Lincoln Reagan dinner, Grafton County

This is a fund raiser that we hold every year.  For a lotta years we have been holding it at the Indian Head resort (fairly tony for northern NH) at Franconia Notch.  I've been going to this event for quite a few years now, to the point where I know by name a lot of the guests. 
  Weather was miserable, it snowed all day, putting down 5-6 inches by 3 PM when it let up.  Trusty Mercury charged out of the garage, up my steep driveway, and crashed thru the foot high snowdrift at the street.  Getting thru the notch was tedious, lot of out of state cars creeping along at walking pace. The road was OK, but a tad slippery.  Being New Hampshire, just about everyone showed up, dispite the weather,  except the guest of honor, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who was coming up from Manchester by car.  Fortunately he had a native driver who got him upcountry all in one piece. 
   Cruz is sufficiently famous to attract TV troops with a satellite truck, which they parked out behind the Indian Head with the dish pointed up at a satellite and filling up with snow.  Cruz is a good speaker.  His English is plain American, no hint of a Texas accent, or a Spanish accent.  Speaking to a Republican audience, he connected.  He spoke of supporting freedom of religion, freedom from federal snoopers, local control of education as opposed to Common Core, the Constitution, love of country, his background.  He did not propose any new federal benefit programs.  He connected with the audience, and gained standing ovations.  This guy is a good speaker.  He would make mince meat of Hillary in a debate.  He took questions from the audience.  The questions were friendly, mostly asking him to expand upon themes he had previously touched upon.  The questioners were all bone fide New Hampshire folk, known to me.  He did not say anything about immigration, but given his background as the son of a Cuban refugee, I would expect him to be fairly sympathetic to immigrants.  Anyhow, this guy is worth watching.  He speaks well, he talks about concrete issues that matter to Republicans,  he would be a very competitive Republican presidential candidate.  He talked about conservative issues, but they are important issues, which many voters cherish.  He avoided wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage.

War for Women

There are a lot of reasons for last week's Republican defeat.  A big one, not the only one, but a big one, is loss of the women's vote.  Exit polling shows  women voted Obama by 55% to 45%.  That's a 10% hit.  And half the voters are women.  If the Republican party ever wants to thrive again, it's gotta  make itself acceptable to women.
   Far be it from me to claim to understand women.  The nature of the fair sex has been a matter of debate going back to Genesis, and I certainly ain't smart enough to improve upon four of five thousand years of learned writing.  But I do know this, women are against getting raped. 
   But this election saw two, not one but two, Republican senate candidates make totally repugnant public statements about rape.  Their remarks indicated a light hearted attitude toward this crime.  "Boys will be boys" and " They were just fooling around" and "It isn't all that serious, you won't get pregnant".  And somehow Republicans nominated these two chuckleheads for high office. 
   Republicans need to agree that rape is a horrible crime.  Perpetrators shall be prosecuted, convicted and punished.  Victims will receive all possible aid and succor, including abortion services, as some small mitigation of  their plight.
   If the party continues to harbor and nominate chuckleheads who think rape is sort of OK, and not too bad, it will disappear from the face of America.