Just a reminder, you can meet Republican Congressional candidate Karen Harrington tonight at an event at Vida Latin Restaurant in Lake Mary, from 4:30 to 6:00 pm.
An excellent New York Post column by Kurt Schlichter regarding the announced 2012 film focusing on the raid by the Navy SEALs who successfully killed Osama bin Laden:
On Saturday, August 20th, the Florida Family Policy Council and the Central Florida Tea Party are sponsoring a debate between the candidates for the Florida Republican nomination for the 2012 United States Senate election.
Saturday, August 20th, 2011
10:00 am - 12:00 noon
Howard Middle School Auditorium
800 East Robinson Street
Orlando, FL 32801
(click image to enlarge)
Adam Hasner, George LeMieux, Mike McCalister, and Craig Miller have all confirmed that they will attend. Find this and other great events on the "Events" tab on the top right corner of this website.
File this under "Birds of a Feather:" George LeMieux finally got an endorsement, and he sure is proud of it.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour announced his support for LeMaestro's candidacy this week, and Team LeMieux wasted no time putting together some cute little graphics for his website and GoogleAds, touting the endorsement:
Helpful hint: "servedthe" isn't a word. I think y'all missed a space.
Wow. "George is a solid conservative." That sounds great...except for the fact that Governor Barbour seems to have left the reservation in recent years, and simply isn't an accurate judge of what a real conservative looks like.
Case in point: check out this article from The Hill just two weeks ago:
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) criticized the Tea Party wing of the GOP on Tuesday for failing to get behind Republican leadership on a deficit plan.
I just got off a conference call for conservative bloggers with Republican Congressional candidate Karen Harrington. It was the first time I had heard her speak directly (other than her YouTube videos), and I was impressed. Those of you in the Central Florida area, you'll want to come out and meet her on Thursday (event details here).
Harrington put up a decent fight last year as a first time candidate against Debbie Wasserman Schultz, garnering nearly 40 percent of the vote and forcing her to spend about a million dollars to defend what had previously been viewed as a "guaranteed" Democrat seat. DWS is once again raising a boatload of money, but most of it comes from PACs. Harrington noted her opponent's lack of support among actual people living in the district, and proudly touted her own campaign's grassroots support. "She's going to raise a lot of money, but it's not going to come from the constituents. It never has."
According to the Harrington campaign's sources, the redistricting process is expected to shift District 20 about three to four percent more Republican. So, if Harrington got 40 percent last time, with the district's new Republicans being likely to support her, she needs to shift the polls less than ten percent to fire Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Folks, this seat is absolutely in play. Wouldn't it be fun to knock out the Chair of the DNC? Oh, is that violent rhetoric? Guess I'm one of those tea party terrorists that DWS and her left-wing buddies have been whining about lately...
The Republican Party of Florida is sponsoring a great series of non-political events around the state to honor Florida's World War II veterans. The "Greatest Generation Tour" comes to Orlando this month in a free event at the Marks Street Senior Center on August 27th.
The event is open to the public and free to attend, but registration is required (click here). This, and many other don't-miss events, are also listed on the "Events" tab on the top right corner of this website.
Complete event information and a copy of the invitation available after the jump:
First, some website notes. I've added an "Events" tab at the top right of this website with lots of great upcoming events for conservatives. Make sure to check it out, and if you have an event you'd like to submit, please contact me at sarahrumpf at gmail dot com.
Also, if you haven't already, please sign up for the free email subscription to this blog, "Your Daily Dose of Sunshine." You'll get an email in the afternoon with a digest of the day's posts (no more than one email a day, and only on days with new posts). I won't spam you, I promise. :)
Self-proclaimed "Charlie Crist Republican" George LeMieux has been tying himself in knots trying to distort Adam Hasner's record. One of LeMieux's favorite smears is to claim that Hasner isn't really a fiscal conservative. PolitiFact Florida discussed LeMaestro's distortions in detail, going so far as to call him "hypocritical:"
Senate candidate Adam Hasner has been traveling around Florida, holding a series of "Up and Adam" breakfasts to meet with voters and discuss the issues of the day.
In case you missed all the excitement on Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA+.
To put this in perspective, this is the first time our credit rating has been downgraded in over a century. The 1929 Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, World War I and II, the Jimmy Carter years, September 11th...none of these events were damaging enough to downgrade our credit rating, but two and a half years under President Obama was.
Regular readers of this blog know I am no fan of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, so I was happy to hear that Karen Harrington had launched a new Congressional campaign to attempt to unseat the DNC's favorite attack dog.
State Representative Scott Plakon is hosting a meet and greet in Central Florida this Thursday, so you can meet Karen Harrington yourself:
Keep in mind, this only shows the last nine years of debt ceiling increases, and the debt ceiling bill that Congress finally passed this week doesn't actually reduce the debt, but only slightly slows the rate of growth. The Chinese are not impressed with these Congressional accounting tricks, and neither am I.
I haven't posted an Adam Hasner speech in awhile, so here's one from earlier this week when he addressed the West Orange Republican Women's Federated Club (video by Allen Wilson):
Here's some good silly fun. "Randall," whose "crazy honey badger" YouTube video has been viewed over 13 million times, has now partnered with a group called "Bankrupting America" to produce a new video called "Crazy Washington Honey Badgers."
This...is the Washington politician! They have the hugest credit cards in the entire world! 14 point 7 trillion dollars! Thanks, American people! Talk about bada**, take me shopping!
Seriously, if you've somehow missed the original honey badger video, check it out here.
The debt ceiling bill has passed, and President Obama has signed it into law. I've collected the statements from several prominent Florida Republicans, Senator Marco Rubio, Senate candidate Adam Hasner, and Congressman Daniel Webster on the passage of this bill and have posted them here.
Rubio voted against the bill, Webster voted for it, and Hasner was opposed.
I cannot support this plan because it fails to actually solve our debt problem, fails to diminish the risk of a credit rating downgrade and is not a long-term solution to avert a debt crisis. This plan still adds at least $7 trillion to our debt over 10 years. It fails to immediately start downsizing government, leaving 98 percent of deficit reduction until after the 2012 election. By not addressing the biggest driver of our debt, health care spending, this plan ensures Medicare’s looming bankruptcy, while protecting ObamaCare’s $2.6 trillion blank check. It contains no real structural reforms to spending, such as a Constitutional balanced budget amendment. It fails to reduce spending by what credit rating agencies say is at least $4 trillion to avert a downgrade. Worst of all is that at a time of 9.2 percent unemployment, this plan fails to include pro-growth measures to help get people back to work and create new taxpayers to help us pay down the debt. In fact, I fear that the new ‘Supercommittee’ in this bill could lead to expedited consideration of big tax hikes on our struggling economy. And if Congress rejects new taxes, then up to $850 billion of devastating automatic defense spending cuts would be triggered at a time when the world is as dangerous as it’s ever been.
Americans are looking at Washington with anger, disgust and concern that maybe America’s problems are just too big for our leaders to solve. As I outlined in The Wall Street Journal in March, keeping America exceptional will require spending cuts and caps, saving Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy, a Constitutional balanced budget amendment, tax reform and regulatory reform. Above all, it will require courage.
Also, here is a video of Rubio's floor speech today:
There are some serious negatives with this bill. It's garnered harsh words from both the right and the left. (Best comment goes to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO 5th), who called the deal a "sugar coated satan sandwich.") Personally, I think they raised the debt ceiling too far and for too long. Obama got one of his major objectives: to not have to deal with this again before the 2012 elections.
Another criticism I have is that it seems that far too many of the spending cuts are put off until later. It reminds me of what University of Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley said regarding the mid-season firing of football coach Ron Zook in 2004, "What must be done eventually, should be done immediately." We know our national debt is too high, we know we're spending too much money, why not tackle it now?
It's not a perfect deal. Not by any long stretch of the imagination. But there were two "silver linings" in this deal that should give everyone hope, for very different reasons:
Her recovery continues to be nothing short of miraculous, and her return to Congress was one thing that everyone could agree was a positive and blessed event.
In years past, the debt ceiling would be approached and Congress would vote to raise it as a "routine" matter, just standard operating procedure, with very little attention from the media or the American people. There might be a bit of partisan wailing and stamping of feet from the representatives who didn't belong to the majority party (as Marco Rubio recently pointed out), but the debt ceiling would be raised, with little debate and even less reform.
This time, however, under intense pressure from their constituents and a media that was actually, finally paying attention, Congress had to address the issue of our national debt. I doubt that in years past a bill like the Cut, Cap, Balance Act would have even made it inside the Capitol Building, much less been debated and passed in one of the chambers. If the "first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem," then Congress took an important step this summer by admitting there really is a spending problem.
So, yes, the bill is not perfect. We haven't solved the problem; we haven't balanced the budget or significantly reduced the national debt yet. But it is a start, and we have to start somewhere.
Let's take this for what it is, a single step in the right direction, and focus on figuring out the steps to follow...like the 2012 elections...
Have I mentioned recently how very, very awesome my Senator, Marco Rubio, is? Here's the bazillionth example, a video of a passionate speech that was delivered by Rubio on the Senate floor yesterday regarding our debt crisis (the ease with which he delivers a smackdown to John Kerry is a nice added bonus):
I would love nothing more than compromise. But I would say to you that compromise that's not a solution is a waste of time. If my house was on fire, I can't compromise about which part of the house I'm going to save. You save the whole house or it will all burn down. We either save this country or we do not. And to save it, we must seek solutions.
That, my friends, is what hitting it out of the park looks like. Complete text of Sen. Rubio's remarks after the jump (as provided by Rubio's press office):
Adam Hasner
Sarah Rumpf
Rory Cooper
Greenwood Cemetery
