The Other McCain

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

Manassas, VA #RomneyRyan2012 Event

Posted on | August 11, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

The announcement in Norfolk, VA, with the USS Wisconsin in the background was a nice touch, as the Romney campaign tours this battleground state, going through the Obama-Biden ticket in proverbial fashion today:

I’m off to go cover the Manassas rally. If fortune smiles, I might link up with Stacy and try to work on a Downfall parody. I can foresee various tidbits to include, but, if you have any ideas, leave them in the comments.
Category: Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Virginia

New Democrat Campaign Message: Grandma, Cliff, Some Assembly Required

Posted on | August 11, 2012 | 41 Comments

Members of the Democrat-Media Complex like Charles Pierce of Esquire and James Fallows of the Atlantic are already registering their disdain of Paul Ryan, and the Democrats are busy e-mailing their massive oppo-research PDF dossier to reporters, so the media attacks on Ryan are pre-scripted dictation from the DNC research department.

This is predictable, and is the best argument for picking a conservative like Ryan: No matter whom Romney had chosen, the Democrats would have demonized the GOP running mate as a Jekyll-and-Hyde combination of Dick Cheney and Martin Bormann.

In that kind of situation, why not go bold?

So we’ll have a few days of “evil heartless Paul Ryan,” then the Democrats will go back to the “clueless rich guy Romney” message and then, if the Romney-Ryan ticket moves ahead of Obama in the polls, they’ll start playing the Mormon card with frenzied desperation.

It’s predictable, and you shouldn’t be surprised.

UPDATE: Democrats hold a monopoly on Civility™!

Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Wisconsin

The Hashtag That Changed History

Posted on | August 11, 2012 | 59 Comments

“This is an emergency post. . . . Mitt Romney must choose Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee, period.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 4, 2012

Who would have thunk it, huh? Friday night I went to bed early, and Ali Akbar kept calling to tell me the news, but my wife couldn’t get me to wake up. The headlines in the order they appeared at Memeorandum:

From Boston to Janesville
— Robert Costa, National Review

Romney Prepares to Pick Ryan
— Weekly Standard

ROMNEY TO ANNOUNCE RUNNING MATE
SATURDAY IN VA.
— Associated Press

Romney To Unveil Vice Presidential Pick On Saturday
— Think Progress

The Angel and Devil in Paul Ryan
— ABC News

Mitt Romney Set To Pick
Paul Ryan As Running Mate
— Jon Ward, Huffington Post

BREAKING: Romney to announce
vice presidential pick Saturday
— CNN

Mitt Romney picks Paul Ryan as running mate
— Politico

Romney to announce running mate on Saturday morning
— The Hill

NBC: 3 sources indicate
Romney will pick Ryan
— NBC News

Everybody I talked to last Friday night at the Americans for Prosperity Summit — Aug. 3, at the terrace bar of the Washington Hilton — said it was going to be Tim Pawlenty.

That inspired a sort of panic: “Good Lord, not T-Paw!” When I heard that Marco Rubio had been eliminated due to “vetting” issues, I started an all-out push for Paul Ryan. One of the first people I spoke to was Suhail Khan of Americans for Tax Reform who told me, “Ryan vets. The worst thing they could come up with was that he worked as a bartender at Tortilla Coast when he first came to D.C.”

That clinched it. Driving home from the AFP Summit Saturday afternoon, I called Ali Akbar, who quickly minted the #GiveUsRyan hashtag, and I pulled off the highway to stop at a Burger King and write that “emergency” post, which was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Daley Gator, Roderic Deane and Troglopundit, among others.

That was Saturday afternoon. In addition to pushing Ryan on Twitter, Ali was busy behind the scenes. After a long conversation with him on Tuesday, I reported the final three:

VP Tea Leaves: Is Mitt’s Short List Now
Down to Pawlenty, Portman or Ryan?

That post was linked by Jackie Wellfonder, Bob Belvedere, Andrew J. Patrick and others. By then, the conservative drumbeat for Ryan was getting loud enough that headlines were popping up left and right. When Alex Moe of NBC News reported that Ryan was planning a “vacation”? Yeah, that was a tea leaf. And by Thursday, the choice was clear:

Hey, @MittRomney: This #GiveUsRyan
Hashtag Is Becoming Kinda Popular

When I finally woke up and called Ali about 3 a.m. today, he was driving to Norfolk to attend the rally where Mitt Romney will announce this morning that Paul Ryan will be the next vice president of the United States. Did the #GiveUsRyan hashtag have as much influence as, say, Bill Kristol pleading on Ryan’s behalf? No, but it definitely had an impact: Ali has friends on the Romney staff and, when the word started leaking out Friday, the Romney staffers told him, “Good work, Ali.”

Your Tweets — and you know who you are — definitely made a difference. As I explained Thursday, Romney’s people pay attention to their online metrics. Every Tweet to @MittRomney with #GiveUsRyan was a signal that Ryan was the grassroots consensus.

So far, only Nice Deb has acknowledged the difference you made.

You may never get full credit, but as Ronald Reagan said, “You can accomplish much, if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

When your kids and grandkids ask someday, “How did Paul Ryan become vice president?” you can say, “I picked him!”

 

UPDATE: The Rio Norte Line reminds us of how Ryan defended his budget against Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

UPDATE: Instalanche! BTW, there are some retroactive hindsight claims by GOP “insiders” that Mitt picked Ryan before Aug. 4, but don’t believe it. That’s just the Establishment trying to deny credit to the conservative grassoots.

UPDATE II: Linked by William J. Hoge, Daley Gator, Jackie Wellfonder, The Lonely Conservative and Da Tech Guy.

 


Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Virginia, Wisconsin

Q: ‘Can We Accurately Determine Someone Else’s Sexual Orientation Just By Their Appearance?’

Posted on | August 10, 2012 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

A. You had better be going to a costume party if you're that ducked up.


Via somebody on Twitter, sorry:

Some people can, to an eerie degree. A study from earlier this summer found that college students had “above-chance accuracy” when guessing whether people were straight or gay, even when they were shown faces without any contextual clues. Even when they only got to look for 50 milliseconds. Even when the faces were upside-down.
For those primed to detect sexual orientation (one author speculated that older people or those from other cultures might have a harder time), it would seem that facial features can be a semi-reliable indicator of sexual orientation.

Category: Sex

#OccupyResoluteDesk Sure Likes To Use The ‘F’ Word

Posted on | August 10, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty


‘Fairness’, like ‘luck’, is one of those intellectual cop-out words that the Left uses to trigger an emotional response in lieu of analysis.

Category: Barack Obama

Fareed Zakaria Caught Engaging In Act Of Biden-esque Plagiarism And Marcotte-esque Argumentation

Posted on | August 10, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Not only did Fareed Zakaria beclown himself by stealing other’s work in a gun grabber article for Time, but Rames Ponnuru notes that when FZ acts as an intellectual burglar, Fareed thugs the contents trash can:

Fareed Zakaria has tried to make “The Case for Gun Control” in Time. The results are not pretty. Virtually every argument he makes misrepresents the underlying data.

After a lead that cites the Sikh-temple shooting, the Aurora massacre, and the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, Zakaria trots out the usual international comparisons: “The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.”

RTWT. Meanwhile, I got just a teeny bit sarcastic on Twitter:

 

 

 

 

Update: more at Outside the Beltway

Category: CNN, Journalism

‘Repeal Equals Death’

Posted on | August 10, 2012 | 18 Comments

Top Romney adviser Eric Ferhnstrom said, “I don’t think a world champion limbo dancer could get any lower than the Obama campaign right now.” The problem with such a statement is that, just when you think they can’t go any lower, liberals always manage to surprise you, as when Jonathan Alter went on MSNBC and declared that Republicans want people to die:

“[W]hat the press should be focused on is what are the consequences of repeal of Obamacare. And the consequences, as Mike just indicated, are death. Repeal equals death. … People will die in the United States if Obamacare is repealed. That is not an exaggeration, that is not crying fire, it is a simple fact. If you have preexisting conditions and you are thrown off of health insurance or if you get sick after you and your husband, spouse, loses the job, you are not going to do to the doctor as soon, your cancer or disease is not going to be caught as quickly and your odds of dying are much, much increased.”

Video:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Category: Health Care, MSNBC

Romney Ad: ‘America Deserves Better’

Posted on | August 10, 2012 | 10 Comments

My shock at the raw dishonesty of the Democrats — and polls indicating that Americans have become indifferent to truth — is evidently shared by the Romney campaign:

The Romney campaign supplies the script of the ad:

AD FACTS: Script For “America Deserves Better”

VOICEOVER: “What does it say about a president’s character when his campaign tries to use the tragedy of a woman’s death for political gain?”

VIDEO TEXT: “A President’s Character?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Scraping Bottom”

Chicago Tribune Headline: “Scraping Bottom” (Editorial, “Scraping Bottom,” Chicago Tribune, 8/9/12)

VIDEO TEXT: “Disgusting” 

  • · ABC News: “‘Disgusting’ Pro-Obama Ad Criticized By Democrat” (Steven Portnoy, “‘Disgusting’ Pro-Obama Ad Criticized By Democrat,” ABC News, 8/9/12)

 VOICEOVER: “What does it say about a president’s character when he had his campaign raise money for the ad then stood by as his top aides were caught lying about it?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing” 

  • · ABC News: “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing Story Behind Man In Super PAC Ad” (Mary Bruce, “Obama Campaign Admits Knowing Story Behind Man In Super PAC Ad,” ABC News, 8/9/12)

VIDEO TEXT: “Unfair Attack” 

  • · CBS News: “Due Diligence: An Unfair Attack On Mitt Romney” (Brian Montopoli, “Due Diligence: An Unfair Attack On Mitt Romney,” CBS News, 8/9/12)

VOICEOVER: “Doesn’t America deserve better than a president who will say or do anything to stay in power?”

VIDEO TEXT: “Doesn’t America Deserve Better?”

MITT ROMNEY: “I’m Mitt Romney and I approve this message.”

* * * * *

I’m Robert Stacy McCain, and I approve this message, too. We’ve got to get these lying Chicago scum out of the White House. They’re not just ruining the economy, they’re corrupting our nation’s soul.

UPDATE: Paul Lemmen has some philosophical ruminations on the transcendant evil of Obamunism.

 


Category: Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Video
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