The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Charleston Afterthoughts

Posted on | January 22, 2012 | 27 Comments

CHARLESTON, S.C.
We left the Citadel a little after 10 p.m. and came down to the Courtyard by Marriott on Calhoun Street, where everybody was hanging out. After a while, it was decided that we should go get burgets at Big Guns.

Will Upton of Americans for Tax Reform checks his Twitter feed while we wait for our burgers.

Saul Anuzis chills out with his laptop. Saul is all about Romney, but don’t hate him for it.

Category: Fear and Loathing in South Carolina

Comments

27 Responses to “Charleston Afterthoughts”

  1. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 4:15 am

    Saul must be sad today.  

  2. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 4:23 am

    EAT SHIT MITT!

  3. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 4:28 am

    Sometimes I miss the whole “political road trip” thing. 26 hours in a van with The Other McCain was a memorable experience.

    Then I read your blog and look at the pictures of the worn-out sons of bitches on the trail, and thank The Indeterminate Deity of Choice that I decided to sit at home and blog instead.

  4. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 5:13 am

    Where are the burgers? Usually your blog makes me hungry.

  5. Adjoran
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 5:43 am

    Oh, it’s a real foodie place – http://bigguncharleston.com/

    The females pictured in the advertising aren’t always there, though.

  6. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 7:56 am

    I don’t hate anybody for supporting Mitt. I would support him in the general provided I thought he won fair and square. What pisses me off is people that go out of their way to diss the other candidates and ignore Romney’s negatives, or even try to play them as positives.

    Actually, I think Mitt is probably a pretty nice, decent guy. He’s just getting in over his head.

  7. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:24 am

    All right let’s just face the facts here, head on, no bullshit. How many people believe that if Romney didn’t have his money and organization, but started out at the same basic level as the others, that he would even be a contender. I say he would be out of it already by now. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say he wouldn’t even be in it this time out. 2008 would have been his swan song. Its nothing against him being a rich guy or a successful businessman, that’s bullshit. It’s just that that is all he has to commend him. He sure as hell has nothing politically going for him.

  8. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:27 am

    People that love Romney so much need to get their heads out of their asses and see what a weak fucking candidate he really is. My God. Obama is not a socialist, he’s just a nice guy who’s in over his head? WTF? Romney just doesn’t have a glass jaw he has a lead tongue. We need a presidential contender who can hold his own, not fucking Ralph Kramden.

    “Mr. Kramden when are you going to release your tax returns?”

    “Ahhhh, homina homina homina”

  9. smitty
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:33 am

    Aw, c’mon: be nice.

  10. smitty
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:34 am

    “TIDC”. Heh.

  11. smitty
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:35 am

    What is the use of this counter-factual?
    Mitt has the cash and the machine. And Mitt gives good sound bite.

  12. smitty
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:36 am

    Mitt is trying to run the ball up the middle. I don’t agree with him; we need to understand that the Left is like cancer and treat it accordingly, but Mitt’s is a strategy.

  13. Quartermaster
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:41 am

    In my book, that’s one to ban.

  14. Quartermaster
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:45 am

    Even if it sin’t much of a strategy.

    I have to agree with the counterfactual above. Mitt is in above his head, but I think the rest of them are as well. There is really only one thing that can be done to make it possible to turn the country around, and that is to utterly repudiate socialism and take a meat ax to FedGov. Only Paul is willing to do that, but his foreign policy stances leave way too much to be desired.

  15. smitty
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 9:01 am

    Concur, but Paul’s funding and level of supporter passion will be crucial both for keeping fiscal sanity in the platform and for providing the grass-roots manpower to recover the country.

  16. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 9:06 am

    Yeah, I think you call that the Dole-McCain rule of politics. I see these people harping on how the Republican Party is more conservative than its ever been, and people like me just can’t understand that. Well here’s what I really don’t understand. If that’s the truth, then why in the hell don’t they try to sell those conservative principles instead of trying to hide them?

    Do you know one reason Clinton was so popular? It was because in his first run he derided not just leftist tactics, but leftist politics in general. He genuinely wanted to move the Democratic Party more towards the center, albeit left-of-center. It may have been bullshit up to a point, granted, but that was his public persona anyway. And guess what, it worked.

    But it worked because he was playing up to the disgust with liberalism at that time. He didn’t try to claim that liberalism and centrism were one and the same, like Romney tries to imply and in the meantime his apologists refer to real conservatives as “the far right” and even  “the fringe right” and all that shit. Why should anybody vote for a guy like that? I know the danger of an Obama second term, and believe me, the Republican Party knows how we feel about that. Instead of taking it to heart and getting behind somebody who could sell conservative principles, what do they do? They double down on their stupid and try to force feed us a RINO because they figure we’ll be afraid not to support him.

    That’s why people are so disgusted with them. Their tactics aren’t so opaque as they seem to think they are.

  17. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 9:09 am

    I’m making a point. Nobody would vote for this guy if he didn’t have the money and organization. So why the hell should they vote for him now.

    “Homina homina homina” makes a good sound bite for a sitcom advertisement, I’ll grant you that, not so much for a serious presidential candidate. Well, for his opponent maybe.

  18. Guest
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 10:08 am

    CNN moderator: “Why are conservatives so racist and evil?”

    Mitt: “Well, I’m not like them…”

    Newt: “That’s kind of a low-class question, even for you- isn’t it?”

    And there it is: Mitt is falling because at the end he agrees with the Democrats about Republicans.
    Newt is rising, not only because he doesn’t- but because he doesn’t let them frame the debate.

  19. AngelaTC
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 12:34 pm

    Up here in Michigan, Saul Anuzis is actively working to undermine the Constitution by lobbying for the Natonal Popular Vote initiative.  This prick should be run out of the party on a rail. 

  20. AngelaTC
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 12:38 pm

    I don’t think you can repudiate socialism without repudiating the military aggression that accompanies it.

    On a philisophical level, it seems completely absurd to insist that individuals can and should take care of themselves, but entire nations must be controlled and protected, because they’re too weak to take care of themselves.

    Unfortunately for the GOP, middle America doesn’t share the failed, dangerously aggressive  foreign policy that the GOP is intent on protecting.  We’ve lost two elections because of that.  So far.

  21. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 1:12 pm

    Good thing I agree with you, isn’t it?

  22. Anonymous
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 1:16 pm

    You’re confusing a foreign policy that calls for a strong military with the socialism that grows by default because GOP Presidents are too busy focusing on foreign policy ro keep Republican Congressmen from playing nice with the Democrats. Bush the Elder and McCain lost because they couldn’t keep the Democrats in Congress from pillaging the economy.

  23. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 2:18 pm

    Well said.

  24. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 2:19 pm

    Well that would be more legal than what I want to do to people of that ilk. A hint, it involves one tree and one rope.

  25. Bob Belvedere
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 5:15 pm

    Aww…I missed it before you hammered it!

  26. Bob Belvedere
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 5:19 pm

    Don’t forget the Establishment Republicans in the Congress – they deserve their share of the blame.

  27. ThePaganTemple
    January 22nd, 2012 @ 8:06 pm

    Take my feelings about Romney and condense them down to two words and you pretty much got the gist of it.