netroots nation

Ultra liberal Chris Murphy is trying the Big Con for CT voters. We can call him on it. And we need to do it now.

Chris Murphy's closing argument in his flagging bid for re-election is that he represents the "pragmatic center" of American politics. This is a place he visits only after Labor Day on even numbered years.

I call B.S. on this. Let's count the ways Murphy is far to the Left in American politics--even beyond the usual Nancy Pelosi foot soldier.

Terrorism

Chris Murphy thinks our efforts to keep Americans safe should be micromanaged by lawyers and run in a fashion so as to not to offend foreign press.

Murphy is one of the most vocal opponents of the use of warrantless wiretaps to obtain information to thwart terrorist threats. We do not know the precise manner this past week effort to blow up Jewish houses of worship with mail bombs was foiled, but do we want to hamstring the people who keep us safe? Murphy evidently does.

Worse still, he favored letting the telecom firms that assisted the War on Terror face ruinous lawsuits from lefty lawyers 

Erick Erickson at Red State has more on this point.

Murphy is also one of the firmest opponents of keeping the detention facility at Gitmo open. What he suggests we do with the jihadists we do not know.

Health Care

Chris Murphy has a problem with the health care bill. He doesn;t think it went far enough. He is a strong supporter of the public option. And why?  Because last year he told the Meriden Record Journal  "I'm haven't given up on private insurance" while claiming the public sector could provide the same service better.  

There are tens of thousands of private insurance jobs in CT. What a joy to know our Congressman isn't ready "yet" to have the federal government put them all out of business.   Murphy went to some tony college in the UK for awhile; perhaps he became enamored of the NHS and socialized medicine while over there.

Netroots

If you are an ally of Kos, you are not a Blue Dog, a New Democrat, or a fiscal conservative. You have decided to ally yourself with folks who think the Democratic Party has not yet moved far enough to the Left. 

Chris Murphy was a lead speaker at Kos' Netroots Nation convention. He wants to be the "tip of the spear" advancing the liberal agenda through Congress.

He told MSMBC that after he and his colleagues got past the voters in November they would return with "steel in their spine" ready to cast more tough votes against the wishes of their constituents.

So Murphy is following the playbook. talking left outside the district, talking right inside the district, and planning to do whatever he pleases if he is returned to office.

That, by the way, will be to abandon his work as a House member and start his 2012 senate campaign against Joe Lieberman.  Of course, CT observers have noticed that if Murphy loses tomorrow, he's probably all done for 2012.

Conclusion

There are plenty of Democrats who are going to lose. Many are well meaning and misguided. But as for a toxic cocktail of ambition, ideology and insincerity there are none more deserving of defeat than Connecticut's Chris Murphy. 

If you agree go to www.samforcongress.com 

Remember  back in the summer, when liberals were thinking the election was just a speed bump on the way to a more statist America?

Oh, yes, the Netroots of the far Left do. And remember wistfully their "Tip of the Spear" symposium at Netroots Nation.  At a posh Vegas hotel, the true believers huddled to determine how they could get President Obama and Speaker Pelosi to enact programs even more liberal than what had been passed in 2009-10.

Two Congressman decided that hanging with lefty activists was more important than working back in their districts for their own re-election.  My Congressman, Chris Murphy, obviously found "the Strip' more alluring than fielding questions about closed businesses on Straits Turnpike.

He was joined by AZ's favorite open borders fanatic, Congressman Raul Grijalva

Murphy was living in his own world in Vegas, self-assured that liberals were on their way to inevitable success

"I would hope that the movement continues to understand that what we’re trying to do is supposed to be hard," said Rep. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who was first elected in 2006. "What I worry sometimes is that people who come into the Netroots community, when they don’t get an immediate victory… they walk away. The frustration level builds rather quickly."

Giving an upbeat scenario for Election Day, Murphy said, "When we retain the House, some members are going to come back with some extra steel in their spines, having cast some tough votes and having survived what’s likely the toughest election of their career."

"Some members don’t want to cast tough votes before November," Murphy said, but he argued "that doesn’t mean that permanently excludes the ability to vote on things like immigration reform and energy."

Well, he got Congressional cowardice right. In fact, by voting to adjourn prior to voting on tax relief extension he was an eager participant. As for the election predictions, well let's say Charlie Cook and Nate Silver ain't buying it.

And Murphy's own constituents's aren't buying the extreme liberalism, the extreme partisanship, the pandering double talk, and the take it for granted attitude of Chris Murphy. 

In an independent poll, Murphy is losing by 50%-44%  National Review says the "dam has burst."

Maybe the 5th District has decided Chris Murphy can take that "steel in his spine" and , hmmm, put it somewhere else?

Oh poor Chris, after going to Vegas to tell lefties to put steel in their spine and reject moderate policies he's trying to claim back here in Connecticut he wants to work with Republicans.   Please. We can use the Internet , too. Selling a bridge?

As for Murphy's buddy in Arizona, he's lost favor with his voters in a gerrymandered Democratic district.  He leads by a mere 7 points. Some people don't like it when a Congressman calls for his own state to be boycotted.

On November 2, voters will be able to make a positive change for America. We will effect a bigger change not by just knocking out the craven and cowardly Blue Dogs, but by making sure that when Markos looks for politicians for next year's Netroots Nation no one more prominent than a college town councilman shows up.

Yep, let's give Chris Murphy and Raul Grijalva the tip of OUR spear. 

Go Sam Caligiuri

In Part I of my post on this subject, I asked two questions that I found relevant after reading Kirsten Powers' description of the divide between the netroots and the grassroots of the Left. How will the "Netroots of the Right" be described 4 years from now? And can the grassroots of the Republican Party ever merge successfully with the future netroots of the conservative movement? I particularly enjoyed a response from "davidfarrar" who says we should have a long term, "beyond GOTV," plan to attract people to the netroots of the Right in order to give added value to the grassroots of the Right, and further mentions that the Georgia GOP is starting to do this.

Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer wrote a long story on the recent Netroots Nation convention in Austin. He confirmed the divide between the institutional Democratic leadership and the bloggers when "the bloggers in the crowd were asked to act like grown-ups and limit their grievance-airing to an allotted ten-second boo-hiss session before [Nancy] Pelosi took the stage." Ed Madej, a blogger with DailyKOS, had an interesting historical observation about the netroots of the Left:

It's official: "netroots" is accepted as a real word by Merriam-Webster dictionary. They provide the following definition: "the grassroots political activists who communicate via the Internet especially by blogs."

While this is a blog where those on the right come to share ideas and disagree, it's always nice to see an online strategy fight between Democrats. Kirsten Powers, registered Democrat, former Clinton administration official and now columnist for the New York Post, today wrote a scathing critique of liberal bloggers like Markos Moulitsas. To give some emphasis to her distaste, the title of the column today is "Net-Roots Ninnies: Dem Left's Dumb Bam Slams." Let's see what Powers has to say:

"One top liberal blogger opined last week that Obama's drop in a recent Newsweek poll resulted from his vote for a compromise on FISA, the intelligence surveillance law. Ridiculous: The average American voter can't describe what FISA is. Meanwhile, a virtual mutiny is taking place on Obama's campaign Web site, which is swamped with angry complaints that Obama has sold out his 'base.' Newsflash to the netroots and the media (which seems perpetually confused on this issue): The netroots are not the base of the Democratic Party. Overwhelmingly white, male and highly educated, they're a loud anomaly in a party that's wholly dependent on the votes of African Americans, women and working-class whites."

I love it! This really does show the central divide in the modern-day Democratic party: the educated white male who voted for Obama in the primaries and the working-class whites who voted for Clinton in the primaries. Matt Bai, from the NYT Magazine, points out something interesting that many who've looked at the numbers also emphasize: "Obama did best in areas that have either a large concentration of African-American voters or hardly any at all, but he struggled in places where the population is decidedly mixed."

Promoted - this can be an important conference for the Right to begin organizing around ideas and people. - Jon Henke

For some reason, at Americans for Prosperity we seem to confronting the left head on quite a bit lately. You may have read about our little adventure last week, when we buzzed Al Gore’s mansion in a hot air balloon (to expose the high cost of global warming alarmism…)