There is something you can do right now…you will find attached an invitation to an event scheduled for Dec. 5, featuring Joe Arpaio, “America’s Toughest Sheriff.” “Sheriff Joe” has very graciously agreed to raise funds for the “Freedom In Truth Trust.” The FIT Trust is the fund that was established to help us satisfy legal debts incurred during the 2006 campaign. You can read more about it at http://www.jdhayworth.com/fit-trust.html

You may not live in Arizona…but no matter where you call home, would you respond to the attached invitation and please send a contribution to the FIT Trust?

That would certainly be a factor in the decision we will make at the “Hayworth Hacienda!”

The irony of using the Spanish word in an appeal for a possible immigration-focused Senate bid is really something.

“The reason I ask you,” said O’Donnell, “is that I think there’s some confusion about Sarah Palin’s policies.”

It wasn’t a man-on-the-street interview with a dopey tourist being asked a surprise question, of the kind John Ziegler conducted with Obama supporters to “prove” that they had no idea what Obama believed. Jackie was a political activist with a political message. And the history of the bailouts has really been mangled by conservative spin since September 2008, when, in a panic, most Republicans (in Congress) supported them. When former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave a speech at the Value Voters Summit this year and attacked “bailing out banks,” few people in the crowd remembered that Romney had supported the bailouts.

By and large, I’ve found that Tea Party activists and conservatives do not forgive Republicans who supported the bailouts — there is a lot of anger toward former President George W. Bush, and more toward former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. And here is what Palin said about the bailouts in her debate with Joe Biden.

John McCain thankfully has been one representing reform. Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.

People in the Senate with him, his colleagues, didn’t want to listen to him and wouldn’t go towards that reform that was needed then. I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain’s bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first.

In September 2008, McCain suspended his campaign to go to Washington to help negotiate a government response to the financial crisis, resulting in a $700 billion bailout bill.

And here is what Palin says in “Going Rogue” about the bailouts, on page 270.

[T]he House of Representatives rejected a Bush-backed economic bailout plan in a vote in which two-thirds of Republicans voted no. The impression this made on the electorate was not helpful to our cause. Millions of Americans were poised to go bankrupt or lose their savings, and the perception was that Republicans had failed to respond.

I don’t think you can avoid the conclusion that Palin supported the bailout package. If a Palin supporter doesn’t know this, it’s perfectly legitimate to find out why. And yet The Weekly Standard, not alone in the conservative media, takes this exchange and makes it all about a brave 17-year-old girl battling back against an “ambush” from MSNBC.

It’s a surprising poll because only 24 percent of state Republicans have a negative view of McCain. He’s suffering from a backlash against everyone currently in Washington. And it’s been two years since McCain broke with the GOP base and backed comprehensive immigration reform. If that comes up again in 2010, as many expect it to, McCain could face real problems with Arizona voters.

Among Republicans… only 27% say Obama actually won the race, with 52% — an outright majority — saying that ACORN stole it, and 21% are undecided. Among McCain voters, the breakdown is 31%-49%-20%. By comparison, independents weigh in at 72%-18%-10%, and Democrats are 86%-9%-4%.

Again, I’m not surprised. When I covered the run-up to the 9/12 taxpayer march on Washington, I encountered multiple conservative activists who said ACORN–then in the news for the James O’Keefe/Hannah Giles sting videos–had stolen the election. From my story:

“Clinton only got elected in 1992 because Ross Perot got back in the race,” said Miller. He attributed Perot’s decision to pressure from the “Dixie mafia, Jimmy Carter’s organization — they ran half the South.” And according to Miller, Barack Obama had only won the 2008 election because of fraud by the community organizing group ACORN.

“You can assume 10 percent of Obama’s votes were fraudulent votes,” said Bench.

I’ve heard this all over the country, and there’s no basis for it whatsoever. Back in May, former Nevada GOP chairwoman Sue Lowden–now a candidate against Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)–told me that ACORN did not have an effect in her state, one of several where Republicans filed pre-election lawsuits against the group.

On Election Day, recalled Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden, the GOP watched the issue closely, alerted state officials to bogus registrations, and dispatched “trained people” to the polls to look for voters showing up to cast ballots under assumed names at fake addresses. None showed up. “Would it have made a difference?” asked Lowden. “No, none of our races were that close.”

After the jump, check out the ads.

First, Rubio:

Now, Obama:

Notice that the equivalent of the picture with Bush is a picture of Crist with Obama.

Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina (Photos courtesy of Chuck DeVore, Agencia Brasil)

Carly Fiorina announced her 2010 campaign for California’s U.S. Senate seat in the usual way. She rolled out a new Website. She bounded across a stage at a “green detergents” factory to the strains of “Surfin’ U.S.A.” and gave a short speech about “solutions that work.” Then she added a step that has become more-or-less essential for serious Republicans–a conference call with conservative bloggers. Over 23 minutes, she fielded some of the friendlier questions she’d get all day, such as whether she’d learned anything from 2009’s successful Republican candidates that could help her in her challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

“My team knows very well how to run a campaign against a nasty Democrat,” said Fiorina.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“I am a pro-life conservative,” said Fiorina. “I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. I am a fiscal conservative. In other words, I share the conservative values that many Republican voters share, and have been public about that for a very long time.”

Riehl stayed on the line, posing more questions from the right about McCain-Feingold campaign legislation, and about regulation of the internet. “I’m just picking up on things that I’ve seen,” he said, “that have been used to come after you from the conservative base.” And Fiorina, who had not brought up DeVore, went after him for accepting DeMint’s endorsement. “I find it interesting,” she said, “that Chuck DeVore, a couple weeks ago, was claiming that he is an anti-establishment candidate and perhaps he isn’t quite so much.”

It was a punchy debut for a candidate who, if national Republicans had their way, would not be worrying about a primary. Getting Fiorina, the multi-millionaire former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to join the race, was a coup for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. And in other public appearances, Fiorina has brushed DeVore aside. Her opponent, she says, is Boxer. The man who got into this race in November 2008 should be an afterthought. As DeVore ties Fiorina in the polls and turns conservative activists against her–as he talks bluntly about fascism and even about Barack Obama’s birth records–he’s forced Republicans to pay attention.

In the wake of the NY-23 special election debacle, where Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman united the national conservative movement against a liberal Republican candidate and let a Democrat sneak in to win a key congressional seat, Republican strategists are looking at more contested primaries than they’d like. While the Senate primary between Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) has gotten the most attention, there are primaries in Ohio, Kentucky, New Hampshire and to a lesser extent Illinois that pit experienced Republican politicians against more ideological activist candidates–some with deep pockets. Democrats who are running defense on their control of Congress are making all they can out of primary battles that, so far, have driven candidates such as Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) to dent their moderate credentials as they try to win over the party’s base.

The California primary is something of an aberration. DeVore has a longer political resume than Fiorina. Her political baptism came as an adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign. He worked for the Reagan administration and has been a member of the California legislature since 2005. He has a lengthy voting record and a longer rhetoric of conservative speeches and blog posts. Ever since it became clear that Fiorina might jump in the race, his small campaign staff has laid traps for her by portraying her as a closet moderate–the kind of candidate many Republicans believe they need in blue California, but not one the base should have to settle for.

“I’m a movement conservative,” DeVore told TWI. “I’ve been in the conservative movement since 1981. I was head of the College Republicans at Cal State-Fullerton.”

DeVore’s case to national activists has been bolstered by unexpectedly strong showings in the polls. According to a Field Poll conducted in October, Fiorina, who had once led DeVore 31-20 in trial heats, had fallen into a 21-20 tie. That Field Poll showed Boxer leading Fiorina by 14 points and DeVore by 17 points; a Rasmussen Poll conducted in September, before both candidates were in the race, showed the race closer, with DeVore outperforming Fiorina. And a November Los Angeles Times poll had DeVore and Fiorina tied at 27 percent each.

One Democratic strategist suggested that if DeVore and Fiorina were on equal financial footing, DeVore would be the stronger candidate. An October FEC report revealed that DeVore, having raised around $700,000, had blown through all but $60,000 of it. DeVore argues that this is more than previous candidates against Boxer have raised; other Republicans look at that as more proof that Fiorina’s potential to raise millions of dollars is another reason to back her. (When one blogger suggested that DeVore’s low fundraising numbers ruled him out as a serious candidate, he dove into the comment section to pronounce “DeVore Derangement Syndrome.”) One Republican strategist suggested to TWI that California Republicans, tired of watching obscure conservative candidates loose statewide elections, are ready to get behind Fiorina. They just didn’t want to throw DeVore under the bus while doing it.

DeVore, well aware of the buzz, has responded by keeping up aggressive web-driven campaigns against Fiorina and Boxer and holding out the possibility that he can raise more money. He told TWI that he’d had conversations with the Club for Growth, the conservative 527 whose money, according to the campaign, “put gas in the tank” for Doug Hoffman.

“I get dozens of emails from him every week, as do other activists,” said Ray McNalley, a Republican strategist in Sacramento. “He’s running a race that’s more aggressive, I think, than what you’ve seen from some of the last statewide Republican challenges. If he comes in with a couple bucks in the bank, if he exceeds expectations, he could light a fire out there.”

From the conservative activist’s perspective, DeVore’s an ideal candidate. After writing a war novel, “China Attacks,” in 2000, DeVore became a frequent reviewer at Amazon.com. His take-outs on action novels and political texts reveal more about his political thinking than most candidates would be comfortable divulging. On a Tom Clancy novel about the threat posed by Japan Devore wrote: “Replace “Japan” with “China” and the thesis holds together rather well in 2005.” On Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”: “Roosevelt’s New Deal had much in common with Mussolini’s fascism.” On the libertarian lessons of his state’s economic meltdown: “Gazing at California, [libertarian economist Friedrich von] Hayek would surely shake his head sadly.”

When he speaks at length about politics, DeVore reveals a sober view of his state’s constitutional woes. He was aware, he said, that liberals view California’s supermajority requirements for passing budgets and raising taxes as factors that wrecked the state. He disagrees.

“We’ve had this system in place for quite a while,” said DeVore, “but if you go back before these innovations of term limits, gerrymandering and donation limits, what you find is a remarkable amount of bipartisanship, of budgets getting passed on time. This kind of hyperpartisanship, I think, is a relatively modern invention.”

Asked about the use of the filibuster and senatorial holds in the body he wanted to join, DeVore suggested that presidents might deserve more deference than President Obama is currently getting. He recoiled at the idea of filibustering judges unless there was a reason to. Instead, he talked about issues he wanted to work on with Democrats, such as prison reform.

The quiet campaign against DeVore hasn’t really gotten into those issues. Republican strategists have heavily advertised DeVore’s friendship and connections with Floyd Brown, a Republican strategist who has “disputed” the president’s birth certificate–some of the most unpleasant material wound up in The Huffington Post, credited to a “Republican source.” DeVore acknowledged that Fiorina would cast him as an out-of-the-mainstream radical and make issues out of his connections.

“She’s going to do that,” said DeVore, “just like I’m going to remind people that John McCain and Olympia Snowe and Lindsay Graham are backing her.”

Nonetheless, asked what he thought of Brown’s ideas, DeVore didn’t take the chance to denounce “birther” rumors or the movement itself–which has been heavily active in California.

“The president is doing himself no favors by spending millions of dollars to block the release of documents surrounding his birth certificate,” said DeVore. “As long as the president keeps fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of such things, people are going to remain skeptical.” The door was left open, said DeVore, because Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign didn’t go after Obama’s qualifications when it had the chance, and because there were no statutory requirements for verifying a candidate’s citizenship.

Answers like that give ammunition to Fiorina’s supporters; they also ensure that the would-be-frontrunner can’t ignore the conservative movement’s preferred candidate. A week after the Fiorina conference call, her campaign created a Website, CallMeBarbara.com, dedicated to a June incident in which Boxer told a military witness to call her “senator” instead of “ma’am.” DeVore’s campaign made great hay out of the Boxer remarks in June, producing a parody Web video, milking the incident for all it was worth. When they saw Fiorina treading the same turf, they blasted out an email to reporters.

“If the Fiorina campaign intends to send out breathless asks with five-month lags,” wrote DeVore media adviser Joshua Trevino, “then I look forward to [a] March 2010 e-mail beginning, “How ’bout them Saints?”

“There better be a hell of a compelling reason for ignoring the advice of our generals on the ground or Republicans will ensure that this Administration spend the next few years explaining to the American people how dismissing our military’s advice has made our troops and our country safer,” the aide says.

Greg wants to know:

But there’s an interesting caveat, one that underscores the political challenges the GOP will face as they respond to Obama’s decision: What if he decides to send less than 40,000 troops, but the decision is endorsed by the commanding officer, General Stanley McChrystal?

You can see this taking shape. Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who’s warned his fellow Republicans against making Afghanistan “Obama’s war” — has promised that McChrystal will testify before Congress after President Obama makes up his mind on the scope of escalation. McChrystal is not going to go before the armed services committees and say he’s dissatisfied with any decision Obama makes. Either he is and he continues to serve and he’s not and resigns. And the latter option is, to say the least, extremely unlikely.

What’s more, let’s say that McClatchy is right and Obama goes with 34,000 new troops. Is the Republican Party really going to say that 6,000 troops — basically one to two Army combat brigades — are the difference between success and failure? That’s, well … that just doesn’t make sense.

Finally, why stop at 40,000? There was a higher-end estimate in McChrystal’s resource-request options palette, one that reportedly centered around 85,000 new troops. Why aren’t Republicans going to jump on that? Some in the military, I’m told, are behind it. But it’s also an extremely high request that’s almost certainly unrealistic, given the realities of deployment on a 12-month schedule for resting troops at home and with 120,000 troops still in Iraq. But as long as the GOP is indicating to Sargent that it’s interested primarily in playing politics with the war, why not go for a number with real differences from any 30,000-plus option Obama is likely to favor?

The Graham amendment is expected to come to a vote today during consideration of the Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill. The earlier Homeland Security and Defense Department spending bills already include restrictions on transferring Guantanamo detainees to the United States.

This restriction, which is reportedly backed by 150 family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks, would bar the trials of the alleged 9/11 plotters in civilian federal courts, effectively forcing them to be tried by military commissions.

The Obama administration has suggested that it wants to try the 9/11 suspects in federal court, and so far has fought to retain the power to decide where the terror suspects will be tried. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder warned Senate leaders that Graham’s amendment “would be unwise, and would set a dangerous precedent.”

The administration has said it will begin announcing where it wants to try the terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay by November 16.

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's alleged driver, was held in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay prison camp like these detainees. (Department of Defense photo by Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy)

As the Obama administration nears its deadline for deciding where to try the men suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists attacks, there are strong indications that those trials could take place in federal courts in the United States. That’s prompting fervent opposition from Republicans, who say the 9/11 terrorists should never be allowed anywhere on U.S. soil, let alone in a civilian U.S. court.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Military Commissions lead prosecutor Capt. John F. Murphy told reporters in September that four different U.S. attorneys offices in New York, Washington and Virginia were vying for the opportunity to try the five now-infamous defendants, which include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash; Ramzi Binalshibh; Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi are the other four. According to Murphy, the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, based in Brooklyn and Manhattan, respectively; the Eastern District of Virginia, based in Alexandria; and the District of Columbia had all submitted requests to hold the high-profile trials in their courthouses, and to detain the suspects in their jails during trial. The military commissions are also seeking to try the defendants.

Meanwhile, White House lawyers, a task force advising the president, and President Obama have all said that their preference is to try terror suspects in federal courts whenever possible, although they have not ruled out the possibility of using military commissions to try some of them. It remains unclear which ones.

The administration has promised to make its final decision on where to try the 9/11 suspects by Nov. 16. Fearing that the administration is inching toward bringing them to New York City or the Washington, D.C., area, opponents of trying high-level terrorists in U.S. federal courts are stepping up their efforts to keep the five men out of the United States for any purpose. On Oct. 9, Sen. Lindsey Graham said he’d attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending money on prosecuting and trying these five alleged terrorists in U.S. civilian federal courts.”Khalid Sheik Mohammed needs to be tried in a military tribunal,”Graham told McClatchy Newspapers. “He’s not a common criminal. He took up arms against the United States.”

Graham is not alone in that view. In August, he joined Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Jim Webb (D-Va.) in sending a letter to President Obama expressing concern over reports that the Administration may try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged war criminals in civilian courts. The senators urged the administration to try them in military commissions instead, saying in part:

The bill, H.R.2847, is pending in the Senate as an amendment to an appropriations bill.

On Tuesday, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey made a similar argument against allowing the 9/11 defendants to be tried in a civilian federal court in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. Mukasey warned that the costs and burdens of security would be enormous, that housing suspected terrorists in U.S. prisons would threaten national security, and that a public trial would elicit sensitive evidence that would compromise intelligence sources and that terrorists will later use against us.

Those sorts of arguments outrage many legal experts and former military officers, who say that only a public trial in a U.S. federal court that affords terror suspects the same rights as all ordinary criminal suspects will carry the legitimacy necessary for such an important trial. And they dismiss the claims that housing terrorists in U.S. maximum security prisons, where terror suspects have been imprisoned for many years, would create any danger at all.

“The federal criminal justice system has adjudicated nearly 200 cases involving international terrorism in the year shortly before and since 9/11,” said Gabor Rona, International Legal Director of Human Rights First, which opposes the use of military commissions to try any Guantanamo detainees. “The idea that it cannot handle classified evidence, evidence from abroad, evidence obtained in the context of armed conflict, all of those have been proven false by the existence and the adjudication of all of those case in the federal criminal justice system, and many of those cases feature precisely those problems.”

“The bulk of resistance to bringing Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. is simply uninformed,” Rona continued. “The ‘not in my backyard idea,’ which I think is a crazy notion of people fearing that they’re going to have to be sitting next to a member of al-Qaeda when they go into Starbucks, is just nuts. We’re not talking about releasing suspected or known terrorists into the streets. We’re talking about transferring them to highly secure correctional and detention facilities for purpose of trial. If they’re found not guilty or guilty and they serve sentences, they’re still not entitled to be in the U.S., they will be deported. I think the administration is confident, and should be confident about being able to convey that this is not a situation that involves risk to Americans.”

Some former military officials hope the president will see it that way as well. On Tuesday, a group of retired generals sent an open letter to Congress, kicking off a campaign to close Guantanamo Bay and have the detainees brought to the United States for federal court trials.

“With 145 convicted international terrorists being held in our prison system, there has been no escape from a supermax correctional facility in the United States,” said retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, on a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. “It does not threaten the security of this country to move however many of the remaining 226 detainees that we cannot farm to other countries or try and incarcerate, to move them from Guantanamo into our supermax facilities. The claim from members of Congress that this threatens American security is shameful and without a basis.”

Still, even some civil libertarians believe it would be legitimate for the administration to try the Sept. 11 suspects in military commissions at Guantanamo Bay or on U.S. military bases. “Our view is that as a legal matter, the 9/11 conspirators, unlike some other detainees at Guantanamo, could be tried in either federal court or military commissions,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies. “Then it’s a matter of policy considerations.”

Although Martin says a defendant could get a fair trial in a military commission, that’s not necessarily the case under the current Military Commissions Act, even if recent amendments passed by the House were adopted. “One of the hallmarks of a fair trial is that it’s public,” and the military commissions have so far severely restricted public access. “If they choose the forum based on an interest in keeping parts of the trial secret, then they will lose their legitimacy right there,” she said.

Some military commission critics claim that one reason some Republicans support using military commissions is to keep hidden any evidence that the detainees were tortured by U.S. authorities, which the defendants or their lawyers would almost certainly present in their trials.

“There is a second objective in everything that someone like Mukasey is saying,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denise LeBoeuf, who directs the John Adams Project, which organizes defense lawyers to represent the Guantanamo detainees. “That is covering up the details and the identities of torturers. This country had a systematic system of torture through the military and through contractors. Some of those people objecting to federal court trials now either implemented it, or knew about it and should have said something,” she said, adding that some are still in the administration and have an interest in preventing the information from surfacing.

Indeed, according to Justice Department memos revealed earlier this year, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed was waterboarded 183 times. Details of his treatment would likely come up in his defense, if he were to present one. On the other hand, he has confessed and even boasted to having masterminded the attacks numerous times, and has said he does not want a lawyer and wants to be martyred. He still could bring up his treatment by U.S. authorities in a trial, however.

LeBoeuf and other lawyers involved in the defense of high-level detainees say they’ve heard rumors that the administration wants to try the 9/11 detainees in federal court, but it’s impossible to know for sure what U.S. officials will do until they issue their decision.

To LeBoeuf, the fact that the 9/11 case is so high-profile is a strong reason for trying the suspects in public, in a civilian federal court in the United States.

“When you say the whole world is watching a case, this is the one,” LeBoeuf said. “This is the one where the administration has the greatest urgency and pressure to do it in a fair court. It’s also the one where there are mountains of evidence — for both sides. It’s the most investigated crime in the history of the United States. If you can’t put this case into a federal court, then what case can you?”

“In 2008, we held our presidential election on Sept. 15,” Clinton said. “When the Bush administration decided not to help Lehman Bros … McCain’s chances of winning an election went from 1-in-4 to 1-in-50. The election ended Sept. 15.”

Debating whether the government should have let Lehman fail is a worthy pursuit, and one best debated by economists and policymakers still probing the near-collapse of the country’s financial system. For Clinton, however, it’s a different matter. Blaming Lehman keeps Clinton from giving any credit to Obama for winning on the merits of his campaign. It helps take the focus even further away from Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful primary campaign, and Bill Clinton’s own role in stirring up controversies that detracted from her effort.

Coming from a more neutral observer, these kind of comments about Lehman might be worth pondering further. Coming from Clinton, they sound more like self-serving revisionist history.