SSP Daily Digest: 8/4 (Morning Edition)

  • FL-Sen: Is Marco Rubio off the supply-side reservation? He admitted in a recent campaign stop that “tax cuts don’t pay for themselves,” which seems like high-grade Republican apostasy. I look forward to his undoubtedly forthcoming apology.
  • Meanwhile, more interestingly, Jeff Greene is getting in some hot water for his maritime adventures. At a debate on Sunday, Greene claimed he had visited Cuba in 2007 – a very touchy subject in South Florida, of course – as part of a Jewish humanitarian mission. Oops, says a campaign spokesbot – “What he meant to say was that in 2007, he went on the boat from Honduras to the Bahamas, and en route the boat had a hydraulic problem” and made a pit-stop in Cuba. Yuh huh – cuz I always mix up yachting hijinks with charity tours with my rabbi. But wait, there’s more! A former Greene deckhand (and there are quite a few who despise their old boss) says the candidate is lying, and that “It was their total intention to go to Cuba. We never went to Honduras, not even close. I figure it was the glamour of wanting to go to a banned country.” Good luck explaining this one away.

  • CA-Gov: Props to Jonathan Martin at Politico for making sure this one didn’t get flushed down the oubliette: Ins. Co. Steve Poizner still has not endorsed Meg Whitman, who vanquished him in the GOP primary.
  • NM-Gov: A new front in the New Mexico governor’s race: Dem Diane Denish says she supports a domestic partnership law, which would give same-sex couples many of the same rights as heterosexual married couples. Predictably, Republican Susana Martinez is opposed. Domestic partnership bills have come up regularly in the state legislature but have always foundered. Of course, this issue may or may not get a lot of traction in a year like this.
  • TN-09: Willie Herenton is claiming that early voting patterns show him well on the way to a 3-to-1 victory over Rep. Steve Cohen. You can supply the laughter.
  • NY-24: Rep. Mike Arcuri, spurned by both the Independence and Working Families Parties, is still trying to get on a second ballot line – one of his own creation. His campaign is petitioning to create an “NY Moderates” party.
  • IN-02: Dem Rep. Joe Donnelly is up with a pair of ads attacking “Wacky” Jackie Walorsky for her support of Wall Street and for “free trade” deals with Mexico and China. Of course, NWOTSOTB.
  • FL-22: This just shows you how stark raving insane Allen West is. While serving in Iraq in 2003, he claims he got wind of a plot… against himself. Rather than recuse himself from the investigation, he ordered his subordinates to beat a detainee, and then threatened the man with summary execution – going so far as to fire a gun over his head. You can find the full story here, but the reason why this is coming up is that West just released an absurdly self-serving video where he portrays himself as some kind of heroic Jack Bauer – but the reality is that West only avoided criminal charges by tendering his resignation to the Army.
  • PA-07: Look, if I were Pat Meehan, I’d howl about this, too – but the fact is, even if Dem Bryan Lentz’s campaign did help teabagger Jim Schneller qualify for the ballot, that’s just fucking politics. (The Lentz camp isn’t answering any questions, but a lot of Schneller’s petitions were circulated by Lentz supporters.) And what’s more, as Alex Roarty at PoliticsPA points out, Schneller is very likely to stay on the ballot, which will undoubtedly help Lentz – and all the whining in the world won’t change that.
  • WI-07: A shadowy right-wing 527 (are any of them not shadowy?) with the oddly dystopian name of “the New Prosperity Foundation” has a new TV ad trying to stereotype Dem Julie Lassa as a “big-spending politician.” Of course, NWOTSOTB.
  • Fundraising: Aaron Blake and the staff at the Fix have truly done heroic work: They’ve compiled gubernatorial fundraising numbers, an epically daunting task given that you need to navigate a million different state SoS websites, with different interfaces, reporting requirements, and reporting periods. Still, somehow, they managed to do so, and they have the most recent fundraising nums for all the major gube races around the nation – just click on the “Governors Races” tab.
  • 105 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 8/4 (Morning Edition)”

    1. You’ll find it embedded here: http://voices.washingtonpost.c

      It’s much better than her last ads, but it’s rather hard to tie the falling house prices to Harry Reid.  That was the inevitable result of the bubble bursting, which was caused by runaway greed at all levels.  I don’t think it’ll do much though.  It may persuaded some undecideds, but I don’t know.  

      Paging DCCyclone! 😉

      P.S. Allen West is a frightful person with no respect for human rights.  He’s essentially in the same vein as Dick Cheney.

    2. That’s bad news for Arcuri.  Both WFP and Independence Party’s are actual parties that have voters that will vote that line.  I won’t say they are straight party-line voters since obviously they are not.  Also seeing one candidates name 3 times on a ballot vs. another candidate only being there once could psychologically sway the uninformed voter. (Hence Arcuri’sa ttempt to “create” a NY Moderates Party)

      This is actually really bad news.  It will be interesting tos ee if Arcuri (D) beats Hanna (R), but Hanna (WFP) and Hanna (I) might carry him over the top.

    3. well, I’m now considering sending money to Denish. It’s ridiculous how Republicans think they can get away with opposing a compromise in a swing state.

    4. I’m never a fan of 2 wrongs making a right, but didn’t Republicans fund the Green Party signature drive in texas this year?  And wasn’t it semi-illegal?

      If Lentz’ camp turns out to have helped the 3rd party but done nothing illegal, its really much ado about nothing.  How its spun in the media is another issue altogether, and soemthing we’ll all have to watch.

    5. Really no huge disappointments there when you think about it.  

      PA looks terrible but given PA was likely to elect a Republican given there “every 8 years let’s switch” mentality to governor’s parties, I’m not too worried.  Onorato just needs to keep it close so he doesn’t sink Sestak, which is a real concern of mine.

    6. By election day, I think he could start crowding out Crist. Assuming Rubio has proven his bonafides ala W 2000, it should not cost him among the wingnut crowd, especially in light of Greene’s assumed travails to Cuba.

    7. OH-SEN

      Protman (R) 44%

      Fisher (D) 40%

      FL-GOV

      McCollum (R) 27%

      Sink (D) 31%

      Chiles (I) 20%

      Scott (R) 35%

      Sink (D) 31%

      Chiles (I) 16%

      These are not the dominating results you usually get out of him. In fact, his numbers have seemed more grounded to me for the last month or so. Still R shift, but not by a great margin. Helps there is polling out there now that is recent enough to compare RR against.

    8. since March 23rd, there have been 11 polls conducted on the Ohio Senate race, 5 of which have been conducted by Rassmussen.  Rob Portman has led in 4 of the 5 Rassmussen polls, while Fisher is 6 for 6 in the polls conducted by other organizations.  

    9. but I don’t think anyone should use phrase “off the reservation” or anything similar. I’m pretty sure it’s offensive to some Native Americans. Granted, there’s debate over this terminology, but I’d just stay away.

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