Miscellaneous

Tyler Lindholm is a youthful freshman in the Wyoming House, and he just made me feel a lot better.  Sen. Jeff Wasserburger told me yesterday that there was a big problem in legislative drafting, and we might have trouble getting our bill written in official form.  And he says he’s so busy with his work on Appropriations that he can’t worry about it.

So I’m thinking, Great, we get Kasich to Cheyenne and we’ve got no bill for him to support.  I emailed Tyler, he called, and it turns out we shouldn’t have any problem at all.  What a relief.

In every state you’ve got to have one person you can count on, someone who will keep you advised of the situation on the ground.  I’ll be counting on Tyler in Wyoming.

I emailed Madrid and Lynch in Kasich’s office and made a couple suggestions.  Like have the Gov. write an op-ed for the WSJ, extolling the BBA and explaining his campaign on its behalf.  And giving a speech to the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce when he’s there in January.  These are pretty basic, fundamental things, which probably would have occurred to them anyway.  I hope they don’t resent my making suggestions.  I’d like to work closely with these guys.  The Task Force and Kasich’s staff have a lot to offer each other.

It’s like they’re the Prussians at Waterloo.  Just in time.

We’ve got Kasich, and I’m betting he brings Coburn aboard.  My son Darren tells me there’s a Law of Threes.  You want three.  Not two.  Not four.  Three.

I think we can get Sarah Palin as our third big hitter.  She may not be much of a factor nationally anymore, but in parts of the country, like, say, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Utah  — you get the picture  — she’s still very popular.  And she’s popular with the sort of people we need to bring around  — Eagle Forum types.

I’ve never met her, talked to her, or seen her in person.  But when she was starting out in Wasilla politics, she had a mentor of sorts in State Senator Rick Halford, my closest ally in the legislature.  Rick and I were pretty tight.  He wanted to be Governor, which I wasn’t interested in.  I wanted to be a United States Senator, which he wasn’t interested in.  Neither of us had any money, and weren’t going to be able to raise much, either.  The oil companies wouldn’t do anything for either one of us in a Republican primary.  To get the oil boys behind you, you had to give them everything they wanted.  90% wasn’t good enough.  My strategy was to be the most conservative Republican in the field.  Nobody would get to the right of me, unless they were crazy.  Rick had a similar strategy.

Palin was in his district, and he kind of took her under his wing.  I remember him telling me I should keep an eye on her  — she was one to watch.  I left Alaska in 2001, before she made her splash.  I’m sure Rick gave her a lot of good advice when she decided to take on incumbent Republican Frank Murkowski in the 2006 gubernatorial primary.

I’d like to get Palin to Boise on Jan. 23 for a rally with Kasich and Gov. Butch Otter.  She’s a native Idahoan, and went to college there.  If she’s got juice anywhere, it’s Idaho.

She was pretty active in the last election.  She had an impact in some races.  If she wants to do something politically in 2015, we’re a perfect fit.  We know she’s with us.  When Andy Biggs killed our bill in Arizona she got on Facebook and tore him a new one.

I’ll get ahold of Rick and ask him to get me in touch with her.  When she was starting out I was still a player in Alaska politics.  Wasilla is 30 miles from Anchorage as the crow flies, and there’s no doubt she read my columns and listened to me on the radio.  She’ll give me a listen.

When Rick made his run for Governor in ’98 he asked me to run his campaign.  I might have been able to get him elected.  I was pretty good.  But I turned him down, and he lost.  I thought of myself as a candidate type, not somebody else’s campaign guy.  And, to be blunt, Rick wasn’t much into gratitude.  I should have done it, anyway.

He would have been a hell of a Governor.

Merle Madrid and Jim Lynch of Kasich’s office have us penciled in for 1-21 through 1-23.  Kasich’s apparently tight with Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, and wants the junket to wind up there on Friday.  Ideally we’d have Kasich start off in Pierre on Wednesday the 21st, then go to Cheyenne for the evening.  On Thursday he’d do Salt Lake, then to Helena for the evening, followed by Boise on Friday.  Who knows what the final itinerary will be, but if we can get him in these five states it would be awesome.  It sure seems like he’s raring to go.

Fruth brought up Oklahoma, where Birchers are born, as a state to concentrate on.  This allowed us to seg into Sen. Coburn, and what he could do for the cause.  We asked them to see if the Gov would call Coburn, so that they can coordinate with one another.  I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut that they were tight back in the 90’s, when Kasich was Budget Chair.  Coburn was in the House from ’94 to 2000, I believe.  He’d promised to serve only three terms, and, unlike most who make such a pledge, kept his word.  Unless there’s some personality problem between them (Coburn’s a little prickly) it makes sense that they were allies in the war against the deficit.

I’m betting Kasich brings Coburn aboard with the Task Force, something we’ve wanted for months.  Watching Kasich in Phoenix showed me he’s one hell of an effective advocate.  I don’t know about Coburn, but the man has a presence, and stature.  He’s retired as of Jan. 3, so as long as his health holds up he should be able to hit all our targets.  Like Kasich, he’s a golf nut, so getting him to Arizona and South Carolina should be no problem.

it’s been a good week.  The wind blows stronger.

There are waves, and winds, and tides.  Waves are a one off.  But a strong and steady wind can drive a ship a thousand miles.

A tide, now, is a different thing.  It carries all before it.  It changes landscapes.  The tide has ebbed against freedom in this country for a hundred years.  The law of tides says the flood is as strong as the ebb.

Can the tide have turned?

Kasich’s good, real good.  He’s smooth, but not slippery, folksy but not phony, conservative but not rigid.  He could pull it off, because he’s also smart as hell.

I thought he was in Phoenix hoping to make it onto Fox that night.  He had other ideas, so went to the local Fox affiliate for an interview.  He had quite an entourage with him.  I only got a chance to talk to Merle Madrid, who’s rather low on the totem pole.  The Task Force is having a cc tomorrow with Merle and Tim Lynch, the press guy.  We’re going to try to work up a schedule for future events.  For some reason he’s hell bent on going to Boise.  Maybe there are some money people there.

At the private meting with eight or ten Arizona state legislators and a few others prior to the presser, he said he’s willing to do whatever it takes for a BBA, including making phone calls.  We’ll ask Merle to pass on our suggestion that he call Sen. Coburn and Demint at Heritage.  I’m fairly sure he was pretty tight with them when they were all fiscal hawks in the House in the 90’s.  Coburn has publicly said he’s going to campaign for a an Article V BBA when he leaves office in a few weeks.  We haven’t been able to tie him down, and we’re concerned he might have been taken in by the CoS guys.  We’ll ask Kasich to call him and see if the two of them can’t coordinate their efforts on our behalf.  Demint runs Heritage, and the only progress we’ve made with them is getting a respectful neutrality.  I think maybe there’s some Birch money behind Heritage.  Why else wouldn’t they join in?  Getting them as part of the Article V Coalition would be a big boost.  They have resources that we don’t.  (We haven’t got a nickel from the Koch Complex, because Daddy Koch was a big Bircher, and the boys don’t want him rolling in his grave.)

After the presser I had a lot of time before my flight, so I went out to try and find a cab to see if I could get out early.  I asked this guy if he knew where I could find one, and he said he was on his phone with Uber.  I asked him where he was going and he said the airport, and agreed to my request that I ride along.  His name was Greg, a finance guy from San Francisco.

We get in the car and it turns out he’s a buddy of Kasich, who flew down from the City to have dinner with him the night before.  I tell him who I am and he asks me about CoS.  I explain their call would allow any amendment which reduced the power and scope of the federal government, and that stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction in abortion cases would qualify.  Seeing as how he was from San Francisco, I figured that wouldn’t appeal to him.  Then he tells me he’s talked to Meckler, who told him most of our old Resos are defective, and wouldn’t be aggregated.  I’m thinking, Why the hell l would this guy talk to Meckler?  I then tell him about Natelson’s opinion, and who Natelson is, and the son of a bitch says he’s talked to Natelson!  WTF.  So we go on and have quite a conversation.

We split at the airport, and today I find out from Biddulph that this guy’s not only been a big time bundler for Romney, he was one of McCain’s main guys.  And that he’s not in this just for Kasich, but because he’s big on the BBA.

You never know what you’re going to run into in Phoenix.

I should be able to get a read on what Kasich really has in mind tomorrow. All indications are that he intends to ride the Article V BBA pony for the next couple months, at least. Politically, it makes absolutely perfect sense for him. He’s pissed off the NRA (they endorsed his D opponent in 2010), wants to see a pathway for citizenship for illegals, and has taken the Obamacare expansion in Ohio. None of this helps with the right
But if he can make the election about balancing the budget, he’s a natural. He’s got cred. And, really, that’s what the election should be about.
Hopefully I can spend some time with his aides, Tim Lynch and Merle Madrid. Maybe have lunch. I talked briefly with both of them today, and liked their attitude. I would feel comfortable talking about “Setting the Table” with them. I doubt they’ve thought it through, and if I can get them jacked up about it they’ll run it by Kasich.
It will be a fun day.