Richard Land had some interesting comments about Mitt Romney’s presidential chances today when talking about the 2008 field with Bill Bennett. (Land is the president of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the public policy entity of the Southern Baptist Convention.)

Land mentioned Romney with McCain and Brownback as someone who might be able to get the evangelical vote. Contrary to the assumptions of the media elite Land thought Romeny’s mormonism wouldn’t be a problem. According to Land:

I have people tell me well you know a Mormon can’t be elected. Well, I disagree with that. I think that if you look at the polling that says that thirty-seven percent of Americans would not vote for a Mormon, the majority of those are seculars who don’t like religion anyway and look at Mormonism as religion on steroids. Most evangelicals understand that we’re voting for a commander-in-chief and not a theologian-in-chief, and it’s going to depend on where they stand on the issues whether or not they’ll get the support of Evangelicals.

I think Land is right. The issues a candidate stands for matters more than the church they go to to most evangelicals. Just ask Harriet Meiers.

It has been a bad night, in some way very much expected but a lot worse than I had hoped. . . I’ll write more later after I’ve collected my thoughts.

I do find this statement from Mike Pence encouraging. Pence is chairman of the House’s conservatives caucus:

We Did Not Just Lose Our Majority, We Lost Our Way
by Rep. Mike Pence

Election Day 2006 will be remembered as a turning point in American political history. Twenty-five years after the Reagan Administration came to Washington with a conservative agenda of limited government, the American people chose a different course.

It is the duty of the losing party in a free election to humbly accept defeat and to acknowledge that the people are sovereign in the People’s House.

As we examine the results of this election, it is imperative that we listen to the American people and learn the right lessons.

Some will argue that we lost our majority because of scandals at home and challenges abroad. I say, we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way.

While the scandals of the 109th Congress harmed our cause, the greatest scandal in Washington, D.C. is runaway federal spending.

After 1994, we were a majority committed to balanced federal budgets, entitlement reform and advancing the principles of limited government. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, entitlements and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt.

This was not in the Contract with America and Republican voters said, “enough is enough.”

Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people didn’t quit on the Contract with America, we did. And in so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters.

As the 110th Congress convenes next year, Republicans must cordially accept defeat and dedicate ourselves to advancing our cause as the loyal opposition knowing that the only way to retake our natural, governing majority, is to renew our commitment to limited government, national defense, traditional values and reform.

I’ll track the results coming in for the NY-24 race below:

Update(10:38): Foxnews calls it for Arcuri. My vote hasn’t been counted yet, but oh well.

9:48PM — 13% precincts reporting
Arcuri 9,262 56%
Meier 7,211 43%
Sylvia 113 1%

CNN has the fastest coverage here.

This is still to early to say anything, but of course it would be nice to be ahead. Tompkins county hasn’t been counted yet.

Take Back NY-24th had some intriguing news on Michael Acruri’s position on the Military Commission’s Act. Originally Arcuri had stated that he fully supported the law. This lead to quite a backlash among some of the more liberal elements in the district. However, even in the midst of much pleading Arcuri stood firm.

That is, until now. Perhaps in a bid to attract more hardcore liberals to the polls, Arcuri has decided to take on a much more nuanced stance on the Act. According to Take Back NY-24th’s post early this morning:

I got a telephone call this morning from a Democratic office holder in my town informing me that Michael Arcuri has finally reversed his endorsement of the Military Commissions Act, and now opposes the law. This person told me that the Arcuri for Congress campaign has promised people to announce Arcuri’s opposition to the Military Commissions Act on the Arcuri for Congress web site.

I regard this source as very credible. This source also told me that this statement promising to declare opposition to the Military Commissions Act has been made by Michael Arcuri to several different people.

The blogger immediately called the campaign headquarters, but was told that Arcuri’s position hadn’t changed one iota.

A rumor like this swirling around just before election day seemed curious though, and there had to be more truth to the fact than first apparent. Consequently I rang up the campaign headquarters and asked them if anything had changed.

And it has. Although earlier Arcuri supported the Military Commissions Act whole-heartedly, according to the lady I spoke with Arcuri now “has a lot more reservations” and would “work to reform the law”. After listening to Cheney’s speeches on the interpretation of the law Arcuri’s support has become more nuanced. However, I never was able to get a clear answer on whether he would now have voted for the law as is.

Trying to have it both ways? Well, it’s not the first time Arcuri has done that.

Update: From liberal blog Irregular Times:

Democrats in Michael Arcuri’s district are thus left today wondering why they should trust anything that Michael Arcuri tells them.

Indeed.

This poll is pretty startling, but it does jive with the momentum Republicans seem to have in the last few days. From Santorum blog:

McCulloch polled over the weekend.

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum has gained ground in his bid to win re-election, according to a new poll released Monday. The poll of 800 very likely general election voters, was conducted by McCulloch Research & Polling, an independent polling company out of Chicago, on November 4-5.

Santorum’s opponent, State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., led the incumbent Senator 48.1-44.1%, according to the poll. “Senator Santorum has a history of closing hard at the end of his campaigns,” said pollster Rod McCulloch. “It looks like this campaign will be no different.”

Treasurer Casey racks up his largest margin geographically in Southeast Pennsylvania, where he leads Senator Santorum 53.7%-37.1% in the region encompassing Philadelphia and surrounding counties.

Senator Santorum, who racked up overwhelming majorities during his last election in 2000 in Central and Northwestern Pennsylvania, is seeing some of those voters returning to the fold, according to the poll. The second term Senator leads in Central Pennsylvania (55.1-38.8%), South Central Pennsylvania (55.0-44.1%), Northeastern Pennsylvania (54.6%-38.1%), and Northwestern Pennsylvania (48.3%-41.4%).

The Santorum Blog has links to all the latest polls in this race as well.

A couple posts back, I chastised Claire Readhead of the Cornell Daily Sun for her rambling dialogues, asking if her latest column was “insightful prose, art, or just the output of a lazy columnist?”

Today in Claire’s column she responds to my criticism:

The “cutting-edge conservative commentary” of Cornell University slammed my column; I take this to mean that I am doing something right. “Sounding the Trumpet” accused me of being lazy, to which I respond that I view laziness as a continuum. There are many degrees of laziness. Some have refined it to an art; others dabble.

For instance, when I was dancing in France and had the choice between going to rehearsal and sunning my bosom on the sandy shores of Cannes, I chose the latter. Those at the Trumpet may consider this behavior remiss, but had any of them ever been a ballerina in southern France, they too may have thrown assiduity to the wind and basked in the luxuriance of sloth, squinting into the sunlight at yachts gliding by and sipping a G&T with cucumber.

I was also charged with the ubiquitous crimes of rambling and being silly: true and truer. In addition, they lamented that The Sun had once produced the likes of E.B. White, and now they are producing the likes of — well — me. I happen to rather admire E.B., especially his children’s stories, but then again, that is probably because I am silly. Yet, I really parted from the E.B. camp when I discovered that he had co-authored a book entitled Is Sex Necessary? If I were to write such a book it would consist of one page on which would be inscribed the simple word — YES. Perhaps I would add the phrase, “especially during long and dreary Ithacan winters.” (Honestly, E.B., you should know better.)

All Cornellians understand that the only way to make it through the last months of the fall semester is to acquiesce to the pressures of coupledom. . . .

If you are dying to find out about the pressures of coupledom, you can read the rest (in a list form) here.

Claire, if you’re going to mention us could you have the courtesy to put a link to us in your column?

Also, perhaps you could notice that “cutting edge conservative commentary” is not our name, it’s our tagline. Our name is Sounding the Trumpet. We are also a blog, which is something that’s not at all clear to readers from your reference to us.

I just came across this article in the Press & Sun Bulletin where Ray Meier’s and Michael Arcuri’s views are are also run through. This seems like a good supplement to the two posts on Meier and Arcuri’s positions we wrote earlier.

Also from the Press & Sun Bulletin we have fascinating article in a day in the life of Arcuri. I looked on their website, but I can’t see anything similar for Meier. Maybe that will come out tomorrow. Arcuri has made a big deal of the energy he has campaigned with: “29,500 miles on his Buick, 1,800 doors knocked on in 26 communities.” I do hope Meier and his volunteers have been even more energetic. I’m sure there is a strong GOTV effort on the part of the Meier campaign, but so far I haven’t heard much on it. Republican GOTV does tend to be under the radar. There’s probably several reasons for this. . . one being the simple fact that most journalists in the msm are liberal and more likely to focus on liberal campaigns.

Also, the blogger at the new blog Support Meier for Congress noted that Clinton is coming into campaign for Arcuri tomorrow (Monday).

Update: A day in the life of Ray Meier here.

Zogby has been polling the NY congressional races, only his methods have been so suspect that WSYR and the Syracuse Post Standard decided not to run it.

Here is an item published by Roll Call on Wednesday that we almost missed about two Zogby polls in New York’s 25th District that two media outlets refused to run:

The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse and WSYR-TV had asked Zogby to conduct a second poll of the race after the pollster acknowledged that his firm had improperly weighted the results of a survey last week. In that case, Zogby polled the 25th district but then weighted the data using voter registration information from the more-Republican 24th district.

Zogby promised the two media outlets that he would do a new poll from scratch, but when the results of that survey came in both declined to run them. Jim Tortora, the news director of WSYR-TV, wrote on the station’s Web site that after consulting with outside polling experts, he was concerned that Zogby had conducted the second poll using the same larger sample of 5,000 likely voters as he had on the first survey.

“With respect to Mr. Zogby, we felt the questions raised … left us with only one choice: We had to pull the poll,” Tortora wrote.

Polster has the rest of the details.

A few days ago, Focus on the Family sent out a letter encouraging voters to vote their values. Since I thought it had some interesting points on what a Democratic congress would look like, I’ve pasted it below.
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In the middle of his busy campaign schedule Ray Meier has made time to once again come on Eric Kuhn’s radio show. There were some recording troubles, so it’s shorter than the last one. Head on over and check it out.

If you want a real good and in depth look at how Meier thinks and what kind of congressman he would be you should really listen to the earlier (and longer interview) here.

It’s a little late, but below we’ve included our rundown of Arcuri’s positions. We’ve also updated our post on Meier’s positions.

Ray Meier has been very open and honest in what he believes and what kind of specific philosophical ideas or policy proposals he supports. Unfortunately his opponent Mike Arcuri has been a lot less forthright. In debates Arcuri has often (I almost want to say always) resorted to unsubstantial platitudes or Bush-bashing.

I’ve tried to get as many specifics about what Arcuri believes as I can. Like I mentioned for Ray Meier, if I missed anything or misrepresented anything, please let us know so we can correct it.

So far I can’t find any specific position on taxes, illegal immigration, or academic freedom. (For taxes the only thing specific I can find is that he opposes the Bush tax cuts.)

War on Terror

Iraq
On Iraq Arcuri has been all over the place. In a forum hosted by local veterans a couple weeks ago he stated that he did not support a date specific for pulling out of Iraq.

He changed his opinion in some of the later debates. In a recent WSYR debate Arcuri said he wanted to pull out the National guard troops out immediately, and have all the troops out by 2007.
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