links for 2010-11-08

Basically, .. After talking a good game about fiscal conservatism for months, the GOP is going to take its cues in the Senate from a guy who basically doesn't give that much of a crap, and very likely empower a guy in the House whose top priorities have previously included money pit swimming pools into which he likes to dump massive, great, heaping piles of your hard-earned cash because, hey, he's in charge here, dammit.

I don't like it; you don't like it. Let's hope that by some miracle, folks calling the shots up on the Hill might possibly be paying attention to what everyone from the Tea Partiers to me, your local candy-ass RINO, thinks: Quit with the earmarks, and let's not just empower the people who pursued them with zeal last time the GOP was in charge, because well screw it, we won… kind of…

Please… for the love of God… the GOP should be capable of getting some basic stuff right for at least a couple months before we descend into the usual silliness, shouldn't we?

Less than an hour after the period began for filing bills for consideration in the 2011 Legislative session, State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball), a leader of the newly muscular conservatives in the Legislature, filed an 'Arizona style' measure that would crack down on illegal immigration, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Riddle says her measure is a response to what she says is the escalating violence caused by Mexican and Latin American gangs in Texas.

"It is absolutely out of control with the gang related crime, which is going through the roof, so, yes, we are addressing this, and quite frankly, I am not worried about political correctness," Riddle told 1200 WOAI news.
+++++++
About damn time.

More Utahns want Sen. Orrin Hatch replaced than want to see him re-elected to another six-year term, according to a Salt Lake Tribune poll of likely voters conducted the week before Tuesday’s vote.

The survey noted that Hatch isn’t up for re-election until 2012, but asked if the vote were held today, would voters back him or someone else? Forty percent of likely voters would give him a seventh term, while 48 percent say they were inclined to favor another candidate. Twelve percent remained unsure. The poll, conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

Hatch — who knows he’s a potential target by tea party Republicans on the right and someone like Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson on the left — is confident past supporters will return to the fold.
++++++
A seventh term?

Orrin Hatch should retire.

The recession and housing bust have accomplished what no other economic slump has managed to in the past century: end Nevada's population-growth streak.

The USA's fastest-growing state for 19 consecutive years until 2006 will see its population drop an estimated 70,000 or 2.6% this year to 2.64 million, Nevada's state demographer predicts. It would be the largest annual drop for a state since thousands of Louisiana residents were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, slicing that state's population 5.7% to 4.2 million in 2006.
+++++++
Folks are just leaving – can you blame them?

An eerily prescient report by CQ-Roll Call prior to the election predicted that the RNC's GOTV decision would cost the party several seats:

"We will lose races because of this," said one senior Senate GOP aide, referring to the Republican National Committees inability to coordinate the traditional 72-hour GOTV effort for House and Senate races. Though its name implies a three-day deployment, in past years Capitol Hill staffers left as soon as Congress adjourned in order to help in tight races.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that unfit candidates caused the GOP to forfeit several Senate seats, it appears that a party-wide failure to fund and implement previously successful GOTV efforts was the true cause of the Republican party's inability to capture a larger share of the U.S. Senate.
++++++
And, in California, I never did see Meg Whitman's supposed superior ground operation.