jerseyhoya wrote:Jodi Rell I guess. Obviously the Maine women. Kay Bailey Hutchison is pro choice, at least sort of.

jerseyhoya wrote:Well it's a district that is fairly swingy nationally. Gore won it in 2000, Bush won it in 2004, Obama won it in 2008. I'm sure Christie won it on Tuesday, probably by a lot. But it's definitely not as tough to defend as a ton of the other districts where Pelosi and Hoyer are looking for votes. Also what's the point of getting elected if you don't help carry out the agenda?

Adler has more than a million bucks in the bank and no opponent so far.

jerseyhoya wrote:I was looking at that. There have to be a number of pro-choice GOPers left in the House. Mike Castle has to be pro-choice, doesn't he? Mark Kirk? Leonard Lance?

The one thing that really seems to have mostly disappeared is pro-choice GOP womens. They've lost or retired. Nancy Johnson, Heather Wilson, Deborah Pryce. I think Judy Biggert has to be pro-choice, no? Bono's wife?

jerseyhoya wrote:I think there might be a small bit to that, but most of it is just an anti-incumbent mood. Maybe that's intensified when the guy who is the incumbent is worth hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and not feeling the same pain you are.

allentown wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I was looking at that. There have to be a number of pro-choice GOPers left in the House. Mike Castle has to be pro-choice, doesn't he? Mark Kirk? Leonard Lance?

The one thing that really seems to have mostly disappeared is pro-choice GOP womens. They've lost or retired. Nancy Johnson, Heather Wilson, Deborah Pryce. I think Judy Biggert has to be pro-choice, no? Bono's wife?

This isn't strictly a pro-/anti-choice issue. There is also the very reasonable middle ground position that abortion is an intensely emotional issue on which society has yet to come to any consensus, so while it makes sense to be pro-choice in the sense of keeping abortion legal, it also makes sense to be anti-choice in the sense of tax $ not going for abortion and healthcare providers not being legally required to furnish abortions. That keeps it a personal/medical issue as it should be in this unsettled time. Anyone who can pay for an abortion should be able to get them. Pro-choice charities should be able to fund abortions for women who need but cannot afford one. The government just backs away and lets women and medical providers make their own decisions. This puts abortion, from a payment standpoint, in the same category as the alternative medicine choices that PTK apparently advocates.

One of the worst, I thought, was the widespread characterization of Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee in New York's 23rd district, as a moderate. I realize that those of us in the media use that term to distinguish certain Republicans and Democrats from their more ideologically consistent colleagues, but in this case, the label was inappropriate.

Scozzafava doesn't only support abortion rights - often a marker for Republican "moderates" - she supports gay marriage. But she doesn't only support gay marriage; she supported President Barack Obama's stimulus proposal that not a single House Republican favored. But she didn't just support the stimulus package; she supports the Employee Free Choice Act (what opponents call "card check"), which is opposed by virtually the entire business community. And in the end, of course, she endorsed the Democrat in the race.

Scozzafava is a liberal Republican by any standard, and she should have been labeled as such. She is more liberal than every Republican in the House of Representatives and many Democrats.

On Thursday, I asked Scozzafava if she recognized the candidate that Limbaugh, Malkin, Pawlenty, and others had maligned.

"Absolutely not," she answered. "I know who I am. I'm not sure where they received a lot of the misinformation that they have on me. But I voted with my Republican leader 95 percent of the time in the State Assembly. I think that's a pretty good percentage."

The woman I spoke with at length Thursday afternoon sounded nothing like the granola-munching, tax-and-spend liberal I heard so much about these last few weeks. A supporter of John McCain in 2008, Scozzafava is the head of her party's policy review committee and a floor leader in the State Assembly. She had a succinct answer when I asked her to classify herself: "I'm a Republican."

"This is my party, too," she insisted. "There are a lot of moderate people - Republicans, like me - and I'm hearing from an awful lot of them. And I think the Republican Party needs to know if they don't have room for us and they don't want us working with them, we're going to find a way to work against them."

She acknowledged that many in the GOP would differ with her support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. But she maintained that she approached those views from a conservative vantage point - a respect for individual liberties.

Her gun-rights bona fides, meanwhile, are beyond reproach. She received an A rating from the National Rifle Association in each election since 2002 (A-plus in 2000) and supported the New York Gun Owners of America in 100 percent of the relevant votes in 2002.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cited Scozzafava's opposition to cap-and-trade legislation and energy-tax increases in his endorsement of her. This while Scozzafava's votes aligned with the EPL/Environmental Advocates - New York's self-proclaimed "environmental conscience" - 79 percent of the time since 2004.

Between 2000 and 2008, she adopted the perspective of the New York National Federation of Independent Businesses 68 percent of the time. (Her most recent rating was 75 percent.)

As for gay marriage, you and I might be in favor of it, but the majority of people in this country aren't, and a huge majority of Republicans in this country aren't. Whether you're in New York or Alabama, this isn't even close.

Now that the gubernatorial election is over, Republicans in Burlington, Ocean and Camden Counties are starting to focus on recruiting someone to take on freshman U.S. Rep. John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) next year.

There is a deep bench of potential candidates, but some Republicans have one in mind who could clear the field: Philadelphia Eagles legend Jon Runyan, a Mount Laurel resident.

Sources tell PolitickerNJ.com that Assemblywoman Dawn Addiego (R-Evesham) - who knows Runyan because their children attend school together - has talked to him about running. Runyan, who is not currently active in the NFL but has not retired, has not ruled out a run. It is unclear, however, how serious the prospect is.

The filibuster prevents reform of Social Security as surely as expansion of health-care reform. It's as bad for deficit hawks as it is for free-spenders. It's as cruel to the Employer Free Choice Act as it is to corporate tax cuts. Democrats don't hate the filibuster any more than Republicans. They just hate it at different times. The result, however, is that neither party can really enact its agenda when it's in the majority. Eventually, the two parties may tire of this. Or they may tire of seeing the Federal Reserve take the lead on bailouts and the Supreme Court take the lead on choice and the EPA take the lead on climate change and Congress become progressively less relevant. In that scenario, the two parties might get together and agree to end the filibuster at some point in the future -- say, six years, or a full Senate cycle.

dajafi wrote:Ezra Klein vs. the filibuster:

The filibuster prevents reform of Social Security as surely as expansion of health-care reform. It's as bad for deficit hawks as it is for free-spenders. It's as cruel to the Employer Free Choice Act as it is to corporate tax cuts. Democrats don't hate the filibuster any more than Republicans. They just hate it at different times. The result, however, is that neither party can really enact its agenda when it's in the majority. Eventually, the two parties may tire of this. Or they may tire of seeing the Federal Reserve take the lead on bailouts and the Supreme Court take the lead on choice and the EPA take the lead on climate change and Congress become progressively less relevant. In that scenario, the two parties might get together and agree to end the filibuster at some point in the future -- say, six years, or a full Senate cycle.