Revolt!

by Dick Morris

  Claire McCaskill, Missouri—Another endangered 2006 freshman, McCaskill has to run in a state that went Republican in the Senate race of 2010 by a wide margin. Republican Roy Blunt’s Senate win and the defeat of longtime Democratic congressman Ike Skelton do not augur well for her. She is ripe for defeat in 2012.

  Herb Kohl, Wisconsin—Wisconsin flipped and became Republican this year. Johnson beat Feingold for the Senate. Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle, a Democrat, as governor and the GOP picked up two House seats and majorities in the state legislature. Kohl should go back to his department stores.

  Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico—Republicans won the governorship and a key House seat here. Bingaman is way too liberal for the state.

  Bill Nelson, Florida—Rubio took the Senate seat and five House seats flipped to Republican. The GOP also won the governorship. Can Nelson survive? Probably not.

  Debbie Stabenow, Michigan—With the Republicans winning the governorship, both houses of the legislature, and a new House seat here, Michigan might be a takeaway in 2012.

  And there are two more Democrats—both freshmen—who could face tough fights in 2012:

  Robert Menendez, New Jersey—After Chris Christie’s win in 2009 as governor and the defeat of New Jersey Democrat Congressman Adler, Menendez has to be sweating.

  Joe Manchin, West Virginia—Just elected in 2010, he will have to run again in 2012 (because he is filling out the term of Robert Byrd, who died in 2010). Manchin ran as something he is not—a Republican. He attacked ObamaCare and cap and trade and boasted of his independence. Now he will have a hard time keeping his promise to oppose Obama. With only a three-vote majority, the Democrats will need him repeatedly to back Obama’s programs, votes that could haunt him in West Virginia. With only a 53–47 Senate majority, there is no place for Joe to hide.

  Meanwhile, among the ten Republicans up for reelection, most are running in red states. Only Scott Brown of Massachusetts, John Ensign of Nevada, and Olympia Snowe of Maine would seem to be in any jeopardy. Republicans will probably hold the seat now held by Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who has announced that she won’t run again. But let’s be sure the seat is filled by a true conservative.

  But that doesn’t mean that conservatives should not try to defeat a RINO (Republican In Name Only) or two! Snowe, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and Richard Lugar of Indiana would be good options. Lugar and Corker toe the liberal line on foreign policy (both backed the START Treaty) and Snowe is the original RINO.

  Otherwise, good solid conservatives like Jon Kyle of Arizona, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Orrin Hatch of Utah, and John Barrasso of Wyoming should have an easy time getting reelected (although Hatch might not run).

  Pretty good odds for Republicans, wouldn’t you say?

  But the Democratic incumbents who are nervous about getting reelected are going to try to fool us with their votes in 2011–12. In 2009–10, we saw their true liberal colors. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama needed every last Democratic senator to toe the line to pass his stimulus spending, and health care changes. And they got them all. Every one of them. They all lined up and voted yes.

  In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a little more leeway and she gave various so-called conservative Democrats a pass to vote no on controversial bills in an effort to fool their constituents into reelecting them. Had she needed their votes, though, she would doubtless have gotten them just like Harry Reid did in the Senate.

  But now the political math gives the Democrats an opportunity for chicanery. The senators who are up for reelection in 2012 (and some of the congressmen) may vote with the Republicans on key measures. The likes of Ben Nelson and others may well vote to repeal ObamaCare and against tax increases. And Reid may encourage them to do so in order to get them reelected so he can keep the majority.

  After all, even if the Senate passes the conservative legislation sent over by the Republican House, President Obama can veto the bills and the Republicans could not come close to overriding his vetoes. So some of these vulnerable senators will let Obama take the rap with his veto rather than shield him by killing conservative bills in the Senate. Why should they stick their necks out to protect Obama?

  Senators Joe Manchin (WV), Ben Nelson (NE), and Jim Webb (VA) followed this reasoning and voted to extend the Bush tax cuts in the lame duck session, joining with the Republicans.

  But don’t be fooled. If their votes were needed, they would be delivered by the liberals just as they were in 2009 and 2010. Once a liberal Democrat, always a liberal Democrat.

  Now let’s explore the vulnerable Democrats. It will be fun!

  The Most Vulnerable Three

  Ben Nelson

  Nebraska

  Elected 2000

  Voted with the Democrats 81% of the time2

  Appropriations Committee

  Armed Services Committee

  Agriculture Committee

  It’s been a long wait since Senator Ben Nelson earned his place in Dante’s Inferno by voting to pass ObamaCare in the Senate, even though 64% of the voters in his home state of Nebraska are opposed.3

  In 2010, his fellow turncoat, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, paid for her vote with her seat in the Senate, losing to Republican Congressman John Boozman by twenty-one points. Now it’s Ben Nelson’s turn.

  Nelson is one of those senators who masquerades as a conservative Democrat, but when the chips are down, votes as the party leaders tell him to. The stimulus spending package? He wanted it slightly smaller and then he voted for it. ObamaCare? He wanted Nebraska taxpayers to be relieved of paying for Medicaid expansion in their state (the so-called Cornhuskers Kickback) and then he voted for the bill.

  Eventually, the stink raised over the deal rose to such heights that Nelson had to surrender and give it up. Now Nebraskans will get soaked for Medicaid increases along with the rest of us (unless we can defund ObamaCare!).

  Nelson likely buried his reputation for fiscal conservatism for good when he voted for Obama’s stimulus package. He even claimed credit for holding the total price tag under $1 trillion!

  Today, Nelson still defends his vote, even after the evidence is tumbling in that the stimulus did not stimulate any growth in the economy, just in the national debt. He points to the tax cuts that constituted one-third of the stimulus, ignoring the two-thirds used to increase government spending. He also neglects to add that the one-shot tax cuts did no good.4

  Nelson’s game—of voting as his party leaders tell him to, but then making a show of holding out for slight moderation in the final bill—is definitely wearing thin. If the party leaders wanted to burn down Washington, he’d probably stipulate that he’d only support it if it were phased in over five years! And then he’d vote yes!

  Nebraska voters are catching on to Nelson. Politico.com recounts how “Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when a patron began complaining about Nelson’s decisive vote in favor of the Senate’s health care bill. Other customers started booing. A woman yelled, ‘Get him the hell out of here!’ And the Nelsons and their dining companions beat a hasty retreat. ‘It was definitely a scene in there,’ said Tom Lewis, a 41-year-old dentist and registered Republican who witnessed the incident. A second witness confirmed the incident to Politico.”5

  Nelson still doesn’t get it. He won’t vote to repeal ObamaCare, only to “change” it. How? He’s not sure. He told 1290 KKAR radio that “I’m perfectly prepared to join with others and I started on my own in two or three areas to develop legislation that would make some changes. But you don’t throw it all out just because there are some pieces of it, or parts of it, that aren’t working as good as some others are working.”6

  (Translation: he won’t change the individual mandate provision, won’t vote for repeal of ObamaCare, and won’t eliminate the cuts in Medicare. In other words, he’ll just talk and do nothing).

  But Nelson’s conduct on the financial regulation bill
that passed in 2010 was outrageous, even for him.

  One of the few good provisions of the bill required companies that hold derivative contracts to put up collateral to shield them in the event of big losses.

  Derivatives are essentially bets on the future prices of commodities or stocks. Like any bets this side of Vegas, you can win big or lose your shirt. The American Insurance Group, AIG, lost big and needed $182 billion in TARP bailout funds.7

  The Los Angeles Times reports that “the goal of the provision [requiring collateral for derivatives] is to force companies to provide a capital buffer for themselves in case of heavy losses on derivatives.”8

  Ben Nelson objected to the provision and held up passage of the entire bill to insist on its deletion. Why? Well, Warren Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway Company happen to be big contributors to his campaign. And the Wall Street Journal reported that Berkshire “extensively uses derivatives in its financial dealings, despite the billionaire’s [Buffett’s] now-famous 2003 warning about derivatives being ‘financial weapons of mass destruction.’ Berkshire has been able to use its strong financial position to post little collateral against its big derivatives portfolio, freeing up capital for investing elsewhere.”9

  Why was Nelson so sensitive to the needs of Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway? It wasn’t only that he got their campaign contributions. The Washington Post reports that “Nelson’s most recent financial disclosure form, filed last year, shows that he and his wife owned between $1.5 million and $6 million in Berkshire stock in 2008—by far Nelson’s largest listed asset.”10

  The Post also reports that “Berkshire Hathaway or individuals associated with the company have contributed $75,550 to Nelson’s campaign war chest since 2000, according to records filed through the end of March and analyzed by OpenSecrets.org, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics. One Berkshire company, MidAmerican Energy, also contributed $9,600 to Nelson’s Nebraska Leadership PAC.”11

  The Post reported that, on April 26, 2010, Nelson voted to block debate on the regulation bill. He “protested that he was looking out for Main Street’s interests, but earlier in the day the Democrats had stricken a special provision from their bill that would have created a loophole for the wealthiest Nebraskan of them all, Warren Buffett. The loophole would have exempted Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s company, from having to pay the fees on derivatives it already holds—fees that all other derivative-holders would be compelled to pay under the terms of the bill. The Democrats sensed, correctly, that this one carve-out was hard to justify as a matter of policy and harder still as a matter of politics, a move that apparently left Nelson so peeved that he voted to keep the financial reform debate from beginning.”12

  Eventually, as he always does in the end, Nelson caved in and the financial derivative regulation provision passed.

  If Nebraska is truly disenchanted with a senator who sells himself as a conservative to the voters in one of the most conservative states in the nation and then enables all kinds of radical, socialist measures to pass in Washington, they will throw Nelson out in 2012.

  In fact, Nebraska Democrats may beat us to it! Because he opposed the creation of a government-owned insurance company and kept the stimulus spending package down in cost, liberals are criticizing him. Obama recently claimed that he wanted a larger stimulus package—which he says would have worked—but couldn’t get it passed.

  “I mean,” the president said, “if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings.”13 Hey! We weren’t invited!

  Only in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Washington, D.C., would a president be able to say, with a straight face, that the stimulus would have worked had it been larger, and that the likes of Ben Nelson made it too small. Some of us, less attuned to the ways of Washington, believe wasting $780 billion was quite enough!

  Ben Nelson will lose in 2012. A Rasmussen Reports poll reports that Republican governor Dave Heineman would defeat him by 61–30 if the election were held now.14 And if Nelson loses the Democratic primary, we will likely defeat any Democrat who takes his place on the ballot. After fooling the voters of Nebraska into electing him and reelecting him, his time has run out!

  Jon Tester

  Montana

  Elected 2006

  Votes with the Democrats 89% of the time15

  Appropriations Committee

  Banking Committee

  Homeland Security Committee

  Committee on Indian Affairs

  Committee on Veterans Affairs

  Montana has two of the most liberal senators in America, Max and Max Jr., despite being one of the reddest of states. Max, of course, is Max Baucus, who wrote the ObamaCare bill, and Max Jr. is his colleague (aka Jon Tester), who follows Big Max everywhere he goes and votes the way he is told to. Max Jr. voted down the line with Big Max and with Obama and Reid—backing the stimulus, health care changes, financial regulation, and all their other initiatives.

  It’s time Montana voters woke up. They elected Tester by fewer than 4,000 votes in the anti–Iraq War, anti-Bush sweep of 2006, when the Democrats won the Senate. They sent their message. Now it’s time to get serious and get rid of Tester and elect a conservative in his place!

  But Tester has another problem, besides liberalism: a certain lack of intelligence. Read his interview with Alexis Glick of FoxNews.com on July 18, 2008. Senator Tester was pushing his bill to limit speculation in oil futures to hold down gasoline prices.

  Glick threw him a curveball to start the interview. She asked what his bill would do. He couldn’t handle a trick question like that!

  “Well, I think basically, what it will do is exactly what—what you said, is it will put more transparency in the marketplace and really deal with the folks on Wall Street who are—are putting the boots to the people on Main Street, and, you know, come forth with that bill, and it’s a part of the puzzle.”

  Told by Glick that the U.S. only has jurisdiction over one-third of the oil futures’ trade, Tester didn’t cover himself with glory in his comeback: “Well, I think—I think—you know, it’s a big puzzle, obviously. And—and we’re a part of that puzzle. And I think that anything we can do to help is a step in the right direction.”

  Then he clarified himself, sort of. “I’m not saying the speculation thing is an end-all to the cost of high price of oil, absolutely not. But neither is drilling. Neither is putting all our eggs in the renewable energy basket. I think it’s—it’s a big puzzle, and we—we put forth every piece we can to help knock down oil prices…”

  Tester’s best answer of the day came when Alexis said: “Senator Tester, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate it.”

  Without hesitation, Tester shot right back: “It indeed is a pleasure. Thank you, Alexis.”16

  Since his election by a hair in 2006, Tester has followed a very simple rule: follow Max. Anything Baucus, the senior senator, did, do the same! Nobody in Washington would give Baucus much credit for brilliance. But, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!

  Tester describes himself as “a pioneer in ethics reform.” His website boasts that his “first act in Congress was passing the most sweeping ethics overhaul since the Watergate scandal” and notes that Tester “is also the first U.S. Senator to post his daily schedule online and to conduct a self-imposed ethics audit of his office.”17

  Really? His ethics “audit” apparently didn’t turn up that he has been getting federal earmarks at our expense and then turning around and hitting up the lobbyists whose clients got them for big campaign donations.

  Tester, who sponsored 95 earmarks in 2010, costing us $138 million (38th in the Senate), took $1,618,500 in campaign contributions from the lobbyists for those who got earmarks. This handy sort of campaign cash has, thus far, accounted for 23% of the $6.9 million he has raised for his 2012 election c
ampaign.18

  Here are the campaign contributions he got in exchange for earmarks:

  * * *

  TESTER’S EARMARKS AND DONATIONS

  Earmark Recipient: FLIR Systems MA; MT

  Amount: $4,000,000

  Campaign Donation: $620,000

  Earmark Recipient: Federal Technologies Group

  Amount: $2,400,000

  Campaign Donation: $170,000

  Earmark Recipient: University of Montana

  Amount: $2,000,000

  Campaign Donation: $154,500

  Earmark Recipient: Montana State University

  Amount: $1,600,000

  Campaign Donation: $250,000

  Earmark Recipient: University of Idaho

  Amount: $547,000

  Campaign Donation: $130,000

  Earmark Recipient: HomeWORD

  Amount: $487,000

  Campaign Donation: $20,000

  Earmark Recipient: Missoula County, MT

  Amount: $400,000

  Campaign Donation: $84,000

  Earmark Recipient: Montana State University/Bozeman

  Amount: $133,000

  Campaign Donation: $190,000

  Amount: Total

  Campaign Donation: $1,618,50019

  * * *

  Quite a little racket he has going—donations for earmarks. Unfortunately, we end up paying the tab.

  Montana has a good alternative: Steve Daines, a fifth-generation Montanan, is the general manager and vice president of the Asia-Pacific region for RightNow Technologies, a publicly traded software company based in Bozeman, Montana. When Steve joined RightNow in 2000, they had 100 employees. Now they are up to 900, including 500 in Montana. Their average wage: $70,000 a year. A businessman who knows how to create jobs will be quite an improvement over the intellectually challenged Jon Tester.