Over the weekend I had a nice conversation with Kristin Fisher of KATV about her new online project “Choose Your News.” It’s a cool feature in which Fisher gives audiences the opportunity to vote on the story she covers.  She’s using her blog, online video and Twitter to keep the public informed with what she is covering.  Her stories also air on the evening news.  Mark Hengel of Arkansas Business has a piece in this week’s issue about Fisher’s work.  If you have story ideas, you can e-mail Fisher at kfisher@katv.com or find her on the Internet.

It seems that everyone is piling on the Republican Party as of late. On Sunday, Newt Gingrich was asked whether Sarah Palin was the future of the GOP. He replied that she was in a group of 20 or 30 others. It’s pretty devastating that someone of Gingrich’s caliber would identify his party’s VP nominee - and, arguably, rising star - as one of thirty key party influencers. Doesn’t that tell us something about the troubled state of the Republican Party?

But beyond this, there is troubling news over at The National Review.

As I noted here earlier this year, Christopher Buckley, son of the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley, endorsed Barack Obama for president, and was quickly shown the door. Today, The New York Times reports that David Frum, a prominent conservative writer, is leaving to launch a Web venture. Over at The Corner, the National Review’s influential blog, you can read comments by a few of the magazine’s contributors.

Yes, like all people, magazine writers move around. But Frum isn’t just any magazine writer, and NR isn’t just any magazine. Or maybe it is now that Mr. Buckley is gone. It’s hard to imagine Mr. Buckley fawning over Palin the way many of the editors and writers there did (one of Frum’s concerns was with the backlash he received after writing negatively about her), but we’ll never know.

But I cannot be unfair to the magazine. After all, I’m hardly a regular reader. I pay attention to Frum and Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowry and Charles Krauthammer because they’re smart guys even if we disagree consistently (as an aside, Krauthammer wrote this piercing editorial about John Edwards, and I agreed with every word of it.) Peggy Noonan and David Brooks don’t write for NR, but I rarely miss a word (they were both critics of Mrs. Palin; Mr. Brooks described her as “cancer to the Republican Party.”)

In late October, E.J. Dionne, writing in The New Republic, observed, “The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity–and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.”

Like everywhere else in life, it’s easy to pile on the defeated in politics. Aside from the score-keeping, one thing the GOP has always been good at is idea generation. After all, that’s the primary reason Buckley founded NR, and it served as adequate justification for rarely turning a profit.

Which brings me to a larger question. In the Times‘ article Mr. Frum notes, “I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.” I’ve been pondering this for past few weeks. Exit polling demonstrates that young people and the well-educated voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Obama. For the first time in eight years, the Democratic Party proved to be the party of ideas.

President George W. Bush will leave office with the lowest approval rating in history, and the comparisons to Herbert Hoover are becoming more accurate as this troubled economy sinks further towards a depression. Barring a Clinton-esque transition gaffe(s), president-elect Obama will enter The White House with approval ratings nearing seventy percent, and substantial majorities in both houses of Congress.

If Mr. Dionne is right, and the GOP think tank is being led by propoganda mongers Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Mrs. Palin, I am saddened. That may sound strange coming from me (after all, it’s about winning, isn’t it?), but let’s be honest. With our economic future in jeopardy; two concurrent wars being fought thousands of miles away; and an energy crisis like nothing we’ve ever seen, it’s time to populate the marketplace with ideas.

But the GOP is polarized. Former presidential candidates are taking swipes at each other, and no one, not even NR, seems to know which way is up. As good as it has proven to be for Democrats in the short-term, how will Americans fare in the long term?

Barack Obama bested John McCain by 34 points among voters 18-29, the largest in post-war American history according to Tuft’s Tisch College Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.  That margin is nearly four-times the margin of John F. Kennedy in 1960.  The youth vote made up 18 percent of the electorate this year, one point more than in the last three presidential elections.

The Clinton School of Public Service hosted a forum on the youth vote the day before the election.  Have a look.

In what is no surprise to me, the Arkansas Supreme Court voted 6-0 today to allow the lottery amendment language to remain on the ballot. Voters will now have a chance to approve or reject the measure on November 4th.  Polling shows the lottery amendment will pass overwhelmingly. I’m certain it will.

Not only did Christopher Buckley (son of the late William F. Buckley) endorse Barack Obama he has also resigned from The National Review, the conservative publication that his father founded.  He writes,

While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.

So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me.

Thanks, anyway, for the memories, and here’s to happier days and with any luck, a bit less fresh hell.

On the day the Arkansas Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a suit filed to remove language from the November ballot that would allow for the creation of a lottery in Arkansas, Rob Moritz takes a look at lotteries thriving in tough economic times.  “[t]he Tennessee Lottery, which just completed its fourth year, reported in September that it set a record during the last fiscal year by generating $286.1 million for education. Since it began, the lottery has raised about $1.2 billion for college scholarships, public school building programs, pre-kindergarten and after-school programs,” he writes.

In addition to a whopping 9% of Americans thinking the country is headed in the right direction, USA Today reports that the financial meltdown has demolished retirement savings, wiping out $2 trillion  - or about 20% of value - in the past 15 months.

Only 9% of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction of the country.  It’s the lowest in the history of the Gallup Poll.

I couldn’t make this up.

Free Think Tank membership if you can name the source of the quote.

Groups for and against the proposal for a state lottery in Arkansas filed briefs with the Arkansas Supreme Court yesterday.  The Arkansas Family Council has requested that the Court remove the lottery proposal from the ballot because it may pave the way for casino-style gambling. I’ve argued before that thie legal arguments on this are thin.  Oral arguments are set for October 13th.   Polling shows the lottery amendment would pass easily.

The House of Representatives will take up the Senate version of the bailout bill today.  A vote is expected midday.  AP wonders whether the votes will be there this time.

For people who think that the failure to approve a $700 billion bailout plan only effects Wall Street CEO’s need to think again.  The ramifications are felt all the way to Arkansas notes a story by James Jefferson and John Lyon of Arkansas News Bureau.   The good news is that Arkansas banks are still lending money consistently.  However, retired people and those with substantial 401(k) plans are in real trouble.  “I would say that the immediate impact is more on the retired person than it is on the 401(k) person.  Their portfolio is diminished in value, but many of them have some time for that to come back, whereas the retirees have to take whatever’s out there in the marketplace,” says former U of A business professor Phil Taylor.

For the record, all members of the Arkansas House delegation voted in favor of the bailout yesterday.

The day ends without a deal on the bailout of the U.S. financial system.  According to this report from the Washington Post there was a deal agreed to last night, but today House Minority Leader John Boehner, a Republican, raised concerns that House Republicans couldn’t support the deal.  Reports the Post, ” The proposal angered Democrats, who accused Boehner of acting on behalf of GOP presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.) in trying to disrupt a developing consensus. It also displeased White House officials, including Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who — half-jokingly — dropped to one knee and pleaded with the lawmakers not to “blow up” the deal, according to two people present at the meeting.”

There is still no word as to whether McCain will attend the debate Friday night.  Today, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, said the debate would go on.  Here’s the latest from the AP.

The Arkansas Project notes that Fox News is moving forward with a television show hosted by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee called “Huckabee.”  It has long been rumored that Huckabee would head into media after he ended his presidential campaign.  He joined Fox News as an analyst a few months back.  The show debuts Saturday, Sept. 26 at 7:00 p.m. CST.  Huckabee made the announcement on his website.

MSNBC is reporting that Congress is close to reaching a deal on the bailout.  Top leaders are huddling today at 10:00 a.m. to work out the details before taking the plan to the White House where President George W. Bush will be meeting with Barack Obama and John McCain.  Sen. Olympia Snowe said that she wasn’t sure that the deal would be complete before the end of the week.

The timing of the deal will have a huge impact on whether McCain will attend tomorrow night’s debate in Oxford, Mississippi.  I still don’t understand McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and get involved in this problem.  He doesn’t sit on a committee with jurisdiction and several outlets are quoting sources from inside the Treasury suggesting that McCain’s decision has unnecessarily politicized the situation.

Chuck Todd reports that House Republicans were on the verge of killing this bailout plan, which would have resulted in a negative that McCain could not have survived.  He also notes that polls were moving quickly to Obama and McCain needed to get away from the bad political week he was having.  “At the photo op, he’ll declare victory,” Todd said.

John Dickerson of Slate writes, “John McCain has launched his second Hail Mary pass in a month. On Wednesday he called for a suspension of the presidential campaign—no events, no ads, and no debate Friday—so that he and Barack Obama can head to Washington to forge a bipartisan solution. Even more than his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate, this gambit feels like a wild improvisation someone in the McCain team mapped out on his chest: OK, you run to the fire hydrant, cut left, and then when he gets to the Buick, John, you heave it.”