Matt Schultz: A down ballot ad (and more) worth watching

THE CANDIDATE

The down ballot races are usually not very interesting to most voters. After all, most people, and quite reasonably so, have only the vaguest of thoughts as to how their lives are affected by their votes in the Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor and Attorney General races. The down ballot state wides even more rarely generate much advertising on television. Not surprisingly, the advertisements that do run are typically bio/likability pieces designed for little more than name identification.

Matt Schultz is a young Republican seeking our party's nomination for Secretary of State. Matt is running issue ads in a primary. Although the video link is not yet available (technical problems only) even the audio is impressive and quite well worth the thirty seconds it will take you to listen.

Matt's TV spot raises a very important issue-voter fraud. The only reason to oppose photo ID for voting is to perpetuate fraud. No other good faith explanation is possible. Although we are lucky to have the rarest of animals, an honest and competent Democrat, serving as Iowa's SoS, Mike Mauro's Democrat colleagues are your more garden variety and ethically challenged L/S/Ds.

Matt is actually running on an important issue and making an argument for his position, all in a thirty second spot ad. Matt's brief spot educates the public about more than the look of the candidate's face and likability of his family.   That is how we persuade the public to agree with our agenda and thereby gain a mandate for the agenda and not just the person.

A Republican running on a real issue; now maybe that's a transformative disease that will become contagious. Either way, this young Matt Schultz is a guy to watch, and long after he wins next Tuesday.

Peter Beinart raises the question: are liberals delusional or demented?

Well known liberal writer Peter Beinart today expressed, quite inadvertently to be sure, the true lengths of sophistry and self delusion to which liberals are, quite enthusiastically to be sure, willing to travel in their pursuit of Western collapse.

We all know the story of the Israeli commando raid on the Islamic Gaza blockade busters. Israelis stop Islamic ship attempting to avoid submission to the board and search requirements for entry into a Gaza port. Islamic radicals on ship start trouble. Israelis do what Israelis do and bring trouble to a shift and bloody conclusion. World screeches about Israeli brutality while ignoring both the long term implications of Hamas success in breaking Israeli blockade (or perhaps well aware of the long term result, Europe is after all the home of the Dreyfus Affair, the pogrom and the Holocaust) and the immediate short term affect of rearming a progressively enfeebled Hamas.

Beinart actually said that it was cruel and unfair to punish the Palestinian people with the blockade "just" because they voted Hamas into power. Left unstated was the support the Palestinian terror regime receives from what appears to be a majority of the Palestinian people who occupy the sewer of the Mediterranean. Hamas has oft repeated the objective of destroying Israel and annihilating its occupants. Presumably that rather unpleasant objective is shared by the Palestinian people because they empower the terrorists.

The faces of friendship?

Unlike Europe, even the Clinton Administration, in the final analysis could distinguish between our steadfast ally, the Israeli people, and the occupants of the hate filled terror proto state in Gaza. For those who have forgotten, the Israelis rushed to mourn our dead on 9.11 while the residents of Gaza danced in the streets screaming "Death to America".

Hamas attacks Israel with every means at its disposal. The preferred method of attack employed by the Hamas terror state is the acquisition of rockets from Israel, Syria and other terror states followed by the random delivery of the rockets into Israeli population centers. While the moron Left, Cindy Sheehan and her cast of pink clad ignorami, cannot be expected to understand the utter lunacy of the Beinart statement, Beinart is himself at least an intelligent and serious liberal.

Hamas public service ad

The Palestinian people are punished by the blockade because they support terror attacks on Israel. Hamas and its supporters seek to settle their dispute with Israel on the battlefield. The liberal progressive ignorance of history is never more luminescent than when discussing military matters. Power and will prevail on the battlefield. Israel has the power to destroy Hamas so Hamas must rely on international pressure to break Israel's will. Israel must break Hamas' will to destroy Israel by undermining its support among the Palestinian population before Hamas gains the power to physically destroy Israel.

Beinart knows the preceding postulate to be true. More importantly President Obama and his highest military and diplomatic officials, whose statements of nonsupport for Israel are so well understood as support for Hamas where it counts, in Gaza, know the preceding postulate to be true.

Only two possibilities can explain the liberal embrace of such a logically indefensible position-one of such attenuated reason as to be simply ridiculous. Either the progressive liberal left is so dangerously deluded as to reject factual reality in the world's most volatile and menacing place or they are possessed of a truly demented embrace, through affinity or fear, of the world's most vile, brutal and hate filled people.

Either way, seriously, why would you trust these people with the lives of your children. Something to consider both the next time they fly and you vote.

Yard sign wars-Zaun dominates and the Gibbons mystery is answered.

One of the habits I developed back in my party officer days was counting yard signs that I would see in my routine travels around the state. It is amazing how frequently the number and location of yard signs is indicative of the ultimate result, especially in primaries.

For the last several weeks I've noticed that Brad Zaun's yard signs easily outnumber his collective opponents by about a factor of four. Brad's dominance of the west suburban venue is probably closer to ten to one. Des Moines' west suburbs of Urbandale, Johnston, West Des Moines, Clive and Windsor Heights contains the greatest concentration of next Tuesday's electorate.

Mark Rees has a nice presence in the west suburbs and few good locations down 163 to Mahaska County. Mark has had some good campaign news recently.

Dave Funk has shown a real upsurge in the east suburbs. Dave's blue signs have taken the lead in Altoona and other parts east. We could use some input on Ankeny because I have not yet been up there much in the last six weeks.

A few Bertroche signs have popped up in the last couple of weeks. Pat's dad, longtime Des Moines lawyer Joe Bertroche's SE 14th Street office location provides Pat with visibility to tens of thousands of cars a day.

The mystery man has been Jim Gibbons. I've been as far east as Iowa County and as far south as Mahaska. Jim's got a few nice locations but overall almost no skin in the yard and barn sign game. Today I had occasion to travel to Boone via the Highway 17 detour, so I saw more of Madrid, Woodward and other even less populous parts of Iowa's "Fourth" Congressional District, Jim's place of residence. There were more Gibbons signs up along today's Dallas and Boone County route than had been previously spotted in Polk County and the rest of the Third District.

It may not be scientific but there's a reason every candidate spends a ton on yard signs in every election in every jurisdiction in every state in the country. Moreover, yard and barn sign activity and location are indicative of a candidate's overall ground game, turn out program and voter intensity. Ground game is more often that not the decisive factor in a close primary.

Given the recent disappearance of the Gibbons television ads it looks like the rumors that Rees has passed Gibbons for second in the polls might be true. If Dave Funk's recent upsurge in yard sign activity evidences a surge in supporter intensity then Jim may well slide all the way into fourth place. The two candidates are fighting for a common voter demographic and it looks like Mark is pulling out ahead in that constituency.