Madison Project

The presidential primary is ostensibly over, but there are still many primary elections taking place that should be of interest to conservatives.  We often find ourselves bemoaning the lack of conservative members in Congress during the legislative session.  Well, it is during primary season that we have the opportunity to shape the orientation of Congress.  On Tuesday, Indiana and North Carolina will be holding primaries.  Here is what is at stake for conservatives:

Indiana

Senate: The marque race is the battle for the Senate seat between Richard Lugar and Richard Mourdock.  We clearly have the momentum, but it would be nice to send an unambiguous message that we are tired of insipid pale-pastel politicians in our party.  We should all rally behind Mourdock to ensure that this is not even close.  Over the weekend, I saw an interesting story from Jack Hoogendyk, the conservative running against Fred Upton in south Michigan.  He is suspending his campaign until after Tuesday’s election, so his volunteers can cross the border into Indiana and help with GOTV for Mourdock.  This is a great idea for team play in future primary battles.

District 5: Dan Burton is retiring and a number of candidates are vying for the open seat.  David McIntosh is, by far, the most viable conservative in the race.  He has a stellar record as RSC chairman during his first time in Congress in the 90s.  He is endorsed by the Club for Growth and the Madison Project.

District 8: Freshman Republican Larry Bucshon has been a tremendous disappointment.  He ran as a Tea Party candidate, but has turned in a mediocre performance during his first year in office.  Kristi Risk, who came close to beating him in 2010, will be on the ballot again.  I have not had time to interview her, and therefore, cannot issue an official endorsement from the Madison Project, but she is clearly the better choice.

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This is one of those times when we must stand back and reflect upon how lucky we are to live in America, despite all the troubles.  According to Ipsos polling institute, socialist François Hollande took 51.7% of the vote to incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s 48.3%.  Some might say that Obama is no different than Hollande.  However, at least we have a vibrant conservative movement in the country to stop him.

A new Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll shows Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock beating Dick Lugar 48-38.  This is looking to be our first moderate scalp for the cycle.

The headline number from the BLS’s Establishment Survey was an addition of 115,000 jobs for the month of April.  That is a terrible number for this far into the recovery, as it fails to keep up with population growth.  At this time in the Reagan recovery, the economy added a population-adjusted 480,000 jobs.  So why did the unemployment rate (U3 number) drop another 0.1% to 8.1%?  Let’s delve through some of the data from the Household Survey:

• Size of civilian labor force:  So why did the unemployment rate fall?  Well, if you shrink the size of the pool, the unemployment rate will actually go down.  While a net-115,000 jobs were added in November, the civilian labor force shrunk by 342,000.  In March, the civilian labor force stood at 154.707 million.  Now, there are only 154.365 million in the labor force.  Moreover, the Civilian noninstitutional population grew by 180,000, yet there are now 522,000 more people not in the labor force than there were in October.  Consequently, the labor participation number dropped from 63.8% to 63.6%.  That is the lowest rate since 1981. This has caused the U3 rate to drop by .1%.  The broader U6 number is unchanged at 14.5% – still amazingly high for this long after the official end of the recession.
• Duration of unemployment: The average (mean) duration of unemployment is 39.1 weeks, a record high. By comparison, the average duration was 19.9 weeks in January 2009.
• Comparison to January 2009- The size of the working age population grew over 8 million from 234.739 million at the time Obama was sworn in.  Yet, the labor force has grown by just 130,000.  The labor-participation rate has dropped 2.1%.  Also, there are still 325,000 less people in raw numbers that hold jobs than there were at the time of his inauguration.  Overall, there are almost 8 million more people not in the labor force relative to January 2009.  So we have a larger population, a smaller workforce (resulting from discouraged workers), and more unemployed.  As AEI’s James Pethokoukis points out, if the labor force was the same size as when Obama took office, the U3 rate would be 11.1%.

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There are some issues that transcend ideological boundaries.  For example, issues like eminent domain and the “do not call list” generated such a public outcry that both parties stepped in to clamor for public support on those issues.  Another such issue is the TSA – or at least it should be.

Even liberals I have spoken to hate the TSA.  The Founders would roll over in their grave if they witnessed the crass violations of our liberties at airports.  It’s as if we no longer have constitutional rights at airports.  Worse yet, we are not even safer after all of their prohibitions, scans, and pat downs.  Due to the fact that they search for items instead of terrorists, we are still exposed to the threat of Islamic jihadists on planes.  It’s not like their “no fly list” is up to date.  As such, this is an issue that is ripe for Republicans to harness and run with.  As usual, it’s Senator Rand Paul who wants to lead.

Instead of parsing words over some minutia, Rand Paul is saying in plain English that he wants to end the TSA and return security screenings back to the responsibility of the private sector, which has a bigger stake in running the process more efficiently and safely.  Rand Paul wrote the following in an email to supporters:

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Drew Ryun has a piece out in the Daily Caller shedding light on one of the more overlooked violations of Eric Holder; his refusal to uphold the Wire Act.

Every president, upon assumption of office, takes an oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The president’s attorney general, serving as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, is charged with faithfully upholding those laws for the president. After three years of pursuing selective and politically charged “justice,” it’s time for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to start following the law. If they refuse to do so, Congress must rein them in.

Under Eric Holder’s Justice Department, justice has not been blind. Attorney General Holder and his staff have chosen which laws to prosecute and which ones to ignore.

Holder has chosen to file lawsuits against states that pass voter ID laws — laws that are passed by duly elected legislators and are universally popular with the residents of those states. Yet, Holder has chosen to refrain from prosecuting the New Black Panthers, who engaged in flagrant acts of voter intimidation in 2010. Holder has chosen to prosecute states that enforce federal immigration laws passed by Congress, yet he refrains from prosecuting those localities that violate our immigration laws. As in the case of the raid on Gibson Guitars, Holder and his staff have invented tenuous justifications for pursuing people who donate to Republican politicians.

Let’s be honest. Holder’s pattern of “discretionary justice” is undermining our system of checks and balances. It was the intent of the Founders that each branch not act independently of the others, yet that is what we are seeing with the current Justice Department. Holder continues to ignore laws that have been duly passed by Congress, such as the Wire Act.

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Chinese dissident Chen Gaungcheng is fighting for his life after leaving the comfort of the U.S. Embassy.  He left because it was becoming clear that the US would not allow him to escape with his family, thereby endangering his wife the longer he defied the house arrest.  So Clinton and Obama have no interest in saving one dissident who stood up for our values in a country (at least the government) that is a sworn enemy to America.  Yet, he has no problem granting amnesty to millions of illegals who come here on their own volition and feed off the welfare state.

Just a thought.

It’s becoming clear that many rank-and-file members of the House Republican Conference are chomping at the bit to resurrect earmarks after a two-year moratorium.  Some are complaining that earmarks cede authority to the executive branch; others are lamenting the lack of “grease” to facilitate passage of statist legislation; still others are trying to push miscellaneous tariff bills, which violate the rules of the earmark ban.

Yesterday, Politico published a reveling account of Republicans who are having a difficult time coping with the earmark ban, particularly as it relates to transportation projects.  Here are some excerpts:

House Republican freshmen are figuring out that it’s hard to hate Washington and need Washington at the same time.

Take New York Rep. Michael Grimm for example, who has lobbied for a revamping of the Bayonne Bridge that connects commuters to New Jersey. Or New York Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, who has said the “federal government can have real and legitimate impact on the economic health of a region by supporting improvements to local infrastructure” — as she pushed the Syracuse Connective Corridor road project. And even Florida Rep. Allen West has touted a $21 million grant to help construct a second runway at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. [...]

“When we went around to each of the freshmen to ask them what their main concerns were, a lot of those were more specific things to their district or specific highways or different things like that,” said Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.). [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), founder of the Tea Party Caucus, has said earmarks shouldn’t count when they’re for transportation projects. And just last week, the Transportation panel’s top Democrat, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, made a public plea that Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) join him in writing a letter asking Boehner to bring back earmarks.

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Unfortunately, this is no surprise, but Romney appears to be resetting the Etch A Sketch.  The Hill has all the money quotes from the world of consultants on why this is no surprise.  After all, hoodwinking conservative is par for the course in consultant-land.