"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
From a public-health perspective, someone ill with whooping cough could spread this potentially deadly disease to anyone who encounters them, however casually — in the hallways of a public school, for example. So requiring young children to be vaccinated for whooping cough just makes common sense.
Human papilloma virus? Not so much.
Because I’m thinking . . . not so much.
Sarah Palin poses for a photo with supporters at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 12.
This morning Smitty taunted me via Twitter with a link to Ed Morrissey’s post Monday about the will-she-or-won’t-she question: What’s up with this Sept. 3 Tea Party rally in Indianola, Iowa? Ed makes a good point:
Politicians don’t win the Iowa caucus with showy, one-off events. They have to conduct the retail politicking that the declared candidates are currently conducting all across the state. That means going to small events as well as large ones, traveling through all of the small towns and shaking hands, and asking voters now to caucus for them in 2012.
Exactly: Let us stipulate that any event with Sarah Palin would be “large” by comparison with, say, the 50 or so voters who showed up for Rick Santorum’s barn party. Still, the fact remains that Iowa caucus-goers prefer to vote for candidates they’ve met face-to-face, and the winner will likely have shaken 50,000 hands by Feb. 6. As Ed says, “Palin would need to win Iowa to have a path to the nomination,” and if she’s going to win it, she’ll have to get busy pretty soon to catch up with the handshaking that’s already been done by her rivals.
Time’s a-wastin’, in other words. Continue reading Mixed Signals from Sarah Palin Produce Pure Frustration for the Political Press →
by Smitty
Allahpundit, emphasis mine:
Since we’re talking Perry, Palin, and Iowa, here’s an … interesting poll that made the rounds yesterday. There’s nothing obviously suspect to me about the methodology for surveying Republicans (the poll was automated, just like all of Rasmussen’s), but I’m not familiar with this pollster so assign whatever degree of credibility to it that you like. I joked on Twitter today that it’ll be fun seeing which side Karl Rove comes down on if the race ends up being between Perry and Palin, but he’d surely take solace in the fact that things will inevitably turn really nasty online between each candidate’s supporters. Perry will get called a cronyist, Palin will get called unqualified, and thus shall the wedge be driven into the grassroots. Can’t wait to find out which of the two is the truer “true conservative.” It’s hard for us RINOs to tell sometimes, you know.
If Governor Palin is the spiritual daughter of Reagan, and his 11th Commandment was not to speak ill of another conservative, then it makes sense that she’ll discipline her troops, to heighten the contrast between her and at least the Left, if not also Governor Perry’s supporters.
But is it in her best interest to go in this early? If she lets Governors Perry and Romney bash on each other and the Left while remaining aloof, is that a bad thing? Her only opportunity cost would be near-term fundraising. However, gambling that her charisma will motivate campaign contributions from the hoi polloi may make it worthwhile to delay.
Furthermore, if a substantial number of the people already bet that she’s running, without an official announcement, then she builds pressure on BHO, while not actually being present on the field, which presence would become a rallying cry for the opposition. She continues to log hours in front of a camera, and work whatever offline coaching she’s doing, honing the message. The Recovering Liberal breaks down the pundit split, which favors a run, but cites 03 September for the announcement.
What is the fish/cut bait date? I predict a buildup during the fall, a final go/no go decision, which will be a go, and come on 13 November, with all of the appropriate invocations of Reagan. By that time, the mysterious 1 in 5 who strongly support BHO shall have ebbed about as far as they will, and the House GOP shall have had time to recycle the debt question with the FY12 spending bills. Unless BHO can find a way not to look a total boob (again) on budgetary matters (it could happen: his opponent is the GOP), he stands to be further weakened as the year drags on. Other than the corresponding economic damage to the country, what’s not to like about that?
So, sorry, Maggie Mac: your bustier straps are likely to remain twisted a few months more, if I’m right. Daily Pundit also sounds a trifle overheated:
At this point, if Sarah does jump in, I’m inclined to be annoyed with her. She dicked around playing cute for months, when she could have joined the fray and locked up the anti-RINO vote.
You’ll shake it off, I expect.
In any event, it makes little sense for Perry or Palin supporters to expend ammunition on each other. They’d fail the Reagan litmus test. And she’s not in the race. He’s still receiving the inspection reserved for candidates whose names do not rhyme with ‘trauma’. If they’re the last two standing, there may be some thumb wrestling to sort out who tops the ticket. But that’s all wildly speculative.
Tim Pawlenty’s former campaign staff is reportedly hoping to join the campaign of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. This is amusing: Who wants to start their campaign with a team of losers? It’s also pathetic: Unemployed campaign staffers pinning their future hopes on a guy who has repeatedly said he is not running for president. And the ex-Pawlenty staffers are trying to make themselves seem more desireable by asserting that they’ve “resisted overtures” from Paul Ryan’s prospective campaign.
Longtime Red State contributor Josh Trevino says Michelle Malkin is “insane” and “fringe” to criticize Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller wrote: “Some conservatives, of course, weren’t happy with Malkin’s criticism. When it comes to covering conservative primary candidates, some people think conservative writers should just turn a blind eye — or solely focus on attacking Obama.”
The problem here is that Perry’s fans — and the Red State crew seems to be leading the charge — have portrayed their guy as All That and a Slice of Cheese and now seem to expect everyone else to cede the nomination to their anointed candidate. As I have explained, I was offended by the Perry campaign’s roll-out, a deliberate diss to the Ames Straw Poll. (Iowan sources told me that Perry’s people had approached the Iowa GOP about getting in on the straw poll and evidently didn’t like the terms offered.) My out-front support of Herman Cain might suffice to explain my resentment of the Perrybots, but really: Don’t supporters of other candidates — Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, et al. — also have a legitimate grievance at being told that Perry is beyond criticism?
They’ve been out out there getting chewed up every day for months, and suddenly they’re just supposed to acclaim the Anointed One?
Because Red State says so? Dan Riehl eats Red Staters for breakfast.
I had raised this same possibility Thursday, with the caveat that it’s probably wishful thinking: A brokered convention is every political journalist’s dream. It was what we’d all hoped the Hillary-Obama battle would lead to in 2008. Yet the crowded GOP field and the new RNC rules about delegate apportionment — prohibiting winner-take-all primaries before April 1 — do permit the glimmer of hope that we could witness a multi-ballot Armageddon at the Republican convention. (Theme song: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”)
And while you wrap your mind around the idea of a Tampa apocalypse, consider this: The Sept. 3 Iowa “Restoring America” rally featuring Sarah Palin has switched its site to Indianola to handle a larger crowd:
There has been speculation that Palin, a former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, could use the event as an opportunity to announce whether she plans to run for president in 2012.
“I don’t know if she’s going to announce or not,” said Charlie Gruschow, co-founder of Tea Party of America. “But whether or not she announces, we’re going to have a huge event.”
Everybody who knows anything about presidential politics has already decided that Sarah Palin is not running in 2012.
But has Sarah Palin decided yet?
by Smitty
ABC has the news of Rick Perry in New Hampshire:
When Rick Perry arrived in New Hampshire one day ago, he repeated the state’s “live free or die” motto, telling an audience, “You’ve got to love that.
What Perry may not have loved, however, is the treatment he received just 24-hours later at a meet-and-greet stop in this picturesque Seacoast town where he encountered about two-dozen protesters who shouted at him, held signs with slogans like “Another Texas idiot for sale,” and followed him into a cafe to yell some more.
Conceptual re-write of the situation:
Rick Perry: Live free or die!
Gail Mitchell: Old and busted. The new hotness: ‘Live for free or die!’
Rick Perry: Shazam!
Over at HotAir, the latest tidbit is that BHO’s team wants to run against Perry. The clear reason for this is that Bush is old and busted, but Perry can be framed as the new raaaaacist. White, male Texas Governors: only Teh One can save us from their depredations! And if you work hard enough for BHO, you may get a federal scooby snack.
It is great that the Administration has achieved such a level of transparency; would that the contents thereof were not pure hooey.
Ron Paul supporter Robert Morrow took out a newspaper ad seeking women who can expose Gov. Rick Perry as a hypocrite:
HAVE YOU EVER HAD
SEX WITH RICK PERRY?
Are you a stripper, an escort, or just a “young hottie”
impressed by an arrogant, entitled governor of Texas? . . .
[W]e will help you publicize your direct dealings
with a Christian buzzword-spouting “family values”
hypocrite and fraud.
It should be noted that Morrow is a resident of Austin. Have there been any rumors in the Texas capital of gubernatorial hanky-panky? Why would Morrow be so specific about the types of women he was seeking? If Perry were indeed prone to extramarital affairs, doesn’t it make more sense that he’d be involved with, say, staffers or lobbyists — women he knew via politics, and who would thus have an incentive to be discreet — than to assume he’d be tapping strippers and escorts? But Morrow says the wording of his ad reflects more than a wild guess:
Morrow claims that he knows strippers in Austin who have stories about Perry, but none of them are willing to come forward to the press; hence, the need for an ad in the Chronicle. “I think it’s only a matter of time until somebody credible comes forward,” he told me.
At the bottom of the ad is a nod to the longtime (and equally unsubstantiated) rumors that Perry, who has pursued sundry anti-gay policies, is himself gay. “Note to gay people: If you know the truth about Rick, please QUIT covering for him,” it reads.
So the governor is either a reckless womanizer or a closeted homosexual, at least according to this Ron Paul supporter in Austin. That’s the great thing about unsubstantiated rumors: They can be completely contradictory, and still be damaging.
How long until Will Folks claims to have had sex with Rick Perry?
The Boss went after Rick Perry for imposing mandatory vaccination with Gardasil on 12-year-old girls. Gardasil protects against human pappiloma virus (HPV, genital warts) and, at the time of the 2007 decision, social conservatives were outraged by the idea of requiring that girls so young be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease. Libertarians were outraged at the mandatory aspect of the requirement. Perhaps the worst part was that it appeared Perry was acting corruptly, as a favor to lobbyists for the vaccine manufacturer, Merck.
In response to this criticism, Streiff at Red State wrote a post about “the bad faith and dishonest arguments being made in regards to this decision. Unfortunately, people I have previously had some respect for have checked their integrity and intellect at the door on this subject” — and linked Malkin, thus accusing her of a lack of “integrity and intellect”!
Dan Riehl demanded that Red State’s Erick Erickson apologize for that.
Amid all this friendly-fire action, The Right Perspective recalled my own gut-hunch reaction to the Perry campaign’s roll-out: “I felt a need to put on the record my instinctive sense that there’s something fundamentally wrong about the Perry campaign . . . . Some kind of catastrophe will result, one way or another.”
I took a lot of flak for saying that at the time, but if Perry is so self-evidently the GOP Dream Candidate for 2012, why are Jeb Bush, Bill Bennett and John Boehner urging Paul Ryan to get in the race? I don’t know.
What I do know is that a lot of conservatives seem to have doubts about Perry’s candidacy, and that these doubts aren’t getting much media notice amid all the hype about the alleged Dream Candidate.
Need a demonstration of the continued influence of the pro-life movement in Republican Party politics? When Americans United for Life announced its 40th anniversary gala, the long list of congressional co-hosts included Michele Bachmann — who just won the Iowa GOP straw poll — while Texas Gov. Rick Perry is among three honorary co-chairs for the event. Here is the press release from AUL:
Political Heavyweights Join
Americans United for Life
for its 40th Anniversary Gala
Honorary Co-Chairs Texas Governor Rick Perry,
U. S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions lead a stellar list of Honorary Hosts for an historic event.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (08-15-11) – National leaders and political luminaries will join together in November to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Americans United for Life — the nation’s premier pro-life legal team and the country’s first national pro-life organization — incorporated in 1971 before the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. The high profile event is already marked by an impressive list of pro-life leaders serving as honorary hosts of the much-anticipated evening.
AUL President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest noted that the anniversary gala would mark the “accumulated pro-life victories AUL has earned through years of public service and the people who made them possible.”
Milestones for AUL include: successfully defending the Hyde Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court, establishing the intellectual groundwork for Fetal Homicide legislation now passed in 38 states, reducing abortions state by state through cutting-edge model legislation found in Defending Life (a catalogue of 39 pieces of model legislation), leading in the fight against assisted suicide, and testifying for life in state legislatures around the country and in the last two Supreme Court justice confirmation hearings. . . .
Details for attendance
What: AUL’s 40th Anniversary Gala
Where: The Newseum, Washington, D.C.
When: Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Honorary Hosts for the event include
FROM THE SENATE:
Senator Kelly Ayotte
Senator Roy Blunt
Senator Richard Burr
Senator Tom Coburn
Senator Jim DeMint
Senator Michael Enzi
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Chuck Grassley
Senator Orrin Hatch
Senator John Hoeven
Senator Mike Johanns
Senator John McCain
Senator Rand Paul
Senator Marco Rubio
Senator Richard Shelby
Senator Roger Wicker
FROM THE HOUSE:
Congressman Robert Aderholt
Congressman Todd Akin
Congressman Steve Austria
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
Congressman Dan Boren
Congressman Paul Broun
Congresswoman Ann Marie Buerkle
Congressman Dave Camp
Congressman Jerry Costello
Congresswoman Renee Ellmers
Congressman Blake Farenthold
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx
Congressman Trent Franks
Congressman Scott Garrett
Congressman Phil Gingrey
Congressman Louie Gohmert
Congressman Bob Goodlatte
Congresswoman Kay Granger
Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler
Congressman Joe Heck
Congressman Bill Huizenga
Congressman Randy Hultgren
Congressman Darrell Issa
Congressman Sam Johnson
Congressman Walter Jones
Congressman Adam Kinzinger
Congressman James Lankford
Congressman Tom Latham
Congressman Steven LaTourette
Congressman Daniel Lipinski
Congressman Billy Long
Congressman Frank Lucas
Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer
Congressman Don Manzullo
Congressman Thaddeus McCotter
Congressman David McKinley
Congresswoman Candice Miller
Congressman Jeff Miller
Congressman Mick Mulvaney
Congressman Randy Neugebauer
Congressman Alan Nunnelee
Congressman Steve Pearce
Congressman Mike Pence
Congressman Collin Peterson
Congressman Tom Petri
Congressman Joe Pitts
Congressman Mike Pompeo
Congressman Ben Quayle
Congressman Denny Rehberg
Congresswoman Martha Roby
Congressman Mike Rogers
Congressman Todd Rokita
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Congressman Paul Ryan
Congressman Tim Scott
Congressman Chris Smith
Congressman Lamar Smith
Congressman Cliff Sterns
Congressman Lee Terry
Congressman Scott Tipton
Congressman Fred Upton
Congressman Allen West
Congressman Lynn Westmoreland