Category: Politics

Cthulhu 2012

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“Why settle for the lesser evil?”

Sarah Palin on the current evil in Washington:

It’s a matter of public record that I did not go to Harvard Law School, but I can add.
The same “experts” who got us into this mess are now telling us that the only way out of our debt crisis is to “increase revenue,” but not by creating more jobs and therefore a larger tax base; no, they want to “increase revenue” by raising taxes on job creators who are taxed enough already! As Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” That’s where we are now. Hard working taxpayers have been big government’s Sugar Daddy for far too long, and now we’re out of sugar. We don’t want big government, we can’t afford it, and we are unwilling to pay for it.
This debt ceiling debate is the perfect time to do what must be done. We must cut. Yes, I’m for a balanced budget amendment and for enforceable spending caps. But first and foremost we must cut spending, not “strike a deal” that allows politicians to raise more debt!

Don Surber has video of Saturday’s meeting of top White House advisers:

“Gentlemen, we must do something Immediately! Immediately! Immediately!”

Perhaps Ann Althouse has something relevant to say about President LePetomane’s “steely nerve, his intelligence, and his groundedness.”

Speaker Boehner has said the two magic words: “No deal.”

So now we’re back to zero. The Lonely Conservative fears they’re putting budget BandAids on a fiscal gunshot wound.

We should listen to the voice of reason: “We’ve got to get our fiscal house in order here in Washington. I’m not sure it’s going to happen under the current leadership.”

Questions for a rube: “Remember? That conversation with Joe The Plumber? Were ya sleeping?”

Yet the larger question remains: “Where Did the Pleasant Cthulhu Go?”


Everything You Will Ever Need to Know About ‘Political Communication Strategy’

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“Total candor with the press — or anyone else, for that matter — is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business . . . and the main function of any candidate’s press secretary is to make sure the press gets nothing but upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory.
“When something like this happens to you, quickly lock all the doors and send your press secretary out to start whispering, off the record, that your opponent’s California campaign coordinator just called to ask for a job.
“This kind of devious bullshit is standard procedure in most campaigns. Everybody is presumed to understand it — even the reporters who can’t keep a straight face when they’re jotting it all down for page one of the early edition . . .”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72

I Bet Doug Hoffman Is Laughing Today

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“The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. . . . Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, 2003

You remember Doug Hoffman, the Tea Party-backed candidate who came this close to defeating the Establishment RINO in the 2009 special election in NY-23. For some reason, Hoffman came to mind when I saw this story at Politico:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will report raising approximately $2 million in the second fundraising quarter of the year and ending the month of June with $225,000 in the bank . . .
But in a steep obstacle to Gingrich’s comeback hopes, his campaign remains about a million dollars in debt. It will be a struggle for Gingrich to put his balance sheet in the black and fund the kind of operation traditionally required to compete in Iowa, where he has indicated he’ll attempt to turn his campaign around.
Gingrich supporters acknowledge that his debt represents a serious financial challenge, though they note that the Republican has paid down about 10 percent of $1.2 million in invoices since June 9, when most of his senior political staff resigned. . . .

Newt’s campaign has been Scozzafava-ed, you might say. Anybody who gives him a dime now is just wasting money. He’s finished.

As a road man for the Lords of Karma, I remember tears on Election Night in Saranac Lake, but Doug Hoffman must be laughing now.

Another Cain Iowa Staffer Resigns

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Shane Vander Hart was first to report this:

Charlie Gruschow, former leader of the Des Moines Tea Party, resigned from the campaign on Sunday “to pursue other interests.”  Gruschow had been an early supporter and activist for Cain having been with him since last year even though he was only on the payroll since May.  This is the third Iowa staffer that Cain has lost over the holiday weekend.

I had a long conversation yesterday with a Republican source in Iowa, and reported at The American Spectator:

Last week, Cain’s Iowa organizational director Tina Goff and Iowa straw poll director Kevin Hall both resigned. The resignations of Goff and Hall were “the best thing that could happen” to Cain, said one Iowa Republican activist, who said the pair were “hated” by many of Cain’s grassroots supporters. While Goff and Hall were running Cain’s Iowa operation, they “basically ignored” Gruschow in recent weeks, the Republican activist told The American Specator, adding that the situation had cost the campaign support of many of its early volunteers from the Tea Party movement.

Goff and Hall had both worked on Fred Thompson’s short-lived GOP presidential campaign in 2008, and for Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad’s 2010 campaign, and their association with Cain had been seen by many Republicans as a signal of his campaign’s seriousness in Iowa. However, my source said that the way Goff and Hall had shoved aside Gurschow — who is much beloved within the Tea Party — had resulted in “devastating” negative word-of-mouth for Cain’s campaign among grassroots volunteers. My source described the recent Iowa resignations as a “bubble that finally burst.”

Cain was interviewed Sunday by WHO-TV in Des Moines and said: “Turn over is a natural thing in any organization you’re trying to put together . . . We’re stable in terms of an organization. In a matter of days we’ll open an office here in Iowa and in New Hampshire. We’ve already replaced those staffers almost immediately; this is not a major hiccup in our campaign.”

On Twitter last night, Prudence Paine asked, “What do you think? falling apart? recoverable?” And my reply was: “Important thing to keep in mind: Still six months before the caucuses.”

This situation is not comparable to Newt Gingrich’s campaign implosion. Practically Newt’s entire staff resigned en masse because of dissatisfaction with the candidate’s own behavior — cruising the Aegean Sea instead of campaigning, etc.

By contrast, Cain has had five resignations and still has a staff of more than 40. And say what you will about Herman Cain: He never endorsed Dede Scozzafava.

UPDATE: I got an angry e-mail from Kevin Hall over my characterization of the situation, and realize now that I probably misunderstood what my source on this story was telling me. Charlie Gruschow returned my phone call today — I’d called him yesterday afternoon, and left a message — and said (a) he and Kevin are friends, (b) Kevin wasn’t the person who was trying to shove Charlie aside, (c) the person who was trying to shove Charlie aside is another ex-staffer not previously named by me in connection with the Iowa organization, and (d) Charlie remains a strong supporter of Herman Cain, despite resigning from his official role with the campaign.

I’ll have much more on this later, but wanted to clarify the misimpression I’d unintentionally created.

‘Signs of Strain Within the Campaign’ UPDATE: You Call This ‘Rumors’?

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Politico has a story today about “speed bumps” for the Herman Cain campaign, a couple parts of which I’ll quote:

The move . . . comes after weeks of swirling rumors between Cain’s staff and volunteers in the Hawkeye State accusing each other of affairs, homosexuality and professional misconduct.
“A lot of volunteers, who worked hard for five months, are all leaving the campaign,” said one Iowa volunteer.
Other signs of strain within the campaign are more visible.
One Cain supporter, who attended an overcrowded rally for the candidate, witnessed [Tina] Goff break down in tears when the event flooded into the hallway and was eventually forced to move to a larger auditorium nearby.
Charlie Gruschow, one of Cain’s remaining Iowa staffers, was shocked by the resignations, but that he didn’t think it would make a dent in Cain’s Iowa support.

OK, in order of appearance:

  • Affairs? Homosexuality? Professional misconduct? I find it hard to believe that Politico would just throw those kinds of “swirling rumors” out there without any source or, y’know, actual facts. Exactly who is accusing whom of what? You can’t just suggest stuff like that without any substantiation at all.
  • Tina Goff, who subsequently quit the campaign, “broke down in tears”? Because an event was overcrowded? To quote Tom Hanks: “There’s no crying in baseball,” and I dare say there’s no crying in politics, despite Speaker Boehner’s tendency to get choked up from time to time.
  • Charlie Gruschow is still on board Team Herman. This is important, because Gruschow is one of the key Tea Party people who backed Cain early.

I blogged this situation Thursday, and have continued making inquiries about the story. There has been a perception among some of Cain’s supporters — and I mean people who are 100% pro-Herman — that the work of his campaign staff hasn’t been exemplary, and that some opportunities have been missed as a result. But I hasten to point out that Ronald Reagan had serious trouble with his staff during the 1980 campaign, and Reagan didn’t fix that problem until after the New Hampshire primary. So any Chicken Little sky-is-falling reaction among Cain’s supporters is obviously premature.

UPDATE: OK, the “swirling rumors” were obviously what had to be chased down first. What I have learned is that a former Cain staffer was once reportedly the treasurer of a local gay-pride organization in a midwestern state (not Iowa). So there’s your “homosexuality” rumor nailed. As to the rumored “affairs,” I am told that two former Cain staffers were reportedly boyfriend and girlfriend and were said to be engaged in (horrors) premarital cohabitation.

I’m not sure what  “professional misconduct” is being alleged, but if this is the best they can do on the “homosexuality” and “affairs,” you can figure the rest of the “swirling rumors” don’t amount to much.

Please note (a) both of these rumors involved former staffers, (b) none of these “scandals” — if you can call them such — involved the candidate, and (c) I didn’t get any of this from the Cain campaign, but from independent reporting involving sources of my own.

No names are named, because that’s not necessary. As far as I can tell, these “swirling rumors” were molehills that some disgruntled person (or perhaps opposition researchers for GOP rivals) had tried to pretend were mountains.

For Politico to have reported such nonsense — evidently without even trying to track down the facts — is a goddamned disgrace to the profession of journalism, and if I were the editor of Politico, I’d fire the hell out of whoever was responsible for it.

UPDATE II: Please excuse my profanity. The ability to cuss a blue streak was once more or less a prerequisite in the news business, and I challenge any Old School editor to say that this craptastic Politico “rumors swirling” business does not deserve denunciation in the strongest possible terms.

Also, I was angry, because I’ve been covering Cain’s campaign since before there was even a campaign and to think I’d been scooped — beaten — on something really juicy caused me to spend two hours on the phone trying to track down this “swirling rumors” stuff. Then to realize that it was such utter trivia . . .

Oh, hell, no. You don’t do that to me on the Sunday before 4th of July and not expect me to be angry about it.

Now the delayed reaction: Exactly who was originally responsible for the “swirling rumors”? Was this some disgruntled Cain supporter? Because that would be a really lowdown backstabbing way to roll. Or was this “swirling rumors” stuff spread by another GOP candidate’s campaign? Because if I ever were to find out that a Republican was doing a dirty trick like this to Cain, I will name some fucking names.

Excuse my French.

Michele Bachmann Boogies!

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Will this cost her the Baptist vote?

Shane Vander Hart has more of Bachmann’s Des Moines Tea Party rally.

I hadn’t realized, or perhaps didn’t remember, that Shane lives in Iowa. (Note to self: Apply for sofa-crashing privileges.)


Ruh-Roh: Rick Perry Staffing Up in Iowa? And What About Sarah Palin? In or Out?

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First, the news:

The group “Americans for Rick Perry,” which made headlines in the last two days for trying to light a fire for the Texas governor in the form of support at the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa next month, is making hires – including a top former Newt Gingrich staffer, sources told POLITICO.
Craig Schoenfeld, a veteran Iowa strategist, has been brought on board and has started nascent discussions with others about six-week contracts – meaning the duration of the lead-up to the Ames poll, the sources said.

OK, now the gossip: When I was at Right Online, I talked to a Republican communications operative who had just returned from Texas and said he was certain Perry would run. I didn’t report that conversation at the time, because when I started asking questions, the source said he didn’t have any “inside knowledge,” but was just saying that “all the signs” from Perry’s people were that they were gearing up for a campaign.

This “Americans for Rick Perry” is a shadow-proxy operation — not an official campaign — but if you put 2 and 2 together, it adds up to . . . he’s getting in. And this changes the whole game.

Personally, my feeling is that American voters aren’t ready for another Texas Republican governor, and Perry’s got a few weak spots that his GOP opponents may hit. What Perry does have going for him is the nation’s hottest state economy — Texas is booming, despite the recession — and some serious fund-raising potential.

Next, the raw speculation: Is Sarah Palin in or out? Continue reading Ruh-Roh: Rick Perry Staffing Up in Iowa? And What About Sarah Palin? In or Out? →

Michele Bachmann, Neo-Confederate?

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Here’s an unexpected bonus of yesterday’s post about Michelle Goldberg’s rant against Mark Halperin: If you’ll watch video of Goldberg’s Democracy Now interview — Donald Douglas posted the video yesterday — she makes reference to Bachmann’s law school mentor John Eidsmoe, who was highlighted in a June 14 Daily Beast article Goldberg wrote:

Bachmann honed her view of the world after college, when she enrolled at the Coburn Law School at Oral Roberts University . . .
At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as “one of the professors who had a great influence on me.” . . .
In 2010, speaking [at] a rally celebrating Alabama’s secession from the Union, [Eidsmoe] claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Say what you will, Eidsmoe is right about that. It has been pointed out (by the late Joe Sobran, among others) that there is no evidence that Lincoln ever read the Federalist papers. Lincoln had little formal education, and became a lawyer by “reading law” as the informal process of legal education was then called. By contrast, John C. Calhoun was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, and Calhoun’s Disquisition on Government is one of the most profound treatises on constitutional theory ever written. Jefferson Davis was a precocious scholar who entered Kentucky’s Transylvania University when he was just 13, and graduated West Point at age 20. He later served as Secretary of War and was a U.S. Senator. Davis’s memoir Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government shows him to be a thoughtful and erudite student of constitutional principle.

Of course, Bachmann isn’t campaigning for the GOP nomination on a neo-Confederate platform, and Michelle Goldberg cites Eidsmoe’s recent activities merely as a guilt-by-association smear: How is Bachmann, who studied with Eidsmoe 25 years ago, to be held accountable for everything her former professor says today? Liberals considered it unfair to blame Obama for Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s demented ravings, when Obama sat in Wright’s pews for 20 years and named one of his books after the title of a Wright sermon.

But Goldberg’s article might actually help Bachmann in the campaign. One can easily imagine some good-old-boy Republicans in the key early primary state of South Carolina who, having previously disdained the Minnesota congresswoman as just another damned Yankee, discover Bachmann’s Eidsmoe connection to the Lost Cause and say, “Hot dang, fellers — she’s one of us!”