SHUTDOWN: WHAT'S IT REALLY ABOUT?
The Democrats
and their “amen” corner is the media are very good at clouding what’s really behind
this slowdown of non-essential government services, but here’s the core of the
situation as explained to me by a key congressional staffer who is very
familiar with the policy AND the politics…
“While much attention has been placed on the role of the health care law and its connection with the continuing resolution, the current debate is actually much larger than the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare).“The cost of the health care law, originally estimated at $940 billion over 10 years when first passed, has ballooned to $1.93 trillion over the first decade of full implementation. With our national debt approaching $17 trillion, this massive law is but one symptom of our greater problem: unrestrained government spending.”
And as
our own Congressman Joe Heck pointed
out yesterday in his Las Vegas Sun
op-ed this week:
“The president has granted waivers for special interest groups and delayed portions of the law, including the employer mandate for big businesses. The House simply voted to ensure fairness for all Americans.”
Fairness
for all Americans. Is that really too
much to ask?
BILBRAY FILES: FUNDRAISING
TOTAL A TOTAL FAIL?
With
much pomp and circumstance, Democrat congressional candidate Erin Bilbray-Kohn announced on Thursday
that she raised $253,000 in the third quarter reporting period, with her
campaign boasting that it was the “most ever by a Nevada congressional
challenger in the third quarter of a non-election year."
First,
let’s fact-check that. I’m told that Democrat
candidate John Oceguera actually
raised more than that for the same period in his own failed attempt to take out
Republican Rep. Joe Heck in 2012.
That
aside, $253K is still quite underwhelming.
Here’s why…
Bilbray-Kohn
is one of the Democrats’ top recruits in one of the Top Ten most competitive
races in the country where the Democrats have a chance to pick up a seat from
the GOP. Indeed, the Democrats’ voter registration
advantage in Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District is somewhere in the range of
10,000 voters.
Bilbray-Kohn
is a legacy. Her father, as she mentions often on the campaign trail, is a
former Member of Congress with, surely, a pretty fat Rolodex.
Bilbray-Kohn
is the Democrat National Committeewoman for Nevada, which means she knows and
has access to all the big wheels in the Democrat Party nationwide.
Bilbray-Kohn
didn’t just fall off the turnip truck last night. She’s been in and around politics for some 20
years. In fact, she’s so involved in the
process that since 2006 she’s headed up an organization training OTHER
candidates.
Bilbray-Kohn
was endorsed early by the pro-abortion Emily’s List and was quickly added to
the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Jump Start” program. That alone should have opened up the
floodgates of campaign cash for her!
San
Fran Nan herself – Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) – came to Las Vegas this summer to
do a fundraiser for Bilbray-Kohn.
And Bilbray-Kohn
hasn’t been raising money just for the last three months since she “officially”
declared on July 1st. No, it’s
well-known that she’s been running and has been dialing-for-dollars – or at
least commitments for dollars - since last February or March.
So
this $253,000 isn’t for just the past three months, but rather about SEVEN
months worth of fundraising.
And
just to put this a little further into perspective…
David Trott is
a congressional challenger in Detroit – a city in even WORSE shape than
Las Vegas. And according to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Trott “announced
just over a month ago” – as opposed to Bilbray-Kohn announcing three months ago
- yet “hauled in nearly $500,000 in donations in the first three weeks of his
campaign.”
Three
WEEKS! And that’s for an
intra-party PRIMARY race!
Yet
according to the Bilbray-Kohn campaign’s spin, her $253K wildly exceeded
expectations. But that can only be true
if you artificially set expectations WAY below what they should be.
Indeed,
as I noted a couple weeks ago the Bilbray-Kohn campaign never said exactly what
their fundraising goal for the 3rd quarter was when making
last-minute appeals for donations to meet their goal. So it’s not exactly surprising that the campaign
would announce that they had exceeded a fundraising objective that no one outside
the campaign knew.
Here’s
the bottom line: Considering everything Bilbray-Kohn has going for her as
outlined above, she should have broken at least a half-million raised. Clearly that’s not impossible, as Mr. Trott
in Detroit proved.
But
let’s concede that I’m a partisan blogger.
So knock off $100,000. Heck,
knock off $200,000!
That
still means, at a minimum, she should have exceeded $300,000 raised.
She
didn’t.
This
is not a juggernaut. Not saying
Bilbray-Kohn will be a pushover, but she’s no colossus. Clearly Democrat donors aren’t completely
sold on her as a candidate yet, especially after several early fumbles in her
campaign roll-out.
On
the other hand, I feel compelled to point out that she has two wonderful
daughters and a husband who cooks a mean lasagna…so she has that going for
her. And will continue having that going
for her a year from now after she, like John Oceguera before her, loses to Joe
Heck.
Not
a bad consolation prize!
Read
more at http://erinbilbray.info/
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FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“We’ve
been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.” – Unnamed
National Park Service ranger quoted in the Washington Times
“I
love baseball. I will however never watch a game or network with Keith
Olbermann involved. Hope your ratings suck.” – Gregg Phillips
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