The Other McCain

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

Can Jim Rutledge and Charles Lollar Beat Barbara Mikulski and Steny Hoyer?

Posted on | September 5, 2010 | 25 Comments

Why the heck not? If my alma mater, Jacksonville (Ala.) State University, can beat Ole Miss, anything is possible. If there really is going to be a Republican tsunami Nov. 2 Read more

Category: Congress, Election, Maryland, Republicans, Senate

Bloggers Surprised GOP Under-reacting To Unproven Tea Party Commitment To Long-Term Agend– Oh . . . Shiny!

Posted on | September 5, 2010 | 68 Comments

by Smitty

Without the slightest disrespect to Dan Riehl and his point, the GOP isn’t ready to lead, one should ask the question: lead what?

First, I’m not here to pat myself on the back. On the Geller scale, I would fall well short of asserting I’m doing “enough” to support American renewal.

Second, let’s not go counting ourselves a representative sample. We hold a lot of truths self-evident in the dextrosphere. Conservativism is a largely common-sense, Constitutional affair, modulo occasional thumb-wrestling over the sort-order of fiscal vs. religious concerns. However, the country is still largely asleep at the switch over the dangers of Progressive statism. Things self-evident to friendly bloggers may not generalize, or be felt as intensely by the population at large. Yes, polls are trending this direction, which brings me to my next point.

Third, Politics is attrition warfare. We can state, with decreasing certainty, the following points:

  1. The election in two months will favor the GOP at all levels.
  2. The GOP will control the House of Representatives.
  3. The GOP will control the Senate.
  4. The GOP will hold an effective veto-override majority in Congress.
  5. The Tea Party will continue to influence the GOP along Federalist lines through the 2012 election.
  6. The Tea Party will succeed in flushing the GOP of Progressive, RINO tendencies, past 2012.

Given that analysis, let’s return to the complaint that the House GOP seems deer-in-the-headlights, when something a little more fiery and less card-held-close-to-the-chest would seem to be appropriate amongst those of us who fancy we Get It.
While it is crucial to continue on as we are, calling it as we see it, giving napalm showers to any knob needing such, let’s allow for some unknown unknowns. Specifically, the magnitude of conservative victory in November is still speculative, and the staying power of Tea Party determination.
When the closets are thrown open, and the Federal financial skeletons come tumbling out, and it turns out that the lying liars were deceptively understating the magnitude of the crisis, and we’re suddenly twice, thrice as screwed as we think we are now, does the Tea Party wet itself? Does it double down in determination to Fix This Noise?
The greatest unproven element here is patience. With the political wind, like any physical wind, you cannot sail straight into it. Movement upwind involves tacking and jibing to cross distance against the wind. We sometimes act as though the GOP should be a shaft-driven vessel, capable of going flank three straight upwind. Not the case. The same procedural inertia that substantially dampened the Democrat Party majorities in the 111th Congress will work the other direction, as well.
The crucial role of blogs will be to sustain the focus and intensity of the Tea Parties, even when the toughest Rand Pauls, Scott Browns, Joe Millers, Christine O’Donnells, Allen Wests, &c. are forced to eat tough votes for reasons that may not ever clearly be articulated.
I submit, without warranty, that Speaker Boehner in 2017, still backed by a strong Tea Party movement, will be cruising through Progressives with the subtlety of the USS Constitution wrecking an enemy.  But, if We The People lose heart, or become distracted, then all bets are off.

Category: Dan Riehl, Republicans

Rule 5 Sunday Part 1

Posted on | September 5, 2010 | 10 Comments

by Smitty

What can I say? I’m rather a sad little blogging junkie. As Wombat Rampant noted about Rule 5 the night before Restoring Honor, “You’ve got to give the people what they want.”

In other words, the opposite of the White House anti-Rule 5 disaster in the Oval Office. The Twitter hash was brutal. What I thought was my personal best:

But enough of that jacking about, on with the show. Read more

Category: Rule 5

Conservative Girl With A Voice Is A Bristol Palin Fan

Posted on | September 5, 2010 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

We’ll see if it’s still rattling around the TiVo when we get home, but CGWAV likes Bristol on the Jay Leno show.

My question is how she’d fare in a celebrity cage match with ol’ Dirty Sexy Politics. I’m guessing that M&M’s candy butt wouldna do so weel.

Category: Blogging

Palin Derangement Syndrome Outbreak: There Are Still Five A’s in Raaaaacism

Posted on | September 4, 2010 | 91 Comments

“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”
— Rhett Butler, Gone With the Wind

Some things are predictable — i.e., that the Palin-haters would decide it was a good time to recycle the old SPLC/LGF attacks on me in order to exploit my interview with Todd Palin for a guilt-by-association smear. When Rachel Maddow tried the same trick last fall — based on my friend Lynn Vincent’s collaboration with Sarah Palin on Going Rogue — I made a few points in my response:

I don’t have to explain myself or prove a negative. . . .
There is no obligation for me to speak a word in my own defense.

Earlier this year, I described the Left’s tactics in dealing with an LGF attack on Dennis Prager:

  • Bad Faith – The accusation that conservatives are motivated by bad faith (mala fides) is essential to the Left’s attacks. Stigmatizing and marginalizing conservatives is much easier than debating them. Cogent arguments about policy become unnecessary to advancing the Left’s political agenda if they can dismiss its opponents as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.
  • The Ransom Note Method – By carefully selecting “evidence” of bad faith, the Left is able to present a distorted image of its conservative targets. Out-of-context quotes and controversial biographical data are cherry-picked and re-assembled (in the manner of a kidnapper assembling a ransom note) to present the target in the most damning possible light. This method is particularly effective against conservative talk-radio personalities who engage in polemic battle with leftists. This is why Media Matters devotes such enormous resources to monitoring talk radio in hopes of grabbing a 40-second “gotcha” sound-bite.
  • The ‘Links and Ties’ Method – More than simple guilt-by-association, the Links-and-Ties Method involves presenting a chain of incidental connections to suggest a sympathy of views that does not actually exist. To wit: Target A once spoke at Event B which was sponsored by Group C, co-founded by Person D who once made controversial statement E. By this method, it is implied that Target A actually endorses Statement E.
  • Telescoping and Telepathy – The actions, statements and associations of a conservative target acquire a trans-temporal permanence in the smear attacks of the Left. Once a target is associated (however incidentally) with controversy, this association can be repeated endlessly as evidence of bad faith, no matter how many years intervene. Furthermore, if the target is associated in Year X with a respectable person or organization that becomes controversial in Year X+5, that association can be cited in Year X+10 as evidence against the target – even if the target had no involvement in the cause of controversy. Finally, all evidence of bad faith accumulated by these methods is presented as indicative of the target’s deepest and unwavering personal convictions, as if the accuser were possessed of telepathic mind-reading abilities.
  • Deny, Denounce, Repudiate – The key to these attack methods is the presumption of the target’s guilt. The accuser, having carefully selected the evidence to be discussed in the manner of a prosecutor making an indictment, demands that the target deny the accusation, denounce the bad-faith views involved, and repudiate the persons and organizations to whom he has been connected by the links-and-ties method. As anyone who has been targeted by such attacks can attest, it’s rather like being accused in one of Stalin’s infamous Moscow “show trials.”

What is at the root of this game is the accuser’s moral authority to act as Grand Inquisitor. The accuser arrogates to himself the unquestionable righteousness to judge the accused, who is then expected to attempt to prove his innocence.

If you play that game, you’re accepting the accuser’s authority.

The idiocy of the accusation that I am a “white supremacist” ought to be obvious: What, exactly, does “white supremacist” mean in 2010? Have I ever advocated any such policy? Do I hatefully derogate non-whites or espouse some bizarre theory of racial superiority?

I do not, and never have.

Remember that it is not sufficient proof of such a serious charge to say that, over the course of a long career, I have occasionally made ill-considered statements or that I have associated with people whose reputations may be even worse than my own. In the first instance, I’ve written many thousands of words which my accusers never bother to cite — e.g., my 2008 feature about Lt. Col. Allen West or my April profile of Vernon Parker — and in the second instance, a journalist necessarily makes a wide range of acquaintances.

I don’t like being told what to think or what to say, and I don’t make a habit of letting other people decide who I can be friends with. Some of my conservative friends can’t understand why I’m friends with that horrible reprobate Dave Weigel, for example, while my liberal friends — and I do have some of those — are shocked that I’m friends with that nasty Dan Riehl fellow. (I may even be part of Dan’s “ilk“!)

Having many friends who can vouch for my bona fides — people of good reputation who know me personally and never once had cause to think of me as a racist hatemonger — I expect that many voices will defend me from the likes of Phil Munger, an instigator of this latest attack.

Hate is against my religion. If I am commanded to pray for my enemies, why then should I hate entire races of people whom I’ve never met and who have done me no harm?

If I do not hate, neither will I fear. There are important stories I need to be covering, and I’ve got better things to do than to seek vengeance on a bunch of pissant “progressives” whose only claim to fame is their vicious obsession with the Palins. I’m past caring what such people think of me, but if I am called on to fight in defense of the good name of the Palins, I’m prepared again to invoke the war oath of Clan Cameron:

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil! 

“Sons of the hounds, come here and get flesh!”

And there are still five A’s in raaaaacism.

UPDATE: Linked by Jehuda the Rhetorican — thanks! BTW, if you don’t know who Phil Munger is, here’s a reminder:

Within hours of her death, [Rachel] Corrie was transformed from human being to sacred symbol, an icon revered by the “Blame Israel First” crowd. She was subsequently glorified in a cantata composed by a University of Alaska professor (who has since become a notorious anti-Palin blogger) and in a play that ran for 48 performances on Broadway.
Exploited to advance the anti-Israel cause, this symbolic Rachel Corrie functions in death as the real Rachel Corrie functioned in life, scapegoating Jews and acting as a human shield for terrorists.

Yeah: Munger composed the St. Pancake Cantata. He’s one of those anti-Israel types who constitute the Sirhan Sirhan wing of the Democratic Party. He doesn’t believe in the Book of Genesis, you see, so he doesn’t take Chapter 12, Verse 3 seriously.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE III: Let’s see, I went to Wasilla on Thursday and two days later, Joe McGinniss decides he’s moving out? Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

UPDATE IV: Linked by Rich Crowther at Conservatives for Palin, Joe at Valley of the Shadow, No Sheeples Here, Sissy Willis, Gathering of Eagles, Pirate’s Cove, and Dan at Gay Patriot. 

Dave C at Point of a Gun reminds us of the liberal argument: “Shut up!”

Now a thread at Memeorandum.

UPDATE V: Linked by Patrick at Political Byline and by Da Tech Guy who describes me thus:

[H]e is an interesting passenger to share a car with, he is on perpetual hyper-drive, smokes like a chimney and is a coffee vampire.

“Coffee Vampires for Palin” would be a great blog name.

UPDATE VI: Piece of Work in Progress is also a great blog name.

Category: Alaska, Racism, Sarah Palin

Ladd Ehlinger WSJ Making-Of Clip

Posted on | September 4, 2010 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Ladd Ehlinger tweets that the WSJ has finally posted the behind-the-scenes look at the filming of his now-viral Jane Harman ad:
It appears that, for reasons of good taste, the Stacy McCain covered-in-pudding moment was edited out, leading to outbursts of hate in the Haight.
Go, Mattie Fein! Also, watch carefully, as John Dennis uses a bad word!

Previously:

“Ahmadinejad Was. . .My Boyfriend!”

Category: California, Mattie Fein, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Video

Jax State 49, Ole Miss 48

Posted on | September 4, 2010 | 11 Comments

In double overtime!

Down 48-41 in double overtime, Jacksonville State found itself in a fourth-and-long situation. After a few seconds of mad scrambling, quarterback Coty Blanchard flung the ball to Kevyn Cooper in the end zone, over 30 yards away. Cooper barely got one foot in bounds for the score.
And then, Jacksonville State coach Jack Crowe elected to go for it all, calling a two-point conversion that paid off. And all of a sudden, Jacksonville State, ranked No. 17 in FCS, has pulled off a major upset of a storied football school, and in dramatic fashion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Jacksonville State University Marching Southerners:

“Courage, pride and honor will lead you on to victory!”

Why does this feel like an omen?

Category: Alabama, Football

Dan Riehl Has His Own ‘Ilk’?

Posted on | September 4, 2010 | 40 Comments

According to Stephen Bainbridge:

By letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, Riehl and his ilk are ensuring themselves of a pure minority.

The rest of us in the blogosphere are now jealous of Dan. What do we have to do to get our own ilks?

Is supporting Christine O’Donnell sufficient to qualify us as members of the Riehl ilk? I’m thinking he could make some money off this: “Dan Riehl Got His Own Ilk and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

BTW, I’m back home. The flight from Anchorage sucked. I took a red-eye, but only got two hours’ sleep on the plane. Just now woke up from a two-hour nap. Still feeling fuzzy-brained.

Update (Smitty): Yep, that one’s for the books (h/t the Mighty Melissa):

Category: Christine O'Donnell, Dan Riehl, Delaware, Election, Republicans, Senate
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