BASEBALL DIARY:
Rangers 8, Tigers 0: the Rangers are clicking on all cylinders. The Tigers aren't. It's hard to understand what hits this team when the second half of the season comes. Meanwhile Ranger starter Tommy Hunter is 7-0 and pitching very well. Ranger pitching remains the key factor in this team's surge into first place in the AL West.
POLITICS DEPT:
By the way, you know that financial regulatory bill that President Obama will sign into law today?
It's over 2300 pages long. And liberals try to deny that government is excessively bureaucratic and full of red tape. Right...
As for Republicans in 2010--I agree with Victor Davis Hanson:
"Republicans will shortly need to stand for something more than just being against much of the Obama agenda. Only a superior and detailed alternative can win more lasting support than just a midterm correction. Obama, after all — with nationalized health care, amnesty, cap-and-trade, financial overhaul, government absorption of private enterprise, takeover of the student-loan industry, and gorge-the-beast deficits that will ensure a generation of higher taxes — at least seems to have some sort of plan to change America. The absurdity of $1.5 trillion annual deficits is easy to run on; but where in the budget should we freeze or cut spending? To restore fiscal sanity, we need details rather than vague promises to reduce red ink to a particular percentage of GDP. Is there to be an across-the-board spending freeze or targeted cuts? How much, if at all, does defense get cut? If it does, where and how?...at some point, blanket Obama-bashing without a comprehensive alternative will turn stale. Critics of Obama — if they are to be taken seriously — will have to be about more than not being Obama. Instead, conservatives must identify exactly how to undo the Obama agenda — and do so in a way that does not earn them the disdain that the Republican Congress earned between 2001 and 2006, and the Republican administration between 2005 and 2009. We need some notion of a contracted agenda, so that conservative voters can hold conservative politicians to account in this age of anti-incumbency. Voters wanted closed borders, balanced budgets, ethical members of Congress, and less government between 2001 and 2006. They believed that all of that had been promised — and then were sorely disappointed.
...In short, conservative voters want to see something specific — as much to keep their own honest as to defeat the other."
Read his whole piece.
And I'm convinced that more specificity will help Republicans, not hurt. Remember the Contract with America for 1994; it gave Republicans something to run on. They couldn't simply be called a party of no. Democrats are trying to use that argument against the GOP now. We can take that argument right away from them.
POLLING NEWS:
Some more good news for Republicans lately, in the meantime.
In Ohio, conservative challenger John Kasich leads incumbent Ted Strickland in the governor's race.
Don't forget how important Ohio is as a swing state.
Quinnipiac has Republicans leading on the 2010 generic ballot by 5 points.Kind of makes one wonder about that big lead Gallup gave Democrats the other day...
And it only gives President Obama a 44% approval rating.
A new poll in Nevada gives Harry Reid only a two point lead over Sharron Angle.
