The Other McCain

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

His Newtness and His 176,000 Donors

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 99 Comments

It’s Friday night and the Missouri caucuses are Saturday. Newt Gingrich isn’t even on the ballot in Missouri, which will award 52 delegates. There was a Missouri primary in February but, because of legislative hassles, that vote was officially “non-binding.” However, Rick Santorum won that primary with 55 percent of the vote — nearly a 30-point margin over Mitt Romney — and today’s caucuses will certainly ratify Santorum’s victory.

Maybe Missourians are still sore about 1838, who knows?

My point is that Santorum is about to put another one in the “W” column, the seventh state he will have won this month: Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota on March 6, Kansas on March 10, Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday, and now Missouri.

It’s important to say this, because none of the reporters, analysts or commentators on Fox News are going to tell you that Santorum’s on a winning streak, because they are indeed biased against him.

Now, let’s talk about Newt Gingrich. Ace headlined this:

Gingrich:  I Have Come Here To Chew Bubblegum and
Not Drop Out of the Race and I’m All Out of Bubblegum

Which is both cruel, and a fairly accurate summary of this:

Asked on CBS’s This Morning “under what circumstances” he would end his campaign before the convention, Gingrich responded: “Probably none.” He told host Charlie Rose, “I’ll be with you in Tampa, Charlie,” adding, “I have 176,000 donors at Newt.org. They want me to stay in the race.”

Hey, Newt, how many online donors did Herman Cain have before he dropped out? Lots. Rick Perry? Lots. Maybe not 176,000, but lots.

Gingrich is counting donors cumulatively, going back to late November and December, before any actual voting took place, when he was No. 1. On Dec. 13, Newt led Romney by more than 12 points, 35% to 22.3% in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. It also includes the comeback period in January when Newt got a bump from his Jan. 21 win in South Carolina and, once again, bounced up to a lead (RCP average 31.3%-27% as of Jan. 27) in the national polls.

While he was on top, or at least a viable contender, Gingrich collected online donors by the tens of thousands, but that was “front-runner” money. Those donors were bandwagon-jumpers who thought they were giving money to The Man Who Could Beat Mitt.

And those people aren’t giving money any more because in the past six weeks it has become apparent that Newt can’t beat Mitt.

Gingrich lost Florida Jan. 31 and lost Nevada Feb. 7, and was 0-for-3 on Feb. 7, when he was third in Colorado, fourth in Minnesota and, as previously noted, failed to make the ballot in Missouri. Newt was fourth in Maine (7%) on Feb. 11; on Feb. 28 he was third in Arizona (16%) and fourth in Michigan (7%); and on March 3 he was fourth in Washington State (10%). On Super Tuesday, March 6, Gingrich recorded third-place finishes in Ohio, Tennessee and Oklahoma, and was fourth in Alaska (14%), North Dakota (9%), Vermont (8%), Massachusetts (5%) and Idaho (2%). On March 10, he was third in Kansas and fourth in Wyoming (1%).

In case you lost count, since Feb. 7, Gingrich has placed third in five states and placed fourth in 10 states, for a total of 15 third- or fourth-place finishes in the past six weeks. You can add in the balance against all those electoral embarrassments Newt’s lone victory in his home state of Georgia on March 6, but that was completely offset by his defeats Tuesday in Mississippi and Alabama, two states his campaign had previously called “must-wins.”

Newt is clearly no longer The Man Who Could Beat Mitt.

He is now The Guy Who Usually Finishes Fourth, and the vast majority of his previous donors aren’t going to pay a dime for that kind of action. They thought they were giving money to a winner, you see, and they’re not going to follow him down the rabbit hole of Wishful Thinking.

There is also the telltale silence of Team Newt about their February fundraising numbers. On Feb. 29, the Santorum campaign told the Associated Press they had raised $9 million in February from 100,000 donors. A week later, the Romney campaign said they’d raised $11.5 million in February.

Gingrich? Crickets chirping.

That silence tells us a lot, but not nearly as much as we’ll learn next week when the official FEC numbers for February are available. What we know, however, is that the Gingrich campaign ended January with cash on hand of $1,788,590, but with debts of $1,726,085, so that their net balance (minus debt) was just $62,505.

By comparison, Santorum’s cash on hand at the end of January was $1,474,064 against debts of $956,701, for a net balance of $517,363.

This is simply astonishing: In the month where Gingrich scored his biggest success (the Jan. 21 South Carolina primary win), somehow his “burn rate” was so high that it vastly exceeded his contributions. Gingrich spent $16.4 million in January, while raising only $5.5 million. Meanwhile the underdog Santorum finished the month with a balance (minus debts) more than eight times greater than Gingrich’s!

With that in mind, what do you think Gingrich’s financial report for February is going to tell us? And how do you think his March fundraising is going so far, given his inability to win Alabama or Mississippi, and his third- and fourth-places finishes nearly everywhere else this month?

Newt’s not going to be able to reverse this perception by scoring any wins any time soon. He’s not on the ballot Saturday in Missouri and won’t finish better than third Sunday in Puerto Rico. Polls indicate Gingrich will finish third in Illinois on Tuesday. That brings us to Lousiana next Saturday, March 24: One poll last week showed Gingrich third there, too. Gingrich was in Louisiana today, begging:

NEW ORLEANS — Newt Gingrich is asking supporters for donations as small as $2.50 to keep his GOP presidential campaign going.
The former House speaker told a New Orleans audience Friday that he can’t raise as much money as front-runner Mitt Romney can. But he said he is gaining 500 to 1,000 new donors a day. He said many of them give small but that he welcomes amounts that might lead to larger contributions later

He’s already desperate, and when the February financial reports are made public, showing a campaign that is essentially bankrupt, whatever little puddles of hope Gingrich has been able to sell to those “500 to 1,000 new donors a day” (a dubious claim) will evaporate almost instantly. If Newt then loses March 24 in Louisiana, it’s over.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! And thanks to the commenter who called my attention to a Feb. 17 article by Luke Rosiak of The Washington Times:

When Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign disclosed in October that it planned to pay the candidate $70,000, the transfer was unusual for a campaign committee. But weeks ago, the former House speaker revised his bill for the third quarter: He actually expected to personally receive $115,000 to reimburse himself for expenses during that period.
The campaign would not explain how the candidate forgot about and then found $45,000 in receipts. Far beyond that payment, the destinations of dollars donated to Mr. Gingrich’s campaign are being obscured by the unprecedented use of a clearly prohibited tactic, The Washington Times found — one that has accompanied the flow of the better part of $1 million in unexplained cash to Mr. Gingrich, family members and top staffers. . . .

Read the whole thing. How I missed that article last month, I don’t know, nor do I know what the explanation for such unusal accounting might be. But one can imagine that it raised eyebrows among the big-money donors. Newt would probably dismiss such financial questions as coming from “the elite media.”

UPDATE II: My attempted humor about Missouri’s less-than-exemplary history of religious tolerance has generated some less than mirthful comments from those who sympathize with the plight of 19th-century Mormons. But my mild jest about 1838 could never rival the studied cruelty of Allahpundit’s well-aimed shot at Gingrich:

Second look at Newt staying in the race to gratify his delusions of grandeur about being chosen as a consensus nominee at a brokered convention?

Ouch.


Category: Election 2012, Louisiana, Missouri, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum

Why Does DC Fund TX?

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Tina Korbe at HotAir on Rick Perry:

Incidentally, this is one of the things I most respect about Rick Perry: He is willing to forgo federal funds, recognizing that federal dollars always come with strings attached.

In the chronic case, are not the 57 states the horse, and the federal government the cart?

Sure, natural disasters may trigger some acute reversal, say, if the Mississippi River floods out the entire Midwest. But I read a sentence like that, and I wonder:

  • Does the entire economy work in some non-obvious way? or
  • Am I just a chump for not understanding something that everyone else grasps readily?

I submit that, post debt crisis, one of our tasks to look for in the plan will be a transition off of the notion of ‘federal dollars’ and onto a notion akin to ‘federal revenues’, where DC, like a river, is constrained by the banks of receipts at the treasury that come from the states.

Returning our federal government’s feet to earth may be what it takes to trigger an influx of sane, moral people into running for office.
Not to say the candidates we have are insane or immoral; rather, insufficient.

Category: Republicans, Rick Perry

‘Jailbird’ Jim Moran

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

His Paco-ness points to a DC Caller article I hadn’t bothered with due to the presence of Clooney. Now, George Clooney is at least watchable in the “Ocean’s xx” franchise. Off camera, the difference between Clooney and Sean Penn is that Clooney is the crypto-Fascist who was never married to Madonna, as far as I know.

In addition to Clooney and his father, journalist Nick Clooney, Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Jim Moran of Virgina and Al Green of Texas were arrested. Activists including NAACP President Ben Jealous, Martin Luther King III and John Prendergast of the Enough Protest were also arrested.
According to a press release, the protest was held to “demand immediate action to stop Sudan’s use of food as a weapon… half a million people in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions risk starvation because Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is blockading food and humanitarian aid.”

Further along:

UPDATE: George Clooney has been released after paying a $100 fine for trespassing. Clooney was among the group of congressmen and activists arrested for ignoring warnings and crossing a police line outside the embassy.

Anorak, of all sites, has a photo spread:

I hope the police don’t stop until they hit Colorado Correctional Center, where ‘Jailbird’ Jim can say hello to Rod Blagojevich.

Now, if you’ve paid any attention to South Sudan, they’ve a substantial Christian minorty, in contrast to the Muslim Sudan from which they’ve recently seceded. So Clooney & Co. should perhaps consider the likelihood of #OccupyResoluteDesk diverting any of the vast U.S. resources spent helping the similar plight of the Egyptian Christians to support the South Sudanese. It’s about 0. BHO, nominally Christian himself, takes not being seen as shilling for his own kind to extremes.

‘Jailbird’ Jim probably grasps all that. He probably also understands the need to set an example, as a public figure. You know, by paying attention to what the police are saying. What I can’t figure out is why he would forgo the day-trading profits to hang around with the rest of these louts. Clooney is some big Democ**t donor, one surmises? Was there a leash on Moran?

All I can say is that I am glad I was not there, and there was no police brutality to report. I would have been 51% against the brutality, and 49% thinking something else. . .

Having said all that, the average folk of South Sudan merit sympathy, as do those of Afghanistan, or the rest of these impoverished countries. Authoritarian, anti-capitalist policies will turn any country into a toilet. Jim Moran, unfortunately, advocates the policies that will render these United States as both as helpless as South Sudan, and incapable of even trying to help those people. There is only one patriotic thing Americans, and especially Virginians can do. Support

Patrick Murray for Congress

Previous/More Antics:

Category: Jim Moran

Interviewed By Sergio Politics

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

I was recently the subject of an email interview at Sergio Politics. A taste:

What is your opinion of Super PACs and its influence in this GOP race?
I’m no tremendous fan of the Super PACs. What is less interesting, though, is having the government regulate speech. No, no, no, no, a thousand no’s, and again: screw that. My ultimate opinion is that our Republic, if we can keep it, is predicated upon an informed populace. So the candidates all have a dead fish aroma about them. If we are dumb enough to let saturation strikes from Super PACs do our decision making, then doom on us.

I’d add, on further reflection, there are laws covering libel which can be brought to bear if the court of public opinion can’t figure things out when a SuperPAC goes too far.

Regulating political speech is like ‘hate crime’ legislation: the notion of criminally crime-y crime, as distinct from crime, is as daft and nebulous as a useless clown like Alxelrod trying to distinguish between potty mouth from Limbaugh and Maher.

The court of opinion has got to come down harshly on political nonsense disguised as argument. But then the joke about expecting truth out of Axelrod is funnier than Maher has been in years.

Category: Blogging, Election 2012

Public Radio Liar: ‘I Wanted to Tell a Story That Captured the Totality of My Trip’

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 12 Comments

The quote is from Mike Daisey, who went to China and came back telling lies about conditions in Apple’s factories there:

It’s Daisey’s story about visiting a Foxconn factory in China where Apple manufactures iPhones and other products. With the help of a Chinese translator, Daisey finds underage workers, poisoned workers, maimed workers, and dismal factory conditions for those who make iPhones and iPads.
“I’m telling you that in my first two hours at my first day at that gate I met workers who were 14 years old … 13 years old … 12,” Daisey recounted. “Do you really think Apple doesn’t know?”

My initial thought: 13-year-olds who work? What a great idea! But my kids aren’t Chinese and there aren’t any iPhone factories nearby, so . . .

Cathy Lee, Daisey’s translator in Shenzhen, was with Daisey at this meeting in Shenzhen. I met her in the exact place she took Daisey—the gates of Foxconn. So I asked her: “Did you meet people who fit this description?”
“No,” she said.
“So there was nobody who said they were poisoned by hexane?” I continued.
Lee’s answer was the same: “No. Nobody mentioned the Hexane.”
I pressed Cathy to confirm other key details that Daisey reported. Did the guards have guns when you came here with Mike Daisey? With each question I got the same answer from Lee. “No,” or “This is not true.”
Daisey claims he met underage workers at Foxconn. He says he talked to a man whose hand was twisted into a claw from making iPads. He describes visiting factory dorm rooms with beds stacked to the ceiling. But Cathy says none of this happened.

We should have known this was too good to be true. Hell’s bells, I can’t even get my 13-year-old to pick up his socks. It would be entirely too much to expect him to toil for hours in an iPhone factory.

Anyway, this Mike Daisey must be one of those right-wing Bretibart-type bloggers who make stuff up on Fox News, I guess. Am I right?

Acclaimed Public Radio International program “This American Life” has retracted an entire episode about working conditions inside Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer that builds much of Apple’s most popular hardware, after learning the reporter “partially fabricated” information about his visit to the factories. . . .

(“Partially fabricated”? I should try that: “Hey, I’m a professional journalist with a 14-inch-long penis.” And if it’s only 11 inches …)

Among the many facts Daisey fabricated, according to PRI, were the number of Foxconn factories he visited, the number of workers he spoke with, as well a major lie about meeting with a number of workers who claimed to have been poisoned by chemicals used on iPhone assembly lines.

(OK, so maybe it’s closer to 9 inches . . .)

“Daisey lied to me and to ‘This American Life’ producer Brian Reed during the fact checking we did on the story, before it was broadcast,” the show’s host, Ira Glass, wrote in a blog post on Friday. “That doesn’t excuse the fact that we never should’ve put this on the air. In the end, this was our mistake.”

Ira, buddy, we need to talk about the meaning of this word, “mistake,” because it strikes me that this is more like “willful negligence” and “editorial malpractice,” but who am I to lecture the host of an “acclaimed” public radio program, huh?

Merely a professional journalist, with a penis at least 7¾ inches long. Because I want to tell a story that captures the totality of my penis. And speaking of total penises:

A co-founder for Invisible Children was detained in Pacific Beach Thursday for being drunk in public and masturbating, according to San Diego Police Department.
Jason Russell, 33, was allegedly found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of something, according to Lt. Andra Brown. He was detained at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Road. . . .
Invisible Children’s CEO Ben Keesey released a statement after 1:40 p.m. on Friday saying:
“Jason Russell was unfortunately hospitalized yesterday suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. He is now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better. …”

(Exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition? I’m “suffering,” too! Want to see my 14-inch penis? I’m “focused on getting better.” Honest.)

Russell is one of the the founders responsible for the “Kony 2012” video that  went viral last week. He is described on the organization’s website as a  co-founder and “our grand storyteller and dreamer.”

OK, I co-founded this blog, but the “grand storyteller and dreamer” gig is above my paygrade. I am merely a professional journalist, with a penis of indeterminate size that I’ve never been arrested for displaying. Yet.

UPDATE: World-famous liar Mike Daisey:

What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.

Speaking of “tools” . . .

UPDATE II: Jack Shafer isn’t buying Daisey’s excuse:

Liars come up with all sorts of justifications when caught. In Daisey’s case, he claims “dramatic license” gives him the right to lie to Glass. Other apprehended fibbers working in the journalistic arena have blamed booze, drugs, madness, overwork, bad fact-checking, notes got lost, wrong version got sent to the editor, or family problems.
I’m still waiting for somebody who got caught lying while practicing journalism to say why he did it. I have my theory: 1) They lie because they don’t have the time or talent to tell the truth, 2) they lie because think they can get away with it, and 3) they lie because they have no respect for the audience they claim to want to enlighten. That would be an ideal subject for a one-man theatrical performance.

The notion that it is a journalist’s job to “enlighten” others is probably the key to understanding what Daisey did. As with Dan Rather and the bogus Texas Air National Guard documents, Daisey believed so deeply in the truth of the “larger story” that he became indifferent to the actual facts.

This “fake but accurate” concept is one of those ends-justify-the-means rationalizations to which idealistic crusaders and other bullshit artists cling ferociously. Michael Moore doesn’t give a damn about trivial little things like “facts,” because his stock in trade is The Important Message that others supposedly lack the courage to tell. While they’re busy congratulating themselves on how heroically “courageous” they are, of course, they’re trampling the truth into the dust.

Shafer suggests that people will now begin fact-checking Daisey’s 2002 book, 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com, and in a review of that book I found this tantalizing clue:

21 Dog Years [is] a great testament to the irrational exuberance of the dot-com era. Daisey signed on at Amazon as a last resort after a string of temp jobs and low-paying acting gigs. The book’s best passages tingle with tension as Daisey watches himself fall for the new-economy talk he knows is jive. “There was the Old World, and the New World, and a war was coming in which Amazon would play a vital role, vanquishing bad, brick and mortar corporations,” Daisey writes. “We began to believe that by supporting Amazon.com we would be helping to crush chains and monopolies and faceless bureaucracies. We were hopelessly naíve.” . . .
He avoided being fired only by being promoted, thanks to a study he did on the customer-service response times of competitors — a study that used faked data.
What Daisey slowly came to realize, with a perfect mix of horror and mirth, was that it didn’t even matter that the report was fiction. “It was only now that I could see that they never cared whether that report was real or not,” he writes.

Whoa! In a book published ten years ago, Daisey confessed to having lied his way into a promotion at a previous employer? An “acclaimed” public-radio program saw no problem in trusting the veracity of reporting by this confessed liar?

Oh, and by the way: Despite Daisey’s sneers about “irrational exuberance,” Amazon is still in business — and quite successfully so..

Category: China

Darleen Click Hasn’t Lost Her Touch

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

After the edgy cartoon with BHO and the Statue of Liberty a couple years back, it doesn’t seem that she’s done much. That is, until Good Democrat Bitches, which she uses both in literal and metaphorical ways.

National Offend a Feminist Week is something we usually do in May, but you can consider this an appetizer.

Category: Protein Wisdom

Did Somebody Hear a Dog Whistle?

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 33 Comments

Far be it from me to go around willy-nilly accusing people of anti-Italian prejudice, just because they don’t support Rick Santorum for President, as all intelligent, honest and courageous people must.

It would be an unfair accusation to imply that Santorum’s critics are prejudiced against Italians, you see, so long as we acknowledge the obvious possibility that they may be stupid, dishonest or cowardly. . . .

Why insist on having arguments laid out like PowerPoint presentations, clubbing people over the head with obvious 1-2-3 simplicity, rather than having confidence in the reader’s intelligence?

Isn’t it possible that if everything we write is Rhetoric for Dummies™ we will drive away more intelligent readers with our repetitive implicit suggestions that they’re in need of lecturing, as if they were a roomful of ignorant 19-year-old college freshmen? Why not attempt to attract an erudite readership by having the humility to assume that our readers may be as knowledgeable as ourselves? But I digress . . .

Dr. Rusty Shackleford is intelligent, honest and courageous, and so I was therefore shocked to learn of his anti-Italian prejudice:

The real explanation here, I think, is that nobody really took Santorum’s presidential bid that seriously until recently.

Huh? Santorum won Iowa (Jan. 3), Missouri, Colorado, Minnesota (Feb. 7), Tenneessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota (March 6) and Kansas (March 10), but “nobody” took him seriously until he beat Newt in Mississippi and Alabama this week?

Michelle Malkin endorsed Rick Santorum on Jan. 30.

Ed Morrissey endorsed Rick Santorum on Feb. 5.

Do you mean to suggest, Dr. Shackleford, that Malkin and Morrissey are “nobody”? Or maybe that their endorsements of Santorum were a reflection of their inferior knowledge and judgment?

Perhaps I am mistaken in discerning such possible implications of Dr. Shackleford’s argument. I’ll have to consult Jeff Goldstein and see if “intentionalism” has any insights on this problem. Or maybe Da Tech Guy is onto something here, despite his being just another stupid dago.

Sometimes, one may best instruct by example.

And I never heard of such a thing as a “fair fight.”

RICK SANTORUM for PRESIDENT
Because He’s Not a Gutless Punk Like Those Other Guys

Category: Election 2012, Media Bias, Rick Santorum

Two Reasons VP Rand Paul Isn’t A Bad Idea

Posted on | March 16, 2012 | 48 Comments

by Smitty

Bill Quick floats an intriguing question:

So, tell me….would putting Rand Paul on his ticket as Veep make Mittens Romneycare more attractive to you?
Why?

As a preliminary note, The Catholic Bandita was attacked rather heavily by Ron/Rand supporters. I hope we can all get along better going down the road, and she can locate a means of forgiving loutish behavior. So, I offer these points knowing that Lisa’s jaw will tighten.

  • A Vice President Paul is a signal that Mitt isn’t simply a tool of the plutocrats, a Massachusetts Manchurian sent to proudly repeal ObamaCare, then re-instate it with altered acronyms. That Mitt has taken pretty much every side on every issue, and continues to spout Newspeak slogans in place of real communication is worrisome. Seriously. You may not like Newt or Rick or Ron, but when they’re talking, you know they are in the room. Mitt has sounded phoned in Every. Single. Time. Even Mitt’s wife sounds more authentic than he does. While I do not advocate alcohol consumption, I confess an academic interest in hearing Mitt after a couple of shots of tequila, purely to satisfy the question of whether there is any ‘there’ there. Does he play cards? Does he collect memorabilia? Paint? Anything? Bueller? I feel I know something of the remaining candidates. Mitt is opaque.
  • Rand Paul is about the second best choice after Marco Rubio, and for the same reason: conservatives should be thinking a 16-year package here. “Whaddaya Know” Joe Biden couldn’t lead two nuns in one minute of silent prayer, much less (hypothetically and God forbid) succeed #OccupyResoluteDesk in a 2016 run. Having Bush41 on his ticket might have been a necessary evil for Ronald Reagan, but the lack of continuity on the path toward restoring liberty after the Gipper helped put us where we are today. Implicit here is the idea that the Tea Parties have both got to support the GOP nominee and keep the pressure for reform continuously applied.

Thus Rand Paul would be workable for any of the candidates. I say that with no expectation of Ron taking the nom. A father/son ticket? The Democ**ts would reply with Hillary/Chelsea, no doubt. [Howls of derisive laughter.]

Update: welcome, Instapundit readers!

Update II: Rhetorican links.

Category: Mitt Romney, Rand Paul
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