Tag Archives: Republicans

Now showing: The theater of the absurd

There is a place, ladies and gentlemen, where magic happens. It is a place where men and women parade around on a stage and recite lines they memorized in their head, and try to make you feel like what they are saying is natural and spontaneous. A place where people are playing characters for the […]

Rules for thee and not for me

I’ve never been all that moralistic about public officials. While I am certain that there are good people who hold public office, in my experience the truth has been that power and influence attract only the worst among us. Those who seek power are usually the ones who are least deserving of it. This basic […]

A pox on both political parties

So, I’ve been a bit hard on the new liberal regime in Augusta recently. I’ve been giving Gov. Janet Mills and her allies in the Legislature unsolicited advice, telling them to do things that I am well aware they will never have any intention of doing. Things like controlling spending, lowering taxes, and continuing to […]

The 2018 Conifer Awards

I don’t think there is anything better than Christmas traditions. Christmas mass. Gift giving. Music. Family. Dinner. Taking six hours to put together over-engineered and insanely designed larger items for the kids, forcing you to go to bed at 3:30 in the morning. The usual. Along with my yearly predictions, I have also traditionally given […]

Don’t learn the wrong lessons from this election

Want to hear an interesting fact about the 2018 election? Shawn Moody received the fourth most votes for governor in the nearly 200 years of Maine history. Obviously, one of the people who received more votes than he did was Janet Mills, the woman who defeated him in that contest. The other two were Paul […]

There was no blue wave, except in Maine

Going into Tuesday’s election, there were a lot of predictions. A lot of polls. A lot of prognostication. The conventional wisdom was that we would see a Democratic tidal wave across the nation, sea to sea, from the House to the Senate to state governorships. Yes, I grant you, there was more pessimism in the […]

Is new blood really better than old blood?

Everywhere you look, they’re dropping like flies. Incumbent Democrats are being defeated left and right in primaries, typically losing to young, often diverse, hard core liberal progressives. Democrats want change. They are tired of the old guard, and they want a new guard to replace them. This is a phenomenon very familiar to me, having […]

Ranked-choice ridiculousness

More than a week, and no winner. Glitches. Memory stick problems. Ballots sent by courier from remote Maine towns. And all for likely selecting the winner that would have been selected anyway under the old system? This is really how you want to do elections, Maine? Maine’s first experiment with ranked choice voting hasn’t exactly […]

Moodymentum carries businessman to easy victory in Republican primary

After all that, it turns out the Republicans don’t need to worry about the foolishness of ranked-choice voting after all. The reason for that, of course, is that Shawn Moody became the Republican nominee for governor on Tuesday night by absolutely wiping out his opponents. And that is no small accomplishment this year, because Moody […]

In campaigns, it’s not all about the money

Last July, I wrote a column that implored you to ignore fundraising reports and polls in the gubernatorial contest. Today is your first test to see whether you listened or not. The end of year filing deadline has come and gone, and the January 2018 reports are now public. We now know who has raised […]