McCain Launches Independent Run - Republicans Sit This One Out

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A Parody, But Just Barely

Senator John McCain has launched his Independent candidacy for President with just the kind of performance the media has been looking for in the former Republican: high-mindedly piling praise on also-ran Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. McCain was effusive in his praise of Senators Clinton and Obama saying,

I commend both Senators Obama and Clinton for the long, hard race they have run. Senator Obama has impressed many Americans with his eloquence and his spirited campaign. Senator Clinton has earned great respect for her tenacity and courage.

The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received. As the father of three daughters, I owe her a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach. I am proud to call her my friend. Pundits and party elders have declared that Senator Obama will be my opponent. He will be a formidable one. But I’m ready for the challenge, and determined to run this race in a way that does credit to our campaign and to the proud, decent and patriotic people I ask to lead.

The mainstream media was delighted with his lackluster delivery and the speech's tepid audience reception. On CBS, Jeff Greenfield said,

There's no energy here. There's no crowd behind him the way there was with Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. You see the slogan, 'A Leader You Can Believe In' that's designed to say 'I'm the Commander in Chief and Obama's credentials are weak.' But you can barely read the slogan because he's blocking it. Also, if you were the oldest candidate ever to run for president and you want to communicate a sense of dynamism, you want to surround yourself with energy, and that is not what happened in McCain's event last night.

It has also been reported that the five voters who really prefer a high-minded campaign as opposed to a lively one are impressed as well. Most exciting of all to the msm and to Democrats everywhere was the ease and actual pleasure with which McCain pounded his former party.

I have worked with the President to keep our nation safe. But he and I have not seen eye to eye on many issues. We’ve disagreed over the conduct of the war in Iraq and the treatment of detainees; over out of control government spending and budget gimmicks; over energy policy and climate change; over defense spending that favored defense contractors over the public good.

I disagreed strongly with the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the war in Iraq. I called for the change in strategy that is now, at last, succeeding where the previous strategy had failed miserably. I was criticized for doing so by Republicans. I was criticized by Democrats. I was criticized by the press. But I don’t answer to them. I answer to you. And I would be ashamed to admit I knew what had to be done in Iraq to spare us from a defeat that would endanger us for years, but I kept quiet because it was too politically hard for me to do. No ambition is more important to me than the security of the country I have defended all my adult life....

When members of my party refused to compromise not on principle but for partisanship, I have sought to do so. When I fought corruption it didn’t matter to me if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. I exposed it and let the chips fall where they may. When I worked on campaign finance and ethics reform, I did so with Democrats and Republicans, even though we were criticized by other members of our parties, who preferred to keep things as they were. I have never refused to work with Democrats simply for the sake of partisanship. I’ve always known we belong to different parties, not different countries. We are Americans before we are anything else.

Adding to the excitement was the reaction from the Right-Wing attack machine. Radio talker and hate monger Laura Ingraham had this to say,

As for McCain, God bless him, he simply does not inspire at the lectern. He looks bored and we feel bored. And while there were a few fun lines in his address, he still has the stiff "screen-lock" look reading the teleprompter. It's too bad that Obama capitalized on the "Change" brand because McCain is the one who needs it most: he needs a change in approach, a change in emphasis, a change in substance. McCain emphasized ending "partisan rancor" and boasted "I have never refused to work with Democrats...if I'm elected president the era of the permanent campaign will end." President Bush thought he could do the same by having Ted Kennedy write his education bill and by massively expanding Medicare. Look where that got him. Here's a clue: If you truly believe the left's agenda for America is destructive, working with Democrats ain't that honorable.

In response to Senator McCain's respectful treatment, presumptive nominee Obama responded,

My differences with him — my differences with him are not personal. They are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign, because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.

It’s not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.

It’s not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college, policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.

It’s not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians, a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn’t making the American people any safer.

So I’ll say this: There are many words to describe John McCain’s attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush’s policies as bipartisan and new, but “change” is not one of them.

(APPLAUSE)

“Change” is not one of them, because change is a foreign policy that doesn’t begin and end with a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

As is widely known, the Republican Party, unable to find a satisfactory conservative to carry the Reagan mantle, decided for the first time since running John C. Fremont for President in 1856 not to run a candidate for the highest office in the land.

It is unknown whether they ever will again.

Whom Gods Would Destroy - The Coming Republican Bloodbath

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A portent. An augury. An omen. You don't need a crystal ball or psychic ability to recognize that Tuesday's Republican House seat loss in Mississippi, the third such recent special election House loss in a previously safe Republican district is spelling out potential catastrophe for Republicans in November. Reid Wilson on Real Clear Politics spells out some of the very troubling behind-the-scenes reactions in Washington:

"The political environment is such that voters remain pessimistic about the direction of the country and the Republican Party in general," Cole continued. "I encourage all Republican candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, to take stock of their campaigns and position themselves for challenging campaigns this fall by building the financial resources and grassroots networks that offer them the opportunity and ability to communicate, energize and turn out voters this election."

Still, losing heavily Republican seats in the Deep South is a big blow to the Washington GOP. "To lose two Southern seats in two weeks, I mean, oh my God," the leadership aide said. The aide told Real Clear Politics that something new is going to happen at the NRCC. "People look at Cole, and they say, 'What are you going to do to change?' And if he doesn't want to change, change is going to be forced on him."

A top adviser to a Republican incumbent who has a difficult race in November already says his boss is not looking to the NRCC for the same help he got in 2006. "This chairman badly underestimated how important it is to have top-flight staff," the adviser said, adding that some NRCC staffers are "toiling" under supervisors with less campaign experience. "We had been planning all along to operate without much help from them."

The leadership aide suggested that a former NRCc chairman, Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, could take on a larger role in the coming months. Davis, who is retiring after this session of Congress, ran the committee earlier this decade and currently serves as chairman of the NRCC executive committee. The adviser suggested, instead, that the wounded NRCC presents an opportunity for other members of the caucus to help out their fellow Republicans with political action committee donations, setting up future advancement for themselves.

The troubling thing about this insider info is that while the Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall the only thing they seem to be able to think to do in response is fine-tune their campaign machinery. Well that's ok. You need to be well organized in order to win an election. What they seem not to understand is that you also need a message.


The reason Republicans are held in such low regard is that they went from being Bob Michel country-club Republicans to being Newt Gingrich rebel-young-Turk Republicans and then right back to being country clubbers again. They have become the epitome of big spending, out of touch pols, more interested in perks than people. What they need is a revitalized message built on Reagan-Gingrich style principles. It is probably too late at this point. You can't show up at the 11th hour and say "Forget the last ten years. Now we believe in something again." The credibility just isn't there.


While salvaging November may no longer be possible, it isn't too early to recommit to conservative policies as a foundation from which to run in future elections. The head of the ticket (John McCain - boo hiss) certainly isn't going to energize the base but the stirrings of some real commitment to conservative principles, even now, might be enough to save some House and Senate seats.


On Brit Hume's show on Fox tonight I saw House Minority Leader John Boehner saying that, yep, this is "another wake-up call." He looked awake alright but he didn't look like he knew what to do with his new found consciousness. I'm glad you're awake, Mr. Boehner, now please just act like a conservative. When you think about it, it isn't that much to ask for, is it?

Liberty Pundit shares in the disgust
And so does Below The Beltway

John McCain's "Base-less" Global Warming Speech

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John McCain had a good day today; no, John McCain had a great day today. He had the kind of day that he likes best, the kind that makes him smile and laugh that "Heh-Heh" laugh of his. McCain gave a speech that he knew would make people like me really unhappy with him.

McCain's speech on global warming, given in a windmill factory in Oregon, spelled out his "cap and trade" plan, which is ostensibly a free market approach to limiting CO2 emissions. Sadly, like most global warming schemes it a feel-good plan masquerading as reasoned policy. National Review Online editorialized against it today and hit on most of its very large flaws:

The Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) estimates that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime like the one discussed in this speech would cause about a one-percent reduction in GDP within five years. In less abstract terms, under that projection, by 2014 something like 1 million people would lose their jobs and the average American family would have about $150 less to spend every month. The costs would ramp up dramatically from there. In short, it would cost a lot. The U.N. IPCC estimates that unconstrained global warming is expected to cause damages equal to about 1-5 percent of global economic output about a century from now. William Nordhaus of Yale has estimated that the net benefit that would be created for the world by a perfectly implemented, globally harmonized carbon tax would be just under 0.2 percent of the present value of future global consumption. That presents a painfully thin margin for error, ignores the fact that costs will be disproportionately borne by the U.S., and does not bear much resemblance to the rhetoric of crisis that Sen. McCain uses in his speech.

It is highly unlikely that we could ever realize this theoretical benefit. Nobody has any realistic plan to get China and India to reduce emissions, and without doing so the costs of cap-and-trade to the U.S. would be dramatically greater than the benefits. Even if we could get the developing world to go along, the theoretical benefits that such a regulatory regime might create would, in the real world, be more than offset by the economic drag that would be created by the side deals required to get China, India, and the U.S. ethanol lobby, among many others, to go along with it.

Well, that's ok because McCain knows just what he'll do in relation to those countries that don't go along: nothing:

The scariest sentence in the speech was: “If the efforts to negotiate an international solution that includes China and India do not succeed, we still have an obligation to act.” This is posturing in the place of thought. It puts us in the worst possible negotiating position, and confirms that Sen. McCain is not engaging practically with the costs and benefits of his own policy. It indicates a foolish willingness to sacrifice trillions of dollars on the altar of fashionable, though uniformed, opinion and political expediency.

This is climate stupidity of Al Gore-ean proportions. It is harmful to the economy, won't accomplish its stated goals and diverts our attention from policies that might be sound.
But this is all about cynical calculation and has little to do with sound policies, anyway. McCain figures if he acts the maverick and annoys people like me, it will attract Independents away from Obama in the general election. Thinking as he does, he sees no way he can lose here. He'll get great press and while it is an extreme policy, Obama's response will attack it as being basically, not extreme enough. McCain figures he can live with that.

Apparently he believes that even though folks like me (and probably you) may throw our slippers at him whenever we see him on TV, on election day we'll still vote for him rather than Obama while at the same time he's attracting enough Independents to win. His calculation has a flaw, of course. Just because we'll never vote for Obama doesn't mean that we will vote for him. If he's going to give the finger to his base he may just find out that the base will give him the finger right back.

He's going to need a whole lot of Independents to make up for our loss.

Also discussing: Hot Air, A Newt One, Gina Cobb

Barack, You're No Dan Quayle [And NO, That's Not A Good Thing]

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So Barack Obama doesn't know how many states are in the United States. Well. Ordinarily I might be willing to cut him a little slack and say that he was tired and misspoke but the Democrats have made very clear that when a Republican says something stupid there can be no explanation except that he is a fool. They've made an entire industry out of cutting no slack for these guys, publishing books of malapropisms and factual gaffes, web site filled with mockery, etc. So I'm sure they would have it no other way than to have their guys judged by the same standards. So, let me say here and now that Barack Obama is a maroon, an ignoramus and a twit. And when thinking of such things I am, of course immediately reminded of the original village idiot, Dan Quayle. Well, I've never thought of Quayle this way (I've always liked and admired Quayle) but the Dems and the media have been working overtime to portray him that way for more than a decade.

This Obama/Quayle confluence got me thinking: how exactly do these two guys stack up against each other? As we've already established using Democrat rules, they're both twits, so the best way to judge them would have to be by seeing how much and what quality experience each has. Hmmm. Let's see, here's a quick look at Quayle:

QUAYLE, James Danforth (Dan), a Representative and a Senator from Indiana and a Vice President of the United States; born in Indianapolis, Marion County, Ind., February 4, 1947; attended the public schools of Phoenix, Ariz., and Huntington, Ind.; graduated, DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind., 1969; graduated, Indiana University, Indianapolis 1974; admitted to the Indiana bar in 1974 and commenced practice in Huntington; served in the Indiana National Guard 1969-1975; associate publisher of the Huntington Herald Press; elected as a Republican to the Ninety-fifth Congress in 1976; reelected to the Ninety-sixth Congress (January 3, 1977-January 3, 1981); was not a candidate in 1980 for reelection to the House of Representatives, but was elected to the United States Senate; reelected in 1986 and served from January 3, 1981, until January 3, 1989, when he resigned to become Vice President of the United States; chairman, Select Committee to Study the Committee System (Ninety-eighth Congress); elected Vice President of the United States in 1988 with President George Herbert Walker Bush and was inaugurated January 20, 1989; unsuccessful candidate for reelection as Vice President in 1992; is a resident of Paradise Valley, Ariz.

Wow. Kind of impressive. But certainly the Obamessiah has a resume that will put Quayle to shame. Let's look here:

OBAMA, Barack, a Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.

Huh? Wait a second. How is this possible? Dan Quayle had sixteen years of national-level political experience before he made his aborted run for the Presidency (which was generally mocked)? And Obama has three? Well, obviously Quayle's many years must be empty, petty, partisan years while Obama's shorter time must be filled with accomplishments and "bringing people together. Let's see; first Quayle:

His assignments on the Labor and Human Resources Committee (and its subcommittee, Employment and Productivity, which he has chaired) and on the Senate Armed Services Committee give him perspective on both domestic and foreign policy. Quayle wrote several defense-procurement-reform measures, one of which recommended a Pentagon czar to oversee defense purchasing, a measure later supported by President Reagan's blue-ribbon procurement-reform panelthe Packard commission-and now a reality. Interestingly, Quayle frequently allied himself with Carl Levin, the liberal Democratic senator from Michigan, in trying to eliminate waste and fraud at the Pentagon.

Along with Ted Kennedy, Quayle co-sponsored the 1982 Job Training and Partnership Act (JTPA), which passed not only the Senate but also the House, and which is now law. JTPA replaced the failed make-work Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) program in providing work skills to the hard-to-employ.

Quayle was JTPA's prime mover. As he had with Levin, Quayle worked with Kennedy to develop the measure, introduce it, and manage the entire process in collaboration with Reagan's Department of Labor. "He brought them all along-Metzenbaum, Simon, Hatch, Humphrey," says a Hill insider. "Quayle's the only one on that committee who could reach across lines. Hatch has a hard time doing it-I mean, playing honest broker. Likewise Humphrey." Of Quayle's politics, this source adds: "Despite his press image, he's rational, and fairly moderate. No one who's seen Dan Quayle in action classifies him as a hard-core conservative ideologue." In 1982, Quayle was the first senator to introduce a comprehensive tax-reform plan, beating to the punch New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley. On environmental issues like soil conservation, the Clean Water Act (he voted to override Reagan's veto), and expansion of wilderness lands, Quayle has been in the vanguard.

In the child-care debate, Representative Tom Tauke (R., Iowa) crafted a consensus conservative alternative to the bill of Senator Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), trying to head off Dodd's massive federal day-care bureaucracy. By no means a pioneer in child care himself, Quayle had the good sense to sponsor the Tauke measure in the Senate. On the basis of this bill, plus the Labor Department's valuable taskforce study (commissioned by the able and prescient Secretary of Labor, Ann McLaughlin), George Bush fashioned a compromise proposal to meet the child-care needs of families where the mothers stay at home, as well as those of families where the mothers work.

Another legislative activity that gives insight into Quayle is his work as ranking Republican on the Labor subcommittee dealing with pensions-that dry-as-dust, extremely complex workforce subject that is both critically important and intolerably boring. Quayle, for example, introduced the Pension Portability Law. "It's not an issue for lightweights," says a ranking Labor Department bureaucrat (not the Secretary). "Quayle is seen as articulate, hard-working, and capable of dealing with very complicated legislative fine print." This month's Pension and Investment Age credits Quayle with an active role in the pension arena, notably in the production of the important 1987 Pension Protection Act.

WHAT HIS 12 years on Capitol Hill tell us about Quayle is that, perhaps more than anything else, he is a deal-cutter. Skilled and pragmatic, Quayle is not unlike Dole in this respect, though he is not quite as smart as Dole. Quayle's father is right when he says, "Dan's quite a salesman." In the Hill context, "negotiator" might be a better word, or "consensus-builder"-which, come to think of it, would put him beyond Dole.

What? Quayle wasn't a "lightweight" and actually worked with Dems to build a consensus? How can this be?

Well if the man most mocked by Dems has this much going for him Obama must just blow Quayle's quality of accomplishment out of the water. Let's take a look:

Hillary Clinton has been trying to make a point about Barack Obama that deserves one last careful look before Tuesday's probably decisive Democratic primaries: If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or aptitude for the hard work of bipartisan government?

This is the real "where's the beef?" question about Obama, and it still doesn't have a good answer. He gives a great speech, and he promises that he can heal the terrible partisan divisions that have enfeebled American politics over the past decade. And this is a message of hope that the country clearly wants to hear.

But can he do it? The record is mixed, but it's fair to say that Obama has not shown much willingness to take risks or make enemies to try to restore a working center in Washington. Clinton, for all her reputation as a divisive figure, has a much stronger record of bipartisan achievement. And the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, has a better record still.

Obama's argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that "yes, we can" break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles in the past. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.

What I hear from politicians who have worked with Obama, both in Illinois state politics and here in Washington, gives me pause. They describe someone with an extraordinary ability to work across racial lines, but not someone who has earned any profiles in courage for standing up to special interests or divisive party activists. Indeed, the trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.

Obama worked on some bipartisan issues, such as a state version of the earned-income tax credit, after he was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. But he also gained a reputation for skipping tough votes. The most famous example was a key gun-control vote that he missed in December 1999 because he was vacationing in Hawaii. The Chicago Tribune blasted him and several other vote-skippers as "gutless." One Chicago pol says that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone."

Obama's brash self-confidence led him into his only big political blunder. Prodded by the Daley machine, he challenged Bobby Rush, an incumbent Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, in 2000. Rush pounded Obama by more than 2-1in the primary. "He was blinded by his ambition," Rush told The New York Times last year.

Obama has been running for president almost since he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2005, so his Senate colleagues say it's hard to evaluate his record. But what stands out in his brief Senate career is his liberal voting record, not a history of fighting across party lines to get legislation passed. He wasn't part of the 2005 "Gang of 14" bipartisan coalition that sought to break the logjam on judicial nominations, but neither were Clinton or other prominent Democrats. He did support the bipartisan effort to get an immigration bill last year, winning a plaudit from McCain. But he didn't work closely with the White House, as did Sen. Edward Kennedy.

What? Obama is a village idiot whose record doesn't stand out for its brilliance,

But what stands out in his brief Senate career is his liberal voting record, not a history of fighting across party lines to get legislation passed.

? How can this be? By looking at the record it is obvious that Dan Quayle (Dan Quayle??) was and is a more accomplished legislator and was more likely to have made a better President than Barack Obama ever will.

Wow. Wait till the media finds out. Boy, I bet they'll really tear Obama apart. Right?

Just Call Him Lucky

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Word is that John McCain is one superstitious guy, in which case this year he must have spent more time looking for his "lucky pen", checking his "lucky compass" and tenderly massaging his "lucky feather" than campaigning. Nobody is luckier than McCain these days. Just a short time ago he was persona non grata on the Right, Mr. Illegal Immigration and "that Maverick", a term said with glee by the msm but with venom by the Republican base.

Today he's the presumptive Republican nominee and with the Democratic nominees ripping each other to shreds in a mad dash to see who can go the furthest to the Left the fastest, he's starting to look like he might even win in November.

The Politico reports on how McCain is proving to be the recipient of all the bad luck that has befallen all of his rivals. At this point in the race McCain doesn't have to do much of anything to nail down his base and bring Independents to his side. With each effective whacking Hillary gives Obama and Obama gives back the voters are becoming more and more disenchanted with each of them. Conservatives aren't really paying him much attention as the sheer awfulness of Obama/Clinton makes any Republican look good. And John McCain is certainly any Republican. Through nothing but sheer luck he's managed to go from nobodies first choice to the only choice.

But before conservatives start breathing a sigh of relief that their guy isn't either of the Democrats they should remember all the things about McCain that, should he win, will leave them let down frequently and profoundly. From immigration to the environment to campaign finance reform to the peculiar joy he seems to take in sticking it to his own supporters John McCain is sure to go his own way and that way is often not our way.

So before we let take too much joy in the latest Democratic scuffle we should not forget that while John McCain may be nothing but lucky this year the same can't be said for conservatives. No matter what happens this November, over the next four years conservatives are going to have to make their own luck. Anybody have any lucky feathers?

The Vice-Squad!

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Did you ever meet someone and pretty much didn't like them right away; you know there was just something about them that turned you off? And then, after getting to know them you found out that, well maybe you were wrong. You might have actually found out that you really like them! That's what John McCain and Mitt Romney are making believe is happening to them right now. Mitt is in mid-faux-swoon and McCain is enjoying the attention of "the jerk".

While they were campaigning against each other earlier this year, the lack of chemistry between these two was pretty pronounced. And their individual campaign organizations loathed each other. But time marches on and needs change and Mitt has let it be known that he'd accept the Vice Presidential nod if offered and is doing everything in his power to turn himself into McCain's new best friend. According to this AP report, while out on the campaign trail with McCain in Salt Lake City and Denver yesterday Mitt said of McCain,

"He is a man who is proven and tested" and without question the
right man to be president."

And Senator McCain, also feeling magnanimous said this of Romney's primary win in Utah (He won by 90%):

"Look, that wasn't the only state I lost to Governor Romney in — it
was just the largest loss."

The love now flows like water. The fact is Romney wouldn't be a bad choice as VP for McCain at all. Despite his rather rocky path to being a true-blue conservative, Mitt seems to have arrived and would probably be acceptable to most conservatives, helping McCain prop up the base, which is a continuing problem for him. Mitt would also help in the Northeast, an always difficult area for Republicans. He's smart, handsome and usually quick on his feet. Oh yeah and he looks like a President.

Another often mentioned possible VP pick is Florida Governor , Charlie Crist; helpful in Florida but he doesn't excite conservatives much. One of the lamer names I've heard floated is South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham or as Rush Limbaugh calls him, Senator Gramnesty. John McCain can be awfully dumb when it comes to appealing to conservatives. A Graham pick would prove him to be deaf and blind, too.

If McCain looks at the VP pick as a strategic matter he'll see that what he needs is a strong conservative with appeal in places that Republicans often have little. This brings us back to the coquettish Governor Romney. McCain could (and knowing him, probably will) do worse.

Oh, and as sort of an afterthought: I'd say that the chances of an Obama/Clinton ticket are looking less likely with every passing "He sucks and besides, he's a Negro" from Hillary and Bill. I attended a National Review function a few months ago in which Jonah Goldberg, Mark Steyn and Rob Long spoke. Jonah threw out the possibility of Virginia Senator Jim Webb as a running mate for Obama: war hero, former Republican, southerner. Could be formidable.

Cross-linked at Liberty Pundit

Where She's Headed?

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David Brooks' latest column, The Long Defeat does a pretty good job of summarizing the Democrats' current predicament. While the numbers at this point make it a near impossibility for Hillary to win (Brooks puts it at about 5%), her massive ego won't let her do the rational thing and pull out. Brooks does a good job of getting inside Hillary's head and looking at the situation from her perspective:

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the
logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

You can almost hear Hillary thinking, "I stayed married to that bum and went through all this crap and all I got was this crummy Senate seat?" She is simply not equipped to handle such a possibility and so she will persevere and slash and burn Obama, using the race card like Lester Maddox on speed and level charges of dishonesty and corruption and whatever else a drowning woman can get her hands on to shove him out of the way and grab at that golden 5% chance.

In fact Hillary already has become Mike Huckabee pumped up with female hormones. Huckabee's pointless end campaign looks smart compared to Hillary's current moves. He kept on well after it made any kind of mathematical sense, without tearing and ripping at the de-facto nominee's coat-tails, trying to prove that even with the odds stacked completely against him, he still could pull votes. In truth, Huckabee's behavior made sense for a guy who was hoping to make a case for the Vice Presidential slot or to remain viable for 2012 or 2016.

Hillary's intransigence is pointless and very soon she will start to seem like Howard Beale of Network fame, mad with no sense of [her] own mental deterioration. Liberals who are so eager to patholigize every behavior might be interested in this analysis of Hillary by Dr. Paul Lowinger, who says of her that she was,

"...dowdy-looking... wearing a misshapen brown dress-like
thing...to hide her lumpy body..fat ankles and thick calves covered with black hair...wide feet...hair on her toes...a definite odor of
perspiration...greasy hair...eyes bulged out of focus... dark thick eyebrow which crossed ...her forehead..." Gennifer describes Hillary as, "...a fat frump...hair hanging down...big thick glasses...ugly dress...a big fat butt...behaving oddly...buzzing around." Bill's mother Virginia, another rivalrous Southern woman had a similar if more muted response when she met Hillary, "No makeup. Coke-bottle glasses. Brown hair with no apparent style."

This is Cinderella before the arrival of the Fairy Godmother and Prince
Charming when the dirty and ragged char girl is transformed into a Princess: influential attorney, policy leader, cultural icon, intellectual, author, mother and a styled First Lady. Why dredge up the sludge then? Because beside the Oedipal, sadomasochistic, frigid and over controlled Hillary is the needy little girl, beautiful and worthy who is searching for love.

Hillary is on the verge of having the glass slipper pulled away forever. Cinderella is about to morph into Howard Beale. Even for those of us who are anything but Hillary fans, this could be painful to watch.



Cross-linked at Liberty Pundit

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!"

John McCain: The Perfect Storm

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Tonight, while watching the evening news I saw something distlinctly surreal: There on the screen was Senator John McCain speaking to the press. He was explaining how he was going to unite conservatives behind him. Nodding in agreement and literally behind him was Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democratic John Kerry's running mate four years ago. Ironically Senator McCain had seriously considered being Kerry's running mate before political and other calculations made him reconsider, leaving the door open for Lieberman. This little scenario is emblematic of one of the reasons John McCain won't be President and why the Movement Conservatives are in almost full revolt at the very idea. Any Republican who could for even a moment entertain being the running mate for the ultra-liberal Kerry can't be a conservative.


But McCain's being widely known as liberals' favorite Republican and his long history of sticking his finger in the eyes of conservatives whenever it suits him (an action in which he always seems to take a smirking glee) are only two of three factors which with a third, his notoriusly thin skin and short fuse form a perfect storm of behaviour and character traits that cause him to be utterly undeserving of conservative support and likely to be a disaster as President should he somehow manage to win that most important of offices.


McCain has said more things that are and should be concerning to conservatives than almost any other Republican with the possible exceptions of former Republican Senators Lincoln Chaffee and Jim Jeffords. Just a sampling: According to the Boston Globe in April, 2004 and then confirmed by McCain himself two days later to Chris Mathews on Hardball, McCain declared, "I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problem with it, their views and their philosphy."


In a January 2000 debate Senator McCain, sounding to all the world like he was lifting his lines from the Democratic talking points said, "“I have never engaged in class warfare. I am very much in favor of tax cuts for middle-income and lower-income Americans. I’m deeply concerned about a kind of class warfare that’s going on right now. It’s unfortunate. There’s a growing gap between the haves and have-nots in America, and that gap is growing, and it’s unfortunately divided up along ethnic lines. I feel very strongly that we ought to have middle-income and lower-income tax cuts, and we’ll be getting into it, I’m sure, later on in this program. Mine are basically comparable to Gov. Bush’s, in some cases far better. But I’m not sure we need to give two-thirds of that tax cut, of that money, to the wealthiest 10% of America.” Although he now says that he was one of only two Republicans to vote against the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 because he was interested in having them accompanied by spending cuts, the above quote is representative of what he was actually saying at the time.


Although now denying he supports amnesty for illegal immigrants Senator McCrain the co-author of the Kennedy/McCain Immigration bill in a May 29, 2003 interview said, "Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens."


The mainstream media and Democrats have, of course loved this kind of talk and have helped to make Senator McCain a star. In their recent endorsement of him the New York Times said, "Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe." And why wouldn't they be thrilled with Senator McCain? He is their kind of Republican. And according to John Kerry, McCain almost became his kind of Democrat as can be seen in this interview with the liberal blog MyDD:

Jonathan Singer (of MyDD): There’s a story in The Hill, I think on Tuesday, by Bob Cusack on the front page of the paper talking about how John McCain’s people — John Weaver — had approached Tom Daschle and a New York Congressman, I don’t remember his name, about switching parties. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what your discussions were with him in 2004, how far it went, who approached whom… if there was any “there” there.
John Kerry: I don’t know all the details of it. I know that Tom, from a conversation with him, was in conversation with a number of Republicans back then. It doesn’t surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as Vice President. So his people were active — let’s put it that way."


As if these disturbing points aren't enough, there is also the problem of McCain's temperment. According to Newmax.com, in a July 5, 2006 interview former Sen. Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican who served with McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee said, "I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues and exploded at colleagues . . . He would disagree about something and then explode. It was incidents of irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that." But such stories are legion with Senator McCain. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ... said in a recent interview that he was so upset by a McCain tirade that he didn't speak to him "for a couple of years." McCain got in his face and shouted an obscenity at him. Senator Thad Cochran R - Miss. gave the following as the reason he was supporting Mitt Romney over McCain in the current race, "The thought of him being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Cochran said. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."


Some have suggested that McCain's often irrational temper is an after-effect of his five long years as a Vietnamese prisoner of war but such seems not to be the case as his military records indicate his temper was a problem before his captivity. Perhaps that very temper is one of the reasons he was able to survive captivity. In that situation, maybe unbridled rage was the difference between life and death. The Washington political environment may often be compared to war but it seems to me that rage is not one of the best weapons a President needs in his arsenal.


Tomorrow is Super Tuesday after which, all Senator McCain's media friends (and Senator McCain) are telling us, he will become the presumptive nominee. They may be right. If so, the Republican Party may soon come to regret their decision. Oh, and as for all Mr. McCain's "friends" in the media and the Democratic Party, I think he will soon see that after they've helped secure his nomination they'll turn around and treat him will all the disdain they always treat Republicans. He may be their favorite Repbulican but any Republican, even one as eager to please as Senator McCain will be thrown overboard in a heartbeat when the choice is between him and a real Democrat.


For a conservative, John McCain, Republican standard bearer is the bitterest of pills. The only question that may remain after November of this year is, "How do we pick up the pieces?"

Call Me Irresponsible

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A number of years ago, during another Presidential election cycle I was talking to a co-worker about the impending vote. She was explaining to me that she always votes and that she is very serious about it, taking all the candidate’s positions into account before making up her mind. The one issue that trumped all others for her however, was a candidate’s position on abortion. No matter what else a candidate stood for, if he or she was not in favor of abortion, did not support Roe vs. Wade, they would not get her vote. On this, what was obviously to her the great moral issue of our time, she would stand her ground come what may. On a hunch I decided to examine her thinking on this just a bit and asked her what she actually thought would happen should the “worst case scenario” happen and Roe vs. Wade were to be overturned? She looked at me a bit suspiciously before regaining her poise and moral haughtiness and responded, “Abortion would become illegal.” I had thought that’s what she would say. Just to make sure I’d gotten her right I asked, “You mean all abortions in America would immediately be banned?" Without hesitation she confidently replied, “Yes”.

Her composure began to slip as I told her, “That’s not what would happen at all. If Roe is overturned, nothing would happen immediately. The issue would go back to the states where each one would decide it. The ultimate result would probably be that it would remain legal in some states, illegal in others and legal with some degree of restrictions in yet others.
You have based every vote you’ve cast on an issue you don’t understand at all, which means every vote you’ve cast has been uninformed.”

At this point her composure had disappeared altogether to be replaced by a prickly defensiveness and the assertion that I was wrong. I told her to research it and she’d see that I was right. I knew she wouldn’t bother and dropped it.

*SIGH*

My little encounter with my morally righteous but factually impaired co-worker wouldn’t be particularly compelling if it were just an aberration, one woman’s lack of civic preparedness. But it is not. In America today, with (thanks to the internet) mountains of information literally a finger-tap away there are still millions of people stepping into the voting booth without a clue.

In 2006 only twenty-eight percent of Americans could name two of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Other recent polls reveal similar findings: Only twenty-four percent knew the names of two of the nine Supreme Court justices. One third of us can’t name a single branch of the Federal Government. And disturbingly, almost fifty percent of Americans under thirty have late night comedy shows as their major source of news.

Try an experiment: ask some relatives, co-workers, friends to name the US Attorney General; if pollution is getting better or worse in the US (correct answer: better), the difference between Congressmen and Senators, what does the Federal Reserve do? The likelihood of getting a large number of correct answers is small, very small.

The public is forever complaining about government, about how it is inefficient, expensive, wasteful, etc but the gross ignorance of the electorate calls into question who deserves more of the blame for the deficiencies of the government; the people’s elected representatives or the people themselves?

The founding fathers were aware of the importance of a well informed electorate. James Madison wrote, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." "The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents," Thomas Jefferson said. "There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information."

Voting is a right but all too frequently when people exercise that right they do so without the recognition that nothing comes free, including their constitutional rights. Attendant to our rights is our responsibility to exercise them responsibly. My pro-abortion co-worker was very eager to vote, but she did so like an overweight person who orders the most caloric selection on the menu, showing no responsibility and obliviously complaining about the unpleasant results of her actions.

So when next you hear someone complaining about the “mess in Washington” you might want to ask them a few simple civics questions. When they come up dry, you could remind them that as Shakespeare said, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…”. But if you do be ready, because you may have to explain who Shakespeare is, too.