RNC eyes $5M bailout for GOP senators

RNC eyes $5M bailout for GOP senators By: Jonathan Martin  October 14, 2008 11:08 AM EST
The Republican National Committee, growing nervous over the prospect of Democrats’ winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is considering tapping into a $5 million line of credit this week to aid an increasing number of vulnerable incumbents, top Republicans say. With party strategists fearing a bloodbath at the polls, GOP officials are shifting to triage mode, determining who can be saved and where to best spend their money. And with the House and Senate Republican campaign committees being drastically outspent by their Democratic counterparts, and outside groups such as Freedom’s Watch offering far less help than was once anticipated, Republicans are turning to the national party committee as a lender of last resort. A decision is imminent because television time must be reserved and paid for upfront, and available slots are dwindling.  A representative for the RNC would neither confirm nor deny that it was considering the move. See Also Poll: Obama leads in 3 of 4 key Bush counties Who's in control of McCain's campaign? Can green jobs save us? The RNC and National Republican Senatorial Committee are legally prohibited from discussing an “independent expenditure” campaign by the RNC for Senate races, including the content of the ads or where they run. Independent expenditure campaigns are run by a separate unit within the national committee, one “walled off” from the rest of the organization. But RNC strategists can deduce from the NRSC buys, as well as public polling, where their help is needed. NRSC officials did not directly address the issue of an RNC-funded ad campaign for Senate races, but they said they had worked closely with their RNC counterparts throughout the cycle. Both the NRSC and DSCC are allowed to spend limited funds directly on Senate races, but spend the bulk of their money on their own TV ad efforts in targeted states. During this cycle, the NRSC has spent heavily in Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Mississippi, among other states. GOP sources emphasized they would not be diverting money from John McCain, who they promised would continue to enjoy a steady stream of ads from the party’s independent expenditure arm. The party raised a record $66 million last month, and McCain is increasingly relying on RNC funds. “We’re not giving up on McCain,” said a top GOP source. “We’re still going to do everything we can there because his margin and what he does affects these races.” A senior Republican said: “We’re much better off having a competitive presidential ticket.”   But that the party would use new money to block a Democratic triumph in the Senate rather than boost the odds of its presidential nominee speaks volumes about what many Republicans think is still salvageable. And some in the GOP, especially those working on House and Senate races in which their candidates’ poll numbers swoon during the financial crisis, are increasingly agitated about money being spent on what all observers, including McCain, acknowledge is an uphill fight on top of the ticket. “They should pull the money from McCain like [former RNC Chairman] Haley Barbour did in ’96, when Dole slid away, and funnel it to save some Senate and House seats as best they can,” said one longtime GOP strategist who is working on congressional races. The RNC tried a similar “firewall” strategy late in the 2005-2006 election cycle, hoping to save GOP Senate seats in Ohio, Missouri and Tennessee. The RNC dumped millions of dollars into that effort only to see Democrats take two out of the three seats on their way to winning control of the Senate. The RNC has also been running TV ads in several House districts, according to GOP and Democratic sources. Incumbents in both chambers who were previously seen as safe are now perceived as slipping away. But to ensure at least one bulwark against total Democratic control, GOP officials are more inclined to focus their resources on the Senate. “There are seven or eight [seats in danger],” a top Republican said of the upper chamber. “What’s it going to be a week from now?” Party officials see GOP Senate seats at risk in North Carolina, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Mississippi, Alaska, Oregon and Georgia. The financial situation for Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) has gotten so precarious that she has announced she will be spending her own money on the campaign. Democratic third-party groups have spent millions attacking her as an ineffective senator, and her poll numbers have cratered. According a source familiar with this week’s ad buys, the DSCC is outspending the NRSC by just under $30 million in targeted states. The committee has been using an e-mail appeal for a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority to raise money, relying on such Democratic Party figures as former President Bill Clinton and Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Barbara Boxer. But the Obama-Biden campaign has refused to provide millions of dollars in help to the DSCC, turning down a direct appeal by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and arguing that it needs the money itself to beat McCain. John Bresnahan and Josh Kraushaar contributed to this story.
© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

Worst Case Scenario (aka Blue Tsunami)

Worst Case Scenario What an Obama administration and a heavily Democratic Congress would accomplish. by Fred Barnes 10/14/2008 12:00:00 AM John McCain trails Barack Obama and shows no signs, at the moment anyway, of propelling himself into the lead. Democrats lead in eight Senate seats currently held by Republicans and are close in three others. In the House, Republicans once thought they'd lose only 5 to 10 seats. Now things look worse. Thanks particularly to the month-long financial crisis, Republicans are in extremely poor shape with the election three weeks away. This means the worst case scenario is now a distinct possibility: a Democrat in the White House, a Democratic Senate with a filibuster-proof majority, and a Democratic House with a bolstered majority. If this scenario unfolds, Washington would become a solidly liberal town again for the first time in decades. And the prospects of passing the liberal agenda--nearly all of it--would be bright. Enacting major parts of it would be even brighter. You can forget about bipartisanship. Start with "card check." It would permit organized labor to unionize the private sector without winning a certification election by secret ballot. It's easy to get workers to sign cards saying they want a union, but it's hard to get them to vote that way when labor organizers aren't hounding them. Card check is labor's last hope for more dues-paying union members. Unions simply aren't popular and neither is card check. But it passed the House last year, only to be blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster. In 2009, with Washington controlled by Democrats, it would sail through Congress and President Obama would sign it. After all, neither Obama nor congressional Democrats have bucked organized labor even once. Then Democrats might go after a longstanding target of big labor, section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act. It allows states to enact right-to-work laws, which bar workers from being forced to join a union. Twenty-two states have right-to-work laws. The liberal scheme for killing conservative talk radio--the so-called fairness doctrine--would stand an excellent chance of becoming law. It would require radio stations to offer equal time, for free, to anyone seeking to reply to broadcasts featuring political opinion. To remain profitable, many stations would have to drop conservative talk shows, a major medium for communicating conservative ideas, rather than give up hours of free time. Obama has said he opposes the fairness doctrine. But would he veto it? Not likely. Obama would nominate liberals to fill Supreme Court vacancies--no doubt about that--with the strong likelihood they'd be confirmed. As a senator, he voted against John Roberts and Sam Alito. And free trade agreements would become a thing of the past, given liberal and labor opposition. What about Obama's health care plan? He's described it as step or two away from a single payer, government-run health system like Canada's. While expensive, its chances of passage would be quite good. A bad economy, however, might keep Obama and his allies in Congress from passing his entire package of tax increases and his "cap and trade" proposal for curbing the emission of greenhouse gases. Obama has called for increasing the tax rate on capital gains, dividends, and the income of top earners, and raising the cap on payroll taxes. But tax hikes would worsen, not stimulate, a weak economy. So that might make Democrats balk--except they might not. For liberals, requiring the well-to-do to pay higher taxes is a matter of ideology. So is cap and trade. It would drive up the cost of energy, another downer for the economy, but Democrats believe it's necessary to save the planet. Besides, the environmental lobby would demand cap and trade's enactment. And environmentalists have as tight a grip on Democrats as labor does. Obama has never crossed environmentalists. As for foreign and national security policy, there'd be nothing stopping President Obama from doing what he wanted in a liberal-dominated Washington, including a quick troop exit from Iraq and presidential-level talks with anti-American dictators. Congress would go along. The media would cheer. But who knows? Maybe McCain and Republicans will rally their forces and keep the worst from happening--the worst, that is, from a conservative standpoint. The campaign has changed direction twice in less than two months, first when McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, then when the financial panic hit. There could be a third game changer. If not, we face the liberal deluge. Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. © Copyright 2008, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

New service to stop loose lips from crashing cars (AP)

Posted on Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:07PM EDT

NEW YORK - When David Teater's 12-year-old son, Joe, was killed in 2004 by a driver who was talking on a cell phone, he tried to cut back on his own habit of driving and talking. It turned out to be very difficult.

"You have to remember to turn the phone off ... which you never remember to do. Or you have to ignore a ringing phone, which is incredibly hard," Teater said. "We've been conditioned our entire lives to answer ringing phones."

Teater became an advocate for curbing what he calls "driving while distracted," and now, he's part of a company with a technology that can help.

Aegis Mobility, a Canadian software company, announced Monday that it has developed software called DriveAssistT that will detect whether a cell phone is moving at car speeds. When that happens, the software will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over.

The software doesn't completely block incoming calls. Callers will hear a message saying the person they're calling appears to be driving. They can hit a button to leave an emergency voice mail, which is put through immediately.

Several states, including New York and California, have introduced laws against talking on a cell phone while driving, but they still allow the use of hands-free devices like Bluetooth headsets. However, studies have shown that hands-free devices may not help. It appears that it is the distraction of dialing or talking that is dangerous, rather than the act of taking a hand off the wheel.

A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2006 found that dialing or talking on the phone was the cause in 7 percent of crashes and near-crashes. For the study, drivers had onboard "black boxes" that recorded their actions.

Last year, 41,059 people died in traffic accidents.

Aegis' software will work on phones with Windows Mobile software, popular for "smart" phones, or Symbian software, used in phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. It uses the phone's Global Positioning System chip to detect motion, aided by the cell-tower signal. If the phone has a Wi-Fi antenna, that can be used as well, said Dave Hattey, Aegis' CEO.

To work, the software has to be supported by the cellular carrier. Aegis has no deals in place yet, but is in discussions with the big U.S. networks, said Teater, who is a vice president at Aegis. The company hopes to be able to announce early next year that the software is available through a carrier, probably for $10 to $20 per month for a family.

The software can be managed remotely through a Web site. For instance, parents will get alerts if their kids override the motion-sensing feature to indicate that they're riding in car rather than driving. A corporation that buys the software for their employees can do the same.

Unusually for the world of cell phone software, Aegis is bringing out DriveAssistT in partnership with an insurance company. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. said it plans to offer a discount of 3 percent to 10 percent on family policies for people who use DriveAssistT.