The Benator: Summer Lovin'

Ben Nelson's summer skirmish with The Left keeps us chuckling.

We like how The Lefties are coming into Nebraska screaming, "You know what? That Ben Nelson? Your Senator? He's CONSERVATIVE!"

(Of course they don't note that he's voting FOR Sotomayor...)

Did Nelson pay them off for these ads?

Let's see. Nelson says, "Whoa, slow down on this whole gotta solve one sixth of the economy by next week, plan."

And then The Libs run a one minute (!) TV ad with a guy with a problem with his health care, where The Leftists essentially shout,

"There you go! It's time to shut down the EVIL insurance industry! It's time for Socialism. And it needs to be finished yesterday! And Ben Nelson is standing in our way, Nebraska!"

Heck, it's gotten so "bad" that Mike Johanns has come to Nelson's defense.

So just to review. Nelson gets to:

• Fight an Outside of Nebraska Leftists group;
• Say slow down on crushing the economy and upturning your current health care system (to a Goverment that can't handle Cash For Clunkers);
• Stick up for the Nebraska Insurance industry and all its employees;
• Get a Nebraska Republican to vouch for him;
• Have everybody think the Health Care plan runs through him.

How is this not a win-win-win-win-win for The Benator?

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And then we continue to chuckle at our comrades over at another Nebraska blog who are getting pummeled by their Lefty coastal bloggers because they are perceived as Yes Men for E. Benjamin Nelson.

And the kids over there are shocked (SHOCKED!) to see the Liberals putting up ads that are cheap, unfair and tell half truths.

Guess what? That's known as the Progressive (or Lefty or Liberal or whatever it is that you're calling yourselves these days) Playbook.

Weird to see it thrown at one of YOUR guys (or YOU), huh?

***

We were remiss last week in not referring you to Don Walton's review of UNO Prof Adkin's book about the NE-2 2008 race.

In it, Adkins gives a nice review of the race and summarizes a number of statistics found after the smoke cleared.

A couple of notes:

1) While Jim Esch benefited greatly from the influx of Obama dollars into the Second District, many Obama voters simply didn't bother to check the box for Esch or Congressman Lee Terry.

And in precincts where that happened at a higher rate, Terry did much better. (Uh oh, you mean Barrack Obama won't be on the ballot in 2010? Wonder what will happen...)

2) Terry's camp put together a field organization that walked the precints where Terry won or lost in 2006 by a very close margin.

So what happened in 2008? Terry increased his average win in those 118 precincts by almost a full percentage point.

In other words, while all you saw back in 2008 were stories about the Obama volunteers, it was the Lee Terry walkers who made the real difference in the 2008 Congressional race.

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By the way, according to the FEC.gov site, a quick view of Lee Terry's fundraising in the 2008 campaign, and the 2010 campaign, at comparable times:

July 2007 Quarterly filing (for 2008 race): $263,449
July 2009 Quarterly filing (for 2010 race): $295,848

Oh, and let us say again, for those who seem to be all hot and bothered about this race:
Barrack Obama ain't on the ballot.

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He may not be getting the big National press (yet), but the above mentioned Senator Mike Johanns continues to pound away in the Senate.

You can read here about him taking it to Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack on the "climate bill".

And our favorite MJ quote from that hearing:

"It’s no consolation to stand with one foot in the campfire and one in the ice bucket and say, ‘on average, I’m in good shape.’"

***

And finally, the Jays getting a 6'11" center from Iowa?
Yes please.

**Update 8/10/09**

Thanks to Don Walton of the LJS for the mention in his column.