Miscellaneous

I assumed the establishment R’s were with us. They are everywhere else. And the outgoing House Speaker, Lubnau, signed the RSLC pledge. I met Rep. Norine Kasperik in Dallas, and she said the next Speaker is going to be Majority Leader Kermit Brown, a 71 year old Laramie lawyer. There’s a tradition in the Wyoming House that if you’re elected Speaker you retire from the legislature after your two years in the chair. So this is it for Brown.
I called him and he was practically hostile — claimed that balanced budget amendment would hamstring the feds in national emergencies. Turns out, in my mind, that wasn’t his problem. He hates the Tea Party, and he thinks we’re aligned with it.
These two groups of R’s in the Wyoming legislature really hate each other, and we cannot be identified with either side. But the Tea Party people, so far, have enthusiastically embraced us — and we can’t spurn their embrace. This is tricky. Tomorrow I’m calling NFIB’s Wyoming lobbyist, Tony Gagliardi, to help me figure this out.
Nothing’s easy.

No it doesn’t. Damn few things do. Term Limits through Article V is a no-brainer, but it still has to be sold.
I may have made a couple sales in Dallas, though I hoped for more. It’s a start. Rep. Wes Keller from Alaska was one.
And at a bar at the Anatole I ran into Don Huffines, his wife, and one or two of his sons. I found out later that he’s a very successful Dallas real estate developer.
He told me he just beat a twenty year incumbent in a State Senate primary. I asked him how much he spent, and he said his opponent spent $5 million — he spent about half that. I asked him how much he’ll make (his only opposition in the general is a Libertarian) — and one of his sons said about $700 a month. There are 31 Texas State Senators, each representing around 900,000 people.
We kind of hit it off, and I made the pitch for an Article V Term Limits amendment. My hunch is that he’ll do it — it turns out term limits is one of the things he ran on. I sent him a follow up email, and we’ll see.
So before I took off, I said, “Let me tell you something. When I got elected to the State Senate in Alaska, people said, ‘Don’t rock the boat’
“Bullshit.
“Rock the boat.”
I like this guy.

Looking good. Talked to House candidate Phil Regeski, and learned a lot. I knew there was a pretty bitter Tea Party vs. Establishment fight going on within the Republicans in the legislature. But it won’t hurt us, because both sides support us. This is great news, since there are so many Republicans in the legislature (Phil told me there were 12 D’s, total, House and Senate) that we can afford to lose some Birch/Eagle votes, as long as the main Tea Party type insurrectionists are with us. And they are.
North Dakota looks greased, so the one state I’ve got to concentrate on, and win, is Montana.
I can do that.

Sometimes I think Obama is a Republican plant. He’s burying the Democratic party for a decade.
And he doesn’t seem to care.
Ukranian-Russian separatists shot down 300 civilians, and 25 Americans, and what does he do? He stops by for a photo op at a burger joint in Wilmington Delaware.
He’s amazing. Actually, no, it’s amazing he gets away with it.
Because he’s black, the press is incapable of criticizing him. They just can’t bring themselves to do it.
And the 2016 D nominee won’t be able to criticize him either, even if they wanted to. The black base won’t let them.
Since he’s given up on being President I don’t see how he recovers politically in the next two years.
Lame duck or dead duck, it doesn’t matter — he, personally, is a millstone around the neck of the Democratic Party. They’re stuck with him. He’s not going away, not for a long time. He’s young, healthy, and will want to be in the political spotlight for the rest of his life.
Live long, Barry.
More wind pushing the wave.

It’s almost 40% black, but totally Republican. I thought when racial minorities get bigger they hurt Republicans.
South Carolina and Alabama are like Mississippi, and Georgia’s almost there. Louisiana, Arkansas, and North Carolina are getting close. It’s slowly spreading north, into North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee.
If it ever gets into Ohio, you’ve got something to think about.
What “it” is is the de facto division of the parties along racial lines. Not everywhere in the country, and not at the same rate everywhere, but a major political trend, and one that’s not talked about.
It will give the Republicans a wind at their back in November — increasing the size of the wave.
The Article V wave.