The Other McCain

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

Hatin’ on the Hawkeye State, Or: Should Iowans Burn Jim Geraghty in Effigy?

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 10 Comments

Mob violence is rare in Iowa, but National Review‘s Jim Geraghty would be well-advised to avoid any gatherings of Hawkeye State Republicans after he blasphemed against the Sacred Caucuses this morning.

A special kind of prejudice causes pundits to disparage the campaign Holy Trinity of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — the crucial early states that have dominated the presidential nominating process for more than three decades now.

What the pundits want is an orderly system that delivers credible Big Name nominees quickly, so that the pundits can then cover the Main Event between the Serious Contenders. What the traditional process provides, however, is an extended, unpredictable and at times anarchic struggle in which Big Names often flop, while voters sometimes deliver enough votes to Obscure Underdogs to embarrass the Political Wizards who had predicted victory for the Big Names.

Let the reader do some research as to what the pundits were prognosticating in autumn 2007, and cite examples in the comments if you wish. My own memory is that all the Political Wizards were wondering which of the alleged GOP front-runners — Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney — would emerge victorious to take on the Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Oh, those damned voters!

Three months ago, right before those Florida GOP bastards wrecked Christmas by jumping their primary date to Jan. 31, I briefly stated the case for the early-state tradition in an American Spectator column:

. . . There are logical reasons why the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, especially, have become sacrosanct as the first events of the quadrennial presidential campaign calendar. Both are states with small populations (Iowa about 3 million, New Hampshire about 1.3 million) where TV and radio advertising are relatively cheap. This permits little-known long-shots with small budgets to campaign on a fairly even playing field with better-known and better-funded candidates. Furthermore, Iowa and New Hampshire are states where retail politics — the old-fashioned business of shaking hands and meeting voters one-on-one or in small meetings — are a huge factor in the campaign. Barack Obama famously beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa four years ago because of Obama’s greater strength in grassroots organizing, and Jimmy Carter won New Hampshire in 1976 by bringing scores of Georgians (the “Peanut Brigades”) to go door-to-door for him in the Granite State. So unless we wish presidential campaigns to become all about money and what pollsters call “name ID,” having Iowa and New Hampshire go first looks like a good idea.
Yet we ought not confine ourselves to merely logical reasons for keeping Iowa and New Hampshire first. Aren’t Republicans conservatives, and don’t conservatives believe in the value of tradition? There is something wonderfully traditional — indeed, downright reactionary — about having presidential candidates go through the quaint custom of waiting for returns from tiny precinct caucuses in Iowa and shaking hands with voters in the snowy streets of small-town New Hampshire in February. Nor are these traditions merely sentimental. The pragmatic and utilitarian value of tradition is evident in that voters of Iowa and New Hampshire, long accustomed to their role in vetting presidential candidates of both parties, have become quite shrewd judges in these matters. A joke told by Tim Albrecht, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad, is quite relevant here: An Iowa Republican is asked whether he supports a certain presidential candidate and answers, “I don’t know. I’ve only met him twice.” Early-state voters are not over-awed by “rock star” candidates and media hype, because they’ve seen it all so many times before. Such is the real value of tradition. . . .

Read the whole thing. Either Jim Geraghty ignored that column or else his Fear and Loathing of Iowa is so profound he could not be persuaded to abandon his hateful vendetta against the Hawkeye State.

Iowans are a gentle and peaceful people, and it’s unlikely they would seek revenge against Geraghty. On the other hand, rural Iowa is a lonely place, and if a journalist were to make a wrong turn somewhere between Pella and Oskaloosa, he might find himself confronted by an outraged Iowan with a long memory: “Did you say ‘Geraghty’? Wait a minute, feller, whilst I fetch my hog-slaughtering knife . . .”

Out in the cornfields, they say, no one can hear you scream.

Category: Election 2012, Fear and Loathing in Iowa, Iowa, Media Bias

Santorum Surge: It’s Real and Spectacular

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 19 Comments

For the past three weeks I’ve been wondering: Is it just me? Am I imagining things, or does Rick Santorum have a legitimate chance of scoring an upset in the Iowa GOP caucuses? Robert Costa of National Review today unloads 2,000 words of solid reporting on the subject, a few excerpts of which I’ll highlight:

Sweat equity can do a lot in Iowa, where Santorum has visited all 99 counties — but in this cycle, with the polls fluctuating each week, nothing is guaranteed. His strategy, his wish, is that “slow and steady wins the race.”
“We just believe that the work we’ve done, our respect for the process in Iowa, holding 349 town-hall meetings, will matter as people start making their decisions,” Santorum says. . . .
Beyond his shoestring operation, the backing of prominent social conservatives is playing an important, often behind-the-scenes role in bolstering his quiet winter surge. Bob Vander Plaats, who heads the Family Leader, a social-conservative group, endorsed Santorum on Tuesday, as did Chuck Hurley, the director of the Iowa Family Policy Center. These high-profile reinforcements add heft to Santorum’s evangelical bloc in Iowa, which already included “well-connected and influential pastors like Cary Gordon of Sioux City, Terry Amann of Des Moines, and Albert Calaway of Indianola,” according to The Iowa Republican. . . .
Spending time, rather than money, has its benefits.
“A lot of pastors come to town-hall meetings,” Santorum says, and they, like most Iowans, want to know where a candidate stands on moral issues. By running an accessible, lightly staffed campaign, Santorum has been able to meet hundreds of religious leaders, all of whom coordinate networks, be it a prayer group or big-city congregation. . . .
“We’ve spent a lot of time in towns that the other candidates simply have not,” Santorum says. Bachmann and Texas governor Rick Perry, he acknowledges, are gaining notice this week for bus tours around the state and could see their own sparks. But his campaign has not “rushed,” trying to hit all 99 counties within days, sprinting toward the finish line, he says. “We spent time early on and it wasn’t a 15-minute stop, it was one hour or two hours,” he adds. “Going to the county dinners in Osceola County and Lyon County, up in the northwest corner, these tiny counties, has been important. We spent three hours up there and then had drinks after dinner.”
“The beautiful thing about Iowa is that you can’t buy Iowa,” Santorum says. “We’ve seen some other candidates spend millions of dollars on ads and then not move in the polls. . . .”

You can read the whole thing at NRO, but they do that annoying multi-page thing where you have to keep clicking at the bottom, so you might prefer the everything-on-one-page print-friendly version.

The “under-the-radar” aspect of a campaign, stuff you can’t see if all you’re doing is watching TV news, is what fascinates me, and no pollster or pundit will be able to predict the kind of grassroots surge that Santorum’s strategy is intended to achieve.

Notice today that CNN is trying to gin up a phony controversy about Santorum’s endorsement by Vander Plaats. Try to ignore such distracting noise — inside baseball for the political press — and instead let yourself think about what’s happening out there on the ground in Iowa. That mystery is what’s driving me nuts, and it’s only four more days until I fly into Cedar Rapids to find out for myself.

Category: Election 2012, Iowa, Rick Santorum

Et Tu, Blackburn?

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Early last month I was singing the praises of Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who was taking a bold stand against Net Neutrality and FCC over-reach at the Defending the Dream summit.

Via Instapundit, we discover that the legacy media are funding the Stop Online Piracy Act in a big way.

The bill, known as SOPA, would strengthen and extend the penalties for online copyright violations, and could force websites hosting pirated content to come down or prevent search engines from sending users their way. Legacy media companies stand to benefit if there’s less unlawful movement of their content on the web, like pirated movies and songs for download.

Some of the nation’s top tech companies — Facebook, Google and Microsoft, among others — have spoken out against the bill while media companies have pushed to defend it. SOPA’s companion legislation in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act, is on hold.

I thought that Rep. Blackburn sounded quite educated on the technical aspects of Net Neutrality. Maybe she can enlighten us on how the First Amendment is less important than media profits. I don’t see where her fellow Defending the Dream summit panelist Seton Motley has commented on SOPA.

Category: Instapundit, Tennessee

70% Of Americans Self-Identify As Raaaaacists Who Want Valid Elections

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

The overwhelming majority of Americans, 70% in a Rasmussen poll, who

believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to cast their ballot

have obviously fallen prey to that ancient, patriarchal, oppressive notion of Truth.

This blog looks forward to that shiny day when we cast off this squalid, hidebound, retrograde commitment to fact and embrace the shiny, gratifying, embrace of #40Dollars, Progress, and helpful organizations like the SEIU.

Update: linked at The Lonely Conservative.

Category: Election, Farce

Romney: Maybe If I Make My Positions Sound Current, I Can Win

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 24 Comments

by Smitty

Byron York, via Instapundit:

“You don’t think we would have gone in [to Iraq]?” asked MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

“Well, of course not,” Romney answered. “The president went in based upon intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction. Had he known that that was not the case, the U.N. would not have put forward resolutions authorizing this type of action. The president would not have been pursuing that course.”

Romney’s statement on MSNBC is not only a change from what he said on Fox a few days ago. It’s also a change from his position during his first run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2007-2008. In a January 2008 GOP debate in Florida, Romney was asked, “Was the war in Iraq a good idea worth the cost in blood and treasure we have spent?” Romney answered: “It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now.”

What I want to hear from candidates is not only their current position on a question, but the reasoning behind the change from “I support it now” to “Well, of course not.”

Has the candidate switched advisors? Has he read some new book on the topic? Opinions evolve. Positions change as new information emerges. Got it. How about a little help here to walk back the whole Ministry of Truth feel?

Category: Iraq, Mitt Romney

Cli-Fi And Radical Feminism Go Together Like Czars And #OccupyResoluteDesk

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

Thanks to Paco for ‘Cli-Fi’, which would expand to ‘climate fiction’, clearly. Equally brilliant: ‘an Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues‘. Melanne Verveer’s post was created by President Obama on April 6, 2009, yet does not appear to be on the usual czar list. Fortunately, if we all chip in $40/week, we can cover the pay of all the Czars, even the ones who are too stealthy for us to know about.
Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh informs us in Canada Free Press:

Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, traveled to Durban, South Africa to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in order “to highlight the critical and largely untapped potential of women to combat climate change.” Who knew that women were so powerful that they could affect climate change!
As I read this brief report, I envisioned billions of dollars washing down the proverbial drain with the blessing of an eager administration to re-distribute our “socially unjust” and “unfairly earned, evil capitalist” wealth.
Ambassador-at-Large Melanne Verveer mentioned studies that have shown that women “are on the frontline of, and suffer disproportionately from, the impacts of climate change.” As I googled women’s suffering from the impact of climate change, I found no such studies.

Read the whole thing. Now, Dr. Paugh, what you’ve missed here is that we’re talking about Man-made Global Warming. Clearly, all of that thermal energy is radiated by the Y-chromosome, and thus we need brave truth-tellers like Verveer to speak truth to heat-generating power, and unplug it.

#OccupyResoluteDesk is all about redistributing wealth, but never political power.

Category: Barack Obama, Global Warming

Senior Game Player, Gamely, Denies Game In Progress

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 1 Comment

by Smitty


Hey, Steny, get stuffed, OK? There hasn’t been a budget from the Democrat-controlled Senate in the better part of a thousand days. People are reading Throw Them All Out, for all a quick search on the Kindle reveals no ‘Hoyer’ hits. Good work!

Still, no one with more than two active brain cells believes your hooey.

via Bluegrass Pundit

Update: linked at Red Alexandria.

Category: Democrats

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 12.22.11

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 6 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Rush Hour Bomb Blasts In Baghdad Kill 27, Wound 133

An Iraqi soldier guards a burned-out truck in Baghdad's Alawi district

Bombings occur against backdrop of renewed Sunni/Shia political friction

Democrats Seek Victory In Payroll Tax Cut Struggle
Democratic ops claim Speaker Boehner will cave

PRC Travel Agents Halt Pyongyang Tours
No cheap holidays in other peoples’ misery while mourning for Dear Leader continues



POLITICS
Mitt, Newt Trade Barbs In Iowa Ads

Newt Gingrich speaks at the University of Iowa in Iowa City

Gingrich challenges Romney to one-on-one debate
Team Newt Scrambles To Get On Virginia Ballot

Army Transfers Eight After Afghanistan Suicide



Romney Taking Aim At Obama Again

Wikileaker’s Defense Rests After Calling Two Witnesses

California Woman Charged With Funding Terrorism

Arpaio Investigation Drawing Mixed Reviews From Activists



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Stock Index Futures Point Higher
ECB President Draghi Warns On Eurozone Breakup
BoA To Settle Discrimination Charges For $335 Million
Minorities inexplicably excluded from home mortgage hosing inflicted on middle class
Chicago Sun-Times To Be Sold For More Than $20 Million
After A Year Of Disasters, Toyota Sees Record Sales
EPA Sets Controversial Cuts In Power Plant Emissions
Oil Rises For Fourth Day As U.S. Supplies Drop Most In A Decade
Micorsoft And CES: Mutual Backstabbing?
7″ LCD Panels Outselling 9.7″ Models
Amazon Updates Kindle Fire Software, Fixes Some Nagging Issues
Verizon To Get Probed By Justice Department?
Mozilla Releases Tablet-Friendly Firefox 9 For Android



SPORTS
Ninety Days, Floyd! When You’re Hot, You’re Hot!

Floyd Mayweather, 42-0 in ring, takes first loss in court

Pleads guilty to domestic violence; sentence puts Pacquiao fight in doubt

42-Yard TD Pass Lifts #16 Horned Frogs To Victory In Poinsettia Bowl



Harrison Barnes, Tarheels Dominate Texas

McCoy’s Concussion Prompts NFL Changes

$20 Million Can Buy Quality Time With Mr. Met

AJ Allmendinger Gets Coveted Kurt Busch Ride With Penske

Nyets’ Big Guy Kris Humphries Glad To Return



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Why Marc Anthony Wants J-Lo To Suffer

Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez: FILLED WITH HATE

Divorce proceedings turning nasty over custody issues

Helen Mirren Set To Guest Star On “Glee”

Slim, Radiant Adele “Back On The Grind” After Surgery

“Real Housewives Of NJ”‘s Joe Giudice Indicted On Impersonation, Fraud Charges


Mark Sanchez In Huddle With Victoria’s Secret Beauty

Harrison Ford Signed For “Ender’s Game”

Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel Engaged?

Meryl Streep Primed To Play Thatcher In “The Iron Lady”



FOREIGNERS
Brent Crude Hits $108 After Iraq Bombings
Nork Media Dubs Kim Jong Un “Outstanding Leader”
French Assembly Debates Armenian Genocide As Turks Act Thuggish
Close To End Of Presidency, Medvedev Urges Sweeping Electoral Reforms
U.S. Erred In Deadly Attack On Pakistani Border Post
PRC Officials Offer Rare Compromise To Rebellious Villagers
Pakistani Army Wants Zardari Out, But Not Coup
Lieberman Didn’t Write Europe Condemnation, Ministry Says
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Seeks Secular State
Ethiopia Convicts Two Swedish Journalists Of Supporting Terrorism



BLOGS & STUFF
NRO Corner: Boehner Hanging Tough In Payroll Tax Cut Fight
Weasel Zippers: Romney Agrees Obama’s Drunk Driving, Illegal Alien Uncle Should Be Deported
Gateway Pundit: Matt Damon Rips Obama, Says He’d Prefer One-Term President With Balls
Sister Toldjah: Budget Cuts Called For In LA To Offset High Cost of Filthy Occupier Hippies
PJ Tatler: Ron Paul In 1988 (Update: Walks Out Of CNN Interview Over Newsletter Questions)
Big Peace: Romney Says We Shouldn’t Have Invaded Iraq
Yid With Lid: 50 Best Political Quotes Of 2011
Lonely Conservative: Kim Jong-Il, Statism, Starvation, And The Stupid Ladies Of The View
Dorothy Rabinowitz: What Ron Paul Thinks Of America
Legal Insurrection: Shock – Totally Misleading Story About Newt Saying Gays Should Vote For Obama
GayPatriot: Putting Newt’s Response To A Gay Iowan In Context
Michael J. Totten: The Levantine Unraveling
Atlas Shrugs: 34 Congressmen Bow To Hamas-Tied CAIR, Demand Probe Of NYPD Anti-Terror Measures
American Thinker: Adolescent Hackers Post Cops’ Private Data In Retaliation For OWS Evictions


SOTD: Tomorrow

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