A week ago I was on my way to Nashville. J and I are now back. The initial flurry on our return, checking the mail, doing errands postponed from last week, recovering from a bit of physical overexertion, are over.
Like any long anticipated event, there’s a let down when it’s over. The excitement, built by anticipation over the last weeks and months, is gone.
Sole Mio Banquet Room, Nashville, TN
Last Saturday, J and I were invited by a number of blogger friends to dinner at a small Italian place, Sole Mio, a couple of blocks from the Music City Center. I had met about half of group from the St. Louis NRAAM in 2012. Some have become good friends despite the fact we’ve only met, face-to-face, once or twice before.
As bloggers, we all have our separate interests. Some write solely about guns and gun issues. Others, like my friend, Kelly, AKA, Ambulance Driver, writes about EMS topics. Some write about their military experiences and Jim, a new writer, presented me with signed copies of his books. All of us, however, have one common topic that we all write about at one time or another: Shooting.
It was a fun night. We agreed to meet again in a year at the next NRAAM in Louisville. Mrs Crucis and I have already marked our calendars for May 20-22, 2016. They’re still counting the attendance. The Annual Meeting continued through Sunday. The attendance by Saturday night was over 78,000. When Sunday’s attendance is added, I expect that number to exceed 80,000. The question is by how much. IMO, the Music City Center was too small. I hope Louisville is larger.
Next year we hope to take a couple of local friends with us.
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I may have escaped the political escapades in Missouri for a few days. That didn’t mean it stopped. In the Missouri Senate, the Tax ‘n Spend crowd wants to raise Missouri’s gas tax by 10¢. IIRC, it sits today at 19¢. This crowd says it must go up to 29¢ or we’ll lose some federal money.
Spend! Spend! Spend! And when the money is spent, it’s never spent on what we really need. Missouri has allocated well over a billion dollars in the last decade to fix the state’s roads and bridges. Most of that money, once it was appropriated, was re-directed to more politically sensitive projects. MODOT is a joke. Nixon won’t release funds already allocated while claiming to need more. Now the idiots want more!? No! The Missouri Senate has blocked this tax and no-spend bill. At least for the moment.
***
The ‘Pubs have three announced candidates so far, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. They all made their announcements in public, in person, and made the media rounds afterward.
On the democrat side, Hillary announced her candidacy…via social media—not in public, not in person, and no interviews with the media. Instead, she rented a Darth Vader van, went to Iowa, found a restaurant, ran out everyone who was there, filled it with hired supporters and created a media event. And, like she did in 2008, departed without leaving a tip—verified by the on-site security cameras.
What a comparison: Cruz, Paul, Rubio, real people meeting real people vs. Hillary, a fraud and a phony, a manufactured candidate. It is a pocket-sized truism of left vs. right.
Hillary believes if she can manipulate the public, she’ll win. Not even the rabid democrats believe her anymore.
From PJ Media…
by Debra Heine, April 15, 2015 – 11:02 am
According to a new Rasmussen poll, nearly six in 10 voters believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the next president. But perception is not reality, as an MSNBC poll seems to indicate.
The poll, which appeared on the MSNBC website on Tuesday morning, shows that 86% of MSNBC readers who responded would not vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming presidential election. Only 13% responded in the affirmative and a mere 2% said “maybe.”
The poll, while not scientific, strongly suggests that progressives do not prefer to have a baggage-laden career politician as their party’s standard bearer in 2016.
***
“Missouri is no longer a presidential bellwether state. The state’s voters haven’t sided with the national victor since 2004,” so says the St. Louis Public Radio. What they really mean is that Missouri hasn’t been an Obama rubber-stamp much to the chagrin and disappointment of the St Louis liberals. In fact, Missouri is so out-of-step, according to them, that the state’s political consultants are being chosen to lead the campaigns of Cruz, Bush, and perhaps Scott Walker.
First, one thing needs to be made clear: Missouri is no longer a presidential bellwether state. The state’s voters haven’t sided with the national victor since 2004.
As a result, as more candidates announce their 2016 presidential bids, many activists in both major parties predict Missouri won’t be a battleground state this time, either.
This means, as in 2012, Missouri voters won’t see many presidential TV ads and likely won’t see much of the candidates.
Under that scenario, Democrats believe it will be too costly, too risky and unnecessary to try to carry the state. And Republicans are confident they don’t need to spend money to keep Missouri in their presidential column.
But that doesn’t mean Missouri has no role to play in the presidential contest. “We will not see presidential candidates coming here for votes, but they will be coming here for some of the talent in our state and probably more importantly, to raise funds,” said Republican consultant James Harris.
In fact, such quests already are underway. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush stopped by a couple months ago for a private money-raising event held at Hunter Engineering, the firm owned by former Ambassador Stephen Brauer and headquartered near Lambert Field.
…
And several major Republican players in the state already have lined up behind GOP contenders:
- Kansas City-based consultant Jeff Roe has been assisting GOP hopeful Ted Cruz for months and recently was named his campaign manager;
- Gregg Keller, a St. Louis-based consultant, is a senior adviser for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Former U.S. Sen. Jim Talent, R-Mo., also is on board with Walker, providing policy advice. Keller and Talent previously had been active in Mitt Romney’s presidential bids.
- Prominent St. Louis lawyer Jack Oliver, former vice chairman of the Republican National Committee, has been volunteering in the state and nationally on behalf of Jeb Bush. Oliver earlier had been the campaign finance chairman for former President George W. Bush.
- Harris, based in Jefferson City, isn’t officially aligned with any of the 2016 candidates, although he personally backs Jeb Bush. He served as a contribution “bundler’’ for Republican nominees John McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012.
Oliver, by the way, disagrees with those pundits who write off Missouri as a 2016 battleground state. “Missouri is a very important state, and will be in the primary and in the general election,” he said.
Some fellow Republicans who privately agree with him point to the state’s top Missouri Democratic consultant, who long has been a national player: veteran consultant/money-raiser Joyce Aboussie.
Based in St. Louis, Aboussie was the national political director for U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, D- St. Louis, for more than a decade. She has supported and assisted Hillary Rodham Clinton for years.
The column continues on the website, you can read all if it here. Missouri’s liberals may think Missouri has nothing much to be noticed. Others, on the national political scene, believe otherwise.
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