Open-borders lobby to Dingy Harry: Knock, knock. Pay up.
The open-borders lobby went all in for Barack Obama, who promised them “comprehensive immigration reform” — translation: blanket amnesty — and failed to deliver.
Then they went all in for Harry Reid (reminder: Harry Reid’s non-English-speaking voting bloc).
And now, the OBL expects “payback.”
Roll Call reports:
Immigration reform advocates said Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid owes “a debt” to Hispanics for helping him get re-elected, and they expect payback in the coming weeks with Senate action on a contentious immigration proposal.
That proposal, of course, is the illegal alien student bailout otherwise known as the “DREAM Act.” Before the midterms, it failed to garner enough votes to get past cloture when Reid attached it to the Senate defense authorization bill.
Activists, focus your attention of the Soros/open-borders Republicans who have co-sponsored and/or voted for the DREAM Act in the past.
Just a reminder about the open-borders Republicans who have supported the DREAM Act:
Soros Republican John McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act and reiterated his support at a La Raza panderfest in 2008:
Utah GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch is one of the original architects of the DREAM Act. So is Indiana GOP Sen. Dick Lugar. Other GOP Senators who have voted for the DREAM Act: Bob Bennett, Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Larry Craig. Chuck Hagel, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Trent Lott, Mel Martinez, Olympia Snowe. Former Arkansas GOP governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is not only for the DREAM Act, but for vastly expanding tuition benefits for illegal aliens.
Harry Reid isn’t the only one out of touch.
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McCain tells illegal alien students he will work to “resolve their issues” and pass a DREAM Act after he “secures the border,” which shouldn’t take long, he says.
Harry Reid had no business winning
A Jonathan Martin reader points to a remarkable November 1 Nevada PPP Poll result that didn’t get the attention it deserved:
If the candidates for US Senate this fall had been Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Danny Tarkanian, who would you have voted for?
Harry Reid………………………………………………. 39%
Danny Tarkanian………………………………………54%
Undecided………………………………………………. 7%
That poll had Angle up one.
Angle had, of course, been subjected to a barrage of attacks from Reid that would have been aimed instead at Tarkanian, dragging him down a bit. But Reid’s campaign also effectively chose Angle in the primary, an aggressive piece of politics that clearly paid off.
Harry Reid’s non-English-speaking voting bloc
Nothing smells right about Harry Reid.
His re-election on Tuesday has deepened the stench. Theories are flying left and right to explain the failure of polls that had consistently showed Sharron Angle ahead.
The New York Times points to Latinos as Reid’s hidden salvation. And not just any Latinos. It was apparently Latinos who prefer not to speak English who curiously turned out in droves for Reid.
I riffed a little bit last night on why the public polls might have been wrong in Nevada; I speculated, for instance, that the fact that Mr. Reid is the sort of candidate whom one votes for unenthusiastically might have skewed the turnout models.
There is another theory, however, which was proposed to me last night by Matt Barreto of the polling firm Latino Decisions.
“There is one overarching reason why the polls were wrong in Nevada,” Mr. Barreto wrote in an e-mail to FiveThirtyEight. “The Latino vote.”
His firm, which conducts interviews in both English and Spanish, had found that Latino voters — somewhat against the conventional wisdom — were relatively engaged by this election and for the most part were going to vote Democratic. Mr. Barreto also found that Latino voters who prefer to speak Spanish — about 40 percent of Latino voters in California meet this description, he told me — are particularly likely to vote Democratic. Pollsters who don’t conduct bilingual interviewing at all, or who make it cumbersome for the respondent to take the poll in Spanish, may be missing these voters.
More from Newsweek:
According to election-eve polling and analysis by Latino Decisions, a surveying firm, Hispanics chose Reid over Angle 90 percent to 8 percent—an astounding margin. CNN’s exit polls showed a significantly smaller spread, with Reid winning 68 percent to Angle’s 30 percent. But Latino Decisions argues that exit-polling methodology is typically inaccurate at measuring voting by Hispanics and other subgroups. The firm also contends that exit polls tend to lowball Latino turnout. Still, CNN’s figures show that Hispanics constituted 15 percent of the Nevada electorate this year, a notable increase over the last midterm cycle, in 2006, when they made up 12 percent. “Latinos certainly saved Harry Reid,” says Gary Segura, a member of Latino Decisions and a professor at Stanford University.
So, the least assimilated, non-English-speaking voters turned out for an open-borders Democrat panderer whose top priorities this lame-duck session including passing the illegal alien DREAM Act student bailout.
Hmmmmmmm.
If only we could clone newly-elected, voter fraud-fighting Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and send him to Searchlight.
Reid’s rescuers miraculously appeared after a concerted effort by the Left to stoke the ire of shamnesty supporters and employ illegal aliens as canvassers — not to mention the White House directive from President Obama to Latinos on Univision to “punish our enemies” for their opposition to lax immigration policies.
Reid infamously race-baited in August, taunting Hispanic conservatives as aberrations. And Reid’s non-English-speaking voting bloc surfaced after a massive push by his Purple-Shirted allies at the SEIU and other radical prog groups to get them to the polls. From October 27 on the SEIU website:
If that Pew Hispanic poll from August is still driving your analysis of the Latino vote, you might want to get up to speed: Latino Decisions’ latest tracking poll, released yesterday, shows that the number of Latino registered voters who say they are “almost certain” to show up at the polls is now 75.1% — a full 10% higher than it was four weeks ago, according to previous Latino Decisions research.
…and $ 5.4 million is going toward making sure it keeps climbing. Last week, a number of national and local organizations highlighted their efforts to turn out the immigrant and Latino vote. Democracia USA, the Campaign for Community Change and the We Are America Alliance, among others, combined forces to announce a $ 5.4 million nationwide effort. They are targeting over a million Latino, Asian and immigrant voters in twenty-three states.
No wonder they are fighting so hard to sabotage voter ID/proof-of-citizenship requirements.
Majority Leader Harry Reid Re-Elected in Nevada
Big win for the Dems, but is it enough save face?
Frank Luntz Predicts Harry Reid Will Win in Nevada
From Politico:
GOP polling guru Frank Luntz is predicting Republicans will win seven Senate seats and 50 House spots, based on exit polls he had seen. On a conference call with associates from K Street, Luntz also said he thinks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will win reelection.
Obama to Nevadans: Harry Reid is my partner for my agenda
Plus, what will Obama say in tomorrow’s presser? Take the poll!
Barack Obama supposedly had nothing on his schedule but closed-door meetings, according to ABC News this morning, but those meetings must have included deejays in Nevada. Obama has been burning the phone lines to radio stations across the country, including an attempt to salvage Harry Reid’s Senate seat. Reid might have done better if Obama […]
Did Harrah’s pressure employees into voting for Harry Reid?
Gambling.
Elizabeth Crum at NRO’s Battle ’10 has internal e-mails from Harrah’s, a major casino chain in Nevada, showing that management has been pressuring its employees to vote for Harry Reid in the Senate race. The e-mails show that supervisors had to account for their staff turnout in early voting, demanding updates and explanations for non-performance. […]
Harry Reid’s Closing Argument: Basically, My Opponent Is Crazy
If you want an indication of just how vicious the Nevada Senate race has gotten in the closing days, look no further:
Will it work ? Who knows. At this point, I’m not sure that either one of these people deserves to win.
Why Harry Reid Could Win (Alternate Media View)
I just finished sending a reply to someone on my Twitter account saying Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is doomed to lost his race to Tea Party favorite Republican Sharon Angle despite some polls that show him within striking distance — when I saw this Las Vegas Sun column. In it, Jon Ralston explains why he thinks Reid could pull of a win — an upset at this point — even though the “atmospherics” are terrible.
Here’s his reasoning:
It just feels as if he is going to lose.
But I don’t think he will. Why?
First, let me be clear on this tradition of predictions. It is not a wish list but a walking out on a limb, so I can either crow afterward or eat same. I base them on data I am privy to and my gut. I have had much success in the past — look it up. But if ever there were a year for my lifetime batting average to take a hit, this is the one.
So take this for what it’s worth:
Harry Reid is the most resilient figure in Nevada political history. He should not even be here. He lost a U.S. Senate race in 1974, embarrassed himself in a mayoral race in 1975 and should have lost his re-election bid in 1998. But he found a way to win 12 years ago, and he will again Tuesday.
How? Let me count the ways:
Considering they were dealing with a moribund politician, and one who was sure to make their job more difficult during the year with his spontaneous effusions, Reid’s handlers have run one of the most spectacular campaigns in history at all levels: The turnout machine is formidable. The TV has been pitch perfect. The strategy — to peel moderate Republicans and independents who might not like their guy away from Angle — has worked.
And, perhaps equally important, Republicans managed to nominate the one person this year who could lose to Reid.
Here he is on target. Angle is truly an acquired taste: to win is most appealing to Tea Part members and conservative talk show fans. She takes no ideological prisoners in the way she usually takes no media questions unless they are coming from Fox News’ Shaun Hannity. Her appeal to independent voters and Democrats is thin — unless they want to get Harry Reid out of office. Which could be a factor.
Angle is a natural retail campaigner in small political subdivisions. But that’s not what a Senate race is about. And her campaign never could find a comfortable way to reconcile her past, controversial statements — they tried massage, change and deny — and she made plenty more during the campaign (Sharia law here, Canada’s terrorist conduit, Latinos-in-ads amnesia).
In the end, if she loses, I believe the six weeks following the GOP nominee’s primary win — she had a double-digit lead in June polls — were pivotal. During that period, the Reid ad campaign defined her so starkly and turned enough people into Anglophobes to give him a chance.
One more thing: Republicans do not have the huge turnout advantage in early voting they should in a wave election — under 4 points. And all the data I have seen tell me that unless Reid loses independents by 15 points or so, he will hold on.
A Reid loss would be expected.
You can BET most major journalism companies have Reid’s political obituary already written and it only has to be topped off with a lede.
If he wins, it’s a big upset at this point. In a year where people are disgusted by Washington just who would spell W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n more than Harry Reid?
On the other hand, for some voters who would spelly r-i-s-k-y more than Sharon Angle?
Will the aversion to Washington or risk win?
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent:
This race is so close that national strategists on both sides are privately refusing to predict the outcome. If Reid loses by a couple points, though, it will still have been a surprisingly impressive performance by Reid’s team.
It’s easy to forget this now, but Reid was trailing all comers by double digits not long ago. The Reid team sprang into action early on, basically selecting their opponent by launching a sustained effort to grind up Sue “chickens for checkups” Lowden in the quest to face Sharron Angle. Once Angle took over, the Reid machine shifted the assault machine in her direction and continued to pummel the new foe with maximum efficiency and brutality. Angle has proven more resilient than expected. But this is more a testament to the stiff headwind Reid faced than to anything else.
Things You Didn’t Know About Harry Houdini
He helped fight fraud:
[Houdini] came out swinging when spiritualism—the belief that the dead could communicate with the living—spawned racketeers who robbed the bereaved. Houdini’s own mother had recently died. He felt the vulnerability that death brings. So when he saw people exploiting it, he went into a white-hot rage.
He toured the country with a team of undercover investigators (sometimes even attending séances in disguise). Then during his stage shows he called out the local spook-crooks by name, listed their crimes, and exposed their methods. The Spiritualist mafia responded with death threats. Houdini answered by lobbying Congress for stronger anti-fraud laws.
