The Other McCain

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

Allen West’s Enemy: Mike Haridopolos?

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 47 Comments

“America is threatened by many crises, ranging from economic recession to international terrorism, but none of these threats are quite so immediate or so fundamentally hostile to our democratic form of government as the existential menace of Florida.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Sept. 30, 2011

Florida Republican politics is a Byzantine web of intrigue and treachery, a terrain of secret alliances and hidden rivalries involving not only elected officials, but also a vast imperial court of staffers, consultants, campaign operatives and money men who constantly aspire to advance their own narrow personal ambitions without any regard for the commonweal. The only reason honest people in Florida vote for Republicans is because the state’s Democrats are so much worse.

If the FBI were to target Florida politicians for a sting operation, they might conceivably arrest nearly every member of the state legislature, and all but a few of the county commissioners, city council members, mayors, and other minor office-holders who infest the state like so many cockroaches.

We should have left the damned mess to the Spanish, the Seminoles and the alligators, but it’s too late. We’re stuck with Florida now. The Spanish can’t afford to buy it back and the Seminoles are content to wreak their revenge on the White Man through lucrative casino operations like the one in Immokalee where a visiting journalist recently spent a few unfortunate hours at the blackjack table, but I digress . . .

The attempt to make Florida state Rep. Will Weatherford the fall guy for an alleged plot — supposedly orchestrated by allies of Mitt Romney — to redistrict Rep. Allen West out of Congress came flying into my face this afternoon, when I got a phone call from Javier Manjarres of The Shark Tank. It was Javier’s interview last week with Weatherford which got the whole uproar started, and Javier assured me this afternoon that he’s privy to all kinds of stuff about the conspiracy against West, stuff he can’t talk about because people would lose their jobs over it. The need to protect sources is certainly understandable, but it unfortunately puts Javier in a position of being unable to prove what he alleges, and I have neither the time nor resources to go chasing after the details myself.

The reason Javier called me is because he is at odds with my Florida friend Sarah Rumpf for her defense of Weatherford, and I had linked her blog in quoting a letter she published from Florida state Rep. Scott Plakon, who likewise defended Weatherford from what Plakon called “cheap shots” by Rush Limbaugh.

My phone conversation with Javier got interrupted by a disturbance at my house involving my son’s dog, and I was unable to reach Javier when I called back. Nevertheless, this conversation piqued my curiosity about exactly what the hell is going on in Florida, so I did some further investigation and stumbled onto some related intrigue that, to my knowledge, has not been reported in connection to this story.

Florida state Senate President Mike Haridopolos may be the unseen force behind the redistricting uproar, for which Weatherford is being unfairly demonized. And if there is a Romney connection to the whole thing, it may not surprise you to learn who Haridopolos endorsed for president.

With no extensive direct knowledge of Florida politics myself, I do know that Haridopolos was a candidate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate (to challenge Democrat Bill Nelson) until his campaign self-destructed last summer. With $2.8 million reportedly left in his campaign coffers, however, there were obvious questions about Haridopolos’s future plans:

Speculation has swirled over a possible Hardipolos bid for U.S. House next year. With Florida gaining two congressional seats in 2012 — and one of those likely targeted for Central Florida — the Brevard County-based lawmaker could be geographically and financially well-positioned for a run.

The plot thickens, you see, and there’s also this angle: Haridopolos blamed those pesky Tea Party people for his failed Senate campaign (they called him out on various issues, including immigration), and one of the Tea Party people Haridopolos hates the most is — did you guess? — Allen West.

There is gossip to the effect that one heated conversation between West and Haridopolos ended with West suggesting that Haridopolos perform an anatomically impossible act. And the fingerprints of Haridopolos are said to be all over that Florida congressional re-districting map that seemed to be designed specifically to screw over West.

But the story is still more complicated than that. If Haridopolos had planned to carve himself out a congressional district, his plans were thwarted in part because of his friends with the Romney campaign. Both U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV and his father, the former U.S. senator, campaigned with Romney in Florida, which had consequences that Haridopolos failed to anticipate:

The leading Republican candidate in the U.S. Senate race, Mack earned national media exposure stumping across the state for Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor went so far as to anoint the 44-year-old Mack in campaign stops as “the next senator from Florida.”
That endorsement helped drive Mack’s opponent, Adam Hasner, out of the race this week and into a congressional race in South Florida. Another GOP challenger, Craig Miller, exited to run for a congressional seat, too, leaving only former Sen. George LeMieux as a serious challenger.

Hasner was the Tea Party favorite in the Senate race, and his decision to switch to a congressional campaign was part of a complex deal that my buddy Dan Riehl reported this week:

In a deal with several moving parts, Conservative favorite Rep. Allen West will move over and run in Rep. Tom Rooney’s old district, as Rooney moves on to run in a newly created district. Additionally, Adam Hasner will drop his Senate bid, leaving a somewhat clearer path for Rep. Connie Mack to run for the Senate nomination.

So guess who ends up the odd man out in this game of musical chairs? Haridopolos, with $2.8 million in the bank and no district to run in.

Now, I don’t know Haridopolos and I don’t know Weatherford, either of whom may be more honest than an Immokalee blackjack dealer, or maybe not. However, I do know Scott Plakon, who is by all accounts a Christian man of unquestioned integrity, and Plakon says Weatherford is innocent of any intent to screw over Allen West.

If anyone wishes to vouch for the bona fides of Haridopolos, let him stand forth and speak up. But Plakon, Hasner and West are all allied with the Tea Party, whereas Haridopolos reputedly depises the Tea Party, and so if there were someone looking to make trouble for West and his Tea Party friends . . .

Well, distracting everybody by putting the blame on Weatherford — a popular politician whose own ambitions might make him a future rival of Haridopolos in a statewide campaign — would be just the kind of sneaky thing you might expect in such a situation involving Florida Republicans.

Too bad Spain can’t afford to buy back that damned state.

Category: Adam Hasner, Allen West, Election 2012, Florida, Tea Party

I’m Not A Newt Fan, But This Ad Should Give You Pause

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 20 Comments

by Smitty

via HillBuzz

Similar Mitt ‘cheerleading’ at The Corner.

Category: Mitt Romney

First, They Came for the Reese’s Pieces …

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 17 Comments

When I worked at The Washington Times, there was a place in the office called the “discard table” where the book review editors — or anybody else — would leave the books they got for free from publishers but didn’t want to keep. My library has scores of volumes rescued from the discard table, among them a slender paperback novel called Generation S.L.U.T.

The titular acronym stands for Sexually Liberated Urban Teens, and the novel is a dark and twisted reflection on the unspeakable degeneracy of contemporary adolescents — and their parents, and their schools, and in fact, it is a jeremiad against the entire decadent post-Christian society which spawned these worthless spoiled brats.

Generation S.L.U.T. is full of dirty words and dirty actions, and it takes a discriminating mind to see that this novel, beneath its numerous  layers of putrid polymorphous filth, is an essentially conservative critique of 21st-century American culture. And as soon as I began reading it, I knew I had to meet the twisted mind that produced this Dante’s Inferno of teen novels, Marty Beckerman.

Were there any justice in the world, young Beckerman would have already seen his perverse novel turned into a major motion picture, or perhaps even an HBO series, but Hollywood evidently lacks the kind of discriminating minds who can see the genius that I saw in Generation S.L.U.T. Or perhaps, they are daunted by fear of what holy unshirted hell would be unleashed on anyone who dared to turn such a wicked story into a movie. Merely to get it down to an R rating would require very careful work by the screenwriter and director. And honestly, what would the critics say about a movie whose climactic scene involves gang-rape, recorded on video for commercial purposes by a suburban teenage drug kingpin?

After reading the book, I quickly got in touch with Marty Beckerman via e-mail and eventually we met in person. It was Beckerman who sat with me, one night at a Reason magazine happy hour gathering, as we plied Christopher Hitchens with Johnny Walker Black, merely for the pleasure of hearing Hitch tell stories. Marty and I have occasionally crossed paths since then, and I have come to admire — and more importantly, to fear — his bizarre sense of humor. If you ever invite Beckerman to a party, rest assured that at least one of your guests will be grossly offended by Beckerman’s outrageous sarcasm, which is all the more dangerous because of his deadpan delivery.

All of which is a necessary disclaimer — you have been warned! — to Marty Beckerman’s latest blog post:

Your Peanut-Allergic Kid is a Little G-ddamn Sissy

Click that link at your peril.

Category: humor

Gingrich, Romney, Trump Monopolize Media; Santorum Keeps Campaigning

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 39 Comments

“[Obama] made the claim that his policies of taxing the rich is authorized by the Bible. That he is doing what is biblically called for by taxing the rich, by having the government tax the rich. Now, I’ve read the Bible, and I must have missed that passage. . . . This is an administration that attacks religion, and then tries to cloak itself in religion in order to take your money.”
— Rick Santorum, Thursday in Fallon, Nevada

“Sincerity is the important thing on TV. A presidential candidate should at least seem to believe what he’s saying — even if it’s all stone crazy.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

If you’ve been watching Fox News lately, you are perhaps aware that the “fair and balanced” network has jumped onto the same bandwagon as most of the rest of the major media: The GOP presidential campaign is now a two-man race between the frontrunners, Mitt and Newt.

This was evidently the narrative the media wanted back in December, before Rick Santorum shocked the world with his astonishing surge to victory in Iowa — a result that was immediately dismissed as a fluke by the media, so that they could get back to telling you about the two-man frontrunner race they had decided on weeks earlier.

That Fox is part of this media bandwagon is a fact I note in passing, while pointing out what was obvious to me long ago: Newt can’t beat Mitt.

It can’t happen and won’t happen, and those conservatives who believe they can make it happen are engaged in a type of behavior that Ace of Spades has called “wishcasting” — the idea that you can do anything you want to do, if only you wish and hope and believe in it enough.

There are many reasons why the seemingly possible dream of a Newt nomination is actually less practically feasible than the admittedly long-shot chance of an unexpected comeback by Rick Santorum. Most of these reasons have to do with Newt’s biography and character: His personal flaws and failings, which are well known even to his supporters, but which he (and they) suppose will be ignored by undecided voters who are less ideological than themselves because, doggone it, he has such great ideas!

You see a bit of this admiration for Newt’s ideas in Karl Rove’s campaign critique, where he faults Romney for relying too heavily on the “successful businesman” biographical narrative. But the problem for Newt is that, beyond his career as a leader of conservative Republicans, his biographical narrative is a major net negative. Even if Republican primary voters could overlook everything else, Gingrich’s two divorces are the kind of “baggage” that he can’t possibly carry to the White House.

Now, maybe you’ve got a divorce or two under your own belt and wish to believe that the American people would be willing to overlook this element of Gingrich’s biographical narrative — but this belief is only possible if you assume that most people share your own vehement opposition to Obama and would be willing to ignore the messy details of Newt’s narrative.

Please see R. Emmett Tyrrell’s column last week on that subject. Furthermore, let’s quote Tyrrell’s column this week:

Ah, yes, Newt Gingrich did in the last days of the Florida primary precisely what I predicted he would do. He hurled wild charges at Mitt Romney that suggested Newt was losing his grip. He charged Romney with lying and falling into the hands of George Soros and Goldman Sachs, and he did this while seeking the Republican presidential nomination!
Newt quoted Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” Citing Goldman Sachs’ profiting from the bailout, he linked the Wall Street firm to anti-Gingrich ads, filling in the dots: “Those ads,” he averred, “are your money recycled to attack me.” On Sunday, he suggested that Rick Santorum drop out of the race and support him. Santorum had left the campaign trail to be with his desperately ill daughter. That is the kind of grace we have come to expect from Gingrich, who, by the way, supplied no evidence of Goldman Sachs’ or of Soros’s aiding Romney.

The astute reader will perhaps perceive that the esteemed editor of The American Spectator relied on his shoe-leather man’s reporting from Newt’s Fort Myers “Fear and Loathing” rally, a service I was more than happy to provide, and which in turn involves a debt to the good readers who hit the tip jar for the Florida trip. Read more

Category: $10 to Win in 2010, Colorado, CPAC, Election 2012, Fox News, Media Bias, Minnesota, Missouri, Mitt Romney, Nevada, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Vanuatu

The Media Is The Gaff; That Romney Courts The Gaff Is The Worrisome Part

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

As is so often the case, The Hill spouts piffle:

Congressional Republicans are worried Mitt Romney’s propensity for verbal gaffes will hurt him in the fall.
The former Massachusetts governor has had a series of foot-in-mouth moments that have set off alarm bells for the GOP and brought on gleeful attacks from Democrats.
The latest came the morning after his decisive win in Florida’s primary, when he told CNN he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”

What is so worrisome to me is not Romney’s words, which are relatively cogent to the rational audience. Rather, the indication that the media is so willing to distort an innocuous phrase to this extent, and the Romney campaign retreats.

It’s the appearance of spinelessness in the face of the the Postmodern media that moves the Not Mitt Romney crowd. Mitt has got to point out, loudly, this false propaganda mongering more or less daily, and not reprise John McCain’s complacency.

Category: Mitt Romney

I Present To The Instapundit The Following Dilemma: Zeeba, Or Roseanne?

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

In case you can’t tell them apart, there are no known recordings of Zeeba trashing the National Anthem. But Roseanne Barr is running for POTUS.

Three cheers for democracy and hearing protection.

More at American Glob.

Category: Instapundit

Little Miss Attila Resurfaced

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Yay! It sounds like she may not make CPAC, though. Bummer.

Category: Little Miss Attila

I Repeat: The Bible Is Not A Political Tract

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

“Who can take Alinsky,
mix him up with faith,
make them both sound rancid,
while he runs his POTUS race?

Obama man can,
Obama man can.
Obama man can,
’cause he takes a little Truth
and mixes it with crap
and makes you say: ‘Tastes good!’”

Emphasis mine on the BuzzFeed quote:

“And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’“

How can we get federal politicians to stop with the hijacking of the Golden Rule?

  • It is offered in the context of inter-personal relationships: the State, as such, didn’t love you, doesn’t love you, and never will love you.

    Leviticus 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

  • Maybe Obama can articulate why this neighbor love business doesn’t apply during political races. Can SuperPAC money restore the love? The tatters of Newt’s [redacted] suggest: no.
  • How can loving thy neighbor be accomplished by bankrupting his grandchildren? Sure, Buuuuuuuush tax cuts, but how far can that particular line of hooey stretch?
  • If sexual harassment is in the eye of the receiver, at what point do I have the legal standing to say ‘no’ to this line of Presidential affection?

Ultimately, loving individuals is not a federal task. Romney is right not to care about the very poor. Such economic discrimination is not a Presidential task.
And I see I lose the whole internet to Cassandra.
More at Left Coast Rebel.

via Insty

Category: Barack Obama
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