On Bucks County

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20100923_In_Bucks_County__a_bitter_poll_for_Murphy_to_swallow.html

Here's why this is interesting: much like the state of Virginia to its near south, Bucks County, PA, is one of the New Democratic Party's prized scalps. It's an affluent, moderate, traditionally Republican suburb full of the sort of squishy, self-involved centrists that both parties unfortunately need to win elections. Bucks County went mildly but measurably for Obama in 2008 and was often cited along with Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, you know the rest, as evidence of the (ta daaaa!) "New Electoral Map" in the Obama Era.

Well, so much for that. Two years later, Bucks County is going to break harder for a Republican milquetoast than it did for the Messiah. It's still a center-right country, folks. And by several metrics, it's moving towards conservatism, not away from it.

Been off for two weeks...

I was busy getting married. So I'm just going to litter the blog with stuff I find interesting...

• The PA Governor's race is over. Tom Corbett is your new governor. I like Mr. Corbett, although something about his most recent ad leaves me cold. I'm glad that he's pledging to resist all of these one-time pet projects; it'll be a soothing economic salve after eight years of Governor Graft. But it's not those spits and farts of money that are standing in between Pennsylvania and prosperity. Does Tom Corbett have the stones to walk the Chris Christie path? Will he support the politically dangerous structural reforms that will finally draw us out of our union-era stupor? His "running mate," Jim Cawley, has come out in support of Right-to-Work law. Corbett probably won't take a stand during the next month because, let's face it, he would have to either piss off moderates or call Dan Onorato a macaca in order make this a race. But will he put it on the agenda once he's governor? (For the record, Onorato is more than a little simian-looking.)
• At a fundraiser, Joe Sestak sold tickets to an appearance by Obama, still the president, for tickets as low as $50. He sold about a thousand. At the same time, Pat Toomey held an apropos-of-nothing internet fundraising drive. He raised $50,000. That race isn't over, but it's starting to look like a Humvee moments before it collides with Mini Cooper.
• Hines Ward has been named to Obama's advisory commission on Asians and Pacific Islanders. (Your first assignment: nuclear disarmament of North Korea.) But why Hines Ward and not Troy Polamalu? Hines is definitely America's preeminent Afro-Asian-American, but isn't Troy America's #1 Polynesian? And the two of them together could take on the whole damn Red Army.
• Western PA will host two bellweathers on Election Night. If Keith Rothfus beats Jason Altmire--which I think is very possible despite the national media's inattention to the race--it's going to be a HUGE night. If Mike Kelly can't beat Kathy Dahlkemper, prepare for disappointment.

The Naked Ideologue

The economy continues to languish in a stupor of slow growth and low employment. Even the majority of Keynesian economists agree that the stimulus has not stimulated. The national mood has shifted so hard against the Democrats that non-partisan pollsters are predicting a house swing of 40-50 seats, while conservatives eye a gain in the 60s or 70s. The progressive brand is so damaged that orthodox liberals like Joe Sestak are running as independents and Blue Dogs are running as conservatives. Obama's Democratic minions are begging the administration to tack toward the center and beat them a path back to the electorate. So, with less than two months until the election, what's Barak Obama's game-changer?

$50 Billion in spending on "infrastructure." Seriously.

I've spent the past few weeks wondering how Obama would react to the Paradigm Correction of 2010--because, really, all this fun is going to be for naught if he recalibrates his agenda just enough to win reelection in 2012. That will not happen.  What I've learned, or rather, what was confirmed for me this weekend, is that Obama is as deeply enraptured an ideologue as we fear he was. He has no interest in presiding over a center-right country. He's going to spend his time in office pulling America as far to the left as he can, and political failure will not stop him.

Making Fun of Al Gore is Always Relevant on Any Blog

He he he.

What's more amusing, there's an environmental school named after (Pittsburgh's own) Rachel Carson and Al Gore--two people who have absolutely no training or demonstrated proficiency in environmental science. The wheels are coming off, my friends.

Fifteen Points

I read somewhere that Onorato's camp denigrated Tom Corbett's new ad as "predictable." Uh, yeah, well, he's up by fifteen freaking points! What point is there in being anything but predictable when you're up by fifteen points, and you're opponent seems to be stuck in the sign-making, slogan-writing phase of their campaign? Do you call a flea-flicker when you're up by three touchdowns?

Big Oil slaps back at the Government Pimp

Rendell's mission to be alienate everyone in PA continues.

Paradoxically, I think Ed Rendell would have been a fabulous businessman. I say this because he is so innately, reflexively acquisitive. From gambling to driving to Marcellus Shale, he has a keen eye for identifying captive consumers and bleeding their money. Such a talent is, if not the engine of capitalism, at least its transmission. The uniquely creative conceive the products that could change the world, but they are rarely the ones who figure out how to turn it into money. (For instance, the next thing Bill Gates invents will be the first.) Rendell is of the second sort; I imagine that as a child he squeezed blandest lemonade in Philadelphia but always set his stand up at the highest-traffic corner.

But that's the catch, and it's the point that the so-called "moderate Democrats" can't seem to grasp. Government is not a business. When business seeks to grow, expand or conquer new markets, it only succeeds by the consent of the populus, and so the populus benefits. When goverment seeks the same ends, it does so conscriptively, and the populus is deprived.

Moderate Dems earn their moderate cred by speaking the shibboleths of the free market. When they propose a grand government project, they don't speak of sentimental egalitarianism or elite aesthetics. Instead they advertise to us the lush revenues that the program will generate. Along the same lines, Rendell-style politicians tend to favor consumption taxes, and they justify them with the defense that, hey, if you don't want to pay it, don't buy into the program. I will concede that taxes levied upon consumption are incrementally pro-market than those levied upon wealth; the problem, though, is that government is only entrusted with the performance of irreducible tasks. If a state raises prices on something under its power, the consumer has no other choices (e.g. the Turnpike). Consumption taxes are consequently not only ill-advised but often immoral--or, in the case of Rendell's oil tax, just plain illegal.

The natural end of this brand of governance has just manifested itself in Pennsylvania. We are America's newest codependents to the demon of state-sanctioned gaming. Once you justify reckless government initiatives based on some accountants conjecture about the resulting revenue, habits that once appeared as vices begin to look like "emerging markets." I selected the term Government Pimp deliberately, and I mean it. If tomorrow Pennsylvanians stopped drinking, smoking and gambling, Harrisburg couldn't pay its electrical bill. Meanwhile, these taxes continue to attract less money than we were promised while politicians incur more debt than they projected. Is it so outlandish to picture Pennsylvania, a generation or two in the future, legalizing prostitution and several drugs on the theory that the tax revenue will finally allow us to pay our pensions?

And hey, if you don't want to pay it, don't buy the product.

Onorato's General Incompetence Making National News

It's not just for Pittsburgh Republicans anymore:

http://www.nationalreview.com/battle10/state/Pa.

Hat tip to Myself, since I was the one who sent the link to National Review.