Truth, Lies and In Between

Howard Nemerov takes the Brady campaign to task. These gun grabbers are liars and should be shown for that. Their data doesn’t hold water when looked at, and is easily debunked as bullshit as you will see with these two articles:

Brady Campaign to prevent democracy? (Part 1)

In their recent publication, Guns & the 2008 Elections: Common Sense Gun Laws Won, the NRA Lost, & What It Means, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence declared that the 2008 federal elections were a victory for gun control:

The 2008 elections demonstrated – not for the first time – that voters support candidates who favor strong gun laws and reject the gun lobby’s extremist agenda.

What is undeniable is that the NRA [National Rifle Association] could not sway the presidential election – or the nomination battles, or races in the Senate, House…

To determine the veracity of Brady’s claims, election results from the House of Representatives will be examined here because the larger number of election contests (435) gives a more accurate picture of the electorate’s view of the 2008 election cycle.

Brady was proud of the fact that over 90% of their endorsed House candidates won. Indeed, Brady-endorsed candidates had a 91.3% winning percentage, besting the 86.6% for NRA-endorsed candidates.* On the face of it, Brady appears to have won handily, but how the results were produced provides an interesting story.

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Brady Campaign to prevent democracy? (Part 2)

Real Election Issues

Of the 25 Congressional races where a Brady-endorsed candidate went up against a NRA-endorsed candidate, Brady won 13. A 52.0% does not bode well for anybody claiming that this election was a mandate for anything, especially since all the head-to-head Brady winners were Democrat. Depending upon how much voter dissatisfaction on other issues impacted this election, Brady’s slight edge here may actually indicate a lack of voter support for their agenda, because voters considered issues like the continued Iraq involvement and the economic downturn the result of Republican policy, a trend that began with the 2006 election when Democrats retook Congress.

The Democrat party agrees with this premise. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is the “official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House.” Their recent email exhorts people to fight against a “cheap shot” by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh:

We need every grassroots Democrat to show Rush Limbaugh and all of the Republicans what they’re up against if they start attacking President Obama and Democrats who are working to end the failed GOP policies of the last eight years. [Emphasis added]

In the national House races, the Cable News Network (CNN) exit polls showed that 93% of all voters thought economic conditions were “not so good” or “poor,” and 81% worried the economic crisis would hurt their families. Overall, 62% disapproved of the war in Iraq, and 63% considered the economy the most important issue with Iraq a distant second at 10%; gun control didn’t make CNN’s list of voters’ important issues. Only 28% thought Bush was doing a good job, and 48% thought McCain––as leader of the Republican party by nature of his presidential candidacy––would continue Bush’s policies; 85% of all Democrat voters believed this, with only 13% of Republican voters agreeing.