The Other McCain

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

The Last Nail in Newt’s Coffin
UPDATE: Conservative Leaders Huddle With Santorum, Seek Deal With Newt

Posted on | April 5, 2012 | 53 Comments

Creditors will get pennies on the dollar:

Newt Gingrich’s health-care think tank has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
The Center for Health Transformation, which has offices in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and St. Louis, plans to liquidate its assets, according to a filing Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Atlanta. . . .
The center listed estimated liabilities of $1 million to $10 million dollars and 50 to 90 creditors. . . .
Political observers said the negative publicity surrounding the bankruptcy spells the end of the former U.S. House speaker and Georgia congressman’s campaign.
“This ends his campaign. He’ll now be completely on the defensive about this,” said Emory University political science professor Merle Black.

Next? Newt will endorse Mitt Romney, and probably before the April 24 Pennsylvania primary. (I first predicted Feb. 3 that Newt would ultimately quit and endorse Romney, although it is taking longer than the “few weeks” I expected at the time.)

To be more specific, Newt will endorse Mitt sometime before his campaign’s March FEC report is due April 20, because otherwise the size of Gingrich’s presidential campaign debts would become a major element of the coverage. So expect Newt to join the “Roll Over for Romney” movement probably in an April 13-16 time-frame. Gingrich will portray his sellout — siding with the “elite GOP Establishment” and “money power” he was railing against all the way from Iowa to Louisiana — as a matter of fundamental conservative principle.

What Gingrich is hoping is that Rick Santorum will quit before then, so that there won’t be any reason to notice — or resent — Newt’s hypocrisy.

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Putting aside my resentment that they gave this scoop to the New York Times, here’s the latest Santorum campaign news:

A group of conservative leaders met with Rick Santorum on Thursday to consider how to persuade Newt Gingrich to drop out of the Republican presidential nominating contest.
The conservative leaders met with Mr. Santorum and his top aides in northern Virginia . . .
The prospect that Mr. Gingrich might draw enough votes from Mr. Santorum in Pennsylvania — Mr. Santorum’s home state — on April 24 to cost him the primary has given new urgency to the task of getting him out of the race. . . .
“The leaders told us that they wanted to stop Romney, defeat Barack Obama and unite conservatives behind Rick,’” according to an aide to the Santorum campaign who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

More reason for resentment:

Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley refused to confirm or deny to confirm reports of the meeting, which was first reported in a tweet by Time magazine’s Mark Halperin.

Checking my cell phone again . . . Nope, no calls from Santorum staffers this morning. A fine way to treat the Future Ambassador to Vanuatu. But it is absurd to hope that Gingrich would endorse Santorum: Newt’s support is up for auction, and there’s no way Rick can outbid Mitt.

(Hat-tip: Azn_Chick on Twitter.)

UPDATE II: Tina Korbe at Hot Air:

If [Santorum’s] supporters can convince Gingrich that his nomination is not only still possible, but even probable without Gingrich in the race, maybe they can inspire Gingrich to let go.

Careful, Tina — you could be sued for libel. No one can accuse Newt Gingrich of giving a damn about anyone but Newt Gingrich.

RECENTLY:

Category: Election 2012, Newt Gingrich

Framing the Narrative: Using Evangelicals as Hook for MSM ‘Mormon Mitt’ Meme

Posted on | April 5, 2012 | 68 Comments

“You watch, they’re going to throw the Mormon church at him like you can’t believe.”
— Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, April 3

Just a quick follow-up on last night’s post about the the predictable emergence of an anti-Mormon message in the MSM, which they held back until they thought Mitt Romney was really “inevitable”: A lot of Republicans seem shocked by the suggestion that our tolerant liberal friends would actually employ appeals to religious bigotry against a Republican, and further seem to assume that all Republicans have to do to deflect this is to point it out for the cheap partisan trick it is.

Good luck with that.

Notice how Debbie Wasserman-Schultz disingenuously disavows it:

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired back Wednesday at Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch’s claim that Democrats would attack Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith in the fall election, saying the charge was “nonsense” and that the issue of religion was off-limits.
“That is just preposterous,” the Florida Democrat, who chairs the Democratic National Committee . . .
“That suggestion is utter nonsense. Let’s remember that President Obama has had so many things hurled at him — birth certificate questions, whether he is or is not a Christian,” Wasserman said. “For them to suggest that religion will be injected [into the election] by President Obama and the Democratic Party, I mean, I think they need to take a look inward at the accusations that their party and their supporters have hurled before they take that step.”

Translation: “Turnabout is fair play.”

And, while Debbie denies that Obama and the Democrats will themselves “inject” the Mormon issue into the campaign, her pledge doesn’t obligate them to muzzle their media allies, does it?

Unlike Da Tech Tech Guy, who saw this coming long ago, some Republicans were shocked — shocked! — by Lawrence O’Donnell’s Tuesday night anti-Mormon rant. Others were mystified as to why, in an appearance with Jay Leno, Meet the Press host David Gregory casually asserted that Mormonism “is the core of who Mitt Romney is” and — oh, just by the way, Jay — did you know Mitt was actually an LDS bishop?

These remarks by O’Donnell and Gregory were rather unsubtle hints of what our liberal media friends are chatting about amongst themselves, and perhaps some Republicans are too stupid to imagine how this meme might make its way into Serious Journalism. But here’s the trick: Rather than raising the subject themselves, liberals will introduce the topic of Mitt’s Mormonism by referencing criticism from evangelical Christians. This two-birds-with-one-stone tactic gets an early workout today from Tim Murphy at Mother Jones:

The Mormon issue has been dogging Romney since he began his first presidential race five years ago. According to a Gallup poll, 18 percent of Republicans say they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon for president — and it’s not a coincidence that throughout the 2012 contest, Romney’s success has been inversely proportional to the percentage of evangelicals voting in a given state. . . .
[I]n December, [Texas Baptist minister Rick] Scarborough explained in a radio interview that nominating Romney would take the GOP to “a place I don’t want to go.” He continued: “There are some aspects of the doctrines of Mormonism that are so outside the realm of normal theological boundaries that I think it will be a real issue if he got the nomination.” . . .
Bill Keller, a Florida-based internet evangelist who sends his devotional out each morning to some 2.4 million subscribers . . .
“If it’s Romney and Obama, as far as I’m concerned, Satan’s flipping a two-headed coin and his head’s on both sides,” Keller says. There’s no such thing as lesser of two evils. “I hear that from Christians all the time: Well you know we’ll just take the lesser of two evils and hold our nose and vote for the Mormon. And I just try to remind people: The lesser of two evils is still evil.”

Lots more where that came from, including this kick in the head:

And according to Gallup,  liberals are actually more likely to hold Romney’s faith against him — a  full 27 percent say they would never vote for an LDS member.

See what I mean? By using evangelicals as the “hook” to talk about Mitt’s Mormonism, the media cleverly raise an issue that hurts Romney more among secular liberals than it does among religious conservatives. (Dude, if you think Santorum’s Catholicism offends feminists, wait until the media start doing their Serious Journalism coverage of what Mormon doctrine teaches about women.) There are all kinds of angles from which to fit the “Mormon Mitt” meme into the media narrative, and yet some Republicans are so stupid they can’t imagine how the liberal MSM will manage to turn this stuff into legitimate news.

The possible story angles are numerous, the basic materials are plentiful, and how far the media might go with this meme is purely a function of whether they view Romney as a serious threat to Obama in November.

UPDATE: Bill Quick expresses his contempt all religions, without explaining why he supported Newt Gingrich, a professed Catholic. Perhaps Bill believed Newt was never sincere about his Catholicism, but why would anyone doubt Newt’s sincerity?

 

Category: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney, Religion

Check Your Water Wings

Posted on | April 5, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

The National Debt Road Trip is about to get underway, in the nautical sense:

Update: linked at ” target=”_blank”>The Lonely Conservative.

Category: Barack Obama, Weimar America

Ain’t I Done Told Ya So? (Part II)

Posted on | April 5, 2012 | 73 Comments

“If Romney gets the nomination and we reach late September with Romney leading the polls, what do you think the Democrat-Media Complex will do? Whatever It Takes to Win, sweetheart.
“Can’t you see the five-part New York Times series on the history of Mormonism? Can’t you see Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News and David Gregory on Meet the Press doing Serious Journalism about all the beliefs and practices of the LDS, and ponderously asking What It Means for America?”
— Robert Stacy McCain, March 6, 2012

“Now that Democrats are near-certain that Romney is the nominee, however, the media is going to start covering Mitt’s Mormonism in a very serious way — ‘Oh, look, he’s a fringe kook!’ — as if this were an entirely legitimate topic of political discussion.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, April 2

“Now part of Romney’s religion problem is that he’s a part of a new religion. Established religions like Judaism, which is about 4,000 years old, and Christianity, which is about 2,000 years old, don’t easily warm up to new religions like Romney’s, which is only 182 years old. . . . Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.”
— Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC, April 3

Look, I wasn’t the only one to see this coming: Da Tech Guy reminds us he warned us about this back in February.

Everybody’s crying “unfair” now — including Kevin Williamson at National Review — but since when do Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) give a damn about fairness?

And my friends, this has just barely begun. That little shot from O’Donnell? It was like the signal gun to start a massive barrage.

Maybe you have never done any research into the history of Mormonism. Maybe you have no idea how much material there is to work with. Maybe you are unaware of how many ex-Mormons and other critics of Mormonism have already gotten in touch with national news producers and reporters, eager to help them with “research” for all those in-depth feature articles and multi-part series about the LDS church.

If you don’t know any of that stuff, you can be forgiven for thinking that any negative media focus on Mitt Romney’s religion would automatically be seen as unfair and bigoted by independent voters. But just wait and see: If Romney actually does win the Republican nomination, and if it ever appears that Mitt poses a serious threat to Obama’s re-election, then the gloves will come off and you will be disabused of your naïveté.

You know who’s going to be shocked the worst by this? Agnostic secularists, whose general attitude toward religious belief is, “What difference does it make which discredited superstition somebody claims to believe in? All religions are equally false, right?”

A lot of the agnostic secularists in the GOP have that kind of attitude, and can’t imagine that there is anything about Mormonism that might be truly offensive to people.

Like I said: Just wait and see.

UPDATE: Moe Lane asks:

Does Harry Reid have the courage to boycott
MSNBC over Lawrence O’Donnell’s bigotry?

Don’t be silly, Moe! Yes, Harry Reid is nominally a Mormon but, like all Democrats, his true religion is the Democrat Party Gospel. Just look at Nancy Pelosi, who claims to be Catholic.

UPDATE II: Serious Journalism, with David Gregory:

Of Romney’s religion, Gregory said Mormonism was at the core of Romney’s character, but suggested he was afraid to talk about it.
“Let’s be honest, this is the core of who Mitt Romney is,” he said. “He was a missionary in France for two years. He has been a bishop in the church, which, in the Mormon church, is effectively like a a priest. Philanthropically, he’s made huge contributions. He’s had a big impact on the church. And yet he doesn’t talk about it. It’s the core of who he is, and yet he doesn’t feel like it’s safe to talk about.”

It’s so predictable, isn’t it?

 

Category: Mitt Romney, MSNBC, Religion

NEWS: Michelle Malkin Joins Board of Directors for National Bloggers Club

Posted on | April 4, 2012 | 7 Comments

A major score for the new organization:

A reliable source has revealed to Red Alert Politics that Michelle Malkin has agreed to join the board of directors for a new association for right-of-center bloggers, the National Bloggers Club. . . .
In addition to building a high profile board of directors, the National Bloggers Club has already made impressive progress in uniting independent bloggers in the conservative movement for good causes.
Recently they became the first organization to provide photo identification credentials to bloggers for press events. They also started a scholarship for Citizen Journalists, Remember Breitbart, in honor of the late Andrew Breitbart, a supporter of Blog Bash and the National Bloggers Club. . . .

Read the rest at the Washington Examiner.

Category: Michelle Malkin

You’d Think A Supreme Court Justice Would Know This

Posted on | April 4, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

Somebody pointed me to the New England Journal of Medicine, with an interesting Elena Kagan quote from last week’s oral argument, emphasis mine:

Roberts also noted a mismatch between covered benefits and each person’s potential need. Speaking to the government’s lawyer, he said, “[T]he policies that you’re requiring people to purchase involve . . . maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance [abuse] treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need [these services] and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase.”
But as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg quickly retorted, “If you’re going to have insurance, that’s how insurance works.” “This is especially true,” added Kagan, “because in this context, the subsidizers eventually become the subsidized.”

Um, how do you know that, Justice Kagan, without being a prophet? Wikipedia on the Ecological Fallacy:

An ecological fallacy. . .is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong.

You might quibble that health care statistics are not an ecological study per se, but I submit that the point still holds: once you roll individuals into a population, you’re done. It’s a one-way process.

Come to think of it, all of this Socialist clap-trap is the Ecological Fallacy writ large. Clearly you have to be a believer in the Progressive Faith to unplug reason sufficiently to buy into this nonsense.

Update: crikey, what an ignoramus! I had not understood what an embarrassingly know-nothing twit the good Justice Kagan is. Adrienne is rather worked up, and has the audio:

Listen, you disgusting squid of a small minded, intellectually challenged poseur. You only sit on the Supreme Court because an equally small minded, intellectually challenged, malignant narcissist squid of a president who, in my opinion, is not even eligible to be president, and who was voted in by the small-minded losers of this country appointed you to the position.

Why so torqued? If you listen to the clip, Kagan is on about “Federal Dollars”, and wondering at what point below 100% government payment for medical care that the system would become coercive.

If dollars are horsepower in the economy, then the economy is the horse. The Federal government is a cart. Progressivism is that Federal government cart bearing a printing press called the Federal Reserve that confuses itself with the horse.

Kagan, you should recuse yourself, not merely from the ObamaCare decision, but from the SCOTUS entirely. When the history of this time period is written, yours is likely to be a special blend of infamy and idiocy.

Category: Supreme Court

Mark Levin and the Omens of Doom

Posted on | April 4, 2012 | 101 Comments

“If Romney is indeed now the ‘inevitable’ nominee, it is a status he has obtained by crushing conservative opposition in an astonishingly expensive and negative campaign . . .”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Predictably Predictable,” The American Spectator, April 4, 2012

This evening, Mark Levin led his nationally syndicated radio show by reading key excerpts from that column. It was evident that “The Great One” sees the same ominous signs that concern me, that he knows what these omens portend, and that he would like to alert his listeners to the fact that they are being propagandized and indoctrinated.

Unfortunately, judging from the reactions by Levin’s callers, there are a lot of people who don’t get it. They misunderstand what Levin is saying — what I am saying — about the obvious weaknesses of Mitt Romney’s campaign. The uncomprehending callers seemed to think that this is merely a matter of personal opinion, and that their admiration for Romney or their disdain for Rick Santorum are the most relevant facts to be discussed.

Some people can’t see the omens or lack the experience to interpret what these auguries signify. When we try to point out to them the portents of impending doom, these people respond, “Well, that’s your opinion.”

It’s a waste of breath to argue with people who think that way. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but we’ll have to wait and see, and there’s no point getting in arguments with people who are merely trying to belittle my intelligence, my knowledge, my experience and my judgment.

Let’s just suppose that you don’t know me from Adam’s housecat, OK? Go ahead and decide that, because I’m telling you something you don’t want to hear, something that contradicts your own opinions, then I must be wrong. Fine: No sweat off my nose and, in the present case, if Mitt Romney actually proves to be a triumphantly successful candidate who clobbers Obama in November, then I will be overjoyed that the Reign of Error is ended.

But . . . what if I’m right?

Never mind. Rule out that possibility. I’ve never been right about anything before, so far as you know. How about Richard Viguerie?

As Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla noted, the “defining feature of the 2012 Republican presidential primary race” has been Romney’s relentlessly negative campaign. According to Przybyla’s research, “Since the contests began, Restore Our Future has spent $35 million on commercials attacking Santorum and Newt Gingrich” and “just $1.1 million promoting Romney.” . . .
Romney’s negative ads, many of them factually questionable, have carpet bombed the conservatives in the race. . . .
However, these attacks have done nothing to build support for Mitt Romney, especially among movement conservatives, and to the extent that Romney can claim front runner status it is because he has come to be seen as the “least worst” alternative by rank-and-file Republican primary voters. . . .
Even if one accepts the fuzzy math that Romney claims puts him half way to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination — and we don’t — his negative campaign has left him with a substantial enthusiasm deficit, and no real base upon which to mount a winning campaign against Barack Obama.

But you don’t know Richard Viguerie from Adam’s housecat, either. He’s just some dude you never heard of before. How about Stu Rothenberg?

The bottom line, of course, is that nobody — not his critics and not his allies — really believes Mitt Romney. . . .
The question is whether, in November, Romney may be in a similar position as Obama was or whether the fact that nobody actually believes Romney will destroy his presidential bid completely.
Is Romney such a mass of contradictions that voters can look at him and project their positions on him, allowing them to support him? Or is his credibility so shot that too many voters will simply conclude that they can’t trust him, making it impossible for them to support him?

But never mind that: Who is this Rothenberg guy, anyway, huh? You’re waaaayy smarter than him — and Viguerie, and me, and Mark Levin.

Now the Romney campaign is threatening to “destroy” Santorum in Pennsylvania. And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says Mitt’s Mormonism is “off limits” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Like I said, some things are predictably predictable.

UPDATE: Romney supporter Cindy Cooper is upset with me. Since I filed my column (I sent it to The American Spectator about 1:30 a.m.) there were evidently late returns that changed Romney’s margin of victory from 4 points to 7 points, and boosted Romney’s total vote to more than 340,000, whereas it had been about 300,000 with 98% of precincts reporting.

OK, so that fact is corrected. Now, what about turnout?

In 2010, in the Wisconsin GOP Senate primary — held in September — Ron Johnson got more than 500,000 votes, and then got 1.1 million votes in the general election to defeat incumbent Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

That was a mid-term campaign, and you see that Romney got a substantially lower total in this year’s presidential primary than did Johnson in 2010.  In the 2008 presidential election — turnout is always higher in presidential elections than in mid-terms — John McCain got 1.26 million votes in Wisconsin, but that was only 43 percent of the vote; Barack Obama won with 1.68 million (56%).

Now, a point: WISCONSIN IS AN OPEN PRIMARY STATE.

This means that any voter — Democrat, Republican, independent — can vote in any primary. In 2008, “Super Tuesday” was Feb. 5, and Mitt Romney quit the race on Thursday, Feb. 7 (I was reporting it live at CPAC when the news broke), effectively ceding the nomination to John McCain. However, the Democratic race between Obama and Hillary Clinton that year continued to be hotly contested into the spring.

So, when Wisconsin held its open primary on Feb. 19 — two weeks after McCain sealed the deal for the GOP nomination — 1.1 million people voted in the Democratic primary, while only 395,000 people voted in the GOP primary, which McCain won with 55% (225,000) to Mike Huckabee’s 37% (151,000).

All of this I note, because Cindy Cooper is angry at me for saying that turnout in this year’s Republican primary was “phenomenally low,” when Eric Ostermier of the Humphrey Institute writes:

Wisconsin Republican primary voter turnout surged more than 91 percent in 2012 from 410,607 voters in 2008 to over 785,000 on Tuesday. . . .
In terms of the raw number of votes, the 2012 GOP primary was the second largest on record in Wisconsin behind only 1980 when the three-way battle between Reagan, Bush, and Anderson brought 907,853 individuals out to vote that April.

So, clearly the phrase “phenomenally low” was an inaccurate description of the turnout but — but — these numbers are still important, if you keep in mind that Wisconsin is an open primary state. The cycle-to-cycle “surge” from 2008 to 2012 is explained entirely by the fact that the 2008 GOP campaign was effectively over, while the Democrats were still going tooth-and-nail.

The best recent comparison (insofar as any such comparison doesn’t suffer from an apples-to-oranges problem) is to 1980, when there was a Democrat incumbent (Jimmy Carter) in the White House, and the GOP primary was still competitive. Turnout in 2012 thus represents a 14% drop from 1980. And keep in mind that Wisconsin’s population has grown 21 percent (from 4.7 to 5.7 million) since 1980.

Despite all that, I clearly got some facts wrong, and I’m correcting the record here. Far be it from me to attempt a “fake but accurate” defense. But the data still indicate that Mitt Romney is a much weaker GOP candidate than Ron Johnson or even John McCain.

We will have to wait and see what happens to know whether the omens and portents accurately foretold events.

Category: Election 2012, Mark Levin, Mitt Romney

Mean RNC Pokes Fun At BHO’s Sincere Efforts To Save Gaia

Posted on | April 4, 2012 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Our future hangs in the balance. The sun is riding so low, it could get stuck on Mount Everest while making its nightly lap about the planet.* What’s a President to do? Recycle his speeches. And yet, here is the mean ol’ RNC, serving up the President’s careful re-use of speech material as though is was a Bad Thing:

Listen, people: Barack is workin’ real hard, tryin’ to save the planet. How about a little peace, love, and understanding?

via Hot Air

Update: linked by The Strident Conservative

*To refute the pernicious rumor that I am a flat-Earther.

Category: Barack Obama
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