Of course we’re still waiting to see what the new redistricting map looks like, but this makes Westchester an interesting battleground. Yes, it’s a heavily Democrat area, and President Obama won with 60%+ last time. But let’s look what has happened since then…

2009 –Rob Astorino (R-NY) wins his county executive race
2010 – Nan Hayworth (R-NY) wins her congressional race
2011 – (R-NY) picks up two seats in the Westchester legislature.

2012 – Bob Cohen (R-NY) winning his state senate race? Maybe even Mark Rosen (R-NY), whose opponent has been rumoured to be considering retirement, winning in the NY-18?

As they say on teh internets, DEVELOPING…

There’s an opening here though. See, as much as it makes me uncomfortable to see other Republicans attacking their opponents as liberals, I’m glad they did because it lets primary voters see a) what’s waiting for him from the Democrats, and b) see how Romney reacts to the attacks. And therein lies his opening to unify everyone, because the biggest issue many of us have with Romney is that we don’t think he’s going to have the balls to punch back and go after President Obama, the Democrats, and the usual Obama Media Complex.

Let’s see Mitt give a full throated defense of capitalism and conservatism as a whole. Defend his record. Point out that while having to fire people may have sucked, in the long run it helped the companies grow and hire more people in the long run. Show conservatives who don’t trust him that he’s not going to accept the liberal premise behind every issue, and hit back against any and all class warfare rhetoric thrown at him…which in this case are coming at him from people on our own side.

I want to see Mitt Romney show us that he’s more than just slightly better than Obama, and here’s his chance. It’s the difference between simply voting for him in November, and actively campaigning for him before then.

There’s hasn’t been a quote that has better summed up Romney’s base of support then from one of his surrogates yesterday, “It’s not even about picking someone with your own beliefs and principles.” Say what you will about Ron Paul supporters, but they at least have specific domestic and foreign policy beliefs that they advocate for. Romney supporters? All they tell you is that “he can win” without any evidence that can back it up.

What is a single accomplishment he had as governor? HE CAN WIN! What’s a single conservative principle that he is passionate about? HE CAN WIN! Have you ever taken a close look at his “job creation” record? HE CAN WIN!

And this is where the frustration for us activists (or as one Mittbot called me, “conservative wack jobs”) comes from. For a lot of us, we started to get involved after the debacle of the McCain campaign and our first taste was 2010. There we found dynamic leaders with bold ideas for turning the country around, advocated for them, and got them elected. Now we find ourselves with a candidate who is slightly better than Obama and thinks simply not being Obama will get him a victory, and that seems to be the one principle the Mittbots support. Democrats supported the same principle in 2004 with John Kerry.

This is where the Mittbots usually start with their indignant, “well, who are you gonna support when YOUR candidate drops out?” I’ll vote for slightly better for Obama. But support? Show any enthusiasm or energy for? There are hundreds of other candidates running in other races who share my own “beliefs and principles.” I’ll support them.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong, none of this is to say that he other candidates haven’t all been different shades of terrible.

Unlike most of the other rumoured NY Senate candidates I left myself get excited by (::cough::dansenor::cough::), Mark Cendella seems more serious than the rest and while a definitive announcement hasn’t been made yet, he’s hired the guy who led Bob Turner to victory, and has been making the rounds talking to GOP heads and even grabbed some time with journalist Fed Dicker at the recent State of the State.

Cendella, who supported Ron Paul in ’08 and sits on the board of the club for growth, plans a jumping starting his own campaign with his own millions (a necessity if you’re running state wide in New York). He plans on drawing from his background as a young entrepreneur and job creator as the cornerstone of his campaign…

After Yale, according to the book The Intelligent Entrepreneur, which tells the story of three successful Harvard Business School grads, he moved to California and began a career importing and exporting, capitalizing on Japan’s interest in American pet food. He turned down Harvard Business School on account of his new company, but lying in a hotel bed in Tokyo one day, decided that even being the king of Japanese pet food wouldn’t exactly satisfy his ambitions. So he re-applied to Harvard Business School and ultimately enrolled. After Harvard, he rose to become a senior vice president at the employment site HotJobs.com, before it was sold in 2002.

But the cornerstone of Cenedella’s Senate campaign would be his own company, TheLadders.com, an employment site Cenedella founded in 2003 that now counts 270 employees.

“Marc is a populist scientist of employment,” reads his bio on the Ladders site, which also says that his “passion in life is jobs,” and calls him a “widely recognized thought leader on job search, career management, recruiting and business.”

As the say in the biz, DEVELOPING…

And to add to that frustration…

“I have great regard for Sen. McCain. I love the man. But it’s another example of establishment piling on. It seems the more establishment piles on, Dole, McCain, all the rest, nobody cares. Nobody cares about this. I mean, none of the endorsements that Romney picked up have been a thing in terms of how people respond, because the people are looking for a new generation of leadership. They’re looking for a new approach to problem solving in this country. You can get all the Doles and McCains in the world as Romney probably will, but in the end, nobody cares.”

Why does Jon Huntsman, the “RINO,” the “liberal,” the guy who should be running in the “Democrat primary,” seem to get conservative/activist/tea party/reformer frustration better than any of the other candidates?

I’m a Not-Romney guy. Newt Gingrich is my Not-Romney of choice. I’ve already discussed why Rick Perry campaign and Jon Huntsman campaign haven’t impressed me. Rick Santorum? I’ll have to Google him when I get home, but meh. But while I prefer one Not-Romney to the other two and it would be easier for him if they dropped out, this jive where people demand [candidate X] drop out and endorse is ridiculous.

I know everyone keeps getting more unhinged on the internets when you disagree with them, but three things…

1. If a candidate has something to say and people who believe in them, I want them as part of the debate.

2. If your candidate isn’t strong enough to win without everyone else dropping out and endorsing them, they’re too weak to beat Mitt Romney and sure as hell too weak to beat Barack Obama.

3. Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign all throughout the primaries in 2008 to the cries of “the infighting is weakening the party.” How did it work out for the Democrats that year?

Everyone put your big boy diapers on.

Politico.com has named it one of a few house districts to watch as a bellwether to see which direction the country is going in 2012. It’s one of the more conservative districts in the state, Bishop isn’t, and Altschuler house to economic background to appeal to more voters who are realizing the Obama might not have been the way to go…

Politico, hardly a shill for the right, recently characterized the rematch as one of the most contestable in the country — a national bellwether. They maintain that an Altschuler victory would signal a shift — namely, that Republicans will have regained the support of key suburbanites lost to President Obama in 2008. In any case, Bishop is extremely vulnerable. With a pro-growth, job-centric platform — not to mention his own record of creating jobs — Randy Altschuler can draw a sharp contrast against Congressman Bishop, who is part of the Washington culture so loathed by voters. Indeed, congressional job approval is at historic lows.

Polling trends aside, it is perhaps the poor state of NY-1′s economy that most undermines Bishop’s re-election chances. The non-partisan analysis of the Long Island Association (LIA) makes plain the state of play: for the fifth straight month, Long Island has lost jobs. And over the last year, nearly 13,000 jobs have been lost in all — over 8,000 of which were in the private sector. Similarly, the housing market continues to struggle. Median home prices fell over 4% since last year, while the foreclosure crisis lingers. Consumers and businesses are burdened with higher taxes and inflation. Under these conditions, the Bishop campaign may find it difficult to gain traction with issues they deem more favorable.

The same can probably be said about NY-18 (Mark Rosen) and NY-23 (Matt Doheny, in another rematch). As they say, DEVELOPING…

This week’s was a perfect example, that I think too many people on our side is going to dismiss since Scarborough is a squishy liberal RINO communist, and even worse…he’s quoting Maureen Dowd’s brother. That’s a shame because they lay out a blueprint the GOP should be listening too. The column goes more into detail, but the bullet points…

1. DO NOT INTERFERE WITH YOUR OPPONENT WHEN HE IS ENGAGED IN THE ACT OF DESTROYING HIMSELF.
2. FOCUS ON THE PRESIDENT’S DISMAL RECORD
3. TOTAL VICTORY IS PREFERABLE TO DISEMBOWELMENT

Sounds like common sense but yet it’s not, and this debacle over the payroll tax cut is a perfect example (and one that they brought up). The Senate GOP was extended the payroll tax cut for a few months and had the White House caving on a millionaire’s tax while forcing him to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline and tell the people while he’d rather have to pandered to radical environmentalists than create jobs. His approval was in the toilet. His party was revolting. The GOP was winning and would have been able to go home for the holidays and come back in the New Year to continue the job.

Instead, the House voted down the bill because it didn’t give them everything they wanted, and while I understand all the reasons why a year long extention is better and agree, all it did was make the GOP look petty while the President went Christmas shopping. We let the President off the hook while he was destroying himself, took the focus off of his dismal record and instead put it on how we don’t seem able to communicate amongst ourselves, and would have disemboweled ourselves had people not been focus more on the holidays.

We need to get it together is we’re taking back the Senate and the White House in November.