Barbara Boxer is in the Fight of her Political Life


Doooooooom! Pt. 2.

On the heels of a Rasmussen poll suggesting Democrats should worry about Senator Barbara Boxer’s re-election chances, comes worse news from Field for the three term incumbent.

The raw numbers: Campbell 44/Boxer 43, Fiorina 44/Boxer 45, DeVore 41/Boxer 45, 3.7% Margin of Error. My model’s win percentages: DeVore 29% , Fiorina 44%, and Campbell 55%.

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Democrats running scared in California (DOOM!)


One point I initially missed in my previous article on the California Senate race (Cross-posted to RedState), and only later pointed out on Twitter, was that the Democrats should be scared to death about the current polling of Babs Boxer versus the Republicans. Our worst result against her right now gives us a one in four chance to win.

One in four sounds poor, but this is California. Since Pete Wilson retired from the Senate to become Governor, we’ve failed to win a Senate race. We lost two in 92 (Boxer over Herschensohn, Feinstein over Seymour), 94 (Feinstein over Huffington), 98 (Boxer over [Fong, that'll each me for using Wikipedia one lazy evening]), 2000 (Feinstein over Campbell), 04 (Boxer over Jones), and 06 (Feinstein over Mountjoy) for a record of 0 wins and 8 losses since then. The fact that all three of our candidates are polling at least that well against Boxer, with her polling under 50 against anyone (she’d probably graze 50 against me on a good day), should have Democrats panicked that this will be Coakley v. Brown revisited.

It turns out I was right and they are scared. The national left is rushing out here to raise her some money, including the DNC and President Obama himself in April, this after Al Gore helped this month.

Barbara Boxer’s political future is in jeopardy. It’s time Republicans across the country tune in, because the Democrats already started.


Rasmussen Polls the California Senate Race


Chart

The California Republican primary race to determine Barbara Boxer’s challenger is getting heated. And while all of us in the state have our biases and preferences, here’s what my cold, hard math says about Rasmussen’s latest poll.

As with last month, the poll again covers all three likely challengers to Barbara Boxer. It shows Fiorina 40/Boxer 46, DeVore 40/Boxer 46, Campbell 41/Boxer 43. All have a Margin of Error of 4.5. Running these numbers through my handy, dandy poll analyzer I get the following winning percentages: Campbell 41%, DeVore 25%, Fiorina 25%.

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Tom Campbell’s story still doesn’t check out


This is not a straightforward point to make, and takes a little dot connecting, but I think that Tom Campbell’s excuses for defending Sami Al-Arian are falling apart.

At the California Republican Party Convention currently under way, Tom Campbell claimed that he would not have written the 2002 letter for Al-Arian had he known that the man called for “Death to Israel,” implying it was not a widely known thing.

There’s a problem with that claim. Al-Arian himself defended the statement on FOX News. Here’s what he told Bill O’Reilly on September 26, 2001:

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“Are you a Republican?” “Right now.”


Behold your NRSC-favored candidate in the California Senate race, in a 2006 interview in Salon:

[Salon:] Are you a Republican?

[Carly Fiorina]: Right now.

What does that mean?

I hesitate because in this country right now, party affiliations have become so polarized. In business you try and focus on what you can agree on and common goals and common objectives. In politics in this country all we ever do is talk about what we disagree about. I’d much rather talk about what we agree the problems are.

Could Carly Fiorina actually be the second NRSC-backed candidate this cycle to jump parties? Or, more accurately, in Fiorina’s case it would mean jumping back out of the Republican party, as the self-proclaimed lifelong Republican was an Independent when she finally managed to register in 1997.

Does the NRSC vet its candidates using surplus Obama administration checklists? Seriously.


Yes, We Do Need Tort Reform


An 8 year old girl was behind a truck hauling a load of product destined for market. The truck driver put his truck in reverse without checking to see if anything was behind him and ran over the 8 year.

The 8 year old survived, but will be permanently physically disabled. She won $24.3 million in damages.

Sounds relatively reasonable, doesn’t it?

Now, let’s add some facts. The girl was the daughter of the truck driver. The truck driver loaded the girl and her mother into his big rig for a long haul trip for work, with a stop over to visit relatives. The shipping company had no idea and did not give its permission.

When the truck driver decided to leave a stop, he did not bother to make sure his daughter was in the truck with him. He backed up and ran over his own daughter.

So he does what people in California apparently do. He sued someone else. And the people of California did what they apparently do. They gave him money. Of course the jury was not told any of the facts below paragraph 2 of this post. The judge wouldn’t let them.

It is the liberal dream that we can no longer be held liable for our own actions and choices in life. All of us are destined to live together tangled on the government safety net because we might injure ourselves swinging from the trapeze of life.

Ain’t life grand in the Obamatopia? Because California is where we’re all headed on the road to hell.

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Conservative Convention in California endorses Chuck DeVore


“Carly Fiorina had every advantage money could buy, and the conservative activists of the CRA decisively endorsed Chuck DeVore on the first round.”

In their 75th Anniversary Celebration and Endorsing Convention held Friday March 5 to Sunday March 7, the California Republican Assembly voted to endorse Chuck DeVore 68.6% (194 votes) to Carly Fiorina’s 31.4% (89).

Tom Campbell? 0%. Guess his “conservative credentials” failed him.

Via the OC Register;

DeVore, an Assembly member from Irvine, trails former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina and former congressman Campbell in polls, spoke first and won over many in the room with his strong record upholding conservative values, both fiscally and socially.

“Is 2010 the year to beat Barbara Boxer?” DeVore said, his voice booming through the microphone. “My bona fides, I believe, make me a powerful opponent.”

Garden Grove resident Bert Ashland acknowledged that a conservative record would be important to secure the endorsement, though members should really be looking to “capture a significant ‘undecided’ or ‘did not declare’ vote in order to win in November.

“Is Chuck DeVore right? Is Carly the right candidate? They need to be able to draw in a significantly broader number of voters than is represented by the CRA,” he said.

Fiorina said she’s spent a lot of time meeting with CRA members to convey her standpoint, which includes cutting government spending and securing the border against illegal immigration.

Obviously they weren’t overly impressed with her sales pitch.

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The Packards Want Carly Fiorina to Pack It In


“If Ms. Fiorina is what passes for conservative in Washington today, then the establishment has veered sadly to the left,” writes Arianna Packard, grand daughter of David Packard, the co-founder of HP, in a letter RedState has obtained a copy of.

Back at the turn of the 21st century, David Woodley Packard, the son of the founder, went to war against Carly Fiorina over the HP-Compaq merger. Vanity Fair documented the merger wars. It was not pretty. Both the Hewletts and the Packards opposed the merger.

The bitterness from the merger wars lingers on.

Ms. Packard’s letter, written to Senators Inhofe, Coburn, and Kyl relating to their endorsement of Carly Fiorina, makes for interesting reading and signals that the heirs of HP intend to take her down. They lost once and they don’t want to lose again.

“I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded. So, allow me to disillusion you of a few of your stated reasons for supporting her,” Ms. Packard writes before detailing, rather unflatteringly, Carly Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett-Packard.

You can read the whole letter here. Game on in California. This comes on the heels of Carly Fiorina losing the California Republican Assembly’s endorsement by a 2/3 vote despite receiving Coburn, Inhofe, and Kyl’s letter supporting her.


California Republican Assembly endorses Chuck DeVore


The California Republican Assembly, a 75 year old conservative group in this state, endorsed Chuck DeVore for Senate today with over 75% support on the first ballot.

“CRA must keep working and producing solid conservative candidates for office at all levels of government, and I hope that my fellow Californians will join the CRA team and get involved with a local chapter.” Ronald Reagan said that of the CRA years ago, and today the group proved itself to live up to those words still. The doubters question DeVore, even after his convincing debate victory, saying he has no name recognition, he has no fundraising, and he can’t win. The CRA stood up today and pushed back. Conservative activists know who he is, stand ready to give, and can be the backbone of a DeVore victory.

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Fiorina to Campbell: Stop lying about your terrorism record


The California Senate race is becoming a real free for all, as the candidates go after each other’s records with gusto, and it appears that Tom Campbell is taking the worst of it. It’s not a good sign when a candidate has to say that he does not help terrorists. What’s worse for him is that Carly Fiorina is not letting it go at that.

The Campbell statement to me seems rather weak, as it repeatedly tries to drag George W. Bush down with him, to use him as a shield in some vague way. But Fiorina is now calling on Campbell to correct that page, saying that the findings of the Investigative Project on Terrorism refute Campbell’s denial that he has worked to assist Sami Al-Arian, who has been convicted in the US of aiding anti-Israeli terror.

While it’s on the record that Sami Al-Arian once snagged an invitation to the White House under President Bush, apparently through campaign contacts, there is no record of Bush going out of his way to give assistance to the man specifically. Campbell on the other hand did.

Can friends of Israel trust Tom Campbell in the Senate or anywhere else where he can influence America’s foreign policy? I’m skeptical.