Monday, November 16th, 2009...11:31 am
A Thing I Meant to Write About Last Week
David Safier, who reads the Northwest Explorer so I don’t have to, linked this article by Emil Franzi over at Blog for Arizona. As expected from a Franzi column, you get your typical “why won’t these ignorant people listen to me?” plus a gratuitous sexist jab at Nina Trasoff. None the less, the column is worth reading. In it is this little nugget:
Having accepted the myth that Republicans are too badly outnumbered, at 24 percent registration, to win without some political talisman (a myth clearly refuted by minimal fact-checking — GOP registration was 24 percent in the ’50s, when Republicans had the mayor and all six council seats and Democrats were at 64 percent as opposed to 40 percent now) they sought help from a Phoenix political consultant.
The advice, apparently based on rudimentary polling data, was to drop a bundle not on a direct assault but on an oblique move based on a public safety initiative that was supposed to draw out voters more inclined to elect council candidates who supported it. This became the now infamous Prop. 200, ultimately defeated 70-30.
I think that there is a concession from a prominent Republican that 200 was not about public safety but a political ploy. I didn’t say it, he did.
6 Comments
November 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
?
where’s the sexist jab? “dingbat?” “battered spouse?”
It’s Monday. Ya gotta spell it out for me.
November 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
The key line:
“They were tactically brilliant in making it a fight against higher taxes, but strategically inept by raising the turnout among Tea Party-type independents who then voted against incumbents and their ally. All they did was beat 200 by a wider margin while almost beating themselves.”
November 16th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Geez, next up we’ll learn that Prop 102 (“Protection of Marriage”) was a political gambit to get social conservatives to the polls.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:11 am
I bet next year they put an initiative on the ballot that would make it illegal to bring KSM to Arizona.
And one in 2012 to make it illegal to be gay.
And one in 2014 to put landmines along our southern border.
And one in 2016 to abolish all taxes.
And one in 2018 to ban the Democratic party.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:15 am
And one in 2020 getting rid of all classroom teachers and replacing them with making the students listen to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity during the school day.
And one in 2022 to require that not saying a prayer in school to be a felony.
And one in 2024 to require that everyone over the age of seven own a gun.