News and Views on Politics, Policy and More
I’m heading over to the KARN studios in scenic West Little Rock at 2 p.m., where guest host Alice Stewart will have me and Think Tank blogger Blake Rutherford on to chat about politics and more as Blake and I continue our ongoing “Goofus and Gallant” routine. (He’s Goofus. Obviously.)
That’s 102.9 FM/920 AM from 2-3 p.m. Tune in!
Posting will resume later this afternoon.
….why, on the Arkansas Sunday Edition on The Buzz/103.7, of course, hosted by local blogging and broadcasting legend Blake Rutherford.
It’ll be me, Lance Turner and the rest of the “Not-Ready-For-9 A.M. Players” talking politics and whatever else comes up. Show kicks off at 7 a.m., and you do not want to miss it. You do not, I say!
In case you missed it, Jonesboro radio man Rick Crawford, a Republican, announced last evening his official entry into the 2010 race to challenge Democratic Rep. Marion Berry. (The Arkansas Project, in one of our rare fits of usefulness, broke the news that Crawford was forming an exploratory committee in April.)
Crawford’s full announcement is at the jump.
More on the state’s four congressional races for 2010 is over here.
God Given: Columnist John Brummett thinks possible Senate candidate Tom Cotton may be “God’s gift to Arkansas Republicans.” But how will Cotton fare in primary match-up against Sen. Gilbert Baker? (Arkansas News Bureau)
Madame Chairman: Sen. Blanche Lincoln is posited as in line to take over the Senate Ag committee. Wait, “posited”? Who the hell writes these headlines? (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
Rifle Shot: Eagle-eyed gun nut John Anderson catches reporting snafu on assault weapon in local news broadcast. (ARCCA Blog)
Let ‘Em In: Green Party sues Arkansas for ballot access. (AP)
Pie Chart: The Radical Returns blog features nice video explanation of Obamanomics from Penn and Teller. (The Radical Returns)
Steady As She Goes: Blake Rutherford says “cool your jets” on those terrible Blanche Lincoln poll numbers. (Blake’s Think Tank)
Deseg Funding Plan Posited: Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says proposal to phase out deseg funding is better than the alternatives. I have no idea what that means. And I’m betting you don’t care. So let’s go look at gratuitous photos of hot chicks doing yoga instead. Hooray! (Arkansas News Bureau)
After several days of brutal polling results for Arkansas Democrats, Public Policy Polling comes through with bright and happy news for Gov. Mike Beebe, who is the most popular and beloved politician who has ever existed on earth.
Sixty-three percent of Arkansans polled give Beebe a thumbs-up, including 50 percent of Republicans, according to the Democratic polling firm. (And don’t forget that Roby Brock at Talk Business recently polled your Beebe-love and came out with even higher numbers, showing 78 percent of you approving of the governor’s performance.)
Now go sacrifice a goat in his honor, lest he turn his mighty gubernatorial wrath upon you and lay waste to all you hold dear.
PPP’s approval ratings for Sen. Blanche Lincoln, released yesterday, were less cheery.
Krystal Thrailkill, a Democrat, announced this week that she’ll run for the Arkansas House of Representatives in District 22. The seat is currently held by Democratic Rep. Bill Abernathy, who is term-limited. The full text of her release is below the jump.
For our running tally of who’s running for the House, click here. (Let me know if you see any names missing from the list—it’s a work in progress.)
Wait, what's she smiling about?
The latest numbers from Public Policy Polling’s recent survey of Arkansas are out today, and they ain’t pretty for Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who’s commanding a tepid 36 percent approval rating in the state, with three potential GOP challengers—Sen. Gilbert Baker, Curtis Coleman and Tom Cotton—all within the margin of error in head-to-head match-ups. (Two of those dudes, Baker and Cotton, haven’t even announced they’ll be running at this point.)
Compounding the ugliness for Lincoln in today’s media mix is this sterling column from the Arkansas News Bureau’s David Sanders, who last week broke the news that Democratic state Sen. Bob Johnson was mulling a primary run against Lincoln. Sanders gets Johnson on the record talking about the whys and wherefores of his flirtation with higher office:
Johnson has concluded that part of Lincoln’s electoral troubles stem from the fact that she’s never become an adored Arkansas politician, like many of her predecessors who served in the U.S. Senate.
“Going to Washington doesn’t mean you have to stop being who you are — that is part of the problem, which adds to the pretentious phony-isms we get out of D.C.,” he said. “People don’t like functionaries.”
But, Johnson also observes the obvious. Her situation, he said, has been made worse by the fact that voters have become openly hostile to Washington incumbents.
“Sometimes candidates just get into a death spiral – an inverted roll – and can’t pull out of it,” he said. According to Johnson, Lincoln is caught up in a much larger problem, and a lot of incumbent politicians are in her situation.
“Death spiral”? Yikes. Hey, maybe this news will encourage another 8 to 10 people to jump into the race.
Blogger Jason Tolbert has more over at The Tolbert Report, as does Max Brantley at the Arkansas Times. Meanwhile, youngblood blogger Zack “Nick” Stovall says “Bah!” to you and your tiresome polling numbers, thereby affecting an air of hardened political cynicism not typically found in someone who only started shaving last week.
UPDATE: Sanders comes back with a blog post about Sen. Gilbert Baker, whom he says will jump into the race by announcing the formation of an exploratory committee on September 1. That’s Tuesday of next week, as of this writing. We’ll see. I hesitated to even point it up, so weary am I of Baker’s indecisive Hamlet routine on this question, so make of that what you will.
The Public Policy Polling results for Arkansas that we teased yesterday are out, and they continue to show that support for health care reform in Arkansas is dicey.
PPP, a Democratic firm, finds that 60 percent of Arkansas voters are opposed to Obamacare, and notes that even among white Democrats, support for health care reform doesn’t hit majority numbers. (Some people are pointing out that the poll asks about “Obama’s plan,” when Obama doesn’t technically have “a plan”—all the proposals have been generated by Congress, not the White House—but that strikes me as an exercise in hair-splitting.)
As always, it’s best not to get too hung up on the results of any one poll, but the overall trend on the health care numbers we’re seeing in recent weeks suggests that Democrats have done a poor job of selling the supposed benefits of the various reform proposals. Cue a rash of commentary from liberal bloggers and columnists complaining about “misinformation” stemming from Republicans and how this all means that the U.S. is having “a nervous breakdown.” And quick, someone tell Blake Rutherford to hammer out another post about how this is all a function of abiding racism!
The PPP poll includes some other results that strike me as weird and pointless, like the question of whether Arkansans prefer Obama’s vision for America or Rush Limbaugh’s. What the hell does that question even mean? On what planet is that relevant? (They preferred Rush, by the way. Great. Who cares?)
Stay tuned for more out of PPP, who say they’ve got more results coming tomorrow on the 2010 Senate race: The Senate numbers we’re releasing tomorrow in Arkansas will show Blanche Lincoln trailing a couple of her potential GOP opponents by amounts well within the margin of error.
Advantage Lincoln?: CQ looks at 2010 Senate race in Arkansas and rates it “Democrat Favored.” (Congressional Quarterly)
Primary Colors: Columnist John Brummett puzzles out state Sen. Bob Johnson’s possible motivations in considering a primary challenge to Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln. (Arkansas News Bureau)
Bernie Notice: Wanna know more about Bernie Skoch, who’s challenging GOP Rep. John Boozman in a primary? Then quit hassling me and go read this profile. (Morning News of NWA)
Health of a Nation: Fans of Rep. Dan Greenberg—those people exist, right? Somewhere?—will want to catch this video from a Benton health care reform town hall hosted by the state GOP on Saturday. Also includes appearances from Rep. Ed Garner, Rep. Ann Clemmer and state GOP chief Doyle Webb. If you watch only one online video today, make it this one! (KTHV)
Keeping One’s Counsel: No one from the Arkansas lottery has bothered to call the state’s only certified gambling addiction counselor. He’s so lonely! Just like your mom. (Arkansas News Bureau)
OK, Jesus Christ, enough! I’m posting the new polling results about Arkansans’ attitudes toward health care reform that are floating around today, since I’ve had like six people send them to me this morning.
The Tarrance Group, a GOP political consulting firm, polled Arkansans with a battery of questions related to Obamacare, in mid-August, and came back with a wealth of results that, in general, suggest a great deal of skepticism among Arkansas voters when it comes Democratic plans for health care reform.
The poll was conducted on behalf of Patients United Now, and the key finding is in the slide above, which notes that most respondents aren’t convinced that the Dem health care reform plans will benefit them or their families.
Say, here’s a nutty idea: What if…try to follow me here…what if the Obamacare crowd actually tried to convince people of the merits of their plan, instead of constantly criticizing and insulting and whining about those who dissent from their proposals? Oh, never mind, that’s an insane idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.
If you want the full report, click on over to the Tarrance Group site and click on the links at the top of the page.
Last month, Roby Brock at Talk Business polled key questions about Arkansans’ attitudes toward their own health care, and found that 86 percent were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their current health care. The Tarrance Group’s findings are of a piece with Roby’s results.
Distrustful of the Tarrance Group’s partisan lean? Then keep an eye on Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm that teases upcoming Arkansas numbers via Twitter with a note that “less than half of white dems [in Arkansas] are with Obama on health care.”
And in a weekend analysis, the AP’s Andrew Demillo explored Arkansas’ emergence as a “battleground” in the health care reform debate.
