Santorum Gets 4 ‘Clean Kills’ in Pheasant Hunt With Steve King; No Endorsement

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ADEL, Iowa
Today’s hunt at Doc’s Gun Club was successful for Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who said he got four “clean kills,” and also saw his teenage son John get his first bird. Santorum also got some solid publicity for his campaign, as a horde of media turned out to cover his post-hunt press conference with Rep. Steve King.

What Santorum didn’t get was King’s much-coveted endorsement — at least not yet. The conservative GOP congressman praised Santorum but said he hasn’t yet decided whether to endorse anyone before the Jan. 3 caucuses, now just eight days away.

Influential Iowa conservative radio host Steve Deace said on Twitter: “No other way to say it, but no Steve King endorsement hurts whatever hopes Rick Santorum had of being the Cinderella story on Jan. 3.”

Yet King said he hasn’t ruled out an endorsement and would continue reflecting on it. Could he be building suspense for a future news cycle?

Well, I’ve got photos and video of today’s event, but the WiFi connection at this particular McDonald’s has bandwidth issues that prevent me uploading in any kind of timely manner so (like a Steve King endorsement) that will have to wait. There is a caucus volunteer training event tonight in Cedar Rapids and my driver Aaron Rupp says, “We gotta hurry.”

Greetings From Iowa

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Aaron Rupp is an industrial control systems engineer from Cedar Rapids who sent me an e-mail yesterday wondering if I needed a ride from the airport. By the time I took off this morning from BWI, my plan had already progressed to include a 140-mile drive to Adel — clear on the other side of Des Moines — for a 4 p.m. “media availability” with Rick Santorum. If you’re going to impose on someone, I say, go ahead and really impose.

Right now, I’m typing this in the passenger seat while Aaron is driving his brand new Honda Civic with less than 9,000 miles on the odometer. I’m sure this car could hit 110 mph, but Aaron has this whole Midwestern law-abiding thing going on, so he refuses to push it past 80. He’s a Santorum supporter. All the high-speed reckless drivers in Iowa are probably backing Ron Paul. (Libertarians consider speed limits the first step on the road to fascism. And they’re right!)

There was a brief rumor this morning that Rep. Steve King might be preparing to endorse Santorum. However, Aaron tells me, staff for both King and Santorum have denied this rumor. We shall see.

OK — we just pulled off at a McDonald’s near I-80 so I could get online, check the news and get this posted. William Petroski of the Des Moines Register has the lowdown on today’s event:

U.S. Rep. Steve King, one of Iowa’s most prominent conservative politicians, is spending this afternoon hunting pheasants near Adel with former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum – their second hunting trip in the past three months.
But King, whose endorsement is highly sought by Republican presidential candidates, told the Des Moines Register he has no plans today to make an endorsement of Santorum or anyone else.
“I have not made a decision,” King said, acknowledging that time is running short before the Jan. 3 Iowa Caucuses. “There has not been a constitutional conservative to run away from the pack.”
King, who represents a heavily Republican congressional district in western Iowa, said he was joining Santorum at Doc’s Hunt Club near Adel because he and the candidate are good friends and because it offered a chance to give Santorum’s campaign some publicity. They were joined here by former Iowa State University wrestling coach Jim Gibbons of Perry, who has endorsed Santorum; Kevin Reynolds, the husband of Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds; Dave Funk, the Polk County Republican Party co-chair, and about a dozen other shotgun-toting pheasant hunters.
Santorum, who served two U.S. Senate terms from Pennsylvania, is scheduled to meet with reporters at 4 p.m. to discuss his campaign. Santorum and King had hunted together in October in northwest Iowa, and King has also hunted with Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

That’s as much as we know at this point. Time to get back on the road.

UPDATE: Linked by Zilla of the Resistance — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Meanwhile, Bill Quick at Daily Pundit has the answer to the question: “What Would Hunter Thompson Do?”


Fear and Loathing at BWI

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BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
They’ll call final boarding in less than an hour, so there’s no time now for a lot of fancy stuff. I’m scheduled for a three-hour flight to Detroit, a one-hour layover and then a 40-minute hop to Cedar Rapids.

The big headline on Memeorandum:

Mitt Romney’s secret money

What does it mean? Who knows? Maybe Mitt’s got more money than George Soros and has bought the GOP lock, stock and barrel. My mind isn’t on Mitt’s money, it’s on Iowa, where I just discovered that Rick Santorum’s schedule has him holding a press conference this afternoon:

4 p.m. CT — Senator Santorum and several prominent Iowa conservative leaders will hold a media availability following a pheasant hunt in Adel, IA.

Hmmm. Two hours from the airport in Cedar Rapids, where I’ll arrive about 1:15 p.m. A guy named Aaron has offered to pick me up at the airport, but would he be up for a 140-mile run to the other side of Des Moines? And then we’d have to turn around and drive back to be at a volunteer-training event in Cedar Rapids at 7.

But what the heck, huh?

If you’re gonna go gonzo, go all the way. This is the kind of situation where the only question is: What Would Hunter Thompson Do?

We know the answer, I think, and so my friend Aaron had best be prepared to do some high-speed driving across Iowa when I arrive, because my plans just changed in the time it took to drink a Bloody Mary in the airport lounge.

The National Affairs Desk, 8:10 a.m., Monday, Dec. 26, 2011

Drinking a Bloody Mary at 8 o’clock in the morning may seem strange, but this is purely medicinal: Three hours cooped up on a plane isn’t the kind of ordeal I can endure in an unmedicated condition, and tomato juice helps fortify my immune system as I prepare for this grueling expedition onto the campaign trail.

What I need is more sleep. I got up at 6 a.m., and if I can catch a couple hours sleep on this flight to Detroit, I’ll be rested and ready when I finally arrive in Iowa. Grab a large cup of coffee for the drive from Cedar Rapids to Adel, and I’ll arrive at that “media availability” as fresh as a daisy and as sober as a judge. No problem.

Well, one problem: Rich Lowry. But he’s a chronic problem, and I don’t have time to deal with it this morning, because I’ve got to get on that plane and fly the friendly skies. Wish me luck, and hit the freaking tip jar.


E. J. Dionne Gets His Winston Smith On

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by Smitty

Sweet, sweet NewSpeak.
How thou makest
the truth to reek.
And those blindest
Who’d their past seek.

Dionne’s column is masterful. Wander through the professional-grade propaganda has E. J. denounces the GOP candidates. A taste:

The GOP is engaged in a wholesale effort to redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society. Consider Romney’s claim in his Bedford speech: “President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.”
Obama believes no such thing. If he did, why are so many continuing to make bundles on Wall Street? As my colleagues Greg Sargent and Paul Krugman have been insisting, Romney is saying things about the president that are flatly, grossly and shamefully untrue. But Romney’s sleight of hand is revealing: Republicans are increasingly inclined to argue that any redistribution (and Social Security, Medicare, student loans, veterans benefits and food stamps are all redistributive) is but a step down the road to some radically egalitarian dystopia.
Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled.

If American history had begun in 1913, then maybe Dionne’s argument would be less of a dirty diaper shoved in the face.

redefine the government help that Americans take for granted as an effort to create a radically new, statist society

It’s not that I would deny E. J. the private right to velvet handcuffs, and whatever other kink turns him on. It’s the fact that this “government help” suppository is being rejected. The plurality of Americans think ObamaCare stinks, and are glomming onto the fact that the rest of the “safety net” programs are also made of industrial strength crap. What is the difference between entitlements and a pressure-sale for a timeshare? I don’t know, either.
And the joke about President Wall Street:

Obama believes no such thing. If he did, why are so many continuing to make bundles on Wall Street?

Ummm, so that the Wall Streeters can line BHO’s wallet? If you really believe there isn’t Wall Street/White House collusion afoot, Dionne, you may represent a safety hazard while driving a vehicle. And alluding to Krugman, E. J., helps your credibility about as much as saying ‘I snort Drano‘.
And truth?

Obama will thus be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word.

Have you seen truth at any point this year, Dionne? Conservatives conserve liberty. The Federal government, as such, is never an object of conservation. We conserve liberty like we conserve the environment, and both precede this decadent, Postmodern era, filled with lousy, deceptive twerps who urinate down the public back and declare precipitation.

The interesting question, E. J., is whether you have any self-awareness of the falsehood of the ideas you peddle. Are you really so flush with commie kool-aid that you believe this stuff, or are you just a simple prostitute, turning in these acts of Hooverism for a paycheck?

via Alan Colmes

Memo From the National Affairs Desk: How’s the Weather Today in Vanuatu?

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“Santorum is a social conservative, and everybody seems to have convinced themselves that social conservatives are a dead weight impeding the Republican Party and therefore no one should ever express support for any social conservative anywhere, under any circumstance.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Slouching Toward Cedar Rapids”

“How long, O Lord, how long? Where will it end?
“All I ever wanted out of this campaign was enough money to get out of the country and live for a year or two in peaceful squalor in a house with a big screen porch looking down on an empty white beach, with a good rich coral reef a few hundred yards out in the surf and no neighbors. . . .
“What worries me now . . . is the strong possibility that my involvement in politics has become so deep and twisted that I can no longer think rationally about that big screen porch above the beach except in terms of an appointment as Governor of American Samoa.”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Among the Christmas gifts I received from Mrs. Other McCain today: New luggage, thermal underwear and a wool overcoat — appropriate and much appreciated by a guy who’s about to head out on the campaign trail to Iowa and New Hampshire.

This trip wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of readers who have contributed to the Shoe Leather Fund, and there are more tip-jar hitters to thank on my last night at home before I fly the friendly skies to Cedar Rapids: Ronald in Charlottesville, Joe in Olympia, John in West Hartford, Victor in Virginia, Lamon in Missouri, Stephen in Alabama, Philip in Englewood, Dewayne in Evansville, Mike in New Hampshire, Barry in Florissant, William in Dallas, and Scott in Ontario.

Before I pack up the laptop and hit the Hawkeye State, however, there are a couple of things that probably need explaining, which might have been mysteriously puzzling even to longtime readers. Continue reading Memo From the National Affairs Desk: How’s the Weather Today in Vanuatu? →

Edasurc: ‘Crusade’ Spelled Backwards

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by Smitty

Earlier, this blog noted the plight of the Egyptian Christians. Memeorandum points to The New York Times (twice today) with atrocious news:

A series of apparently coordinated bombings struck three churches during Christmas services across Nigeria on Sunday, killing more than a dozen people and solidifying a recent escalation in violence by a radical Muslim sect.
At least five bombings were reported, including three at churches and one at a state security building. The worst appeared to be at a packed Catholic church just outside the capital, Abuja, where a bomb tore through the building and killed at least 16 people as they left a morning mass.

Now, the Islamic extremists wage jihad, and refer to Western countries as ‘Crusaders’. That baffles Americans, because we:

  • are not religiously motivated to intercede militarily in the Middle East,
  • are in fact dedicated to a division of sacred from profane in pretty much everything, i.e. haven’t got a ‘Christendom’ to saddle up and deploy on a crusade,
  • would likely have significantly different tactics in use in the hypothetical case of a Crusade,
  • are disconnected by eight hundred years and an ocean from the historical Crusades.

And yet, looking at the news, one is tempted to connect the dots, with Christian blood, in such a way as to wonder aloud if the ummah isn’t engaged in something akin to a ‘crusade’ against Christians. Let us not call it jihad, though. That term is copyrighted by some Imam, who will immediately contend you are misusing it. Edasurc, ‘crusade’ backwards, besides turning up some World of Warcraft character hits on Google, does not appear to have any previous usage. Therefore, let us define that to mean the (occasionally violent, even murderous) animosity toward Christianity on display in various Muslim countries toward unarmed Christians.

It was strange to be in Kabul, and go to the military chapel of a Sunday, sing hymns, and hear excellent preaching, and to recall that, outside the walls of New Kabul Compound, one could be forced to pay the ultimate price for that.

A fellow Baptist like Ron Paul might balk at U.S. involvement in supporting people in foreign countries who are being butchered. But, as with these Nigerians in today’s outrage, the Copts in Egypt, or the Jews in Europe in the last century, we have a gnawing question: what is the body count at which one triggers that possible Burke line:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

There really is no formula to compute the crossover point. It’s a matter of context and leadership. Nevertheless, I should expect our serious GOP candidates to offer some kind of policy. On the playground of world religions, there is exactly one bully. Whoever thinks that bully can be appeased is a fool, and needs to have their foolishness escorted away from levers of power. Whether calling that bullying ‘Edasurc’ helps elevate the problem in the public debate, I have no idea. But the body count from Edasurc keeps rising.

Joe Nocera On ‘The Big Lie’

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by Smitty

Joe Nocera in the Grey, Undead Lady:

So this is how the Big Lie works.
You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility.

Postmodernism is the ultimate lie, beginning with the notion that there is no Truth. In responding to any modern accusation of deploying a ‘Big Lie’, one should first make the accuser stand and deliver on the question of what they hold to be absolutely True.

You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.
You’re chosen for an investigative panel related to your topic. When other panel members, after inspecting your evidence, reject your thesis, you claim that they did so for ideological reasons. This, too, is repeated by your allies. Soon, the echo chamber you created drowns out dissenting views; even presidential candidates begin repeating the Big Lie.

Thus far, we could be referring to the Big Lie that is Anthropogenic Global Warming, or whatever they are calling AGW at the moment–I guess it is ‘climate change’–a really Big Lie, like the flu, begets variations in its assault on Truth.

But Nocera’s task is to ignore the 10th Amendment, and try to con you into believing that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 wasn’t Yet Another Progressive Puddle of Puke (YA3P). The U.S. has permitted, for almost 40 years, a short-circuit in the chain of command. We have allowed the Federal government to bypass the state capitals and deal directly with citizens for housing.

Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis. His partner in crime is another A.E.I. scholar, Edward Pinto, who a very long time ago was Fannie’s chief credit officer. Pinto claims that as of June 2008, 27 million “risky” mortgages had been issued — “and a lion’s share was on Fannie and Freddie’s books,” as Wallison wrote recently. Never mind that his definition of “risky” is so all-encompassing that it includes mortgages with extremely low default rates as well as those with default rates nearing 30 percent. These latter mortgages were the ones created by the unholy alliance between subprime lenders and Wall Street. Pinto’s numbers are the Big Lie’s primary data point.

Nocera gets down to naming names here, giving two people who have ‘almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis’. It would seem that if one is going to wield the Big Lie stick, one would want more certainty than ‘almost’. Are we to believe that these two blokes just randomly decided to connect the Fannie/Freddie dots in a certain way? Powerful dudes, if they are responsible. Maybe they informed Jonah Golderg, whose book Liberal Fascism was my personal entre into the rottenness of Progressivism.

Or is the quibble the notion that the financial crisis had a single cause? I have neither heard of, nor read yet, Wallison or Pinto. Did they really say it was all Fannie/Freddie, or just that these GSEs had contributed significantly?
Nocera concludes:

To have that debate, though, we need a clear understanding of what role the government’s affordable-housing goals did — and did not — play in the crisis. And that is impossible as long as the Big Lie holds sway.
Which, now that I think of it, may be the whole point of the exercise.

I see nowhere in Nocera’s article any acknowledgement that Fannie/Freddie are

  • possibly Constitutional dodgy for starters;
  • that they engender massive moral hazard (temptation) for mischief (Senator Dodd is gone, Representative Frank does not plan to run for re-election. Could that mean they kinda know they transgressed?);
  • that daring to question the validity of the scam triggers such white-hot denunciations for a reason.
So, the ball is in your court, Nocera. Why don’t you begin with first principles and justify Fanny/Freddy, and the debt they’ve wrought, and maybe we’ll see your finger pointing and Big Lie invocation as something other than Even Bigger Lie.