The Other McCain

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

Rick Santorum Distances Himself From Newt’s Lefty ‘Hit Job’ on Mitt Romney

Posted on | January 12, 2012 | 48 Comments

Newt Gingrich’s “super PAC” has unleashed its 27-minute documentary about Bain Capital, When Mitt Romney Came to Town, which a Daily Kos blogger calls a “hit job” that “you’d expect from a lefty operation.” It’s as if Newt hired Michael Moore. Avowed lefty Steve Benen calls it “devastating”:

Desperate to gain some traction in South Carolina, Rick Perry has joined in on this weird left-wing beatdown of Romney. The fact that the latest South Carolina poll shows him in sixth place — behind Jon Huntsman, in what was supposed to be Perry’s “firewall” state — perhaps explains Perry’s willingness to engage in an “Occupy”-style attack on free-market capitalism. Rick Santorum refuses to go down that road:

“It’s this hostile rhetoric, which unfortunately – I don’t want to stand here and be a defender of Mitt Romney, but unfortunately even some in our party now, even some running for president will engage in with respect to capitalism,” Santorum said to a town hall of nearly 200 people. “It is bad enough for Barack Obama to blame folks in business for causing problems in this country. It’s one other thing for Republicans to join him.” . . .
Even when prodded by reporters to take a shot, Santorum instead has only said he believes in the economic model that allows people to be successful.
However, that does not mean Santorum has shied away from taking jabs at Romney. The candidate trying to portray himself as the only true conservative in the race has elected to use Romney’s record as a governor, not a businessman, to go on the offensive.
“The other side is going to look at my record and look at Gov. Romney’s record on health care and say, ‘You want to attack me on health care? Who are you to attack me on something that I used your plan to build my health care method?'” said Santorum. “He’s taking away the biggest issue that we have in this election.”

Good on ya, Rick. The problem with attacking “vulture capitalism” (to use Perry’s rhetoric), is that shutting down inefficent and unprofitable segments of a company’s business is essential to maintaining economic viability. Romney did some stupid things at Bain Capital — e.g., his crony capitalist moves in the “My Twinn” debacle — which are subject to criticism. But closing down inefficient operations in an effort to turn around companies that were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy is just the way business works. Perry’s rhetorical appeal to economic ignorance is backfiring disastrously in South Carolina:

BLYTHEWOOD, S.C. (AP) — Presidential candidate Rick Perry’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s business past has cost him the support of a prominent South Carolina Republican.
Investment fund executive and top GOP donor Barry Wynn told The Associated Press Thursday that he’s leaving the Perry fold to endorse Romney. Wynn says he was irritated by Perry’s attacks on Romney’s time at the helm of the private equity firm Bain Capital.
As Wynn put it, “It’s like fingernails on the chalkboard.”

Isn’t it time somebody stuck a fork in the Perry campaign?

UPDATE: Linked by Protein Wisdom, The Rhetorican, Wake Up America and The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

Category: Economics, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, South Carolina

Election Day Tea Party Wants To Abuse Debbie Wasserman-Schultz

Posted on | January 12, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

It really isn’t fair to debate Ms. Wasserman Schultz on a topic of which she has no knowledge:

“Today, we are challenging Ms. Wasserman Schultz to a debate on the Constitution,” said Michael Patrick Leahy, co-coordinator of Election Day Tea Party. “We think the country is ready for direct and civil discourse on what the Constitution says about the proper role of the federal government in our lives. That’s the real issue. Ms. Wasserman Schultz and the entire leadership of the Democratic Party believe that the federal government should keep taxing and spending more and more. We in the Tea Party movement think otherwise.”
The first national event of Election Day Tea Party 2012 will be a celebration of the Tea Party movement’s 3rd anniversary on February 25th, 26th, and 27th. On February 27, 2009, the Tea Party movement was launched with simultaneous tea parties in fifty cities which were attended by more than 30,000 tea partiers. This was immediately followed by Tax Day Tea Party on April 15, 2009, when over 1 million tea partiers participated in rallies held in more than 900 cities.
Michelle Moore, organizer of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition in February 2009, said “The St, Louis Tea Party will be happy to host this debate on February 25, 2012, the 3rd Anniversary of the movement. We think CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews will be very interested in covering such an event.”

This outfit looks like the genuine article. I hope that they schedule copious rallies this year: tax day; the ObamaCare testimony at SCOTUS; and 9/11 all come to mind. The troops must needs be rallied.

via Dr. Wolf

Category: Tea Party

LIVE AT FIVE – 01.12.12

Posted on | January 12, 2012 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Mississippi Judge Blocks Release Of Pardoned Prisoners

Former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour

21 prisoners held; did Barbour follow the process before pardoning them?

Observer Brands Arab League Mission “A Farce”
Algerian observer Malek quits


Gingrich Slams Romney In SC As “Moderate”
Says a moderate can’t win against Obama; conservatives must rally behind one candidate



POLITICS
Supremes Reject Curbs On Eyewitness Testimony

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg

Court says juries have to weigh believability of witnesses

Churches Given “Ministerial Exemption” From Employment Discrimination Law

Marines Probe Video Of Men Urinating On Taliban Corpses

Obama Back In Chicago For String Of Fundraisers

Amish Plead Not Guilty In Beard-Cutting Case

Immigration Debate Returns To GOP In South Carolina

IRS Watchdog Accuses Agency Of “Bait & Switch” Tactics



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
PRC Snubs Geithner On Iran Oil; Japan Plans Cut
Dow Edges Lower On New Europe Worries
PRC Inflation Falls To 4.1%
FDA Suspends Orange Juice Imports To Examine For Banned Fungicide
Italy, Spain Offer $21.5 Billion In Debt In First Auctions Of 2012
Justin Bieber, Robo-Boy, Drops In On CES
Congressmen At CES Warn: Time Running Out For SOPA Opponents
HP’s “No Compromise” Ultrabook
FCC Chairman Urges Action On Spectrum Auctions
Wii U: Five Players, One Touch Screen, Total Family Madness



SPORTS
Dirk Pushes Mavericks Past Celtics

Dirk Nowitzki goes up & over the Celtics' Kevin Garnett

Nowitzki scores 16, including go-ahead basket

“St. Elmo’s Fire” Remixed As Tribute To Tebow

Caps Shut Down Penguins In 1-0 Win For Pittsburgh’s Sixth Straight Loss

LSU Tigers Fall To ‘Bama In Hoops, 69-53; Roll Tide!

#1 Syracuse Now 18-0, Tops Villanova 79-66

Knicks Win Fourth Straight, Snap Sixers Streak With 85-79 Win

Alan Casden In Market For Dodgers Again



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Halle Berry Engaged!

Olivier Martinez and his fiancee

Engaged to French actor Martinez after dating since the fall of 2010

Ashton Kutcher Cuts Hair, Shaves Beard, Keeps Wedding Ring

Teen Mom Leah Messer: It’s Twins…Again

Katy Perry & Tim Tebow – Hot New Couple Alert?

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie Stay Covered Up For D.C. Premiere

Dolly Parton Reveals New Flower Tattoo



Rob Marshall Takes On Sondheim’s “Into The Woods”, Signs Two-Year Deal With Disney

Bryan Ferry, 66, Weds 29-Year-Old Amanda Sheppard

PLUS Model Magazine: “Most Runway Models Meet BMI Criteria For Anorexia”



FOREIGNERS
Arab League Delays Sending More Observers To Syria
Van Der Sloot Pleads Guilty To 2010 Peru Murder
Ahmadinejad Visits Cuba During Latin American Junket
French Journalist Killed In Syria On Official Trip
Dear Leader’s Body To Be Displayed In Perpetuity
Pakistan’s Army Chief Summons Military Commanders Amid Rising Tensions With Civilian Government
Two Years After Quake, Haiti Remains In Distress
Silicon Valley Keeps Close Eye On Taiwan Election
Mexico’s Drug War Death Toll Tops 45,000



BLOGS & STUFF
Legal Insurrection: Add Bain To The List Of Things We Cannot Discuss
Big Government: Palin Urges Romney To Release Tax Returns, Provide Proof Of Jobs Created While At Bain
Rush Limbaugh: Are You Sitting Down? Romney Compares Career At Bain To Obama’s Takeover Of GM
Don Surber: Buffett’s Diversion
Hugh Hewitt: A Huge Victory For Religious Liberty And A Huge Defeat For The Obama Justice Department
Michelle Malkin: John Bolton To Endorse…
AmSpecBlog: The Big Number From Tuesday Night That Was Bad For Romney
Lonely Conservative: Homeland Security Monitoring Journalists, Bloggers?
Dave Kopel: Mercedes, The Car For People Who Admire Racists, Mass-Murdering Totalitarian Thugs
NRO Corner: Does Perry Qualify For the S.C. Debate?
Gateway Pundit: REVOLT! CEOs Blow Off Obama’s Big Jobs Summit And Photo Op
Sundries Shack: DWS’ Grotesque Puppet Show – Now With Tea Parties!
Verum Serum: Time To Shut Down Occupy DC – Infant Found Alone In Tent
PJ Tatler: Axelrod Claims Rev. Wright Was The Victim Of Selective Editing


SOTD: Muffin Man

Category: Live at Five

Rick Perry Has Replaced Jon Huntsman in the Coveted ‘Gov. Asterisk’ Position

Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 23 Comments

Marginal poll numbers, yet deemed debate-worthy:

According to CNN’s criteria for inclusion, a candidate must get at least 4th place in either Iowa or New Hampshire, or get 7% support in at least three national Republican or three South Carolina primary polls released in January. The requirements were posted online last Tuesday afternoon, several hours before the Iowa caucuses began later that night.
Perry came in fifth place in Iowa, and sixth in New Hampshire. And currently, his national and South Carolina poll numbers do not show him meeting that threshold, either.

Never mind, says CNN, they’re including Perry anyway.

Because to do otherwise would be . . . well, heartless.

Category: CNN, Debates, Election 2012, Rick Perry, South Carolina

Are The Taiwanese Animators Tantamount To Rosie O’Donnell In The Steel Bikini And Winged Helm?

Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 26 Comments

by Smitty

The Sisyphus imagery for Ron Paul really makes this one:I, for one, disagree. How many actual delegates have been committed? If Tea Partiers want to roll over for Mitt, he can certainly coast from here.

However, keep in mind that neither Mitt nor these animators write the history in isolation. It wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and it’s not over because Santorum bombed in New Hampshire.

And should Mitt succeed in gaining the nomination, it’s important for him to know that support in the general election does not translate into a honeymoon: #OccupyResoluteDesk has destroyed all patience with autocratic twerps in the White House.

Via Insty, I really hope we don’t go down the road of wondering if Mitt actually won, in either NH or IA. Too much is at stake to deal with ambiguity here, and the anti-voter ID weenies, when they take a break from global warming hysteria and hating the unborn, are looking increasingly stupid.

via Legal Insurrection

Category: Election 2012

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Seventeen Days on the Campaign Trail

Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 5 Comments

P.J. O’Rourke encounters Andrew Breitbart at the
Manchester, N.H., Radisson Bar, Saturday, Jan. 7, 2012

PHILADELPHIA
“Wheels up” from Boston’s Logan Airport was at 1:09 p.m., and as Flight 1727 ascended from the runway, I noticed the houses that dotted the little spits of land jutting out into the bay. There were docks and piers and even an apartment building or two, and from my window seat (5A) I looked down and wondered about the people who live there in the airport flight path. Then the US Airways jet banked right, toward the south and, after a while, I recognized the familiar fishook shape of the Provincetown peninsula.

Flying has become a more commonplace experience for me in the past three years of campaign coverage, but it’s not so common that I take it for granted. I still pray at takeoff — the most dangerous part of any flight — and take notes about my journeys, even if I never actually turn those notes into anything for publication.

Half a century ago, the phrase “jet set” described the lives of the glitterati, in an age when frequent air travel was the prerogative of the affluent. Nowadays, air travel is for everybody: salesmen and tourists and even bloggers out covering the presidential election campaign. So it was that I found myself sitting in coach class reading the New York Times on my flight from Boston to Philly.

Nobody on the plane recognized me as a “media celebrity,” even though only a few days earlier I’d been hanging out with guys like Jake Tapper and Andrew Breitbart in Manchester. Also, the man with the hat with the pink camera kept showing up in the background of TV shots like this Monday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash and Ron Paul:

Hey, I’m just a blogger. During the course of this trip, by my count, I’ve filed 51 posts in 17 days, in addition to 11 columns for The American Spectator:

It’s been a pretty productive trip, whatever the discouragement of Mitt Romney’s continued march toward “inevitability.” Maybe we can stop him in South Carolina, but first I’ve got to fly home for a couple of days.

The National Affairs Desk at the Riverbend Bar & Grill,
Philadelphia Airport, 3:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012

My flight to D.C. takes off in less than an hour, and I’ve got to close down the National Affairs Desk here at the airport hotel bar and make it through the routine security hassles before they call final boarding. This leaves me just enough time to write The Five Most Important Words in the English Language: Hit the freaking tip jar!



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Category: Election 2012, Fear. Loathing., Iowa, New Hampshire, Shoe Leather Fund

Philly Layover Musings: The Republican Party Is Depraved and Decadent

Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 34 Comments

PHILADELPHIA
With a three-hour layover in Philly, I logged on here at the Riverbend Bar & Grill at the airport Marriot, and the first thing I find atop the Memeorandum aggregation is my buddy Dave Weigel’s thoughts on the campaign to date:

I’m thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party’s elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who’s walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul).
The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances. When the primaries arrive, he’s in single digits and reduced to attacking the front-runners. But in Iowa, he does just well enough to justify staying in the race. . . .

Read the whole thing. The basic problem is this: The sincere idealists suffer from disastrous incompetence, while the selfish cynics are rewarded for their utter lack of ethics or principles. Decent and honest people, recognizing the GOP’s systemic incentives toward moral and political corruption, are repulsed by the shabby lies and vicious compromises necessary to “success” as a Republican, leaving the party to be controlled by a ruthless gang of dishonest jackals.

How else to explain the sadistic venality of those consultants and strategists who publicly backstabbed Newt in May and then hopped the next flight to Austin, where they have spent the past six months collecting fat paychecks in the service of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose formerly excellent reputation his campaign staff has done everything possible to destroy. If he had quit after his humiliating fifth-place finish in Iowa, as any intelligent and honest person would have advised Perry to do, he might have preserved some shred of dignity. Instead, his consultants and strategists — knowing that Perry’s still got a few million bucks left in his campaign account — told him, “No, no, Boss! Don’t quit now! You can win this thing. Trust us.”

And so they’ll spend it all in South Carolina, continuing to pay fees, salaries and commissions to the cronies they’ve hired, and when all is said and done, they will have accomplished nothing but to turn Perry into one of the biggest laughingstocks in American political history, rivaled only by Jon Huntsman. Any politician who hires John Weaver to run their campaign deserves whatever catastrophic embarrassment subsequently befalls them.

The quality of hired help in the GOP has never been really good, and the people who donate money to Republicans ought to start making lists of operatives who hire on to disasters like the Perry and Huntsman campaigns. If any future camapign starts putting those incompetent clowns on its payroll, you’ll know not to give them a dime.

Join the Republican Party!
“We’re Probably Not the Worst Political Party in America”

Category: Dave Weigel, Election 2012, Jon Huntsman, Republicans, Rick Perry

Departing from Logan: Live Free or …

Posted on | January 11, 2012 | 40 Comments

“There was never enough time. Every deadline was a crisis. All around me were experienced professional journalists meeting deadlines far more frequent than mine, but I was never able to learn from their example.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

BOSTON LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Pete Da Tech Guy woke me up about 9 o’clock this morning: “We both overslept! We’ve got to hurry!” But first he had to figure out how to connect the computer to the printer to print my boarding pass. Pete did some excellent driving to get me to the airport on time, and we listened to Boston talk radio on the way. with the question of the day being, “Is Mitt Romney inevitable? Is it all over but the shouting? Have all efforts to stop Mitt been a vain and futile waste of time? Should we jump off a bridge now, or wait until after the Florida primary?” (I paraphrase slightly.)

For conservatives, Tuesday was “A Cruel Night in New Hampshire“:

MANCHESTER, N.H. — About 40 percent of voters in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary cast their ballots for either Texas Rep. Ron Paul or former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who finished second and third behind the “It’s His Turn” Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Adding in Romney’s 39 percent, the top three finishers in the Granite State got nearly 80 percent of the vote — even though none of them can credibly claim to represent the mainstream of GOP conservatism that has developed over the past three decades. Romney, of course, has been on both sides of every important issue during his political career, having even denied any fealty to “Reagan-Bush” during his unsuccessful 1994 Senate race. Ron Paul’s foreign policy views are not merely at odds with mainstream Republicanism, but arguably put him to the left of President Obama. And Huntsman has not only embraced same-sex civil unions and global-warming theory, but has praised the Democratic president who appointed him ambassador to China.
Thus in New Hampshire, a state where independents are eligible to vote in the GOP primary, barely 20 percent of voters chose either of the conservative candidates — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum — who competed here. Gingrich and Santorum each got less than 10 percent of the vote, providing the only real suspense of the night with their see-saw battle for fourth place. Texas Gov. Rick Perry didn’t even bother to campaign in the Granite State, and got about 1,500 votes. And so the first-in-the-nation primary ends with the fight for the Republican nomination exactly where it was when the campaign started, with Romney as the pre-emptive favorite. . . .

That’s from my American Spectator column today and you should read the whole thing, in case you aren’t yet sufficiently depressed. Last night at the Radisson Hotel, I came to the conclusion that Republicans are on the verge of nominating their own John Kerry: A candidate whose supposed strength — for Kerry, his military service; for Romney, his business background — proves to be a dangerous weakness.

The Gingrich “super PAC” is about to unload $5 million worth of attack ads on Romney in South Carolina, and as weird as it seems for a Republican to be attacking “ruthless” capitalism . . . Well, Newt was always kind of weird anyway, so this only confirms what we already knew about him.

In New Hampshire, they still have only 98% of precincts reporting, with both Gingrich (23,271 votes) and Rick Santorum (23,118) at 9.4 percent. Michele Bachmann, who quit the race a week ago, got 349 votes Tuesday, which is more than twice the margin between Gingrich and Santorum. Take that as proof that New Hampshire voters are extraordinarly stupid. Top headline this morning at Memeorandum:

Ron Paul To Everyone But Mitt: Drop Out

Which is not the craziest thing Ron Paul has said in the past 24 hours. Hell, he probably said a half-dozen crazier things before breakfast today. But that’s how this campaign has been: Non-stop insanity from start to finish. It’s like being assigned to cover a psychotic breakdown, so that the challenge as a journalist is to report accurately all the paranoid gibberish, the bizarre hallucinations and delusions of grandeur.

And there is never enough time to report it all. I’m flying home today for a couple of days of rest, before it drives me nuts. Time to board that flight. Hit the freaking tip jar!

 





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Category: Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, Shoe Leather Fund
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