Right Minded Online

Indicted Democrat Congressman William “Cold Cash” Jefferson has gotten the boot by his New Orleans voters, giving the GOP a pickup in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Louisiana voters oust indicted Rep. Jefferson – Yahoo! News.

Senator Saxby Chambliss won re-election to the U.S. Senate yesterday in Georgia with 57% of the vote. This is pretty amazing considering that he only had a three-point lead on Election Day. It was widely reported that Sarah Palin went to Georgia to campaign on Senator Chambliss’ behalf, and he won by 14 points. Of course, we were told that Sarah Palin was a drag on the GOP ticket this year. Ha! Not hardly.

Now that the election is over, the Washington Post admits that its coverage was biased toward Barack Obama. Of course, the mainstream press long ago abandoned any pretense of objective journalism in favor of blatant politicking on behalf of liberals and liberal policies. And yet Democrats want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and apply it only to talk radio — not TV or newspapers or any form of media the liberals own, just talk radio, which is the one area where conservatives excel.

While the GOP got its clock cleaned on a national level a week ago, the opposite was true here in Tennessee. John McCain received 57% of the vote while winning 89 of the state’s 95 counties. Lamar Alexander was also returned to the U.S. Senate for a second six-year term, getting 65% of the vote.

But in the Tennessee General Assembly, the GOP exceeded expectations by winning a majority in both the House and Senate for the first time since Reconstruction. Republicans picked up the four House seats they needed to earn a 50-49 majority, while picking up three seats in the Senate for a comfortable 19-14 majority.

This was no small feat. The legislative districts have been so heavily gerrymandered by the Democrats that Republicans have for years won a majority of the cumulative popular vote in the 99 House races, but could never quite get that reflected in the actual balance of power in the House.

Jimmy Naifeh’s Reign of Terror as the longest-tenured Speaker of the House is over, assuming all 50 Republican House members vote for their own candidate, who will probably be Jason Mumpower. Believe me, this is not the slam-dunk that it should be.

In the Senate, the Republicans will also finally have the majority, four years after winning the majority. You see, back in 2004, the GOP made history on Election Day by winning an 18-15 majority. But their majority was thwarted by two turncoat Republicans, Tim Burchett and Mike Williams, who voted to retain longtime Democrat Lt. Gov. John Wilder as Speaker of the Senate. (The Speaker of the Senate also assumes the role of Lt. Gov.) Wilder went on to appoint Democrats to a majority of the committee chairmanships, and made Senator Williams the Speaker Pro Tem. Republicans across the state, having toiled for years trying to win a majority, were livid.

Two years later, the GOP lost a seat to the Democrats, but still retained a 17-16 majority. Somewhere along the way, Senator Burchett had an epiphany and voted for a member of his own party, Ron Ramsey, to the Speakership, but the jury was still out on Senator Williams. Thankfully, Rosalind Kurita, the former Democrat Senator from Clarksville, crossed party lines and voted for Senator Ramsey over Lt. Gov. Wilder, thereby handing the gavel over to the GOP. With Ramsey’s 17th vote now assured, Senator Williams went ahead and cast his now-meaningless vote for Ramsey, but it was widely believed that he would have voted for Wilder had Kurita not tipped the scales to the GOP.

Lt. Gov. Ramsey, having relied on a patchwork of support, as was often the case with John Wilder, appointed Senator Kurita as Speaker Pro Tem, and appointed some Democrats to committee chairmanships.

By now, Senator Williams, completely alienated from his own party by virtue of having become more Democrat than Republican, switched to Independent, thereby plunging the GOP back into the minority at 16-16-1.

Last week, attorney Mike Faulk, also known as “The Right Mike,” as he is an actual Republican, defeated Mike Williams by a scant 0.4%, at long last giving the turncoat former senator his just desserts. The GOP picked up two other seats, and can now actually act like the majority. Senator Kurita lost her bid for re-election, and so Lt. Gov. Ramsey is beholden to no Democrat, and will require no patchwork of support to retain his position.

In the House, things are a bit trickier. For some reason, a handful of Republicans have heretofore decided to vote for Jimmy Naifeh for Speaker the last few elections instead of their own party’s nominee. To date, Jimmy Naifeh has yet to throw the GOP a bone even once, instead running the House in total lock-step partisanship.

That’s fine.

If the GOP has any backbone, and let’s hope it does, all 50 Republican members will unite behind their candidate, loosen Speaker Naifeh’s iron grip away from the gavel, and plug Republican members into every position of leadership and every committee chairmanship.

Republican members have already promised to fill the state’s constitutional officers — Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Comptroller — with Republican members, since these positions have long been occupied by Democrats. It is heartwarming to see the GOP counter with some partisanship of their own.

And when it comes time to re-draw the state’s legislative districts, the GOP will hopefully do what the Democrats have done and gerrymander the districts heavily in its favor in order to help ensure a GOP majority well into the future.

Sarah Palin discusses why John McCain lost to Barack Obama last week, and her treatment by her opponents in the Democrat Party and mainstream press. I hope we haven’t seen the last of this woman.

“I think the Republican ticket represented too much of the status quo, too much of what had gone on in these last eight years, that Americans were kind of shaking their heads like going, wait a minute, how did we run up a $10 trillion debt in a Republican administration? How have there been blunders with war strategy under a Republican administration?” Palin said.

“If we’re talking change, we want to get far away from what it was that the present administration represented, and that is to a great degree what the Republican Party at the time had been representing. So people desiring change, I think, went as far from the administration that is presently seated as they could. It’s amazing that we did as well as we did.”

Looking back on the race, the Alaska governor said that she was “frustrated” by misinformation spread about her, especially related to her family.

“Some of the goofy things, like who was Trig’s mom. Well, I’m Trig’s mom, and do you want to see my medical records to prove that? And banning books. That was a ridiculous thing also that could have so easily been corrected just by a reporter taking an extra step and not basing a report on gossip or speculation,” Palin said.

“Just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn’t even been written when I was the mayor. So, gosh, we have so many examples, I mean every day, especially the first few weeks, every day something that was thrown out there.”

Palin: GOP ticket was too ‘status quo’ – Yahoo News

The AP writes that there was no hidden white bias seen in the presidential polls this election, which is amazing given that the media spent a lot of time telling us white folks how racist we were for not supporting Obama. Furthermore, white voters preferred McCain over Obama by 12 percentage points, but 95% of black voters chose Obama over McCain. In other words white voters proved far more willing to cross racial lines than black voters.

In California, which has already performed a number of same-sex marriages, voters have approved a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Similar amendments were also approved in Florida, and in Arizona, where the amendment failed to pass just two years ago.

California voters approve gay-marriage ban – Yahoo News

State Representative Stacey Campfield, who would be Tennessee’s new Speaker of the House if I had my way, is pinching himself over the fact the the GOP exceeded all expectations by taking the House last night. Thank you for all your hard work over the years, Mr. Speaker. It has finally paid off.

Camp4u: Like the Pointer sisters

While Republicans fared poorly on a national level yesterday, the opposite was true here in Tennessee where the Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. In the House, the GOP gained the four seats it needed to win a 50-49 majority, and in the Senate, the GOP gained three seats to turn a 16-16-1 deadlock into a healthy 19-14 majority. This brings about the prospect of finally ending the reign of Jimmy Naifeh as Speaker of the House, and the GOP is promising to replace the state’s constitutional officers of Secretary of State, Comptroller, and Treasurer — long held by Democrats — with Republican appointees. Also of note, Mike Faulk won a razor-thin victory over RINO-turned-Independent Mike Williams in the Senate. Good riddance, Senator Williams.

Republicans control both state houses for first time since Reconstruction : Local Politics : Memphis Commercial Appeal

As I write this, Barack Obama leads in the electoral college 207-138, and is leading in several other states that McCain needs in order to win. The big blow came with Ohio falling to Obama, and so it looks like the Obamessiah is going to win the presidency, with the Democrats, as expected, picking up seats in both the House and Senate. So we Republicans are exactly where we were 16 years ago, and where the Democrats were just four years ago. I was hoping McCain would win tonight, but I was also prepared for him to lose.

But at least the Phillies won the World Series.

So much for conservatives voting solely on the issue of race. Reports out of Philadelphia earlier today point to voter intimidation by Democrats.

CITIZEN: We got a phone call that there was intimidation going on, and so as I walked up to the door, two gentlemen in Black Panther garb, one of them brandishing a nightstick, standing immediately in front of the door. As I walked up, they closed ranks next to each other. I’m an Army veteran, that doesn’t scare me, so I walked directly in between them, went inside and found the poll watchers. They said they’d been here for about an hour and they told us not to come outside because a black man is going to win this election no matter what.

Imagine the media outcry if the roles were reversed. But since it’s black Democrats intimidating voters, this will get scant attention from the mainstream press.

True to form, the Associated Press is already setting the table in the event Barack Obama doesn’t do as well as expected by blaming conservatives for voting against him because of his race.

State Democratic Party Chairman Ivan Holmes is expecting a strong Obama turnout in urban areas, but he anticipates a backlash in some conservative areas where the candidate’s race may be a factor — “especially among older voters.”

This has been the media’s template the duration of this long campaign — that we right-wingers would oppose Senator Obama because of his race. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives oppose Obama for the same reason we opposed John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. The guy is a flaming liberal. The insinuation is that Obama would enjoy more support from the right if he were white, and this simply isn’t true. We oppose liberals of all colors. For race to actually be a factor, it would have to be among the voting block that would vote for Obama if he were white. In other words, those who would vote against Obama simply because he is black would have to come from the Democrats’ constituency, because they are the only ones who would vote for a liberal in the first place.

Sarah Palin has been cleared of any ethics violation in the supposed Troopergate scandal. My only surprise is that this story broke before the election.

Barack Obama has expressed his desire to bankrupt the coal industry in America. What a way to win over the coal vote. I wonder what other industries he would want to bankrupt if elected president.

That’s how long I had to wait in line to vote this morning — by far the longest line I’ve ever seen since I began voting at my current polling place back in 2000. Perhaps this portends an enormous turnout today. At any rate, for the first time since I began following presidential politics back in 1988, I honestly don’t have a feel for the outcome today. I’ve always known ahead of time who was going to win. I even wrote an editorial for the Lebanon Democrat several weeks before the 2004 election predicting a Bush second term. But today? I have no instinct one way or the other. Yes, I know all the polls show Obama with a victory today. But the media have been carrying the water for Obama like I’ve never seen them carry water before, and so they aren’t to be trusted with anything — especially polls. And then there’s the Bradley Effect to consider, too, and who knows how that’s going to come into play. At any rate, I was actually more stressed during the World Series than here on Election Day, even though the fate of the free world hangs in the balance on the outcome of the vote. I guess we’ll know in a few hours.

“I have never seen such flagrant disregard for online security as I have seen on Obama’s Website and ACTBLUE (DNC PAC)”

I’ve seen the polls. I know Barack Obama leads pretty much all of them. I’ve seen the electoral map, too, in which Obama has well over 300 electoral votes. I have never believed in the accuracy of these polls for a second, as I’ve explained before. On Friday, Rush Limbaugh quoted from a blog post by an anonymous Obama campaign worker, confirming my suspicions.

“The Bradley Effect. Do not believe these public polls for a second. I just went over our numbers, found that we have next to no chance –” this is regarding Obama, “– in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada.  Ohio leans heavily to McCain but it’s too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa are the true toss-up states. The only two of these the Obama campaign feels confident are Iowa and New Mexico, but now Obama’s headed back to Iowa on Monday. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we in the Obama campaign tend to take a ten-point percentage in allowing for this, a minus ten-point percentage for allowing this and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark.”

Go vote. Plain and simple.

2 accused of hanging Obama effigy on Ky. campus (Note: Two were arrested.)

WeHo Homeowners Pull Down Sarah Palin Effigy (Note: No arrests.)

Michelle Malkin’s latest column is up. In it, she discusses, in her own words, “the silence of the left-wing privacy champions who care more about protecting suspected terrorists than Barack Obama’s critics.”

Michelle Malkin » Plundering the plumber’s records

Wow! An entertainer who is also a lifelong Republican. I’m not an Aerosmith fan, but I now have a little more respect for their guitarist.

Michelle Malkin » Aerosmith’s Joe Perry comes out of the closet