2010 : Page 49 : The Other McCain

‘By Any Means Necessary’

Posted on November 18, 2010November 18, 2010Comments

“Willow Palin is a 16 year old girl who, like all 16 year olds is going to make mistakes and say things she shouldn’t have. . . . Apparently, it’s only a ‘homophobic slur’ when it comes from the daughter of a conservative female leader. Make no mistake; this is all about destroying Sarah Palin by any means necessary.”
— Tammy Bruce, GOProud

Having begun to address the matter of Andrew Sullivan, let me turn to the important question of motive.

Why did Sully become so obsessed with destroying Sarah Palin that, within four days of her announcement as John McCain’s 2008 running mate, he posted nine times in regard to the Trig Truther rumors? Occam’s Razor directs us to the simplest answer: Pure politics.

What you see here is the chart of the Real Clear Politics poll average for the 2008 presidential campaign, showing that by Sept. 8, the McCain-Palin ticket was leading by 2.9 points — with the RCP average for the Republican ticket (48.3) on that date being the highest poll showing of McCain vs. Obama at any point during the entire campaign, even before either candidate had won his party’s nomination.

When Sarah Palin’s name was announced as the GOP vice-presidential candidate on Sept. 29, Andrew Sullivan saw what everyone saw: Here was a potential game-changer.

John McCain was the worst Republican presidential nominee since Gerald Ford. Old, short, bald and grumpy are not high on the list of characteristics any consultant would cherish a presidential candidate.

Sure, he had that Vietnam POW thing going for him, but (a) that was more than three decades ago, (b) the “Republican war-hero” factor hadn’t helped Bob Dole in ’96 or Bush Sr. in ’92, (c) Bush Jr. had mopped the floor with McCain in 2000, and (d) hey, did I mention old, short, bald and grumpy?

With one decision, however, McCain changed the calculus of the campaign. Everybody understood the dynamic: In defeating Hillary Clinton, Team Obama had alienated many independent women voters — and not a small number of loyal Democrats who continued to oppose Obama under the PUMA (“Party Unity, My Ass”) banner.

One of those PUMAs was my lesbian friend Cynthia Yockey. Her last hope as a feminist Democrat was that Obama would pick Hillary as his running mate. Instead, the nod went to Joe Biden and when McCain picked Palin — well, Sarah had Cynthia at “hello.”

And, mirable dictu, the same was true of the Republican Party’s conservative base, which had hitherto been less than enthusiastic. As I reported, Sarah Palin instantly became the “Sweetheart of the Heartland“:

LEBANON, Ohio — Janet Stefanopoulos drove 30 miles from Cincinnati to attend yesterday’s presidential campaign rally here, but it wasn’t the man at the top of the ticket that brought her out on a rainy Tuesday morning.
“I want to see Sarah Palin,” said Stefanopoulos, a retired nurse and staunch Republican who had favored Fred Thompson in the primaries. “I was a lukewarm McCain [supporter] until he picked her. I mean, I would have voted for him, but now I’m fired up. . . . She is what I would like my children to be.” . . .

Oh, yes, I remember the cheering crowd of thousands who turned out on that rainy Tuesday morning in Ohio:

Sarah Palin was a role model who inspired the dreams of millions and, by the week after the Republican convention, she had boosted the GOP ticket to a 10-point advantage among like voters in a Gallup poll.

Sarah Palin’s potential to change the dynamic of the 2008 campaign was, as I say, obvious from the moment her name was announced. And so, for purely political reasons, Andrew Sullivan set out to destroy her.

“By Any Means Necessary.”

UPDATE: It’s those “bitter clingers,” you see, who are shooting up their TV sets in Wisconsin. But Jimmie Bise makes an important point here:

I mean, he could have gotten just as enraged had be seen any spoiled politician’s daughter who had wrangled her way into a position that she would never have earned save for her last name.

Hmmmmm. Who could he mean by that? Never mind. Fingers Malloy attempts an intervention:

Listen, this whole Bristol Palin on Dancing with the Stars thing – yeah we need to talk.

(Via Amato Activists Daily.)

A. Because I’m Not Ann Coulter

Posted on November 17, 2010Comments

Q. Why don’t I try to get away with writing stuff like this?

Last year, a Muslim attempting to murder Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia blew himself up with a bomb stuck up his anus. Fortunately, this didn’t happen near an airport, or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would now be requiring full body cavity searches to fly.

Read the whole thing. There is only one Ann Coulter. If there were eight more of her, she’d be the Supreme Court — in your dreams.

Lies, Damned Lies and Liberalism

Posted on November 17, 2010November 17, 2010Comments

Michael Zak pushes back against political correctness:

Today, Steve Kornacki, news editor at Salon, published a lengthy denunciation of the Republican Party, and of Rush Limbaugh specifically, on the subject of civil rights The title of the article is Dittoheads, race and denial. Kornacki makes a pretense of setting the record straight about the civil rights movement, but instead he imparts his own lefty spin. . . .

Read the whole thing. It’s amazing that, rather than debate the serious policy questions currently confronting us — which generally have nothing at all to do with race or racism or race relations — liberals insist that The Real Truth is to be found in re-hashing arguments from 1876 or 1964 or some other time in the distant past.

There are still 5 A’s in “raaaaacism!”

Andrew Sullivan: Does the Phrase ‘And the Horse You Rode In On’ Ring a Bell?

Posted on November 17, 2010November 18, 2010Comments

“Here’s Robert Stacy McCain rushing to Willow’s defense . . . Maybe I should defer to McCain as an arbiter of homophobia. He’s one of the vilest bigots on the web.”
— Andrew Sullivan

OK, post-election flame-wars being The New Black, I’m happy at last to have an antagonist who (a) hates all Republicans and (b) throws some pretty hefty traffic. Because when I completely dismantle someone, it’s nice to have the largest possible audience for the show.

My plan for the afternoon had been to compose a thousand-word article about the defeat of the Paycheck Fairness Act, but if I have to lay that aside to write an analysis of Patient Zero in the Palin Derangement Syndrome pandemic, so be it.

Pop some popcorn, hit the tip jar, and check back later.

UPDATE: Let’s begin at the most obvious place — Sullivan’s role as Trig Truther-in-Chief.

It was Sully who, almost from the moment that Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s 2008 running mate, lent aid and comfort to the demented loons who claimed without any credible evidence that Palin’s infant son Trig was not actually her son.

Even after every reputable journalist in America had denounced this line of inquiry as misguided, counterfactual and insultingly sexist, Sully persisted until at last — in November 2009 — there arose a new voice in the argument:

To this day, I have no idea who was behind the “Sarah Palin’s Uterus” blog, but it was a perfect distillation of Sullivan’s pathological obsession, which led me to dub him “Dr. Andrew Sullivan, M.D., OB-GYN, excecutive director of research at the Atlantic Memorial Center for Republican Obstetric Investigation.”

Although it has made him an object of ridicule, still he continues to foment the notion that there must be some dark right-wing secret hidden in the medical records relating to “Palin’s bizarre story about her fifth campaign prop.”

“Legitimate questions of fact! Relevant questions!”

How, then, does Sullivan consider himself such a mental health expert that he is fit to diagnose me as suffering from a “phobia”?

UPDATE II: Sully’s obsession has no legitimate basis as journalism, as my friend (and occasional Daily Dish guest-blogger) Dave Weigel said:

Were Sarah Palin to become president and everything the Trig Truthers believed to be proven right, it wouldn’t matter at all. But they won’t be proven right. All of the evidence indicates that Trig Palin is Sarah’s son, and none of it suggests otherwise. I paid close enough attention to this in 2008, and realized pretty quickly that the countervailing theories made no sense.

UPDATE III: Excuse the long delay in continuing this post, as my crusty laptop overheated and shut down while I was researching the history of Sullivan’s obstetric obsession. So far, I’ve arrived at Sept. 3, 2008:

Brandishing a child with Down Syndrome as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him.

What I’m seaching for, BTW, is exactly when Sully began using his perch at The Atlantic Monthly to throw traffic at other Trig-Truther blogs, giving them and their wild-goose-chase theories a prominence they otherwise would have never had. Please link examples in the comments while I keep searching.

Permit me here to point out that I’ve actually met Trig Palin — even held the romping tyke in my arms for a moment or two — and watched Trig’s father read him a story. As a husband and father myself (with teenage twin boys who might occasionally use impolite language), there is a certain element of personal-is-political subjectivity involved.

Belated thanks to Jeff in Walla Walla and to Suzy and Joe in Olympia (mmmm, Coronas) for having hit the tip jar.

UPDATE IV: Well, that didn’t take long! From Day One, Sullivan was happy to link any Trig Truther anywhere, including an almost-instantly-deleted Daily Kos diary by “Inky 99” entitled, “Sarah Palin Is NOT the Mother.”

As regards those ugly rumors that “Inky 99” is actually Andrew Sullivan, “Inky 99” has been unavailable for comment since that Glenn Beck interview.

UPDATE V: Seriously, from Day One, Sully interpreted Trig strictly as part Sarah Palin’s appeal as a “Christianist” symbol:

“Now I understand: she’s a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child.”

UPDATE VI: From Day One, I repeat, including this post (Aug. 31, 2008) entitled “Things That Make You Go Hmmm“:

What was it that aroused suspicion about that photo? That Palin’s oldest child was holding her youngest child while Mom was on stage? Thinking back on all the times my oldest daughter (now 21) held our youngest (now 7) when my wife was too busy to hold the baby, would that also “make you go hmmm”? But let’s look at Andrew in “just asking questions” mode on Aug. 31, 2008:

Where has Bristol Palin . . . been for the past year? Has she been attending high school? Or was she absent because of infectious mononucleosis for between five and eight months, as is now being reported on the Internet?
Why would a 43 year old woman, on her fifth pregnancy, with a Down Syndrome child, after her amniotic fluid has started to leak, not go to the nearest hospital immediately, even if she was in Texas for a speech?
Why would she not only not go to the hospital in Texas, but take an eight-hour plane flight to Seattle and then Anchorage?
Why would she choose to deliver the baby not in the nearest major facility in Anchorage but at a much smaller hospital near her home-town?
Why did the flight attendants on the trip home say she bore no signs of being pregnant?

The way he posted these questions suggests that Sullivan received them in an e-mail, although he has never said from whom, but he himself was the source for this part:

[T]he rumors buzzing across the Internets and the press corps are unfounded and unseemly. There must be plenty of medical records and obstetricians and medical eye-witnesses prepared to testify to Sarah Palin’s giving birth to Trig. There must be a record of Bristol’s high school attendance for the past year. And surely, surely, the McCain camp did due diligence on this. But the noise around this story is now deafening, and the weirdness of the chronology sufficient to rise to the level of good faith questions. So please give us these answers – and provide medical records for Sarah Palin’s pregnancy – and put this to rest.

That link is, of course, to the subsequently deleted “Inky 99” post at DKos — which was, so far as I know, the only “buzzing” Sully could have linked at that point — and yet we see that, beginning on Aug. 31, 2008, Sullivan demanded that the McCain campaign provide witnesses and release Palin’s obstetric records to disprove those rumors.

UPDATE VII: Remember that the latest dust-up began with 16-year-old Willow Palin calling one of her older sister’s DWTS detractors “faggot” and “gay.”

To which I replied, “This is not ‘homophobia.’ This is just how teenagers insult each other” — an objective fact, which I confirmed with Mrs. Other McCain, who I would certainly hope is more of an authority on the behavior of contemporary teenagers than Andrew Sullivan is.

We are not debating how teenagers should behave — no one supposes that Sarah Palin approves of her daughters using foul language and puerile insults — but rather discussing how teenagers commonly do behave, and asking whether the phrase “homophobic” may rightly be applied to an angry 16-year-old girl’s use of the schoolyard slurs “gay” and “faggot.”

What about “baldy” or “four-eyes” or “creep” or “psycho”? Are such insults evidence of hate and phobia and whatever “isms” they might be said to represent?

Let me ask whether calling Sarah Palin “a pathological liar [who] simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth about herself” might be considered an insult, evidence that the person who used such a phrase was a “bigot”?

And what about “Ewok”? Is Ace of Spades insulted when someone refers to him as a hairy diminutive creature who dwells on the forest moon of Endor? Let’s ask Ace’s opinion:

Give It. A F—ing Rest. You F—ing. Child-Hating. Vagina-Envy. Brain-Detrioriated. Bi-Polar. Borderline Personality Disorder. Steroid-Raging. Degenerate. Psychopath.

Uh, maybe I linked the wrong post there. Definitely NSFW. IYKWIMAITYD.

UPDATE VIII: Thanks for the linkage from Republican Redefined and Gay Patriot.

UPDATE IX: While researching — I’m not through with you yet, Sully — I stumbled onto my American Spectator article “Punished With a Baby,” from Sept. 2, 2008:

Strange as it seems in this time of war and economic crisis, the tale of a pregnant teenager could determine who will be the next Leader of the Free World. Surely this wasn’t what feminists meant when they coined the phrase “the personal is political.” Or was it?

Thanks to Susan in New York for making my afternoon labor more lucrative than the article I had previously planned to write today. A few more tip-jar hits like that, and maybe I’ll be able to get the radiator in the Pontiac fixed.

UPDATE X: Ah, found what I was looking for. My blog post of Sept. 1, 2008:

Sully repeatedly gave vent to, and defended, the horrid and baseless speculation — apparently originating with a DKos vermin — that Sarah Palin’s fifth child, Trig, was actually her grandchild, having been born to Palin’s teenage daughter, Bristol. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

So, in no fewer than nine blog entries, this contributor to The Atlantic Monthly pumped oxygen into one of the most bizarre and disgusting conspiracy theories ever to emerge from the fetid swamps of the Leftosphere.

Sullivan’s relentless promotion of this sick rumor prompted Ace to organize “heavy hitters” into a boycott:

Let’s see a brain scan, buddy. Let’s get some answers to these questions. Medical f—ing answers.

Read the whole thing. (Dang, Ace, I’d forgotten how good that post was. As for why I’ve linked Sully here: I wasn’t a “heavy hitter,” so I never got your e-mail.)

UPDATE XI: Rachelle Friberg is one of those Bristol Palin fans who are allegedly undermining the precious “integrity” of Dancing With the Stars, thereby causing people to engage in insane acts of violence.

Bristol: Another Palin.

With a Uterus.

Causing Insanity!

UPDATE XII: “By Any Means Necessary.”

Post-Weigel Journalism? Impossible!

Posted on November 17, 2010November 17, 2010Comments

Once David Weigel left the Washington Independent, they were doomed to oblivion:

The crisis in the world of journalism today isn’t really about journalism — it’s about the bottom line. Reporters and editors everywhere are trying to find a way to keep their very good work alive. We thought our model had a chance. It put up a good fight.

Ah, screw you, whiners. And if those losers at Newsweek had been smart enough to hire Dave, they wouldn’t be Tina Brown’s bitches now.

UPDATE: Trying to live down his reputation as the arrogant punk he actually is (NTTAWWT) Weigel gets serious:

The highest-profile examples of non-profit journalism have been investigative reporting hubs . . . which focused on journalism that really was becoming hard to fund privately — investigations that would take weeks to produce news, if they produced any news.

That’s really the trick: If you know anything at all about how investigative journalism actually works, you know that it requires a publisher who is willing to foot the bill while a reporter — or a team of reporters — roots around on a story that may not actually pan out to be anything. Or, as is more often the case, you get one of those long-run-for-a-short-slide affairs: A five-part series that doesn’t really “make a difference,” as they say.

Weigel notes that even basic reporting that used to be commonplace (e.g., when every good-sized daily paper would send a reporter to cover the state legislature when it was in session) has become too much of a financial burden for most newspapers.

I’m grateful that the tip-jar hitters have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund to cover travel expenses for campaign coverage and other occasional ventures outside the basement. On the other hand, I’m disappointed that no deep-pocketed right-wing Sugar Daddy has offered to pony up the few hundred thousand bucks that would be needed as start-up funding for the R.S. McCain School of Journalism, where young punks would get advanced instruction in such valuable skills as smoking, cussing and driving like a maniac.

In the meantime, then, hit the freaking tip jar.

Bolsheviks for Monarchy

Posted on November 17, 2010November 17, 2010Comments

Matthew Yglesias hates greedy rich people and “corporate America” and — of course — despises all racism, sexism, homophobia and every other form of prejudice or intolerance you could imagine.

Somehow, these leftist commitments do not stop Yglesias from fawning over British royalty.

All politics is local, I suppose. And any hypocrisy is acceptable, so long as it is fashionable hypocrisy.

UPDATE: Almost forgot the whole point of blogging about British royalty: Kate Middleton bikini pictures.

UPDATE II: “First royal with bolt-ons,” a Twitter friend comments and, indeed, it appears from some photos that young Miss Middleton has resorted to surgical augmentation.

My preference is for a natural A-cup over a fake C, and I think that a sort of Gresham’s Law applies: Big fake breasts tend to diminish the value of big breasts generally.

Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE III: Linked by the Rhetorican and of course, welcome, Instapundit readers! Professor Reynolds offers no opinion of the royal breasts. He’s a natural-born diplomat.

Worst. Headline. Evah.

Posted on November 17, 2010November 17, 2010Comments

Some things make you want to gouge your eyes out:

Murkowski now has apparently insurmountable lead of 10,000+ votes

When I saw that at Hot Air Headlines, I knew that it was time to confront this ugly reality head-on. That dreadful excuse for a human being has been re-elected, and we must ask ourselves, “Why?”

Let me remind you of a headline from Oct. 5:

Palin Backers Suspect Huckabee Loyalists on Joe Miller Staff Behind E-Mail Leak

Other observers will analyze this campaign in detail, but the essence of what seems to have happened is that somebody on Team Joe got the clever idea that what they needed to do was to “distance” their candidate from Sarah Palin.

This was a tragic miscalculation. In a two-way campaign against the Democrat Scott McAdams, perhaps, the Republican candidate might have wished to avoid being seen as a Palin proxy. But once Murkowski’s write-in campaign became a viable enterprise — a development that I certainly never expected — any attempt to “distance” Miller from Palin was clearly counter-productive. For Miller to offend the pro-Palin vote was to alienate the very voters who were essential to his election.

Whether there is any truth to the widespread suspicion that pro-Huckabee members of Team Joe were responsible for the Miller campaign’s blunders, the lesson in the end is the same: In politics, as folks say down home, it is always best to “dance with the one that brung ya.”

Is there any silver lining here, any cause for cheer? Not much, although some may take encouragement from the fact that the Democrat got just 23% of the vote. Still, we are left with the inescapable fact that some 40% of Alaskans cast write-in votes for an unprincipled pro-abortion pork-barrel Republican.

And John Cornyn, who congratulated her on her re-election, was unanimously re-elected chairman of the NRSC.

NOT ONE RED CENT!

UPDATE: “My precioussss.” The power-crazed bitch blames Jim DeMint for the NRSC’s blundering away the Senate majority — a majority which, as William Jacobson has pointed out, would have been utterly useless to accomplish anything meaningful in terms of advancing a conservative agenda.

Here you have the mile-deep taproot of my disagreement with those who claim that, by backing Miller, Ken Buck, Christine O’Donnell, et al., conservatives lost the oportunity for a GOP majority in the Senate. That this is supposed to be the sophisticated intellectual belief sticks in my craw for several reasons:

A Republican majority in the Senate was always a longshot. Simply as an exercise in political math, it was hard to calculate a way for Republicans to get to 51 seats.
Carly Fiorina. Hello? The establishmentarians got their dream candidate in California and what was the result? 43 percent. It is therefore difficult to credit the GOP Establishment with a monopoly on political wisdom.
A 51-seat Senate majority isn’t too useful from a policy perspective. The supermajority requirement of 60 votes for cloture prevents the Senate Majority Leader from exercising the kind of all-or-nothing power enjoyed by the Speaker of the House. This was why the election of Scott Brown as the “41st vote” was so important, a fact that some of our sophisticated intellectual friends seem to have forgotten.

Under current circumstances, with Obama in the White House, a narrow Senate majority for Republicans is even more problematic than it was during the Bush years. This is another thing that seems to have slipped down the Memory Hole for our sophisticated friends. Throughout the Bush presidency, the administration always began its policy calculations with the question: How can we get 60 votes in the Senate for it?

The result was a tendency toward pre-emptive triangulation, where any legislation Republicans wanted to get passed had to be loaded up with enough goodies for Democrats to get past the cloture hurdle. Much mischief in the way of GOP “brand damage” can be blamed on that tendency, because whatever the Bush administration did was labeled “Republican” and reflexively defended by conservatives.

(Hey, am I the only one who remembers when conservatives opposed federalization of airport security, until political geniuses in the Bush administration decided that Republicans must support federalization of airport security? Think about that, the next time you’re getting groped by TSA.)

A slender Republican Senate would be automatically compromised as a policy vehicle by the presence of GOP liberals like Snowe and Collins, and the addition of Mike Castle to the RINO Caucus would only aggravate that problem. You would have an ostensibly “Republican” Senate pre-ordained to sell out in a heartbeat to whatever Obama wanted, with GOP spokesmen compelled to go on TV and praise this awful legislation (as such compromises inevitably are) as a great idea.

Have conservatives learned nothing from their experiences when Bob Dole and Trent Lott were dealing with Clinton in the 1990s? My argument is not that there would have been no advantage to a 51-seat GOP majority, but rather that the disadvantages are obvious enough that it’s wrong for pundits to act so butt-hurt over the failure to achieve that majority.

Furthermore — and I’m going to come right out and make this accusation as plain as possible — a lot of the people bitching and moaning about Ken Buck, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle are really aiming at Sarah Palin, because they desperately don’t want her to be the GOP presidential nominee in 2012.

There, I’ve said it. And please, my sophisticated friends, stop pretending that the rest of us are too stupid to see what you’ve been up to, and also stop pretending that we are unaware of the potential downside of a Palin 2012 campaign.

And since this little update will probably spark a new round of flame-wars, let me go ahead and take it thermonuclear: Do you really think that Sarah Palin is so stupid or such an egotistical prima donna that she is unaware of the downside potential of a 2012 presidential campaign?

When Sarah Palin says she wants what’s good for America, good for the Republican Party and good for the conservative cause, I take her seriously. I think she is capable of weighing the positive and negative factors of a 2012 campaign and making rational decisions. I think she’s probably going to run — I fully expect her to be at the first debate at the Reagan Library this spring — but I also think that, if the primary campaign develops to her disadvantage, she’d drop out of the race and support the winner.

Therefore, my sophisticated friends, your attempts to pre-emptively undermining Palin by blaming her by proxy for the loss of a GOP Senate majority signals that you are afraid you can’t muster enough primary votes to stop her in 2012.

But we’re too stupid to see that, I suppose.

All through the 2010 campaign, I tried to discourage readers from the distracting temptation of looking forward to the 2012 presidential campaign. And what I’d like to do at this point is to ask that readers try to avoid that distraction even now.

Forget about the presidential campaign, and let’s focus on getting good conservative challengers to the 22 Democrat Senate incumbents who will be defending their seats in 2012. We might also think about primary challengers for any weak-kneed Republican Senators who would be an obstacle to a conservative agenda should we get a GOP Majority Leader in the next election.

Finally, I remind you of what a GOP operative said to me after that treacherous bastard John Cornyn endorsed Charlie Crist: