{"id":4608,"date":"2009-08-31T12:58:43","date_gmt":"2009-08-31T19:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/08\/31\/whats-the-matter-with-arkansas\/"},"modified":"2009-08-31T12:58:43","modified_gmt":"2009-08-31T19:58:43","slug":"whats-the-matter-with-arkansas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/08\/31\/whats-the-matter-with-arkansas\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Matter with Arkansas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

PUMAs.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re still out there.\u00c2\u00a0 If you really want to look. \u00c2\u00a0See, for instance, here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been watching the <\/em>Glenn Beck Show<\/em> this week<\/em>;[…]\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>For me, it is confirmation of everything I have thought, said, felt about Obama since the campaign<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0[…]\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em><\/span>I find it rather alarming that we now have avowed communists and radicals advising our President in official positions called czars.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Hm.\u00c2\u00a0 At the dawn of the Russia’s Communist\u00c2\u00a0Revolution back in 1917, if you had told Vladamir Lenin that within a century the United States would go Communist, he would have smiled and nodded in approval.\u00c2\u00a0 If you had then told him that the Communists would be infiltrating the United States government in the form of Czars, he would have been, well,\u00c2\u00a0a tad confused.\u00c2\u00a0 Such is the weird arc of history.<\/p>\n

Another day, another creepy murder <\/a>related in some way to Barack Obama. There is something about this guy that leads to unusual murders wherever his name arises.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

There is some dejavus with this one.\u00c2\u00a0 It reminds me of Clinton’s Ring of Death.\u00c2\u00a0 Though, of course, every president has a Ring of Death, so why shouldn’t Obama be different?\u00c2\u00a0 But it just kind of strikes me as odd — PUMA — Hillary Clinton supporters, weren’t they?<\/p>\n

When pondering the election returns and the red streak that ran across Appalachia<\/a>, Arkansas was the state that stands out most glaringly.\u00c2\u00a0 Or:
\nMcCain:\u00c2\u00a0 58.72 percent\u00c2\u00a0 Obama:\u00c2\u00a0 38.86%
\nBush :\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a054.3 percent\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Obama:\u00c2\u00a0 44.6 %<\/p>\n

The Republican advantage, on the national scale, has doubled.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference between the state Democratic party (Arkansas is at once a\u00c2\u00a0one – party state on the state level)\u00c2\u00a0and the National Democratic party widens, and there I suppose we have to suggest that the party is three and four decades behind the rest of the South.<\/p>\n

We could basically assign Arkansas as the “Epicenter of PUMA”.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no “PUMA effect”, but\u00c2\u00a0to the degree that there\u00c2\u00a0was — it would have been pretty much consigned to Arkansas.\u00c2\u00a0 In a way this makes sense, the final attachment to a Clinton, the husband swamping his “Favorite Son” state in his two elections, and leading his successor Al Gore to a narrow loss, helping to obscure the political shifts.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0To say these are at times complicated and confusing matters,\u00c2\u00a0I had to\u00c2\u00a0laugh when I saw this headline \/ suggestion <\/a>that Clinton be brought in to arm-twist the “Blue Dogs” — the Blue Dogs having formed their formation after the 1994 midterm election.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma is on the state level “Democratic” (of that type that would run their mouth against the Secular Conspiracy and bemoan the lack of school prayer in the schools), but they spit out to the Senate\u00c2\u00a0two crackpot Republicans.\u00c2\u00a0 Arkansas\u00c2\u00a0has managed to spit to the Senate two\u00c2\u00a0Democratic senators, such as they are, and the\u00c2\u00a0bill should come due sooner or later.<\/p>\n

Arkansas is also the Epicenter of Birtherism<\/a>, it appears.\u00c2\u00a0 These two things probably go hand in hand, the conspiratorial churnings that bring about one aligns with the other.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new survey of Arkansas from <\/em>Public Policy Polling (D)<\/em> finds the state to be very conservative, very Birtherist, and very much opposed to President Obama on health care — despite the fact that the state’s Democrats are typically dominant and hold all major offices right now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Only 40% approve of President Obama’s job performance, with 56% disapproving — matching up pretty closely with John McCain’s 59%-39% victory here in 2008. In addition, only 45% say Obama was born in the United States, with a strong 31% saying he was not, and 24% unsure. Among Republicans in Arkansas, the Birther question comes up as 23%-49%-28%.<\/em><\/p>\n

On health care, only 29% support Obama’s plan, with 60% against it. In addition, respondents were asked whether Rush Limbaugh or Barack Obama has the better vision for America: Limbaugh 55%, Obama 45%. And keep in mind that this is a state where Dems have both Senate seats and three out of four House members.<\/em><\/p>\n

Arkansas Republicans have been shifting about locating a candidate to take on Blanche Lincoln.\u00c2\u00a0 They have some minor status candidates and not their “Big Guns” (being a one-party state, somewhat hard to find — though party-switches are pretty likely around about now), and polling indicates that just might be enough to oust Blanche Lincoln.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Their candidates include<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In May 2009, Hendren apologized after it was reported that during a meeting of the <\/em>Pulaski County<\/em> Republican Committee in <\/em>Little Rock<\/em>, he referred to Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer of New York as “that <\/em>Jew<\/em>” after Schumer had criticized the Republican Party. “I ought not to have referred to it at all. When I referred to him as Jewish, it wasn’t because I don’t like Jewish people. I shouldn’t have gotten into this Jewish business because it distracts from the issue… I believe in traditional values, like we used to see on <\/em>The Andy Griffith Show<\/em>,” Hendren said, adding that he does not use a <\/em>teleprompter<\/em> and sometimes mispeaks in haste.[<\/span>3]<\/span><\/sup>[<\/span>9]<\/span><\/sup> Schumer said that he accepted the apology. Hendren’s comments drew a reprimand from Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the <\/em>National Republican Senatorial Committee<\/em>, who said that “Comments like this are completely inappropriate and don’t have any place in public or private discourse.”[<\/span>3]<\/span><\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

And then there’s this candidate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“When I joined the military I took an oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic,” Reynolds said. “I never thought it would be domestic, but in today’s world I do believe we have enemies here. It’s time for people to stand up. It’s time for us to speak out.”<\/em><\/p>\n

He added: “We need someone to stand up to Barack Obama and his policies. We must protect our culture, our Christian identity.”<\/em><\/p>\n

When he got to the Q&A session, he said that he would be careful with his answers, “I don’t want to do a Kim Hendren,” and later clarified that he was not categorizing President Obama as a domestic enemy.<\/em><\/p>\n

To be fair, that one may be considered the “Alan Keyes” in terms of fringe-ty in this election race.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know how viable the\u00c2\u00a0Founder of the Arkansas Tea Party, Tom Cox is either.\u00c2\u00a0 For all I know, the primary battle will become an epic battle between those two.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0But the polling is matching up Coleman, Griffin, Baker, and Cotton<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Nobody’s ever heard of them, and they tie your Blanche Lincoln.<\/p>\n

Considerig the Birthers and PUMAs and “Deathers” floating about, I wonder if a Sam Yorty <\/a>prototype\u00c2\u00a0character could gain some traction in the Democratic Primary?<\/p>\n

Although he was the first mayor to have a female deputy, and the first to have a racially integrated staff, his appeal did not extend to most of the city’s large African-American population. Disaffection with high unemployment and racism contributed to the <\/em>Watts Riots<\/em> of <\/em>August 11<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u201c17, 1965. Yorty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s administration was criticized for failing to cooperate with efforts to improve conditions in neighborhoods such as <\/em>Watts<\/em>, but he accused other leaders of raising false hopes and of action by communist agitators, having always categorically rejected any criticism of the city’s police or fire departments.<\/em><\/p>\n

After the riots, Yorty challenged incumbent Democratic Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in the 1966 gubernatorial primary. He received 981,088 votes (37.6 percent) to Brown’s 1,355,262 ballots (51.9 percent). Yorty\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s politics shifted toward the right. This change became evident when he joined the election night celebration of Brown’s successful opponent, Ronald W. Reagan. Yorty went to Vietnam to support the American troops and was thereafter dubbed “Saigon Sam” by his liberal opponents<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PUMAs.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re still out there.\u00c2\u00a0 If you really want to look. \u00c2\u00a0See, for instance, here: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been watching the Glenn Beck Show this week;[…]\u00c2\u00a0 For me, it is confirmation of everything I have thought, said, felt about Obama since the campaign.\u00c2\u00a0[…]\u00c2\u00a0 I find it rather alarming that we now have avowed communists and radicals advising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}