All of a sudden it’s Lite Gov-Lite Gov-Lite Gov everywhere you look. Freyne’s column leads with the race, Philip has set the week aside for Dubie-trouncing, and Matt Dunne is in the headlines.

There are several elements converging to create a perfect storm heading for the Doobster:

• Positive polls for the US Representative race are making Democrats feel more cautiously confident, and that optimism is electorally cross-pollenating.
• The Parker campaign is energizing the grassroots, and the Dunne field operation is well situated to plug into that energy.
• The debates have finally begun, and Dubie was right to be scared to face Dunne – in addition, his obvious fear has itself become an issue.
• Staff turnover in Dunne-land, where former Vermonters First blogger and veteran of the first Schweitzer campaign in Montana Adam Quinn is now steering the ship. I’ve worked with Adam, and his first impulse is to be very aggressive – an impulse he very much held in check while on the Clavelle campaign. Don’t expect him to hold back after that experience, especially with only a week-and-a-half to go.

Meanwhile, Dubie – up to this point widely assumed to be cruising to an easy victory – has approvals only in the low 40s, and his flaccid re-election campaign, which has been dominated by his hide-from-Dunne-whenever-possible strategy, is perhaps best summed up by this screenshot from his campaign website (below the fold):

No news stories. No supporters. No interest. Just a single, throwaway “vote for me ’cause I’m already here” press release message. In a combination of laziness, overconfident hubris and fear of engaging on the issues, the Dubie operation is barely even phoning it in.

And lest you think I’m just being Mr. Pep Rally, consider this report from Darren Allen only yesterday that suggests the wave is breaking:

An internal poll conducted on behalf of Democratic Lite Guv candidate Matt Dunne showed that the GOP incumbent, Brian Dubie, is not holding ground.

The poll, conducted within recent days, shows that Dubie still has a comfortable 15 point lead over Dunne. But going beyond that, Dubie failed to garner the support of 50 percent of those polled.

Dubie polled 44 percent, Dunne 29 percent and Prog Marvin Malek 4 percent, leaving nearly a quarter fo the electorate undecided.

Allen adds that we’re about to see some of the money Dunne has raised in the form of an ad blitz in the waning days of the campaign season.

Of course, nobody’s doing any polling to back up these internal campaign reports, but anecdotally at least, the momentum seems consistent with what we’ve all been witnessing. The question lingering is whether or not the breaking wave has time to make it to the beach before Election Day, now a matter of days away.

Dunne’s campaign has sleeper victory written all over it. Get involved:

Contribute.
Volunteer.

(There’s gonna be more local race talk in the next few days, and JD kicks us off very nicely… – promoted by odum)

Disclaimer: I’m working for candidate Donny Osman. In the interest of not propagandizing for my candidate, I’d just like to share with you some observations I’ve seen at two of the recent candidate forums, in Waitsfield last week and Montpelier last night. I’m not going to get into bashing anyone. The six candidates are Bill Doyle (R-inc.), Phil Scott (R-inc), Ann Cummings (D-inc), Kim Cheney (D), Jim Parker (R), and Donny Osman (D).

The forums have covered a wide variety of topics, from energy policy to, of course, the property tax. A few observations…

Only one candidate is on that ‘repeal and revolt’ bandwagon in regards to the property tax(Parker). I don’t think that’s selling too well outside the gold towns.

Curiously, civil unions, gay marriage, gender discrimination and abortion haven’t come up at the forums.

The most distinctive party-line split I could see was in regards to nuclear energy. All of the Dems had severe reservations about it, and didn’t support it. The Repubs all support it to one extent or another.

All of the candidates seem to come out in favor of wind power and weaning ourselves of fossil fuels, and none are in denial about global warming.

Healthcare was all over the map, on one end a full and vocal support of universal healthcare as a right (Osman), with market based solutions on the other end (Parker).

Curiously, all candidates stated in both debates that they believe the ‘War on Drugs’ has been a complete failure, and all came out in support of more rehabilitation and education as opposed to more law enforcement.

School vouchers seemed to be a party-line split as well, with mixed levels of support on the Repub side and the opposite on the Dem side.

All in all, this race is really hard to call. I wouldn’t say there’s any idealogues running , but within the candidates there is a classic progressive-liberal on one end and a somewhat conservative free-market Repub on the other, with varying shades in between. I do know which candidate is going to come in 6th, but other than that, I have no idea how this will turn out; there are so many factors.. the possible filtering down of the Democratic wave sweeping the country (which Phil Scott has acknowledged on more than one occasion), Osman’s unabashed progressivism which has been missing from Wash. Cty. races in the past and seems to be resonating with a lot of people, the Doyle factor (the man’s been in there forever – will it work for or against him this time?), and this is also Kim Cheney’s 4th run for senate. Alas, there are no polls to give us a clue.

I’ve met all of the candidates, and found them all to be nice, decent people to varying degrees, and it shows in the manner of decor and lack of personal attacks in this campaign. It’s good to know the venom of the national level (and also creeping into the statewide level) is nonexistent at our local level.

There’s another candidate’s forum on Thursday evening(26th) at the Worcester Grange Hall. I haven’t been able to find out what time, but if I do, I’ll post it.

I’ve learned quite a bit about Vermont politcs since getting on board the Osman campaign in the capacity of tactics and strategy. I’ll share some of it with you after the election.

you can read more of JD Ryan at Five Before Chaos

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) reminds us what many “enlightened” Republicans – as well as many live-and-let-live Independents who tend to lean to GOP candidates – would find it convenient to forget; that the one-party rule in Washington is moving us rapidly back to the outright re-criminalization of homosexuality. And that this is a goal that could come to fruition (enabled by spineless, hypocritical gay Republicans) in the next two years if there isn’t a change of power in congress.

Think it’s hyperbole? Just listen to the clip below from Bill Maher’s show as Frank makes mincemeat of GOP mouthpiece Stephen Moore (thanks to Bill in Portland Maine and Firedoglake).

PRESS RELEASE – for immediate release

For more info: 802-882-1967 or 202-370-6653

Senate Candidate creates search engine to catalog Republican sins

Warren, Vermont

October 24, 2006

Reference: Reasons to Reject Republicans

Steven Moyer, an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Vermont, has created a web search engine to collect information on Republican crimes, misdeeds and unethical behavior.  The search engine is called “Reasons to Reject Republicans”  and includes links to articles on the web as well as videos at YouTube and Google Video. Moyer’s goal is raise awareness of Republican misdeeds by archiving at least 1,000 records of information by the time of the election.

“I’m fed up with the Republican party,”  said Moyer. “They have done so many evil deeds that I’ve lost count, so I started this database to raise public awareness and hold them accountable.”  The database allows any visitor to enter information including links to web sites, videos and audio files. It can be searched by keyword like Google and other web search engines. 

Each entry includes a “reason” to reject Republicans, a 50-word maximum summary statement, and a category.  Categories include “cronyism, false Christianity, greed,  incompetence, excessive secrecy, propaganda, bribery, corruption, graft, militarism, and war profiteering.” 

Users can add their own categories and include up to 32,000 characters of additional text ( 6,000 words ) with each entry, as well as a quote and three links to web resources ( web pages, video and audio files ).

“The Republican party has crossed the line of acceptable political behavior,” said Moyer.  “I want the Republican party to go away … forever!”  Moyer believes that one of the worst Republican evils  has been the war in Iraq. “The Republicans conspired to create an aggressive war for the purpose of capital
  conquest.  That’s not just a bad idea —  it’s evil!”  Moyer also believes that Republicans have stolen several  of the recent elections with “black box” voting machines and voter intimidation techniques. 

“We need to throw these people out of government at every level. I want a landslide rejection of the entire Republican party at every level of government.  We need a new kind of politics based on virtues, like honesty, compassion and justice, rather than deceit, division and domination.”

The database and search engine is located at  http://reason.stevem… 

  Moyer plans to allow visitors to e-mail searches from the database to their friends.  He also plans to offer the entire database on CD-ROM to those who want to collaborate by running the program on their web site and sharing the data in an open-data, open-source network.

  “Political networks are the wave of the future.  Political parties are the dinosaurs of the past. In the future, many of the functions of democratic government will be accomplished using the Internet.  But first we need to reject the Republicans because they have lost their virtue and done great damage to the nation, our democracy and the world at large.”

Moyer is responsible for the first online copy of a statewide voter registration database which he claims is the “logical starting point” of an Internet Democracy.  The Vermont Democracy Network is located at http://vermont.steve…

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