Porter has the edge

The race in the 3rd Congressional District, in which Democratic state Sen. and UNLV professor Dina Titus challenges three-term incumbent Republican Jon Porter, remains tight as it goes down to the wire. Last Thursday, the two candidates participated in their final televised debate.

There are a number of issues for voters to consider and considerable differences between the two.

For instance, while Ms. Titus has taken some sensible stances -- she claims to have "come out for offshore drilling long before he did" -- she joins with her party leader, Sen. Harry Reid, in opposing both nuclear power and construction of the coal-fired power plants that could provide Nevadans with ongoing reliable power without driving rates through the roof.

Asked if higher taxes on oil companies won't send gasoline prices back through the roof, she insists, "No it won't."

And she joins with her party's other national leader, Barack Obama, in insisting we can all get rich on new "solar energy" jobs -- meaning government subsidies of an industry that can't grow as fast on its own as the green extreme might wish.

Asked why Democrats have not used their control of Congress to repeal one of the laws that helped launch Wall Street's current financial meltdown -- the Community Redevelopment Act of 1977, under which banks were encouraged to make loans they might not have otherwise made -- Ms. Titus reverts to the now-standard Democratic line, saying, "All of that should be on the table."

That's like saying patching the holes and lowering the life rafts should be "on the table" when your ship starts listing heavily to starboard. It shouldn't be "on the table." If they meant to do it at all, it should have been done weeks ago.

In contrast to this, Rep. Porter has been a steady, relaxed and reliable representative of his constituents, voting not a Republican party line, but rather "whichever way I think will be best for Nevadans."

Judging simply between the two candidates, Jon Porter is the better choice.

But something more needs to be said of this race.

First, Democratic candidates traditionally "run to the center" as an election approaches. A politician's entire career is a better predictor of future votes than what they say in October of an election year. And Dina Titus' career, taken as whole, is that of someone who has worked for the government all her adult life, and who has never seen any trouble with violating that section of the state constitution which stipulates a Nevadan can't make policy in one branch of government (the Legislature) while drawing pay in another (the executive-branch University of Las Vegas, an institution whose biennial budget is set by ... surprise! Dina Titus and the Legislature).

Is this a person who can be expected to demand her Washington cohorts respect constitutional restrictions on the tax-and-spend powers of the Congress?

Please.

For the other overriding concern, today, as hyper-liberal Barack Obama appears to have surged to an irresistible lead in the polls, is that of total one-party government.

If Democrats take the White House, appoint two or three new far-left Supreme Court judges to replace their ailing septuagenarians, and hold Harry Reid's U.S. Senate -- perhaps with a new, filibuster-proof majority -- it is only a braced-for-the-storm Republican minority in the House that stands in the way of the redistributionist juggernaut.

Barack Obama says he wants to raise taxes -- as much as a trillion dollars in new taxes, if he's to fund all the new programs he's promised -- "only" on those who pay 60 percent of the income taxes already. Want to see the current economic downturn converted into a massive, decade-long Depression as investment capital flees these shores en masse?

It won't matter whether Dina Titus personally seeks those outcomes. As a back-bench newcomer to a stronger Democratic majority, she'll be along for the ride; any doubt she may have will be swept away in the deluge.