The Other McCain

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

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

“He’s Not The King. He’s The President. He’s Elected Just Like The Rest Of Us”

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 13 Comments

by Smitty

Peter Robinson interviews Rep. Paul Ryan in an excellent palate-cleanser. It’s 17 kinds of awesome to be home, with bandwidth, and have a chance to enjoy this. It’s also fantastic that a state which could produce a bloggerwho posts a picture of a ballerina sitting in a tree, wearing galoshes and a stormtrooper helmet (I guess that’s dating in Wisconsin for you) could also produce a statesman of the caliber of Ryan. Trog must have been part of the bargain, somehow.

Click to view at NRO online

Post title comes at 3:25 in the clip. Ryan, you rock.

Category: Health Care, Paul Ryan, Troglopundit

Rick Perry Dissed by ‘Most Influential Blog in the Conservative Movement’

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 58 Comments

If I were Rick Perry’s campaign manager, I think I’d be worried by the sound of that rumbling engine and the smell of diesel fumes:

“My problem with Perry is pretty straight forward. I’ve been muttering to myself since that third debate, ‘My God. This guy is undefeated?’ “
— Erick Erickson, “I Hate You”

Wasn’t it barely six weeks ago that Red Staters were publicly impugning the “intellect and integrity” of anyone — and last time I checked, Michelle Malkin was still someone — who criticized the smilin’ Texan?

And then there was that newspaper article I missed while I was in Iowa covering the Ames Straw Poll:

Perry’s announcement highlights
RedState’s growing influence
“RedState has emerged as the most influential blog in the conservative movement,” Republican political consultant Matt Mackowiak said. . . .

So if the Perry announcement was a testament to the “growing influence” of Red State, whose influence had indeed grown so overwhelming that they were willing to throw Malkin under their bus, what does it mean when Erick Erickson starts publicly dissing Perry?

Excuse me for thinking that the Texas governor’s strategist Dave Carney — who didn’t hesitate to throw Newt Gingrich under his own bus — probably isn’t sleeping too well lately, tossing and turning while the sound of a roaring diesel engine haunts his nightmares.

And the title of Erickson’s post reminds me of an old Ronnie Milsap song:


Category: Election 2012, Red State, Rick Perry

What She Said, and What I Said

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 23 Comments

“While the Post tries to impose an old narrative on Perry and squeeze blood from a stone, the reality is that Perry has gone out of his way to pander to left-wing impulses on race.
“This is the guy that has disparaged his own base as racist in two separate GOP debates.
“Remember? . . .
“Remember? . . .
“It sucks to be falsely accused of racism.
“Maybe Rick Perry, now under siege by the ruthless race card-playing media, will remember that the next time he’s tempted to accuse conservatives who disagree with him of heartless bigotry.”
— Michelle Malkin, “Rick Perry and the Macaca Media,” Oct. 3

“Call me crazy. Attribute my forebodings of doom to irrational prejudice. Say what you will, and I don’t care, but I felt a need to put on the record my instinctive sense that there’s something fundamentally wrong about the Perry campaign. . . . Some kind of catastrophe will result, one way or another.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Young Minions of the Sith Lord of Texas,” Aug. 9

Look, just because I warned you something bad would happen — just because the Jedi master’s foresight has been vindicated by events — doesn’t mean that I’m happy to see the shocking fulfillment of my prophecy. And I am profoundly unhappy that the media have drawn Herman Cain into this ginned-up controversy:

Just when Rick Perry was coming up with a stronger answer on his immigration vulnerability, just when he was starting to show progress in New Hampshire, and just before he might have some good news to announce (his 3rd quarter fundraising report), comes another damaging story for the Texas governor. As the Washington Post reported over the weekend, a racial epithet had been displayed at a hunting camp that he and his family had leased. The story got additional legs when Herman Cain, the only African American in the 2012 GOP field, piled on. “I think that it shows a lack of sensitivity for a long time of not taking that word off of that rock and renaming the place,” Cain told ABC yesterday. “It’s just basically a case of insensitivity.”

Republican primary voters don’t much care for lectures on “sensitivity” and, while it is certainly true that Mama would have washed my mouth out with soap if she had ever heard me say that word — the Texas word for “macaca,” as it were — it doesn’t benefit Cain’s campaign for him to bite the bait when the media dangle it in front of him. Political considerations aside, however, Ed Morrissey has a solid point:

I don’t find it at all surprising that Cain . . . would have an immediate and emotional reaction to this story.  It seems almost churlish to scold him for calling it “insensitive,” a rather mild criticism considering the nature of the term.

Every man is the judge of his own honor. If I say that you’ve insulted me, it only compounds the insult for you to tell me that no insult was intended, because it requires a special sort of contempt for a man to claim that you’ve insulted him by accident. If you have respect for someone, you should take care not to insult them, and so the properly respectful response when someone you respect takes umbrage is to apologize for the insult, rather than to defend yourself by protesting the accidental nature of the offense.

Whatever the history of the now-infamous “N–rhead” hunting ranch, however, I think we can also agree that Republicans feel insulted by accusations of racism, and the sooner this unfortunate incident becomes yesterday’s news, the better for all concerned.

Will this slow Herman Cain’s momentum? I certainly hope not. People are coming to know him as a candidate who speaks his mind, a trait that they appreciate even when he says things they wish he hadn’t said.

And I think we can all agree that racism in Alabama is a terrible thing.

Category: Herman Cain, Michelle Malkin, Racism, Rick Perry

When It Rains, It Pours

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 14 Comments

Herman Cain Set to Win S.C. Debate
— headline, Wednesday, May 4

Things keep happening that nobody but me predicted, and predictions that were ignored when I made them are forgotten when they come true. A commenter on a previous post said, “The whining is unbecoming,” to which I replied, “An admission of failure is not ‘whining.’ ”

Just as nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails like failure, and when that first tiny snowball of fail starts rolling downhill, expect an avalanche.

It is not in the least surprising, therefore, to see my friend Sunshine State Sarah aggregating May headlines about Herman Cain, none of them as prescient as my pre-debate prediction of Cain’s victory in Greenville.

Obviously, my friend Sarah did not consciously set out to humiliate me. It is simply that the sources she cites — Erick Erickson at Red State, Patrick O’Connor at the Wall Street Journal, Tony Lee at Human Events — are respected, authoritative and influential, as I am not.

This is why the Massive Cosmic Bitch-Slap of 2:21 p.m. ET Sunday struck me with such overpowering force. If ever the universe reached out to tap me on the shoulder and say, “You’ve failed,” that was it. And failure has no educational value if you refuse to admit you’ve failed.

By God, I hate failure and I despise defeat. It gives me no pleasure to call attention to my public embarrassment, to advertise the fact of my professional failure. The psychic pain is so intense that my fingers tremble with rage to type these words, as I behold my entire career — everything I’ve ever accomplished in my life as a journalist — mocked and spurned as if it were a complete waste of time.

“Line up and look him in the eye and say, ‘I’m going to beat you today,’ and then knock him on his butt. Hit him as hard as you can, then come back on the next play and do it again. Just keep at it until you’ve got him beat.”

Tim Crunk calling plays in the huddle with tears in his eyes is the kind of lesson that’s hard to forget. I have failed, but I am not yet defeated.

Because I didn’t come this far to start losing now.


Category: Cargo Cult of the Blog Gods, Football, Herman Cain, Sunshine State Sarah

Looking Up From Here, It’s Barely Possible to See the Bottom of ‘Down’

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 16 Comments

BREAKING: South Carolina
to hold primary on January 21

A friend sent me that on Twitter and then, via Memeorandum, I saw this:

Nevada Republicans decided Saturday to move up the GOP presidential caucuses to January to preserve the state’s early voting spot, although it will cost the Silver State half its delegates at the national convention.
The GOP executive board voted to go ahead with plans to hold its caucuses on the Saturday following New Hampshire, once that state decides a new date. It will be after the traditional first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

This just confirms what I wrote Friday at The American Spectator:

A Jan. 31 date for Florida’s primary would result in four other events on the presidential campaign calendar — the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, and the Nevada caucuses — also leap-frogging to January dates.

But nobody bothered to read what I wrote on Friday, and nothing I write about it now could possibly make any difference.

Because I don’t know nothing about no Florida primary.

PREVIOUSLY:

Category: Cargo Cult of the Blog Gods, Election 2012, Florida, Nevada, South Carolina

Unlike Alex Pappas …

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 18 Comments

. . . Mark Block never returns my phone calls:

The man who talked Herman Cain into running for president, and plotted a strategy that has the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO surging in the GOP presidential race, knows both highs and lows.
Mark Block was the first 18-year-old ever elected to office in Wisconsin when he was voted onto the Winnebago County Board of Supervisors in 1974.
Yet he was also banned from politics in Wisconsin for three years and forced to pay a $15,000 fine after being accused by the Wisconsin State Elections Board of violating election law in 1997 as campaign manager to state Supreme Court Justice Jon P. Wilcox. . . .
“Politics at times is ugly,” Block, who worked as an official at Americans for Prosperity before becoming Cain’s chief of staff and campaign manager this year, explained during an interview with The Daily Caller. . . .

An interview with the Daily Caller! Wow! But I’m sure Alex’s story is probably already linked elsewhere by now, so why bother commenting?

Because I don’t know nothing about no Herman Cain.

Category: Cargo Cult of the Blog Gods, Herman Cain

No Joy (McCann) in Mudville

Posted on | October 3, 2011 | 37 Comments

Several commenters have been wondering why I haven’t blogged about Herman Cain’s victory in yesterday’s straw poll. Others have tried to bait me into writing about Rick Perry’s “N–rhead” hunting camp, or Cain’s comments about that controversy.

Short answer: Because there is no point in my doing so.

I’m not Michael Barone or Jennifer Rubin.

I’m not Byron York or John Podhoretz or Ann Althouse or Ed Morrissey.

Having somehow offended the god of the cargo cult, I’ve abandoned false hope and surrendered to reality: Nothing I write about politics matters and there is no point pretending it does. Rather than continue showing up at a party where I’m so obviously unwelcome, I’ve decided to heed the message and relieve the invited guests of my annoying presence.

Joy McCann knows everything about Texas and racism and Herman Cain, and she has lots of friends whose opinions she cares about.

Me? I don’t know nothing about no Herman Cain.

If you see John Frum, tell him I said hello.

Category: Cargo Cult of the Blog Gods, Herman Cain, Little Miss Attila
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