My Representative, Pat Tiberi (R-OH12), despite being a fairly reliable supporter of conservative and Republican legislation over his 3 terms, took a big step this week in his slow slide to RINOism. Tiberi, in his apparent attempt to turn his relatively safe seat into a toss-up against leftist dinosaur Bob Shamansky, is the latest Republican that has decided to stab the President, his party, and his supporters in the back.

From the Dispatch yesterday:

"I can’t defend how the president laid out the need for (going to war in Iraq). I don’t support Rumsfeld," Tiberi said.

The comments from the three-term congressman came during a meeting before the Dispatch editorial board with challenger Bob Shamansky...

Asked whether Bush has operated above the law regarding government surveillance, Tiberi responded: "He might have."

Despite supporting the Prez every step of the way-- and all the evidence to the contrary-- all of a sudden he has decided that defeating Islamofascism, terrorists, and liberating tens of millions of people from dictatorial rule is a bad idea.

The earliest signs of his RINOism occurred in 2002, when he co-sponsored legislation-- even prior to the Medicare Modernization Act-- that attempted to deny patients cost-effective health care through specialty hospitals. FYI: The MMA imposed an 18-month moratorium-- which recently expired-- on specialty hospital construction, which allowed tax-exempt hospitals to greatly expand and solidify market share. (How's that for a mandate Kelso?!) This is one of my pet issues about which I will post in the future.

In an earlier post Tom Raga said internal polling has them down 7 points. If that is the case then all they have to do is get their Republican support up to the mid 80s. Couple this with 30 percent black support and they'll win. It's a shame to think that we need the RINOs to win this election. Your thoughts?

We've all seen the recent poll numbers that show Ken Blackwell down anywhere from 4% to more than 20%, with the majority of those polls showing Blackwell down double digits to Strickland. More importantly, these polls show Blackwell lacking in Repubilcan support. The new Rasmussen poll shows Blackwell with 59% of Republican support.

Why do I think this is so important? Well, the first reason is quite obvious. Anytime a candidate is receiving that little support from his party, it means trouble. The second reason I think this is significant is because Blackwell's current Republican support breaks down very close to the amount of the vote he received in the primary. Blackwell received 55.5% of the vote in the primary, and Jim Petro received 44.5% of the vote. That shows that the wounds from the primary are still open, and that almost no progress has been made towards uniting the party for the November election.

With that said, I think Petro doing some campaign appearances for Blackwell in Northeast Ohio would go a long way to shoring up Blackwell's numbers amongst Republicans. I don't know if or how many he's done with Blackwell up to this point, but if he hasn't it's time to start doing some. Petro showing his support for Blackwell would do alot to get Petro's supporters to support Blackwell. If their candidate tells them to bury the hatchet and support Blackwell, it's likely that most of them will do so. Plus, Petro is a popular figure in Northeast Ohio amongst independents, so Petro doing campaign appearances for Blackwell could also win over some independent votes for Blackwell.

Ladies and gents, it's quite simple. Blackwell can't win in the fall unless the party is united. Right now, it's pretty evident that the party isn't united going into campaign season. We need to unite not only to elect Blackwell as our next Governor, but we need to unite to get our whole ticket elected. If we don't unite, Blackwell isn't the only one who's going to suffer, our whole ticket is going to suffer along with him.

It's time to bury the hatchet so we can present a united front going into campaign season.

*cross-posted at the VikingSpirit blog*

The Labor Day weekend being the unofficial start to the campaign season, The Columbus Dispatch launched a free pre-emptive strike and political ad for Taxin' Ted "The Stealth Candidate" Strickland. The Dispatch, sensing Strickland to be electorally vulnerable if the voters actually find out who he is, all but dedicated Saturday's edition to countering the Blackwell campaign's not so secret strategy to expose Strickland as the liberal he is.

Dispatch: Strike 1

First, they place a front page(!) "story" (Strickland doesn’t always fit ‘liberal’ label) declaring Strickland a "moderate Democrat"-- which is like being less crazy than 25% of the asylum. To "prove" their assertion, they insert this disceptive figure (Note: I think they reversed the years):

Using National Journal's criteria, Strickland received only a 71.8 liberal rating (on an ascending 0-100 scale) in 2005 and 77 in 2004. [Note: Sherrod Brown is up in Looney Toon land, but not far away from TS).

What is it that makes TS "moderate"?

He is a generally reliable supporter of abortion rights, but he backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions and was among a minority of Democrats last year to vote for House legislation barring transportation of underage girls across state lines to obtain an abortion without parental notification.

He picked a fervent gun-control advocate as his gubernatorial running mate, but he consistently votes in Congress against gun-control measures and is regularly endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

He voted against a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, but for an amendment barring desecration of the American flag. He typically votes with a majority of Democrats against President Bush-backed tax cuts, but he broke with most in his party to support a GOP-authored bill making it tougher to escape debt through bankruptcy.

So he is against infanticide, kidnapping, fraud, and admits that there is a 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. To most of us with a functioning brainstem, these are common sense not principled stances; but this is what passes for "moderate" in today's Democratic Party.

What The Dispatch doesn't tell you is:

1. Supposedly, this doesn't put him in the "far left" of his party, but another "moderate"-- only 1.4 percentile points more liberal than TS-- is Clinton hatchetman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL)-- now chair of the DCCC.
2. Since there are 18 congressional districts in Ohio-- and the other 12 are held by Republicans-- TS is the 5th most liberal (14th most conservative) out of the 18 in the Ohio contingent; not the 5th least liberal out of the 6-- Democrats only-- that they want it to appear.
3. Who is the most liberal Republican? Jim Leach (R-IA) with a 61.5 (still 10 less than TS, and 7 less than the least liberal Ohio Democrat, Tim Ryan).
4. Who is the most liberal Ohio Republican? Steve LaTourette with a 46.3 [25(!) less than TS].
5. Who is the most conservative Democrat? Gene Taylor (D-MS) with a 45.7 (only 0.6 less than LaTourette!).
6. Ergo, the entire Democratic Party of the House-- except for 1 guy-- is more liberal than the most liberal Ohio Republican (7th out of 18)-- who is still just to the right of center-- and you still have another 25% of the entire House and 50% of the Democratic Party that's less liberal before you get to Strickland!
7. Even if KB were assigned as the perfect conservative-- 0 liberal score-- he would still be numerically closer to the median Ohio representative (35.5) than Strickland (36.3).

Now who's out of the mainstream of Ohio again?

Dispatch: Strike 2

In the aforementioned article, there is not one quote from a person that disputes the premise. Now let's go to an article in the same issue about Blackwell (Blackwell pushes campaign during 3-day bus tour). One would assume that this would be a standard puff piece (Section B-3) giving Blackwell's schedule of events, noting throngs of supporters, etc. You'd be wrong!

The gist of the article is how Blackwell dares to campaigning despite being hopelessly behind. The article also prominently quotes a Strickland operatives and an anti-Blackwell ex(?)-Republican with disparaging remarks about KB:

Strickland... has saved and created jobs in his district while Blackwell, the secretary of state, has been among the Republicans in control during the state’s decline, spokesman Keith Dailey said.

"Blackwell is arriving at this party about three years late," said Andy Douglas, executive director of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association and a former Republican justice on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Dispatch: Strike 3

The second editorial in the issue details the success of and need for... wait for it...the focus of Ted Strickland's (so called) "Turnaround Ohio" plan: "access to high-quality early care and education" under the title, Wise investment. Although it doesn't name Strickland in the editorial, I doubt it was coincidence.

How much are these free not-so-subtle political ads worth? This is what Blackwell (and Republicans in general) has been up against for the last year, and not just from The Dispatch. I can hardly wait for Sunday and Monday.