The Other McCain

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

They Told Glenn Reynolds …

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 8 Comments

. . . that if he voted for John McCain, the Internal Revenue Service would go after the president’s political enemies — and they were right!

Last night the IRS put a levy on my father’s bank account and zeroed it out. They got the money before I could pay any bills. My father is a federal retiree  and receives his retirement annuity and Social Security payments by direct deposit at the beginning of the month. . . .

Conservative Lesbian Cynthia Yockey needs your help. How bad is her emergency? I just hit her tip jar for $20 myself.

UPDATE: I learned of Cynthia’s crisis because of a post by Dan Collins at The Conservatory that pinged a post of mine he linked:

Jeff’s having his fall fundraiser, Stacy’s trying to get out to Las Vegas with Smitty and Wombat, The Anchoress is holding her fundraiser. Or as Joy points out, we’re still looking for our first contribution to this site,

Which is to say, everybody’s in dire straits. The crisis is universal and all-encompassing for the conservative blogosphere while — just to cite one example — Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign raised $4.4 million (as of the end of June). Here was a complete loser, a guy who lost all three debates he was in, bet everything on Iowa, lost the Ames Straw Poll to Michele Bachmann, then quit and endorsed Mitt Romney.

A stunning example of utter worthlessness, in other words, yet T-Paw raised $4.4 million in slightly more than three months. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are hustling and scraping for nickels and dimes. There is something disastrously wrong with that, and it depresses me when a friend like Cynthia is overwhelmed by a sudden financial crisis like this, yet there is nothing to do now but to urge you to give $10, $20, $50 or $100 to help her out in the present emergency.

And spit on the ground every time you hear the name “Pawlenty.”

Category: Cynthia Yockey, Taxes

David Brooks: ‘You Know Who Has Some Sharp Pants Creases? Mitt Romney!’

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 33 Comments

The NYT’s token Republican columnist loves him some Mittens:

Over the past several months, Mitt Romney has been an excellent presidential candidate. He has performed superbly in the debates. He has outorganized his rivals. He has relentlessly stayed on his core theme of putting Americans back to work. He has taken Rick Perry apart with a cold ruthlessness that is a wonder to behold.

The emphasized sentence — even more than any other sentence in any David Brooks column — is clearly wrong. It was Michelle Bachmann (on the Gardasil issue during the Sept. 12 Tampa debate) and Rick Santorum (on immigration in the Sept. 22 Orlando debate) who did the most in terms of “cold ruthlessness” against Perry.

It is nevertheless true that, especially on immigration, Perry made the fatal mistake of letting Romney out-flank him on the right. As I said, “Dude. When your ‘conservative’ candidate makes Mitt Romney look like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, it’s over.”

If you are strong-minded enough to resist the temptation to believe well-written persuasive wrongheadedness, you have my permission to read the rest of Brooks’s column, But don’t dare come back into the comments telling me what brilliant arguments he’s made. That’s what makes Brooks so evil: He makes brilliant arguments for wrongness and, unless you have a strong mind, he might even persuade you that he isn’t evil.

Category: David Brooks Fisking Day, Election 2012, Mitt Romney

McDonnell & Patrick On Press The Meat

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty (via SWAC Girl)

I’m a fairly huge Bob McDonnell fan, but Deval Patrick affords some amusement:

01:06 Patrick:

“Do we want a government that is on the side of helping people help themselves?”

01:18 Patrick:

“The American people are going to choose a partnership with leadership, in the form of President Obama, which is about helping people help themselves, and the jobs bill is the most recent, and I think, very important. . .”

06:08 Patrick:

“. . .we understand that people look to us to help–not to solve every problem in everybody’s life–but to help people help themselves, and we are all looking to the federal government that way. I think the President has shown over and over and over again, sometimes to the dismay of his supporters, that he is willing to reach across the aisle.”

On RomneyCare:

09:22 Patrick:

“. . .98% of [Massachusetts] residents have health insurance. It’s added 1% to state spending. It’s been a wild success.”

On Governor Christie:

11:54 McDonnell:

“I’d be surprised at this point if [Christie] got in [the Presidential race].”
Gregory: “You would be surprised?”
McDonnell: “I would.”
Gregory: “Just because of the calendar?”
McDonnell: “Because of the calendar, and because he has said for a year he’s not.”

Now, I’m a fan of Governor McDonnell, but he’s trying way too hard to be the nice guy here. The Massachusetts readers can offer cheers or jeers for Governor Patrick. I expect that he is speaking politically (i.e., at variance from empirical facts) with the coverage/budget claims above.

The 2012 election is not a choice between the openly Socialist Democrat party and the Ruling Class GOP that arrives at Socialist results in passing. It’s fine if McDonnell declines to scare the horses by talking about whacking the federal government back within Constitutional limits. But I really want confidence that the GOP is going to go after Leviathan with pliers and a blow torch.

One understands that the century-long buildup of debt will not be retired right away. Americans have been trained by decades of entitlements to be liberty-averse, fearing the occasional pain that comes from living like an adult. The trick is to avoid letting patience become complacency, and eventually acceptance. That is precisely what the Progressive Left is counting on Americans to do.

A bit of Patton-ism may not be completely inappropriate in a few cases, going down the road:

Disclaimer: I support the Constitutional right of people to be abject cowards. Just not in leadership positions. Get you and your effing dirty diaper self off to the sidelines, while the adults take care of business, say I. Cowards are a navigation hazard.

Category: Massachusetts, Virginia

CHRISTIE SAYS ‘NO’ (AGAIN)
UPDATE: ‘Now Is Not My Time’

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 70 Comments

UPDATE 1:07 p.m. ET: “Now is not my time,” the New Jersey governor says in his press conference statement. “This is not the time to leave unfinished business. . . . Like it or not, New Jersey, you’re stuck with me.”

In response to reporters’ questions, he says, “It did not feel right” to quit a job he’d worked so hard to get.

UPDATE 1:15 p.m. ET: “I’m not prepared to make any endorsements today,” he says, by which he means, Romney hasn’t asked yet.

UPDATE 1:22 p.m. ET: “I am who I am — there’s not a lot of varnish here,” Christie says. In response to a question, he dismisses talk of himself as the GOP running mate, saying there’s nobody in America who thinks he’s temperamentally suited to being No. 2.

UPDATE 1:27 p.m. ET: Talking of his his conversations with other people who had run for president — including, by inference, the Bushes — Christie says, “No one to me endorsed the joy of running for president.” This rather confirms my suspicion that some Team Bush people (e.g., Bill Kristol) were key figures behind the Christie boomlet.

* * PREVIOUSLY (11:10 a.m. ET) * *

Robert Costa of National Review broke the story this morning.

UPDATE: The New Jersey governor has said “no” many times before, but Monday the story got out that he would make an announcement Thursday. Now there is a 1 p.m. press conference scheduled today in Trenton.

UPDATE II: Jonathan Karl of ABC News confirms:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will not run for president, according to a source with direct knowledge of the governor’s thinking.
By deciding not to run Christie is refusing the pleas of many establishment Republicans who have been urging him — even pleading with him to jump into the race. Dozens of high-level GOP donors have been paying visits to Christie since this spring in the hopes of changing his mind. . . .
On Sept. 24 sources close to the Republican governor told ABC News that “the pressure from donors and other people has intensified,” and that the “volume of calls” urging Christie to run had increased.
That was before Christie came face-to-face with some of the big-money GOP contributors who were hoping to lure him into the race during week-long fundraising tour that took him to Missouri, California and Louisiana. But it was at a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., last Tuesday where Christie heard some of the most passionate please to date. . . .

Why did pressure for Christie to run intensify Sept. 24? That was two days after Rick Perry’s meltdown in the Orlando debate, and the same day Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll.

UPDATE III: The Washington Post:

Christie was heavily courted to reconsider by large Republican donors as well as a handful of elected officials and party activists in key states.  That recruitment process picked up steam following several mediocre debate performances by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, showings that raised doubts about his ability to unite the party and beat President Obama next fall. . . .

(“Mediocre debate performances”? Like the Hindenburg had a “mediocre” landing at Lakehurst, N.J.)

The lone figure yet to announce her plans for 2012 is former Alaska governor Sarah Palin who has pushed back her timeline to make a decision from September to November.

So unless Sarah gets in, this is the final field. I’m sure Chris Crocker T.C. Lynch will be relieved.

UPDATE IV: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

The only way a late entry will work is with someone with high name recognition and a positive intensity among Republicans, and that’s not the position in which Christie finds himself today.

If Palin would say “no,” we could rally conservatives behind Herman Cain. If Palin would endorse Herman Cain, it would be a full-tilt boogie all the way to the nomination in Tampa. But as long as Palin is a “maybe,” there will be tens of thousands of grassroots conservatives waiting and praying for her to say “yes.”

UPDATE V: Headline of the day by Gabriel Malor at AOSHQ:

Today’s Schedule:
Chris Christie Presser at 1:00pm;
Bill Kristol Suicide at 1:05pm

PREVIOUSLY:


Category: Chris Christie, Election 2012, New Jersey

From Doug Hoffman to Herman Cain: Continuing the Tea Party Momentum

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 15 Comments

“Busting the balls of the Establishment is a process not an event.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Nov. 12, 2010

Steve Foley and I were having a laugh yesterday about the success of the Herman Cain campaign, which has made us look like geniuses, having lined up early with the self-described “dark horse” who’s now gaining ground on the front-runners.

Steve launched Citizens4Cain.com in January, when the general attitude toward Cain was “Herman Who?” But the online grassroots army had actually been in the planning phase for weeks. Steve and I had our first phone conversation about it sometime in November, after I’d mentioned Cain near the end of a Nov. 13 post about the blog-war between Patterico and Jeff Goldstein.

It’s kind of characteristic that I’d bury something like that near the end of a long post about something that would only interest a relative handful of diehard readers. Dan Riehl used to chide me about doing long posts, or doing multiple updates to a post on a breaking story, because that’s not the way you’re supposed to do it. People like blog posts to be short, and it’s better to have updates as new posts of their own, rather than to update a previous post.

Sometimes, however, doing it the “wrong” way is the best way to do things, as for instance when — in one of the most crucial presidential elections in American history — you decide to back a hopeless longshot with zero name recognition that everybody says can’t possibly win.

Genius, you see? Read more

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Tea Party

Not A Failure Of Imagination

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

Pardon my under-whelmed response to Neal Stephenson’s Innovation Starvation.
Neal comes near a breakthrough here, emphasis mine:

Researchers and engineers have found themselves concentrating on more and more narrowly focused topics as science and technology have become more complex. A large technology company or lab might employ hundreds or thousands of persons, each of whom can address only a thin slice of the overall problem. Communication among them can become a mare’s nest of email threads and Powerpoints. The fondness that many such people have for SF reflects, in part, the usefulness of an over-arching narrative that supplies them and their colleagues with a shared vision. Coordinating their efforts through a command-and-control management system is a little like trying to run a modern economy out of a Politburo. Letting them work toward an agreed-on goal is something more like a free and largely self-coordinated market of ideas.

The Apollo Program put a man on the moon while I was still, in the eyes of modern feminism, a busy insurgent within my mother’s flesh. That link I just provided juxtaposes the Cold War and the Space Race nicely. From little bits of scuttlebutt I’ve heard in some odd places, the Apollo Program was really just so much cover story along the road to Really Big Missiles. This explains why, once the technology for Trident was in the pipeline, we got. . .the Space Shuttle. Not to mock the program; it has done much good. But really: can you match Neal Armstrong with a spiffy Hubble image? “One small NITF for man. . .one giant JPEG for mankind.”
Back to the quoted Stephenson above, now: people don’t scale. The significance of the external threat of the Soviet Union was as crucial to the success of Apollo as Nazi-ism and Imperial Japan were to WWII. Without the threat of the fertilizer hitting the air circulator, that Iron Law heads its ugly rear. Lacking an external bad guy putting the back against the wall, the engineers turn into intellectually flabby bureaucrats, launching applications instead of cutting edge projects. They can navigate the artificial intricacies of a travel claim more readily than deal with orbital mechanics. However, that engineering genius does not support people moving paper from point A to point B, now does it?
Many, like the Instapundit, strongly favor privatizing space efforts. Fair enough, but there are significant national security implications for allowing Stacy McCain to have a go at “Gonzo in Space”. Barbara Espinosa would just have installed on the main computer. Stacy’s head, and, subsequently, the spacecraft, would ‘splode, triggering some major repercussions. We don’t need that.
Maybe some credible national leadership could help. If you put Carmack at NASA, and gave him a free hand and an Apollo-style budget to git ‘er done. . . But no, that would just be more opportunity for Congressional graft. Perhaps the best government role is, in fact, command by negation.
Flabby bureaucrats have a highly socialist diet. They feed on regulations with the aforementioned high iron content. Fe males, they are. The creative, exceptional American vigor that should drive actual improvement (would have said ‘Progress’, comrade, but how liberally gay can the English language get and retain meaning?) is perverted to ensconce weaknesssocial justice.
So the useful question to ask is: How do we liberate the creativity of the people from the dismal prison of Socialism? Restated, just how hard are we going to work in 2012 to elect conservatives? How much pain are we going take to regain liberty? Sci Fi writers can spin all manner of tales, but the real failure is not of imagination: rather, over-regulation.

Update: linked at Daily Pundit. In response to:

Nobody is really interested in original or inspiring thinking, not when it threatens one of their sacred cows, whether socialist or socon. And that is the real problem, not regulations.

Let me say that I, personally, am not threatened by ideas as such. Ideas live on a failure/success spectrum. My task is to argue the successful ones in a positive way. Having served in the military, let me flog the drum: drenching the troops in hormones isn’t advancing the military strategy one bit. An election strategy, perhaps. That is all.

Category: Instapundit, United States

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.04.11

Posted on | October 4, 2011 | 5 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
WaPo Poll: Perry Slips, Cain Rises

Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain

Romney 25%, Cain & Perry 16%, RON PAUL! 11%

Long-Delayed Trade Deals Go To Congress
White House finally sends free trade pacts with Colombia, ROK, Panama to Congress for approval

Docs Show Attorney General Lied To Congress On “Fast & Furious” Gunrunning Scheme
Holder was briefed on gunwalking plan in June 2010



POLITICS
Romney To Meet With Central Florida Voters

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney

Looking for votes in retirement community that supported him in ’08

Rezwan Ferdaus Plea Not Guilty In Pentagon Bomb Plot

Hispanics Fleeing Alabama?

House Poised To Vote On Continuing Resolution

Surfing Named Official High School Sport In Hawaii

Underwear Bomber’s Trial Set To Begin

E-Mails Reveal Early White House Worries Over Solyndra



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
EU Signals Bigger Haircuts Coming For Greek Bond Investors
World Stocks Tumble On Greek, Banking Fears
Wall Street Approaches Bear Territory
American Airlines Resumes Pilot Talks After Stock Rout Shows Bankruptcy Concern
Gold Rises 1% On Greek Default Fears
Oil Declines For a Third Day As Goldman Sachs Cuts Forecast For Brent Crude
Sprint To Get iPhone 5 Exclusive?
Kindle Fire Teardown Reveals Device Is Loss Leader
Apple Rejects Samsung Offer To End Tablet Row In Australia
Microsoft Hotmail’s New Features Target “Graymail”
Gas Prices Down In Anemic Recovery



SPORTS
Verlander, Young Put Tigers Up 2-1 Over Yankees

Don Young, Miguel Cabrera celebrate

Verlander racks up 11 K’s in 5-4 win; Yankees on edge of elimination

Napoli Big Factor In Rangers’ Defeat Of Rays




Hank Yanked From Monday Night Football Over Political Comments

Bucs Rally To Top Colts 24-17; Colts Now 0-4

Today’s NBA Talks Considered Crucial

Concrete Kurt: Busch Wins AAA 400 At Dover



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Seth Rogen, Lauren Miller Tie The Knot

Lauren Miller & Seth Rogen

“Knocked Up” actor weds longtime girlfriend

“Hung” Star Thomas Jane: I Was A Homeless Gay Hooker

Jacqueline Laurita, Caroline Manzo Cut From “Real Housewives Of NJ”?

Four Naked Women, Vodka On Tap And A Hot Tub

Jenna Fischer: It’s A Boy!

Madonna To Perform At Super Bowl Halftime


Frock Horror! Lindsay Lohan Supports Kanye At His Paris Fashion Show

Kristen Stewart Covers GQ

Homeland Posts Best Ratings For Showtime Drama Debut In 8 Years

“Friday Night Lights” QB Zach Gilford Joins Schwartzenegger’s “Last Stand”



FOREIGNERS
Libyan Rebels Launch “Final Assault” On Gadhafi Stronghold Of Sirte
Palestinians Disagree On What Their Version Of “Arab Spring” Would Be
Dalai Lama Calls Off South Africa Visit Over Visa; RSA Bowing To PRC Pressure?
Iraq Hostage Standoff Comes To Bloody End
Putin’s Impending Return To Power Leads Some Russians To Consider Leaving
South Pacific Water Shortage Hits Tokelau



BLOGS & STUFF
Lonely Conservative: Hank Jr. Booted By ESPN After Bizarre “Fox & Friends” Interview
Legal Insurrection: Cain’s Mistake?
The Crawdad Hole: Who’s To Blame For That?
Weasel Zippers: ABC/WAPo Poll Says Majority Expect Obama To Be One-Term President
Big Government: Solyndra Investor, Obama Donor Warned President Not To Visit
Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
PJ Tatler: Government Global Warming Pimp Rakes In The Outside Dough
Kara Swisher: PuffHo At One BIIIIILLLLLIIIION Monthly Page Views
Ed Morrissey: Great New Idea From The Hollywood Left – Behead The Bankers
Fox Nation: Ron Paul Says Obama Could Be Impeached


SOTD: Midnight To Midnight

Category: Live at Five

Attention, Bandwagon Jumpers: All Aboard the Fatty McAwesome Express!

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 110 Comments

The biggest news today? The Florida poll showing Rick Perry in a distant fourth place (!) behind Newt Gingrich (!!), while Herman Cain has surged to within 4 points of Mitt Romney in the Sunshine Evil State.

And in the unscientific (but not insignificant) Hot Air Straw Poll, it’s Herman Cain 39%, Sarah Palin 32%, Rick Perry 12%, Mitt Romney 5% (hat-tip Gary Jackson).

The Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion of the once-vaunted Perry juggernaut explains two things:

  1. Erick Erickson’s first baby steps toward a walk-back of Red State’s “Perry über alles” totalitarian solidarity motif; and
  2. Rumors that Perry allies are planning a scorched-earth smear campaign against Herman Cain.

Remember you heard that rumor here first and, when the hit-piece on Cain comes out, remember that Perry’s supporters are behind it.

Meanwhile, Matt Lewis hears that Chris Christie’s supporters have been told to gather in Trenton for a Thursday announcement, which would match Steve Forbes saying a Christie announcement is expected within 72 hours. (Both via AOSHQ Headlines.)

Those of you who’ve been jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon — T-Paw or Bachmann or Perry — this might just be the last bandwagon leaving the 2012 GOP station. And if you like ’em large, loud and kinda Romney-like, Christie’s your man.

You might want to wait until Thursday, however, before jumping aboard the Fatty McAwesome Express, because his announcement may be “no.” He’s said “no” over and over again, and I have no idea why he’s letting himself be talked into a “maybe,” but if he says “yes,” then you can expect him to become this year’s Giuliani, sucking up lots of MSM attention and getting praise from the Peggy Noonan types. And then he’ll lose badly, but only after providing three or four months of employment for Republican campaign operatives who couldn’t get hired by Romney.

I’ve got nothing against Christie, per se. He seems affable and smart and about as conservative as any New Jersey Republican can be, but that’s not going to win him any primaries, The upside? By becoming the MSM favorite, Christie could finally push Huntsman off the debate stage, which is long overdue.

The shake-out? If Christie gets in, I expect Bachmann finally to quit, with many of her Iowa supporters going to Rick Santorum. Depending on how bad the Perry hit on Cain is — and I’m told they expect to hurt him bad — there could be a lot of flux between now and the end of the month. There are many variables in play (some people say Sarah Palin might still jump in), but by Sunday we’ll know whether or not Christie’s in the race, and by Oct. 13 or 14, we’ll have some polls to measure the impact.

The next debate is Oct. 18 in Las Vegas. We’re planning to be there and by “we,” of course, I mean me, Smitty and Wombat. He’s been doing good work; he deserves the trip; hit the freaking tip jar.

UPDATE: After about three hours sleep, I wake up, check the comments and see some of y’all going after each other with knives down there. People need to chill with the accusations of bad faith against, e.g., Pagan Temple, who’s been commenting here forever. I mean, I’m not offering to co-sign a loan for PT or anything, I just don’t think attacking him personally helps anyone’s cause.

Furthermore, the reason I tipped y’all to the rumor that an anti-Cain attack was coming — and that Perry supporters were behind it — is that I’ve seen campaigns do oppo-research dumps in the “no fingerprints” way, so that when bad stuff comes out on a candidate, you don’t know where it came from. The tip I got was both vague and specific: While I wasn’t told what they were going to hit Cain with, or where it would be published, I was told that a hit was coming, and that it was Perry’s supporters who were pushing it. Notice I said Perry’s supporters, not Perry’s campaign, because I don’t know whether there was that kind of official involvement.

And let’s face it: That “N–rhead” rock story had to come from somewhere. Your natural instinct would be to blame the Romney people for it, of course. But then I remember that many key people on Perry’s team dumped all over Newt on their way out the door of Newt’s campaign, so this could be payback for that. On the other hand, maybe this was Texas enemies of Perry getting their own revenge for whatever reason.

We should look on the bright side of all this, however: This is what’s called “vetting,” and a hyper-competitive primary where the candidates are all cutting each other to ribbons is sure to produce a battle-hardened nominee when it’s finished. If the Democrats try to bring up something ugly during the general election campaign, let’s hope it’s something that has already come out during the primnary campaign, so even the liberal media will say, “Old news!”

Category: Chris Christie, Election 2012, Polls
« go back — keep looking »

    About

    This is an area on your website where you can add text. This will serve as an informative location on your website, where you can talk about your site.

    Subscribe to our feed

    Search

    Admin