Operation Chaos Scores Again - John McCain, Not So Much

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North Carolina Republican Party- Obama Ad



McCain Condemns Obama, Rev. Wright Ad



The North Carolina Republican Ad which points out Barack Obama's friendship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has gotten scads of attention over the last few days, most of it missing the point. Chief among the point-miss-ers is, as usual, John McCain who, sight unseen denounced it. McCain, of course never misses an opportunity to remind Republicans, who periodically try to forget, how much contempt he has for them. His criticism of the ad is empty and baseless. Listen to him becoming increasingly agitated in the clip, above and you'll notice that while he's railing against "the kind of ad that was put up by the North Carolina Republican party" he never actually says why he finds it to be so objectionable. Probably because there is nothing objectionable about it. It is a mere restatement of the fact that Obama has had a longstanding relationship with the racist Rev.

In fact the ad is ostensibly aimed at two Democratic gubernatorial candidates but if they were its real targets the ad would have to be considered a failure. Their connection to Obama and his relationship with Wright is too remote to have any effect on any rational voter. It is kind of like saying that you won't vote for Congressman X because his third cousin is a pedophile. There have to be better arguments against these guys.

Rush Limbaugh sees the ad as another beachhead in Operation Chaos' master plan, reminding voters why Obama is untrustworthy leading them into Hillary Clinton's camp. On these grounds Rush is probably right. The North Carolina Primary is May 6 and the timing of the ad is coincidental enough that it is likely no coincidence at all. McCain probably figures that coming out against the ad and slugging the Republicans will help him with Dems and Independents. He can't be blamed for doing something that will benefit him but somehow he always manages to do it at the expense of the rest of the Republican Party. This screw-you attitude may fit his personality and it may gain him some non-Republican votes but you have to wonder how much of this Republicans are willing to take. It is only April. Another seven months of the same and McCain may just find that he's picked up a few new friends and lost a lot more old.

Sister Toldjah also has her say on the matter.

Why I Am A Nazi - A Surprising Confession

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I have dreaded this moment for a long time, knowing that someday it would certainly come. But I am worn down, tired of the denials, tired of being defensive, trying to hide. The evidence has been mounting for a long time and I must face the facts and state the truth boldly and admit it to the world: I am a Nazi!

How do I know? Well many powerful and influential sources have been saying it for a long time. I've heard it from virtually any movie that even touched on a political topic or deals with social issues in any way. The liberal blogs tell me daily. I hear it from magazines, college professors and Democrats. I hear it from TV. For a long time I'd see people like me, who believe that the government's role should be far more limited than it is today but who believe that national defense is one of the those things government should be doing and that that defense should be muscular and effective, portrayed as goose-stepping Jew, Black, Gay killers. I've seen those of us who believe that the US has a right to defend its sovereignty, make and enforce laws respecting who gets to come and go, live and work in the US shown as being swastika-tattooed, zeig-heiling murderers. I resisted what the media has been saying about me for so long now but I've grown weary and after watching an episode of CBS's series, Cold Case last night I finally broke down and have accepted the fact that yes, I am a Nazi.

The episode in question, Spiders, revolves around Tamyra Border, an abused seventeen year old girl who we see in flashback because we find out that ten years ago she was murdered and the case has gone cold. She had run away from her abusive father who burned her with cigarettes and beat her. Desperate she falls into the arms of "Spider" Leland who befriends her and takes her home to stay with him, his mother and loner, Elliot Leopold, another apparently lost and sympathetic soul. Once having settled in and starting to feel comfortable with Spider he reveals the reason for his extending Tamyra his and his mother's sympathies: Spider wants to her to join his group which believes that laws should be enforced, the government should be smaller and illegal immigration is bad...just like I do. Oh yeah, he also doesn't believe the Holocaust ever happened and all manner of bad things should happen to Blacks, Gays, Jews, etc. none of which I agree with for even a nano-second but I've learned from years of being told by the media, if you believe in the first group of things, you also believe in the second. By the time Spider took off his top shirt revealing the swastika on the T-shirt underneath I knew what CBS was telling me: I'm a Nazi!

Well as it happens Spider was lucky enough to find an Hispanic woman whose car had broken down. She was, of course a lovely, sweet (we're made to assume) illegal immigrant whose son was hiding in the car, watching as Spider got out of his car and beat her unconscious. He gave Tamyra a gun and told her to shoot the Hispanic woman but Tamyra refused so Spider did it instead. Tamyra was brought back to Spider and Spider's Mom's where she tried to escape and go to the police. As it happens Mom, who is some sort of combination of Nurse Ratchett and the Wicked Witch of the West tells Tamyra that "You're either with us or against us" in killing those danged Hispanics. Well those are the exact same words that Republican President George W. Bush has so famously used. So it is obvious that George W. Bush and the Nazi mom think exactly alike!! And I voted for him! So, I'm a Nazi, too!

Well, I have to admit that I was a little confused here as no president has been more welcoming to illegal aliens than GWB has been. I mean I think that he's been far too lax in enforcing immigration laws, which I guess means I'm an even bigger Nazi than George W. Bush. Also, GWB has done more to prevent AIDS in Africa than any other president and is actually very popular in much of Africa, but still CBS said it so it must be so: he just wants to kill all those Hispanics and Blacks etc.

Nazi-mom also quoted Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, who said, "We can have no "50-50" allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all." Well, there you have it: Nazis just love Republicans and that's because Republicans are just like them. See? I'm a Nazi.

Well, ok it may be true that, as Jonah Goldberg points out in minute detail, in Liberal Fascism, Nazism is really a Left-Wing phenomenon, which was much admired by many people in FDR's administration and that anti-semitism is spreading like wildfire in all the strongholds of socialism in Europe and that it was Democrat, Jimmy Carter who, according to his own Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, was going to "sell Israel down the river" if he'd been reelected, but still: I'm a Nazi.

Oh yeah, as it turned out it was Elliot who turned out to have been Tamyra's murderer; had to kill her to shut her up. It turns out he wasn't so nice after all. In the present it seems he is one of those right-wing college economics professors. They're everywhere, you know.

So there you have it. It is irrefutable and I'm through protesting. I'm a Nazi. I must be. CBS told me so. But you want to know the only solace I have? I think you might just be a Nazi, too.

And The Winner Is...

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Tuesday, November 4, 2008:

Well it's been a long, hard-fought campaign but finally we're here at the finish line; Election Day, and boy are we here at McCain Central pumped! Oh sure, we've had our ups and downs along the way and yeah the polls don't look good, but hey, who believes polls anyway? We've fought like crazy for what we believe in and I know it is going to pay off BIG TIME.

The first couple of months after Senator McCain became the presumptive front runner were a little rough, of course. Those talk radio creeps just wouldn't cut the Senator a break even after he reached out to them. I'll never forget how proud I was when Senator McCain said, "Yeah, I heard that Limbaugh on the radio today. My friends, he sure can talk, eh? Hehe". It was like he was giving El Rushbo a great big hug. That's why I was so shocked when Rush kept on attacking my guy over illegal immigration and CAFE standards and global warming and Gitmo and ANWR and the Gang of 14 and all that other stuff. It was like he really didn't believe that Senator McCain is as conservative as Ronald Reagan. Why, the Senator was a foot soldier for Ronald Reagan, for goodness sake. I mean I heard him say so himself!

That's why I was so proud of him when he went to all the Republicans in the House and Senate, even the fifteen of them who weren't retiring this year and convinced them to speed the Fairness Doctrine through before the election. I was in the room with him when he told them all, "These guys are beating my head in and unless you a..holes (I love it when he's so direct, like that. Now that's leadership!) pass the G..damn Fairness Doctrine this party, this country and my G..damn campaign are going to go right down the crapper." That and the sort of crazed, I'll-break-you-in-half look on his face got them jumping his way, that's for sure.I understand that Rush, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and a bunch of others are getting together to form some sort of blog network but the Senator has beaten them to the punch and the Even More Fairness Doctrine is already making its way through the legislature. Blog this, you guys.

It was just about at that time that the Senator realized that his polls were never going to improve among conservatives, and he did what he always does, he reached out and made his big play for independents. I was there in the room with him again when he came up with the campaign slogan that's become a rallying cry, "About As Conservative As You'd Want". That let everybody know that he was their kind of conservative, you know, one who was kind of independent in his conservatism, sort of. I get chills hearing it even today.

One of my favorite moments was the day he made his vp choice just before the convention. Nobody in the party saw it coming when after his big build-up the Senator finally said, "Hehe, and he's got about a billions bucks, too, the rich bastard hehe. I'm proud to present my choice for running mate...Michael Bloomberg!" Oh yeah, the big shots in the party squirmed and screamed and everything just because Mayor Bloomberg wasn't a Republican anymore but Senator McCain had read all those newsmagazines about how Bloomberg was one of those new kind of politicians. All the network anchors and everybody said he was just great and besides since money wasn't exactly flooding in, if you know what I mean, Bloomie's deep pockets have really come in handy...like paying for the campaign-handy! Ha! That's what happens when you reach out. You get things done!

Of course Barak Obama's choosing former Marine, Senator James Webb wasn't a bad choice either, I suppose. It sort of killed our plan to make Obama out to be kind of a skinny pantywaist a central part of the campaign. But when the news got out (thanks ex-Senator Clinton!) that Senator Obama had been a drug "kingpin" for a year in his younger days we really made hay out of it. Of course the media said he turned it into a positive with his "The Audacity to Turn Dope into Hope" speech, but we know America didn't buy it, no matter what the polls said afterwards.

The debates were really something, too. That Obama guy thinks he's so smart. I don't care what the polls said after each of them and what the papers said either. I know that Senator McCain really brought it to him. I think everyone remembers the healthcare debate where Senator Obama pledged not only to provide universal healthcare but to extend it to everyone's (including illegal aliens', I mean immigrants') pets, too. Senator McCain delivered one of his best comebacks when he famously said, "Yeah, I've got a pet, Barak; a dog. You know what I named him? "Bite Me". Yeah, Bite Me, Obama, Bite Me hehe!" (I always enjoy the way he laughs at his own jokes, even if no one else does.) And remember when Senator Obama said that if Venezuela didn't start selling oil to the US again he'd bomb England? Senator McCain didn't even have to respond to that one. The look on his face said it all.

There were some disappointments along the way, of course. The media, for one. All the years John McCain had been in the Senate being a maverick and everything, the press loved him but just as soon as it becomes obvious that he's got the nomination all sewn up they start jumping all over him, as if he were just some regular old Republican. And when the New York Times endorsed Senator Obama, well let me tell you that was the first and only time I've seen a tear in the Senator's eye. Bunch of turncoats...

Well very soon now we'll show them all. I can hardly wait to see tomorrow's headlines. Boy is everybody in for a shock. Let's see, the polling places have just closed. Hmm. Where is everybody? They know the party is going to be held here...Maybe they're all coming together. Yeah, I bet that's it. I can hardly wait...


Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Late Edition Special:

Obama Romps! First Black President Wins In Greatest Landslide In American History!
Takes EVERY State and EVERY Town!
John McCain Says, "G..damn Conservatives!"

Things Fall Apart - How McCain Can Still Lose The Republican Nomination

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Super Tuesday has come and gone and the smoke has cleared leaving the landscape clear, with only one man left standing with any chance, mathematically, of gaining the Republican nomination: John McCain.Mitt Romney has bowed to reality; and with his grace and good sense in doing so spared the Party a now pointless competition. Mike Huckabee, of course, is still in but his candidacy is now more clearly seen for what it has always been, a route to the vice-presidency, not the presidency. Oh yes, Ron Paul is still in as well, acting as he has from the start, as a sort of political poultice, drawing out the poisons (conspiracy theorists and other whackos) in the Party.

McCain is now the presumptive nominee, the establishment is lining up behind him and the Democrats have already crafted a playbook on how to handle him in the general election. The Straight-Talk Express has now reached critical mass. But maybe not.

In all likelihood McCain will be the Republican nominee, but in politics, as in life in general, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over. And there are some troubling signs on the road ahead for the McCain candidacy. The Republicans start this election season off with a number of distinct disadvantages; attempting to follow an unpopular Republican president completing his second term; the memory of a corrupt, profligate Republican Congress that was swept from power only two short years ago, still fresh; a newly energized Democratic Party that is almost psychotic in its lust to get back into the Oval Office and, most damaging to the now apparent nominee, a candidate whom a large part of the Republican conservative base (and this is no exaggeration) loathes.

Due to the front-loading of this year’s primaries John McCain has wrapped up the nomination earlier than any other nominee in modern times. While this affords some opportunities, such as giving him time to assemble his general election policies and team, it also presents some possibly fatal difficulties as well. As stated earlier, the Democrats have more time to assemble their strategies for taking McCain apart and while McCain has always been the mainstream media’s favorite Republican, in a general election, against a Democrat the msm is going to go after him with the same vigor they do any Republican. And where a Republican would normally have the support of the so-called “alternative media” i.e. talk radio, the conservative blog-o-sphere etc., McCain’s years of treating the base with contempt has left it dispirited and frequently antagonistic to him.

Taking all of the above into consideration, the following scenario now becomes possible: With eight months to go before the Republican convention McCain, lacking an energized base and under constant assault in the press performs abysmally in national head-to-head polls with either of the two likely Democratic candidates and come September it is obvious that McCain is such a damaged and flawed candidate that it will be impossible for him to win the general election. The Party, in a desperate attempt to save themselves from a disaster of historic dimensions, does what it did when the writing was on the wall for Richard Nixon: they send a group of respected Republican emissaries to inform him that he must go. McCain, the bottom having dropped out of his campaign steps aside “for the good of my party and my country” and releases his delegates, thereby throwing the convention wide open.

Now this scenario is far more likely to occur if it becomes clear fairly soon that Barak Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton is so flawed as a candidate herself that polling is likely to show a fairly close race between her and McCain. But if Obama becomes the presumptive nominee within the next month or two, the enthusiasm of the Democratic base coupled with a press-in-love with him promises to reveal poll after poll of a Republican Armageddon.

Should this scenario play out, who would inherit the Republican nod? Mitt, perhaps? Fred Thompson? Someone who hasn’t been in the field yet at all perhaps. That would certainly make for an exciting convention and perhaps even set up the possibility of a Republican win.

Is any of the above likely? Not terribly but in this unusual political season which has been filled with the unexpected, I wouldn’t rule anything out just yet.

The Greatest Man Who Can Never Get My Vote

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By now the story is well known: John Sidney McCain III, son and grandson of Admirals, while serving as a naval pilot during the Vietnam War was shot down over that country in 1967 and captured by the Viet Cong. Injured on impact he remained a prisoner for five years, two of them in solitary confinement. He was frequently tortured. In response to this torment he gave only his name, rank and serial number. The North Vietnamese, in an overt propaganda ploy offered to release POW McCain after his father was named Commander of the Pacific Command, the communists hoping to show that America cared only for the sons of privilege. John McCain refused, stating he would stay unless every man captured before him was released first. The North Vietnamese refused. Lieutenant McCain did not return home for another four years.

John McCain is the very definition of an American hero. I have voted in every presidential election for the past twenty two years and each time I have voted for the Republican candidate. John McCain, hero, is now running to be the next Republican nominee for President and if he achieves his goal it will be without my vote. I will not vote for John McCain for president. If John McCain becomes the Republican nominee, for the first time in twenty two years I will not cast a vote for president.

You see, unfortunately while Senator McCain has great personal courage and is a truly great man he also has terrible political judgment and is an absolutely awful Republican. Awful. John McCain claims to be a conservative but on issue after issue he has proven that he is not. Senator McCain's departures from conservative principles are almost as well known as Lieutenant Commander McCain's courage.

• On campaign finance reform he was the author of and chief cheerleader for the McCain/Feingold Act, the main effect of which is to limit the public's free speech during elections.
• When President George W. Bush passed his landmark tax cuts in 2001 McCain was one of only two Republican Senators to vote against it. As he campaigns for president today he says that he voted against these tax cuts because they weren't accompanied by spending cuts, but the record of the time shows this is not the case. He said at the time he was voting against the tax cuts because they favored the rich. This is rhetoric right out of the Democratic lexicon. And even if the claim were true it shows an astonishing lack of understanding about the proven track record of tax cuts: they raise revenue due to the increase in economic activity they stimulate. Tax cuts do not require spending cuts "to pay for them." They "pay" for themselves.
• He was the leader of the notorious "Gang of 14" Senators whose compromise on the filibustering of judicial nominees left open the door for more of the same in the future.
• Most notoriously Senator McCain worked hand in hand with Mr. Liberal himself, Senator Ted Kennedy to try to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which was in effect the largest amnesty program in American history and whose effect would have been a massive increase in illegal immigration into the nation. It was only stopped by a tidal wave of protest from average Americans.

The list goes on and on, on issue after issue. And with each and every one of these very damaging and very un-conservative policies Senator McCain became more beloved by the blatantly liberal mainstream media, frequently being referred to in conservative circles as the New York Times' favorite Republican. At times it seems that McCain is ashamed to be a conservative and his attempt to cast himself as one is nothing more than a mask he feels he needs to wear so that he can capture the office he so desires.

Stubbornness can be a good quality in a president but when taken to an extreme it can also be a fatal flaw. John McCain does not like it when he doesn't get his way and his reputation for nastiness and condescension behind closed doors in the Senate is common Beltway talk. I will always remember when he lost the South Carolina primary to then Governor George W. Bush in 2000. He said that he believed some "dirty tricks" had been perpetrated against him by Bush. This belief was specious at best. His concession speech on that night was one of the most ungracious and most troubling political performances I have ever seen, filled as it was with rage and rancor. He looked like a man on the verge of losing control. On that night I knew that John McCain did not have the temperament to be president.

It is odd that a man who has so many of the qualities of greatness should have in equal measure, qualities that would make his ascension to the most powerful leadership role in the world a likely calamity.

I respect John McCain. I know that John McCain is a better man than I will ever be. And I will not vote for him for President. Senator John McCain is the greatest man who could never, will never get my vote.

Would/Would Not

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Back during the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan's presidency the question of what was or was not a conservative position was fairly easy to determine. Reagan, unlike the caricature constructed of him by an elitist, near monolithic press and a long-regnant Democratic party, was far from a shallow simpleton; in fact, in a very real sense he may have been the most prepared president in US history. Reagan had spent most of his life reading, writing, talking and thinking about how society is ordered, where it had failed and what principles were needed to be to be in place for a free and dynamic society to remain free and dynamic. The nascent conservative movement nurtured and grown by the likes of William F. Buckley, Whittaker Chambers, Barry Goldwater, William Rusher and all the others squabbled and debated their way to a generally consistent philosophy whose standard bearer Reagan became. It could be argued whether a certain position or policy was conservative or not but the answer could be found in the First Principles to which the (now established) Movement had pledged its fealty.

Well things have changed. After years of electoral success which saw opportunity shrivel into opportunism and a Republican Congress that, under the corrosive spell of Washington's many temptations seemed to morph more and more into that regnant Democratic party it had come to power to replace, what is and is not a conservative position has lost the clarity it once had.

So now we see a current Republican field of presidential candidates whose conservatism has left the public suspicious and dissatisfied. We have candidates who just a few short years ago held positions even they admit weren't conservative. We have candidates who seem very much commited to conservative principles on some issues but not at all on others, revealing a kind of ideological confusion we have all seen before to our dismay. And we have candidates whose sound-bites echo the worst impulses of Democratic demagogues. And we seem to have a Republican electorate that is as confused about the verities as politicians would like them to be.

This series of posts, "Would/Would Not" is going to attempt to answer some of the questions about what is and isn't conservative based on First Principles. It will be serious, it will be fun. It will raise the biggest issues and spend just as much time on the small. It will not attempt to be a Bible that demands anyone's loyalty, but hopefully a provocative discussion that might clear the thinking and blow away just the smallest bit of the fog that has floated in over the last few years, obscuring what had once been clear.

Coming soon: If Huckabee were guided by conservative principles he would...