Following up on last night’s post on Rudy’s plain to slash the federal workforce down to about two-thirds of its current size, I find that Rudy apparently first rolled this plan out at the beginning of the summer. And it’s already generated a lively discussion among those who actually follow the federal workforce as an issue full time. Here’s one example here and another here.
One basic point — not a surprising one — is that if you approach this issue only as a matter of cutting federal workers rather than the less politically popular one of announcing which services you plan to cut, you quickly run into trouble. Either you farm the work out to crony contractors or you do what Rudy himself did as mayor when he had a similar job attrition plan. He quickly realized that cutting the number of city workers just wasn’t consistent with improving the quality and reliability of city services. So he quickly bagged the whole idea.
Supporter asks McCain about Hillary, “How do we beat the bitch?”
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), under investigation for his Abramoff connections, turns to a former Abramoff protege for fundraising help.
I should probably preface this post by conceding that I was quite sure that Rudy’s pro-choice, pro-modernity stance on a number of key social issues would make his run for the Republican nomination a non-starter. I’m still fairly confident I’ll be vindicated on that one in the final analysis. But clearly my political antennae leave something to be desired on the Rudy front. That said, can Rudy really win the nomination after losing Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina? One, two, three, in that order?
As far back as I can remember, there’s always been a candidate who tries something like this, tried to hang back on the low-count early primaries and then break out nationwide on that year’s “Super Tuesday”. Often it was a candidate trying to wait until a slew of Southern primaries and try to break out there. But this has basically never worked. The catalytic effect of victories in the early states almost always creates unstoppable momentum and an aura of victory for whichever candidate wins Iowa, New Hampshire or both. For the Republicans at least the list definitely also includes South Carolina.
There’s an added factor here because it seems likely that Mitt Romney will win Iowa and New Hampshire and at least has a decent shot of taking South Carolina too.
Does Romney really get six weeks of solid wins in the early primary states and then get stiff-armed by Rudy on February 5th?
Late Update: Here’s an AP article relaying Rudy’s argument for why this will work for him when it hasn’t worked for anyone in the past. The one significant factor he has in his favor is that the primary season is much more compressed. Still, history is very much against him.
Edwards is asked again about whether he’ll support Hillary if she wins nomination.
Late Update: Watch the video. Is that a hedge?
There’s a more complete version of that video of McCain responding to a supporter’s query of “How do we beat the bitch?” After a bit of rueful chuckling, he says, “But that’s an excellent question.”
In our coverage of the US Attorney Purge story a major issue looming in the background was the Republican party’s effort to reduce minority voting. And a key way of doing that was to get states to pass (and the gutted Voting section at DOJ to approve) so-called voter ID laws to crack down on vote fraud for which there was in fact no evidence.
The truth is that if you’re an educated and reasonably well-off person who has time free to read about politics during the day at TPM you very likely have one or more pieces of ID, in all likelihood a drivers’ license. But among minorities, low-income voters, the young and the old that’s often not the case. And those who don’t have acceptable voter IDs are disproportionately Democrats.
Remember, the point of voter ID laws is not to eliminate fraud it is to eliminate Democratic voters. So if your voter ID law disenfranchises 10% of voters and 80% of those are Democrats you’ve just handed yourself several percentage points that can win you a bunch of close elections — it’s certainly easier than winning them the old fashioned way.
In any case, I return to this topic because one of these laws has been enacted in Indiana. And the Brennan Center and others have filed an amicus brief with a new quantitative study which finally puts real numbers on how many people will effectively lose their right to vote.
I’m quoting here from the press release on some of the study’s key findings ….
# 21.8% of black Indiana voters do not have access to a valid photo ID (compared to 15.8% of white Indiana voters – a 6 point gap).
# When non-registered eligible voter responses are included – the gap widens. 28.3% of eligible black voters in the State of Indiana to not have valid photo ID (compared to 16.8% of eligible voting age white Indiana residents – a gap of 11.5 percent).
# The study found what it termed “a curvilinear pattern (similar to an upside down U-curve)” in the relationship between age and access to valid ID – younger voters and older voters were both less likely to have valid ID compared to voters in the middle categories. 22% of voters 18-34 did not have ID, nor did 19.4% over the age of 70. (compared to 16.2% of Indiana voters age 35-54 without valid ID and 14.1% for 55-69 year olds).
# 21% of Indiana registered voters with only a high school diploma did not have valid ID (compared to 11.5% of Indiana voters who have completed college – a gap of 9.5%).
# Those with valid ID are much more likely to be Republicans than those who do not have valid ID. Among registered voters with proper ID, 41.6% are registered Republicans, 32.5% are Democrats.
The study puts in a very stark relief what the Republican effort to keep minority and low-income voters from the polls is really about. And the Supreme Court will soon sign off on whether this is permitted — a decision that will have a huge effect on voting rights in this country for years to come. Please take a moment to check out the press release and find out more.
The DOJ’s internal investigation into warrantless wiretapping–an investigation once blocked when the White House refused to authorize security clearances for the investigators from the Office of Professional Responsibility–has been restarted.
I guess we can count on McCain’s response to the “How do we beat the bitch?” question to rally the wingnuts.