A Good Unifying GOP-Primary Fight to Cleanse Our Palates
My fellow men and women of the Right . . . indeed, as my colleague Jonah pointed out, the family-squabble phase of the Republican primaries has arrived. You're going to insist my assessment of Ted Cruz is condescending. You're going to insist my assessment of Ted Cruz is agitprop hagiography. Repeat for all other contenders. Let's turn our attention to the special election in the 18th congressional district of Illinois to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of former U.S. representative Aaron Schock, (R., Peoria). The date for the special primary election is July 7 and the date for the special general election is Sept. 10. Mr. Schock resigned last month after a controversy about his use of federal funds that is now the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. Gov. Bruce Rauner called for a special election to replace Mr. Schock and on Tuesday released a statement finalizing dates for the election. A federal judge approved a consent decree to amend the election schedule to comply with the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. The 18th Congressional District includes the cities of Peoria, Springfield and Quincy and includes part of Stark County. Can we all unify behind someone -- some conservative -- behind, say, a Republican running for Congress who's the son of an Obama cabinet official? Right now the only filed candidate is state senator Darin LaHood -- son of former Republican congressman-turned-Obama-transportation-secretary Ray LaHood. You remember, the earmark guy. The let's-publicly-demonize-Toyota-while-the-government-owns-GM guy. Sorry, we can't. You may characterize this as blaming the son for the sins of the father, but besides the hereditary-monarchy aspect of Congress, the elder LaHood stepped up for the Obama agenda when the president asked. As our John Fund writes: LaHood is about as establishment a choice as one could imagine. He is the son of Representative Ray LaHood, the very moderate Republican who represented about half of the current district in Congress until 2009. He then left office to become President Obama's Transportation Secretary, where he promoted pork-barrel spending and dubious high-speed-rail projects. His son's supporters say his politics are distinct from those of his father, but clearly the LaHood name will be a mixed blessing in a primary. On the one hand, it brings strong name identification for Darin LaHood. But on the other, it leaves many of the district's conservatives looking for a fresh, non–status quo alternative. Somebody like Breitbart's Mike Flynn? Fine. Because if LaHood wins, despite his professed Republican status, you know what the national media's take-away is going to be. "Despite all the ups and downs of the past six and a half years, Obama still plays in Peoria." Is Chris Christie the Candidate Who Can Win New Hampshire? Drew Cline makes the case that Chris Christie is the kind of candidate who could win the New Hampshire primary: Journalists and professional political consultants parse the details of every policy position, while voters size up candidates in a more personal way. New Hampshire Republicans react well to bold candidates with strong personalities — John McCain, Pat Buchanan, Ronald Reagan — even if they disagree with those candidates on some issues. New Hampshire is almost tailor-made for Christie, who takes big political risks and can work a room like no other 2016 hopeful. That he has to win New Hampshire gives him all the more incentive to give the state the full Christie. When he stumped for Romney in 2012, the chatter among Republicans was that the surrogate outshone the nominee. That was the case again last year when Christie made four visits on behalf of gubernatorial nominee Walt Havenstein. When Christie is in the room, all eyes turn to him. He is a carousel placed in the center of the banquet hall of a non-descript chain hotel. As Christie lit up a capacity crowd at a town hall meeting in Londonderry on Wednesday, drawing many rounds of applause, the national political website Political Wire posted a headline calling him a "dead man walking in New Hampshire." The same was said about John McCain in 2007. He did not lead a single poll from June 5 to Dec. 31, 2007. He beat Romney by 5.5 points. He did it by holding dozens of town hall meetings across the state, talking directly to voters and gaining voters' trust — which is exactly what Christie intends to do. You're familiar with my insider, elitist, RINO, Georgetown-cocktail-party-driven, anti-corn, unreasonable, extremist un-American jihad against the Iowa caucuses. Credit the New Hampshire primaries for high turnout, and the winners in the Granite State tend to do better than Iowa's winners. "In fourteen contested nominations from 1972 to 2004, the eventual nominee won the New Hampshire primary nine times and placed second five times; no candidate placing third or lower ever went on to win the nomination." In 2008, Hillary won the Democratic primary in New Hampshire but McCain won the GOP primary; in 2012, Romney won New Hampshire. Having said that, because of the independents voting in the GOP primary, the New Hampshire primary tends to lean more libertarian or economic-issue-oriented. As one consultant once put it to me, the average GOP primary voter in New Hampshire is a big guy in a red plaid shirt with three days' growth on his face, who works construction or contracting, owns a snowplow business on the side, and who wants his taxes and regulatory paperwork low. Oh, and there's one other extremely high priority for New Hampshire Republicans: to contradict Iowa Republicans. Because if they assent to Iowa's choice, Iowa becomes more important. Sure, Christie's big personality might play well in New Hampshire. But can you scale that up to bigger states as the race goes on? What do you do when the states are bigger, and you don't have the time to reach everybody through town halls? Rejecting the Premise of Questions about Raising the Minimum Wage Look at Jeb Bush, calling out the minimum-wage hikes as based upon polling and focus groups, instead of sound economics! "We need to leave it to the private sector," he said when asked whether raising the minimum wage is a good idea, according to video from the event on YouTube. "I think state minimum wages are fine; the federal government shouldn't be doing this." Bush's representatives did not return a request from The Hill to clarify whether Bush meant the federal government shouldn't be raising the wage or setting a minimum wage altogether. Federal law sets the minimum wage at $7.25, but states have the leeway to raise that in their state. Bush argued the calls for raising the minimum wage are driven by positive poll numbers, but that doing so only looks good on the surface. He added that workers in lower-paying jobs could benefit in the short term from a raise in pay, but that businesses would eventually change practices to cut costs and ultimately fire those employees. "I'm sure, on the surface, without any conversation, without any digging into it, people say, 'Yeah, everyone's wages should be up,' " Bush said. "But the federal government doing this will make it harder and harder for the first rung of the ladder to be reached, particularly for young people. Particularly for people that have less education." Responses like, "The premise of your question is flawed," shouldn't just come from the Newt Gingrichs or Rand Pauls of the world. Meanwhile, if you were wondering how that $15-per-hour minimum wage was working up in Sea-Tac, the small, airport-dominated locality in between Seattle and Tacoma . . . An estimated 1,500 total workers saw their minimum wage increase under the new law. Around 400 actually live in the city limits. City manager Todd Cutts says there has been no impact on sales tax or property tax, and no measurable change in the number of business licenses issued. The law requires hoteliers with more than 100 rooms to pay workers $15 an hour. Scott Ostrander, former general manager of the Cedarbrook Lodge in SeaTac, argued during the campaign that he would close several rooms in his hotel to avoid having to comply. Now, Cedarbrook Lodge is moving forward with a 63-room expansion and recently started paying the $15 per hour minimum wage. WallyPark says it's had "the best year ever" and it's very supportive of the minimum wage ordinance. Most businesses owners are staying quiet about the impacts on their bottom line, but according Paul Guppy, researcher at the Washington Policy Center in Seattle, some employers are now removing benefits like free meals and free parking to make up for the wage increase. "We're not seeing the big benefits that proponents said we would because so few people are affected," said Guppy. "And at the same time, it's not having a ripple effect through the economy. It just affects so few jobs, it's not having much impact." ADDENDA: I'm scheduled to appear on the panel tonight for On the Record with Greta Van Susteren . . . . . . I'm not saying I really enjoyed the new trailer for the Star Wars movie coming out in December . . . I'm just saying I spent a good portion of Thursday night going "WAAAAAAHHHHHH VWOOSH PYEWPYEWPYEW" and eager to take my boys to see it. 
The Star Wars trailer came out too late to be discussed in this week's edition of the pop-culture podcast, but we looked at Gwyneth Paltrow's lime-ridden diet for the Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program and when a celebrity becomes insufferably preachy; the government's war on "free range parenting"; America's fascination with the mob; and the typically bloody start of this season of Game of Thrones. | 
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