The Other McCain

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

New Polls Confirm Santorum Surge in Iowa; Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry Fading

Posted on | December 30, 2011 | 31 Comments

One poll is getting the big headlines this morning:

NBC poll: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul
neck-and-neck in Iowa; Newt Gingrich in 5th

The numbers from that poll, conducted Tuesday and Wednesday:

Romney 23%
Paul 21%
Santorum 15%
Perry 14%
Gingrich 13%
Bachmann 6%

Similar numbers from a Rasmussen poll conducted Wednesday:

Romney 23%
Paul 22%
Santorum 16%
Gingrich 13%
Perry 13%
Bachmann 5%

Thesed results have been enough to move Santorum to third place in the Real Clear Politics average of Iowa polls, but there’s yet another poll — conducted Thursday by We Are America — which shows Santorum now in second place:

Romney 24%
Santorum 17%
Paul 14%
Gingrich 13%
Bachmann 12%
Perry 10%

All three of these polls, then, show the former front-runners Gingrich and Perry now fighting for fourth place.

Erick Erickson is frothing at the mouth and chewing the carpet.

Also, there is a graveyard, and Ace is whistling past it.

Thanks to Anthony Massa for the Twitter tip on that third poll.

Category: Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Iowa, Polls

I Thought Fischer Sounded Fishy

Posted on | December 30, 2011 | 27 Comments

by Smitty

Bryan Fischer. . .ah, yes, back in April, when the stench of his writing reached me in Bagram, Afghanistan.

When we pick a president, we are in fact choosing a minister of God
. . .if we allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, we are in fact choosing a minister when we select a president. No less than three times in Romans 13, Paul uses words that emphasize the sacredness of public service.
The one who serves in public office is “God’s servant” and the “servant of God” (v. 4), and statesmen are “ministers of God” (v. 6).
The word translated “servant” in v. 4 is the Greek word “diakonos,” which elsewhere is translated “deacon,” referring to one of the divinely ordained offices in the church. Another form of this word, “diakonia,” is frequently translated “ministry.”
So if in fact we allow the Scriptures to be our guide, then public service is a form of ministry. One who holds public office is serving in a divinely ordained role, just as much as a pastor in the pulpit. The role of a statesman is every bit as sacred as that of a clergyman.

So, churches have Deacons, and that word could be translated into Minister, as in Prime Minister. Thus, because some countries have Prime Ministers, all public offices are like Deacons or something. So, whenever we vote, we’re somehow, unbeknownst to the person on the ticket, turning them into a Deacon.

I think I can perform a conceptually similar trick, and connect the character of Fischer’s exegesis with a random graph of earthquake data I found here.

Read more

Category: Constitution, Religion

Rick Santorum to Ann Coulter: ‘I Mean, Ann, Should I Have Voted for Amnesty?’

Posted on | December 30, 2011 | 68 Comments

During his speech Thursday night in Davenport, Iowa, Rick Santorum talked about his record in the Senate and mentioned that Ann Coulter had criticized him in her column for voting against “E-Verify”:

But if Santorum wins, we lose on the second most important issue — illegal immigration — and he’ll be the last Republican ever to win a general election in America. . . .
Kowtowing to business (while pretending to kowtow to Hispanics), Paul, Perry and Santorum oppose E-Verify. As a senator, Rick Santorum voted against even the voluntary use of E-Verify.

Santorum explained to the Iowa folks that he voted against “E-Verify” when it was part of John McCain’s amnesty bill in 2006 — a bill that Coulter and every other American with a shred of honesty, intelligence or patriotism also opposed. And what he said next was Tweet-worthy:

“Tell @AnnCoulter, next time you see her, get her facts straight.”

Wow. It’s takes a lot of confidence to throw down with Chairman Ann and, even though I’m having a hard time figuring out her pro-Romney turn in recent weeks, I could imagine the MSM headlines:

REPUBLICAN TELLS COULTER
TO ‘GET HER FACTS STRAIGHT’

The New York Times , Huffington Post, MSNBC, Media Matters — they’re gonna love this story, OK? So I was eager to get more comment from Santorum afterwards. I don’t have the software to edit video, and so you’ll have to skip ahead to the 4:45 mark to catch his answer:

“Why would Ann Coulter criticize me for voting against the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill? I mean, Ann, should I have voted for amnesty? Should I have voted for comprehensive immigration reform? Because if that’s what you’re saying, then, doesn’t sound like you’re the real conservative here. I think when Jim DeMint and every conservative in the United States Senate voted against the McCain-Kennedy bill – yes, we voted against E-Verify, but we voted against a pretty bad bill that I think, at least you said you were against.”

That video is guaranteed viral, my friends.

Category: Ann Coulter, Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Immigration, Iowa, Rick Santorum

You’ve Got To Hand It To The Fetus

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Congratulations to Rachel Uchitel on the blessed event thought to be happening in April.
Contrary to TMZ, this is a baby. We must fight the politically correct call to de-humanize our offspring by using alien terms like ‘fetus’. This blog wishes a healthy pregnancy and a happy life to the little girl. May she never have to get after her husband with a golf club.

Category: Celebrities

IOWA NOTEBOOK: Occupy Caucuses?

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 25 Comments

Rick Perry speaks at Smokey Row coffee shop
Pella, Iowa, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011

DAVENPORT, Iowa
After days of chasing after campaigns, I find myself in the unusual position of waiting for the campaign to come to me. Rick Santorum will be here in Davenport this evening for a 7 p.m. event, and so I’m hunkered down in the corner booth at a McDonald’s, which will be temporary headquarters of the National Affairs Desk for a few hours.

The National Affairs Desk, 2:10 p.m. CT, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011

There’s news today about the Occupiers, who have announced plans to disrupt the GOP caucuses here:

DES MOINES, Iowa — Five Occupy protesters were arrested Thursday outside the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential contender Ron Paul as the group continued its protest against Republican candidates and President Barack Obama.
The five were cited with trespassing and later released after they refused repeated requests to leave Paul’s campaign office in the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny. The action came a day after seven protesters were arrested outside Republican Mitt Romney’s Des Moines headquarters, and Occupy spokeswoman Danielle Ryun said more protests, and probably arrests, will come.
“They’re all going to get equal play on this,” Ryun said. “We are very disillusioned with every candidate.”
The protests are part of an Occupy the Caucuses effort launched this week in Des Moines, attracting activists from around the country. Many of them have promised to interrupt campaign activities.
Ryun said the protesters would be going to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines later Thursday and to other Republican candidate offices Friday.
Eight protesters were arrested at the state Democratic Party offices on Dec. 19. Ryan said protesters would try to get into the offices again Thursday.
Lt. Ben Bowersox, an Ankeny police spokesman, said as many as 15 protesters were at the Paul headquarters. They were told to move to a public sidewalk nearby or face arrest. All but the five moved to the sidewalk.

“Cited with trespassing and later released”? These scum should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law — and beyond. A bunch of worthless punks running around whining about how oppressed they are? I say, give them a nice taste of some real oppression: Tase them, pepper spray them, beat them with nightsticks. Crush them like ants.

But these are merely my personal feelings, and do not reflect the official opinions of the Future U.S. Embassy in Vanuatu. Read more

Category: #Occupy, Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Iowa, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Shoe Leather Fund

Phil Klein Endorses Obama

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 55 Comments

OK, that’s a slight distortion:

Why I’d back Obama over Ron Paul

What I can’t understand is why Phil felt the need to write a column like that. Nobody who supports Ron Paul is open to persuasion, and Republicans who don’t support Ron Paul are unlikely to undergo a last-minute conversion at this point. (Unless, like Kent Sorenson, they’re sold-out backstabbers.)

Klein seems to be making a “here, top this” gesture, striving for the championship in the Anti-Ron Paul Derby. And, of course, his criticism will be dismissed by Paul’s supporters with two words: “Israel lobby.”

Category: Ron Paul, Washington Examiner

Will The Laws Of Economics Support It?

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 11 Comments

by Smitty

The post is titled: “I’m Proud to Be a Freeloader: Taking is as Important as Giving in Collaborative Consumption”

No Right or Wrong Answer
It’s a problem I’ve been pondering in my own experiences with setting up a neighborhood tool share. So far my neighbors seem delighted to lend, but I am the only one doing the borrowing. It’s easy to start feeling like a freeloader, until you realize that the borrower is as valuable a part of the transaction as the lender is. Of course if I now refused to lend to neighbors as and when they reach out, that would be a serious detriment to the system (not to mention it would make me look like a dick), but as long as each gives or lends according to what they have, and asks, borrows and takes according to what they need, then it’s important not to put too many barriers up to reaching out.

The only way I can even relate to this is in a church setting. In a Christian context, one can argue that we are all theologically equivalent, freeloaders upon the grace of God. And yet, anyone truly moved by the Gospel is unlikely to be motionless. Freeloaders happen, but a church is likely to place positive peer pressure upon them to, you know, read the Bible and be productive.

Marx preached “the Kingdom of God, hold the God”. Marx may not really own the results, but the ideas he generated merit careful study and rejection for their appeal to anti-liberty forces since Das Kapital.

People don’t scale. What you can do with the neighbors on your block is not what you can do state-wide. Something like Favabank can work in your neighborhood. Something like it might even have a bit of traction in Sweden. But watch it utterly capsize at the full U.S. population, #Occupy my words.

Via Althouse

Category: Economics

‘Everyone Sells Out in Iowa’

Posted on | December 29, 2011 | 33 Comments

DAVENPORT, Iowa
According to Michele Bachmann, that’s what her former campaign chairman state Sen. Kent Sorenson told her before he switched allegiances to Ron Paul.

Ed Morrissey is shocked — shocked! — to discover that Republicans can be bought, but it happens every day.

Remember when Tim Pawlenty was supposed to be the “conservative alternative to Mitt Romney”? And yet when Pawlenty dropped out, his campaign deep in debt, he endorsed Romney. Like that wasn’t about money?

Shane Vander Hart at Caffeinated Thoughts:

The principled thing for Sorenson to do would have been to see his commitment through to the end. . . .
I don’t know how much this will help Paul.  I would suspect not much.  What Sorenson did manage to do however is fatally wound the Bachmann campaign and damage his own credibility in the process.

Sorenson’s defection may have served the purpose of signaling to evangelicals in Iowa that, given the choice between Santorum and Bachmann, hers is the weaker of the two campaigns. A for the impact on Sorenson: “He just committed political suicide.”

Yeah. You can have a fine career in the GOP as a greedy opportunistic backstabber, but only if you maintain a public reputation as a Man of Principle and Integrity.

But why bring Ralph Reed into this, huh?

Category: Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Iowa, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul
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