Landrieu Says The South is Racist and Sexist

How do we know that Democrats are facing some troubling poll numbers as early voting in many states comes to a close before Tuesday's general election?  The divisive political rhetoric is in full throat with everyone from President Obama to Senate candidates like incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu in Louisiana.  

Here is what Landrieu told NBC's Chuck Todd when she was asked why President Obama would not be particularly well received in Louisiana to campaign for her re-election:

“I’ll be very, very honest with you. The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans,” the senator told Todd. “It’s been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader.”Landrieu also said that Louisiana was a tough place for women as well. “It’s not always been a good place for women to present ourselves,” she added. “It’s more of a conservative place.”

She started out with the usual race baiting and then moved into claims of sexism.  Perhaps she forgot that the last Governor before the current one was a woman.  Yeah, well, we'd all like to forget her and her utter incompetence in handling Hurricane Katrina.

When the push back on this insipidness began from the Louisiana Republicans, Landrieu doubled down as she offered her explanation:

In a statement released Friday evening, Landrieu defended herself against people trying to “twist” her comments. After clarifying that the president’s energy policies are the “main reason” for his unpopularity in Louisiana, the senator addressed the backlash over her race comment.“[T]he South has not always been the friendliest or easiest place for African-Americans to advance, and it’s been a difficult place for women to be recognized as the leaders we are,” Landrieu said, echoing her initial statement. “Everyone knows this is the truth, and I will continue to speak the truth even as some would twist my words seeking political advantage.”

Mary Landrieu has been in elected office since 1980.  She has the advantage of being a part of a political family in Louisiana.  She knows exactly what she is doing when she says such remarks to the media.  

The Democrats have nothing of note to run on for re-election and they face another shellacking this mid-term, just as the last one.  It's desperate times for them.

The War on Women Game

Carly Fiorina has a plan to combat the War on Women game played by Democrats pandering to women and Independents voters.  As we know, women now make up the majority of voters.  Elections are won by appealing to the majority of Independent voters, as well as getting out your own party's voters with a solid, well implemented ground game for early voting and on election day.

Part of the problem with the GOP’s current strategy (or lack thereof) to combat the Left’s “war on women” narrative is that there’s too much talk and not enough action and accountability.Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a former Senate candidate, has a plan she says is based on results instead of speeches and lectures.“As a business person, results matter to me,” Fiorina said when she spoke to the Washington Examiner. “So words are nice, but in the end words don’t change that much.”Fiorina came up with the idea for her plan, the Unlocking Potential Project, after she gave a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2014. In the speech she took on the “war on women” narrative aggressively, noting that women make up 54 percent of voters.

Women are not single issue voters.

“We’re not some special interest group and please don’t insult us by saying all we care about is reproductive rights, whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice,” Fiorina said. “I happen to be pro-life. But there’s more to women than that debate, there’s more to women than the debate about birth control.”

Fiorina is right.  It is insulting to assume that women solely are concerned with one issue or another. The War on Women meme began when all else failed for Democrats on the social issues.  You may remember that during the re-election of President George W Bush, it was all about national security and the threats of terrorism on our shores.  Women voters swung over to him in the aftermath of 9/11/01 - they were called "security moms".  Before that women were referred to as "soccer moms" as it was presumed that women cared most about family issues and children, therefore more women voted for Democrats. To further exploit that line of thinking, the War on Women emerged over recent arguments about the so-called rights of women to tax payer funded birth control.  Obamacare has provisions for federally funded birth control.  Free birth control is assumed to be a human right now, according to Democrats.  It's all rather silly when one looks at it from a realistic approach - most standard prescriptions for basic birth control pills cost about $7.00 per month.  The issue clearly isn't about birth control.  It is about the larger issue of employer paid health care insurance.  Thus, the legal wrangling and debates.

And, over the battle of equal pay for men and women, Democrats like to say that those mean Republicans don't want women to make as much money as men in the work place.  Paid partisans like to give the press tantalizing quotes to make headlines and sometimes that come back in a bad way.

Maybe you remember this one:

"Scott Walker is giving women the back of his hand"  said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC Chair. Walker is the Republican governor of Wisconsin running for re-election. She said this as the issue of domestic violence was all over the air waves and newspapers due to stories relating to that issue and professional athletes.  She later had to apologize for her crude remark.

We Republicans have our own communications problems. We also make the mistake that voters won't take such nonsense seriously.  We know better so we assume that everyone knows better.  Unfortunately, that is not the case with most of today's voters. We can fix that and allow successful Republican businesswomen to lead the way.  Carly Fiorina has taken the right first step.  Republican women have to step up and state that Democrats don't speak for us. She has several ads out in states that can be in the GOP win column to take back control of the U.S. Senate.  You can see ads she has done for Iowa, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, for example, HERE.  Targeting specific races is how she is reaching voters.

Republican Women lead the way.

Which Cable Network Airs More Republican Campaign Ads?

This is a chart found online which shows the cable networks and the percentages of money spent from both Republican and Democrat campaigns.  You may notice the obvious - the majority of Republican ad money is spent on networks believed to fit into the stereotype that the party is traditionally older, whiter and not much for diversity.  

It's time to switch out that kind of thinking and reach outside of the normal comfort zones.  Preaching to the choir doesn't increase the number of voters in the Republican column.  Even on the Food Network the difference is almost 50% - 38.57% GOP and 61.43 Democrat.  What's up with that?  I know this chart doesn't represent the majority of my television viewing and I surely can't be alone in that.  

Surely it is worth more investment in reaching Independent voters needed to win elections.  

You may think that FOX and MSNBC would be the most partisan when it comes to running political ads.  This proves to be wrong, in this survey.  

As cable networks take up a bigger percentage of viewer eyeballs, campaigns are spending more on those networks than ever before. A new study by Echelon Insights, a Republican firm that specializes in digital and advertising strategy, found that Republican campaigns tend to buy cable spots on channels aimed at men, while Democrats are buying more spots on channels that draw more women and young viewers.It’s little surprise that the overwhelming number of political advertisements on Fox News come from Republicans: GOP candidates accounted for 84 percent of Fox’s ads. A similar number, 85 percent, of ads on MSNBC come from Democrats.But the news networks are only the second-most partisan channels. Echelon found that 93 percent of political ads on the Golf Channel are paid for by Republican candidates and outside groups. And 94 percent of the political spots on the E! Network are sponsored by Democrats and their allies, making it the bluest network in America.

Attention shifts a bit, as you would expect, from primary season into the general election time frame.

Because of Fox News’ overwhelmingly Republican viewership, its relative value to political campaigns changes over time. Echelon’s analysis shows Republicans advertised most heavily on Fox News, almost to the exclusion of other channels, between February and late March, and again in late June — both times when expensive primary battles made access to conservative eyeballs essential to success.After primaries, Republican cable dollars expanded across many other networks. Similarly, Democrats tended to gravitate towards MSNBC earlier in the year, when primary voters were about to cast their ballots. 

By taking a look at the results, as itemized in three separate charts in this piece linked above, the Golf Channel used most by Republicans is also the most expensive cable channel for advertising.  

Wendy Davis Attack on Greg Abbott Brings Immediate Bi-Partisan Criticism

The backlash from the latest political ad released by the Wendy Davis for Governor campaign has been quite an amazing situation to watch, to say the least.  I have yet to see anyone defend that ad except for Wendy Davis herself and her campaign communications director, Zac Petkanas. 

This is where I remind you that before coming to the Wendy Davis campaign, Zac Petkanas was the communications director for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).  Enough said.

Liberals and conservatives alike are weighing in with disgust and disbelief with the ad - it is literally attacking a candidate who is in a wheelchair with a wheelchair.  Time Magazine even called an article about it : "Wendy Davis Wins the Prize for Most Ill-Advised Political Ad of 2014". It called the ad the nastiest point of the campaign season:

The 2014 campaign season reached its nastiest point yet Friday, with a campaign ad by Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis that plays off the disability of her opponent Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, while calling him a hypocrite in the same breath.

With all the ugly stuff out there during this mid term election season, with the Democrats running scared about losing control of the U.S. Senate, running THE nastiest ad is saying something. 

Here is the ad:

Energy Policy and Poverty - At the Crossroads

Recently, I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Judith Curry speak at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's first annual At the Crossroads Energy and Climate Policy Summit in Houston.  Dr. Curry has an op-ed in Friday's Wall Street Journal. Some of her credentials are at the bottom of the article: Ms. Curry, a professor and former chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the president of Climate Forecast Applications Network. She points out that the numbers do not add up in the arguments in the climate change alarmists' rhetoric.

Here is a good introduction to the information now available from that summit on the TPPF website:



It is not an exaggeration to call most of the policy demands and emotional rhetoric coming from the wealthy and unaffected simply snake oil.  Wealthy liberals like Al Gore, formerly career politicians, jumped on this bandwagon in the early stages not out of some kind of need to save the world but out of pure greed.  Many have become even more wealthy from actions taken that have now been proven contrary to not only common sense but also to basic statistics. 

Bad policy decisions - especially many of the arbitrary mandates promoted by policy makers - are literally killing poor people.  How's that for alarmist reaction?  By making electricity more expensive in hopes of discouraging use of power, the poor suffer.  Think of African villages with no power source.  Without a cheap source of energy - namely electricity - there is common place shortened life spans and no hope for a better future.  

Electricity lifts people out of poverty.  It gets no simpler than that. 

You can listen to Dr. Curry's presentation to the Summit HERE. 

Other presentations are available now on the website, too.  It is worth your time to get the real facts on the subject.

Weekly Republican Address: NY-21 Candidate Elise Stefanik

"It's NOT a war on women. It's a war FOR women", said Texas Federation of Republican Women President Jody Rushton recently.  I see the Speaker of the House, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, agrees with this statement. He asked Elise Stefanik to deliver the Republican weekly response to President Obama's weekly address.

She's been called the new "poster candidate" of the Republican Party, and this weekend New York congressional candidate Elise Stefanik was selected by House Speaker John Boehner to deliver the GOP's weekly address."One month from today, all Americans face a clear choice: stick with the status quo of more government, more spending, and higher taxes or choose a new direction of new ideas to unleash job creation and economic growth," she said.

At 30 years old, she will also be the youngest member of Congress on Election Day.