Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Here ’tis, a delayed reply to the good folks at Wactivist and a late post-mortem for the Obama for America-Arizona campaign.
Last week, Tom-AZ over at Wactivist put up a couple of posts (here and here) asking why Barack Obama lost here in Arizona. He took an uneeded swipe at their political director, Toni Morales. I […]

This could ruin everyone’s plans.
A letter has been sent to John Shadegg signed by Mike Pence (who you may remember was the guy that found downtown Baghdad as safe as Indiana, at least when you have a well armed batallion with you) and 129 other Republican congressmen. They want him to stick around:
As your colleagues, […]

Tom Delay, way back like, three or four weeks ago:

Now, Delay is campaigning for John McCain, speaking to anti-McCain bitter ender Rob Haney and his Republican district club.
In addition to that fun, one wonders why McCain, who was the guy who is famously the maverick for standing up against the fundraising tactics and big spending […]

Pamela Gorman has thrown her hat (no loss, since near as I know, she never wears it) into the ever growing district 3 ring.
Well…no…she is, in the words of the press release, forming an “exploratory committee to consider a run for congress.” I don’t know if there are any legal differences between “forming an exploratory […]

Sen. Jim Waring will be “announcing his plans” at the capitol at 1 PM tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that he is not calling all of his supporters to a press conference to tell folks that he isn’t interested in running for congress.

Today is the 96th anniversary of Arizona Statehood. We here at R-Cubed want to celebrate by honoring the first elected governor of Arizona, George W. P. Hunt.
Hunt was important not just for his several non-consectutive terms as governor, but for his work as head of the constitutional convention. He helped craft what is still one […]

One of my capitol correspondents reports to me that Appropriations Chair Russell Pearce will be presenting a new budget proposal tomorrow at a meeting. He hasn’t made any of the proposals, which could be dozens of pages long, available for committee members to peruse before the meeting. So, apparently, they are supposed to vote up or […]

Karl Rove made an appearance at tony Connecticut boarding school Choate. The Hartford Courant managed to chronicle the visit, despite Rove’s objection to having media there. One Choate student, Marla Spivak, grilled Rove about his opposition to gay marriage. She took the guy apart:
Then there was Marla Spivak.
Spivak, a senior from Hamden, was one of […]

I’ve gotten more than a few e-mails and questions from folks about Monday’s Talk of the Nation. The answer is yes, that was me that called in. And, Hillary Clinton fans will be happy to know that I was actually defending her. Of course, the point I made seemed to be totally blown off by […]

Apparently, Phil Gordon has decided not to run for congress after all. This saves him the trouble of having to pretend to share the views of Democratic constituents.
I was thinking of a possible set of nominees…Bob Lord and Sean Noble…Lord v Noble. We can give the community theater rejects of the Renaissance Faire some extra work […]

You think that the Republicans were going to let things be easy for Bob Lord? Naw…
I just got an e-mail from a highly placed Republican muckety muck who noted that Speaker Jim Weiers lives in the now candidateless District 3 and is looking at a run. Other folks that may go for it include Pam Gorman and […]

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Lincoln was a lawyer from Illinois who only spent a scant four years in federal office, so was obviously unqualified for the Presidency.

Anyone remember when Tim Bee announced that Meg Econ, one of his campaign staffers, had assured folks that the campaign had already raised over $300,000?
Now that we can actually see the reports, it seems that Bee’s campaign has only raised $285,694. Which, for you fiscal conservatives out there, is not “well over $300,000.”
(An aside here: […]

I just got a text from one of my vast network of sources telling me that Rep. John Shadegg will not be seeking re-election.
No explanation of course, so I have no idea what is up with this.

Representative Tom Lantos of California has died. Lantos was often called the only Holocaust survivor to serve in congress, although he usually refered to himself as one of the last people in congress that had personally fought fascism. His experiences led him to be a fierce advocate for human rights. In recent years, he had been taking […]

The Hillary Clinton campaign has been making a lot of hay of last week’s comments by David Shuster that she was “pimping out” Chelsea. Not only was the comment offensive, but Shuster was attacking Clinton for doing something that other candidates with adult children have done (Was Mitt Romney “pimping out” Tagg?).
I’m not sure I […]

I’ve heard more than one pundit mention that this presidential election will be unique because the likely nominees for both major parties come from the United States Senate. This means that not only will votes be scrutinized during the race, but that there will be pressure on the candidates to advance their programs during the […]

This morning, the Star ran a piece about the troubles on election day. Yesterday afternoon, one Pima County official reported to me that as of that time, there were somewhere around 13,000 provisional ballots still to be counted. On election day, it was reported that this was due to the large number of independents who […]

Today will be what might be the final quixotic tilt in Rob Haney’s quest to take down Captain John Sidney McCain III. The conservative campaign against the McCain has been revealing. For example, there is this unhinged quote posted by Andrew Sullivan where a conservative writer actually counts McCain’s position against waterboarding as violating core Republican principles. […]