The Other McCain

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

WARNING: Polls Are Not Campaigns

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 40 Comments

Instapundit links Fisherville Mike’s caution against over-optimism turning into apathy for Republicans. Meanwhile, Karl Rove is trying to forecast the relationship between “generic ballot” polls and the likely GOP gains in November.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

If all you’re doing is following the national polls — Obama’s numbers down, Republican numbers up — you are seriously underestimating the challenges facing the GOP in House races this fall. Some people are giving outlandish estimates of Republicans gaining of 60 or 70 seats, I’ve been talking to individual campaigns and operatives and, as one operative told me this morning, “I’m just not seeing 40 seats out there.”

Yesterday I talked to a California Republican official who referred to the authoritative California Target Book and said he sees the GOP flipping maybe one — or at most three — of the 34 Democrat-held seats in that state. Considering that California has more than 12% of the seats in Congress, if Republicans can flip that official’s high-end estimate of three seats there, they’d then have to flip 37 districts in the other 88% of the country to take control.

Do the math. It ain’t easy. And given the omens in California — where one Republican says gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman “is looking out for herself and herself only” — it’s discouraging to any prospect that the GOP can flip even one House seat there.

When you start taking the House races district-by-district, looking at individual candidates, historic voting trends in their districts, their campaign funding, their current level of organization, etc. . . . Honestly, it’s scary out there.

All of these Democratic incumbents are sitting on huge reserves of campaign cash, and I don’t know of a single district in the country where the Republican challenger has more money than the incumbent Democrat. (If you know of such a situation, please tell me.)

Worse than the money situation, perhaps, is the lack of precinct-level organization by Republicans. This was a basic problem in the PA-12 special election. With the help of the NRCC, the Tim Burns campaign was able to roughly match the Democrats in terms of money, but the local GOP didn’t have the kind of organizational infrastructure in terms of county and ward committees necessary to mobilize volunteers for door-to-door canvassing operations.

Phone-banking is important, but even the best phone bank is no substitute for a genuine door-to-door campaign, especially when such canvassing is done by local volunteers contacting their friends and neighbors in their own communities. And, as in PA-12, a basic reason Democrats control these districts is because the local GOP is controlled by weak-minded time-servers who have failed to organize effectively.

All this talk about polls and Republican enthusiasm isn’t translating into anything that operatives can see on the ground. “Meet-and-greets are still five or 10 people,” as someone in a key swing district told me.

Think about that: Here is a Republican candidate who stands a reasonable chance of being elected to Congress. The candidate schedules a lunch or cocktail reception in a town — not a fundraiser, mind you, just a “meet-and-greet.” The campaign invites all the local Republicans, and fewer than 10 people show up.

And we’re barely 10 weeks from Election Day!

Politics is about elections, and the evident unwillingness of conservatives to focus on the basic work of winning elections is starting to worry me. There was a big uproar in the blogosphere this week about Rep. Melissa Bean shutting down questions at a town-hall meeting.

OK, what district does Bean represent? Who is her Republican challenger? What do you know about the district and the campaign? If you read my report at the American Spectator, you know a little:

Illinois’ 8th District, running from the northern suburbs of Chicago up to the Wisconsin border, was held by Republican Phil Crane until 2004, and Bush carried the district with 55% of the vote in 2004. Like many other vulnerable Democrats in this mid-term campaign, Bean has refused to debate her Republican challenger, Joe Walsh.

Reporting that kind of basic research isn’t exciting — it’s not a “scoop” that’s going to get a Drudge link — but it’s necessary, and not enough blogs are doing it. A bit more research reveals that Melissa Bean’s got $1.2 million in campaign cash-on-hand, while her Republican opponent’s got just $30,000. Have you contributed to the Joe Walsh campaign?

While we’re at it, here are campaign finance reports on some House races I’ve been watching:

GA-12

  • D – Rep. John Barrow – $665,000
  • R – Ray McKinney – $77,000

CA-36

  • D – Rep. Jane Harman – $202,000
  • R – Mattie Fein – $2,000

FL-22

  • D – Rep. Ron Klein – $2.8 million
  • R – Allen West – $2.2 million

OK, the good news is that Allen West has closed the gap. The bad news is that there’s still a gap.

If even a genuine GOP rock star like West can’t out-raise his Democrat opponent, we should not be surprised that Ray McKinney and Mattie Fein are facing such tremendous disadvantages in funding. Ray just finished a hard-fought primary runoff campaign and Mattie’s report is from June 30, after she’d spent more than $100,000 to win her primary. And neither of their Democrat opponents is showing a multimillion cash-on-hand balance that would put them out of reach if hundreds of conservatives were to start making $10 and $20 online contributions to the Republican challengers.

My point is that winning a House majority doesn’t “just happen” because polls show the incumbent party is unpopular. Victory requires actual candidates running actual campaigns with actual money and actual volunteers in actual districts.

Unless conservatives start paying attention soon, they’re apt to be sadly disappointed on Nov. 2.

UPDATE: The Ace-o-Lanche! Thanks, man.

Category: Election, Polls, Republicans

The Obama Obsession

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 62 Comments

Da Tech Guy‘s habit of watching Morning Joe on MSNBC, to get a daily read on what liberals are thinking, is a habit I’ve started to adopt. It’s interesting to watch the Obama-centric worldview in action.

Today, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinsksi spent a full ten minutes discussing with Savannah Guthrie and Evan Wolfson this Pew Poll that shows 18% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim. This evidently loomed large in their minds, and at one point Scarborough made reference to the president’s “critics,” as if these unnamed critics were somehow responsible for this perception.

My Republican consultant friend Ali Akbar — who is, in fact, a Southern Baptist from Texas — could probably explain to Joe and Mika that a certain percentage of the public automatically thinks “Muslim” when it hears a name like Barack Hussein Obama. One need not conjure up “critics” to make this phenomenon understandable.

The MSNBC crew, however, evidently consider it their job to superintend Obama’s public image, and so a thick slice of their morning was spent obsessing over this Pew Poll result. And when we learn that this pushback against the Pew Poll is being orchestrated by the White House press shop, we see how Joe and Mika are required to function as administration mouthpieces.

If all you knew about this poll was what you saw on MSNBC, however, you might have missed other results of the Pew Poll. Fortunately, we have Yid With Lid to point out this important finding:

[T]here is widespread agreement that politicians should be religious. Fully 61% say that is important that members of Congress have strong religious beliefs; just 34% disagree.
Majorities across all major religious groups – with the exception of the religiously unaffiliated – agree it is important for members of Congress to have strong religious beliefs. More than eight-in-ten white evangelical Protestants (83%) express this view, as do roughly two-thirds of white non-Hispanic Catholics (66%) and white mainline Protestants (64%). And about seven-in-ten black Protestants (71%) say it is important that lawmakers have strong religious beliefs.

While Joe and Mika were obsessing over Obama’s image problems, they neglected to discuss this: For most Americans, religion is not about identity politics, it’s about having a firm system of morality — a bedrock sense of right and wrong, good and evil. People quite naturally want their political leaders to possess the kind of deep faith that inspires virtue.

Outside the secularized world of the media elite, religion is still viewed as a good thing, and the people want their leaders to be religious.

In other words: Good news!

Too bad Joe and Mika missed that.

UPDATE: Citing a Byron York column, Professor Glenn Reynolds observes: “Obama famously described himself as a blank screen onto which others projected their impressions. This worked for him for a long time. Now, it’s working against him.”

UPDATE II: Brandon Kiser on the “guilty pleasure” of watching Morning Joe:

The liberal talking heads get under my skin, but at least they’re not like Fox and Friends and talking about koalas in Nantucket or something.

Yeah, it’s pretty much all-politics, all-the-time at MSNBC, whereas Fox and Friends mixes in more general-interest news.

Category: Barack Obama, MSNBC, Polls, Religion

Ace Is Absolutely Killing

Posted on | August 20, 2010 | 45 Comments

When he’s on, he’s really on:

It would never even occur to me, or any decent person, to erect a Museum of American Achievements in Aviation in Hiroshima.

And here he makes an analogy so brilliant I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it myself. Having been endlessly lectured by our enlightened betters about the need to be sensitive to the feelings of victims, we are now informed that sensitivity toward the survivors of 9/11 ought to trumped by sensitivity toward Muslims.

We detect here the aroma of those “smelly little orthodoxies which now contend for our souls.”

Category: Ace of Spades

Malibu Plastic Surgeon Dies in Car Crash; Was Driving While Texting About His Dog

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 13 Comments

Not an Onion parody:

Dr. Frank Ryan, plastic surgeon to Heidi Montag and other celebrities, was sending Twitter messages about his border collie before his fatal car accident.
The California Highway Patrol is investigating whether Ryan was texting at the time he crashed Monday . . .
A close friend of Ryan’s says Ryan sent two Twitter messages Monday afternoon with photos taken on the beach, but she expects the CHP will conclude Ryan was not texting when the car went off the cliff.

Via Rob Long, who feels obligated to note:

And let me stipulate, at the outset, that this is of course a terrible tragedy, and my sympathies and condolences go out to his friends, family, and survivors.

Translation: “BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

SHOCKER: Doctors Say Lindsay Lohan Doesn’t Actually Have Mental Disorder

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 20 Comments

She’s not technically crazy, she’s just a part-time lesbian who sometimes makes bad decisions like driving drunk and bleaching her red hair blonde:

[T]he doctors who have evaluated Lindsay Lohan at UCLA have concluded she does not suffer from the drug or psychiatric problems that were previously diagnosed. . . .
We’re told Lindsay has been “weaned off” all of her meds — Dilaudid, Ambien, Adderall, Zoloft, Trazodone and Nexium — and has had no adverse reaction. Likewise, she has had no withdrawal issues in the alcohol department. . . .
And, we’re told Lindsay was misdiagnosed in the past with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) — which is why she started taking Adderall. The UCLA docs say LiLo does not have ADHD.
And finally, as for having psychiatric problems — again the doctors say it’s just not the case. Morningside Recovery — the rehab facility Judge Revel initially chose for Lindsay — determined she was bipolar, but the docs at UCLA say she is not.

OK, let’s take this point by point:

  • Dilaudid? — Dude, that’s a heavy-duty opium-like pain killer. Exactly what illness or infirmity was Lindsay suffering that a doctor prescribed her Dilaudid?
  • Zoloft? — This is an SSRI anti-depressant that can cause all sorts of funky side effects, including nausea, diarrhea, insomnia and increased risk of suicide. Zoloft is also “associated with sexual side effects, including arousal disorder and difficulty achieving orgasm.” Given the downside potential of SSRI treatment, no psychiatrist should prescribe this stuff unless the person is experiencing serious mood disorders that don’t respond to milder treatments.
  • ADHD and/or bipolar disorder? — Here’s your postmodern rush-to-diagnosis problem in a nutshell: People who in a less medicalized society might be described as “high strung” or “moody” are nowadays quickly diagnosed as being afflicted with a psychiatric malady requiring treatment.

God knows what would have become of me if the ADHD diagnosis had been commonplace when I was a talkative, over-energetic child. Back then, they called it “acting up” or “ants in the pants,” and teachers treated it by administering a few swift swats with a paddle.

Andrew Breitbart says he’s been diagnosed with ADHD, but it’s not a debilitating “disorder” so much as it is a personality trait that happens to fit perfectly with the rapid-fire information-processing involved in operating an Internet empire. 

If not every ADHD sufferer is a helpless basket case, neither can everyone whose moods are volatile be classified as clinically afflicted with bipolar disorder. But our medicalized culture pretends that there is a pill for every ill, so when someone like Lindsay Lohan starts experiencing stress — her parents are divorced, her Dad’s a scary wacko, she’s partied herself out of a job or two — doctors are quick to make a diagnosis and give her prescriptions.

So, it’s good news/bad news for Lindsay: The good news is, you’re not psycho. The bad news is, that bleach-blonde look is atrocious.

Category: Celebrities, Health Care, Science

Allahpundit: We Have To Work On Your Rock’N’Roll Picks

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 8 Comments

by Smitty (h/t HotAir)

One is tempted to move off the anti-triumpnalism stance on the news that, apparently, the Lefty think-tanks are nearing acceptance of that which we knew all along about ObamaCare. Our blue state Col. Jessup overlords figured we couldn’t handle it, though: the truth.
When you look at the ultimate slide in the presentation from the Politico link,
…the first thing to come to mind for the Dems is:

The Edge’s list of don’ts is far more helpful and comprehensive for Nancy and the Gang:

Don’t move Don’t talk out of time Don’t think Don’t worry Everything’s just fine Just fine
Don’t grab Don’t clutch Don’t hope for too much Don’t breathe Don’t achieve Or grieve without leave
Don’t check Just balance on the fence Don’t answer Don’t askDon’t try and make sense
Don’t whisper Don’t talk Don’t run if you can walk Don’t cheat competeDon’t miss the one beat
Don’t travel by train Don’t eat Don’t spill Don’t piss in the drain Don’t make a will
Don’t fill out any forms Don’t compensate Don’t cower Don’t crawl Don’t come around late Don’t hover at the gate
Don’t take it on board Don’t fall on your sword Just play another chord If you feel you’re getting bored
Don’t change your brand Don’t listen to the band Don’t gape Don’t ape Don’t change your shape Have another grape
Don’t plead Don’t bridle Don’t shackle Don’t grind Don’t curve Don’t swerve Lie, die, serve
Don’t theorize, realise, polarise Chance, dance,dismiss, apologise
Don’t spy Don’t lie Don’t try Imply Detain Explain Start again
Don’t triumph Don’t coax Don’t cling Don’t hoax Don’t freak Peak Don’t leak Don’t speak
Don’t project Don’t connect Protect Don’t expect Suggest
Don’t project Don’t connect Protect Don’t expect Suggest
Don’t struggle Don’t jerk Don’t collar Don’t work Don’t wish Don’t fish Don’t teach Don’t reach
Don’t borrow Don’t break Don’t fence Don’t steal Don’t pass Don’t press Don’t try Don’t feel
Don’t touch Don’t dive Don’t suffer Don’t rhyme Don’t fantasize Don’t rise Don’t lie
Don’t project Don’t connect Protect Don’t expect Suggest
Don’t project Don’t connect Protect Don’t expect Suggest
I feel numb

That’s 90+ Don’ts, but who was counting?

Something slightly more up-tempo might help the situation a bit more.

And who could capture the moment more cheerfully and appropriately than the Presidents of the United States of America?

I will now retreat into my dour, wet-blanket mode.

The land is in the middle of a full-on disaster. When your Congresstool arrives and (s)he opens the piehole about, well, anything, just laugh. Loud guffawing will do. Speaking from personal experience, the effect, while mildly rude, is not lost.

Category: Health Care, Hot Air

Curious Phrasing, Mr. Appel

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 12 Comments

“In my experience, liberal think tanks and intellectuals dominate most domestic issues while conservative think tanks and intellectuals dominate foreign policy. . . . Democrats have traditionally held an advantage on domestic issues while Republicans have traditionally held an advantage on foreign policy. The intelligentsia of both parties reflect this divide.”
— Patrick Appel, The Atlantic

The terms here that draw immediate attention are “dominate” and “advantage.” Does Appel mean that the intellectuals whom he designates as dominating are more persuasive or better informed? And what of Democrats’ “traditional advantage” on domestic issues? Did this help Jimmy Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984, or Dukakis in 1988?

More recently, the 2000 election was fought almost entirely on domestic issues and, had it not been for a late-breaking DUI “scandal” against Bush, it’s doubtful Al Gore would have won the popular vote that year. Grant that in the 2002-04 cycles Republicans won primarily on foreign-policy terrain, but don’t forget those “values voters” whose allegiance to the GOP was principally a matter of domestic cultural or social issues. In the 2006-08 cycles, of course, the backlash against Bushism was the major trend, driven in large measure by war-weariness, although John McCain’s economic ineptitude (i.e., his frantic support for the unpopular “Bush bailout”) was ultimately decisive in the 2008 campaign.

All of which is to say that Appel’s talk about partisan domination and advantages on areas of policy doesn’t necessarily match the political record and, perhaps more important, doesn’t tell us who is right.

For example, if it is true that conservatives “dominated” and Republicans “held an advantage” in foreign policy during the 2001-’04 time-frame, then it proved a mixed blessing in the long run, as the failure (or at least, perceived failure) of Bush-era foreign policy was deeply implicated in the GOP “brand damage” problem that now haunts Republicans.

So a policy that is politically popular in the short term may bring disaster in the long term and, I hasten to add, it’s entirely possible a policy may both right and unpopular.

Morever, the interaction between politics and policy is such that policy is never purely a matter of who’s got the best ideas. The wrongheadedness of LBJ’s “Great Society” programs, or of Nixon’s wage-and-price control policies, were pointed out by insightful critics at the time but the advocates of good policy did not have sufficient political influence to prevent enactment of bad policy.

Nowadays, of course, demographic trends (especially a burgeoning Hispanic population) so favor Democrats that their party’s long-cherished policy goals are being enacted not because arguments for those policies have suddenly been recognized as factually superior, but rather because they’ve got the votes.

And this returns us to the earlier colloquy with David Frum, who asserts the supremacy of policy (“governance”) over politics. You can’t govern without a majority, you see, and so without successful Republican politics, talk of Republican policy is . . . just talk.

In their present minority status, then, Republicans are compelled to follow the advice of Jennifer Rubin: “The opposition party must oppose.”

Specific policy proposals are less necessary to Republicans now than is the imperative to constantly explain how the policies of Democrats are wrong and harmful, combined with a pledge to stop and (where possible) reverse those policies if elected.

The essential political idea is this: After more than 18 months of “Yes, We Can,” Americans are ready for a healthy dose of “Oh, Hell No, You Won’t!”

How that translates into Frum’s “governance” will be determined after Nov. 2 — a bridge to be crossed when (and if) we get there.

Category: Culture, Politics

Associated (Orwellian) Press

Posted on | August 19, 2010 | 50 Comments

A memo from the Ministry of Truth:

AP Standards Center issues staff advisory
on covering New York City mosque
Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production Tom Kent sent the following note to the staff about covering the New York City mosque story:
Aug. 19, 2010
Colleagues,
Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington:
1. We should continue to avoid the phrase “ground zero mosque” or “mosque at ground zero” on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.
WE WILL CHANGE OUR SLUG ON THIS STORY LATER TODAY from “BC-Ground Zero Mosque” to “BC-NYC Mosque.”
In short headlines, some ways to refer to the project include:
_ mosque 2 blocks from WTC site
_ Muslim (or Islamic) center near WTC site
_ mosque near ground zero
_ mosque near WTC site
We can refer to the project as a mosque, or as a proposed Islamic center that includes a mosque.
It may be useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace. The proposal is to create a new, larger Islamic community center that would include a mosque, a swimming pool, gym, auditorium and other facilities.
2. Here is a succinct summary of President Obama’s position:
Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center in New York as a matter of religious freedom, though he’s also said he won’t take a position on whether they should actually build it.
For additional background, you’ll find below a Fact Check on the project that moved yesterday.
Tom

Good-bye, “Ground Zero Mosque,” hello, “Muslim center near WTC site”!

We look forward to future AP guidelines on Pearl Harbor (“a former U.S. naval base in Hawaii”) and Treblinka (“site of a former German government detention center”).

UPDATE: Linked by Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs and Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints. Now a thread at Memeorandum.

UPDATE II: Linked by Western Rifle Shooters and (obviously) not linked by Allahpundit, although the first commenter on that post catches the Orwellian aspect: “We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

Category: Neutral Objective Journalism, New York, Religion, Terrorism
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