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Kyl blames the state party – updated.

September 17, 2007 By 22 Comments

“I don’t think the state party is doing everything it can.” – U.S. Senator Jon Kyl, 9/16/07, Sierra Vista Herald.

We are trying to confirm this quote with the senator’s office but have not yet heard from them. A good follow on question would be what does the senator think the state party should do to improve the situation and would the senator and others in the congressional delegation like to be a part of improving things?

We are getting reports of a separate event last weekend also in Southern Arizona where the state party chairman appeared and one issue came up again and again. The border. The first question after the chairman spoke was about Senator Kyl and what he is doing, after decades in office, to secure the border. We continue to hear reports of Republicans threatening and actually re-registering as independents over the national party’s lagging efforts to address illegal immigration.

We would like to remind the senator that for two years, from 2005 to 2007, Republicans controlled the White House, Senate, and House and failed to address the border and illegal immigration in a meaningful way. We would also note that the state party was controlled by forces closely aligned with the senator during that very same period. During this era Republicans in Arizona lost several legislative seats and two congressional districts. Would the senator like to return to those halcyon days of Republican power?

Update: A member of the state executive committee sent the following comment to us “The state party has been reaching out to Kyl and his staff, Shadegg and his staff, and others in the delegation and they get rebuffed time and again. If Senator Kyl wants to criticize the party, he should stop turning down their requests for help.”

Update II: We received the following response from Sean McCaffrey, executive director of the state party. “Senator Kyl and the rest of the delegation have a great deal of work to do each day just to keep the Democrat majority from raising taxes, surrendering to terrorists and auctioning off the Bill of Rights.” He did not mention if a meeting had been set with the delegation.

McCaffrey was quick to tout the party’s recent accomplishments showcased over the weekend at the state executive committee meeting. “We are quickly approaching the number of precinct committeemen and women they had months ahead of this time in the last previous presidential cycle thanks to the hard work of our county and LD chairs. And voter registration programs are kicking into high gear with a level of excitement that is very encouraging – most especially because it isn’t just anti-Hillary sentiment, it’s pro-Republican sentiment. In Maricopa County, they have a very exciting voter registration and PC recruitment program getting underway that I believe will be a great success.”

McCaffrey also mentioned upcoming fundraising events, including events with former Vice President Dan Quayle and former Congressman/Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “We’ve got aggressive fundraising and our overhead is now a quarter million dollars under where it was two years ago. We’re hopeful that Senator McCain’s presidential schedule will allow him to be the grand finale to our 2007 Trunk-n-Tusk series, and once we have that scheduled, we’ll make that announcement so we can turn up the heat even more on the Democrats here in Arizona.”

Sonoran Alliance has still not heard from anyone in Senator Kyl’s office.

Filed Under: Political Parties

Local lefty blogs discussing their popularity rankings

September 17, 2007 By 2 Comments

Amusing reading what the local lefty blogs – including the commenters – are saying about their blognetnews.com rankings and alexa rankings. Sustainability, Equity & Development (that name screams dull, which proves that doing so is not an oxymoron, although I’ll admit the site isn’t as boring as you’d think) is pleased that his blog is ranked #1 on blognetnews this week. As us conservatives who pay attention to history know, the way blognetnews’s schizophrenic rankings go, he’ll be back down to #15 next week. Stick to alexa, it’s been around and is much more established as a credible source.

Filed Under: Media, Political Parties, Uncategorized

So wrong, only an intellectual could believe it

September 17, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I love it when public policy eggheads produce studies that are so obviously at odds with reality. 

Last week, the Arizona Republic printed the results from a ridiculous study on state economic performance.  The misleadingly named Corporation for Enterprise Development claims the bad states are those with a fast growing population, rising personal income and a very low unemployment rate.  Huh?  If that is bad, how does this study define good?  Surprise surprise, its defined as high levels of government spending!

Bob Robb makes some excellent points:

A useful check on the validity of such studies is to see whether those scoring well on them actually have superior economic performances.

The following states got A’s on the scorecard: Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming. According to the most recent five years of data available on the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ interactive tables (2000-2005), the A states collectively had personal income growth that lagged behind the national average. Arizona’s personal income grew two-thirds faster than the national average.

The A states did have average wage growth that exceeded the national average. But so did Arizona.

The left hates the suggestion that population growth itself means anything about the quality of a community. Nevertheless, if the question is which states are doing a better job of creating opportunity, surely people can judge that better for themselves than think tanks of either the left or the right. And presumably they go to places they perceive offer greater opportunity.

Over the same five-year period, the A states on CFED’s scorecard had a population growth less than half the national average. Arizona grew three times faster than the national average.

Perhaps the CFED scorecard measures something. Opportunity ain’t it.
 

People vote with their feet.  Looking at the demographics, people are fleeing the high tax, big government Democrat states.  They come to where there is opportunity.  That is the pro-growth environments of Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida and other parts of red state America.

Filed Under: Economics