The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

How to Avoid Journalistic Hindenburgs

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 17 Comments

“I’m the managing editor of Culture11 (www.culture11.com), a new online magazine/social network that was started by Bill Bennett, David Kuo, Steve Forbes, et al. Today is our first day and rather than trying to get attention using traditional media, we’ve decided to announce our launch by reaching out to our friends.
“With your help, we can make Culture11 something truly extraordinary — an online destination that has the editorial excellence of a great magazine, the thrill of a terrific conversation, and the comfort of a supportive community all rolled into one.”
— Joe Carter, e-mail, August 2008

“Ponder the yawning chasm between David Kuo and ‘the next Cameron Crowes and Hunter Thompsons.’ It’s as if one day Kenny G announced he was looking for ‘the next Ramones.’
“Personnel is policy. Imagine Hunter S. Thompson walking into the offices of Culture11, wearing his Acapulco shirt and aviator shades, reeking of gin, with a head full of mescaline and a satchel full of felonies. David Kuo would call the cops.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Good-bye, Culture11,” Jan. 30, 2009

Some people go unscathed from disaster to disaster. Perhaps the most eminent survivor of the Culture11 catastrophe was Conor Friedersdorf, now employed at a Scientology-funded magazine called The Atlantic, bashing Rush Limbaugh and arguing for legalized marijuana.

Joe Carter, the former Mike Huckabee campaign staffer who bought into David Kuo’s lunatic idea that Culture11 would be like “Rolling Stone in the ’70s,” ended up at First Things. Peter Suderman is a senior editor at Reason. James Poulos went on to Ricochet.

Others were not so lucky: Kuo, the Republican hack who burned through a reported million dollars of start-up capital in six months at Culture11, has disappeared from public view. Although I had been solicited to write for Culture11 — originally named “Liberty Wire” — I avoided that Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst trip after reading a New Republic item:

David Kuo . . . a former Special Assistant to President Bush and author of tell-all Bush indictment Tempting Faith, is going to be the CEO.

As soon as I learned Kuo was involved, I e-mailed back to the young staffer who had solicited my contribution, telling her:

  1. Under no circumstance would I ever consent to write for any project connected to David Kuo; and
  2. She’d be smart to get the hell out of there immediately.

Personnel is policy. Kuo has never been associated with anything but failure. He couldn’t make a profit on the snow-cone concession in Hell.

Memories of the Cutlture11 debacle are fresh in my mind today because part of the start-up money Kuo pissed away on his doomed vanity project (the smoldering digital crater is a “404,” so that not even the archives remain) was an investment by Steve Forbes. And another Forbes-funded venture is making news, not in a good way:

Over the weekend, professional golfer Phil Mickelson complained about tax increases (including state income taxes in California) that he said had pushed his marginal rate to 63 percent: “I’ve got to make some decisions on what to do.” That incited a scolding from Syracuse University professor Len Burman, who said Mickelson should “stop whining” because he was so “lucky” to be one of the world’s highest-earning athletes.
What is perhaps surprising is that Burman published his attack on Mickelson’s “whining” at Forbes.
Forbes was once a leading advocate of free-market economic policy . . .
Yet in recent years, the online version of Forbes has become increasingly notorious as a hive of strident left-wing opinion. . . .
What happened to Forbes? Two words: Lewis Dvorkin.
A former AOL executive, Dvorkin got funding from Forbes in 2009 to start a Web site, True/Slant, that lasted a little more than a year before it was taken over by Forbes in a deal that brought Dvorkin into the company with the title of Chief Product Officer. . . . Dvorkin’s July 2010 deal also brought under the Forbes online umbrella several of True/Slant’s left-wing staff and contributors, including [Steve] Zwick, [Rick] Ungar and, apparently, Professor Len Burman.
My friend Jim Lakely at the Heartland Institute is dismayed that Phil Mickelson apologized after his scolding from Burman. I’m more dismayed that Dvorkin’s left-wing takeover at Forbes has proven the truth of O’Sullivan’s First Law, formulated by former National Review editor John O’Sullivan: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

Maybe Forbes should hire David Kuo. I’m sure he’s available.

 

Category: Journalism

LIVE AT FIVE: 01.23.13

Posted on | January 23, 2013 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Likud/Israel Beitanu List Wins; Let The Arithmetic Begin

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Coalition wins 31 seats in Knesset; maneuvers begin with invite to Shas
Final Israeli election results
Yeir Lapid Leaps From Obscurity to Power Broker As Head Of New Yesh Atid Party

Obama Won’t Oppose House GOP Plan To Suspend Debt Limit
Proposal removes limit through May 18

President’s Lofty Inaugural Ideals Run Smack Into Reality
White House struggles to explain how sweeping rhetoric on climate change, gay rights gets translated into specific action



POLITICS
GOP Insists Tying Members’ Pay To Budget Is Constitutional, Will Force Vote Today

Speaker John Boehner

Rep. Dave Camp’s bill would withhold pay from Senate until they pass a budget

New Documents Cast Shadow On Legacy Of LA’s Cardinal Mahony

Hasidic Counselor Gets 103 Years In Abuse Case

Mistakes Raise Questions On Texas’ Women’s Health Program

Marco Rubio Blasts Roe v. Wade As “Blatant Judicial Activism”

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk Quits

Senator Lautenberg Calls Mayor Booker “Misbehaving Child”

Cuomo Proposes $143 Billion Budget For New York

General Allen Cleared In Petraeus E-Mail Case



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Surges On Optimism About Global Economy: NYMEX $96.57, Brent $112.18
Asian Stocks Mostly Lower As Japan Skids
Banks, Commodity Stocks Boost S&P 500 To Five-Year High
Microsoft Joins Effort To Take Dell Private
Prosecutor Asks 50 Years For Peregrine’s Wasendorf
Software Growth Boosts IBM’s 4Q Earnings
Walmart Toughens Supplier Policies
Bethesda Opens Beta Signups For “Elder Scrolls” MMO
Apple’s iPhones Top-Selling Smartphones In 4Q 2012
DARPA Takes Aim At Space Junk
Samsung Confirms Galaxy Note 8 Tablet For Mobile World Conference
Keon And Peak: First Firefox OS Phones Revealed
AT&T Buys Alltel’s Retail Wireless Operations
Intel’s Desktop Motherboard Operation To Shut Down Within Five Years



SPORTS
Jerry Rice Sides With Tim Brown In Super Bowl Sabotage Claim

Brown and Rice during media day before Super Bowl XXXVII

Wide receivers claim Oakland’s coach Callahan threw the game for his old boss Gruden

Brodeur Notches 120th Shutout As Devils Sink Flyers 3-0

NFL Lifts Saints Coach Payton’s Suspension

Backstrom’s Turnover Leads To Wild’s First Loss

“Kyrie Irving Happened”: Celtics Fall To Cavs 95-90

Power Play Fizzles As Wings Lose 2-1 To Stars

Jets Turn Into Juggernauts Against Capitals, Win 4-2

Former Players Urge Hall Of Fame To Add Marvin Miller

Former Nationals OF Elijah Dukes Arrested For Failure To Appear In Court



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Beyonce Lip-Synched At The Inauguration

Beyonce Knowles pretending to sing at the Inaugural

Kelly Clarkson, on the other hand, sang.

Shakira: It’s A Boy!

ABC Yanks “Apartment 23”, Doubles Up On “Happy Endings”

Lindsay Lohan Rejects Massive Offer From “Dancing With The Stars”

Daniel Gilles Set As Lead In “Vampire Diaries” Spinoff

Brandi Glanville Calls LeAnn Rimes “Insane”, Rimes Gets Nasty Right Back

New Kids On The Block Hit The Road With 98 Degrees, Boyz II Men

Bill Hader To Reprise David Hasselhoff Role In “Baywatch” Movie

“Boy Meets World” Spinoff Could Bring Back “Saved By The Bell”



FOREIGNERS
UN Security Council Slams Norks, Tightens Sanctions
Netanyahu Touts “Broadest Coalition Possible”
Start Of Something Big? Russia Pulls 100 Citizens From Syria
Nations Join Mali Effort To Reclaim Timbuktu
Algeria Defends Its Tough Response To Hostage Crisis
How “Le Pong” Engulfed Kent And Sussex
Polls Open In Jordanian Parliamentary Election
Cameron’s EU Referendum Pledge Is Testament To Power Of UKIP
India: It’s Time UN Observers Left Kashmir



BLOGS & STUFF
Weekly Standard Blog: Reid – Filibuster Rule Change Coming Later This Month
Ed Driscoll: This Is Going To End Well
Bryan Preston: Left Scolds Golfer Phil Mickelson – You’re Lucky To Pay So Much In Taxes!
Robert Tracinski: Barack Obama Is Boring
Gateway Pundit: Missouri Sheriffs Pledge Not To Enforce Obama’s Gun Laws
The Hill: Paul Ryan Accuses President Of Punting On Debt Crisis
Lonely Conservative: American F-16’s Headed For Muslim Brotherhood’s Egypt
NRO Media Blog: NBC/WSJ Poll Misleads On Roe V. Wade
American Thinker: Media Trumpets Poll That Shows Majority Wants To Keep Roe V. Wade – Whatever That Is
Weasel Zippers: More People Watched W’s Second Inauguration Than Obama’s
The Crawdad Hole: You Can’t Argue With A Bigot
The Lid: James Taylor On Guns – “Americans Need To Make Some Sacrifice[s] To Our Freedoms”
Legal Insurrection: Veteran Stands Up For Second Amendment At Chicago Anti-Gun Forum
Samizdata: Sir David Attenborough Would Like Us To Die Soon (Sort Of)
Protein Wisdom: In The Midst Of Texas School Shooting, CNN Reporter Trolls Twitter Users For Photos


Yesterday I misidentified Prince Harry as the Prince of Wales. This title is actually held by his dipstick father, Prince Charles. No doubt I was indulging in some unconscious wishful thinking. Carry on.

Category: Live at Five

Fake Singing, Real Tyranny

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 13 Comments

Beyoncé lip-synched “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Obama’s inaugural. She’s as real as Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend. Meanwhile, Harry Reid — who hasn’t passed a budget in four years — is threatening to turn the U.S. Senate into North Korea with himself as Dear Leader.

Isn’t this the part of the story where the barbarians storm the city gates while the emperor is having an orgy with his decadent courtiers?

Category: Barack Obama, Celebrities, Harry Reid

WE BACK MACK!

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 12 Comments

Just when you were feeling down in the dumps — still 1,460 days remaining in Obama’s second term — Amanda Read brings you reason to hope: Say hello to Stanley Mack, a U.S. Navy veteran who is running for Congress in Alabama’s 7th District in 2014.

It’s a 3-to-1 Democrat district, but there is reason to hope: Alabama has a strong statewide Republican Party. The GOP finally captured the state legislature after the 2010 mid-terms, and the incumbent Democrat is a no-name you never heard of — a perfect target for one of those grassroots-backed underdog challengers we love.

Most incumbent Republicans in Alabama will coast to victory by 2-to-1 margins in 2014, so the statewide party apparatus could help lend support to promising challengers like Stanley Mack, potentially knocking off an incumbent even in a strong Democrat district. If the online grassroots can help drive fundraising and publicity for a good candidate like Stanley Mack, he could really change some hearts and minds.

STANLEY MACK for U.S. CONGRESS
Let’s Back the Mack Attack!

Category: Alabama, Election

The Next 1,460 Days: I Still Hope He Fails

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 28 Comments

If only more people had listened to Rush Limbaugh . . .

My post this morning about how to hate Democrats reminded Andrew J. Patrick of the bitter debate between Jeff Goldstein and Patterico, and Andrew makes a good point:

The Democrats did not respond to getting their teeth kicked in by George Bush in 2004 by embracing civility, by congratulating the President on his re-election. They doubled down on outrage. They fought the President on his second-term agenda tooth-and-nail.
That worked out rather well for them, all things considered.

This is exactly right. You must know your antagonist. You must study his successes, and you must also study your own failures.

One of the great blunders of the Republican Party is that as soon as the 2004 election was over, they began looking ahead to 2008 when they were sure that they would be running against Hillary Clinton. How many anti-Hillary books were published in 2005-2007? So many Republicans bought into the Hillary-as-Antichrist message that in March 2008, when Rush Limbaugh launched “Operation Chaos” — aiming to turn the Democrat nomination fight into an absolute deadlock — his phone lines lit up with dimwit callers who had let themselves be convinced that Barack Obama was actually the lesser of two evils.

Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!

I remember it well: I saw exactly what Rush was doing. It was pure genius, and if enough Republican voters had listened to him — especially in Indiana and North Carolina — “Operation Chaos” may have resulted in such a vicious bloodletting within the Democrat Party that they never would have recovered from it. For want of a nail . . .

Well, there’s no point recounting the history of everything that went wrong the past five years. But it exposed a fundamental problem of the conservative blogosphere: It developed during the Bush years, amid the Global War on Terror, and its accustomed task was to defend the president and the war effort against the Left. As far as fighting elections, conservative bloggers had 2004 as their basic model — the patriotic Republican incumbent vs. the treacherous Democrat challenger — and this proved a poor template for future conflicts.

In general, by 2009, too many Republicans didn’t have any useful memory of how to be the Opposition Party. The experiences of 1964 and 1974 were remembered only by a graying generation of Elder Statesmen types who, unfortunately, were neither tech-savvy nor culturally attuned to the 21st century. The long 12-year Reagan-Bush ascendancy had been followed by a brief two-year loss of power after the 1992 election, but then the latent vigor of the Party Reagan Built came bouncing back with the 1994 “Republican Revolution.” Dole predictably lost in 1996, and the Lewinsky-inspired impeachment drama of 1998 threw the GOP off its game, but by 2003, they were back on top, controlling the White House and both houses of Congress.

Accustomed to success, to acting in defense of power, Republicans (and by extension, many conservative spokemen, including bloggers) were unaccustomed to the task that faced them after Democrats won Congress in 2006 and captured the White House in 2008.

Ah, but Rush Limbaugh knew what he was doing! Rush had risen to talk-radio superstar status during the low ebb of Republican fortunes in the wake of Bill Clinton’s 1992 defeat of George H. W. Bush. In fact, it is now often forgotten that Limbaugh supported Pat Buchanan’s challenge to Bush in the 1992 primaries. Limbaugh knew that Bush was doomed to defeat in 1992, and that the key was to give conservatives a cause worth fighting for. After Bush lost, Limbaugh’s show became the focal point for the Republican opposition that triumphed in 1994.

It should be pointed out, by the way, that Limbaugh is old enough to remember the true Wilderness Years of the GOP, the post-Watergate era of 1974-78, when such eminent figures as William Rusher, publisher of National Review, thought the Republican Party was done for and were ready for Ronald Reagan to lead a third-party movement.

Too many have forgotten that history — if they ever bothered to learn it in the first place — and no one under 40 has any real direct memory of it, so that there is a sort of “Generation Gap” within the conservative movement. If you don’t remember where you were when Saigon fell (I was a sophomore at Lithia Springs High School) or the Berlin Wall came down (I was a 30-year-old sports editor for the Calhoun [Ga.] Times), it’s impossible for you to understand the Cold War mentality, the petri dish within which the post-WWII conservative movement was incubated.

Conservatism was originally and fundamentally about foreign policy: Are we going to stand up to these godless Commies, or not?

Trying to get Americans to listen to conservative ideas on domestic policy has always been much more difficult, and we are really now back to an era that precedes my own birth, which I know only from history books and from tales of old-timers like M. Stanton Evans. We’re back to the Truman era, when the godless Commies who threatened America were clandestine subversives who called themselves “liberals.”

Really, it’s in some ways much worse now. Julius Rosenberg and Alger Hiss were traitorous stooges of Moscow, but today’s “liberals” pursue a Bolshevik agenda of strictly domestic origin. The disciples of Howard Zinn, Saul Alinksy, Bill Ayers and Frank Marshall Davis are most certainly Marxists, and we should not be afraid to call them what they are. Hell, “neo-Marxism” is the fashionable style for young hipsters.

The Sovietization of America is an agenda every patriot should oppose, and when Rush Limbaugh famously said, “I hope he fails,” he was right. That’s why I sided with Jeff Goldstein in his fight with Patterico four years ago. Jeff’s essay “How I learned to stop worrying and love the f-bomb” is worth re-reading today, as we begin the final 1,460 days of this catastrophic Reign of Error.

Are we going to stand up to these godless Commies, or not?

 

 

 

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein reacts to Andrew J. Patrick, describing Obama’s agenda as “a malicious attack on our individual sovereignty and an intentional plan to undermine our constitutional republic and replace it with an beneficent police state peopled by industrious worker bees, helpfully directed and nudged toward happiness by a permanent ruling elite.” Basically, Sweden, with better weather and uglier people.

 


Category: Barack Obama, Conservatism 101, Rush Limbaugh

Ask Michele Bachmann About CBS News Political Director John Dickerson

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 10 Comments

There was a great uproar over John Dickerson’s column advising Barack Obama to “go for the throat” and “declare war” on Republicans, but it wasn’t as if there were no prior evidence of Dickerson’s biases. Remember the November 2011 debate in Spartanburg, S.C.?

In an e-mail exchange, a network staffer informed CBS political analyst John Dickerson that Bachmann was interested in appearing on Dickerson’s post-debate webcast. The staffer CC’ed the message to Bachmann’s communications director Alice Stewart and when Dickerson answered, he evidently clicked “reply to all” without realizing that what he wrote would go directly to the Republican aide. Dickerson wrote:“Okay let’s keep it loose though since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else.”
What Dickerson appeared to be mean by his “keep it loose”remark was that he wanted to avoid a firm commitment to have Bachmann on the webcast, as he was hoping to “get someone else” as a guest. But the part of the 29-word Dickerson e-mail that infuriated Bachmann’s team most was what looked very much like proof of a preordained decision by CBS that the candidate would not“get many questions” during the debate because she was “off the charts” — out of contention for the GOP nomination, based on her declining poll numbers. Posting the e-mail to Bachmann’s Facebook page, campaign director Keith Nahigan fumed that Dickerson’s comments were “concrete evidence confirming what every conservative already knows — the liberal mainstream media elites are manipulating the Republican debates by purposely suppressing our conservative message and limiting Michele’s questions.”

This is who John Dickerson is, and this is what John Dickerson does. And there isn’t anyone with any influence at CBS News who doesn’t share Dickerson’s biases. CBS News is a partisan political organization completely devoted to the success of the Democratic Party.

Strange as if may seem, however, CBS — traditionally the most liberal of the Big Three networks — is now rather moderate compared to the strident leftism that prevails at NBC News under the influence of NBC’s fanatically partisan political director Chuck Todd.

The Federal Election Commission should count the “news” budgets of the major networks as contributions to the Democratic Party.

 

Category: CBS, Michele Bachmann

‘Patriotic Progressivism’, The Moron’s Oxymoron

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

Begins beta-male Brooks:

The best Inaugural Addresses make an argument for something. President Obama’s second one, which surely has to rank among the best of the past half-century, makes an argument for a pragmatic and patriotic progressivism.

This country remains founded upon individual liberty. That a pack of liars over the last century have sold an unsustainable falsehood is neither deniable nor right. ‘Progress’ remains the most expensive and destructive scam in history, and Brooks is truly a false prophet for peddling it.

Modern problems like globalization, technological change, widening inequality and wage stagnation compel us to take new collective measures if we’re to pursue the old goals of equality and opportunity.
Obama wasn’t explicit about why we have failed to meet these challenges. But his critique was implicit. There has been too much “me” — too much individualism and narcissism, too much retreating into the private sphere. There hasn’t been enough “us,” not enough communal action for the common good.

Oh, you Devil. And I mean that in the theological sense of a deceiver selling the very causes of the problem as solutions. Human nature remains constant, technology, the variable. It’s a fine sales pitch that the variable can be used to tweak the constant. If your audience is totally fools. Peaking out at the current 51% is not likely to cut it. The implicit critique of ‘too much “me”‘. Has any President ever been so immodest as to deploy the personal pronoun like #OccupyResoluteDesk?
Emphasis mine here:

I am not a liberal like Obama, so I was struck by what he left out in his tour through American history. I, too, would celebrate Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, but I’d also mention Wall Street, State Street, Menlo Park and Silicon Valley. I’d emphasize that America has prospered because we have a decentralizing genius.
When Europeans nationalized their religions, we decentralized and produced a great flowering of entrepreneurial denominations. When Europe organized state universities, our diverse communities organized private universities. When Europeans invested in national welfare states, American localities invested in human capital.
America’s greatest innovations and commercial blessings were unforeseen by those at the national headquarters. They emerged, bottom up, from tinkerers and business outsiders who could never have attracted the attention of a president or some public-private investment commission.
I would have been more respectful of this decentralizing genius than Obama was, more nervous about dismissing it for the sake of collective action, more concerned that centralization will lead to stultification, as it has in every other historic instance.

What in the world are ‘entrepreneurial denominations’, you clown? Do you really think sincere sacred business is secular? Sure, people sell books, and yes, one might argue at length and in detail about the contents, but that’s peripheral to the question of faith. Come visit my Sunday School class, Brooks, for some desperately needed insight.

And what is the point of being ‘respectful of this decentralizing genius’ in a speech? Obama is more honest in his contempt for the fundamentals of American greatness than you, Mr. Brooks. He tosses our seed corn under the bus with a personal pronoun on top. You’re making some wistful nod to what, were you actually a conservative, you’d be snarling a ????? ???? and defending.

Reinvigorating a mature nation means using government to give people the tools to compete, but then opening up a wide field so they do so raucously and creatively. It means spending more here but deregulating more there. It means facing the fact that we do have to choose between the current benefits to seniors and investments in our future, and that to pretend we don’t face that choice, as Obama did, is effectively to sacrifice the future to the past.

Our first task for recovery is to ignore false prophets like yourself. Our political Winter, while cold and bitter, can be followed by a Spring of reform. But that involves understanding that the centralization of policy is the garrote about the neck. Your ‘patriotic progressivism’ piffle is absolutely not the answer, Brooks.

via Byron York

Category: New York Times

Democrats: You Can Never Hate Them Nearly as Much as They Hate You

Posted on | January 22, 2013 | 77 Comments

Last night, I saw a post at an anti-Palin blog that had more than 200 vitriolic comments about the woman they called “the Creature from Lake Lucille.” More than four years after Sarah Palin was the Republican vice-presidential candidate, she still inspires frothing rage from the Left.

What prompted that particular outburst of hatred? Palin put up a Facebook post commemorating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Think about that for just a minute. And then think about something Erick Erickson wrote on Inauguration Day:

Congratulations Mr. President on your second inaugural.
Saying that makes some of you really enraged. I said the same on twitter shortly after his official swearing in. Several of the replies were embarrassing and atrocious. Some accused the man elected by a majority of Americans of treason. Some accused him of willfully destroying the nation.
I believe the President’s policies are destructive and will harm our economy, our nation, and our sense of national self long term. I believe his policies have the effect of turning us into subjects of the government, not citizens in charge of it. Because of his expansion of the social safety net funded through class warfare, Mr. Obama’s policies will cause too many Americans’ fortunes to rise and fall with those of the government, unable to chart a course for themselves apart from government.
But I do not think the President means to do this maliciously. I do not think he is treasonous. I do not hate him. I am not outraged by it.

As soon as I saw that, my attention focused on one sentence: “Some accused him of willfully destroying the nation.”

Yes, of course: David Limbaugh, author of The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama’s War on the Republic, a book I heartily recommend.

Erick Erickson didn’t title his post “David Limbaugh Is Wrong,” or “Don’t Listen to That Idiot David Limbaugh.” He merely dismissed as “embarrassing and atrocious” anyone who agrees with Limbaugh’s argument that Obama’s “War on the Republic” is deliberate.

As to how one should deal with Monday decorously, I took a vow of silence: I simply wouldn’t say a damned thing about Re-Coronation Day.

Didn’t watch it on TV. Didn’t blog about it until it was over. The last time I checked, I still had the right to remain silent. “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” and what conservative could possibly say anything nice about America’s public humiliation?

That’s what we’re dealing with here: A stain on our national honor, the negation and antithesis of everything that makes our country great.

Americans should be outraged by it, and we should not be dismissing their expressions of outrage as “embarrassing and atrocious.”

Ordinary Americans don’t always express themselves in such eloquent and measured phrases as meet with the approval of the elite, but why is it that no one on the Left ever bothers to chastise the commenters frothing with rage at Sarah Palin, whereas Erick Erickson feels the need to scold Republicans who don’t like Barack Obama? Why is Erickson embarrassed to be associated with these Republicans, when no one on the Left ever bothers to notice the non-stop messages of hate emitted by the immoral monsters who constitute the Democrat Party’s grassroots? My answer:

The problem, really, is that Republicans just don’t hate Democrats the way Democrats hate Republicans.
Most Republicans are born and raised Republicans, and are spiritually attuned to the sentiments of bourgeois respectability that are core values to the decent, honest people the GOP represents. By contrast, Democrats owe their power to the vilest dregs of humanity — corrupt union goons, Marxist academics, criminals, drug addicts, sexual perverts and race hustlers — who have no respect for the values of decent, honest people.

We do not have to lower ourselves to their level. We merely have to tell the truth about who the Democrats are. People who voted for Obama (or any other Democrat) should be ashamed of themselves.

The GOP’s ridiculous defensive flinch reflex — “Oh, no! Somebody said rude things about Democrats!” — is symptomatic of a larger problem: Republicans let liberals dictate the terms of debate.

If liberals say the problem is that Republicans lack “civility,” then the GOP is beset by hall-monitor types telling us to watch our language. If liberals say the problem is Republicans need to appeal to Latinos, we’ll hear a lot of sermonettes from the open-borders crowd. If liberals say Republicans are losing because of gay-rights issues, we’ll be told to drop our pants and bend over to demonstrate our support for sodomy.

At what point will Republicans figure out they’re being scammed? Liberals lie constantly, routinely and habitually, but never do they lie so predictably as when they’re giving advice to Republicans.

Mitt Romney lost the presidential election. His defeat cannot be blamed on “outrage pimps” (Erickson doesn’t name names, so we don’t know if he meant that term to apply to David Limbaugh or Mark Levin or Michelle Malkin). Nor can the GOP’s problems be excused by scolding people who say rude things about Obama on Twitter.

Why did Erickson feel the need to tee off on “humorless, angry opponents of the President” who “scream ‘Benghazi’ and ‘Fast & Furious'”? Was that aimed at Katie Pavlich, author of Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up?

Katie wasn’t offering any “congratulations, Mr. President” sentiments there, so maybe she’s one of those “humorless, angry opponents,” eh?

Here’s the point: All Sarah Palin had to do is put up an MLK Day post on Facebook, and the haters swarmed all over her without anyone in the Democrat Party noticing or complaining. Democrats don’t get any “civility” lectures from their liberal spokesmen. They just win elections.

Democrats hate Republicans with the heat of ten thousand suns. When are Republicans going to give themselves permission to hate back?

 

 


Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Sarah Palin
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