Category: Politics

‘You Have to Answer for Santino, Carlo’

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“Our best chance to put responsible and principled leaders in Washington starts here, with Dede Scozzafava.”
— Newt Gingrich, Oct. 16, 2009

“Former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells NRO that he is sure that endorsing Republican Dede Scozzafava in the upcoming special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district was the right thing to do.”
— Robert Costa, National Review, Oct. 20, 2009

“She’s dramatically better than the Democrat.”
— Newt Gingrich, Oct. 21, 2009

“The choice in New York is a practical one . . .”
— Newt Gingrich, Oct. 22, 2009

“Newt for 2012? No, thanks.”
— Michelle Malkin, Oct. 26, 2009

“If this third-party candidate takes away just enough votes to elect the Democrat, then we will have strengthened Nancy Pelosi by the divisiveness. . . . The money raised in the district is overwhelmingly going to Dede Scozzafava.”
— Newt Gingrich, Oct. 27, 2009

“In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York.”
— Dede Scozzafava, Nov. 1, 2009 (endorsing Democrat)

“I’m very, very let down because she told everybody she was a Republican, and she said she was a loyal Republican.”
— Newt Gingrich, Nov. 2, 2009

“Guess who will not be representing the 23rd District? Dede Scozzafava!”
— supporter of Doug Hoffman, Nov. 3 (Election Night)

“This one was worth the fight. . .  And this is only one fight in the battle. . . . Stand up and fight back.”
— Doug Hoffman, Nov. 3, concession speech

“We cannot forget how this whole thing happened in the first place. . . . The right message here would indict the way party bosses, Republican Party bosses and these big thinkers like Newt screwed the whole thing up, from the get-go.”
— Rush Limbaugh, Nov. 5, 2009

When Allahpundit first asked, “Second look at Gingrich?” on Oct. 18, my visceral reaction was, “Are you freaking kidding me?” Nothing astonishes me more than poll numbers — from PPP and CNN — suggesting that people are taking Newt seriously as a presidential candidate. And of all the prognotications I’ve ever made, of none have I been more confident than in predicting this: It won’t last.

The Newt Bubble is one of two things:

  1. A transition point for the erstwhile Rick Perry voters before they go to one of the other Not Romneys; or
  2. The final doomed hope before these fickle voters — the ones who started out for Tim Pawlenty or some other non-viable candidate, then hopscotched around amongst the Flavor of the Month candidates — shrug their shoulders, say “Why not?” and settle for Mitt Romney.

The croakers are once more pronouncing doom on Herman Cain (all day today the Fox News talking heads have treated Cain dismissively), which doesn’t bother me much since the croakers never believed in Cain to begin with, and they’ve been so wrong so often that I automatically discount their repetitive doomsaying. Cain will either recover or he won’t, but the ultimate non-viability of Newt remains a solid fact.

To get way ahead of the argument, Newt is unelectable, period. If Republicans actually were to nominate him, sending the twice-divorced Pillsbury doughboy up against Obama would be a fool-proof formula for catastrophic electoral wipeout on Nov. 6, 2012. Supporting Gingrich is therefore tantamount to advocating the re-election of Obama. I’m convinced that Republican primary voters will sooner or later wise up to that reality, and the Gingrich Bubble will collapse as suddenly as it has inflated the past two weeks.

What is ironic, of course, is that many of those prominent voices now cheering the Newt Bubble are the same people who often say that they oppose Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum on the grounds that those particular Not Romneys are not “electable.”

These self-authorized arbiters of “electability” are never going to have a chance to be proven wrong about Gingrich in the general election next November because, within the next 10 weeks, it will be demonstrated that Newt can’t beat Romney.

Prediction: Newt won’t even finish ahead of Ron Paul in Iowa.

Why do I say that? Because Ron Paul inspires fanatical devotion from his followers, and can muster armies of fired-up volunteers. By contrast, Newt’s staunchest supporters are respectable Establishment types who aren’t going to be trudging through the snow in Iowa on Jan. 3.

If a blogger really wants to have some fun, do this: Start collecting comments of pundits who are currently pumping up the Newt Bubble. Save the links in a special folder in your browser bookmarks, and wait until the morning of Feb. 1 — the day after the Florida primary — at which point those quotes are going to look silly as hell.

By Feb. 1, Newt will be 0-for-4, his campaign will be deeply in debt, and he’ll be ready to quit and endorse Romney. Take it to the bank.

Of course, if I’m wrong and the Newt Bubble proves an enduring phenomenon so that, on Feb. 1, we’re left with a choice between Newt and Mitt, I’ll endorse Mitt, because I can never forgive Newt for what he did to Doug Hoffman in 2009.

While thousands of grassroots conservatives all across the country were doing all they could to elect Hoffman in the NY-23 special election, Gingrich spent three weeks telling everybody that Dede Scozzafava was “our best hope.” He kept going on TV to repeat the counterfactual assertion that Dede was the unaminous choice of Republicans in the district, while suggsting that Hoffman — a mild-mannered accountant — was some kind of wild-eyed extremist, and that those of us who supported Hoffman were ignorant of the realities in the district. Of course, Newt himself never even bothered to visit that district, and was just repeating what he had been told by the clueless hacks in the New York GOP leadership and at the NRCC.

When push came to shove, as we all remember, Dede quit on Halloween — the Saturday before Election Day — and endorsed the Democrat on Sunday, which was just about the only thing she could have done to prevent Hoffman from winning. In the end, Bill Owens won by less than 4,000 vote out of more than 150,000 votes cast in the special election, with Dede leaving her name on the ballot to collect some 8,500 votes, which was greater than Owens’s margin of victory.

It was Dede Scozzafava, not Doug Hoffman, who was the marginal “spoiler” candidate in that election, a role she played with Newt’s wholehearted support.

Like many of other Republicans of his vintage, Newt never understood or sympathized with the Tea Party movement. Gingrich, like so many GOP Establishment types, seemed to fear the grassroots uprising as a potential third-party threat, and viewed Hoffman’s campaign in that context. But what happened in NY-23 was a unique circumstance that has never been repeated in the past two years, and Gingrich evidently couldn’t be bothered to do the research necessary to discover that his Republican buddies were lying to him: About Dede, about Hoffman and about the 23rd District.

As someone who traveled all over NY-23, I can attest that the district was mostly rural, with a few relatively smallish towns — Watertown and Plattsburgh being the biggest — and a bit of suburban Syracuse thrown in. It was a basically conservative district and there was nothing in Hoffman’s platform that made him unelectable. Frankly, Hoffman’s worst problem in the district was the open hostility shown by the publisher of the Watertown newspaper, who seems to have been a personal friend of Scozzafava and hated Hoffman with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns.

Newt couldn’t be bothered to learn any of that, and made a complete fool of himself: “She said she was a loyal Republican.” Chump.

Here we are two years later, and Gingrich wants to pretend none of that ever happened. Newt is currently prospering because he talks a good game. He’s always been brilliant at articulating issues, and has benefitted by comparison to the hapless Rick Perry, at a time when Herman Cain has been under siege for two weeks. But the Newt Bubble won’t last, because people will eventually remember Newt’s past and his lack of grassroots volunteer enthusiasm will doom his candidacy.

Nobody is going to volunteer to campaign for a career politician who blows half a million at Tiffany for his third wife and then goes off on a luxury Mediterranean cruise. Newt isn’t going to get those $25, $50, $100 campaign contributions from retirees and housewives. Whatever campaign Newt puts together, he’ll have to rely on paid staff, and he’ll get no help from Tea Party activists who remember what he did to Doug Hoffman, the original hero of the Tea Party movement. And if nobody else remembers, we’ll be sure to remind them.

“You have to answer for Santino, Carlo. You fingered Sonny for the Barzini people. . . . Barzini is dead. So is Phillip Tattaglia. Moe Greene. Stracci. Cuneo. Today I settled all family business so don’t tell me that you’re innocent. Admit what you did.”

Ayn Rand On The Liberal And Liberal-Lite Parties In The U.S.

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by Smitty

The Tea Partiers are the moderates; everyone to the Left is suicidal.

NPR quotes Ayn Rand:

“Both [GOP and Democrats] today are for socialism, in effect — for controls. And there is no party, there are no voices, to offer an actual pro-capitalist, laissez-faire, economic freedom and individualism,” she said. “That is what this country needs today.”

The Tea Parties are a de facto second party, infiltrating the Liberal-Lite party.  Hence the tepid response to Mitt Romney at the Defending the American Dream Summit, until he mentioned repealing ObamaCare. Lots of applause. “Should have started with that,” he observed.

The Rand quotation comes from a 1959 interview. Since then, we’ve entered an Information Age. The Nanny State was as brutally stupid toward individuals then as it is now. Subsequently, the demographics have worsened, and the people who used to scream at home, clutching their newspapers, are now blogging, commenting, networking, and comparing notes. The Nanny State delenda est. The likelihood of success for the GOP nominee is proportional to the degree (s)he gets it.

via The Future of Capitalism

ObamaCare Granted Certiorari

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by Smitty

SCOTUSblog reports:

Setting the stage for a historic constitutional confrontation over federal power, the Supreme Court on Monday granted three separate cases on the constitutionality of the new federal health care law, and set aside 5 1/2 hours for oral argument, to be held in March. The Court, however, did not grant all of the issues raised and it chose issues to review only from three of the five separate appeals before it. It is unclear, at this point, whether all of the cases will be heard on a single day.

My man Cuccinelli has sounded quite firm and confident about the arguments in Virginia’s case, which is being pulled into the multi-state fracas. 27 states, in fact, desire to tell #OccupyResoluteDesk where to go with his legislative brainchild and what to do with it upon arrival.

Jimmie Bise on Twitter seems to think that a majority of the states could get crushed in a case where constitutionally, economically, financially, historically (to look at Europe) the states totally have the right of it*. Coming as it does during an election year, the SCOTUS will be under extreme pressure not to make the president look worse than usual. A follow-up post at SCOTUSblog summarizes the issues. The intense scrutiny on this issue is going to hurt the Left significantly. So much of ObamaCare in particular and Progressivism in general is predicated upon you shutting up and grazing quietly in your pasture, you ungrateful little sheep.

Yet Progressivism is the dead parrot of our day. I cannot fathom the Roberts court failing to scuttle ObamaCare, at least in a de facto way. There may be enough desire to offer a fig leaf that an attempt is made to leave BHO’s centerpiece ‘achievement’ intact. Certainly, the wording will try to minimize collateral damage to the Progressive project, lest the Roberts court be charged with Judicial Activism, which is only acceptable to Progressives in the service of tearing down what is good about the country.

In a way, it does not matter. Irrespective of the ObamaCare decision, conservatives must double down on efforts to emancipate future generations from the failed promise of the New Deal. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

via Ace of Spades

Update: Linked at The Lonely Conservative

Update II: More at Hot Air, and now a Memorandum thread. Legal Insurrection notes:

And, it does not look like Elena Kagan recused herself from consideration of the cert petitions, so expect her to be part of the decision, notwithstanding very strong evidence that she had some level of prior involvement when Solicitor General.

I, for one, can assert with total confidence that Kagan was not selected specifically to tilt the discussion in favor of ObamaCare. No, wait: it’s blatantly obvious that she was.

Update III: At Power Line, a note on the fact that the SCOTUS will hear 5.5 hours of testimony across four questions:

It is impossible to overstate how remarkable this is. Usually the Supreme Court allows only an hour for a whole case to be argued. They didn’t even extend the time limit for the two Bush v. Gore cases in 2000. Prediction: If the Court strikes down Obamacare, and especially if its opinion goes beyond just the individual mandate, as these issues suggest is possible, look for the Left to start calling it “the Extreme Court.”

Since we’re in an all politics, all the time era, we see how Obama tries to leverage the abject failure of his policies into a “blame conservatives” game. ObamaCare was sabotaged by the GOP and Buuuuush appointees. In order to usher in the Progressive Human Unicorn Cornucopia (PHUC), we must re-elect #OccupyResoluteDesk, so he can appoint more drool bucketwise softball player Justices, and break through this conservative roadblock.

Update IV: The Federalist Society Blog:

the Fourth Annual Rosenkranz Debate and Luncheon at The Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, former solicitor general Paul Clement and Professor Laurence Tribe debated the very question. It was truly a preview of coming attractions since Clement will be arguing the case before the Supreme Court.

A very interesting post, showing just how far off a straightforward interpretation of our Constitution, and into the realms of sophistry we have journeyed.
Video here.

*That tweet is so Eeyore-ish as to invite the question: Is Jimmie Bise actually the international man of mystery known as Allahpundit?

Greta Scooped Me, But That’s OK

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Greta Van Sustern’s exclusive interview with Gloria Cain is, on the one hand, great news for the Cain campaign, but on the other hand, an indication that Cain’s campaign team views TheOtherMcCain.com as less influential than Greta.

Months of Cain coverage did not earn me that scoop? I’m hurt.

But I understand: If I’m not good enough for BlogCon . . .

Never mind that now, though. The damage is done, and I have a duty to my readers, so I must overcome the humiliation of being scooped, suck it up and report the second-hand news:

Mrs. Cain strongly defends her husband against the allegations of sexual harassment.
“You hear the graphic allegations and we know that would have been something that’s totally disrespectful of her as a woman. And I know the type of person he is. He totally respects women.”
“I’m thinking he would have to have a split personality to do the things that were said,” according to Mrs. Cain.

I’d like to provide you with an advanced transcript of tonight’s interview, or photos or something, but Team Cain is probably busy supplying that kind of exclusive stuff to really important blogs.  But here’s something — a poll at Greta Wire asks, “Who in the list below is most likely to get endorsed by Governor Sarah Palin?” The results as of 10 a.m. today:

You should go vote right now.

Remember: Sarah Palin endorsed Doug Hoffman; Newt endorsed Dede. So the idea that Palin would endorse Newt — who went on Fox News again and again in October 2009 trying to counteract Palin’s influence — seems wildly improbable to me. Newt was an Active Agent of Evil in NY-23. It was not until after Dede quit and endorsed the Democrat that Newt expressed even the mildest regret for his constant shilling for that vicious backstabbing RINO crapweasel.

It Ain’t ‘Whining’ If the Bias Is Real

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No, I’m not talking about the bias of Tabitha Hale in excluding me from the BlogCon agenda for the second consecutive year. The final word on that has not only been said, but also set to music. Rather, I’m talking about the evidence of bias by John Dickerson of CBS:

In a slip of the finger that quickly ignited a furor among Mrs. Bachmann’s supporters, Mr. Dickerson e-mailed his colleagues that he would prefer to “get someone else” other than the Minnesota congresswoman for an online show after the CBS News/National Journal debate on Saturday night. The e-mail said that Mrs. Bachmann was “not going to get many questions” in the debate and that “she’s nearly off the charts” — an apparent reference to her low standing in many polls.
The problem was that Mrs. Bachmann’s communications director was copied in on the e-mail, and Mr. Dickerson hit “reply to all.” Oops.

Smitty has said that it is “whining” to call attention to such vicious backstabbing dishonesty, as though no one — least of all Michele Bachmann herself — should call attention to Dickerson’s contemptuous disparagement of her candidacy, lest they be accused of irrational and unseemly self-pity. Bachmann’s campaign manager Keith Nahigan, by contrast, complained of the insult with the obvious goal of exacting retribution.

Now, imagine yourself in Dickerson’s place, while your bosses at CBS News are being deluged with e-mails demanding your immediate termination. Imagine the next 24 hours, as Dickerson is denounced on the radio airwaves by Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, et cetera.

Even if Dickerson doesn’t get fired by CBS, he is now marked for life — his name a despicable epithet, so that no Republican will ever trust him again — thanks to the success of Nahigan in calling attention to that 29-word e-mail.

But there are many more scoundrels like Dickerson in high places amongst the soi-disant elite of the media establishment, and the way they’ve stage-managed the GOP presidential debates this year is the subject of my American Spectator column today:

Whether they’re accused of trying to gin up rating-friendly “fireworks” or limiting questions to a candidate they deem to have dropped out of contention, suspicions toward debate moderators are part of an ongoing erosion of the media’s credibility. Perfect fairness and complete objectivity are perhaps an impossible ideal, but when a candidate claims to have discovered “concrete evidence” of bias, it is a serious charge that merits serious consideration. Republican voters will ultimately decide their party’s nominee, despite efforts by the media elite to decide for them. And Bachmann’s poll numbers are still higher than Huntsman’s.

Please read the whole thing, because among the many unintended consequences of Dickerson’s insult to Bachmann was the fact that I was compelled to spend three hours writing that column in a McDonald’s in Spartanburg, S.C.  The necessary delay in my departure meant that I was on the road driving 452 miles to arrive home at 3:15 a.m., utterly exhausted at the end of a grueling 19-hour day.

Journalism as an act of personal vengeance — seeking vindication against bullies, backstabbers and other such miscreants — is a topic worth at least an essay, if not an entire book, but I’m too tired to write it now.

And why write that story at all, when I’m living it every day of my life?

An Aside On Safe Passage For Messengers

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by Smitty

Twice now in recent memory, on

I have had commenters level the charge of “shooting the messenger”. Well, allow me to retort.

In the former case, I am to view Politico as some wholly innocent information nozzle, and in the latter case, Julian Assange and Bradly Manning as wholly innocent information nozzles. Your opinions may vary substantially from mine, but stand by while I develop the notion of “shooting the messenger,” and why I don’t think any of the above merit such a label.

“Shooting the messenger,” I contend, implies:
(a) A party in an authority position over the messenger. If you are, say, a the guy at the Metro station whose task it was to inform me at 8:30 AM that an “all day” pass does not mean “all day” in the normal sense, but a special “after 9:30 AM” sense peculiar to the Metro, then you are indeed the messenger, communicating the policy of an authority, and shooting you would be crass.

(b) A lack of a market incentive for delivering the message. Politico needs to have at least one allegation of sexual harassment against Herman Cain prove more substantial than a finger-pointing exercise for Politico to look more credible than the Weekly World News. Now, if  Politico wants to print that a six-eyed alien from Planet Q’uddlethumpin’ has endorsed Herman Cain’s candidacy, and thus be honest about its substantive content, then its mimetic warfare will be less of an odious distraction from real policy questions.

The media in general has so thoroughly abandoned any notion of a free, balanced presentation that it is an insult to honest messengers to be equated with these cheap propaganda mongers like Politico.

(c) A message that is not a warlike act. I don’t know how anybody can conflate Manning’s and Assange’s actions with anything other than a warlike act. If you think your government behaves dishonorably at various time and on various issues, then the way to deal with that is at the ballot box. A U.S. citizen giving away bulk information like Manning who is looking for sympathy should check the dictionary between s***t and syphilis, for all I care. We can have a theological discussion about sympathy for the lad’s soul, fine, but his actions are indefensible in my opinion.

As for Assange, it’s a miracle of modern technology that one twerp can inflict so much damage. However, his organization is substantially similar to Al Qaeda in my book. The fact that he draws breath, and he and his organization are not long since atomized probably means he has good friends. Notwithstanding any theological argument about his soul, as with Manning’s, Assange had better hope his friends remain good. Assange has broad jumped the line of demarcation between “things you do” and “things you just don’t do”.

Anything unfortunate happening to Assange before he dies at a peaceful old age is an argument in favor of being careful when you make enemies.

Something should be said about the inevitable ‘freedom fighter’ equivalencies that will ensue. Bore me not with such piffle. From what I can tell, Manning was not motivated by anything beyond the vacuous 20-something angst which Commies have pumped into our schools. I’m not a scholar of the fellow, and stand by for correction. In any case, a figure of George Washington’s caliber he is not. Equating a punk with any great American is a disservice to the great American.

Summarizing, the Metro attendant in example (a) is the only situation in which I think a “shooting the messenger” claim has merit. Thrashing people for ‘doing their job’ is in bad taste. Also unimpressive: demanding sympathy for the likes of Politico or Assange/Manning.

Perry Aides Dissing Gingrich Campaign?

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Interesting news:

A new book claims Newt Gingrich spent $1 million on jewelry to “buy off” his reluctant wife and stop her objecting to his running for president.
“Election 2012: The Battle Begins,” by reporters Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon, follows up on previous reports about Gingrich’s unpaid $500,000 charge account at Tiffany’s and his Greek cruise with his [third] wife, Callista.
Gingrich’s staff denied the latest account, which details the GOP hopeful’s extravagant spending while he professes to be a fiscal conservative.
Unidentified sources in the book are believed to be former Gingrich aides, many of whom now work for rival Rick Perry.

A hit-job on a GOP candidate blamed on Team Perry? I’m shocked.

Mike Rogers to Mona Charen: No, Cainiacs Are Not Liberal Hypocrites

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In a column at National Review, Mona Charen suggested that the boos from the audience in Wednesday’s debate for Maria Bartiromo’s “character issue” question were because Republicans have adopted “liberal hypocrisy.” This prompted Mike Rogers — a New Hampshire volunteer for Cain — to respond in the comments:

That’s a very uncharitable interpretation, and it fingers you as a liberal. Why, because LIBERALS are the ones who project their foibles and character problems onto Conservatives.
If you do your research as a journalist, you will find plenty of reasons to believe that the only two accusers known to actually exist have been found to be gold-digging serial accusers, one of whom is chuckled about in the halls of CBS for her past.
Character DOES matter, and the boos signify that most of the audience think that the charges are baseless and the resent the media trying to pile on.
Clinton was protected by people who said “we know it happened, and we don’t care — attaboy!”
Cain is supported by people who believe firmly that it didn’t happen, and have reasons for that belief — they will desert en masse if he’s lying.

It is perhaps uncharitable for Mike to accuse Charen, a veteran conservative writer, of being a liberal. But I fear she has succumbed to the temptation of letting others do her thinking for her — being influenced by what “everybody knows,” rather than considering the possibility that the Conventional Wisdom is mistaken.

The truth of the matter is that, in regard to the allegations against Cain, we don’t know what we don’t know and, alas, there are some things that are unknowable. However, many people have vouched for Herman Cain’s character, describing the accusations against him as implausible and, at this point, we have less reason to doubt his denials than we do to doubt his accusers.

Hey, why aren’t the media doing feature stories about Herman Cain’s longtime acquaintances who say they’re sure he’s innocent? Isn’t that . . . y’know, news?)