Rematch.

Mia Love, mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah and conservative crowd favorite of 2012, made it official Saturday she’s looking for a rematch with Rep. Jim Matheson in 2014. A break-out star of the GOP Convention and the Tea Party circuit, Love lost to Matheson in ’12 by under 800 votes. She made the announcement at [...]

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Play it again, Sam

Among the many disappointments which came with the elections of 2012, one of the real heartbreak moments for many observers was Mia Love’s race in Utah’s 4th congressional district. After seemingly coming out of nowhere in January of that year, Love surged in both popularity and national profile, even getting a speaking slot at the [...]

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Beehive.

It’s hard to tell exactly what this means yet, but it’s a flashpoint to watch as the federal government works to create health care exchanges in more than half of the states— a task it foolishly didn’t think it would have to do and is now worried it can’t finish by the scheduled opening of [...]

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Hmmm.

Only slightly smaller, but still. At the Corner, they’re wondering whether these numbers were skewed by the fact that Utah and Idaho weren’t exit-polled this year. I don’t think so. There were no intensive exit polls of those states individually, but the people responsible for the comprehensive national exit poll said a few months ago [...]

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"Without markets, there can be no coal mines and no coal jobs."

In January 2008, Barack Obama promised that his energy and regulatory policies would “necessarily bankrupt” coal plants. Consider this the next step towards fulfilling his campaign pledge. Over 100 coal miners in Utah got pink slips late yesterday, and the mine’s operator blamed Obama’s re-election and the bleak future for coal it portends: The layoffs [...]

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Up 16 among women.

With the presidential race so close, we haven’t had much of an opportunity to pay attention to Congressional races — but the race in Utah’s 4th District deserves a look today.  Mia Love looks poised to become the first African-American woman elected to Congress as a Republican, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll in her [...]

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Surge.

If it’s accurate, it’s a 28-point swing since July, which unofficially makes Love the single biggest beneficiary of the GOP convention. Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to an internal poll, but (a) her national profile’s soared since that speech, (b) as Dave Weigel notes, this is a heavily Republican district (hey, it’s Utah), and (c) [...]

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Make Washington smaller and people bigger.

Mia Love, candidate for Congress in Utah’s 4th District, stars in a new National Republican Congressional Committee #OurAmerica video, part of a push which started with this trailer. The NRCC says it’s “designed to demonstrate that the House GOP understands where solutions and progress in America comes from: the people, not Washington. Mia Love is [...]

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Stay classy.

Here’s yet another test of Morrissey’s Axiom of Politics and Courtship: Desperation isn’t an aphrodisiac in either. In Utah, where Republican incumbent and nominee Orrin Hatch looks ready to sail to a sixth term in office, his Democratic opponent has decided to make Hatch’s age the central issue in the campaign. And as the local [...]

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Thinking big.

Mia Love’s name has been all the rage here in Tampa since her big debut on the RNC stage at the start of Tuesday night’s lineup, and my Townhall colleague Elisabeth Meinecke and I managed to catch up with her outside the Tampa Bay Times Forum for a little bit of follow-up. Even though Love’s [...]

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Mr. President, we're not buying what you're selling in 2012.

The theme of tonight’s convention session at the RNC is “We Built It”, and rising conservative star Mia Love helped get the lineup of speakers off to a great start and showed ‘em how it’s done with a brief spotlight speech focusing on the American dream and self-reliance. Love, the current mayor of Saratoga Springs, [...]

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Survivor.

Utah Republicans go to the polls today to select their nominee for the US Senate, but it’s a mighty different race than two years ago.  In 2010, Tea Party activists dethroned Bob Bennett at the convention, preventing him from getting on the primary ballot.  Six-term Senator Orrin Hatch learned a lesson and out-organized the activists [...]

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Rats, sinking ships, etc.

The DNC convention this year is going to turn out to be a serious opportunity… for ticket scalpers. The list of folks who won’t be coming from the Left side of the aisle continues to grow. We already saw US Senator Joe Manchin, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall taking a pass. [...]

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Drama.

Weird rule out there: The delegates to the Utah GOP convention get first crack at choosing a nominee by voting on the candidates. If anyone gets 60 percent, he’s nominated. If no one gets 60 percent, the top two finishers go to a statewide primary. That’s how Bob Bennett was sunk two years ago, you [...]

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“I despise these people”

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has been under a lot of pressure from his own right flank this cycle, facing a serious primary challenge from people who think he’s too “moderate” for today’s Republican Party. FreedomWorks has dropped more than a half million dollars in attack ads trying to knock him out of the running, hoping [...]

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Adapt and overcome.

Tea Party activists in and out of Utah have targeted six-term Senator Orrin Hatch for a primary challenge, hoping to replicate their 2010 success against his former colleague Bob Bennett.  Bennett got caught by surprise at the caucuses, but Hatch didn’t make that mistake, according to the Salt Lake Tribune: “I’ve been told that things [...]

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Will Utah caucusers take note today?

How many Congressional candidates can quote Bastiat while mostly parrying a question on the Republican nomination?  Mia Love talks economics, politics, and the Tea Party with Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds for PJTV on the eve of the Utah caucuses today. Glenn put this up on YouTube so that Utah Republicans planning on attending today’s GOP caucus [...]

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A rarity in more ways than one.

U.S. congressional candidates aplenty populate the halls of the CPAC hotel — but Mia Love still stands out. Every bit as electric in person as she seems in her campaign videos, she has a contagious smile and an irresistible frankness. She came to CPAC in part to present as a member of a panel that [...]

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Wife, mother, mayor, runner.

She’s been compared with Marco Rubio and called “the next big thing in conservative politics.” Meet Mia Love, a wife, mother, mayor and runner who is, er, running for Congress in Utah’s newly-created fourth congressional district. Here, she introduces herself in a video that makes it easy to see why she’s attracted such positive attention [...]

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May still trump them all

The folks at Rasmussen are either geniuses or they have way too much time on their hands. I can never make up my mind which. In any event they continue to occupy themselves with a dizzying array of scenarios to question Americans on, generally just when they are sitting down to dinner. This week’s offering [...]

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Learning curves taken.

There actually is a dearth of stories from Wisconsin media today on the recount in the Supreme Court race. A quick scan of various state media sites turned up only stories filed about yesterday’s start to the recount, and those were almost completely without exception general “the recount has started slowly but surely” pieces. That [...]

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Irony.

An Education Intelligence Agency analysis of Internal Revenue Service filings by the National Education Association and its state affiliates reveal the union amassed more than $1.5 billion in revenue in 2008-09, more than 90 percent of it in the form of dues from public education employees. EIA created a table, now posted on its web [...]

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Another leadership vacuum?

Barack Obama may avoid mentioning Social Security in his speech today, but the Senate may not let him off the hook.  Both Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber demanded movement on reform to salvage Social Security with calls for higher retirement ages.  The Hill reports that a small group of Democrats have demanded reform [...]

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Chickens do not equal eggs.

The President took to the bully pulpit for a presser covering a wide range of topics including the Japanese earthquake and the situation in Libya. He also took time out to make a rather curious claim about US oil supplies. “We’re adapting. We’re producing more oil, and we’re importing less,” he remarked. “Now, the hard [...]

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Democrats seeking a shutdown?

As Senator Jeff Sessions told me yesterday on The Ed Morrissey Show, Harry Reid has gaveled out the Senate for the week and plans to spend the next two weeks on issues unrelated to the budget.  That would run out the clock on the current continuing resolution and force a showdown between John Boehner and [...]

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