Gingrich Uses ‘Accountable’ In The Context Of The Obama Administration

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by Smitty (via PuffHo)

“The president says he has full confidence in Secretary Chu despite [the Solyndra] scandal,” Gingrich wrote on his website. “What kind of confidence can we have in a president who refuses to hold his cabinet officers accountable?”

Ha ha ha.

“As President, I would have fired Secretary Chu for so grossly mismanaging taxpayer dollars,” Gingrich continued.

Oh, come on, Newt: you know that’s not how Chicago-upon-Potomac works. Let’s review:

  1. The government borrows public money via moronic legislation and Democrat tools give it to idiots with low animal cunning.
  2. Their low animal cunning dominates initially, and the idiots give the kickback to the Democrats.
  3. Then the idiocy kicks in, and the idiotic ventures end, well, idiotically.
  4. The Democrats blame Bush horoscopes Tea Parties.
  5. ???
  6. Profit!

Newt cares not a fig for the Underpants Gnome Administration’s methodology, however:

“My 21st Century Contract with America calls for moving power out of Washington and back to the states and the people, to reduce the arbitrary power of federal bureaucrats. It also calls for a complete overhaul of the federal government’s work rules, processes and bureaucracies using proven private sector waste reduction and productivity improvement techniques like Lean Six Sigma.”

Yeah, the Contract with America is to Newt what RomneyCare is to Bruce Campbell’s political doppelgänger. We need neither a Contract with America, nor RomneyCare: we need leaders who grasp the mission to load-shed the pile of cruft that is DC’s overreach.

Update: Surber ‘lanche!

CAMPAIGN FOCUS: Will Rick Santorum Be the Next GOP ‘Flavor of the Week’?

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Recent media coverage of the Republican presidential field has focused on the front-runners, especially Herman Cain’s emergence as a contender. Little attention has been paid to a candidate who may be poised to make a move: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Santorum could benefit from recent developments, including the apparent decline of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign. It was reported this week that several of Bachmann’s key staffers have left the campaign, and the third-quarter fundraising report due Oct. 15 is expected to show the Tea Party favorite’s coffers running low.

Bachmann surged in the polls after a strong performance in a June 13 debate in New Hampshire, and scored a big victory Aug. 13 in the Iowa GOP Straw Poll. Bachmann’s win at Ames knocked her fellow Minnesotan, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, out of the race, but the entry of Texas Gov. Rick Perry into the Republican field — at the Red State Gathering in South Carolina the same day as the Ames event — deprived her of the boost she might have expected from her Iowa success. Meanwhile, few in the media noticed that Santorum’s low-budget Iowa campaign had managed a fourth-place finish at Ames.

Perry’s stumbles in three debates in September – Sept. 7 at the Reagan Library, Sept. 12 in Tampa and Sept. 22 in Orlando – were followed by Cain’s surprise victory in the Sept. 24 Florida GOP straw poll. Since then, a series of polls have shown a steep decline in Perry’s support. While Perry was melting down in the September debates, many observers praised Santorum’s strong performances, especially in the Orlando debate, where Santorum hit Perry hard on the immigration issue.

With Bachmann’s campaign evidently in trouble, and Perry’s once-promising campaign thrown off-stride, Santorum could be positioned to gain support particularly among social conservatives who have historically played a key role in the Iowa caucuses. Florida’s decision to move up its primary to Jan. 31 means that Iowa will also move up its caucuses — perhaps as soon as late December — and Santorum has worked hard to build a grassroots organization in the Hawkeye State.

Santorum just completed another three-day swing through Iowa, telling a group in a small town Monday that “no candidate is working Iowa like I am.” And Santorum got good news Tuesday from New Hampshire, picking up the endorsement of former state Rep. Bill Cahill, who will serve as co-chairman of the Santorum campaign in the Granite State. (See full text of press release below.)

The 2012 Republican campaign so far has been defined by candidates rising and falling as “flavor of the week,” as Sarah Palin said. With two debates scheduled in coming weeks — Oct. 11 in Hanover, N.H. and Oct. 18 in Las Vegas, Nev. — Santorum will have a chance to make his case as the next flavor to challenge the front-runner vanilla of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

*** TEXT OF SANTORUM PRESS RELEASE ***

SANTORUM NAMES BILL CAHILL
NEW HAMPSHIRE CO-CHAIRMAN
AND SENIOR ADVISOR
Former Executive Councilor and State Representative
endorses Santorum for President

Verona, PA – Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) announced today that his campaign has received the endorsement of former Executive Councilor and State Representative Bill Cahill. Cahill will serve as Santorum’s New Hampshire Co-Chairman and Senior Advisor alongside Claira Monier.
Bill Cahill said, “I am excited to endorse Rick Santorum for President of the United States and I look forward to serving as the Senator’s New Hampshire Co-Chairman. Senator Santorum has shown he is committed to New Hampshire and has the work ethic Granite Staters demand from their candidates. The Senator’s passion and commitment to conservative principles are exactly what our nation needs right now to get back on track.”
Claira Monier said, “I am excited to work with Bill to help propel Senator Santorum to victory in New Hampshire. From working with Senator Santorum’s campaign since he announced, it is clear that he respects New Hampshire’s role as the First-in-the-Nation primary state and does not take our votes for granted. His commitment to New Hampshire and the nation is without doubt, and we look forward to making him our next president.”
Senator Santorum said, “I am honored to have Bill’s endorsement and thrilled that he will serve as a Senior Advisor and my New Hampshire Co-Chairman. Bill has a strong track-record of helping conservative candidates and a long history of standing up for conservative principles in both volunteer and elected positions. Bill is an esteemed member of the New Hampshire community and I look forward to working with him as we move toward victory in the First-in-the-Nation primary!”
Bill Cahill, of Piermont, is a former Executive Councilor from District 3 and a former New Hampshire State Representative. Cahill has served in numerous volunteer leadership positions on various presidential campaigns, including the 2008 campaign of Senator Fred Thompson and most recently as a member of Governor Tim Pawlenty’s New Hampshire steering committee. Cahill is the founder and CEO of Cahill Public Affairs, LLC.


Mead Was Nearly Onto Something There

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by Smitty

Walter Russell Mead shoots. . .it rolls around the rim. . .falls out. Sonofa. (Emphasis mine):

For all the brouhaha over the Citizens United decision, however, campaign finance reform was never the ideal way to reduce the influence of special interests on politicians. Despite the howling from the commentariat about “opening the floodgates” of corporate money into politics, I have never been able to see how regulating the ability of people to spend their own money on elections is anything but a violation of the most basic of civil liberties.
That doesn’t mean I’m not worried about the mix of political ambition and corporate self-interest. But it might make more sense to work on this problem from the demand side: reducing the incentive for lobby groups to pump money into politics by reducing the discretionary ability of lawmakers to tinker with the tax system.

I have infinite faith in the capacity of lawmakers, given time and a system, to arrive at a work-around. Thus, I have little faith in the capacity of legislation to bind any Congresscritters.

The real hope would be to minimize the corruption by scaling the system down, and making it as transparent as possible. Scaling down means using the enumerated powers of the Constitution. Making it as transparent as possible means that, short of no-kidding existential threat like Imperial Japan, we Just. Don’t. Run. Deficits.

But no, let’s compromise. If we only smoke just a little crack, maybe the public noggin won’t totally ‘splode.

New Polls Confirm Presidential Surge of Best-Selling Author Herman Cain

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Three national polls published since the Florida straw poll on Sept. 24:

ABC News/Wash Post (9/29 – 10/2)

Romney 25% … Cain 17% … Perry 17%

Quinnipiac (9/27 – 10/3)

Romney 22% … Cain 17% … Perry 14%

FOX News (9/25 – 9/27)

Romney 22% … Cain 17% … Perry 19%

Furthermore, the liberal polling firm PPP conducted surveys in three states — North Carolina, West Virginia and Nebraska — and found Cain leading in all three! And here’s your “unexpectedly” news of the day:

Herman Cain is surging in the polls and on the best-seller  charts.
“This is Herman Cain,” a newly released memoir by the businessman and Republican presidential candidate, was in the top 10 on Amazon.com as of Tuesday afternoon.
Interest in the book has soared since Cain unexpectedly won the Florida straw poll on Sept. 24.

Just checked the Amazon Associates sales report. So far, we’ve sold three copies of This Is Herman Cain! and for each $13.75 you spend to buy his book, my commission from Amazon is 55 cents. If you bought 10 copies of This Is Herman Cain! I’d get $5.50. Wouldn’t This Is Herman Cain! be an excellent Christmas gift for your family and friends?

RECENTLY:


They Told Glenn Reynolds …

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. . . 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.”

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

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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.

McDonnell & Patrick On Press The Meat

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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.