The Other McCain : Page 1963 : "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
During tonight’s debate, Mitt Romney started talking about his father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 and subsequently served in Nixon’s cabinet. When I heard that, I reached into my computer bag and retrieved a book I carry with me everywhere on the campaign trail.

“I went to Nixon’s inauguration [in January 1969]. Washington was a sea of mud and freezing rain. As the Inaugural Parade neared the corner of 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue, some freak threw a half-gallon wine jug at the convertible carrying the commandant of the Marine Corps . . . and as one-time Presidential candidate George Romney passed by in his new role as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the mob on the sidewalk began chanting, ‘Romney eats shit! Romney eats shit!’”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

CNN SOUTH CAROLINA DEBATE:
GOP MADNESS @ FINAL FOUR

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012Comments

by Smitty

UPDATE (RSM): Shortly after the exchange among the candidates about abortion, Rick Santorum’s press secretary Matt Benyon appeared in the media filing center, distributing a stack of papers headlined: ROMNEY SIGNED PRO-ABORTION PLEDGE.

On the questionnaire by the Planned Parenthood ADvocacy Fund of Massachusetts is dated April 9, 2002, and signed by Mitt Romney. To the question, “Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?” Romney answered, “Yes.”

To the question, “Do you support state funding of abortion services through Medicaid for low-income women?” Romney answered, “Yes.”

21:55 EST Santorum: agreeing with Romney on the stakes. I am the candidate with the true contrast.

21:54 EST Mitt: liberty is the pursuit of happiness. BHO is creating an entitlement society.

21:53 EST Newt: we must defeat #OccupyResoluteDesk. His radicalism will be truly frightening in a second term. We must have a series of debates to convince Americans that a Saul Alinksy radical must be avoided.

21:52 EST Paul: I will protect individual liberty. That benefits everybody. The debt is the threat. I will cut $1 trillion from the budget.

21:51 EST SC has the record. Make your case.

21:47 EST Wow. The Santorum/Paul exchange on abortion really made the debate. Santorum played the Declaration of Independence card, and Paul shot back with the the 10th Amendment, arguing that returning the question to the states would repeal Roe v. Wade overnight. My head ‘sploded.

21:44 EST Paul: hey, medical topic, and I’m a doctor. When a woman is pregnant, you have two patients. The morality tanked, and the law reflected it. Abortion is an indictment of government-run medicine.

21:43 EST Newt: I have an enviable pro-life record. Did my best.

21:42 EST Mitt: I have further details supporting my pro-life record. Did my best.

21:41 EST Santorum: if you don’t explicitly preclude abortion, you know the courts will require it. Social issues are not a check in the box.

21:38 EST Mitt: I have excuses for every detail raised on every issue by every rival. So there.

21:37 EST Newt: why yes, Mitt has some weird details about his pro-life record.

21:36 EST CNN: can I get you to fight on abortion positions?

21:35 EST Newt: Drop federal prosecutions of states for supporting the law.

21:33 EST Paul: we are not looking at the economic incentives.

21:31 EST Mitt: I’m holding my position of four years ago. Mitt deftly co-opts any position that gets applause.

21:30 EST Santorum: I’m the son of an immigrant. Mitt has flip-flopped. Newt is like BHO. We need a clear contrast; somebody who has always held the correct position.

21:27 EST Romney: illegal aliens is among the more manageable challenges.

21:25 EST Newt: controlling the border, English as the official language of government, and modernize visas, and speedier deportations. A better guest worker program. And, yeah, some kind of way to handle people who are here for multi-decades.

21:25 EST CNN: ‘amnesty’ is such a lonely word. What about immigration.

21:24 EST Paul: no big changes, but maybenotspeakingsofast.

21:23 EST Santorum: wouldn’t change a thing. I am proud of doing it the old-fashioned way.

21:22 EST Mitt: I would take back all the time spent on other candidates and drop in on #OccupyResoluteDesk.

21:21 EST Newt: I would scuttle the first three months of standard rent-a-dolts.

21:21 EST CNN: admit your biggest screwup.

Linked at The Camp of the Saints and The Lonely Conservative.

21:15 EST Santorum: I agree with the need for freedom, and SOPA goes too far, but that intellectual property needs protection. The internet is not a wild-wild West.

21:14 EST Paul: I was the first Republican to side with Democrats against SOPA.

21:13 EST Mitt: we need freedom, and use existing law to go after pirates.

21:12 EST Newt: I favor freedom. The World’s Youngest Blogger concurs.

21:11 EST CNN: Time Warner wants SOPA.

21:10 EST Santorum: I’d sign a national right to work bill.

21:09 EST Paul: don’t oversimplify the trade question. Car companies are a bigger problem. The union problem is worse. We need more right to work states.

21:06 EST Santorum: cut the corporate tax to 0 for manufacturers.

21:05 EST CNN: Apple computer. Half a million employees in Chinese sweat shops. What gives?

21:04 EST Mitt: Hey, why don’t you quit carrying the Democrat party water and attacking people for being successful?

21:03 EST CNN: Mitt, will you follow your father’s example and drop 12 years?

21:02 EST Santorum: they’re on my computer, I do them myself, I’m not home to release them.

21:02 EST Mitt: I’ve been successful, and will release them if the nominee.

21:01 EST Mitt: I’ll get them out.

21:00 EST Paul: don’t intend to, too embarrassingly broke.

21:00 EST Newt: did an hour ago.

20:59 EST Question: what about releasing your taxes?

20:57 EST Newt: let me double down on history by contrasting Carter and Reagan. Let me pat my self on the back while sound just a little teeny bit like Elizabeth Warren.

20:56 EST Mitt: yeah, this Santorum/Gingrich catfight is perfect evidence of the need for an outsider.

20:54 EST Newt: I have shown 88 miles of courage, against the wishes of the party’s leadership.

20:52 EST Santorum: Pelican beak, hummingbird backside. I was in the House at the time of the anti-Newt coup, and the House checking scandal.

20:51 EST Newt: My resume can thrash anyone. Grandiose? I shop at BMF Wallets.

20:49 EST CNN: Newt said you should just punt, Santorum. Rick: Grandiosity has never been a problem for Newt. Beat him in IA and NH, for all he outspent me. I should get out? I’m steady, solid, and going to beat Barack Obama.

Photo curtesy of RSM:

20:43 EST Paul: I thought you were prejudiced against doctors. ObamaCare can be diminished, but government involvement in medicine is going to be hard to walk back. And Santorum has supported government involvement. We need to protect those dependent on medical care, and we need to follow the money.

20:42 EST Santorum: you ate the individual mandate for ten years.

20:41 EST Newt: I fought against HillaryCare. I will debate ObamaCare Lincoln-Douglas style.

20:41 EST Mitt: man, I got wrecked on taxes last time, and now RomneyCare. These debates suck.

20:40 EST Santorum: you’re defending a turd.

20:38 EST Mitt: Santorum is wrong, and the people of Mass. favor it 3:1. [Really?]

20:37 EST Santorum: RomneyCare sucked, and we should worry about trusting him when he’s standing by it. And Gingrich has been for an individual mandate. Mitt and Newt don’t have the clear contrast that I do. Wow.

20:34 EST Newt: people don’t trust Congress. To the people: elect Republicans, so the kids can move out and get their own insurance.

20:32 EST Mitt: the Day #1 Executive Order is the beginning, and then follow up with the Congressional repeal. Replacing it with a Bill That Does Not Suck.

20:31 EST Audience: can you really stop ObamaCare?

20:30 EST Newt: my dad went to college on the WWII GI Bill, and the tax cuts that kickstarted the economy. We should emulate it.

20:29 EST Romney: watch me break hard federalist, since Perry ejected. Furthermore we can’t eat BHO’s DoD cuts.

20:26 EST Santorum: veterans should have some preferences. BHO says he will cut benefits and military budget, but not a penny out of social welfare programs. Why does Rick not understand Democrats buying votes?

20:25 EST Paul: if we fix the economy, the veterans would be taken care of. Veterans need medical support.

20:23 EST CNN: should federal government tweak the market in favor of veterans returning from Iraq?

20:22 EST Santorum plays a strong populist capitalism card, in contrast to ‘high finance’. Points to economic squalor from Barack Obama. Rather well played.

20:20 EST Mitt had invested in Dominoes? No wonder “Godfathers” Cain had to be taken down. He’s going to stuff Adam Smith down BHO’s throat. Woo hoo!

20:19 EST Mitt parries the Bain jobs number by pointing to capitalism.

20:18 EST Mitt understands the need to speak slowly, and focus on #OccupyResoluteDesk. Crony capitalism. Solyndra, Keystone XL, NRLB.

20:16 EST Newt is determined to outspeak Ron Paul, going from the Panama Canal to the USACE to ports. My neck nearly snaps. Newt slows down for a gentle Bain drive by.

20:14 EST Ron Paul gets the ball and beats the currency, regulation, policy and mali-investment drums. Washington DC nearly executes evacuation plan.

20:12 EST CNN does Santorum want to take a swing at Newt? No, Rick leaves Newt to the people. Mitt wants to get to the issues. Paul piles on the corporations that run the media. And is proud to have his wife of LV years with him.

20:11 EST CNN has just given Newt a couple of points in the Primary. Newt turns the attack on him into an attack on the ‘elite media’ that is ‘protecting Barack Obama’.

20:09 EST Newt: I am appalled that you would start with that.

20:08 EST CNN: Newt, are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Swinger Party?

20:07 EST Introductions: Santorum celebrates his late Iowa victory, Romney has 16 grandkids, Gingrich is glad to be there, and Ron Paul is the only veteran.

20:05 EST The Citadel cadets, in a surprise attack, win the entire debate with a rocking rendition of the national anthem. Game over, we can all relax.

20:03 EST All four on stage, Santorum looking alive, while the other three stand stiffly.

20:00 EST 35 hours to the SC primary. The intro is fitting for a WWF spectacle. Get some!

19:51 EST Vodka Pundit is drunkblogging.

PREVIOUSLY. . .
Stacy will be in fine form, reporting live from the debate:

Lesser mortals such as myself shall have to settle for live blogging via TV, with the occasional phone-in from RSM.

The polling going into the primary on Saturday has Romney by a carefully positioned follicle over Newt, splitting under a third of the vote each. The Perry departure and endorsement of Newt has the potential to give Gingrich his first taste of triumph thus far. Or not. The Newt Ex-Wives Club is deploying Marianne, unexpectedly, to sandbag him in an ABC interview. Expect a statement from the Romney campaign decrying such tawdry muck-raking in 3. . .2. . .ummm, wait.

Rick Santorum goes into Saturday polling in the caboose, despite the news that the final Iowa result had him winning by 34 votes over Mitt. Welcome to the modern age, Rick, where the facts are less important than whatever news leaked first out of the media diaper.

Slightly ahead of Rick in the SC polls is Ron Paul, featuring some of the best domestic policy ideas around. . .in some of the least electable packaging.

Also happening in SC this week: Herman Cain is to appear with Steven Colbert.

In support of their non-candidacies, this Friday, January 20th at 1:00 P.M. at the Cistern in front of historic Randolph Hall at the College of Charleston, Colbert and Cain will co-hold “THE ROCK ME LIKE A HERMAN CAIN: SOUTH CAIN-OLINA PRIMARY RALLY.” The area will open to guests starting at noon.

and, four days later:

Tea Party Express, the nation’s largest tea party political action committee, is announcing that Herman Cain will be delivering the Tea Party State of the Union response at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on the evening of January 24th, 2012.

Herman Cain has endorsed “We the People” on CNN, and promises to support the nominee. Reacting to Marianne’s character assassination of Gingrich, he declares her “irrelevant”. Cain says we’re sick of the negativity and lack of focus on issues.
Go, Herman!

U.S. Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, appearing on CNN, with a ‘highly coveted’ endorsement. . .of no one. It’s your decisiveness we admire. Oh, you’re against SuprePACS. “We’ve got to regulate them.” Hockey puck Linsdsey: why don’t you let people spend money on ads, and viewers make up their own minds? Graham: “The wind is to Newt’s back.”

Is There a Real ‘Elizabeth Reichert’?

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012Comments

CHARLESTON, S.C.
Last night when we left the Pro-Life Presidential Forum in Greenville, the windshields of most of the cars in the parking lot were festooned with pink flyers attacking Rick Santorum and his wife, Karen. This propaganda was attributed to a self-proclaimed pro-life activist who signed herself “Elizabeth Reichert, Parker, S.C.”

As soon as I got online, I Googled the name and the only mention of this person I could find was at Will Folks’s “FITS News” blog.

This, I suggest, is mighty damned suspicious. Remember that Folks is the slimeball who claimed to have had an affair with Gov. Nikki Haley. How was it that Folks got the “news” of this flyer online — the full text of a two-sided flyer — so shortly after the flyers were (anonymously) distributed at this pro-life event?

And who is Elizabeth Reichert? If she was a well-known pro-life activist, don’t you think there would have been some reference to her online beyond the Folks instant transcription of her flyer? But either there is no such person, or else this phenomenally Web-savvy pro-life activist — who managed to search out the cheap smear on Karen Santorum — has left no trace of her existence online.

Strangely enough, Rick Santorum responded to a BuzzFeed reporter’s question about the flyer. But when I saw Santorum’s communications director Hogan Gidley the other day, Hogan refused to comment. So you see how this alleged “Elizabeth Reichert” and her flyer, publicized by the slimeball Will Folks, managed to make the attack on Santorum’s wife a sufficiently legitimate story that the candidate felt the need to respond to it.

Perry Campaign Post Mortem:
Doomed From the Start

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012Comments

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
Several years ago I picked up a book called The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents, which is a major reason why, whenever I travel by air, I always pray before takeoff.

Because what you will learn from studying air disasters is that takeoff is the most dangerous part of any flight and, in many cases, the people who died were doomed from the time they boarded the plane. An undetected mechanical malfunction or a bungle by the maintenance crew and, from the time that jet rolls away from the gate, there is no hope for anyone aboard that doomed plane. They bought their ticket, and they are going to die.

Which brings us to Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. First the headlines:

Perry quits race, backs Gingrich
— The State (Columbia, S.C.)

Perry’s Speech, Dropping Out, Endorsing Newt
— Ace of Spades

Perry’s Voters May Not Flock to Gingrich
— New York Times

Rick Perry Announces End to His Presidential Bid
— Time

I was there at the Hyatt Park for today’s press conference, along with Dave Weigel of Slate, Byron York of the Washington Examiner, Dan Balz of the Washington Post, Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times, Willie Geist of MSNBC and dozens of other reporters. When Perry said, “I’ve always believed the mission is more important than the man,” I remembered that Perry was an Air Force pilot, and thought about The Black Box, because Perry’s campaign was doomed from the moment it began.

Rick Perry is a good man, and he deserved a better campaign than he got, but his political advisers — Dave Carney and those other guys — had all the wrong ideas, and thus Perry’s “mission” was destined to failure from the outset. Exactly how these men, so widely hailed as shrewd strategists, got so many things so badly wrong is a story that I’m sure will be the subject of many campaign post mortems, like Jennifer Jacobs’s excellent examination of what went wrong with Michele Bachmann’s campaign. But I have neither time nor inclination to offer a full analysis today.

What is important today is to realize that there was never really any hope that Rick Perry could win the presidency. All the hype generated about Perry’s candidacy last summer was mistaken, based on a flawed assumptions about the candidate, about his campaign staff, about the entire strategic conception of the Perry campaign.

It was all wrong, wrong, wrong, from the very beginning, an utter waste of time, money and effort, and everyone involved would have been better off if Perry had never run at all. Instead of asking, “What went wrong?” we should be asking simply, “Why?”

But that question is one that Perry’s most vocal supporters — who loudly and repeatedly proclaimed their candidate the only viable alternative to Mitt Romney — do not wish to0 contemplate. And so I will simply link my American Spectator report on the Perry press conference, which ought to be the final word on this tragic folly.

It won’t, of course, because the campaign will continue, until it is at least recognized that Perry’s endorsement of Newt “Share Me” Gingrich, like everything else about the Perry campaign, has proved to be a mistake.

And then no one will give me credit for that prediction, either.

One Of The Best Pages On The Net

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012Comments

by Smitty

The topic of deconstruction came up last night. Deconstruction is to art what Postmodernism is to Philosophy, and Progressivism is to our politics: a nihilistic effort to destroy reason, the Enlightenment, and our Constitution. Hence the record here on the blog that I regularly pump as many metaphorical shotgun shells into the whole zombie effort against Western civilization as I possibly can.

Around 20 years ago and $10 trillion dollars ago, when the threat was less apparent, Chip Morningstar served up a humdinger of an essay:

Randy and I were scheduled to speak on the second day of the conference. This was fortunate because it gave us the opportunity to recalibrate our presentation based on the first day’s proceedings, during which we discovered that we had grossly mischaracterized the audience by assuming that it would be like the crowd from the first conference. I spent most of that first day furiously scribbling notes. People kept saying the most remarkable things using the most remarkable language, which I found I needed to put down in writing because the words would disappear from my brain within seconds if I didn’t. Are you familiar with the experience of having memories of your dreams fade within a few minutes of waking? It was like that, and I think for much the same reason. Dreams have a logic and structure all their own, falling apart into unmemorable pieces that make no sense when subjected to the scrutiny of the conscious mind. So it was with many of the academics who got up to speak. The things they said were largely incomprehensible. There was much talk about deconstruction and signifiers and arguments about whether cyberspace was or was not “narrative”. There was much quotation from Baudrillard, Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Saussure, and the like, every single word of which was impenetrable. I’d never before had the experience of being quite this baffled by things other people were saying. I’ve attended lectures on quantum physics, group theory, cardiology, and contract law, all fields about which I know nothing and all of which have their own specialized jargon and notational conventions. None of those lectures were as opaque as anything these academics said. But I captured on my notepad an astonishing collection of phrases and a sense of the overall tone of the event.

We retreated back to Palo Alto that evening for a quick rewrite. The first order of business was to excise various little bits of phraseology that we now realized were likely to be perceived as Politically Incorrect. Mind you, the fundamental thesis of our presentation was Politically Incorrect, but we wanted people to get upset about the actual content rather than the form in which it was presented. Then we set about attempting to add something that would be an adequate response to the postmodern lit crit-speak we had been inundated with that day. Since we had no idea what any of it meant (or even if it actually meant anything at all), I simply cut-and-pasted from my notes. The next day I stood up in front of the room and opened our presentation with the following:

The essential paradigm of cyberspace is creating partially situated identities out of actual or potential social reality in terms of canonical forms of human contact, thus renormalizing the phenomenology of narrative space and requiring the naturalization of the intersubjective cognitive strategy, and thereby resolving the dialectics of metaphorical thoughts, each problematic to the other, collectively redefining and reifying the paradigm of the parable of the model of the metaphor.

After this encounter, Morningstar goes back and tries to puzzle out what, if anything, Deconstruction means. He offers, as an example of the form, “John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual.”

It’s a bit lengthy, but humorous and well worth your time. Read it, and join the fight against these nihilistic zombies.

Fear & Loathing: Breakfast of Champions UPDATE: Rick Santorum Wins Iowa; Perry Will Quit and Endorse Gingrich

Posted on January 19, 2012February 25, 2013Comments

The National Affairs Desk at McDonald’s in Greenville, S.C.,
11:10 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2012

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.
My 13-year-old son Jefferson and I got back here at 2:30 a.m, and woke up Ali Akbar, in whose hotel room we’re crashing through Saturday. The topics of discussion were (a) the Republican primary and (b) why Tabitha Hale hates me. But we didn’t talk long, because I was so dead tired that despite a day spent guzzling coffee I soon fell asleep.

Wednesday was one of those days when I wish I’d stuck with that forklift-driving job I had before I got into the news business. We set out early for the scheduled Newt Gingrich press conference in Columbia that didn’t happen.

After blogging about that debacle, we headed back on the road to Rock Hill, where Mitt Romney was scheduled for a 3:15 p.m. rally at Winthrop University. We got there in time, but Mitt was late — it was 3:44 p.m. before they finally introduced the singer who would perform the national anthem. We didn’t stick around to hear Mitt because we were due in Spartanburg for a Rick Santorum town-hall event at 5 p.m.

Do a Google Map search for directions from Rock Hill to Spartanburg and imagine, dear reader, what feats of vehicular prowess were required to drive that route in barely an hour. Somewhere between McConnells and Jonesville, we were just one special-effects stunt away from remaking Smokey and the Bandit.

Alas, there were no open drawbridges to jump. Continue reading Fear & Loathing: Breakfast of Champions UPDATE: Rick Santorum Wins Iowa; Perry Will Quit and Endorse Gingrich →

Couple Of Points On The Race Card

Posted on January 19, 2012January 19, 2012Comments

by Smitty

Da Tech Guy wonders why the race card went unplayed in the case of Herman Cain.
If you flip it over, the Race Card says “Property of the National Socialist Democrat Workers Party”.
Conservatives, therefore, cannot play the card.
If conservatives try to play the card, cast as, say, a ‘hi tech lynching‘, they quickly get shouted down.
If the conservative under attack is rich, he is assumed guilty anyway: calls for, you know, trial by jury, facing accusers, and innocence until proven guilty merely underscore the evil of the rich conservative. Those are Constitutional notions. Besides, as the Central Scrutinizer noted, the Constitution is being modified in order to accomodate the future. Or at least Ezra Klein.