"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty (via The Lonely Conservative)
After Crist gets done repeating a completely cheesy accusation from a Hispanic newspaper, Rubio looks about ready to come across the table and flog the orange clean off the guy:
Rubio: champ
Crist: chump
Kendrick Meek sounds like a decent guy in all this, but, of the three, Rubio seems the clear choice.
by Smitty
After a day or two under the new posting regime, the time has come to celebrate Stacy McCain’s aggressive approach to new technology integration with a reader poll. The first and third choices will combine to form the NO crowd, the second and fourth the YES.
Hopefully, the third try at migrating the old comments proves successful. Fragile process. And I have a query in to DisqUS about the comment counts on the posts, but this could be a theme issue, i.e. more on us to sort out.
On the whole, I think the system is a net win, but will lay by my dish if our survey suggests otherwise.
Aside: everybody, request you disagree agreeably. There has been some recent animus about rude replies to comments. Treat these other commenters, whom you mostly haven’t met, with a default level of courtesy. There are ways to express that another person’s ideas are utterly daft in a positive way, that doesn’t detract from the blog’s overall dialog level.
If you want to call me everything but an American citizen, get your own blog and flex that First Amendment. My postings strive for a general decorum. Stacy lets fly a bit more than I care to; that’s his prerogative. He is The Talent.
But I Frankly, Unsurprisingly, Can’t Know Immeasurable Nirvana, Given hate (of) babysitting, and will show a commensurate lack of humor to those dragging me into such.
The latest poll tells the sad tale for Mr. RINO-No-More:
A statewide poll released Saturday night shows Republican Marco Rubio building on his lead over independent challenger Charlie Crist, while Democrat Kendrick Meek appears to be closing in on Crist in the closely watched contest.
Rubio is favored by 40 percent of likely voters, up from 38 percent last month; Crist’s support has dwindled to 28 percent from 33 percent, according to the Mason-Dixon Research & Associates survey of 625 likely Florida voters. . . .
The poll found that Meek is gaining on Crist, with his support rising sharply to 23 percent of likely voters, up from 18 percent. Nine percent are undecided.
“Rubio seems to be in a solid position to win, while Crist is fading,” said Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker: “Crist is bleeding Democrats to Meek and independents to both Meek and Rubio.”
Hey, I knew it all along. Immediately after Crist declared he was running as an independent, when the polls showed him leading the three-way — keep in mind Crist led every single Quinnipiac poll from April through August — some people seemed on the verge of panic, but I never broke a sweat.
Why? Because independent voters can’t stand a waffler. Continue reading Brown Clown Going Down: ‘Sorry Charlie’ Crist Isn’t Tanned, He’s Toast in Florida →
by Smitty (h/t Lopez)
Thirty-one seconds of ‘Thanks, I needed that’.Rubio rocks. The governor dude, no’ so much.
That’s from Jennifer Rubin at Commentary, who calls the Florida Republican Senate candidate’s speech yesterday “frankly the best speech on Israel since George W. Bush went to the Knesset.” The text of the speech is online and includes some important points:
We are in the midst of an all out, concerted global effort to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist. . . .
If Israel’s right to self-defense is undermined by efforts to lift its legal and necessary blockade of Gaza, which serves to stop Hamas from arming itself with deadly weapons, there will be lasting consequences not only for Israel, but also for the U.S. and the entire world. . . .
We should always remember that the obstacle to peace isn’t Israel; it is Palestinian extremists and Islamic terrorists who will not accept the Jewish State.
Which is exactly right. I am not anti-Arab and not even really anti-Islam, except insofar as Islam is intolerant toward Christianity and/or used as a rationale for violence. Nor am I one of those who, as Russell Kirk said of certain neoconservatives, mistake Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States. Yet the political, military and diplomatic reality is exactly as Marco Rubio describes it:
Israel’s enemies are or will soon be America’s enemies as well. They are emboldened every time they sense any sort of daylight between the United States and Israel.
It must be noted, in this context, that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are supporters of the “Free Gaza” movement. This exemplifies the radical roots of anti-Israel activism in the West. One of the forgotten details of the history of the Weather Underground is that, in their manifestos, Ayers and his terrorist buddies consistently expressed solidarity with the PLO:
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE! U.S. OUT OF THE MIDEAST! END AID TO ISRAEL!
The Democratic Party is now dominated by the ideological soulmates of Sirhan Sirhan. Radicals like Ayers supported the PLO for the same reason they supported the Vietcong: Any enemy of America is a friend to those who hate America.
Bill Ayers doesn’t support Hamas because of any concern for the well-being of Palestinians, any more than Ayers supported the Black Panthers out of empathy for black people. Ayers hates America, and the violent extremists he supports are mere proxies for that fundamental hatred which is the essence of Ayers’ radicalism.
What is the purpose and effect of such radicalism? To undermine and weaken the United States. Marco Rubio nailed it:
In every incident, every pronouncement and every action related to Israel, enemies like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah look for signs of weakness in America’s support as an invitation to undermine Israel and move one step closer to her destruction. The stronger the U.S.-Israel alliance, the stronger the moderate, pro-U.S. elements in the Arab world will be. If the U.S. shows itself to be an unreliable ally to Israel, moderate Arab states will take note that they cannot trust the U.S. to be a reliable friend for them either.
This goes back to my childhood memories of the Vietnam War. Back then, peaceniks were always whining about corruption in the Saigon government and saying that the U.S. was propping up an undemocratic regime. Yet the insuperable argument for defending South Vietnam was that they were our ally, and for America to abandon an ally in time of crisis would be an open invitation for America’s enemies to attack our allies everywhere.
If America is not a reliable ally, soon America will have no allies.
Marco Rubio gets it. Read the rest of his speech.
UPDATE: Linked by Ed Driscoll — thanks!
No, not the BP oil spill. I’m talking about Charlie Crist:
Charlie Crist (I) . . . . . 37%
Marco Rubio (R) . . . . 37%
Kendrick Meek (D) . . 15%
That corrupt perma-tanned two-faced backstabber has pulled even, and Rasmusen Reports finds that a majority of those senile geezers in the Sunshine State have slipped a cog:
Sixty percent (60%) of Florida voters now approve of the job Crist is doing as governor, up three points from a month ago.
This is an emergency, people: Go support Marco Rubio now!
UPDATE: A source just contacted me to call attention to another slime threat in Florida. Rick Scott jumped into the Florida GOP gubernatorial primary, calling himself “pro-life,” when he profited by running a hospital chain that performs abortions. Scott’s Republican rival, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, explains:
“In his most egregious attempt yet to run from questions of his role in overseeing massive Medicare fraud, Rick Scott is now claiming he is a ‘pro-life leader’ who allegedly believes ‘every life is worth defending’. Unfortunately for some, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“As the disgraced CEO of Columbia/HCA, Rick Scott profited from elective abortions performed at his hospitals. He can say he’s pro-life, but when he could have created a ‘culture of life’ policy to stop abortions, he didn’t – the company had this policy throughout his tenure and continues it today. Rick Scott just collected the money that his hospitals made off of abortions and bought himself an $11 million home on the beach in Florida. . . .”
Here’s video of Scott talking to Republicans in Collier County, and trying to shift the blame:
The background is here. It’s OK to be a pro-choice Republican or a gay Republican, but it’s not OK to be a lying Republican.
Gay-rights activists might consider this “progress.” Republican can congratulate themselves on being rid of the beau ideal of transparent bogusness:
Charlie Crist, who previously opposed repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell when he was a Republican . . . will now support the repeal compromise . . . .
Until recently, Crist had been saying that the current policy works. But with the repeal compromise moving forward in Congress, both Republican Marco Rubio and Dem Kendrick Meek . . . have been pressuring Crist to take a stand on the compromise.
Now Crist is coming out for it.
Charlie Crist, the political hermaphrodite, preferred candidate of the addled and confused. But hey, it’s Florida . . .
So, now that “Crist is coming out for it,” cue the disco!
Why is it that so many conservatives are OK with Donna Milo but have nothing but contempt for Charlie Crist? It’s the opportunism, stupid!
Let me say to any pro-gay-rights voter in Florida who might be reading this: If that’s a fundamental issue for you, OK. It’s a free country — and might stay a free country if you vote for Marco Rubio.
But if you feel like you can’t vote for an honest conservative Republican like Marco, go ahead and vote for the liberal Democrat. Please don’t vote for that two-faced back-stabbing crapweasel, Charlie Crist.
OK, so who the heck is Michelle Todd? Her name popped up in this story about Charlie Crist:
Gov. Charlie Crist told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on April 30 that he would “probably” give refunds to donors who don’t approve of him leaving the GOP. . . .
No more. . . . [C]ampaign spokeswoman Michelle Todd said there will be no refunds. Asked whether that amounts to a flip-flop, she said, “We have never made an official statement before. It is now the official statement. They donated to the Charlie Crist for U.S. Senate Campaign, and it’s still the Charlie Crist for U.S. Senate Campaign.”
Republicans have now written down her name on their persona non grata list. Michelle Todd is henceforth an un-person to the GOP, and everybody else who does one day’s work for the Crist campaign will find their names on the same list.
One of the reasons Charlie Crist thought he could get away with this betrayal was his erroneous supposition that he could hire competent campaign staff to replace those who resigned en masse when he announced he would run as an independent.
Knowing a thing or two about how these things work, however, I explained on Ladd Ehlinger’s radio show this week that Crist would have extreme difficulty finding staff because (a) he’s doomed to defeat, and (b) any Republican operative who hires on with a Crist independent campaign will be committing career suicide.
Some conservatives have been freaked out by polls showing Crist leading a three-way race, evidently forgetting that, a year ago, the same polls showed Marco Rubio trailing Crist by 30 points in the GOP primary. There are four basic reasons Crist is doomed to defeat:
Crist is doomed and, after Nov. 2, Crist’s campaign staffers like Michelle Todd are going to find themselves not merely unemployed, but unemployable.