Todd's Mischief Blog

On Monday, I lamented that Sarah Palin and Breitbart.com were dabbling in local Nebraska politics that they didn’t fully understand. The day after I wrote that, Herman Cain—who hasn’t lived in Nebraska for decades—seconded that endorsement. Last night, for better or worse, they and others got their wish as dark horse Deb Fischer beat favorite Jon Bruning in the Nebraska Republican senate primary. (Full disclosure: I volunteered for the Bruning campaign.) It’s impossible to gauge by any objective measure how much influence their endorsements had on that outcome, but as one on the ground, I am inclined to say it was more than a little. There is just one thing I want to reemphasize before moving on and moving forward, that this was a primary contest among conservatives all around. In spite of certain characterizations, there was no “establishment” candidate in the race and certainly no RINO. I say this only because I hate to see a good and solid conservative’s reputation tarnished just t...

What was, just one week ago, a fairly tame US Senate primary in Nebraska with a young and popular conservative Attorney General holding a comfortable lead has now become a neck-and-neck race for the finish as the candidates try to “out-conservative” one another. Last Wednesday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin made a late endorsement in the Nebraska GOP Senate primary for Deb Fischer, previously in a distant third place. Now today Breitbart.com is running the story--billed as EXCLUSIVE--that calls Jon Bruning “establishment” in the lead. Alaska might rhyme with Nebraska, but that doesn’t make Sarah Palin an expert on our politics. And Brietbart.com is so intimately familiar with the Cornhusker State that in a March story about the lawsuit against ObamaCare, they made Bruning the AG of South Dakota! As Maxwell Smart would say, “missed it by that much.” What Palin and Breitbart are doing is putting an underline beneath the old adage, all politics are local--or at least they should be....

Also: Say hello to the “Sev-Con” There’s a NYTimes article out over the weekend that is all the buzz today. The pull-quote du jour is by former Mitt Romney strategist Mike Murphy, who told National Review in 2005 that Romney "is a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly." The preferred pick-apart is that this proves Romney will say and do anything to get elected. And, I admit, it certainly sounds damning. If nothing less, it was a poor choice of words. But this is old news. At the time Murphy issued a statement saying he had been misquoted. I’d say the facts support Murphy’s side of the story. The Times article tries to make more ado about Romney’s pro-life journey than there is. In 1994, when he ran against Ted Kennedy, he did not shy away from his personal opposition to abortion but positioned himself by saying “my personal beliefs, like the personal beliefs of other people, should not be brought into a political campaign.” He lost that race. In 2001, Romney e...

Bachmann Wins Ames Straw Poll  Just announced, Michelle Bachmann has won the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, taking first place with 4823 votes and becoming the first woman to do so. With 4671 votes, second place goes to Ron Paul while third goes to Tim Pawlenty with 2293 votes. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry did not participate (the latter being a little late to the game) but they took 567 and 718 votes, respectively. So what does it all mean?  Any discussion of the Ames Straw Poll should rightly start by pointing out that it has only been conducted five times in the past, so there’s not all that much precedent to rely upon. On the other hand, since the event began in 1979, the candidate winning the Iowa Caucus has placed first or second in the straw poll every time. And the Caucus, with a longer track record, is a pretty fair indicator of who gets the party nomination. So, if the Straw Poll changes anything, it is that it spells out definitely exactly what chances Bachmann has for the...