Paul Mulshine wrote a blog post last week wherein he wittingly or not shed light on the puzzle of New Jersey’s conservative ideologues.
Mulshine was tauting a post by the blogger formerly known as Manly Rash that suggested that NJ GOP Chairman Jay Webber should be replaced because he canceled a meeting of the State GOP Committee. Conservatives have been upset that the NJGOP has not adopted the GOP’s 2008 National Platform, particularly its pro-life planks.
The various NJ Tea Parties and Steve Lonegan’s Americans for Prosperity had planned to demonstrate at the scheduled meeting in order to gain support for various proposed resolutions before the committee,” Support for the Governor’s reforms at the DRPA,Joining the lawsuit against Obamacare, Stopping the implementation legislation for Obamacare in New Jersey, Support for New Jersey Citizens’ right to privacy when flying (TSA pat-downs), and Repealing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) which is New Jersey’s own version of the Obama administration’s “Cap and Trade” energy tax,” according to Rash.
Webber said he canceled the meeting because he and other members were busy in Trenton with the legislature in session. The ideologue conservatives adopted a conspiracy theory that Webber cancelled the meeting to silence them.
This conservative blogger supports each of the initiatives that Rash wrote of and supports the pro-life plank of the National GOP platform. This conservative blogger also supports Jay Webber and Governor Chris Christie. The latter has earned me the RINO label from some. I’ve even been nicknamed Arlen.
Mulshine says, conservatives are supposed to stand on principle. He says Webber violated principle when threw his support to Chris Christie in the 2009 GOP Gubernatorial primary over Steve Lonegan. The principle of “Loneganwas perhaps the cheapest skinflint ever to run for office in this great state. He really meant to cut state government.”
The principle that Webber, Christie, and even Senator Mike Doherty who has earned the Loneganites scorn, are guilty of violating is the principle of irrelevancy. The cutting your nose off dispite yourself principle.
Yet Mulshine surprised me in his blog post. Despite his nearly constant criticism of Christie for not fulfilling all of his campaign promises in 11 months, Mulshine wrote this line that demonstrates that he can occassionally see beyond his blinders:
“Webber, despite his conversion, is a huge improvement on Tom Wilson, the prior chairman, who agitated for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. And Christie, despite his flaws, is a huge improvement over Jon Corzine.
But this is just another reminder that the New Jersey Republican Party has a long way to go.”
My apologies to Tom Wilson.
The New Jersey Republican Party does have a long way to go. However, it has come further in the last year under the leadership of Christie and Webbler than any observer could have predicted. Had Lonegan been the GOP nominee in 2009, a battle that Mulshine and many other ideological conservatives keep fighting 18 months after they lost it, Jon Corzine would still be governor. Much of the progress the GOP made this year, in New Jersey and nationally, would not have happened. More importantly, much of the progress New Jersey made this year would not have happened.
The conundrum of conservative ideologues is that they are more likely to be right, “standing on principle” and lose as they watch life get worse than they are to work with those they agree with on most issues and win.
It’s easier to be right and be a wind bag than it is to win and do the hard work of correcting decades of damage while in the minority. Rash says leadership is standing on principle. Yet, thanks in large measure Christie’s work this year, Democrats in Trenton are adopting smaller government principles. Which is more effective leadership? Going down in defeat while being right and then wind bagging or having your political adversaries shift their agenda? I’ll take the latter.
As we head into 2011 with the entire State Legislature up for reelection, ideologues have a critical choice to make. Based upon history one might expect them to undermine the progress by targeting otherwise “safe” Republican legislators in primaries with more ideologically pure opponents. All that would accomplish is to put safe seats at risk.
The smarter and more difficult choice would be to work with, rather than against, those they agree with most of the time to pick up Democratic seats in the legislature. The ideologues would serve New Jersey better by focusing their criticism on potentially vulnerable Democrats and shifting their focus, even if only temporarily, away from RINOs.
If the “hard right” can move public opinion in New Jersey to the right, as was done nationally this year, RINOs and Democrats will follow.
I bet if NJN produced a knockoff staring New Jerseyeans rather than New Yorkers that people would watch it and they could sell enough ads to cover their budget.
As of this writing, Santa Claus is in Albany, Austrailia. Next stop: Bunbury Austrailia, according to NORAD’s Official Santa Tracker and Google Earth.
NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955 according to their website:
For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight.
The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.
In 1958, the governments of Canada and the United States created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa.
Since that time, NORAD men, women, family and friends have selflessly volunteered their time to personally respond to phone calls and emails from children all around the world. In addition, we now track Santa using the internet. Millions of people who want to know Santa’s whereabouts now visit the NORAD Tracks Santa website.
Finally, media from all over the world rely on NORAD as a trusted source to provide updates on Santa’s journey.
To My Democratic Friends: Please accept with no obligation, implied or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2011 but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. To My Republican Friends: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Now that we know for sure that NJ will lose a congressional seat, speculation will run rampant over which two incumbents will be pushed into running against each other when the new district lines are drawn.
Redistricting has historically been an incumbent protection plan. With one incumbent sure to go, barring a retirement or a primary upset, there will be two incumbents facing off against each other in the 2012 general election.
Some incumbents have more clout than others. Seniority matters, as does money. Newly elected Jon Runyan is the logical odd man out based upon seniority. However, if New Jersey’s population has grown in the southern part of the state as many believe (those census numbers will be released in February) Runyon might be sparred. Runyan could find himself up against Rob Andrews or Chris Smith. Or maybe, if Runyan’s district in combined with Smith’s or Andrews’, the former NFL star will run for U.S. Senate against Robert Menendez.
The next most junior member of the NJ delegation is Leonard Lance of the 7th district who was first elected in 2008. In the 2000 redistricting parts of the 6th (Frank Pallone) and 7th were swapped to protect Pallone and then incumbent Mike Ferguson. That’s how Plainfield in Union County ended up in Pallone’s 6th. There has been some speculation that 6 and 7 will be combined, pitting Lance and Pallone against each other.
Such a scenario could make for an interesting GOP primary, as Anna Little has already announced that she is running against Pallone. Would Little run a primary against Lance? As good as a Lance-Little contest would be for blog traffic, Pallone’s seniority and his war chest will probably keep him safe from an incumbent.
A Rush Holt (12) vs Leonard Lance contest is possible as their districts border each other and parts of Holt’s 12th were moved into Ferguson’s 7th in the 2000 incumbent protection plan.
If northern districts are combined, like Pascrell and Garrett or Pascrell and Frelinghuysen, well that would just be boring for a Central Jersey blog.
As most experts have expected, New Jersey will lose one representative in the House of Representatives as a result of the 2010 U.S. Census. In 2012 New Jersey will elect 12 Members of Congress. Currently NJ has 13 Member of Congress.
As of April 1, 2010 the U.S. population was 308,745,538 people, according to the Census, an increase of 9.7% over the 2000 Census. New Jersey’s population increased 4.5% over the decade from 8.4 million to 8.8 million people. The average population of congressional districts is targeted to be 710,767 people.
A total of 12 seats will shift among 18 states. In addition to New Jersey, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania will lose seats. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas and Utah will gain seats.
