The Other McCain

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

Yes There Are Two Paths You Can Go By, But In The Long Run, BHO Is Leaden; Romney, Golden

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

Where are the corresponding montages from the CommiesDemocrats? Lots of great nuggets, after a review of #OccupyResoluteDesk’s wretched record:

via NiceDeb

Category: Barack Obama, Republicans, Video

Expect the Unexpected: Why Liberals Suddenly Melted Down After the Debate

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 21 Comments

Da Tech Guy points out that the latest Pew poll has caused the Washington Post‘s Jon Cohen to join the ranks of “poll denialists.”

Until this week, only conservatives were calling attention to the Democrat/Republican/Indpendent distribution of poll samples, which were often showing skewed numbers that defied any rational expectation of what the 2012 electorate would look like.

In several polls, we saw Romney actually leading among independents, yet self-described Democrats were so overrepresented in the sample, Obama was still ahead — sometimes by margins that were quite literally incredible: There is no way Obama is going to win Ohio by 10 points, no matter what Quinnipiac says.

The panicked meltdown reaction by Obama supporters, now that polls are beginning to reflect reaction to last week’s debate beatdown, should have been expected, as Ace says:

So part of the extreme emotional deflation of people like Sullivan . . . is due to their having invented in their minds a conquering hero, an Eternal Champion . . .
And he’s never been that. He’s been a very average politician, whose only above-average skill is giving a scripted, TelePrompTed address to people who already support him.
So for people like Sullivan, this is a bit of a bitchslap to their entire fantasy worldview, the day they saw Obama As What He Is rather than What They Fantasized Him To Be.
And they’re shocked by this. They feel their psychical mooring-lines stretching to the break.

Yes, exactly. However — and I’m not just trying to one-up Ace here — a major part of the problem is that liberals were snuggled inside their media-provided cocoon of Conventional Wisdom. It wasn’t just deluded hysterics like Andrew Sullivan who had bought into counterfactual conceptions of the electoral landscape. Remember that during last month’s Democratic National Convention, I interviewed veteran Democrat campaign strategist Joe Trippi:

RSM: My thought is that this one — it’s gonna be about the debates. Do you feel that way?
TRIPPI: I don’t think so. I mean, if someone makes a mistake in the debates, that’s going to be pretty costly, but I think … once you get into this kind of a polarized campaign, what tends to happen is that each side’s folks watch and cheer their guy on, there aren’t a whole lot of undecideds left out there to move in a debate. So I’m one of those — I’m a contrarian. I don’t think the debates are really going to matter unless somebody gaffes.

Trippi didn’t expect the unexpected. No one expected a first debate so overwhelmingly in Romney’s favor as to completely re-set the election, but anyone who recalled how Romney ripped up Newt Gingrich in the Jacksonville, Florida, debate in January at least should have considered a Romney debate victory as possible.

So when the unexpected happened, those who weren’t psychologically braced for the impact found themselves stunned and disoriented. (Headline: “Police Called to Henry County GOP Headquarters After Man Attacks Romney Sign with Scissors.”) Compare the two experiences:

  • Most conservatives have never been huge Romney fans, but were skeptical of pre-debate polls showing the Republican getting buried by Obama. This just didn’t make sense, and those of us who were labeled “poll denialists” by Jonathan Chait felt that the poll samples were demonstrably unrealistic. We were pleasantly surprised by Mitt’s strong debate performance.
  • By contrast, most liberals were huge Obama fans, showed no skepticism toward the polls, did not take seriously the possibility that the samples were skewed, and were so shocked by the debate that their own reaction made Obama’s defeat seem even worse than it was.

Notice that John Podhoretz points to recent poll results, mostly favorable to Romney, as unreliable. This is a point that should not be ignored: Such extreme volatility and wide divergence in polls ought to teach us to take polls with a grain of salt. And this is just as true now that polls are showing good news for Romney: With four weeks remaining until Election Day, we still don’t know who will win, and even the good news — Romney gaining ground in Ohio — isn’t good enough that we can begin making plans to attend President Romney’s inauguration.

Still, we can smile at the weirdness inside the Obama campaign reported by Toby Harnden of the London Daily Mail: “David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, was stunned that the President left the  stage feeling that he had won the debate.” Related: “The Traits of a Narcissist.”

UPDATE: Ace ripped up Nate Silver on Twitter with such thorough brutality, he got his own Twitchy post out of it, but you still should read his blog post about Silver’s “forecasting model”:

It’s like the Global Warming “models” — they discount actual data which does not agree with their model.  The Pew poll didn’t fit the model, so it’s plainly incorrect.

Silver’s predicted 25% chance of a Romney win is actually an improvement since Oct. 4, when he rated Romney’s chances at a measly 12.9% . It was his Sept. 8 forecast that had Romney at 20.2%, which prompted me to dismantle Silver’s assumptions at The American Spectator:

What reason is there to believe that Silver’s “Five Thirty Eight Forecast” has any predictive value? Or, better yet: What if its predictive value is entirely a function of its authority, as a self-fulfilling prophecy? If the poll expert at the most prestigious paper in the United States says that Romney’s campaign is doomed beyond all hope of redemption, isn’t it possible that this will have the effect of discouraging Republicans and influencing late-deciding “swing” voters to jump aboard the bandwagon of the Democrat candidate they believe to be a certain winner?

Silver clearly has begun hedging his bets. If Romney should eventually win, Silver will expect us to forget his previously misguided “forecasts,” insisting that he was merely reporting data.

 


Category: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Polls

23 Million Reasons to Ignore Big Bird

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 16 Comments

With the polls beginning to indicate a sudden meltdown in the president’s support, the Obama campaign has nothing to offer now except ridiculous distractions about Muppets. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney keeps focused on the important issues of this election:

“About 23 million Americans, still looking for a good job. You’ve got college graduates this year, came out last spring, who are still looking for work. About half the college graduates that came out couldn’t find a job or a college-level job. Food stamps — when the president took office, 32 million people on food stamps. Now there are 47 million people on food stamps. I mean, these are these are tough times with real serious issues. So you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird. I actually think we need to have a president who talks about saving the American people and saving good jobs and saving our future and also saving the family farm.”

Citing actual facts in a campaign: It’s just so unfair, isn’t it? And even the producers of Sesame Street are sick of the Obama campaign.

UPDATE: Sometimes the jokes just write themselves:

 

Category: Economics, Election 2012, Mitt Romney

@Gabby_Hoffman Wonders Whether Her Brain Also Counts as a ‘Lady Part’

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 11 Comments

Has any recent phenomenon been more strange than the Left’s embrace of the Vagina Monologues as an expression of female “empowerment”? This theme — gynecology as ideology — reveals the underlying narcissistic appeal of identity politics, wherein the craving for self-esteem is satisfied by celebrations of group solidarity

This groupthink trend is what causes leftists to attack actress Stacey Dash as inauthentic — a race traitor — for her endorsement of Mitt Romney. (“hoe kill yourself“? Really? You stay classy, liberals.) Heaven knows what abuse will be heaped on Gabby Hoffman for questioning the Democrats’ “vote-with-your lady-parts” message:

The question beckons: Should women vote with their brains or their lady parts? If the latter best resonates with our gender, then they might want to reevaluate their priorities.
Much like their radical feminist supporters, many Democrats think that government-subsidized birth control is the only issue concerning women.
The Left, with the Democrat Party claiming to be the party of women, ironically has hurt women the most. CNSNews.com reported in July that 780,000 more women are unemployed since Obama took office in 2008. . . .

Read the whole thing. And follow @Gabby_Hoffman on Twitter.

Category: Election 2012, Feminism

The Tears of Unfathomable Sadness

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 19 Comments

Andrew Sullivan emotionally implodes over the latest poll:

The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating. Before the debate, Obama had a 51 – 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 – 45 lead. That’s a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. . . .
Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That’s terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion. . . .
Look: I’m trying to rally some morale, but I’ve never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week – throw away almost every single advantage he had with voters and manage to enable his opponent to seem as if he cares about the middle class as much as Obama does. . . .

Read the rest. I should resist the temptation of schadenfreude.

I should. But I can’t.

 

Category: Uncategorized

A Poor Substitute For Live At Five

Posted on | October 9, 2012 | 14 Comments

— by Wombat-socho


I had every intention of getting up at the usual ungodly hour this morning and doing Tuesday’s Live At Five, but I underestimated how fatigued I’d be after eight hours of doorknocking for American Majority Action yesterday down in Prince William County. I slept right through the alarm and didn’t get up until 0900. It’s good and necessary work, though; every day this weekend, in spite of the occasionally drippy weather, yours truly and a couple dozen Hill staffers have been out pounding on doors, dropping literature, and otherwise doing our bit to win Virginia for Mitt Romney. This will be going on every weekend until the election, and in fact I’ll be putting in time during the week as well. Of course, we could always use more people, so if you happen to live in Northern Virginia – particularly in Fairfax and Prince William counties – and want to earn a little extra pocket money, drop office manager Chris Smith a line and let him know you’re interested.

Category: Blogging, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, Virginia

Ash!

Posted on | October 8, 2012 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

It’s slightly mundane, the triumph of a Presidential candidate with enough motivation for the job to take on a little rain:

Indeed, it’s a far cry from the ol’ boom-stick days: UPDATE: [well, so much for letting me advertise Army of Darkness for free for them. . .]

Category: humor, Mitt Romney

Among The Minor Side-Ironies Of The End Of Progressivism

Posted on | October 8, 2012 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Daily Pundit links Insty, noting the 2/3 military support enjoyed by Romney. Of the third who do support #OccupyResoluteDesk, one wonders what chunk would drop were the racial background of the #Occupant to alter. . . More interestingly than that, the military, including retirees, should form a vast special-interest group. Cleverly, the active duty DoD is kept substantially at odds with itself internally, with the services devouring each other in addition to budget resources. And, yes, there are plenty of retiree outfits lobbying to keep the Veterans Administrations afloat. Something about PTSD, missing body parts &c motivates.

Yet the frequent swearing of oaths to support and defend the Constitution, and the frequent changes of command, hinder the organization from achieving enough identity to form a junta. A General Petraeus (or General McChrystal, or Admiral McRaven, just to throw out some names), wouldn’t dream of gathering support for some takeover scheme, even were some rogue neurons to formulate the idea.

While veterans have some consciousness and response when being thrown under the bus by the government, and can inform heavily a de-centralized undertaking like the Tea Parties, they would fail miserably if some Community Organizer came along. I can imaging Van Jones trying to whip a crowd of veterans into some grievance frenzy, and getting drowned by. . .crickets. Cold-stared into wetting himself. Exiting in haste to a low, bass rumble seemingly coming from everywhere.

Ironically, the military knows a mutiny when it sees such, and refuses to be turned into some sort of vast ACORN/SEIU muscle pool for the Left. Those who have given so much already in support of liberty wouldn’t give it up for a serious leader, say, an american Caesar, much less a sad joke like BHO.

Category: Barack Obama, Military
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