KY-3 Race Makes Bill Bennett Show

Sen. Rick Santorum, who is subbing for Bill Bennett this morning, mentioned the race for Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District. In particular, Santorum noted the recent SUSA poll and the prospect of sending John Yarmuth home.

Wonder if anyone from the NRCC was listening.

SUSA Poll: Great News for Todd Lally

The Survey USA poll conducted by WHAS 11 and the Courier-Journal shows that the race for the 3rd Congressional District is a statistical dead heat.

John Yarmuth leads Todd Lally 50-46. But the margin of error is + or - 4/1 percent. (Ed Martin and Michael Hansen each have one percent.)

Interestingly, the undecideds only constitute one percent, which is much lower than the national average.

Lally leads by six among voters who describe themselves as "very likely" to vote in a midterm election.

That means Yarmuth will be looking to his labor friends -- including SEIU, which gave $2500 last quarter -- to bus in the union voters.

Kentucky conservatives can score a two-fer by working to get out the vote for Todd Lally and Hal Heiner. (Rand Paul won his race when Jack Conway aired his infamous Aqua Buddha ad.)

It is time to walk the precincts and work the phone banks. Time to show the NRCC that conservatives in KY-3 are hoping for change. We're not waiting around for the pros from D.C. to rescue us from John Yarmuth.

New Poll Results For Lally, Yarmuth

The Lally campaign has released new poll results for Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District.

• Todd Lally: 37 percent
• John Yarmuth: 41
• undecided: 22
• margin of error: + or - 4.5

The poll was conducted by Rivercity using automated phone calls. The Lally campaign maintains that this poll is particularly accurate because it uses the RNC's voter vault methodology. However, I question whether 22 percent of KY-3 voters are undecided; that number seems way off.

Two other points to note: First, the poll shows that Lally has cut Yarmuth's lead in half . Second, Yarmuth is "upside-down." meaning he is below 50 percent. That is bad news for an incumbent, especially this close to the election.

Recall how late in the campaign Scott Brown surged. This is not over. Conservatives in Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District need to make a donation, work a phone bank and walk a precinct.

Yarmuth Throws Conway Under Bus

John Yarmuth could have stayed mum on the issue of Jack Conway's Aqua Buddha ad, but he did not. Yarmuth took the somewhat surprising step of noting that (1) he would not have run such an ad and (2) it appears to be backfiring. Yarmuth made his comments to the Huffington Post (H/T: Joe Arnold).

It wouldn't have been that hard or that unusual for Yarmuth to deflect the question on the grounds that he has his own campaign to run and is not going to advise the Conway campaign.

But instead, Yarmuth took the opportunity to criticize Conway. Perhaps Yarmuth felt the need to distance himself from Conway, given that as Chris Matthews ripped Conway a new one, a fan waved a big Yarmuth sign immediately behind them for the duration of the interview.

The Difference Between Yarmuth and Lally

Last night's debate between John Yarmuth and Todd Lally produced one moment of clarity, in which each candidate revealed his view of the voters -- the premise that animates all policy choices and explains the differences between these two men.

John Yarmuth thinks that voters are stupid. He's not mean about this condescension; he really worries about the poor imbeciles of Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District and beyond. He truly wants to save them -- us -- from making bad choices.

It is the elitism that forms the foundation of liberalism, a view that paternalism is not only appropriate but necessary to ensure that the masses do what is best for themselves. It's the philosophy that assumes that if poor people weren't stupid, they wouldn't be poor. Therefore, the government must mandate what they spend their money on lest they use food stamps to buy crack or junk food with trans fats.

Yarmuth revealed his view of the voters, and his role as our benificent philosopher king, last night. WHAS 11 (unlike the Courier-Journal) saw fit to include the sound bite. According to Yarmuth,

All of the disinformation that's out there, it's very tough for the average citizen to get a full sense of what's involved in the legislation. So what I try to do is talk to as many people as possible, figure out the challenges that they face, what they need and then craft policy that involves that.

Let's unpack that. First, Yarmuth is worried that voters are being duped by "all the disinformation out there." Though this is arguably the most informed electorate in history, Yarmuth is worried about where we get our information. Translate: the rubes are reading the Wall Street Journal instead of the Courier-Journal. And then there are the dangers of talk radio, Fox News and (dare we say it) conservative blogs! No wonder the people are confused.

Second, given that it's too "tough" for the "average citizen to get a full sense of whats's involved in the legislation" -- as a result of "all the disinformation" -- Yarmuth must rescue us. He purports to do this by mixing with the rabble ("I talk to as many people as possible"). Then he debriefs us to discern what we really need: "figure out the challenges that they face, what they need." Yarmuth is like the good father who hears a crying baby and investigates to see what it requires: a bottle? a nap? a diaper? Like the baby, the voters cannot articulate what they need.

Finally, Yarmuth solves the problem: He "craft[s] policy that involves that."

Todd Lally has a much different view of the electorate. And he is smart enough to recognize Yarmuth's underlying premise and call him on it. According to Lally,

The one thing that I've found from travelling all over the district is that people know what they're talking about. They're not this ignorant group of lemmings that just want you to take care of them.

Todd Lally looks at the voters and sees intelligent, informed, hard-working grownups, worthy of respect. Lally trusts the voters to sort through "disinformation" and make the best choice for not just for their individual lives, but for the 3rd Congressional District and the country.

Daily Kos Tries to Protect Yarmuth's, Chandler's Flanks by Promoting Hit Pieces

The Daily Kos, godfather of the Nut Roots and Demo-blogs, has launched a project to protect 98 of the most vulnerable Democratic members of the House. John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler both make the cut.

Kos is urging its readers to engage in a "grassroots-based search engine organization campaign," SEO for short. The upshot is that Democratic activists would search for (or create) unfavorable stories about Todd Lally and Andy Barr, opponents of Yarmuth and Chandler, respectively. Likewise for opponents of other vulnerable Democrats. Readers should then forward those stories to Kos, which would promote them to increase the Google ratings of the hit pieces.

According to Kos, "The goal of Grassroots SEO is to get as many undecided voters as possible to read the most damaging news article about the Republican candidate for Congress in their district."

In one respect, Kos's SEO project gets it backwards with respect to Kentucky; they rely on five political lists that rank Chandler as more vulnerable than Yarmuth. Chandler pretends to be a moderate now and then, whereas Yarmuth makes no attempt to hide the fact that he is to the left of Obama. Given that Kentucky is a center-right state, therefore, Yarmuth would seem to be in a more precarious position than Chandler for reelection.

KY-3 Voters are Scared

Senior citizens in Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District are scared, but not about some hypothetical Medicare deductible that will never, ever apply to current recipients.

If all politics are local, then nothing is more local that what happens to our homes and to those of us neighbors. Louisvillians are scared about their homes being robbed during broad daylight. The common law definition of burglary specifies that the criminal break into and enter the home at night time. This current rash of break-ins, however, occurs between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It is this brazenness that has put people on edge.

It was inevitable, really. Our unemployment has hovered around ten percent for two years now. That figure does not begin to count the people who would like to return to work, people who have given up looking and certain races and ages for whom the rate is actually much higher.

Recessions cause crime to increase. Those of us old enough to have lived through previous recessions know this. Here's what is different: the Obama recession -- though we are told it ended in the Recovery Summer -- shows no sign of abating, even after two long years.

Those voters who have jobs are scared that they will lose them. Voters who own a home worry that its value has dropped so far that they could not sell the house if that becomes necessary. People are afraid to spend because they don't know, for example, if their taxes will go up 20 percent on December 31 when the Bush tax cuts expire.

And now those homes -- for many, their largest asset -- no longer feel safe even during the day due to the rising number of thefts. Increasingly desperate people are taking increasingly desperate risks, attempting more audacious crimes.

Here's an example from Louisville's East End. Last week, a senior citizen was out walking when she noticed an unfamiliar, dilapidated car with its trunk open, backed up to a neighbor's garage. This neighborhood had experienced a half dozen daytime break-ins recently, so she called the woman of the house on her cell to see if they were having work done on the home. They were not. The man of the house -- also a senior citizen -- then raced home. The criminal abandoned the pile of goods he was about to steal and took off. The home owner tried to chase the car. It got away, but police now have the license number.

The bad news is that this foiled crime was unnconnected to the previous thefts in the neighborhood. This is no longer a situation of one brazen robber, but rather a pattern of conduct that is being repeated all over the East End, and perhaps all over the 3rd Congressional District.

John Yarmuth did not cause the break-ins, of course. But he has voted for a system of policies that have prolonged and exacerbated this recession. People are desperate -- so much so, that they take the extraordinary risk of robbing homes in neighborhoods and at times of day when senior citizens are walking their dogs and young mothers are pushing their babies in strollers.

The policies of Yarmuth, Reid, Pelosi and Obama have contributed to a lawlessness that has boiled over into neighborhoods unused to such conduct.

It should be noted that the elderly woman who spotted the break-in while out walking -- she has put a big Todd Lally sign in her yard.

And that house where the robbery was foiled -- there is now a "Repeal Yarmuth" sign in the yard. That senior citizen who chased the robber is backing Todd Lally.

Nothing energizes a voter like fear caused by failed government policies passed by clueless elites.

Is Yarmuth in Trouble?

Joe Arnold reports a poll that shows Todd Lally and John Yarmuth in a dead heat, with both at 43 percent (13 percent undecided). The Lally campaign released the results from River City Polling, which, according to the campaign, was most accurate in predicting the results of the Republican primary.

I'm dubious that the campaign is that close this early. But I do think Yarmth's extreme-left positions make him vulnerable. To be sure, Louisville is more liberal than the rest of Kentucky. But Yarmuth is more liberal than the rest of his party -- a problem in a year where the Democratic brand is toxic.

This seat is ripe for the picking. I just hope the primary voters chose the best candidate to do the harvesting.

So Who Should Oppose Yarmuth?

Since the Republican primary for U.S. Senate has sucked all the oxygen out of the Commonwealth, many of us almost forgot that there are other primaries tomorrow.

Hal Heiner will take the mayoral primary. But who will win -- who should win -- the right to challenge John Yarmuth?

The Democrats enjoy a considerable registration advantage in Kentucky's 3rd Congressional District. Nonetheless, this could be the year to bring Yarmuth back to the Kentucky links.