The Other McCain

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

BREAKING NEWS: MITT ROMNEY WINS FLORIDA REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 75 Comments

TAMPA, Fla.
Polls just closed in the western panhandle of Florida, and there is no need for suspense regarding the result. It has been pretty much a universal certainty for the past week that Romney was going to win this thing pretty easily, and the only question is the final margin of victory.

In fact, I’m writing this post in Naples at 4 o’clock in the afternoon — four hours before the polls close — because I’ve got a three-hour drive to reach the Mitt Romney RINO-tastic™ Florida Primary Victory Celebration at the Tampa Convention Center, and wasn’t sure if traffic might delay my arrival, preventing me from being the first to report this URGENT BREAKING NEWS.

Anyway, it is not true that the only people who support Mitt are sold-out gutless RINOs. “Sunshine State Sarah” explains why she voted for Romney. You Newt people can go unload all your hate on Sarah. Here’s a headline:

Newt Gingrich Robocall: Mitt Romney Forced
Holocaust Survivors To Eat Non-Kosher Food

Desperate much? And here’s another headline:

Santorum says Gingrich should stop
pressuring GOP rivals to drop out

Ditto that. Newt should drop out and endorse Santorum. Otherwise, he should stop blaming his failures on other people.

UPDATE: Now on the scene at the Press Filing Center at the Tampa Convention Center, where the TVs are on CNN, which called the election for Romney as soon as the polls closed in the Panhandle, by which time nearly 60% of the precincts were already reporting:

Romney …….. 47%
Gingrich …….. 31%
Santorum ….. 13%
Paul ………….. 7%

That 16-point gap is likely to narrow as the Panhandle precincts report.

UPDATE II: Mitt sends out his wife, Ann, to give thanks to their supporters and to introduce Mitt.

UPDATE III: Very much a general-election speech from Mitt, taking aim at Obama, promising an America “where hope is a new job and a paycheck, not a word on a fading bumper sticker.”

Romney also said: “A competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us and we will win. When we gather back here seven months from now here in Tampa for our convention, we will be a united party with a winning ticket.”

It is reported that Gingrich won’t even spend the night in Florida, and won’t do the morning talk shows tomorrow, but will fly tonight to Nevada, where the caucuses are Saturday. Lots of Mormons in Nevada.

UPDATE IV: A couple of photos:

TV satellite trucks parked under the palm trees outside the convention center.

Inside the press filing center.

UPDATE V: At Newt’s speech, they’re holding up signs that say, “46 States to Go.” Just ran in to top Romney advisor Eric Ferhnstrom, who said, “He’s not even on the ballot in 46 more states.”

Ferhnstrom said they expect Ron Paul to be Romney’s chief opponent in the Nevada caucuses, and said Missouri (which holds a non-binding primary on Tuesday) will be a two-man race between Romney and Santorum, because Gingrich isn’t on the ballot there.

In case you’re wondering, the next debate is Feb. 22 in Arizona.

UPDATE VI: Citing polls showing Rick Santorum leading Romney in Missouri and Ohio, the Santorum campaign says in a press release: “Santorum is a stronger long term threat to Romney than Gingrich because he has less baggage and is simply much better liked.”

Category: Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State, Florida, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum

Interesting Online Data Point–No One Has Much Command In The GOP Scramble

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 8 Comments

by Smitty

This means little more than the fact that Drudge’s server is working, but it may blunt some of the triumphal noises from Romney-land:
For a third of a million Drudge readers, I would expect the prohibitive favorite to at least pull one in three, if not two in five. But, like a mortally wounded SNL season, the blow must go on.

Category: Election 2012, Republicans

‘Why Do Younger Men Shorten Women’s Lifespans?’

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 23 Comments

by Smitty

Roxanne de Luca poses the subject question. First off, I think that the Progressive notion that women=men is as much garbage as global warming. Neither gender is superior, in my estimation. I will note in Genesis 3, when the politics hit the fan, that a man is more immediately culpable.

Cutting right to the chase, are the traditional sociological arguments for gender roles really all that moot in our Postmodern age? Are men still in some sort of leadership role, where age, experience and financial resources buy nubile young brides in a cozy arrangement designed to propagate the species?

Roxanne’s link points to a study claiming to show that cougars, or “Demi Moore arrangements”, lead to shorter lifespans for women. But how common is the cougar case, really? And does the cougar case point to enough other hard-living factors to be more incidental to these women’s lives than causal?

I’m landing somewhere around the opinion that the toy boy is peripheral to the broader philosophical question: is decadence sustainable?

Category: Culture

Newt Gingrich: Graceless in Defeat?

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 48 Comments

Newt Gingrich in Fort Myers, Fla., Monday Jan. 30, 2012

NAPLES, Fla.
This will be my last day here in the posh condo which Dan Collins has so generously made available as the Florida headquarters of the National Affairs Desk. Tonight I head up to Tampa to cover RINO Fest 2012 Mitt Romney’s victory celebration, and then I must find someplace else to get a few hours sleep before leaving out from Jacksonville on Wednesday afternoon.

Before I do all that, however, I must contemplate the scapegoating, blame-shifting and excuse-making by which Newt Gingrich is attempting to provide a pre-emptive explanation of his looming defeat here in Florida. Among other things, Newt is once again pointing the finger at Rick Santorum:

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says rival Rick Santorum should take a look at the poll numbers, which show Gingrich beating him, and drop out.
“The longer conservatives stay split, the harder it’s going to be for us to [beat Romney],” Gingrich said on FOX and Friends on Tuesday. “And I think that we risk not being able to beat Obama unless we get a conservative. I have to win the nomination.”
Santorum is sapping conservative votes from Gingrich, the former House speaker said.

Ed Morrissey slaps down that pathetic excuse:

Oddly, Gingrich didn’t appear as principled on the subject of conservative consolidation when Santorum won Iowa and Gingrich finished fourth, nor when Santorum narrowly edged Gingrich for fourth place in New Hampshire. If he was concerned about a conservative sacrificing to make sure a conservative alternative had the strength to beat Mitt Romney at that time, Gingrich didn’t pull a muscle leaping out of his chair to volunteer.

One of the basic traits of narcissism is an ability to accept blame for one’s own failures, which leads to scapegoating, the attempt to externalize blame in order to protect the narcissist’s glorified mental self-image.

Newt came into Florida riding a wave of momentum from South Carolina and, if it is true that the Romney machine poured out an unprecedented onslaught of attack ads here, it is also true that Gingrich himself reacted badly. Gingrich had his worst two debates of the entire yearlong campaign, and seemed cranky and irritable all week. But he can’t admit his own complicity in his problems — as if Freddie Mac forced him to take that money — and so what went wrong must always be blamed on somebody else, even if that somebody is Rick Santorum, who barely campaigned in Florida.

Narcissism is a pathology closely connected to paranoia, and the spooky vibes of yesterday’s Gingrich rally in Fort Myers were enough to put me in mind of Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Watch this video in which Gingrich promotes the belief that both he and his listeners are victims of “money power”:

“We’re in a very simple campaign. We are pitting people power against money power. No question — you look at the list of top ten donors to Mitt Romney, that’s money power. That is the establishment. Those are the people who would be happy, as George Soros said, with either Obama or Romney, and they do not want a conservative. Those are the people who have led the assault on me over the last couple of weeks, by all sorts of folks whose number-one goal is to keep power in Washington the way it is now. I want you to know, I do not believe it is legitimate for the current establishment to preside over the decay as long as they’re doing well. I think we have an obligation to our children, to our grandchildren, to fundamentally change Washington and, frankly, to fundamentally change New York. We deserve to know the truth about the last four years. We deserve to know what happened to our money.”

The idea of usurpation of authority by an illegitimate, selfish, decadent plutocracy — who strive to conceal the truth about their malign manipulations — is a very familiar theme in populist demagoguery. Without denying the possibility that there are elements of truth in such a claim, the implications of this rhetoric are scary, and there is nothing Reaganesque about this kind of embittered rant against “money power,” promoting the sense of victimhood at the hands of an all-powerful “establishment.” Yesterday’s rally was the subject of my American Spectator column today:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — George Soros, Goldman Sachs, and other forces of the “establishment” are conspiring to support Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich warned Republicans here Monday, as Floridians prepared to go to the polls in their state’s crucial GOP primary.
Referring to an interview that Soros — a billionaire notorious for his funding of left-wing causes — gave to Reuters last week in Davos, Switzerland, Gingrich summarized Soros as saying, “We think either Obama or Romney’s fine, but Gingrich, he would change things.” The anti-Gingrich cabal, said the former House Speaker, also includes investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, which backed President Obama four years ago and now — having profited from taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts — is bankrolling Romney’s campaign attack ads. “Those ads are your money recycled to attack me,” Gingrich told the hundreds gathered outside Page Field airport here.
He cited no evidence that Goldman Sachs was in cahoots with Romney, and the opacity of the “super PACs” which are pumping millions into this Republican primary campaign makes it impossible either to prove or disprove Gingrich’s depiction of the malevolent forces arrayed against him. Yet he repeated similar accusations in different forums throughout the day — on ABC in the morning, on Fox News in the afternoon, and at each of the five stops on his final whirlwind tour of the Sunshine State — as if endeavoring to convince his supporters that they are victims of a vast conspiracy. Newt seemed to be providing a pre-emptive excuse for what polls indicate will be a decisive defeat for him in Tuesday’s winner-take-all primary. . . .

Read the whole thing. It is impossible for me to think that the American people will be fooled by Gingrich’s playing of the victim card, or that they will accept Gingrich’s absurd claim that he lost Florida because Rick Santorum refused to “consolidate” behind Newt’s candidacy.

I’ve got to tidy up this condo before I leave today. That could take a while, considering the deplorable conditions at the National Affairs Desk:

Don’t blame me. It was the “money power”!




PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State, Florida, Newt Gingrich

Global Warming Is Dead. Will ManBearPig Campaign For ‘Gentleman’ Jim Moran Again In 2012?

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Red Alexandria trots out the tiny violins for global warming, and showed what a tool VA State Senator Adam Ebbin is.
Ebbin, however, is but a jeweler’s screwdriver compared to the breaker bar that is ‘Gentleman’ Jim; but neither can hold an incandescent bulb to the uber-tool that is ManBearPig, seen here campaigning for Jim Moran in 2010:
I’ve taken the liberty of re-posting the video to YouTube, just in case the sheer idiocy on display becomes an embarrassment, and they kill the original. Transcript here.

One is embarrassed, in the light of Schweitzers revelations, to consider that Moran might have done a few things that were perfectly legal, yet not savory in the court of public opinion, to curry such favor with ManBearPig. Speculation, but not a real suspension of disbelief.

Moran Delenda Est.

Patrick Murray for Congress

Previous/More Antics:

Category: Democrats, Jim Moran, ManBearPig

It Will Be Interesting To See If Mead Has Read Golberg, Or Listened To Whittle

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

Via Insty, this new series by Walter Russell Mead is either going to get meatier, or stay out in geosynchronous orbit and suck:

It is, of course, a very similar situation today. The forces ripping up our old social model are too powerful to beat. That is not because the rich bankers or global multinationals are engaged in a conscious conspiracy of rip-offs and oppression (though, frankly speaking, big business does sometimes engage in exactly that). It is because the forces ripping up the social model are deeply implanted in the nature of the economic system — and that system is a reflection of the propensities in human nature which we cannot and perhaps should not overcome.

I realize I’m supposed to bow to the fact that Mead has a whole shelf of books under his name.

But, as a glance at Liberal Fascism or a gander at Bill Whittle reveal, the pendulum did not merely swing from Locke to Rousseau according to some Newtonian fancy: there has been a deliberate, sometimes benign, more often malevolent attack on Rationalism and American Exceptionalism underway for a few score years now.

It will thus be interesting if Mead just offers a bunch of ‘as with the weather, things changed‘ navel gazing, or has the courage to step up, admit we’ve been rooked, and raise a call to serious consideration. Panic isn’t helpful, but neither is the 22,236 mile view.

Category: Blogging, Instapundit

Madness On The Conservative Front

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 51 Comments

by Smitty

Breitbart.tv has said “NEWT DENIED ADVOCATING INDIVIDUAL MANDATE DURING THURSDAY’S DEBATE, 2009 AUDIO PROVES HE DID”
At Legal Insurrection:

This is wrong. I have listened to the entire audio recording, and Newt does not endorse the Obamacare mandate, in part because the speech took place before even the earliest draft of Obamacare had been proposed.
The actual discussion in the recording is nothing new, listen for yourself, it shows Newt saying what he has said before about not allowing free riders at hospitals including either having insurance or showing that you have the ability to pay. You can like it or not, but it’s not new or news, as Verum Serum acknowledges in its post.
The recording does not support the conclusion that Newt supported Obama’s federal mandate, which uses the police powers of the state to force people to buy insurance or face penalties.
At the time of Newt’s presentation, in May 2009, the earliest versions of Obamacare had not yet been released. Newt specifically notes that the details of what would be proposed were unknown and (at 27:00) the process was still in the “wish list press conference stage.”
The initial version of Obamacare was not released until early June 2009. My first blog post about the early draft (the Senate HELP Committee version) of Obamacare was on June 16 regarding the CBO assessment. Various iterations of Obamacare were proposed throughout June -August. The Obamacare legislation and mandate eventually focused on using the IRS as the enforcer.

I’d have listened to the audio myself, but the page requires SilverLight, and I’m booted on a Mac at the moment.

Irrespective of the audio content, I (a) favor Prof. Jacobson’s opinion by default, and (b) can’t figure out what the devil is going wrong with the conservative blogosphere. The candidates all suck: get over it. There is no reasonable way this audio proves two contradictory conclusions. There are a lot of unreasonable ways that people could be spreading hasty propaganda in an effort to skew results.

Don’t be hasty! Even if the intent is not evil, crapflooding has evil results. We expect that from the Left. Have your preferred candidates, but understand that, post-convention, we still have to coalesce as a team.

Hopefully the facts will shake out, and we can have a jolly round of kum-bah-yah at CPAC.

Later. . .

Via Althouse, Politico (my elbiB) has “Newt expressed support for Obama health care plan in ’09”

He also discussed the concept of a mandate:
We believe that there should be must carry – that is, everybody should either have health insurance or if you’re an absolute libertarian, we would allow you to post a bond, but we would not allow people to be free riders failing to insure themselves and then showing up at the emergency room with no means of payment.

So, in defense of Newt, as Jacobson notes: “At the time of Newt’s presentation, in May 2009, the earliest versions of Obamacare had not yet been released. Newt specifically notes that the details of what would be proposed were unknown and (at 27:00) the process was still in the “wish list press conference stage.””

Has Newt Gingrich sinned against the Holy Spirit? Will conservatives eschew Newt at the ballot box, only to fall into the warm embrace of CthulhuRomBamaCare?

If we’re that dumb, we deserve #OccupyResoluteDesk. Go, Rick Santorum!

In other can-we-please-think-about-what-we-are-saying news, Maggie’s Notebook has a detailed look at the Allen West redistricting saga. Districts are some of the most sausage-y things going, as parties gerrymander for fun and lock-in to maximize political power. To contend that a former governor and POTUS candidate from another state is having any direct affect on the Florida redistricting is just a little far out there.
I have no facts, but a couple of points to ponder are that West may have the best chance to raise funds to go for some of that blue territory, or West may secretly not be interested in swimming in the political septic tank any longer; or this was seen as the most likely means of maximizing GOP seats; or West lost a golf bet.
Political parties suck. Given the opportunity to be radical, I would have a mapping algorithm contest to see who can publish the shortest and most elegant algorithm for calculating the most even districts in each state. Let there be as many useful inputs for the calculation as desired, but let it be Open Source and the data freely available.
The more we do to make politics transparent and freely accessible to all, the more participation we are likely to enjoy, and the less of a godforsaken, graft-driven racket we’ll endure.
More at Legal Insurrection, mostly blowing away my speculation.

And, just when you thought the suction had hit hard vacuum, via Daily Pundit, none less than The World’s Most Tired Warhorse drops a few more road apples:

“We’ve got to stop the debates. Enough with the debates because they are driving up our candidates, all of them, unfavorabilities.”

Buzz off and go park in the jacuzzi, man (a completely watered-down version of my actual sentiment). We don’t need less debates, we need more! We need actual moderators (say, conservative bloggers) and substantive debate on the issues like the Federal Reserve.

Not needed: the Ruling Class Overlords who kinda created this mess telling us to sit down and shut up. The “we may be incompetent, but we’re all you’ve got” argument belongs in Brussells, Senator McCain. Why don’t you consider going there. Permanently. With the rest of your ilk.

Category: Allen West, Newt Gingrich

Congratulations, Perry Supporters!

Posted on | January 31, 2012 | 56 Comments

His doomed campaign pissed away $20 million and never finished better than fifth place anywhere.

Let’s see: Perry got 12,557 votes in Iowa and 1,766 votes in New Hampshire, for a total of 14,323 votes, and then quit two days before South Carolina, which was supposed to have been his “firewall” state. By comparison, the pointless campaign of Jon Huntsman got 739 votes in Iowa and 41,945 in New Hampshire, a total of 42,684 votes — nearly three times Perry’s total, and I rather doubt Huntsman spent three times as much money.

Just ask yourselves, Perrybots, what might have been possible if some other candidate — any other candidate, perhaps one who could remember how to count to three — had an extra $20 million to spend here in Florida. But no, you spent months telling the rest of us that Rick Perry was The Only Conservative Who Could Beat Romney, an argument you didn’t hesitate to repeat as late as December, long after it was apparent that he wasn’t ready for prime time. And you still refuse to admit that you were misled, and helped mislead others, into jumping aboard that hopeless Bandwagon to Loserville. And who warned you, huh?

“What I fear will happen is that Perry will spend several months sucking up media oxygen and burning through GOP donor cash, only to collapse early next year. This will have the effect of suffocating other conservative candidates, and thereby lead to … Romney 2012.”

Wrote that August 9. Perry’s failure was entirely predictable. But you knew everything and wouldn’t listen to me.

“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”

Category: Election 2012, Rick Perry
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