NRSC to Senate Democrats: Just Try to Defend Picking Klain for Ebola Czar!

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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Left would rather forget its old slogan, “Bush lied, thousands died.” The Biggest Lie.

THE EDITORS: Janet Yellen isn’t all wrong. What to Do about ‘Inequality’.

IAN TUTTLE: Personhood laws are a controversial tactic, but they’re nothing like what the Left says they are. Liberals Are Lying about Personhood Amendments, Again.

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October 21, 2014

NRSC to Senate Democrats: Just Try to Defend Picking Klain for Ebola Czar!

This morning the National Republican Senatorial Committee is hitting this year’s crop of vulnerable Democrat incumbents for meekly acquiescing to President Obama naming Ron Klain — as Andy McCarthy summarizes, a “sharp-elbowed Democratic political operative with no medical expertise” — as the “Ebola czar.”

Here’s the Mark Begich version:

Unfortunately, Mark Begich (D-AK) not only refuses to hold the Obama Administration accountable for the slow response to Ebola entering our borders, but it appears that he has taken his marching orders from the White House on a serious matter of public health. Instead, Begich's Washington allies have resorted to spreading false and debunked claims, blaming others for the Administration's failures. President Obama's choice of Ron Klain as Ebola Czar is indefensible, yet Mark Begich once again refuses to hold the White House accountable.

"It is absurd that President Obama believes that a partisan lobbyist with zero medical experience should lead the national response to the Ebola epidemic, but Mark Begich is nowhere to be found," said NRSC Press Secretary Brook Hougesen. "Mark Begich apparently believes that a partisan Washington lobbyist like Ron Klain is an appropriate choice for this position, which speaks to his lack of judgment and his refusal to stand up to President Obama’s poor decisions — even on matters of public health and safety."

Will this make a big difference in the coming midterm elections? If nothing else, we may get some amusing moments of watching these Democratic senators trying to explain why Ron Klain is such a terrific guy for this job.

We know Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas greets questions about Ebola with a lengthy “uhhhhhhhhh,” and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado is having a tough enough time with any questions as is these days.

Another Uncharismatic, Underachieving Partisan Democrat Coasts to Reelection

I know what you want to hear. You want to hear that Republican Monica Wehby has a shot at winning Oregon’s Senate race.

She’s trailing most polls by 10 to 20 points, so . . . sorry, no good news here.

You may ask, “What’s wrong with Oregonians?” Maybe a fair question is, “What’s wrong with Oregon Republicans?”

A pediatric neurosurgeon and mother of four, she appealed to moderate Republicans fed up with Obamacare and big government.

But polls now put Wehby behind by 10 to 15 percentage points.

A poll released last week showed only 52 percent of Republicans plan to vote for Wehby, while 22 percent said they're still undecided.

The talk of a potential GOP upset here in Oregon earlier in the year wasn’t just hype; incumbent Democratic senator Jeff Merkley has genuinely “blah” numbers for a guy asking for another term. The percentage of Oregon voters who approve of the job he’s doing is usually in the low 40s, and the percentage who disapprove is in the mid-30s. He has mind-bogglingly low name ID for an incumbent U.S. Senator; as noted yesterday, “Senator Merkley was recognized by 46 percent as his party’s candidate.” It’s as if he’s been in the Witness Protection Program.

Merkley is not a whirling dervish of raw political charisma, nor an unstoppable vote-accumulating machine. In 2008, Barack Obama received 1,037,291 votes in Oregon — 56.7 percent of the vote. That year, in his first statewide bid, Merkley won 864,392 votes, or 48.9 percent of the vote — 3.4 percent more than the incumbent Republican Senator he beat, Gordon Smith. He underperformed the margin projected in most of the final polls.

Back in July, George Will wrote a column that made Republicans’ hearts skip a beat, declaring, “Senator Tom Coburn is retiring, but another doctor may be coming, straight from the operating room to her first elected office.”

The editorial board of the Oregonian, the state’s largest newspaper, chose to not endorse a candidate this year. They concluded Merkley was a shameless partisan hack, and then detailed the personal scandals in Wehby’s past years that made them deem her unworthy of support:

The collapse of Wehby's campaign has been almost painful to watch. First was the late-breaking revelation this spring of a 911 call made in 2013 by estranged boyfriend Andrew Miller, who reached for the phone as Wehby entered his house without permission. He accused her of stalking him. Shortly thereafter, Oregonians learned that Wehby's ex-husband had called the cops on her in 2009. According to a police report filed two years earlier, her ex accused her of "ongoing harassment."

The incidents raise obvious questions about judgment and self-control, but just as significant are questions about anticipation. Did Wehby and her campaign really think these episodes wouldn't come to light? If so, they were shockingly naïve.

Oregonians don’t expect such shocking and unnerving revelations from a potential senator. They expect it from their state’s first lady.

A lesson: In the lazy Democrat media’s template, every Republican is either dumb, evil, or old. Because they can’t portray a pediatric neurosurgeon as dumb, they’ll paint her as evil or a variant of it, crazy. Because we all know how ruthless and black-hearted those pediatric neurosurgeons are, right?

So what should we expect in November? Recent history suggests flawed Democratic candidates can coast along, relying on the Oregonians’ voting habits being set on autopilot — particularly in the state’s most populous counties.

Yesterday we discussed how it’s difficult, and perhaps impossible, for a Republican to win statewide in Oregon when they’re getting blown out in the state’s largest city, Portland. It’s not that Republicans need to win the land of microbrews, mustaches, fig and gorgonzola pastries, and a general hipster culture that’s convinced it’s still the counterculture no matter how widespread and popular it gets. But a winning GOP candidate would need to keep the margin manageable so the Republican margins in the rest of the heavily-rural state could put him or her over the top.

Four years ago, in the previous midterm of the Obama era, longtime incumbent Ron Wyden ran for reelection. He was challenged by Jim Huffman, law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. While his fellow Republican Chris Dudley came within 1.5 percent in the governor’s race, Huffman lost by 18 percentage points.

In 2010, Democrat John Kitzhaber won 198,157 votes here to Dudley’s 76,915 in Multnomah County, which includes Portland. That year, Wyden won 212,371 votes to Huffman’s 56,513 – an even more lopsided 76 percent to 20 percent margin. (And Huffman lived and worked in Portland!)

Look Who’s Paying Minimum Wage in Kentucky!

You know, Alison Lundergan Grimes… you’re not necessarily a terrible person, but you seem like one when you give an answer like this:

In her race to defeat Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Alison Lundergan Grimes has barnstormed Kentucky, talking up her support for raising the minimum wage and criticizing the GOP's so-called war on women.

But the restaurant owned by Grimes' family doesn't always practice what she preaches, and Kentucky Republicans have been happy to point that out.
On the campaign trail, Grimes said recently, "I'm fighting for all Kentuckians, all working Americans across this nation. I don't believe $7.25 an hour raises a family of four above the poverty level."

We caught up with Grimes in Kentucky and asked how she can advocate for raising the minimum wage, when that's all her family's restaurant pays some workers.

"Listen, my family is not in this race. I'm on the ballot. And as much as Mitch McConnell wants to attack my family, he has from the beginning, I'm going to stay focused on the issues," she told CNN. "And for me, it's about making sure that hard working Kentuckians have a bright future. And that future includes having not just a minimum wage, but a living wage."

Of course, servers can often make more than minimum wage after tips. And while Grimes doesn't own the restaurant, she did do legal work for the business, signing incorporation documents and representing it in a lawsuit.

She could have said, “I believe everyone should make a higher minimum wage, and I’ve said as much to my family, but I don’t run the business.” Sure, it might cause a little heartburn around the Grimes dinner table at Thanksgiving, but it’s embarrassingly disingenuous for her to claim that a CNN reporter asking about wages at her family’s restaurant — and their failure to pay what she considers a living wage! — constitutes “Mitch McConnell attacking her family.”

But instead, Grimes non-answer illustrates what the cynics suspect — Democrats don’t really care about whether someone is paid the minimum wage. They just want to campaign on the issue and use it to make their opponents look harsh, selfish, and cruel. As noted earlier this year:

The Nation, which pays its interns the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, wrote an open letter to Walmart demanding that it pay its workers at least $12 per hour. The American Prospect, which frequently demands a hike in the minimum wage, offers a $100 weekly stipend for a full-time internship.

Some unions may pay you a bit more than that, namely $8.50 per hour, to protest and chant outside worksites where contractors are not using union labor.

ADDENDA:

In this knick-knack shop in Astoria, Oregon, you can buy a paperback copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope for $9. The price on the back cover says $14.95.

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