More leftovers - and those diehard Republicans

 

How well this banner describes the Republicans' preoccupation with women's personal choices instead of unemployment and other economic matters.  These women were engaged in a protest in Columbus where a legislative committee was considering a bill to ban public money from  going to Planned Parenthood.  Being  Republicans-tilted, the committee ignored  the protest and voted 11-9 along strict party lines to send the bill to the House floor for further consideration and a vote.  News of President Obama's election that gave him the edge on social issues had apparently not found its way into the GOP cave in Columbus.

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Speaking of issues, how did Paul Ryan arrive at the conclusion that during the campaign his side was talking about the "popular" issues (i.e., the ones supported by the voters, I guess)?  Ryan also scoffs that Obama won a mandate from the voters because the House of Representatives remains in Republican hands.   That overlooks the math that told us a majority of America's voters supported Democratic congressional candidates, but gerrymandering  remained the decisive factor in electing Republicans. Case in point:  Although the president carried Ohio, Republicans won 12 of the 16 congressional districts.  Go figure.

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Let's stop talking about "mandates" - fuzzy references to the width of a winner's margin to carry out his or her plans.   A wise old politician once told me he didn't have much interest in mandates.  Rather, he said, a true leader looks at a situation and simply says to himself, "I gotta do what I gotta do".  Makes sense to me.

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In case you felt overwhelmed by all of those TV political ads, there was a reason:  The New York Times reported 1.4 million ads were aired, estimated cost: $952 million.

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Biggest  losers in Ohio were Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted and Atty Gen. Mike DeWine, both of whom traveled down dark paths by mistakenly ignoring  the potency of  those voters who had been  profiled  to lose .   DeWine  worked with Husted in trying to shrink the vote.  And U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbus assailed Husted's late-campaign directive   to further alter the vote , declaring  it was "surreptitious" and a"flagrant violation of a state election law." Clear enough?

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My column on Jon Husted's lashing by a federal judge and the GOP attacks on Planned Parenthood has been posted on Plunderbund
  

Mike Duncan's new math

  I HAD promised myself that I would break from the  herd and not write about Saxby Chambliss. But I could not resist the temptation that finally overcame my better judgment.  So to repeat the obvious, the Hollywood-looking snowy-haired Republican senator won the Georgia run-off  this week - as expected in a very conservative southern state where a very talented professional football player was sent to jail for engaging in dog-fighting and a former Democratic governor and U.S. Senator, Zell Miller,   turned up at the Republican convention to praise Bush and damn Kerry while noisily wishing that he lived in a day when he could challenge Chris Matthews to a dual. Georgia is not Vermont. 

I'm still trying to figure out how the proud voters of the Peach State first went for Chambliss - who had eagerly  avoided military service - in  2002  against the Democratic incumbent senator, Max Cleland,  a triple amputee  from his service in Vietnam.  Chambliss got away with describing his opponent as a wimp on fighting terrorism.  Georgia Republicans are an easy sell.

So now here was Mike Duncan, the incidental chairman of the Republican National Committee, crowing that Saxby's win was so profound that it serves as  irrefutable evidence that Barack Obama doesn't have a mandate to lead the country.  Let him explain:

"Georgians clearly sent a message that any rhetoric about a liberal mandate is nothing but hot air." 

Message to whom?  He didn't say.  But he did say that Saxby gave the GOP conservatives  the "momentum" that the party had been seeking since Obama's...um...mandate-less triumph on Nov. 4. 

All of this high-level consideration of mandates led me to put it in some kind of historical context to define the word.  

Back in 2004, moments after the fateful numbers that sent him to the Oval Office a second time, George Bush clearly exercised his thoughts about his next four years  with a boastful threat to anyone who might stand in his way.  "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital," Dubya sounded off, "and now I intend to spend it.  It is my style."  Cool.

This is where I went off the track with Chairman Duncan.  Using his logic, Bush won with a 3 million vote margin, a hefty 50.7 pct. vs. Kerry's skimpy  48.3 pct.    Obama edged McCain by more than 9 million votes  - 52.7 pct. to 45.8 pct.   Hardly enough to convince  Duncan that Obama had earned enough "political capital" to claim a mandate.  

So I ask: How dumb do you have to be these days  to serve as the Republican National Committee's chairman?    Just asking.  Obviously, math is not a prerequisite.