Category: Legal Insurrection

Stacy McCain Still Shines

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by Smitty

Marco Rubio is a GOP celebrity whose nod would be a real help in the Florida primary. Legal Insurrection points out that:

Neither Romney nor Newt deserve credit for helping launch Rubio.
That credit goes to the folks at Not One Red Cent and a handful of other bloggers who started backing Rubio in 2009, when no one believed.

And who was the original Not One Red Cent blogger? That would be the Rodney Dangerfield Of Our Dextrosphere, Stacy. If you catch up with Stacy in Florida, offer him some encouragement. Sure, being the RDOOD is a thankless job, so he should be well acquainted with the underside of the bus, but that doesn’t mean that the occasional bit of linkage, re-tweeting, or even tip-jar hitting would be unwelcome.

He may not always be right, but he’s never boring.

 

The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again

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JOHNSTON, Iowa
Today I published another column from the campaign trail here in Iowa:

Rick Santorum made a bold prediction here Friday night: The Pittsburgh Steelers will go all the way to the Super Bowl for a rematch with the Green Bay Packers.
The former Pennsylvania senator was enjoying a rare moment of relaxation on the campaign trail here in Iowa, where voters will gather Tuesday night to cast the first real votes that count toward the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Santorum was wearing a University of Iowa Hawkeyes cap at the Okoboji Grille, where he gathered with supporters to watch the Hawkeyes play the Oklahoma Sooners in the Insight Bowl. When he arrived at the restaurant in Johnston, a suburb of Des Moines, Santorum was swarmed by reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen who have swooped down on his campaign in the past week as polls began indicating that he was surging ahead in the pack of GOP candidates.
Most of the reporters had left the restaurant (and the Hawkeyes were well on their way to a 31-14 loss to the Sooners) by the time I had the chance to ask Santorum about his beloved Steelers. “We will beat the Browns this week,” he said, sitting in front of a half-finished platter of nachos. “My prediction is, both the Patriots will lose to the Bills and the Ravens will lose to the Bengals and we will be the Number One seed in the AFC playoffs.”
But while the underdog-turned-contender was willing to risk prognosticating the NFL all the way to the Super Bowl, he has remained hesitant to predict how he’ll finish in Tuesday’s caucuses. Santorum obviously wants to exceed expectations, but the poll numbers and media buzz surrounding his campaign are making it hard to suppress those expectations. . . .

You can read the whole thing at The American Spectator, and I hope readers are not offended by my practice of linking my columns here, but I sometimes get the feeling that if I didn’t link and quote my own columns, no one would. Here, for the record, are my previous four columns from Iowa:

God knows that, having started reporting the “Santorum Surge” weeks before anyone else noticed it, I certainly don’t deserve any credit for my foresight now that the surge is headline news all across the country. In fact, conservative bloggers who ridiculed me for writing about Santorum a month ago are now linking and quoting MSM reports about the Iowa caucuses rather than quoting anything I’ve written. Continue reading The Familiar Pattern Emerges Again →

Newt Throws A Hail Sarah Pass?

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by Smitty

CBS News:

Newt Gingrich, plunging in the polls, dropped this bomb Wednesday: he would consider asking Sarah Palin to serve as his number two or in his Cabinet if he became president.
“She is certainly one of the people you would look at,” Gingrich said Wednesday, according to Right Wing Watch, when asked if he would consider tapping the 2008 vice presidential nominee for a second try.
“I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would be one of the possibilities,” Gingrich said at Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.

I mentioned this little blip on the radar to well known Ralph Reed aficionado Stacy McCain, and he suggested it merited a post. The conversation veered into the bizarre notions afloat these days, like the idea that Michele Bachmann was steering clear of Romney attacks in hopes of a VP slot. Stacy suggested that, given the intensity level of Presidential campaigning, the only sane reason to be in it is to win it.

We chuckled a bit at the Virginia primary fracas, clearly off topic for him while focused on Iowa.  Wir mussen einen Treueeid haben* does make some sense, if you take a party-centric view of things. Sure, I’ll sign it, for the opportunity to vote against Mitt Romney, when that vote is not for keeps. Is there a reason for the increasingly Independent nature of voters, though?

One of the major American archetypes is what I call the “Tommy Boy Myth”. Stacy still hasn’t seen the flick, so I cast it in Bluto Blutarsky terms for him. Essentially, we seem to think that we can fanny about until clutch time, pull a NoDoz-driven all-nighter, and ace whatever test comes with the dawn. We love the underdog. We want to root for the Bachmann/Perry/Santorum who are fighting against “the Establishment”. Isn’t that what Sarah Palin campaigned on as Alaska Governor?

The Sarah Palin situation varies the theme considerably. How does she maximize the remaining goodwill the Tea Parties bear her, if at all? Stacy and I both are of the opinion that, given the absence of any sort of campaign staff, the calls for Iowans to caucus for Palin don’t amount to much. No amount of Tommy Boy Myth could get her on the Virginia ballot. More importantly, she the party system is set up to preclude such insurgency, not support it.

Would she be interested in playing second fiddle to a Newt? Who knows? I, for one, think she would give the GOP ticket a much needed adrenalin boost. That’s not how the party sausage is made, but there it is. Furthermore, I do hope that whoever is selected for VP is somebody young enough to run for POTUS after eight years. The situation is dire enough that, while not losing sight of the need to eject #OccupyResoluteDesk in 2012, the need for a longer-term vision to carry past 2020 is clear. Maybe that suggests Paul Ryan for VP.

But for 2012, though, the GOP head shed is hopefully considering how it will harness the Tea Party energy. Sarah would bring it by the barrel.

Update: Memorandum thread. Director Blue is game:

If swear to all that’s holy that I would pay serious money to watch the reactions of the moonbats when President Gingrich and Vice President Palin are sworn in.

I’m not as serious a Gingrich fan; he seems as much an insider as Mitt, without the savvy electoral machine. I imagine Sarah would look that gift horse in the mouth.

Interestingly, the chief Memorandum action is on the left side of the blogosphere, suggesting Sarah has more value as an anti-conservative keyword than for whipping up the right.

*We must have a loyalty oath!

Fear of a Ron Paul Planet

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“Newt Gingrich’s lead in the race for the GOP presidential nomination has evaporated, according to a new national survey.”
— Paul Steinhauser, CNN

“The model gives [Ron Paul] a 44 percent chance of winning Iowa based on the current standing of the candidates and the historic uncertainty of polling-based forecasts. Mr. Romney has a 32 percent chance of winning, while Mr. Gingrich’s chances have crashed to 15 percent.”
— Nate Silver, New York Times

“If Iowa picks Ron Paul as its caucus winner, two things will result. First, Mitt Romney will probably run the table as Republicans everywhere else but Iowa recoil in horror. Second, Iowa will likely end up losing whatever cachet it has managed to build over the last three decades as a first-in-the-nation proving ground for presidential candidates, and the drumbeat to unseat both Iowa and New Hampshire from the front end of the primary system will prove irresistible.”
— Ed Morrissey, Hot Air

“[T]he GOP establishment has so invested itself in Romney’s candidacy that it has increased the likelihood of the one thing that would hand Barack Obama the election, a Ron Paul third party candidacy.”
— William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection

Everybody chill, OK? It’s merely a poll. And despite the impressive increase in Ron Paul’s Iowa poll numbers, he’s still Ron Paul — a candidate with a “high floor, low ceiling,” as they say.

Furthermore, the panic over the evident “collapse” of Newt Gingrich’s support reminds me very much of the panic over Rick Perry’s collapse in September. Like Perry before him, Gingrich was cloaked with the mantle of “The Only Viable Alternative to Romney” and, when things went wrong, the argument was (and is being) made that those who fail to rally to the designated Not Mitt are objectively pro-Romney.

This argument was absurd when I was hearing it from Perry’s people three months ago, and is equally absurd — indeed, more absurd — when it is made on behalf of Newt Gingrich. His serial disloyalties to the conservative grassroots make Newt a strange choice as the Last Hope of the conservative moment. He joined Nancy Pelosi to endorse global warming theory. He supported RINO Dede Scozzafava in the crucial NY-23 special election. He collected big bucks from Freddie Mac. And yet Gingrich, of all the candidates in the GOP field, is to be the final repository of conservative hope in the 2012 race?

Are you people on drugs? Continue reading Fear of a Ron Paul Planet →

Shorter Ace: ‘Bitches Lie’

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A grossly unfair oversimplification of Ace’s argument? Sure.

But in a multi-candidate Republican primary campaign where everybody’s cutting each other to ribbons, who can complain — if anyone even notices — when I gratuitously play the sexism card?

And isn’t Ace calling the lady a liar?

Michele Bachmann lives in a strange world. People talk about “moral relativism.” Presumably they would claim she’s not a moral relativist.
But truth is an objective fact, is it not?
Ms. Bachmann seems to confuse premises which are politically helpful to her for premises which are actually true.
That seems like moral relativism to me — the world is not as it is, but as I perceive it to be.

Ace is talking about the assertion by Bachmann “that we’ve been hearing all across the country, that money is changing hands” — candidates paying for Tea Party support. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection says:

You know I have a big problem with Michele Bachmann making statements which are not supported by facts and then repeating them endlessly.
Her campaign is up to much worse in South Carolina, where her local campaign manager has suggested that the Gingrich campaign has paid off Tea Party leaders for support.

Professor Jacobson has hopped aboard the Gingrich bandwagon and is savagely lashing Newt’s critics, as is his right. But notice that this pay-for-play accusation comes from South Carolina, which is to the GOP what Chicago is to the Democratic Party: The dirtiest place on the planet.

A South Carolina Republican primary is always fought according to the Al Davis rule — Just win, baby — and they never heard of a “fair fight.” So either:

  1. Bachmann’s S.C. guy Wesley Donohue is just slinging mud against Gingrich; or
  2. Gingrich and perhaps unnamed others are indeed bribing Tea Party activists for their support.

Are the pay-for-play accusations unproven? Yes, but so were the sexual harassment accusations against Herman Cain, yet the accusations were enough to drive Cain out of the race. And furthermore, just because Bachmann can’t prove that the Gingrich campaign is paying for endorsements doesn’t mean that Bachmann is lying when she says she has “been hearing all across the country” that such shenanigans are afoot.

Maybe the people telling Bachmann this stuff are paranoid, and certainly it is irresponsible for a candidate to repeat such stuff without proof. But you can accuse Bachmann of being a loose cannon without saying she’s engaged in “moral relativism.”

Grossly unfair oversimplification, you see.

Being aboard the Santorum Express myself, I should be happy to sit quietly while Michele Bachmann is accused of lying. Bachmann and Santorum appeal to the same pool of social conservative voters who are crucial in Iowa, so if Ace and Professor Jacobson are calling her a liar, the “smart” thing to do would be to say, “They’re right! You can’t trust that lying hussy!”

Ah, but why do what’s merely “smart,” when genius is an option? Because Professor Jacobson is a Gingrich supporter, and the two-bank carom shot is this headline: 

Gingrich Supporter Calls Bachmann a Liar

But did I say genius? Here’s Ace proclaiming his own allegiance after Thursday’s debate:

I thought Perry did well. He’s still my pick.

Ah, so here we have a three-bank carom:

Gingrich, Perry Supporters: ‘Bachmann Lies’

As I’ve said before, Ace is ax-grinding against Bachmann because he’s still butt-hurt about the way she carved up Perry in the Tampa debate three months ago.

Dude: Let it go. It’s not worth it.

But I’m “Not Good Enough for BlogCon,” so nobody ever listens to me.

UPDATE: Ron Paul is a uniter, not a divider:

Ron Paul Takes Swipes at GOP Rivals,
Says Michele Bachmann ‘Hates Muslims’

That should boost Bachmann’s InTrade rating. Damn it.
 

Doug Hoffman Forgives Newt Gingrich?

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When Professor William Jacobson called this to my attention, I could scarcely believe it, yet Dave Weigel has the story:

So what does Hoffman think? Is Newt to be trusted?
“I support all the candidates running right at the moment,” said Hoffman. “Any one of them would be better than the current president, and that definitely includes Newt Gingrich. Newt apologized to me for not endorsing me, and that’s water over the dam, I think.”
Right before the election, Gingrich apologized publicly for endorsing Scozzafava. Sometime after the election, he called Hoffman to tell him personally.
“He was very sincere in his apology,” said Hoffman. “He was given misinformation as to what this race was all about, and what the other candidate was all about. The people in this district, the sort of local leaders who had endorsed Scozzafava, fed him the wrong information. I don’t think it was an error in his judgement. I would advise other conservative Republicans: Don’t hold this against him.”

Wow. Just . . . wow.

Dave e-mailed me his story and I told him I’d already seen it, but replied to the effect that perhaps, after 14 years in Washington, I’ve finally “gone native.” Anybody in Washington who got screwed over as badly as Hoffman got screwed over by Gingrich would insist on exacting their bloody retribution as a matter of principle, as a warning to anyone else who might be tempted to do the same.

If you let yourself be treated like a doormat, you can’t complain about the footprints on your back. Capische?

Imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot. How would Newt have reacted if Hoffman had done to him what he did to Hoffman?

Even if it was a sincere mistake — Gingrich being “given misinformation,” as Hoffman says — wasn’t Gingrich obligated to double-check his facts before going on Fox News the third or fourth times to praise Scozzafave and trash Hoffman? At the time, everybody who knew anything about the NY-23 race knew Newt was wrong, and yet he refused to walk-back his endorsement of Dede until after she quit and endorsed the Democrat.

“Water over the dam”? Doug, you’d be Congressman Hoffman today if Newt hadn’t spent two weeks in October 2009 going on TV — again and again and again — to badmouth you as a dangerous extremist.

This forgive-and-forget turn-the-other-cheek stuff is fine as a moral ideal, but moral idealism and three bucks will get you a cup of coffee in Washington, and in the time it takes to drink that cup of coffee, you’ll get backstabbed by a half-dozen of your “friends” who figure you for a weakling. It’s like being the slowest wildebeest in the herd when a hungry lion leaps out of the bushes down by the watering hole. Next thing you know, vultures are picking your bones.

So Doug Hoffman has forgiven Newt Gingrich, but that doesn’t mean I’m obligated to emulate Hoffman’s Christian example.

“You Still Have to Answer for Santino, Carlo.”


Is Mitt Getting A Media Pass?

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by Smitty

Legal Insurrection raises some excellent points:

I also pointed to a Chicago Sun-Times article arguing that when Romney was at Bain he used a “plunder” strategy for a number of companies. This is a theme Ted Kennedy used against Romney quite successfully. While new-found Romney supporters like Ann Coulter claim Romney came close to defeating Kennedy, in fact Romney was trounced because the anti-Bain theme worked.

Read the whole thing. Jacobson falls short of saying outright that the Mitt Fix Is In, but the lack of inquisitiveness on the part of the media is startling. And what is it with Coulter? Oh, she is a Christie fan, who might, unexpectedly, find himself a VP pick. Got it.

Or does Mitt just have a lot of cash? If my Latin serves, Belvedere is saying that Romney is the lender. Another good hypothesis.

Sarah Palin Demonstrates A Better Grasp Of Leadership Than Obama, Though, Admittedly, Barack Sets A Low Bar

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by Smitty

Fire Eric Holder, saith the Arctic Fox:

Holder conceded this week, “I have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the department.” He can prove it by resigning. And if he refuses to resign, then President Obama – with whom the bucks ultimately stop – can prove that he respects honesty, transparency, and accountability in his administration by firing Holder.
I stand with the members of Congress who are calling for Holder’s resignation. I stand with the family members of Brian Terry who are demanding transparency and accountability. Mr. President, where do you stand?

I’m uncertain whether this is enough. It may be time to consider the wholesale replacement of the entire Department of Justice. Simple dissolve the Department and re-constitute its legitimate functions with fresh faces.

Of course, now that That Woman has dared to raise her voice, #OccupyResoluteDesk can be expected to offer his best “neener neener neener, you’re not the boss of me” response.

via Legal Insurrection