli effort beginning today. And if you can afford it, give a little money too.

Will Bolling Help Put McAuliffe in the Governor's Office?

A new poll shows the race for Virginia Governor between Terry McAuliffe and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli currently tied.  When Lt. Governor Bill Bolling's name is added as an independent candidate, Bolling garners 13% support, tipping the scales in McAuliffe's favor. Bolling has said he will announce on March 14th whether he intends to run as an independent.  NRO's Jim Geraghty has a good take on the poll. Asking rather 13% is really the theshold of a credible independent candidate, Geraghty ends with:

But this may come down to what Bolling really wants to see: his own victory… or Ken Cuccinelli’s defeat.

Virginia Bellwether for Nation

For most of this election season, this blog has talked about two races - VA05 and VA09.  Those two featured the highest profile races where State Senator Robert Hurt won a bruising primary for the chance to take on endangered one term incumbent Tom Perriello.  The other race featured House of Delegates Majority Leader Morgan Griffith taking on 28 year incumbent Rick Boucher.  Just days before Griffith jumped in the race, the NRA made an unprecedented February endorsement for Boucher.  It is generally understood that Boucher sought the early endorsement because he knew that Griffith would be a tough challenger - one who has an excellent pro-rights record in the General Assembly.

But there was always the race in VA02 that was also going to be an opportunity for the Republicans to pick up a seat they had held since the late Owen Pickett retired in 2000.  That race features incumbent Glenn Nye and businessman Scott Rigell.  Rigell also won a spirited primary in June. 

Conventional wisdom held that Rigell and Hurt had a good shot to take back two long time GOP held seats because the districts are conservative (though VA02 barely went for Obama in 2008).   The 9th went big for McCain in 2008 but Boucher won with no opposition.  When he has been opposed in presidential years, Boucher would win while the district went Republican.  He even survived the last GOP wave of 1994.  But this year, he would have to defend his vote for Cap and Trade which most believe would further destroy his coal field district.

The final race that has gained notoriety is the rematch in VA11 between challenger Keith Fimian and Congressman Gerald "Gerry" Connolly.  The first indication that Connolly was in trouble was when he bucked his party and voted for congress to stay in session and deal with the expiration of the "Bush Tax Cuts."  NRA also has a field representative  working in the district to oversee activities for gun owner volunteers.  NRA has endorsed Fimian.

So, for those who are wonder just how big a night the GOP will have, here is my prediction based on Virginia races.  If Rigell (VA02) and Hurt (VA05) win, it is a good night for the GOP as they start to take back some of the seats lost over the last four years in conservative leaning districts.  As the night goes on, should Fimian (VA11) be added to the list of wins the wave has hit the shore and the predictions of 55 GOP pick-ups made by the well known prognosticators are well within reach.  Finally, if Boucher loses to Griffith (VA09), the hurricane has come ashore.

For some perspective, political analyst Charlie Cook has both the 2nd and 5th districts leaning GOP as both challengers have small leads of about 5 points.  Cook has the 11th a tossup with Connolly leading by 2 points and the 9th a tossup with Griffith up by 11 (though I don't know if the Cook's numbers are correct in the 9th as most polls have shown the numbers flipped).  Real Clear Politics lists the four the same as Cook.  The latest Survey USA poll has Griffith up by 1 point on Boucher.  Jim Geraghty has the 2nd, 5th and 11th going to the challengers and Boucher hanging on in the 9th.

Obama's Numbers Continue to Tank

Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt email this morning discusses John Fund's Wall Street Journal article entitled Obama Girl is No Where to be Found. Geraghty's daily email is a light hearted look at the morning's headlines, or at least items that would likely be of interest to conservatives. The poll numbers indicate that Obama is losing support for every component of his job and Fund could not have provided a better lead in for Geraghty:

"Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll's latest results. For the first time in the survey's history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that President Obama doesn't deserve re-election. Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008. The Quinnipiac Poll is pored over by political observers because it has a good predictive record and because its large sample size of nearly 2200 people implies a much smaller margin of error than most surveys -- around 2 percentage points."

Look at all of the things that Obama has wrought on this nation in the last 18 months (and it is quite a bit) and one can only come to the conclusion that Geraghty suggests, that the last era of totally liberal control (the early 90's) were the good ole days.

Another clip from Fund's break down of the Quinnipiac Poll:

Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, says the warning signs for Mr. Obama include the fact that voters now turn thumbs-down on him on all major aspects of his presidency. Only 39% rate him positively for his handling of the economy, only 43% on foreign policy, a mere 30% on his illegal immigration stance and only 41% like his Gulf oil spill policy. Even his pick of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court is approved by voters by only 46% to 34%.

Obama knows what he is doing. He has said he would rather accomplish his agenda and be a one term president than get re-elected, and he knew that he would likely have only two years to do it. That is why the push for Obamacare the first year. He knows that once things like Obamacare and crap and tax are enacted that repealing them will be significantly difficult. That is what makes this year's election so important.

You can subscribe to Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt here.

National Review Profile of Creigh Deeds

Jim Geraghty has a profile of Democratic Candidate for Governor Creigh Deeds today on National Review Online. He details how Deeds' rural background and his campaigning as a moderate is sometimes at odds with reality. In other words, Deeds sometimes appears to swerve away from principle when it serves his political ambitions. For instance:

More fundamentally, Deeds’s perception of what’s best for his district shifted dramatically leftward when he started preparing to run for governor. He knew that to win the Democratic primary, he would have to appeal to voters in the significantly more liberal northern suburbs. During his run for attorney general in 2005, by contrast, he won the nomination without a primary, so he could tailor his message for a bipartisan statewide audience all along. Deeds’s ads that year touted his "conservative values”: teaching abstinence before marriage and fidelity within marriage as “moral obligations and not matters of personal opinion or personal choice”; putting before the voters a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage; broadly defined Second Amendment rights; and a ban on partial-birth abortion. Now he says supporting the gay-marriage vote was “a mistake,” he opposes all limits on abortion, and he supports closing the “gun show loophole” on firearms sales, citing the Virginia Tech shootings — even though the shooter in that tragedy did not purchase his weapons at a gun show, so even if the proposed restriction had been in effect, it would not have prevented the massacre. It is unlikely that the Creigh Deeds of 2005 would recognize the Creigh Deeds of 2009, much less vote for him.

SurveyUSA released poll results yesterday showing Republican Bob McDonnell with a 15 point lead. I am a little skeptical of the poll results as this is the same poll that showed McCain beating Obama in Virginia last year. And remember, Deeds was far behind the pack in the primary before winning 50% of the vote in a three way race.

There is a long time between now and November 3rd.

Phoenix Anticipation

I am currently in the Chicago airport where I am an hour into a three hour layover before continuing on my journey to the NRA Annual Meeting. This will be a short trip as I have to get back on Saturday to attend my daughters' dance recital so I will be trying to pack an entire weekend of activities into one day.

As an estimated 50,000 people (I think it will be considerably more) converge on the City of Phoenix, there is both good news and an air of uncertainty awaiting the arrivals. As Jim Shepherd reported in yesterday's Shooting Wire, there has been some positive things come out of Washington in the past week. After an initial signal that the Obama Administration was poised to move to reinstate the Clinton Gun Ban, courtesy of the AG Eric Holder, all talk of the administration on the subject has been silenced.

Also last week, the FY2010 Obama Budget retained the Tiahrt Amendments with only minor changes to insure law enforcement gets information it needs from the data. The important point is that the language prohibiting use of the date for frivolous law suits remain. The collective screeching of the anti-rights crowd berating Obama for "breaking his promise" is proof that any talk that their was a caving to the administration by the pro-rights community is an attempt to drive a wedge through the gun community.

On Monday, the pro-rights community won another legal victory in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court. This is the second consecutive ruling from the court that is making me wonder if it is trying to reform its reputation as the most overturned circuit in the country. The case in questions was Ileto v. Glock, RSR and the ruling says that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act "requires the dismissal" of the long-running. This was another of those cases seeking damages from a manufacturer for crimes committed by a felon with a firearm.

Finally, last week the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Reform and Firearms Modernization Act In was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). This bill is similar to one that was passed by the House in the 109th Congress in 2006 and brings some much needed reform to the agency.

While all of this is good news, the anti-rights crowd aided by the "drive-by" media is still pushing gun control in the face of a strong public head wind. Poll after poll in recent weeks has shown weakening public support for stricter regulation of firearms but that has not stopped the likes of Representative Carolyn McCarthy and others who have vowed to reintroduce a bill banning so-called "assault weapons."

And that is where the uncertainty I mentioned comes in. Gun owners cannot for a minute begin to become complacent by the inaction of the Obama Administration to push an agenda that most everyone knows it favors. I am in full agreement with National Review Online's Jim Geraghty when he said last week on Cam and Company there is no way that Obama goes into the 2010 elections without at least throwing some kind of bone to the anti-rights crowd. And since he does not want it to be fresh in the memory of the (gun) voters, it is likely to happen sometime after this fall rather than in the fall of 2010.

So, there is a lot to celebrate as we arrive in Phoenix, but there is much of which we should also beware.

Gun Sales Increase Part II

I posted on this earlier this week but it continues to be news. Cam Edwards on NRANews last night led his program with it as well. The increase in gun sales as the election approaches is clearly a nationwide story. All you have to do is google "Increase in Gun Sales" and you get page after page of articles around the nation, even here in Virginia.



National Review's Jim Geraghty said on NRANews last night it is possible that if Obama wins and he has increased majorities in both houses of Congress as expected, that Obama will try to strike while the "iron is hot" and push through things like a renewal of the Clinton gun ban. Geraghty believes it will be hard for even normally pro-gun Democrats (i.e. like a Heath Shuler) to resist the arm twisting from a president in the same party in the first 100 days.