Category: Politics

CPAC Day 2: Into the Scrum

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Rep. Michelle Bachmann was surrounded by autograph-seeking admirers Friday afternoon in the lobby of the Wardman Park Marriott in one of those spontaneous scrums that occur when GOP celebrities show up at the Conservative Political Action Conference. 

There is an interesting story behind how I ended up in the midst of the Bachmann scrum. About noon, I got a call from a young woman who introduced herself as Kathleen McCaffrey, a Cornell University student who is also a co-blogger at Professor William Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection. Professor Jacobson had told me that his associate would be attending CPAC and so, when she called, I arranged to meet her in the hotel lobby.

When we met in the lobby — “Look for the man in the brown hat” — Miss McCaffrey was accompanied by her friend, Michele Walk, associate editor of The Politicizer, a student-oriented conservative site. “Come to my office,” I said, directing them to the smoking area outside the hotel that functions as my HQ at CPAC. We had been out there about two minutes when we were joined by Ladd Ehlinger Jr., who employed his photographic skills to commemorate the meeting.

Now, it happened that Miss Walk is a student at George Washington University. As soon as she told me that, I said, “Do you know Sergio?” GWU alumnus Sergio Gor is a rising young operative I’ve known since 2007, who now works for — can you guess? Continue reading CPAC Day 2: Into the Scrum →

Best VA Political Week Of The Year

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by Smitty

I know CPAC is at full roar, while I sit out in the cold, where I can catch enough bandwidth for a post.

What a week in VA news. Cuccinelli tilting the SCOTUS windmill-style for the ObamaCare case. VMI looking really creepy over Islam. And then ol’ “Born Fightin'” Webb decides that fighting for the wrong team is no’ so fun.

But what’s this at Virginia Virtucon? A Daft Jim Moran for Senate site? Get the fertilizer out of here, as they say. Cracking good idea, that. Here is a menu of 10 campaign slogans:

  1. “No one in Virginia knows public service like I do, especially not Patrick Murray.”
  2. “Like I told that Arab network, raaaaacism is a problem in the US, but I know how to solve it.”
  3. “The economy is recovering, and I will continue to exercise the 1st Amendment non-sensically until the statement becomes true.”
  4. “I greatly fear that redistricting is going to bring yet more voters to VA-8 who are not on the take from my various patronage schemes.”
  5. “Harry Reid said that if I win he would protect me from Jason Mattera.”
  6. “Corporations make too much money, and I can be instrumental in fair redistribution. Just ask me.”
  7. “PMA scandal? What PMA scandal? Old news.”
  8. “Oh, that vast office building on 395 that brought in all the jobs and really tubed the traffic? Amazingly, that’s Dick Cheney’s fault.”
  9. “If I run for the Senate and lose to Allen, that’s a less humiliating drubbing than the one I know will come in 2012 from Murray.”
  10. “They say I look and sound Kennedy-esque.”

CPAC Update: Rep. Allen West Will Buy Me Beers and Also Give Keynote Speech

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One of these things is very important news:

Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) will be the closing keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, he said in a Wednesday morning tweet.

Will update with further news of who’s buying me beers at CPAC. Other than “everybody,” of course.

UPDATE: It can be neither confirmed nor denied that Matt Lewis is buying me beers.

UPDATE II: Here is the Tweet by which Congressman West made his big announcement:

Some of you may notice that he didn’t say anything about buying me beers. Well, (a) he only had 140 characters to work with, and (b) some things are too important for a mere Twitter announcement. We expect a press release momentarily. Meanwhile, The Hill reports:

By choosing West, CPAC sends an interesting message. The Florida freshman hasn’t been afraid to clash with the GOP leadership in the House, and he enjoys a unique status as just one of two black Republicans elected in the House.

Uh, that word “unique” has an actual definition. If there are two of something, it’s not “unique.”

UPDATE III: Jerry Wilson is not in the CPAC holiday spirit:

The clubby chummy high school-ish clique vibe is pathetic. . . .
I have yet another doctor’s appointment this morning to see if the staph infection in my sinuses, which has plagued me for several months, is any better. Also, all appearances indicate I have some kind of infection, possibly staph as well, in my lungs or close vicinity thereof. I’ve undergone four rounds of antibiotics in the past five or six months, and in the case of the first three treatments (I finished the most recent one yesterday) all the symptoms came back at full strength within a matter of days.
I’m tired of being sick, and I’m scared about why this isn’t going away.

Persistent illness is indeed cause for concern, and I certainly hope Jerry gets well soon. My own health has been less than optimal the past few days, but remain resolutely determined to ignore any source of woe during “Mardi Gras for the Right.”

If I keel over dead before it’s done, I can only hope that I have done my share by then to put the “party” back in the Republican Party. Until they plow me under, however, Laissez les bons temps rouler!

UPDATE IV: Now a Memeorandum thread. The choice of West is commended as “brilliant” by Cubachi.

You may wonder, “Why is Stacy so certain that Allen West is going to buy him beers?” Let me remind you that I spent Election Night at West’s victory party in Boca Raton.

There was a cash bar at the party and, although I was fortunately able to impose on some of my friends to purchase the necessary refreshments, the very thought a Republican congressional campaign would expect me to buy my own beer . . .

Well, it offended my sense gonzo ethics. If a professional journalist doesn’t even get free beer, what’s the point in becoming a professional journalist?

Might as well go to law school or something.

Buerkle in the Crosshairs

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Ann Marie Buerkle is one of 19 GOP House members targeted by a new Democrat attack ad.

Wait a minute: Didn’t we just get lectured that it was inflammatory and irresponsible to use violence-inspiring terms like “target” about members of Congress? Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters:

I guess it’s okay to do this 23 days after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot, but it was completely inappropriate for Sarah Palin to do virtually the exact same thing months before last year’s midterm elections.

Remember: You should never accuse liberals of not having any standards. They’ve got exactly two standards: One for them and one for everybody else.

At any rate, this early round of attack ads signals that the 2012 campaign is already underway, and I urge you to go contribute to help re-elect Ann Marie Buerkle now. Every $20 or $50 helps.

In Case You Didn’t Notice, ObamaCare Is Both Unconstitutional and Un-American

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This falls under the category of “Not Exactly News,” although it’s good to have a federal judge say so:

A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that requires Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at two-to-two in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
Unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so essential to the workings of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required that the entire Obama health care law be invalidated.
“The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.

Liberals are whining about like you’d expect, while conservatives are chuckling at Judge Vinson’s cleverness:

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.

Bwaaahahahaha! Dave Weigel detects a bit of Tea Party sentiment in this part of Judge Vinson’s ruling:

It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.

Bwaaahahahaha! Chew on that one, lefties!

(Via Memeorandum.)

Van Jones and Other Marxist Scum Protest Koch Brothers’ Meeting

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Yesterday I told you that Herman Cain would be speaking at a conference in Rancho Mirage, California, sponsored by the Koch Foundation. Well, about a thousand smelly hippies turned out to protest the conference and guess who was helping lead them?

Van Jones, the former green jobs deputy in the Obama Administration and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, described the anti-Koch rally as “the beginning of our fight back.”

Twenty-five hippies were reportedly arrested. Click here for some nice photos of the Riverside Sheriff’s Department riot squad who, alas, didn’t get the opportunity to use their batons, pepper spray and tasers.

Herman Cain Attends Koch Brothers Meeting, Causes Left-Wing Freak-Out

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Lee Fang at Think Progress sees a conspiracy afoot:

This weekend, David and Charles Koch, co-owners of the Koch Industries conglomerate of chemical, timber, oil and manufacturing interests, are hosting their twice annual meeting to coordinate strategy and raise funds for the conservative movement. . . .

Among those in attendance at the meeting in Rancho Mirage, California, is Herman Cain. Still a year to go until the Iowa caucuses, and he’s already got ’em shaking in their shoes.

Health Care and the ‘N-Word’

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Last week, when I did a post about efforts to promote state nullification of ObamaCare, my friend Ali Akbar joked on Twitter that I was using the “n-word,” but now apparently nullification is the latest rage:

BOISE, Idaho — Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight President Obama’s health care overhaul.
They are introducing measures that hinge on “nullification,” Thomas Jefferson’s late 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters.
GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming are also talking about the idea. . . .

You can read the whole thing. Professor Thomas Woods’s recent book Nullification has helped promote this trend, but the Associated Press didn’t find him worth quoting, instead relying on anti-nullification sources who derogate the authority of states to defend the liberty of their citizens. Certainly the revival of interest in this doctrine — first promulgated by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions — is a testimony to the depth of opposition to ObamaCare.

UPDATE: Via Red State Eclectic, here’s video of Professor Woods discussing the recent controversy in Idaho:

Watch this mild-mannered scholar and try to convince yourself that he’s a radical extremist. His Web site is TomWoods.com.