BatesLine

You just thought the 2004 election was over!

Louisiana has a unique election system. There are no party primaries, but all candidates of any party face each other on election day. If someone gets 50% of the vote, he is elected; otherwise, the top two candidates are in a runoff a few weeks later.

This year two Louisiana Congressional races are on the runoff ballot this Saturday (another Louisiana peculiarity), and Republicans are poised to win both and achieve a 6-1 lead in the state's U. S. House delegation.

This Wictory Wednesday, BatesLine joins hundreds of other blogs in asking you to contribute to Dr. Charles Boustany, Republican candidate for Congress in southwest Louisiana's 7th District. You can donate to the campaign by following this link. Dr. Boustany is a heart surgeon and, if elected, would be the first Republican ever elected from the district.

You'll find a list of all the Wictory Wednesday blogs on the lower right of my homepage, along with information about how bloggers can participate.

Armavirumque links to this nice satirical piece, in which the folks in the Kerry states offer a deal to the inhabitants of Jesusland: Play nice and we won't secede. A couple of excerpts:

We, the bold, free-spirited peoples of the Diverse Lands of Blue America, hereby contract with you, the safe, ordinary drabs of the Nearly-contiguous Lands of Red America to exist peaceably and amicably in the manner to which we've become accustomed....

We need a tremendous amount of ever-changing, ever-improving goods and services. We will need you to provide manpower for industries and meet these needs. As such, we will need you to raise respectful, honest, hard-working children. We don't care how you do it, but please don't tell us how. If it has anything to do the preservation of the "traditional family unit" or instilling "moral values" we really, REALLY don't want to know. ...

We are your story-tellers, and we will present constant meretricious offerings concerning nihilism, the insanity of living and the horror of dying. And just to let you know that we're in touch with your boring little lives, we will occasionally tell you your own story through movies about people that can't wait to leave their backwater towns and girls that have babies in Wal-Mart. Please attend these movies in herds so we can turn around and do ones about the salvific qualities of lawlessness, sexual promiscuity and abortion.

Speaking of Wal-mart -- STOP GOING THERE. We are really, really serious. We would never set foot there ourselves, but it bugs the crap out of us that they exist, seeing as how they run out of business your quaint little shops that we also were never going to.

A commenter adds:

"And we'll of course need you to provide us with a constant supply of food."

And Moxie helpfully provides a travel guide for liberal visitors to Jesusland.

Kevin McCullough links and comments on Walter Shapiro's USA Today column, analyzing the Democrats' dilemma. Shapiro says that the Democrats are really four parties in one, united only by opposition to the Republicans. He names the four factions as "the Party of Cultural Permissiveness," "the Anti-War Party," "the Party of Economic Justice," and "the Status Quo Party." "Status Quo Party" refers to the Democrats' habit of frightening certain constituencies into voting against any change to their pet government programs.

I think he's missing one faction, somewhat related to the "Status Quo Party." That's the "Perks and Power Party" -- the faction devoted simply to doing whatever is necessary to remain in power and enjoying the fruits thereof.

My feeling is that the "Party of Cultural Permissiveness" is on the rise in the Democratic Party, and that if you scratch beneath the surface of many in the other factions, you'll find that cultural issues ultimately motivate their opposition to the Republicans on the war, the economy, and government programs. Increasingly voters sort themselves between the parties based on cultural issues more than any other issue.

Wictory Wednesdays roll on. As we savor last week's big wins, we have to lay the groundwork for future victories. The Republican National Committee does some of the groundwork that helps Republican candidates at every level of government. The appeal for this Wictory Wednesday is to contribute to the RNC, which you can do by clicking this link.

You can find a list of the blogs that participate in Wictory Wednesday on the right side of my homepage at the bottom of the sidebar.

Jay Cost, the Horserace Blogger has the first two installments of his post-election analysis up. I think he has the Bush/Cheney campaign just about right.

Jessica of The New Vintage, one of the New York Republican bloggers I met during the Republican National Convention, went to Iowa to help during the last few days of the campaign. She is back home and starting to write up her experiences here. One of her first stories is of handling ticket check for the VIP section at President Bush's appearance in Sioux City, and seeing the whole first family up close. She says she has the pictures to prove it -- let's see 'em.

Meanwhile, another blogger I met in New York City, Dawn Summers (aka Evil Dawn), who is anything but a Republican, writes of her experiences campaigning in Arizona (which was anything but a swing state, as it turned out) here.

Karol of Alarming News worked for the Republicans in Durango, Colorado, and posted way too much for me to link to everything she wrote about her time there. She has also posted a pile of pictures. I imagine she'll be writing more once she's gotten some sleep.

I've already linked to Scott Sala's journeys to Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Let's hope that the New York Republican Party can get its act together sufficiently that these young Republicans will be able to stay home and make a difference in competitive races.

Katherine Bates stamped 101 mailers...

and Joseph Bates stamped more than 1000, and helped tag the bulk rate trays...

and a lot of other boys and girls, moms and dads, college kids and retirees made phone calls, dropped flyers on doorsteps, talked to their friends, and sent e-mails.

Take a look at that photo and at all the youngsters working in the background. Stay-at-home moms brought their kids after school, homeschool moms built campaigning into the curriculum. This is the Roe effect at work -- coming generations are going to be more conservative than the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers. The kids who helped with Tom Coburn's campaign were born to parents who place more value on life than on convenience and career, parents who understand the importance of acting on one's beliefs, and these children are learning to embrace the same values.

It's not just the unwashed hippy peaceniks who have time for political action in the middle of the day. If the lefties ever understand the political power of families, they'll probably try to mandate day care and 10 hour days in public school.

(Photos by my lovely wife, the proud mom of these kids.)

and Katherine says hooray!

It's been a busy day and a frantic evening. I finally got to a computer about an hour ago to post a summary of the Oklahoma results over at The Command Post.

Earlier in the evening, from 7 until about 10, I was doing "color commentary" on News Talk 1170 KFAQ, live from the Republican watch party in Tulsa, and I was three feet away, but without my camera handy, as Tom Coburn got the word that the networks were predicting him to win the U. S. Senate race.

I'll be on KFAQ again in the morning, from 6 until about 8, sifting through the results.

It was frustrating to see how slowly the state election board results were being updated. Tulsa results were very late to come in. The results look great for Oklahoma, and things look very hopeful nationwide.

Unless something extraordinary happens, don't expect an update here until midday tomorrow at the earliest. In the meantime, you can watch the remaining Oklahoma results trickle in here.

And Jay Cost's Horserace Blog has some fascinating coverage, looking at county by county results in the battleground states and comparing them with the 2000 results. Things don't look good for the President in Iowa or Michigan, but things are hopeful in Ohio and Wisconsin.

(ENTRY POSTED 8:10 PM, Monday, November 1, postdated to remain at the top through election day.)

The Tulsa County Election Board website is here.

Here is a precinct locator: Enter your address, and the locator will tell you what precinct you're in, where you vote, and what districts you're in. There's even a photo of the building that hosts the polling place.

Nationwide, you can go to MyPollingPlace.com to look up your precinct location. The result will also tell you what kind of voting device is used and how to make sure your vote is counted in that kind of device. They tell you the hours that your polling place will be open. They also provide a phone number for the county election board and a link to the state election board website.

You can look at PDFs of the different ballots that will be seen in Tulsa County here.

Some voter's guides that may help you:

Oklahoma Family Policy Council (all offices plus state questions)
Christian Coalition (PDF -- Presidential and Senate races only)
Oklahomans for Life (4 MB PDF -- all offices)
Oklahoma Libertarian Party
Oklahoma Prosperity Project

(ENTRY POSTED 6:59 PM, Monday, November 1, postdated to remain at the top through election day.)

UPDATED 12:00 AM, Tuesday: I've moved off dead center on 707.

Here's how I'm voting tomorrow -- click the link below, for my choices with links to what I've written about them:

Here's my guess as to the result, with the help of the OpinionJournal.com electoral vote calculator:

You might imagine that a busy blogger like me would decide that I'm too busy to get involved in hands-on campaigning. It would be easy enough to rationalize not getting involved, but all the blogging in the world is useless if people don't turn out to vote for the candidates I support.

So Saturday evening I spent about three hours making calls at Tulsa County Republican HQ, 15th & Denver. It was easy work. We had a simple, short script, nothing that would tie up a voter on the phone for too long. A few people hung up, but most people responded positively. Our reward -- a cool T-shirt and dinner brought in. We lucked out: The organizers were sick of pizza so they brought in food from Atomic Burrito. There's a big need for callers today and tomorrow -- stop by 15th & Denver, 52nd & Harvard (in front of Mardel's), Coburn HQ at 61st & Memorial, and at 2191 E. Kenosha in Broken Arrow (near County Line Road/193rd East Ave). Call 627-5702 (Republican county HQ) or 313-4516 (Oklahoma Victory 2004) if you

Sunday afternoon I got out in the rain on the streets of Owasso with some ORU students, dropping off campaign literature. The list of homes to target was tough to use (it treated different spellings of the same street as two different streets), and it didn't help that we were in the Cone of Confusion -- those places in the Tulsa street system where the numbers of the east-west streets are very close to the numbers of the north-south avenues. It can make your head spin to be at the corner of North 108th East Place and East 108th Place North. Still the five of us managed to distribute 600 literature bags, containing flyers for many of the Republican candidates in the course of about three hours. The rain stopped after the first hour, which was nice.

Scott Sala of New York-based Slant Point headed across the Hudson yesterday to campaign for Bush-Cheney in New Jersey. He's got a nice write-up and photos of the experience here. He's very optimistic about Bush's chances in the Garden State.

Even if you only have an hour to spare, that's enough to make a difference. Show up and ask what you can do to help get your candidates elected.

I've received two e-mail messages tonight on several different addresses -- one trying to connect Tom Coburn with an extremist group, the other containing a Shockwave animation encouraging the reader to visualize a Kerry victory on November 2. Earlier I got spam from disgraced Democrat and former Gov. David Walters encouraging me to support Carson, in which Walters claimed that his progressive policies are why he only won one of his three statewide races.

And so Little Boy Brad Carson's smear campaign continues -- on the radio, on the phones, on TV, and now in e-mail. I know there are "ends justify the means" types in the Republican Party, but they're on the fringes and they have the disrespect of elected party officials and grass-roots volunteers. On the other hand, the "win at all costs" mentality seems to have captured the heart and soul of the Democrat Party.

REVJAB thinks the Democrat Party has all the marks of a cult (hat tip: TulipGirl):

Truth to tell, the contemporary Democratic Party has become a gathering-place for all sorts of conspiracy-theories, esoteric quasi-religious devotees, insurrectionists, and con-men. Consider its cult-like characteristics:

* Blind, amoral devotion to a leader that completely disregards and/or excuses the sexual, financial, and ethical evils of the leader(s).
* An apocalyptic intensity fired by a worldview -- more or less Marxist -- that sees everything as a titanic battle between the forces of Repression (Christianity, constitutionalism, heterosexuality, monogamy, and property-rights) versus the forces of Liberation (them).
* An all-out selling of soul to ends-justify-the-means, operationally married to "ethics" only when and if it has some helpful persuasive PR effect.
* An underlying anti-God-ism, taking various forms -- materialistic atheism on one extreme, and variety popsicles of animism/polytheism/pantheism/gnosticism on the other, with evolutionism as a common bridge between the two groups.

I don't think this is so characteristic of most grassroots Oklahoma Ds, like the folks I met walking for City Councilor Roscoe Turner, but it seems to fit the activists that now dominate the party machinery.