Michael Steele certainly hasn’t done anything to help the situation. With at least one Republican chair calling for him to step down, it seems that his days could be limited. Perhaps it will help Republicans if Steele is gone, but is the rest of their house in order? Perhaps not. The health care debate might have confused some who thought the GOP had returned to traditional conservatism. While the GOP did manage to stay completely on message for about a year in regard to the toxic health care bill, after it passed they seem to be falling apart again with a mixed message of “repeal”, and “replace”. Why would you bother to say you’re going to replace a bill which is universally hated in your base? A more logical approach would be to maintain the hard line “repeal” message. Conservatives are looking for signs of weakness, and this “replace” funny business fits the bill.

The Tea Party is seen as something of a force to contend with in the May primaries, and in November. While championing conservative causes and candidates they have rightfully been brutal on liberal Democrats. What the GOP needs to remember is that the Tea Party is independent. They have a self-assigned primary obligation to serve conservative, traditional values. That means on occasion they have come out swinging against various “moderate” Republicans. Many conservatives see that as a good thing, since they feel they are weeding out the “weak” Republicans in favor of “true” conservative candidates. It could cut into Republicans votes in November.

This is a bitter sweet movement for conservatives. For years they’ve simply been taught that Republicans are the slight lesser of two evils. For the most part the GOP has been reliably against personal entitlement programs, and it’s worth repeating that they were solidly against health care reform (at least until it passed). To their credit, they have, at times tried very hard to stay true to conservatives. On the other hand, they have a legacy of Medicare Part D, endless war funding, Wall Street bailouts (which amount to a Washington takeover of finance), and near complicity on auto bailouts.

Conservatives have been awakenedand have realized that while Bush was hands down better than the current administration, he did spend, as one conservative put it “like Paris Hilton on a binder”. That seems like a fitting assessment. He blew through the savings the previous Republican Congress had managed to accumulate, almost instantly. There is a lot of apprehension about simply putting in another John McCain, Lindsey Graham, or even George Bush. These are all like-able people in the GOP camp, but most conservatives know they are not conservative and represent the same Washington mentality that landed us where we are.

November will indeed be a great month for the GOP no matter what. Conservatives, however, know that one election will solve very little. That’s especially true if attempts to install more conservative candidates wind up putting Democrats in for another term this country simply cannot afford.

“But 64% say Congress is doing a poor job. The good news is that’s a seven-point improvement from last month’s 71%, the highest negative grade recorded in over 40 months of tracking. The bad news is that 64% is the second worst grade the legislators have earned in that same time period and is up 21 points from late March a year ago.”

64% is bad, but it’s not bad enough. Time and time again, no matter how people view Congress as a whole, they tend to believe their own Representative is doing better than the others. This poll was taken just before the health care reform vote. The scary part is that as it became more clear that Congress was going to ram the health care bill through, their ratings actually improved. So we can conclude that some respondents in both polls were left-wing voters who were only upset that Congress wasn’t acting aggressively enough to enact the legislation in the previous polling period.

In New York it would appear even more dire for incumbent State legislators:

“A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of New York voters finds that 69% think it would be better if most incumbents in the state legislature were defeated this November.”

So what? As I’ve written before, we re-elect 90% of Congress people no matter how much we hate them. It seems that taking the chance on an unknown candidate is perceived to be too great a risk. Well, let’s say we could take the voters who got polled at their word and that they represent the mood of the country pretty adequately, where does it leave us? If 64% of Congress were to actually get the boot in November (which isn’t possible since not every Senate seat is up), who would we replace them with?

Well if the recent generic ballot poll Rasmussen conducted is correct, we’ll be hiring a lot more of the same:

“46% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, up three points from last week, while 39% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent”

That poll was conducted after the health care vote. We see that Republicans are gaining in popularity, slightly. The bad news for Republicans is that Democrats are too.

“Voter support for Democrats is at its highest level measured since early December 2009, while GOP support matches the highest level measured since weekly tracking began in early April 2007.”

Democrats actually picked up some points by voting for the controversial health care bill. What’s interesting about this poll is that we see a gap of 15% between the total electorate and supports of Republicans and Democrats combined. Wow! Guess that means 15% of people will vote for an independent candidate (hopefully conservative) right? Wrong again. It only happened once, when Ross Perot got 18.9% of the popular vote, and not even one electoral vote.

Voters want real change, or at least they always say they do. When it comes to the voting booth, however, they rarely mean what they say. More likely, is an outcome where we repeat the pattern of the last few decades. We’ll simply shift the power in favor of one party, and then the other after a short time. Each time we get sick of Democrats we just elect some Republicans. Then we get bored with low taxes and high debt, and move back to the Democrats where we’ll get higher taxes and high debt. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Myth: Corporations are greedy. They tend to hurt customers because they’re always worried about making higher and higher profits.

Truth: Self-preservation is at the core of free markets, so if a desire to exist tomorrow is how you define “greed”, then perhaps corporations do have lots of “greed” in them. However, they can’t sell a product no one wants to buy, at a price no one wants to pay. In general, every company works in an industry teeming with competitors waiting to eat that company’s lunch. Rest assured that if a products price isn’t at the lowest currently sustainable level right now, it soon will be.

Myth: My job treats me and other co-workers poorly. There’s nothing we can do about it, since the company refuses to open its wallet and do right by us. They’ve even taken away certain benefits that cost the company very little.

Truth: You always have a choice. Most obviously, you could look for another job. If you don’t want any of the other jobs near you, then you’re making a choice to stick with your employer because it’s the best deal available in the market today. Keep in mind, as an employee, you’re the seller, and your boss is the buyer. So in this case, your boss (and every other boss you’ll ever have) is continuously trying to get the lowest market rate for your labor. This is akin to how you look for the cheapest gasoline when filling up your car, without resorting to gas that will make your engine stall.

Having said that, it’s expensive for companies to train employees, so in general, they actually do want employees to stick around. When it comes to workplace safety, many point to how well OSHA has worked out. That may not be a great example, though. OSHA was implemented when workplace injuries were already falling rapidly. As John Stossel once said: “Sometimes government likes to jump in front of a parade and say it’s leading it”.

Myth: Without government controls, we’d have a lot of safety hazards in the market place. We need government to at least protect us from greedy corporations who would otherwise make shoddy products that endanger us to make a higher profit.

Truth: This myth makes two fatal assumptions. One is that we still don’t have dangerous products on the market because government saves us from them. The second is that government is generally more effective at stopping dangerous products than companies would be themselves. Both are false. Recently, Toyota proved that you can have a lot of government oversight and rules about how your products are made, and still create a dangerous product. Although, Toyota is an anomaly, because in general companies try to produce safe products. However, sometimes companies try to reduce costs by reducing the quality of their wares. If successful, you get a product that does the same thing but costs less. If unsuccessful, you could get hurt. In that case we have tort law that lets you take that company to court. Since companies want to avoid that, they try to keep the products safe while lowering costs.

Myth: Because companies have so much money, they don’t have to care about individual customers and they cheat them because the customer can’t afford to fight back.

Truth: Well firstly, not all companies have that much money. Companies start off life with less money than you probably have, and most of them fail. Just because you declare you’re in business doesn’t mean you’ll ever make a single thin dime. With that out of the way; Cheating customers certainly happens. The free market is filled with free people, not robots, so sometimes even best company will make a regrettable decision. However, companies that continuously behave this way eventually suffer consequences. Customers talk, and they especially talk about a company that “screwed them”. However, if you just mumble and take it but you don’t tell friends, you’re part of the problem.

When reasoning about our markets, it’s useful to remember a few basic facts:

• Greed exists in every nation, in every industry, and in any economic system
• People who endanger others have legal liability, government almost always “fixes” problems after they make it to market, not before (FDA recalls are a good example).
• Companies are like individuals in that they have a need to sustain themselves, but that doesn’t make either you or them evil.

Of course, some horse-trading (or judgeship trading) to get a vote here and there is to be expected, if not condoned. However, when they come in batches and people are forced to step down (even temporarily), the scandal ridden party has something to be worried about. Now, to go along with political failure on every major party platform, the Dems can add these scandals to the reasons many wonder if they can cling to their majority in November.

Forget not, that the New Yorkers didn’t start the fire. Obama kicked off his administration with a series of tax cheats being appointed to the cabinet. They were generally given the customary forgiveness you and I would never receive. The notable exception being Tom Daschle, who dropped out before his tax woes embarrassed the administration (I think they already did). Then there was NM Governor Bill Richardson, who quietly withdrew his cabinet bid because he was under a grand jury investigation in his home state. Obama’s so-called ‘Green Jobs Czar’ resigned after his affiliation with the 911 Truth project was brought to light. All in all, New York is a little late to the party.

Will voters forgive the jackass party by November? Anything is possible, we’re not an especially moral country these days, and everyone is human. Plus, the GOP has had it’s fair share of scandals…Mark Sanford, anyone? One thing the GOP didn’t do, however, was launch a 2006 campaign offensive on the piety of their candidates, that’s all on the Democrats.

“And yet, that same public will almost undoubtedly return about 90 percent of incumbents running for reelection to office.”

“Americans are pretty terrible at throwing the bums out, no matter what we tell pollsters.”

Sadly, it’s true. We whine and complain and some of us even write heated mails, but who will dare go to the polls armed with actual research and vote what’s right, not who’s name looks more familiar on the ballot.

Indeed, the statistics show we rarely ever do what’s right in the voting booth. In particular, you could be surprised to learn that the best year for kicking bums out of office was 1980 when only 55% of the Senate got re-elected. That’s still pathetic. In a completely dysfunctional government, 45% of those responsible get to keep their jobs. That’s not acting like responsible voters.

Everyone likes to talk about 1994 when the GOP took over. Well, it wasn’t such a banner year statistically because we re-elected 90% of the House and 92% of the Senate that year. It was barely a blip on the radar.

If you wonder why Pelosi, Reid, Nelson, Shumer, and others act with such reckless disregard for their constituents, it’s because you’ll keep letting them.

Then it turned into such a calamity. Chuck Shumer, New York’s answer to a Senator, warned that the end of times was near (and not because of global warming, either). He envisioned the future: evil, angry men sitting in stuffy boardrooms with their monacles and private jets, appointing our next President.

However, liberals trip all over themselves when trying to describe an acceptable way to win office. Describing Illinois’ democrat nominee for Lt. Governor Scott Lee Cohen, US Rep Jan Schakowski had this to say:

“people didn’t really pay attention…clearly this nominee got there because he spent about 2 million dollars”

That’s a breathtakingly detached statement, from someone who knows better.  Campaigns cost money, lots and lots of money. While Cohen has his share of personal problems, he did get elected – the people had their say.

It’s too bad the political ruling class can’t decide what kind of money is acceptable to spend on campaigns.  If they aren’t happy with corporate money and they aren’t happy with personal money, what should we do?  Should Schakowski and company just appoint all of our leaders, and that way we’ll always get “good people”?

As I grew older I wondered how good our election system really is for public office. There are certainly lots of perfectly legal stunts pulled by candidates that make my skin crawl. Does that mean the system is bad? Not necessarily. Compared to North Korea, it rocks.

If our goal, however, is to elect officials based on what the majority of people want, then we have failed. Let’s take New York 23 for an example. Two candidates were clearly vying for the ‘conservative’ slot. Disputes about whether Dede Scazawhatever was really a conservative aside, this election clearly represents what’s wrong with the system. We have allowed our officials to create a system that guarantees that a 3rd party candidate won’t ever get a chance.

Dede won 5% of the vote in that race. This probably represents the least informed segment of the electorate since she had already dropped out of the race. If her 5% had gone to Doug Hoffman, he’d be in that seat right now.

There is little doubt, in this case, that a majority of voters preferred a conservative candidate. However, the election system guarantees a defeat for the conservative (either one) because voters will split the vote between two candidates.

I used to think this was one of those big complex problems no one could solve. Certainly all those smart guys in Washington would have fixed it by now, if it could be. Right?

Actually it is fixable. Georgia, among others, employs something called the “run-off election”. The concept is that if every candidate fails to get a majority of the vote, another election is held between the two of them to determine a winner.

This pretty much eliminates the penalty to third parties running for office. Why wouldn’t we want this? Who loses? The ruling political class loses, and that’s why it will never be allowed to happen.

We’ve been burned before and burned hard.  In fact Obama was only 50% lying when he talked about inheriting tons of debt from previous administrations (Bush).  He mentioned that yesterday, the day before that, the day before that, and so on.

For these reasons and more, I was shocked to learn that officials in IL’s primary being held today only expect 15% turnout.  Critical decisions are being made, and on the GOP side there are serious land mines to avoid.  For instance, Mark Kirk is a pro-choice, Cap and Tax supporter, and yet he’s the front runner for the GOP senate bid.  In the Governor’s race, we have a range of candidates from the old guard who’s been watching Springfield crumble for years and sitting on their hands, to an Obama supporter during the ’08 election.  Still think they are all the same?

Let’s prove the ‘experts’ wrong again and not allow a 15% turnout to determine our next batch of leaders.  If we fail, the next Blago could be mere months away.