Via Hot Air Headlines, Tom Brokaw does not understand why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not looming issues in this year’s election; or, indeed, really issues at all.  He doesn’t bother to even try to answer the question, himself - apparently, Brokaw decided that his wordcount was better suited towards the production of ponderous melancholia - but fortunately I’m here to explain things to him.

In order:

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For a while now I’ve been calling the Nevada Senate race tied. Before the primary, Repbublican Sharron Angle led comfortably. Right after the primary, Democrat Harry Reid won 9 of 10 polls. Then came a stretch of polls in the last few weeks of September which included 3 Reid leads, 3 Angle leads, and 2 ties. That was what I easily called a tied race.

But now we’re in a new era of the race, and I’m pretty comfortable in saying Sharron Angle has taken a slight edge.

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• Looks like Harry Teague (NM-02) has outlived his usefulness: the DCCC is pulling funds out of his race and throwing them at Martin Heinrich’s in NM-01.  This is probably due to Teague’s recent fading in the polls against challenger Steve Pearce, which is apparently being helped along by revelations about Teague’s canceling of his own private employees’ health care plans.  It’s also interesting that the DCCC thinks that Heinrich needs the help; apparently Jon Barela is worrying them more than they let on.  Cook rates this race as [Toss-Up, and NM-01 as Leans Democratic.]

The DCCC has also picked four new races to try to build its latest firewall:

• AZ-07’s Raul Grijalva.  Ruth McClung is the challenger, and a strong one*. Cook rating: Likely Democratic.
• CA-[20's Jim] Costa.  Andy Vidak is the challenger. Cook rating: Lean Democratic.
• IA-02’s [Dave] Loebsack.  Mariannette Miller-Meeks is the challenger.  Cook rating: Likely Democratic.
• TN-04’s Lincoln Davis.  Dr. Scott DesJarlais is the challenger.  Cook rating: Lean Democratic.

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The media is buzzing today about an altercation that happened at the Joe Miller rally in Alaska.

A left-wing blogger, Tony Hopfinger, tried to corner Joe Miller as Miller was departing. He kept shoving people to get to Miller and it did not go over well. The left tried to blow this up, as did Murkowski, but now several eye witness reports are coming out, along with Hopfinger’s confession that he started it, and the story is going no where.

Red County had an eye witness at the event who provides a first hand account of what happened.

There comes a point to where a person passes the point of getting answers to then becoming a person who is harassing an individual. And Tony Hopfinger crossed the line when it was clear Miller changed his direction because of Hopfinger engaging Miller’s security detail in what started off as a shoving match.

What I also found interesting was the set-up that took place between blogger Jesse Griffin, who when leaving was asking where Tony was. Notably, Griffin was with the individual who asked the question on why Miller was a Welfare Queen.

And leave it to political hacks like Andrew Halcro to say Miller ordered the arrest when Miller wasn’t even there when the security team detained Hopfinger.

Like I said before, there comes a time when the press cross the line on getting questions answered and Tony Hopfinger crossed the line by pushing back and trying to hide behind the First Amendment.

The lefty blogger is claiming he felt threatened. If so, why the heck did he start the shoving match?

Governor Rick Perry knows - and is not afraid to say - that Texas has been successful in the current economic downturn because it limits the size of its government, keeps taxes low and has created a freedom-oriented environment that attracts business and workers. The result is not surprising - Texas leads the nation in job creation - having created 119,000 jobs between August 2009 and August 2010 as compared with just 214,000 job throughout the nation. Meanwhile, over 1000 people are moving to Texas every day. (see also this from repair_man_jack)

Perhaps more importantly, the Governor (along with Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott) has made crystal clear that the ways of Washington are not the way to a prosperous future and Texas is prepared to tell Washington to get out of the way - in the form of rejecting federal funds with strings attached, litigation against intrusive federal legislation and otherwise.

For this, the Dallas Morning News rails against Governor Perry for his “swagger,” and has put its weight (for whatever that is worth) behind Democrat challenger Bill White in the form of an editorial endorsement bristling with hostility to the current Governor. It would be tempting to go through the editorial line-by-line to point out the flaws in its reasoning. But, far more striking and worthy of note is the extent to which the newspaper’s editors made the case for Governor Perry in the process of endorsing his opponent.

While backing White, the editors describe him as a “progressive” (the stealth term for liberal) who “recognizes the need for new revenue sources.” It goes on to say that Texas needs “a solution-oriented leader” (code for big government activist) who is “focused on bolstering Texas - not doing battle with Washington” (i.e. ignore the harm Washington is inflicting upon Texas and just increase state taxes to deal with it).

This is a perfect explanation of why Perry is the right man for Texas, not Bill White.

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Having driven Arlen Specter out of the party and now on the verge of winning Pennsylvania, we owe a great deal to Pat Toomey.

Can any of you help? Toomey needs boots on the ground in Pennsylvania. With 15 days before the election, the more the merrier.

If you are interested in heading to Pennsylvania to help Pat Toomey, email RedState@toomeyforsenate.com. They’ll have somebody monitoring the address, specially set up for RedState readers who want to volunteer.

If you want to do something to help the man who beat Arlen Specter out of the party and is set to move Pennsylvania right, but you can’t be on the ground, send Pat Toomey some money.

Quite frankly, we haven’t done enough around here for Pat Toomey. Anything we can do to help him we should.

It was Darrell K. Royal who originally said, “When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before”

In the past few weeks we’ve seen Charlie Crist attack Marco Rubio for not being Hispanic enough. Serously.

Earl Perlmutter refused to shake hands with his opponent in Colorado.

Jim Marshall in Georgia had an oppo researcher obtain the divorce records of his opponent’s parents.

Jack Conway attacked Rand Paul’s faith.

A left-wing blogger invaded a Joe Miller rally in Alaska and assaulted attendees.

Alan Grayson selectively edited a speech by Daniel Webster to make it look like Webster said something he did not.

Barack Obama himself went out bashing his own side for not getting out the vote.

Joe Biden accused the Democrats of whining.

The Democrats are on the cusp of a very bad defeat. They need to start acting like they’ve been there before. They have — 1994.

This sore loser stuff is doing them no favors at all. But it is delightful to watch. I can’t wait for the post-election blame game. Nancy Pelosi may have to take up residence in an undisclosed location.

That will probably be the most quoted line from the Rand Paul / Jack Conway debate last night, and for good reason: it represents a rather drastic line in the sand drawn against the scurrilous and vituperative wave of attacks made by progressive Democrats desperate to keep their tottering Congressional majorities. The video:

What Dr. Paul is referring to is this exceptionally offensive and cynical attempt by the Conway campaign to provoke religious bigotry in Kentucky voters. As Ed Morrissey noted at the link, one of the things that made said ad so… pettily nasty… was that Conway not only attacked Paul’s personal religious beliefs; he went after Paul’s opposition to funding faith-based initiatives. Given the way that progressives in the last decade had gone after such things hammer and tongs themselves - at least, when there was a Republican in office - I think that we can safely assume then that their opposition was a flat-out lie.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just broken one of Europe’s greatest taboos. But the truth may prove more dangerous than the lies that preceded it.

Europe has a decidedly love-hate relationship with racial, cultural and religious pluralism. On the one hand, Europeans have no choice but to deal - more than do Americans - with a continent with a multiplicity of languages, they love to lecture ’simplistic’ Americans about tolerance, and moreso than in the U.S., there’s a powerful taboo among the governing elite against even talking about cultural or social issues of any kind, let alone subjecting them to free public debate. On the other hand, there’s thousands of years of history of racial, ethnic and religious animosities tearing the continent apart and leading to many of human history’s worst atrocities. And with regard to specific case of Europe’s relationship with the Islamic world, think location, location, location: even places we think of as far distant lands - Algeria, Libya, Syria - are geographically right on Europe’s doorstep, and familiarity in Europe has often bred contempt, and worse. It was Europe that was invaded by Muslim imperialists pretty much continuously from the 700s (when Charles Martel stopped the Muslim advance into France at Poitiers) to the 1600s (when the Turks were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683); Spain spent 700 years under Islamic rule, parts of the Balkans even longer. It was also Europeans who launched the Crusades, beginning some 300 years after Poitiers. European nationalism is not the conservative, free-market, liberty-oriented variety we have in the United States, and really never has been; it tends to be statist, befitting its feudal origins, and in recent centuries it has lost the restraining or at least balancing force of Christianity, as the continent has become less Christian.

The elite consensus has been placed under exceptional strain in the past decade by two symbiotic trends: the declining birthrates of native Europeans, who reproduce barely more than pandas, requiring large-scale immigration of young workers to make Europe’s welfare states even remotely sustainable; and the fact that those immigrants are predominantly Muslim and include large numbers of people who have no respect for pluralism of any kind. Put simply, Europe can’t live without Muslim immigration, but at some point, if demographic trends continue and the immigrants don’t drastically alter the extent of their cultural assimilation, it won’t really be Europe anymore.

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Things must be really bad for Jack Conway. He’s gone on offense against Rand Paul with attacks that (a) reach back to college days and (b) are filled with lies.

When asked about it over the weekend, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill called Conway’s tactics “very dangerous.”

Conway is directly attacking Rand Paul’s faith. It’s not only very dangerous, it is also disgusting. As Senator McCaskill notes, “Candidates who are at behind at the end reach and sometimes they overreach.”

Paul is not taking it laying down. He’s hitting back.

Send Rand some money if you don’t mind so he can fight back against Conway’s sickening attacks.

Some youthful videographers approached Congressman Lincoln Davis.

It was all well and good until they mentioned some woman’s name — Norma Jean.

Then the Congressman fled and his Chief of Staff shoved the cameraman.

That all begs the question — who is Norman Jean? It isn’t Mrs. Davis. That much we know.

I am a diehard Karen Handel supporter for Governor of Georgia. I believe Nathan Deal won the nomination by lying about Handel’s record. After Deal’s nomination, we now see what appears to be insurmountable allegations of corruption, bad business deals, near bankruptcy, etc.

But all things being equal, I’ll be voting for Nathan Deal while holding my nose because even with all his problems, he is still better than Roy Barnes.

So I get that many Republicans in Florida are having a hard time embracing Rick Scott as their nominee after a terrible, nasty primary with Bill McCollum. While Karen Handel went all in for Nathan Deal after he beat her, McCollum has not been man enough to do the same for Scott.

This will be the first election since the passage of the Voting Rights Act that the Democrats control the Department of Justice during redistricting. There will be numerous judicial and executive appointments to be made by the next Governor of Florida.

In the choice between Rick Scott and Alex Sink, there is no choice. We now know just how bad Alex Sink would be. During her tenure as Chief Financial Office of Florida, she routinely licensed felons to sell insurance if they contributed to her or the Democratic Party of Florida.

The [Palm Beach] Post obtained records Friday for 25 insurance agents with a broad variety of criminal convictions, including shoplifting, grand larceny, credit card fraud and passing bad checks among others. All were licensed by Sink’s office in 2009.

Among those 25 were at least a dozen who received licenses in 2009 to represent American Medical and Life Insurance Co., which along with Aventura-based Cinergy Inc., was being investigated by Florida regulators earlier this year.

Many of those who Sink licensed were donors to her campaign or the Democratic Party in Florida. Think of the untold damage this woman could do in redistricting, appointing people to state jobs, awarding state contracts, etc.

Are you really going to continue holding the primary against Scott and risk Alex Sink as Governor? Really?