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A large group of Kuster supporters - and some Bass supporters - waved signs outside the event.
But do read the whole thing, if only to see Charlie complain about deficits out of one side of his mouth, while pressing for extending the deficit ballooning Bush tax giveaways for the wealthiest on the other.
[Jennifer Horn] also warned "if we are not happy with our representation, we will run again" (emphasis on 'we') and will "put a true conservative in this seat."
And this doesn't tell you that we need to do everything we can to capitalize on the other side's collective "meh" about Charlie, I don't know what will. From the right-wing diarist:
Some feel that we should vote for Charlie Bass, simply because he won the Party primary; some will hold their nose as they vote for him, but are not likely to provide any campaign support; some are considering a protest write-in; others prefer to do nothing.
"America was doing pretty well in January of 2008."
America, the bad new days:
"I feel America's being ruined."
Here's what state house candidate John R. White has to say about the Good Old Days of the Bush years:
Of course, the person running for Congress who hasn't spent twelve years in DC during the Good Old Days, and who isn't creating Two Americas is coming to a diner near you and wanting to hear from voices from all parties and perspectives.
"America was doing pretty well in January of 2008." -- Charlie Bass
That's what he said on Channel 9's WMUR CloseUp this Sunday. We heard about his mistake a couple of days ago, but to actually hear him say it, and in the context in which he said it, was quite interesting.
Elect Charlie Bass and he'll reinvent history in 2011.
This guy is losing it. Kind of sad.
It ranks up there with John Stephen's ignorance the other day in the debate with Governor John Lynch about the minimum wage. A question came up about whether the minimum wage should be increased.
Stephen was under the impression it's solely a federal issue, which Lynch quickly corrected. Obviously, the difficulties of working men and women is off Stephen's radar screen -- he doesn't even know about the minimum wage. Anyone hanging around the State House for a while knows that the issue is discussed virtually every year.
Part of the Republican chatter this week was about how in disarray the Charlie Bass campaign is, usually ending with some exasperated version of "it's Charlie being Charlie." Everything should be going Bass's way, but is Kuster running such a much more superior campaign in nearly every single metric? Has Bass actually convinced people he wants this job and is willing to work for it?
And why would anyone like someone who spent twelve years in Washington in a campaign cycle that is supposed to be anti-Washington?
Adding: This "willing to work for it" business should be new to no one. Bass was a lazy campaigner four years ago until, sometime after SockpuppetGate, he realized he might actually lose.
Not even Cloud Hampshire - the state Andy Smith polls to make Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes look bad - can scratch up enough votes to make six-term Washington Insider Charlie Bass look good:
The poll shows Bass coming out on top by a 5-point margin -- 43 to 38 percent. That's big swing from July, when Bass held an 18-popint lead in a head-to-head matchup.
And speaking of momentum:
Democrat Ann McLane Kuster's campaign manager says that in the two weeks since the Sept. 14 primary, her 2nd District U.S. House campaign has raised about a quarter of a million dollars.
Colin Van Ostern said that while the exact figure isn't ready yet, at quarter's end, "We will have raised more in this quarter than Congressman (Charlie) Bass raised in his entire campaign," at least as of the most recent filing on Aug. 25, which reported $537,000.
Of course, every time the BassMaster panders to the fringe, this helps Annie:
The last time Charlie Bass represented me in Congress, he voted to pass the Soviet sounding National Uniformity for Food Act, which would have nullified state food laws.
Or to put it another way, it would have allowed someone to pump high fructose corn syrup into a bottle and call it Pure New Hampshire Maple Syrup (we have a law against that here).
Basically, the corporatists who tell Republican legislators what to do were angry that Proposition 65 in California was forcing them to put health risk labels on some food products. Which in turn pressured them to, um, produce healthier food. The solution for Republicans, then, was simply to crush states' rights with this proposed law.
In his sixth term in DC, Charlie Bass voted for it. Luckily for us Granite Staters, it never became law.
That much was evident by how little Bass managed to squeak by two ticket splitters with no money and little name recognition.
But now here's another metric:
There were 5,000 more Republicans voting in the 1st Congressional District primary won by former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta than there were casting ballots in the 2nd CD race that former Congressman Charles Bass won.
Yes, it's true the 2nd District has increasingly become an even more Democratic-leaning district than the 1st District, but the falloff in the GOP primary wasn't seen while Bass served in Congress, or even in 2006 when he lost to Democrat Paul Hodes.
Of course, columnist Landrigan can't let something that damaging to Republicans remain in print on its own, so right-leaning pundit Landrigan chimes in:
The election demographics make it all the more critical that all Republican voters are super-motivated to vote for Bass in November.
Annie Kuster can win this race, despite a media environment in Nashua that consistently handicaps the red team.
Rep. Charlie Bass must've sustained a head injury in the "thumpin'" Republicans received at the hands of angry voters last week. He's thinking of a comeback.
What Granite State Republicans need is a house cleaning, not a rearranging of old furniture.
...Finally, Republicans need to find the next generation of candidates. Reps. Charlie Bass and Jeb Bradley are not among them.
Remember a couple days ago when the BassMaster went on the attack, using the word "progressive" negatively to go after Annie Kuster?
Well, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (wisely, imo) sent out a fundraising appeal based on Bass' bash (email text below the fold), replete with this graphic:
The folks at PCCC let me know earlier today that "nearly 1,000 people chipped in over $12,000". And counting.
Keep bashing progressives, Charlie. Every little bit you can do to help defeat yourself counts!
I've been using C-SPAN's new video archive to remind myself of what life was like when the Republicans were in charge of all branches of government and six-term Congressman Charlie Bass represented me in Washington.
Check out this video from May 11, 2006, taken of the Republican controlled, Joe "I apologize" Barton chaired, House Energy and Commerce Committee's second day of hearings on gas prices. At the time the country was reeling from three dollar plus gas in many places, and it was negatively affecting Bush's approval ratings. And as CNN noted, "members of Congress are worried about how the issue will affect them in November's mid-term elections." Clearly, the GOPer Congresscritters needed to look like they were doing something about it. So, we got a "hearing."
Tough stuff, huh? Compare that horse and pony show between Bass and Big Oil's chief spokesperson Red Cavaney, if you'd like, to the actual grilling Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo gives Cavaney on new refinery production just before in 1:38 of the hearing. And the subsequent interference Barton runs on her to try to stop her from doing her job.
Now, this clip and the people in it brought back a memory I had about Bass' ties to DC life and Big Oil from four years ago. Sure enough, I had come across Red Cavaney, then President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, before:
That picture is from the May-June 2006 newsletter of the anti-environmental regulation American Council for Capital Formation. ExxonMobil gave the "non-partisan" ACCF almost a quarter of a million dollars in 2001, and nearly a million in 2002-2003.
The picture above depicts Charlie Bass and Red Cavaney at one of ACCF's Economic Policy Evenings. Joe Lieberman (in ACCF's July-August 2004 newsletter) referred to these get togethers as "Washington's last salon."
But here's the kicker. The date of that photo of Bass and Cavaney? May 09, 2006.
Dining with a Big Oil chief in a DC salon one evening, and then a couple days later tossing softball questions to him on the Hill.
This the kind of independent-minded, New Hampshire leadership we can expect from Charlie Bass if he returns to Washington.
"Annie Kuster is proud of her record as a liberal, progressive activist for Barack Obama."
- Charlie Bass, from a press release issued today.
That's nice and everything, but six-term Congressman Bass has something Annie doesn't: his own Presidential nickname!
Bush quickly assigned nicknames to Washington players - most of them undignified, such as dubbing former New Hampshire Representative Charlie Bass "Bassmaster," a reference to a stomach-churning "Saturday Night Live" sketch.
Of course, only "Washington player"s get that kind of treatment, so Bass had a dozen years in the Village to get that token of affection from the President he fervently supported and for whose agenda he pushed at every turn.
Republicans will unveil their new "Contract with America" in Virginia on Thursday, less than two months before election day.
...The new contract, modeled after the 1994 "Contract with America" - credited with helping Republicans win the House in 1994, which they held until 2006-is intended to highlight what the Republican party would stand for if it were to return to power in Congress.
Back in the day when today's high school sophomores were not yet alive, Charlie Bass began his long infatuation with Washington DC, getting swept into power by (the later disgraced House speaker) Newt Gingirch and the Contract for America.
Term limits were a big feature of the Contract. More than six terms was too many, held signatories like Charlie Bass.
Congressman Bass broke his Contract with America by running for re-election, and thus a seventh term, in 2006. Voters rejected him.
And Congressman Bass is breaking it today by trying once again for a seventh term.
Should original Contract breakers be allowed to run on a new one? Or to put it another way: should a six-term Congressman like Charlie Bass who voted to balloon the deficit by green lighting tax giveaways for the rich and wars that had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD be allowed back into Washington DC?
Remember when the local GOP fooled the press a little while back about our house seats being abandoned by the DCCC? Well, looky here:
Targeting key battleground districts in the wake of last week's primaries, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has added two candidates to its Red to Blue program.
According to announcements that will be released Monday, Ann McLane Kuster, of New Hampshire's Second District, and Bill Keating, of Massachusetts' 10th, will be the beneficiaries of additional "financial, communications, grassroots, and strategic support" that the program offers.
That's on top of the roughly million and a half the DCCC reserved for both house districts last summer.
And here's today's moment of absurdity: both Guinta and Bass have been named to the "Young Guns" NRCC program.
Six-term Washington insider Congressman Bass, who has been around so long he was once defeated by his current opponent's mother, is a "Young Gun." And so is Guinta, who was previously a Young Gun until his travails forced them to drop him until a nominee was named. Hilarious.
A: When the right-wing think tankers come out to put on their best concern troll costume:
Primaries traditionally attract the more ideologically committed voters within each party, and Arlinghaus said the clear support 2nd District Democrats gave Ann McLane Kuster over the more moderate Katrina Swett shows they weren't voting strategically either. Swett argued in the campaign's final days that her pragmatism would better position her to win the general election. But for many primary voters, "electability becomes shorthand for abandoning your principles," Arlinghaus said.
I have no interest in re-playing a primary that is now behind us, but when the Republicans try to set the narratives for Democrats, it's important to call them out on it each and every time.
The truth is that Kuster won her primary by huge margins, while Bass, despite enormous name recognition and history, could barely squeak by against a hard right-winger who had no money and a ticket splitter to boot.
We are fired up and ready to go with a candidate who is firmly in the mainstream with Americans on Afghanistan and tax cuts. The GOP, on the other hand, largely doesn't like their nominee.
It is true that former congressman Bass started his political career as a moderate, during his time in the New Hampshire Senate. But that was 20 years ago, before something in the waters of the Potomac got to him. It would be difficult to find evidence of Bass's moderation in his Washington career. He was a fervent supporter of the invasion of Iraq, and continued to support the policy long after its rationale had been disproved. He backed Bush administration's assaults on civil liberties. During six terms in Congress, he was a standard issue conservative, often a water-carrier for Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay. Today on his Web site he calls the plan to expand private health insurance to millions more Americans "the Democrats' massive government takeover of health care."
So now New Hampshire's Tea Party conservatives have been defeated. The general election campaigns are getting under way, featuring Ayotte, Bass and other "moderate" Republicans. Right.
...no "intelligent economist" would support the stance of most Democrats, who would extend the tax cuts for everyone but the highest earners.
...we learned that apparently "Alan Blinder, professor and co-director of Princeton University's Center for Economic Policy Studies" is not an intelligent economist.
In today's episode, we learn that some high-powered Republican economists aren't intelligent either:
It's hard even to find Republican economists who will defend Bush's policies. Summing up the Bush years, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in Bush's first term, had this to say in an interview with the Washington Post at the end of the Bush administration:
The expansion was a continuation of the way the U.S. has grown for too long, which was a consumer-led expansion that was heavily concentrated in housing. There was very little of the kind of saving and export-led growth that would be more sustainable. For a group that claims it wants to be judged by history, there is no evidence on the economic policy front that that was the view. It was all Band-Aids.
Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson, who is highly respected by supply-siders, put it more succinctly. When asked by The New York Times last year to name some positive aspects of Bush's economic policies, he replied, "I don't see any redeeming features, unfortunately."
But of course, when you're a Bush man like Charlie Bass from way back, loyalties trump policy.
Deep thought: A millenium ago, when Newt Gingrich (the future disgraced speaker of the house) swept Charlie Bass and some others into Washington, the children who were entering kindergarten, whose parents were rocking out to the bands on the Arsenio Hall show, and whose older siblings were glued to the TeeVee for Saved by the Bell, are now graduating college.
Oh, and the cost of living for the DC crowd must have gone up since then too:
Bass said he supports extending the Bush tax cuts for all income brackets, and he objected to the use of their approaching expiration as "the class warfare issue of the election." He said no "intelligent economist" would support the stance of most Democrats, who would extend the tax cuts for everyone but the highest earners.
Here's one of those uneducated economists:
"Not all budgetary dollars are created equal," said Alan Blinder, professor and co-director of Princeton University's Center for Economic Policy Studies, in a conference Wednesday morning. "Some have a lot of bang for the buck, and some have very little. The GDP increase per dollar of budgetary cost is in the range of 1.6, 1.7 for things like food stamps and unemployment benefits, and in the range of .35 for extending the Bush tax cuts. We could get some substantial job creation by simply reprogramming the $75 billion that would be saved over the next two years by not extending the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts and spending it instead on unemployment benefits, food stamps, and the like."
Blinder's economic advice supports the tax policy of President Obama and the Democrats, who would like to maintain tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans, while letting the cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 expire. Letting the tax cuts lapse is projected to trim approximately $675 billion from the deficit over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
By doing the opposite of what Charlie Bass wants, we can create more jobs and lower the deficit.
No wonder the American people want the Bass-supported Bush tax cuts on the wealthy to expire. No wonder this view is also found here. And here. And here (.pdf). And here. And here (.pdf).
Annie Kuster's got a new approach. As she said last night (2:28):
Instead of going backward to an economic policy of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and companies that move jobs overseas, I believe we need a new approach. One that cuts taxes for the middle class, eliminating capital gains tax on small business investment, and rewarding companies for creating jobs right here at home
Charlie Bass, a creature of Washington for many years, is part of the problem. Between now and election day, it is your job to remind voters of that.
