#tcot @AceOfSpadesHQ So, You’re Still Kinda Butt-Hurt About Rick Perry, Huh?

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Look, I’ve just endured my own Disastrous Month of Pain, OK? But I seriously doubt that 78 days from now I’m gonna be grousing bitterly about Gloria Allred and Ginger White. So why — 78 days after the Tampa debate — is Ace still ax-grinding against Michele Bachmann?

What’s especially interesting is that Bachmann signs up so willingly for Sacrifice Attacks. Some attacks are kind of over the top and involve a lot of blowback; they hurt the person making them as much or more than the target of the attack.
Gardasil, for example. That more or less took Bachmann out of things.
And that wasn’t entirely unforeseeable. A lot of people — including Republicans — are not so jazzed about the anti-vax swamp that a lot of the animus there seemed to be coming from. And her cloyingly emotional appeal — “Little. Girls.” — came off as shameless.
Plus, her convenient My Daughter Came Out a Retard mystery witness.

Dude. That was Sept. 12. And I was there:

TAMPA, Fla. — Rick Perry came into last night’s debate here with a target on his back, leading in the polls only a month after his late entry into the Republican presidential campaign. His fellow GOP candidates fired at the Texas governor all night, but it wasn’t until Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said the phrase “innocent little 12-year-old girls” that he suffered any serious wound. . . .

You can call that a “cloyingly emotional appeal” if you want, but it was absolutely devastating in terms of Perry’s support among conservative moms. Don’t take my word for it: Ali Akbar was in the audience in Tampa, sitting among a bunch of Tea Party women who came into the debate pro-Perry. Afterwards? Thumbs down.

Was the Gardasil issue overblown, misrepresented, misunderstood? Tell it to conservative mom Michelle Malkin. But why blame Bachmann? Because you think she’s stupid? Because she’s a woman? Because her attack on your guy Perry was effective?

And this endorsement of the C4P write-in campaign?

Rather than look for a Palin-like candidate, doesn’t it just make more sense to write in Palin?

“Hey, let’s undermine Bachmann in Iowa — just for spite!”

Ultimately, it wasn’t Michele Bachmann or any other Republican rival who destroyed Rick Perry. He surfed into the race on a tsunami wave of overconfidence, his campaign led by a bunch of cutthroat assholes who had just finished sabotaging Newt Gingrich.

They convinced a lot of people — Ace among them — to climb aboard The Smilin’ Texan Express for a one-way ride to glory.

“Phantom Menace.” Told ya so.

Perry auto-destructed and keeps bumbling onward toward greater humiliation. So why keep beating up on Bachmann? Why scapegoat her, instead of blaming the geniuses who sold you on Perry? (“Howdy. Thank you, Erick.”) Or why not own up to letting yourself get sold?

It’s been non-stop pain for me lately, Ace, so I’m not here to rub salt in your wounds, but . . . beating up on a girl? C’mon. Let it go, man.

And tell Tabitha Hale I said, “Hi.”

 

UPDATE: Linked by God’s Own Crunk — thanks!

Some in the comments are wanting to turn this into “Why Everybody Should Hate Ace,” which isn’t my intention at all. Ace loved him some Perry, which required him to do some hating on everybody else — especially anyone who attacked Perry (Bachmann and, to a lesser extent, Santorum) or appeared to prosper at Perry’s expense (Cain).

Honestly, I get it: Vengeance is fun, and hate is a habit, which is why I can’t stand me no Newt Gingrich. What Newt did to Doug Hoffman was so wrong and so stupid as to make Newt permanently unacceptable to me. When Hoffman forgave Newt, I was shocked beyond words. Dude, if I’d been screwed over that bad, I wouldn’t even have taken Newt’s call.

Ace is a good blogger, and one of the best at eviscerating liberals. His work on WeinerGate was heroic and — just in case you didn’t realize it — Ace ought to take a bow for Barney Frank’s retirement. No blogger did more than Ace to promote Sean Bielat, and it was Bielat’s 2010 challenge, combined with re-districting, that convinced Barney to hang it up.

Ace and I (and evidently many of y’all) are having a disagreement over a contested primary. It happens, and we can’t let ourselves go all Montagues and Capulets over this stuff. Because next August, if we find ourselves watching Mitt Romney give his acceptance speech in Tampa, we’re all going to have to find a way to convince our fellow Americans that this was The Greatest Acceptance Speech Ever.

Like we really mean it.

Am I looking forward to that? No, but if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, it’s what I’ll be doing, and I’ll keep pushing Romney as long as there is any real hope he can beat Obama.

Then I’ll go to the voting booth on Nov. 6, 2012, and probably vote Libertarian again, just to defy the GOP Establishment sons of bitches who keep ramming these doomstruck losers down our throats.

Anyway . . .

Don’t hate Ace. He’s a good man ewok to have on our side.

PREVIOUSLY:


Candidate Cain Said “I’m Not Supposed To Know Anything About Foreign Policy”, Whereas President Obama Lives It

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by Smitty

In case the president is unaware, England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. There is no such thing as an “English” embassy anywhere in the world, and there hasn’t been one for several centuries.


This blog doubles down on its firm commitment to help the President figure out the basics of his job in the remaining 417 days of his error-riddled tenure.

The ‘Sarah Palin Reconsider’ Clip

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by Smitty

Via Michelle Malkin, here is the mighty Sarah Palin ad, which appears to have been uploaded on 22 November. I am sure that Ladd Ehlinger could have done something with a bit more zip to it. This appears to be a straight up the middle play. On the one hand, this egalitarian statement is what America in general, and Sarah Palin in particular, are all about: get the substance right, and understand that the anti-elitism is a style of its own.

That said, my newfound irritation with Romney’s diction helps me understand where some people are coming from about Sarah’s tone and accent. The fact that my mother (who lives in Idaho) could do passable voiceovers for Sarah (who is from Idaho) does mitigate a lot of the distraction for me, but this clip puts Sarah’s folksy cadences right out front.

I’d still love to see her on the ticket. Unsure with whom, though. Oh to be the fly on the wall when the GOP delegates look at the primary returns and realize that, no matter her conditions, they should have coaxed her into running.

Exploring ‘Explaining Postmodernism’ By Stephen Hicks 4: Poisoned Enlightenment

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by Smitty

Poisoning the Enlightenment for fun and excitement
Our last post was about the first half of the 20th century. Things were nearly interesting with the Postmodernists when, at last, even they realized that Karl Marx was a false prophet. Fortunately for the human race, they PoMo weenies repented of their ways, sought enlightenment, and–wait: which history is this? The PoMo weenies doubled down on dumb, and resurrected an idiot older than Marx.

Postmodernists are not individuals who have reached relativistic conclusions about epistemology and then found comfort in a wide variety of political persuasions. Postmodernists are monolithically Left-wing in their politics. (Hicks, 84)

In other words, shouldn’t we see at least some libertarians? And why couldn’t you be a Postmodern conservative?

The initial Marxist symptoms:

  1. Capitalism is exploitative: The rich enslave the poor; it is brutally competitive domestically and imperialistic internationally.
  2. Socialism, in contrast, is humane and peaceful: People share, are equal, and cooperative.
  3. Captialism is ultmately less productive than socialism: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; and the ensuing class conflict will cause capitalism’s collapse in the end.
  4. Socialist economics, by contrast, will be more productive and usher in a new era of prosperity. (Hicks, 86-87)

Continue reading Exploring ‘Explaining Postmodernism’ By Stephen Hicks 4: Poisoned Enlightenment →

Did I Ever Mention …

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. . . that I live about a mile from the Appalachian Trail? And that my teenage sons have a pretty serious gun collection?

The reason I mention this is because Professor Glenn Reynolds linked to an article on a survivalist site about the “Redoubt of the East,” which the author describes as the mountains of East Tennessee. That’s about a six-hour drive south of here, so I suppose if there were sufficient warning of “a severe crisis where food and public infrastructure fails,” I could zip down I-81 and beat the stampede out of D.C. and Baltimore. But I’d probably just stay put.

While I do not wish to derogate the merchants of freeze-dried food, generators, et cetera, I’m not really worried about surviving whatever apocalyptic scenario prompts the hunker-in-the-bunker preparedness industry. There’s enough venison on the hoof hereabouts that we’d survive all right, I reckon.

But there’s one problem: If post-apocalyptic America doesn’t have WiFi, how the heck are people supposed to hit my tip jar? On the other hand, the tip-jar action has been slow enough the last few days, maybe the apocalypse already happened and nobody told me.





Naked Scarlett Johansson: ‘It Would Be Irresponsible’ Not to Support Obama

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A story I missed: Somebody hacked her cell phone and got hold of naked photos Johansson had taken of herself and sent to her (now ex-)husband Ryan Reynolds. I only learned about this yesterday because I glanced at a headline linked on the sidebar of an article and (the mind plays funny tricks) got the idea she’d sent nude photos to Burt Reynolds.

That would be what we call “news,” so I had to click that link and immediately realized my error. Never heard of this Ryan Reynolds guy and, frankly, never much noticed Scarlett Johansson — she’s an actress who does, like, movies and stuff — and would have ignored the feature article in Vanity Fair if not for this:

Johansson, who has been active in campaigning for various Democratic political leaders, including Barack Obama, tells Biskind that nearly one term later “we’re all guilty of being idealistic, I and everyone who voted for him.” But in response to being asked if she would work for him again, she says, “It would be irresponsible not to.”

This shouldn’t be surprising, given the notorious liberalism of Hollywood, but it doesn’t make sense to those of us out here in the rest of America, where pretty girls generally tend to be conservative. To cite one example, the annual Reaganpalooza, the post-CPAC party sponsored by the Young Conservatives Coalition, is a total babefest.

Perhaps it’s something intrinsic to the entertainment industry, where the relationship between hard work and success  is less obvious, that causes people in show business to be so peculiarly liberal.

Or maybe conservatives just need to do more education and outreach to Hollywood. Somebody else will have to do “outreach” to Scarlett Johansson. I don’t want to make Alyssa Milano jealous.

UPDATE: Linked by Pirate’s Cove and Weasel Zippers — thanks! — and now a Memeorandum thread. By the way, Alyssa Milano has 1.8 million Twitter followers. Scarlett Johansson? Doesn’t get it.

Herman Cain ‘Re-Assessing’ Campaign

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Suggestion for Mr. Cain: Fire whoever it was on your staff who left me off the conference call to which Robert Costa was invited:

“Over the next several days, we are going to continue with the schedule as usual,” he said. “I’ve got a major speech tonight at Hillsdale College on national security and foreign policy and I will deliver it with vim, vigor, and enthusiasm. And then tomorrow we’ve got some media appearances scheduled. So we’re going to continue until we complete our assessment over the next several days.”
“But if a decision is made, different than to plow ahead, you all will be the first to know,” he said. “So until that time, I want to continue to thank you all for your support, thank you for your prayers. It’s taken an emotional toll, but the people in the audience tonight will never know it.”

Accusations by hyper-litigious bankrupt divorceés? No biggie.

Leaving me off a key conference call? That could be serious trouble.

I’ve got to go get a pack of smokes and cool my temper.

Maybe some updates after that.

UPDATE: OK, got my smokes, plus cheeseburgers, fries and a Hershey almond bar — comfort food, which I needed badly, as well as a cup of decaf coffee. Thanks to Don Surber for the link, as well as to Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom, who says:

Time to wake up, people. Bachmann is still out there. So is Santorum. And both of them would whip Obama in any debate.

Made a few phone calls while I was out. Thanks to all the friends whose ears I blistered with my rants. I needed to vent.

Maybe I need a nap now.

UPDATE II: “When the going gets weird, the weird get pissed.” Yeah. Then the weird say, “Hit the freaking tip jar.” And take a nap.