Many conservatives feel Governor Butch Otter should be challenged in 2010’s Primary. I’ve heard very little belief in Rex Rammell as the candidate to do that  and that was before he filed Chapter 11.  The question is who could challenge Governor Otter and hope to prevail.

I’ve given this some thought and have an answer. I have no clue if she’d run or even I’d endorse her, but Ada County Commissioner Sharon Ullman occurs to me as a very likely candidate.

Conservatives complaints with Otter have centered around a couple of key issues: taxes and government arrogance with the Chris Pentico arrest epitomizing that. Ullman’s strength as an open government advocate and a budget hawk could answer those questions quite nicely.

The biggest knock on Ullman is the allegation that she doesn’t work well with others. Butch Otter doesn’t have much room to talk after the last session.

Ullman also has name recognition, money, and activist power that would form behind her well in Ada and Canyon County,  and her general sympathies would end up helping her in Rural Idaho.

Could she make a campaign in the first two years of her term on the Ada County Commission? Absolutely. Conrad Burns ran for the U.S. Senate in the middle of his first term as Yellowstone County Commission in Montana. So, it would not be unheard of.

One possible issue with Ullman is that her views on moral issues are unknown as they’ve not been relevant to any job she sought. If those aren’t traditionalists, many people who vote on the cultural  issues would choose Otter over her.

If Ullman’s views are in line with the conservative base then she would be a huge threat to Governor Otter, bringing anti-establishment credentials mixed with executive experience: a potent mix that I’m not sure Governor Otter could withstand.

Cheers to the Idaho Virtual Academy:  They had their first graduation this Saturday.  And somewhere an IEA board member cried. Hard. Well done IDVA, great work bringing innovation to public schools.

Cheers to the Obama Administration: For its plan to incentivize states adopting charter schools and lifting restrictions. If you’re going to have the federal government in education (which you shouldn’t.) then it should be supporting something responsible. The Obama Administration’s plan is more carrot and less stick. Wonder how our friends on the left feel about this.

Boos to Supporters of a big new tax to fund a library in Canyon County.  I love libraries as much as the next guy, but there’s a recession going on and people are truly taxed enough.

Why 539,000 people losing their jobs may not be good news.

Obama’s phony cuts.

A whale of government waste. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

Where Obama cuts budget: funds for slain police officers. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Obama strongarms Chrysler’s creditors. (Hat Tip: Wizbang Blog.)

Obama strongarms California.(Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Likely will follow with CEOs.  (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Massachusetts presents welfare cars.  (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

Frivolous complaint against Sarah Palin dismissed.

Obama’s new military commissions a lot like Bush’s old commissions.

Pelosi knew and that’s not all.

Obama seeks to make Israel give up nuclear arsenal. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)\

Conyers backs off on ACORN probe. (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin.)

Obama backs away from homosexual groups.

1000 people show up to oppose tax increases in Tucson. (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

America’s reading gender gap.  (Hat Tip: Education Watch.)

Paying teachers not to teach.

Second Amendment update.

Anti-Catholic gay rights activists appointed to President’s faith council.

Happy Islam Day.

Music by Madly Jadly via the Podsafe Music Network.

Click here to listen, click here to download.

I responded to a piece by a John Hawkins on Pajamas Media on conservative civility

PJM columnist John Hawkins’ advice to conservatives to be as nasty as liberals is like Sean Connery’s “Chicago way” speech in The Untouchables applied to American politics: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.”

But is the “Chicago way” the right way for conservatives? Certainly, conservatives need to re-evaluate their tactics in light of Democratic behavior. That Democrats will engage in obstruction of Republican judicial nominees, while Republicans will let Democratic nominees sail through is absurd. In my home state of Idaho, a local was critical of Republicans talking about challenging first-term Congressman Walt Minnick (D-ID) and urged them to wait until 2010, even though Minnick was on record as a candidate who criticized former Congressman Bill Sali back in January of 2007, the year Minnick raised more than $400,000.

When conservatives do things like this, they’re acting like British troops trying to form into straight lines while their enemies take positions behind rocks and trees to pick them off like flies. They’re denying reality and have failed to acknowledge that the battle lines have shifted. However, I think Hawkins’ thesis for conservative nastiness is wrong for several reasons:

1) Conservatives are not liberals

I’ll counter Hawkins’ martial arts analogy with a sports analogy of my own. A baseball team with several players that regularly hit home runs can get players on base, not worry about base running, and win with a strategy of “pitching, defense, and the three-run homer.” This same strategy won’t work if a team has decent speed and only one or two players that are reliable long-ball hitters. Baseball strategy is always going to be dependent on the team you have to play with. You can’t expect singles hitters to consistently deliver three-run homers, so you have to work it another way.

Culturally, conservatives are unable to play the same game as liberals, because we do not possess the same mentality. I would argue that conservatives have a greater sense of respect for authority, rules of civility, and fundamental order within society. This is so ingrained that in Boise, when social conservatives felt the need to practice civil disobedience over the removal of a Ten Commandments monument, it was arranged in advance with the police that only a small number of people would be arrested and they would go quietly. There was a strong feeling among Ten Commandments supporters that they didn’t want to give the police officers a hard time, because the police were only doing their job and enforcing the actions of a boneheaded city council.

Hawkins responded with a piece of his own that didn’t leave me a whole to respond to in  an actual PJM response. Hawkins doesn’t prove that his tactics will work, only arguing that conservatives should do them because the liberals are due it.

 Hawkins of North Carolina questions the tactics of the Ten Commandments:

It’s fascinating that Mr. Graham picks that example, not only because it was a failure, but also because of the obvious contrast that has so often been drawn between Christian and Muslim protests. Christians are mocked and laughed at with impunity in this country because most Christians don’t have the backbone to stand up for their faith. Maybe the truth hurts, but I suspect there are few Christians reading this who’d disagree. On the other hand, Muslims are treated with the utmost respect here in the U.S. and across the world. Part of that’s because there is a fear that if you insult Muslims, one of them might kill you. However, even if that weren’t the case, Muslims would be treated with much more respect because they take grave offense when someone insults their religion. If Christians felt the same way, 90% of black Americans would be voting for Republicans instead of Democrats, Barack Obama wouldn’t be invited to speak at Notre Dame, and that Ten Commandments monument would be sitting in that Boise park today.

I’d also add that sometimes, regrettably, the only way to preserve “respect for authority, rules of civility, and fundamental order within society” is to give the people who are ruining those things a taste of their own medicine.

So, let me agree in part with Hawkins, that if Christians had cared in large enough numbers about the issue, there would have been a different outcome politically. We had hundreds involved, but there are tens of thousands of Christians who didn’t care and indeed who in order to make themselves look good attacked those who supported the Ten Commandments.

However, what if the 100 people who had volunteered to be arrested all lied down on the ground and made their bodies go limp, would that have stopped police? It would have delayed them, but the monument would have still gone out.  We needed Christians to care to the point that there were political consequences for the Mayor and Council, not for hundreds to obstruct police.

If this were an effective tactic, abortion would have ended during the Operation Rescue situation. While, it can be argued that Operation Rescue’s tactics were moral as a response to abortion with non-violent civil disobedience, they did not end abortion.

Hawkins also disagrees with my statement on trained protestors:

Really? The 18-year-old college students blocking conservatives from speaking at campuses are trained Alinsky radicals? I’m not so sure that’s correct. Moreover, it doesn’t seem like such a good idea to “never go outside the expertise of your people.”

I’d say many of them are, though probably more like the 21-year old ring-leaders. Generally, you’ll hear certain things at protests that people have been taught to do, like the screaming/chanting person who stands up like a priest during vespers.

Chanter: I say union, you say rocks. Union.

Crowd: Rocks

Chanter: Union!

Crowd: Rocks!

Going along with my point of conservatives looking silly in this regard, imagine this:

Chanter: I say Captain Gains Taxes and you say, “suck.”  Capital Gains Taxes.

Crowd: Suck.

Chanter: Captain Gains Taxes.

Crowd: Suck.

I rest my case on the poser point.

Moreover, the Right is slowly but surely narrowing the media gap. For example, WorldNetDaily — which Mr. Graham disparagingly mentions — gets more traffic than the Associated Press and the top seven conservative talk radio hosts alone reach more than 60 million people a week combined.

My point is that the stories on journalists are more likely to play in a conservative echo chamber and not get out to the general public. Conservatives are narrowing the media gap, but with the exception of Fox News, the only people who are being reached are conservatives. Therefore to expect to get great play in the mainstream of society by exposing Maureen Dowd is silly. Ain’t happening.

We can’t handle the truth. (Hat Tip: Brody File.)

Obama plays the madman card. (Hat Tip: Wizbang Blog.)

Arlen Specter plays death of Jack Kemp for political advantage. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Arlen Specter’s misleading website.  (Hat Tip: Right Wing News.)

A Democrat for Coleman. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.) 

Congress ends up funding Washington, DC’s other zoo.  (Hat Tip: Campaign Spot.)

The Government what it’s doing is a waste of time. 

Obama makes up jobs numbers.  (Hat Tip: Don Surber.)

No bid contact corruption for Congressman’s nephew at the Pentagon. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.) 

Union election fraud in Chicago.  (Hat Tip: Labor Pains.)

Click here to listen, click here to download.

The endless legislative session continues into its 113th Day. Members are getting testy and I’d say that its understandable, this isn’t what they signed up for and the session is dragging on due to the incredible stubborness of the Governor and his refusal to accept the BIllion Dollars Idaho’s legislature has appropriated this year for roads as their last say. He desperately wants to raise our taxes. This is like back during the Grocery Tax debate when the governor didn’t want to sign a bill that didn’t have the effect of raising taxes on the middle class in order to finance a tax cut for the poor.

Does the Governor believe he opposed far too many tax increases as a principled young man and now needs to make up for it by taxing the heck out of  his in twilight years? One has to wonder.

What do we say of Governor Otter’s latest plan?

Gov. Butch Otter said he still wants a gas tax increase, but he’s also willing to accept the interim committee to study transportation funding that House GOP leaders have proposed. He said his “counter offer” to House leaders is a delayed, 3-cent per gallon increase on July 1, 2011 and another 3-cent hike on July 1, 2012, which combined with the already-offered ethanol and DMV fees bill, would bring the package up to $75 million in new revenue. “I have seen well-intended and well-meaning people work on interim committees,” Otter said, but often, “there was no result, and there was nothing to go forward. I believe having the 3-and-3 delayed implementation bill this day, then, would motivate that interim committee to attend to its work and to be as creative and come up with the real solution.” If the committee finds a better solution than the delayed gas tax, Otter said he’d consider it, but he wants the tax approved now for planning purposes for transportation work. “We will continue to work, we will continue to try to go forward on the transportation funding, because it is so very important,” Otter said. “We need certainty, and we need the $75 million in revenue.”

Otter offers the legislature a chance to avoid increasing taxes IN the recession by waiting until AFTER the recession. To imagine that the recession will not have reached a technical, if not felt end by 2011 would be incredibly pessimistic, so in essence, if the House Republicans agree to Otter’s proposal, they can go home and say they didn’t raise taxes in the recession. Better yet, voters won’t be hit by the tax increase until 2011, a year after the vote. The gas tax increase tends to be the easiest tax in the world to hide because it’s not even shown on the receipt how much you’re paying in tax. A 3 cent variance can happen in a week easily, so the 3 cent increase gets slipped into the ebb and flow of gas prices. 

And the interim committee? As proposed by the House, it would be an opportunity to find money to fund transportation. Under Otter, it’s something that compromising legislators can go back and tell their constituents will prevent the tax increase, but in reality, Governor Otter, for whatever reason, wants a tax increase, and has shown no interest in alternatives. If Governor Otter was interested in alternatives, his man in the Senate, John McGee (R-10) wouldn’t have bottled up H0226, an innovative transportation funding proposal that could provide tens of millions of dollars for Idaho roads without raising taxes. If Governor Otter has the gas tax increase, he’s going to reject any other funding mechanism that eliminates it.

But what Governor Otter offers the Idaho House is a chance to try and pull the wool over the eyes of Idaho voters and everything will be fine. If this were 2003 with the Sales Tax increase, Otter would be right. However, it’s not 2003. The mood is far different and far less forgiving for recalcitrant politicians.

Don’t be fooled by the size of Tea Party II. All that proved was that most conservatives aren’t professional protest warriors. Boise’s big tea party on April 15 is not the only reason the legislature is in session. If I’m from Sandpoint or St. Marie’s, I really don’t care what’s going on in Boise. These members of the State House are responding to the voices of their people. And as Representatives they’re doing their job, as much as it may frustrate the Governor.

As for State Senators, all I have to say is that many of these fellows ought to sincerly pray that Closed Primaries aren’t the law come 2010 or I see big-time turnover that will make your head swim.

Podcast Show Notes

Anti-terrorism expert declines to participate in Obama’s charade. 

National media paints bright red targets on designers of CIA’s interrogation program. (Hat Tip: Right Wing News.)

Self-sacrificing Michelle Obama‘s $540 shoes. 

The Vice-President misrepresented what the Vice-President meant to say.

The Obama’s Administration’s secret dinners with the press.

Obama declines to call on Fox Reporter

Obama declines to call on Fox Reporter because Fox didn’t carry his press conference.

Obama Administration allegedly threatens attorney with personal destruction. (Hat Tip: Hot Air.)

On second thought: Obama considers changing mind on military commissions for Guantanamo detainees. (Hat Tip: Patterico.)

Obama’s taxpayer surprise. 

Diversity training gone wrong. (Hat Tip: Colussus of Rhodey.)

Second Amendment update.

Environmental activists trying to reframe Global Warming debate with word games.  (Hat Tip: Stop the ACLU.)

Congress wastes time on the BCS. (Hat Tip: Outside the Beltway.)

Music by Daniel James via the Podsafe Music Network. 

Could China become a Christian Nation?

Click here to listen, click here to download.

My latest Pajamas Media piece is up.

Since the election, the debate has raged. Who is responsible for the 2008 election debacle and the defeat of the Republican Party?

So far this question has centered on various groups’ attempts to reenact the scapegoat scene from Leviticus and cast all the sins of the Republican Party onto cultural conservatives and release their concerns into the wilderness.

The battle has been as entertaining as it has been misguided and pointless. Is there a war between economic conservatives and social conservatives? As someone actively involved in both social and fiscal issues, I’ve seen a lot of crossover between the two sides in terms of people who show up. This crossover is quite common. A leading economic conservative group, Club for Growth, often backed the same candidates as socially conservative groups like National Right to Life, Government Is Not God-PAC, and Focus on the Family Action. Newt Gingrich has begun to go around with slides showing that the most socially conservative members of Congress were also the most fiscally conservative.

I’m going to suggest an alternate conclusion. I’m going to reject the conventional wisdom that the election was lost because of the party grassroots and go out on a limb and suggest that maybe the problem is not the party’s activists. Perhaps (and I know this is shocking) the people who led the party over the cliff are the ones to blame.

The GOP doesn’t have a religious problem, a gay rights problem, or an abortion problem. It fundamentally has a good old boy problem. Let us tell the story of a primary, and we don’t have to name names, because the story is the same across the country.

Read the rest here.