| Morning Jolt – November 26, 2012 By Jim Geraghty One of my favorite readers writes in, saying she could use "a Jolt of hope. The air seems heavier than usual." That may just be the tryptophan talking. So, What Fun Can We Have with Chicago's Upcoming Special House Election? Moe Lane has a crazy idea for the upcoming special House election in Illinois, where Jesse Jackson Jr. has resigned, after increasingly bizarre behavior, a long disappearance from the public eye, and an announcement that he was on medical leave earlier this year for treatment of bipolar disorder. Hold on, hear me out. Let's jump back for a second to 2009. You might remember that in 2009 Rahm Emanuel resigned his House seat (IL-05) in order to bungle being White House Chief of Staff. Well, that caused a special election to trigger, and at the time I took the position that hey, how's about trying to, maybe, I don't know: win it? …And I was told, quietly but firmly, no. Folks didn't like the candidate, didn't like the idea of spending the money, didn't want to contest the seat. And that's fine; but here's the thing. The Democrat who won (Mike Quigley) the primary was cordially hated by the rest of the Illinois Combine, and the general election he beat Rosanna Pulido, 30.6K to 10.6K. Two years later, Quigley's opponent David Ratowitz got 38.9 K votes in the 2010 general election. Didn't matter then, because Quigley got 108.3K votes… but it shows that there were in fact enough potential Republican voters in the IL-05 to win a low-turnout special election, if sufficiently motivated. Now, let's look at IL-02. In the last election Jackson got 181K votes to Brian Woodworth's 67.4K. But Jesse Jackson's quitting in, frankly, disgrace: and there's going to be a vicious internal Democratic fight for his seat; and it's a special election, which means low turnout. If the GOP does nothing, none of that will matter. If the GOP decides to make the Democrats work for the seat… it still may not matter. But… then again, it might. We won't know until we actually try. What we do know is that doing nothing doesn't work*. All of which leads up to the observation that if anybody reading this has a clever plan about how to boost turnout in traditionally unfriendly districts, then there's going to be a Republican campaign in Illinois in the very near future that is probably going to want to hear from you. You can check out the oh-so-precise district lines here. Jazz Shaw appears game, and is already talking tactics: So how do you do it? The first thing to settle on is what you don't do. You don't dump a ton of money into an air war that gets the Democrats noticing that there's a race going on. What you do instead is bring back a very old, but mostly forgotten idea which we used to great effect in 2010: Precinct Captains. Invest the available resources in identifying one solid Republican in each and every precinct. Get them the data from pouring through registration stats to identify every single Republican and potential independent in the few miles around their house. Help them round up a few friends and quietly begin going door to door explaining the situation. Save your money for the final week before the special election and then hit a direct mail bomb targeting only the people on those lists. The message is fairly simple. "Hey. There's an election on Tuesday, and for the first time in living memory you've got a chance to have your voice heard. All you have to do is show up, because the liberals aren't going to. Hell, we'll even come give you a ride." Would it work, even in such a dismally conservative-poor area? You won't know unless you try. But if it did, it would send shock waves across the country and be used as a model for the next cycle, demonstrating that 21st century election science is a game that both parties can play, not just Team Obama. The schedule is coming together: Cook County Clerk David Orr said Wednesday that he hopes to hold a primary election in February to replace Jesse Jackson Jr.'s seat in Congress. Jackson announced his resignation mere weeks after handily winning re-election. Most of the precincts included in the 2nd Congressional District already have a special election February 26, and all precincts have general elections planned for April 9. Chicago is the only place in Illinois not already holding a primary election in February; those Chicago precincts would be the only added cost. And at this early point, it looks like the Democrats will probably have a messy primary: Since Jackson announced on Wednesday that he was leaving office after 17 years for mental-health reasons, the local media have cited a number of sources saying they want to represent Illinois' Second District. They include his wife, Chicago Alderman Sandi Jackson; his brother, John Jackson; and former US Rep. Debbie Halvorson, who lost to Congressman Jackson in the March Democratic primary. Other names include Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Illinois State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, and Sam Adams, an Illinois attorney who led former Gov. Rod Blagojevich's defense team. Some Democrats see a danger in so many would-be members of congressman. "My fear is that there is going to be so many wannabes blinded by ambition ... that we could find a tea party" candidate winning, said Rep. Bobby Rush, who represents Illinois' First District, hours after Jackson's resignation. Both Jackson's brother and wife are thinking of running for his suddenly vacated congressional office? Boy, and you thought there was tension at your Thanksgiving table. There's one more House race to be resolved, down in Louisiana, pitting two incumbent House Republicans against each other: Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry. If you feel like the GOP needs to be pushed in a particular direction after the 2012 general election, here's the first chance to weigh in: But in a field of five candidates, neither incumbent mustered more than 50 percent of the vote, which is required to claim an outright win. In Louisiana's open primary system, all candidates for an office appear on the same ballot, regardless of party. Boustany, of Lafayette, drew 45 percent of the vote and Landry, from New Iberia, drew 30 percent, according to unofficial results from the Louisiana secretary of state. Democratic challenger Ron Richard peeled off almost 22 percent of the vote, and two other candidates finished with less than 4 percent combined. Boustany, considered a moderate Republican, raised $3 million for the campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, almost 50 percent more than Landry, who had support
from the Tea Party movement for smaller government. But endorsements from conservative political groups including FreedomWorks, Citizens United, Tea Party Nation and the Family Research Council strengthened Landry's run. Here's something interesting: a newly elected Republican House member from Barack Obama's home state . . . who didn't sign Grover Norquist's no-new-tax-hikes-ever pledge, who's still holding the line and arguing that hiking tax rates isn't the answer to our national-budget disaster: U.S. Rep.-elect Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, said Monday that while he still doesn't want to see tax rates rise for anybody, he anticipates voting for the "best plan that's put forth" to tame the national debt. Davis, who defeated Democrat David Gill of Bloomington and independent John Hartman of Edwardsville in the Nov. 6 election for the U.S. House from the new 13th Congressional District, met with reporters at the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce headquarters to discuss his plans. He noted that he is not among politicians who signed a no-tax pledge, saying it's his policy not to sign any pledges because he thinks "that signature on a piece of paper allows Washington power brokers to kind of lord those pieces of paper over you on individual pieces of legislation," including proposals that may not seem related to the pledge. "My plan is to allow the job creators … to have the certainty they need to actually create the jobs that we all keep talking about needing," Davis said. "To do that, I think we need to keep tax rates the way they are." He said "loopholes" and other issues can be negotiable. Here's one of his new colleagues from Oklahoma: Markwayne Mullin made his first trip to Washington last week as one of Oklahoma's two congressmen-elect. And though he's still finding his way around Capitol Hill, he knows where he stands on the biggest issue here now. "I'm not for raising taxes on anyone — period,'' said Mullin, a Republican who will succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Boren in the House next year. Mullin, of Westville, won't get to vote on any kind of temporary fix, if one is fashioned in the next few weeks, for the looming tax hikes and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff. He won't take office until January, just after they're scheduled to take effect. If, as expected, the real work of overhauling the tax code is done next year, the 35-year-old plumbing company owner will get his say. In a brief interview, he said he would not support tax code changes that meant higher taxes for anyone. "Right now, if it's putting more (money) in the hands of the government — they're not being responsible with it now. It makes no sense to send more money up here for them to waste." As the AP notes, "Overall, the new House is on track for a 234-201 Republican majority, a narrowing of their 242-193 advantage today, which includes five vacancies. Democrats will control the Senate 55-45, up from 53-47." Republicans held about 234 seats while Barack Obama was winning 64.4 million votes nationwide, the second-highest vote total ever (second only to his 2008 total). No majority is impregnable, but the DCCC has a gargantuan task ahead of it in the coming cycles. ADDENDUM: I concur with a lot of what Josh Trevino writes about the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. (Spoilers there and below.) Dare I say it, the James Bond concept is exhausted, and it's not for lack of effort from Daniel Craig or any of the makers of this latest movie. I felt like I was watching everything but the kitchen sink thrown at the screen -- Bond "dies!" Bond is reborn! The last days of "M"! A new "Q"! Details about Bond's early life and origin! The return of the Aston Martin! -- and in the end, none of it was all that tense or gripping. We know how every Bond story must begin and end -- he must be back at MI6, having gotten the girl, M with a new mission . . . The one time Daniel Craig's version of Bond seemed interesting was the first two-thirds of Casino Royale: a rookie Bond, hot-tempered and making mistakes, nowhere near the effortlessly smooth icon we've come to know. It made the character much more compelling and fun to watch, in that it places just enough doubt in our mind that maybe this time Bond isn't going to accomplish the mission or come out of it okay. Early in Casino Royale, Craig's Bond has bruises and cuts and scrapes from earlier fistfights -- a little touch that suggests that actions have consequences in this reboot, instead of the action-movie standard where a hero gets clobbered, thrown through plate-glass windows, etc., and appears in the next scene with no discernible injury or pain. Sadly, by Quantum of Solace -- taking place about an hour after Casino Royale -- Bond's head is slamming into bricks with concussion-level force and he just shakes it off. It took exactly two movies for Craig's Bond to go from being treated by his colleagues as a "rookie" to "obsolete and past his prime." (Heck, 1995's Goldeneye dealt with the notion of Bond being "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War," in M's words.) The villain was an interesting concept -- clearly inspired by Julian Assange -- but clearly Javier Bardem got the memo, "Do Heath Ledger's Joker." In fact, the whole thing felt like Christopher Nolan's James Bond -- we have the impeccable British elder warning the protagonist that he's getting too old for the mission before him, the hero's guilt and confusion over parents slain during his childhood while preparing for battle at an old manor, a cackling villain whose sole purpose is anarchy (and whose face is briefly a disfigured, ghoulish smile), and of course, the Bond-mobile. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com Save 75% . . . Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for print-edition information. Click here for digital-edition information. And National Review makes a great gift. Click here to send a full-year gift to NR Digital, and here to send a full-year subscription to the print edition. Conservatives – stay healthy! Get plenty of Vitamin Sea on the next National Review cruise. Visit www.nrcruise.com for complete information about our next trip. 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