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Washington, D.C. – The Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) will host a conference call to discuss its new health care poll Monday, March 15 at NOON ET. The poll surveys attitudes in 35 swing congressional districts regarding the health care plan being debated in Washington.
Who:
- Heather Higgins, President and CEO, Independent Women’s Voice
- Michelle Bernard, Director, Independent Women’s Voice
- Kellyanne Conway, President and CEO of the polling company™, inc./ WomanTrend
What: Conference call to discuss and answer questions about the IWV health care poll
When: Monday, March 15, Noon ET
Call-in: 1-888-732-6202, Passcode: 117006
The full poll will be posted Monday, March 15 at 11am ET on the IWV website (www.iwvoices.org).
Congressional districts surveyed include: AR-01, AR-04, AZ-08, CA-18, CO-03, CO-04, IL-14, IN-08, IN-09, KY-06, MI-07, NC-07, NC-11, ND-At Large, NJ-03, NM-02, NV-03, NY-24, NY-20, OH-01, OH-06, OH-15, OH-16, OH-18, PA-03, PA-04, PA-08, PA-10, TN-06, TX-17, VA-02, VA-05, VA-09, WA-03, WI-08.
Independent Women’s Voice is a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization for women, men and families. IWV is dedicated to promoting limited government, free markets, and personal responsibility.
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After Massachusetts: Now What?
Heather Higgins
Townhall.com
Monday, February 01, 2010
The lessons of Massachusetts are not quite as obvious as they first appeared. The election holds a cautionary tale for both parties.
To better understand what really happened, the Independent Women’s Voice commissioned an in-depth statewide survey of those who voted in the special election to fill the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat.
Let’s dispel one bit of spin and then look at the key issues and voting trends.
Martha Coakley wasn’t the Democrat’s problem. Her gaffes provided fodder for comics, but voters resoundingly said their vote was about issues; for 80% of Brown voters, it was about opposing the Obama agenda; for 81% of Coakley voters, it was about supporting it. The type of candidate each proved to be may have been a reason for not voting for them — 24% in Coakley’s case, 11% in Brown’s– but even among those voters, the candidate’s agenda was dramatically more important to their decision.
Being the 41st Senator was the driver in this election – for both sides. In Massachusetts, all politics was suddenly national: 86% of voters said that that 41st Senate vote was important to their decision; knowing that their vote could make a difference in critical Washington policy debates almost certainly drove turnout for both sides.
Health care was the top issue – for both sides. For 86% of voters, health care was the top or among the top three issues. Overall, Massachusetts voters supported Washington’s health care legislation 46% to 44%. However, for those who said health care was the top issue, opposition ran 51% – 46%.
That spread gets even wider when one looks at Independents, whose oppose/support numbers for the legislation came in at 57%-34%. Even while women overall favored the healthcare legislation by 53%-35%, Independent women opposed it, mostly vehemently, by a mirror image 55% to 33%.
Among the greatest surprises in the data was the tri-partisan agreement that the status quo on health care has been a failure; just 16% of voters, including 29% Democrats, 8% Republicans, and 5% Independents, recommend Congress proceed as-is.
The real terrorism threat: it wasn’t just timing. Much was made of the importance of the Christmas Day Bomber to Brown’s surge coupled with the initial non-response of the Coakley campaign. Indeed national security was an important issue for 63% of voters, including 75% of independents and 82% of Republicans. But well over half of Brown’s voters had made up their minds by early December, and for 69% of them this issue was already a priority before Christmas. The implication? Transfers of terrorists to U.S. soil and decisions to have them tried in criminal courts are going to continue to cause trouble for Democrats.
It’s the economy, stupid. PS: Tax cuts rule. Eighteen percent of voters said jobs and the economy were top issues; an additional 62% placed economic issues in the top three. Given a given a choice between continuing to have the federal government spend money versus yanking the congressional credit card and cutting existing programs, 56% chose the latter, including 65% of Independents. Additionally, 82% of voters across the board think that providing tax cuts to small businesses for job creation will speed up the recovery – including 79% of frequent Ted Kennedy voters.
2010 elections: Independents, and particularly Independent women, matter. Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats cast votes along party lines for their candidates. But while women overall voted 53%-45% for Coakley, Independent women voted 67%-33% for Brown. Given an option between reducing taxes and regulations on small business or increasing government spending, 51% preferred tax cuts while 30% chose infrastructure. On these issues, as well as health care and national security, independent women were lining up closer to Republicans than Democrats, bucking their sex and voting on issues.
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Originally published on National Review Online
For years, golf has been touted as a growing market: Any product, business, or contract that was golf-related was supposed to be a sure thing.
But it wasn’t really golf. It was Tiger.
When Woods had to miss months of competition last season because of his knee injury, TV viewership of golf events dropped by nearly 50 percent.
People hadn’t bought golf; they’d bought Tiger. Woods spoke to their hopes and aspirations: His was a success story marked with grace, graciousness, and conservative values. Yet the reality of his life couldn’t have been more different, and people are now looking at the ever-growing procession of girlfriends and saying, “Where did these come from?!?” The yuck factor has gotten pretty high, and it is not just Tiger, but golf itself, with all its self-deluded premises, that will take the hit.
Democrats are just starting to realize they’ve made the same mistake. They thought the 2008 election meant people bought the ideas of the Left. In fact, voters were both rejecting various policies of the last eight years — the Iraq War, runaway government spending, and so on — and embracing a fill-in-the-blank-slate version of “hope” and “change” embodied by Barack Obama.
But now that people have seen the pork-filled stimulus bill, the economy-ravaging prospects of cap-and-trade, and the authoritarian nightmare of government-run health care, they are saying, “Where did these come from? This is not what I bought.” Like Tiger’s many girlfriends, the policies that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hope to pass reflect reality, but they are not at all what people fell in love with or wanted to see.
Now Democrats have a choice. The Left is demanding they pass something, anything, to mobilize their base for 2010, claiming that the party lost seats in 1994 because its voters were dispirited by the failure to pass HillaryCare. But choosing to pass health care now is rather like saying to Tiger, “Go have another fling — heck, have several! You’ve already made your money and can afford to be yourself. The hell with public reaction; the public will get used to it.”
Tiger is smarter than that, as are his sponsors, who know that the damage done is almost irreversible. Salvaging the image of “Tiger” will requires huge mea culpas and timeouts. Whether motivated by his family or his future, he’s publicly sworn off the women and is trying to be what he sold himself as, both to the public and to his wife. That’s the only way he might be able to regain some of the critical trust that he squandered. And that’s the plan of a man who doesn’t have to face re-election next year.
Democrats seem to be figuring out how dangerous the path they have chosen might be. Many now view their health-care plan as politically suicidal. More sober campaign strategists might suggest that, if Democrats don’t pass this legislation, liberals can be motivated to turn out to elect more liberals as part of their caucus, while moderates and independents will be grateful that they went back to the drawing board, and Republicans will find that a key issue that motivates their own base is much diminished.
By contrast, if Democrats do pass legislation that more than 50 percent of Americans reject (many of them intensely), the Republican turnout will be extraordinary. And those Republicans will be joined by furious independents who feel betrayed that the man and the party they elected turned out to be something very different from how they were advertised.
We’ll soon learn if Democrats are willing to change their ways so that they can salvage the public’s trust, or if they are willing to sacrifice their credibility for years to come.
— Heather R. Higgins is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Voice and an erratic but enthusiastic golfer.
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President Obama’s meetings at the Senate on Sunday, much like his visit to Copenhagen this week, are not indicators of inevitability; they are portents of panic. The reports coming out of the closed door, Democrats-only, meeting of internal divisions that are still irreconcilable, despite the high rhetoric of historic moment, only make the point more vividly: can you say “desperation”?
The sensible Democrats know they are in trouble. They know the American people have lost confidence that the Administration and Congress share their priorities.
While polls consistently show that Americans are increasingly concerned about jobs, reviving the economy, and managing our deficits, the Democrats fixate on health care, a relatively low priority for most Americans and anathema for many in this form. The reforms the Democrats push are themselves unpopular, and for good reason. Americans know that a government takeover of health care will diminish the quality of care, reduce our ability to control our treatment options, and drive up the premium costs for many Americans. It’s not just the health care system that will suffer, but proposed reforms will also cripple one of the few sectors that have been creating jobs during the recession, create multiple new taxes and penalties, and further hamper the economy by creating massive new debt and entitlements.
At the same time, the Obama EPA stands ready to declare carbon a pollutant while Pres. Obama commits in Copenhagen to grandiose reductions in carbon use. Undoubtedly “climate change” is another “crisis” that Rahm Emmanuel doesn’t want to let go to waste, but the presumption of consensus crumbles as scientific certainty morphs into a political put-up job. Regulating carbon is a control-freak, revenue-sucking bureaucrat’s wet dream, but it is also the average American’s definition of insanity. It may be change, but it’s not the change Americans voted for.<
What can save the Democrats? Not much. They no longer have a shrewd and sensible leader like Bill Clinton, who would listen to a Dick Morris and understand the need to move to the middle, manage the party’s extremist elements, control government and deficits, and genuinely encourage private sector growth.
Instead the Democrats are manipulated by rabid, loony left activists who won’t tolerate compromise on their utopian, authoritarian impulses, and an arrogant, ideological leadership that will buy, seemingly at any price. the votes of Members and Senators to get the game-changing legislation it wants, even if that means losing the mid-term elections.
Moderate Democrats are terrified for their seats short-term, and longer term for their party and the country. Obama’s visit to the Hill was both an indication of the Democrats’ continued difficulty in ramming unpopular health care legislation through, despite their majorities and positive spin, and the determination of the left to get this passed at any cost – they cannot see wasting their majorities, even if what they want is not what the country wants.
The moderate Democrats know this is wrong, but are still consoling themselves by drinking the Democrat leadership’s delusional Kool-Aid: that August was a manipulated fluke, that intensity of concern is not now what it was then. Their leadership knows to exploit the fact that people are busy during the holidays, and Members are not home, to encourage their nervous Nellies to believe that it really won’t hurt them to impose these tremendous burdens on the American people.
Who can save the Democrats and prevent legislation that is so out of line with what America wants? Only the American people. Big business won’t do it – they’re in bed with the administration on these efforts, or at best in keeping their heads down and hoping someone else will have more courage than they.
But imagine the effect of another Rostenkowski moment – where furious seniors pursued Rep. Dan Rostenkowski to his car in their disgust over the catastrophic health care bill — only this time it’s Harry Reid. Also feared is an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more” uprising where the normally quiet silent majority – the moderates, the independents, and ordinary seniors, women, and small businesses –rise up and make clear that August was no fluke, writing letters all December (far better than calling or emailing) again and again. And though media will try to ignore it, Members will notice when there are well attended rallies like the one Sen. Tom Coburn is encouraging in DC on December 15th.
If Americans produce one final push to show that it’s not over, that the intensity today is greater than ever, that indeed the American people are paying attention, will hold policymakers to account, and are willing to speak loudly to defend their basic rights, then that would embolden enough votes that we could stop the insanity, defeat this monstrosity of a bill, and get a chance to pursue genuine reforms that might instead actually improve the health care system without hurting jobs, the economy, or our children’s futures.
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Barack Obama’s Poor Understanding of the Constitution
The Founding Fathers were correct in the way they set up the Constitution
A 2001 interview of Sen. Barack Obama saying some pretty remarkable things about what he sees as the inadequacy of our Constitution has recently come to light. They go to the core of what this election is about and, even more fundamentally, what America is and may be. Read more »
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The Sarah Palin-bashing chattering classes are at it again, and to the delight of their openly liberal colleagues.
A series of officially conservative commentators have disparaged Gov. Sarah Palin: She is a “mark against John McCain” (Peggy Noonan); she is “an embarrassment and a dangerous one at that” (Christopher Buckley); and she is incapable of “the constructive act of governance” (David Brooks). Read more »
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The Sarah Palin-bashing chattering classes are at it again, and to the delight of their openly liberal colleagues.
A series of officially conservative commentators have disparaged Gov. Sarah Palin: She is a “mark against John McCain” (Peggy Noonan); she is “an embarrassment and a dangerous one at that” (Christopher Buckley); and she is incapable of “the constructive act of governance” (David Brooks).
Each of these writers is an admired friend, so I write this with some trepidation. I am not angry, but rather deeply sad that these otherwise keen observers of the unattractive prejudices of others don’t hear how they themselves sound.
Even more importantly, their arguments miss the key aspect that makes America so different from Europe and the rest of the world, and which animates the enthusiasm for Gov. Palin: the American appreciation of individual human potential and exceptionalism, regardless of background.
Leave aside that Sarah Palin is not running for president, but for vice president. And ignore for a moment that Sen. Obama really has little more foreign policy experience than she (a few trips does not experience make), a track record of bad judgment where he has advocated positions, and no executive experience at all to speak of. (And on the last two, ditto, in spades, for Sen. Biden.)
We all hope for a candidate who is well prepared and has thought deeply about the issues that may confront us, the problems that beset us, and who has a well grounded understanding of history and political philosophy. But it is rare to find politicians who have all those gifts, yet we do not attack them for being anti-intellectual and a “cancer on the Republican Party.”
What evidence is adduced to substantiate the claim that Palin has a “scorn for ideas” (Brooks) and is “not a leader, this is a follower” (Noonan) – a comment which given Palin’s history is risible on its face? Well, none. To Brooks, she is too long on “brashness and excessive decisiveness,” and represents an anti-establishment strain, which he thinks we’ve endured too long in the Bush years.
Yet, Bush wasn’t so much anti-establishment as perfectly willing to sign away conservative principles. And Palin is not so much anti-establishment as anti-corruption and more focused on connecting with the American people than media elites.
Noonan doesn’t like that Palin in seven weeks has not revealed herself to be Harry Truman (excuse me, but did Harry Truman impress anyone in the first seven weeks of his nomination to vice president, never mind convince commentators even during his derided presidency that he had the right stuff?). Nor that Palin doesn’t “think aloud.” (By which, I guess, we are to presume, illogically, that she doesn’t think.) That she uses “tinny lines to crowds” that she “doesn’t, really, understand.”
Based on what evidence?
The pithy lines are used because they are effective in political speech – Peggy was expecting a disquisition on John Locke? And reports are that often 50,000 people will show up for Palin rallies, driving long hours precisely because they think Palin understands them as they haven’t been since Reagan.
Perhaps the most telling charge is that Palin represents “a new vulgarization” (Noonan). Or Christopher Buckley’s distinction between McCain/Palin and Obama is that the latter has a “first-class temperament and a first-class intellect”; Buckley is endorsing Obama because “surely” that first-class temperament can’t possibly mean that he intends to do what he says.
If these derisive comments sound like the contempt for the “grade B actor” Ronald Reagan, or the “Catholic” Robert F. Kennedy, or the “uncouth” Eleanor Roosevelt, it should.
Elitism (defined not as excellence in achievement, which our Founders valued, but in having similar social experiences) is trumping political philosophy.
The monumental chasm between the two tickets – on fighting corruption, energy, spending, the role of government, the economy, trade, national security, marriage, and even infanticide to name just a few should matter. But it doesn’t to a social set that puts an inflated premium on their own credentializing educations (exactly the folks Christopher’s father, William F. Buckley, preferred not to have as his judges).
Unfortunately, perhaps without knowing it, they’ve bought into both a flawed Progressive Era idea: that you need experts to run things – and a stifling European one – that we all have our proper place, and rather than average Americans having “ownership” of the government, as Tocqueville noted, we ought to defer to our betters to run it.
That’s not the American idea.
Here good people accomplish great things (think of the Wright brothers – bicycle mechanics – astonishing the incredulous French that they of all people had figured out how to fly, or Edison relying on trial and error – he had only three years of formal schooling – to make his inventions).
Like Truman, we do not need to come from “educated” backgrounds to make wise leaders.
The criteria for leadership more than anything else is good judgment, self-determination, and initiative; not vocabulary, diction, geography, or a particular degree. Sarah Palin seems to have the attributes that matter for those sufficiently unblinkered to see.
Heather Higgins is a member of the board of directors for the Independent Women’s Voice.
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In the wake of financial upheaval, McCain’s prospects have plummeted. The campaign’s response has not helped – erratic, desperate to get this behind them, and, if the Biden-Palin debate is a harbinger, blaming Wall Street greed as the cause of all that ails. In short, the Obama approach.
That tack is a missed opportunity. Much as the rise in oil prices permitted the McCain campaign and House Republicans to force the issue of drilling, and differentiate themselves from Washington interest groups politics as usual, the continuing crisis on Wall Street allows McCain to solidify his image as a leader who recognizes what Washington can-and shouldn’t-do.
We’d been told that we wanted change from President Bush and all things Republican. But to argue that was to willfully disregard the even more dismal disapproval of the Congress, and the media itself, who have fallen a long way in our national regard from the days of Cronkite-like esteem.
In fact, the desired change was from “business as usual” among our self-styled elites. That giant lack of confidence was again stunningly signaled with the public backlash to the bailout bill, despite the fact that all of the Washington establishment and elite media demanded it. We don’t trust our leaders any more, and as markets are showing, perhaps with good reason.
It is that void of trust that McCain needs to fill. In Tuesday’s debate, and again and again in the month to follow, McCain needs to contrast the man of action v. the lawyer, and the track record of correct judgment v. votes and associations that are simply too radical for comfort.
But beyond that, the McCain campaign should not expect to “put this financial issue” behind them. Rather they need to break out that economic straight talk express and articulate a principled vision for the role of government in our financial sector.
First, McCain needs to state clearly that, when it comes to the current mess, there is plenty of blame to go around. It isn’t just Wall St. greed, though that surely played a significant part, but also Washington’s establishment that created the environment that allowed bad business practices to flourish.
Sen. Dodd and Cong. Frank should be brought to task for combining the implied government backing of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a repeated refusal to regulate them more stringently, and for pushing legislation and regulations which lowered credit standards at community banks and helped shift the entire mortgage market culture.
Add to that the unwillingness of several administrations to adequately fund the SEC’s oversight division, the backfiring of various well-intended regulatory reforms such as mark-to- market accounting, expanded tax incentives for home ownership and low interest rates, you’ve got the perfect economic storm.
Mr. McCain needs to be the maverick again, and be against having the same regulators and politicians that helped create this mess be the ones to self-servingly proclaim to be fixing it.
Second, McCain needs to be clear that this problem is going to be with us for a while, and handled wrong (and, sadly, maybe even if handled right), it could be huge. We can learn from sectors of the economy that are just fine thank you, like small community banks. And we need a McCain plan that, unlike the “Wall Street” Treasury plan’s top-down attempt to value the leveraged maze of complicated securities based on mortgages, is a “Main St”, bottom up, solution that refinances and properly values the underlying securities that are causing such uncertainty all the way up the chain. Voting for the Treasury plan may have been necessary in extremis, but markets are confirming that it’s just another band aid that doesn’t yet really fix the problem.
That leads to the third point Sen. McCain should make: that we are at the time of a defining choice. Under the wrong leadership, taxpayer liabilities could swell, not just through tax and spend policies, but as the post-bailout line forms of all those businesses, municipalities, and even states hold out the tin cup for their shot at a federal bailout.
Here is the difference McCain needs to emphasize: If we get an administration which continues to believe as the Washington establishment largely does that they get to play Santa Clause – to give out gifts, redistribute wealth, pay for various benefits, and solve anything and everything that ails us, and that the money to do it is all somehow magically and marvelously disconnected from the economy and divorced from consequence to the taxpayer, then we will pay an even greater price down the road.
But if, like the town of Vallejo, CA, as a nation we’ve had our Pogo moment, and finally realize that someone has to pay for all those wonderful promises, and that that someone is us – then we want a McCain administration that isn’t going to embark on burdening promises we can’t keep and programs we can’t afford.
The numbers have rallied for McCain when he’s spoken such politically incorrect but frank truths before. He can do it again.
