February 10, 2008 Mark Steyn's weekly OC Register column reviews the campaign to date.
... it should be noted that the defining McCain moment came back in the fall when he responded to Hillary Clinton's support for public funding for a Woodstock museum. If you're under 70 and have no idea what "Woodstock" is or why it would require its own museum, ask your grandpa. But McCain began by saying he was sure Mrs. Clinton was right and that it was a major "cultural and pharmaceutical event." Which is a cute line. And McCain wasn't done yet: "I wasn't there," he said of the 1969 music festival. "I was tied up at the time." And the crowd roared its approval. It's not just a joke, though it's a pretty good one. It's not merely a way of reminding folks you've stood up to torture and you can shrug it off with almost 007-cool insouciance. But it also tells Republican voters that, when Sen. Clinton offers up some cobwebbed boomer piety, you know a piñata when you see one, and you're gonna clobber it. ...
If you want Mark with a little more bite, we have a Townhall link to his CPAC speech. Twenty-eight minutes of fun. So how did McCain do at CPAC? John Fund liked McCain's appearance.
Democrats, and even a few Republicans, have suggested that John McCain may not wear well as a candidate, with many making comparisons to Bob Dole, the former war hero and longtime senator who was the uninspired GOP nominee in 1996 against Bill Clinton. But Mr. McCain put many of those doubts to rest yesterday with a thundering speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. ...
John Podhoretz did too.
What John McCain delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference was a nearly perfect political speech in a nearly perfect setting. The rhetorical dynamic was to present McCain as an “imperfect servant” — first of his party and then of his country. This had the effect, first, of creating a mood of rueful modesty, which are the necessary critical grace notes for any speaker trying to make a case before a partly hostile audience. Any hostility shown him by the audience — and there was some — seemed unreasonable and ugly-spirited given the outstretched hand of the speaker. The purpose of the speech was for McCain to make the case that he is a conservative, and indeed, it was a speech rooted in conservative philosophy, featuring two (count-’em) quotes from Burke on the nature of liberty and the threats to it. But he did far more. ...
Jennifer Rubin, also in Contentions.
McCain did himself a lot of good in his CPAC speech. The crowd gave him a very friendly welcome. The only boos I could discern came during his discussion of immigration reform. Throughout the speech he was interrupted several times by healthy applause. Specifically, he did six smart things: First, he did not deny there are real differences between him and the assembled. ...
The Captain's first post today is on the McCain speech.
... McCain focused the latter part of his speech on the big issues that he says will define the election - the war, the Democratic insistence on statist policies, and entitlement reform. He concluded that part of the argument with this (emphasis mine): These are but a few of the differences that will define this election. They are very significant differences, and I promise you, I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this country safe, proud, prosperous and free. We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won't continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord. If conservatives hear that carefully, that is an invitation to the table. They should accept that invitation and start seeking to fill the seats. ...
He also posts on MSNBC going in the tank for Obama.
... What? MS-NBC biased? Oh heavens, could that possibly be? Before the Left gets particularly outraged by that particular idea, let's recall that this is the network that airs Keith Olbermann, who saw Peter Finch's performance in Network and didn't realize it was satire. Their supposed news anchor spends every night ranting about conservatives and Republicans, daily issuing them the title of "The Worst Person In The World", which ignores people like Richard Ramirez, Ali Khameini, Osama bin Laden, the Castro brothers, and so on. And yet, Republican presidential candidates have regularly appeared on MS-NBC, despite the almost relentless bias against them on the cable channel. They haven't even demanded Mr.Meltdown recuse himself from the proceedings. Apparently, they don't feel as though the pettiness and rancid commentary at MS-NBC can knock them off their stride. Hillary feels differently -- shouldn't that say something about her candidacy? ...
And he speculates on the source of Clinton's $5 million dollar loan. Neal Boortz comments on McCain.
... But .. McCain is the guy. He's going to be the nominee unless something really bizarre happens. If you don't support his candidacy .. if you sit out the election .. just how much influence do you think you are going to have during his presidency? That is ...if your actions don't put Hideous Hillary in office.
Charles Krauthammer tells us how we got to McCain.
... The story of this campaign is how many Republicans felt that national security trumps social heresy. The problem for Giuliani and McCain, however, was that they were splitting that constituency. Then came Giuliani's humiliation in Florida. After he withdrew from the race, he threw his support to McCain -- and took his followers with him.
Look at the numbers. Before Florida, the national polls had McCain hovering around 30 and Giuliani in the mid-teens. After Florida, McCain's numbers jumped to the mid-40s, swallowing the Giuliani constituency whole. ... ... Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives such as George F. Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively). Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain. ...
VDH has a call to arms.
... The alternative is a Republican loss, and likely increased Democratic control of the Congress and soon a trifecta with the Supreme Court. We would witness a new generation of European-like tax increases, unnecessary new programs, negotiated or unilateral surrender in Iraq, loss of what has been achieved in preventing another 9/11 (a return to the Sandy Berger/Albright response to terrorists in the late 1990s when our embassies were leveled and Pakistan got the bomb), 2-3 far Left Supreme Court justices, and the race/class/gender industry given official sanction. The idea that feuding conservatives would each not make some sort of concessions to prevent all that is lunatic.
Gerard Baker of the London Times says the Dem race is Dunkin' Donuts against Starbucks.
I'm not sure when the term latte liberal replaced the old champagne socialist as the favoured term of derision for the well-heeled leftie but it looks an increasingly useful metaphor for understanding how the deadlock in the Democratic presidential primary election might be broken. The two candidates have fought themselves to a standstill. In the closest race in any US presidential primary campaign in decades, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are more or less tied in total votes received and in delegates elected for the party's nominating convention. Super Tuesday, when almost half the country voted in the nearest thing ever to a nationwide primary, was supposed to break the logjam but has merely tightened it. The reason the race is so close has nothing to do with policy differences. I'd wager that not one voter in a hundred could name with any confidence a single difference between the two candidates' stances on the war in Iraq, healthcare, taxes, public spending, abortion or anything else. That's because there isn't one. ...
IBD Editors say it's time to prepare for global cooling. According to Popular Mechanics, a truck was the Auto Show big hit in Chicago. Navistar introduced its new big rig.
At what was by far the most jam-packed unveiling of the entire show here so far, Navistar International today took the wraps off its new flagship truck, the LoneStar. This monster is the big-rig equivalent of a Harley-Davidson dresser, with a huge chrome grille and lights galore. But there’s some green poking through that smoke: As part of Navistar’s Advanced Classics line of Class 8 trucks designed with advanced aerodynamics, the LoneStar is projected to be 5 to 15-percent more fuel efficient than traditional trucks. ...
Orange County Register McCain can sure sound like a conservative
His tough talk distracts from his far-from-conservative stands on global warming, immigration and other issues. by Mark Steyn It's looking like a grim pick of the daisy petals for conservatives: McCain. Clinton. Obama. He loves us not. She loves us not. He wants to waft us upward on a great uniting bipartisan marshmallow of "hope" and "change" so he can implement down-the-line by-the-book highly partisan hopeless unchanged liberal policies. How did it get to this? I was on the radio with Laura Ingraham an hour or so before she introduced Mitt Romney's farewell appearance at CPAC, and she played Stevie Wonder's campaign song for Barack Obama, whose lyric runs: "Ba-rack O-ba-ma Ba-a-rack O-ba-a-ma Ba-ra-ack Obama-a … " (Repeat until coronation.) It would be hard to believe you could come up with a Barack Obama campaign song thinner in content than a Barack Obama campaign speech, but Mr. Wonder has apparently accomplished it. So Laura and I had a laugh over Stevie's two-word lyric and moved on to discussing McCain and Romney and policies on this and that, at which point I observed that, on reflection, that Stevie Wonder song is actually quite a useful way to look at the campaigns. When a guy starts running for president, a few of us tend to hear the lyrics – what's he saying about the war, abortion, taxes. But a lot more people respond to the tune – howhe's saying it. That was part of the problem with Mitt's campaign: When the sheet music came rolling off the fax machine from the Romney press office, it looked great. Good policies on the economy, national security, social issues – all three legs of the Republican coalition. But, when Mitt put the sheet up on the stand and started to sing, it wasn't quite what the broader GOP electorate wanted to hear.
Mitt is a smart, talented, successful man, but he has a clean-cut mien, and he says "Golly!" quite a lot. I found that goofily endearing. When someone raised the old polygamy question about Mormons, Mitt could have snidely pointed out that, in contrast with certain former New York mayors and Arizona senators, he was the only candidate still on his first wife, but instead he just took Mrs. R's hand and said "Golly, I hate polygamy." I don't know whether I'd want to be married to someone who said "Golly!" quite that often, but that's Mitt: not a polygamist, but a gollygamist. A decisive chunk of the Republican primary electorate didn't find this goofily endearing. When Mitt stood up and warbled, they didn't like his tune. They wanted something meaner and rawer and tougher, and there was John McCain. At the risk of overextending my musical analogy way beyond its natural 32 bars, it should be noted that the defining McCain moment came back in the fall when he responded to Hillary Clinton's support for public funding for a Woodstock museum. If you're under 70 and have no idea what "Woodstock" is or why it would require its own museum, ask your grandpa. But McCain began by saying he was sure Mrs. Clinton was right and that it was a major "cultural and pharmaceutical event." Which is a cute line. And McCain wasn't done yet: "I wasn't there," he said of the 1969 music festival. "I was tied up at the time." And the crowd roared its approval. It's not just a joke, though it's a pretty good one. It's not merely a way of reminding folks you've stood up to torture and you can shrug it off with almost 007-cool insouciance. But it also tells Republican voters that, when Sen. Clinton offers up some cobwebbed boomer piety, you know a piñata when you see one, and you're gonna clobber it. And that's the music a lot of Republican voters want to hear. For a certain percentage of voters, McCain is tonally a conservative, and that trumps the fact that a lot of his policies are profoundly unconservative. He won New Hampshire because if you stuck him in plaid he'd be a passable Beltway impersonation of the crusty, cranky, ornery Granite Stater. The facts are secondary that, on campaign finance, illegal immigration, Big Pharma and global warming, the notorious "maverick's" mavericity (maverickiness? maverectomy?) always boils down to something indistinguishable from the Democrat position. As it happens, on the Woodstock museum, McCain's absolutely right: If clapped-out boomer rock is no longer self-supporting and requires public subsidy, then capitalism is dead, and we might as well Sovietize the state. In a sense, it's the perfect reductioof geriatric hippie idealism: We've got to get back to the garden, but at taxpayer expense. A McCain presidency would offer many such moments. But, in between, he'd be "reaching across the aisle" to enact essentially Democrat legislation on climate change, illegal-immigration amnesty and almost everything else. Charles Krauthammer calls McCain the "apostate sheriff," which is a nice term. He suggests that, for many Republican voters, "national security trumps social heresy." I'm not sure about that. This isn't shaping up to be a war election and, if it was, McCain would come under greater scrutiny. What's his big picture on radical Islam? We know, because he now claims all but sole credit for it, that he's prosurge, and he was surging when surging wasn't cool, especially among jelly-spined Republican senators. But, as Mark Levin points out, the surge is a tactic, not a long-term strategy. So, if Republicans went for McCain because he's the "national security sheriff," I think it's the sheriff part they like, rather than the national security. It's easy to see him moving down a dusty Main Street in a low crouch, hands ready to draw. Actually, now I do try to picture it, he's less like the sheriff and more like Yosemite Sam, and that doesn't usually work out as well. Still, Republicans seem to have decided that McCain matches their mood. George W. Bush, you'll recall, was reviled by Dems and Europeans as a shoot-from-the-hip, dead-or-alive Texas swaggerer, but Republicans could never quite match the Dubya caricature with the guy who cooed all the
religion-of-peace mush while strolling hand in hand with King Abdullah or announced homoerotically that he'd gazed into Putin's eyes and got a glimpse of his soul. It's hard to imagine McCain offering such effusions, yet at the same time, insofar as he has anything that could be regarded as a grounded political philosophy, it lies in the same "compassionate" direction as much of the Bush era. Meanwhile, in this primary season, as the field has winnowed on the Republican side, the gap between GOP and Democrat "enthusiasm" has widened. John McCain is supposedly the man who'll bring "moderates" and "independents" and even "anti-Hillary Democrats" into the big tent. Look at the Super Duper Tuesday turnout figures. One reason why the tent feels big is because it's getting emptier.
Mark Steyn's Address to the Conservative Political Action Conference - CPAC Click Below http://www.townhall.com/blog/g/fe3e2eb2-a3d8-425f-8e47-399a24c6e353
John Fund McCain Slays Them in the Green Room
Democrats, and even a few Republicans, have suggested that John McCain may not wear well as a candidate, with many making comparisons to Bob Dole, the former war hero and longtime senator who was the uninspired GOP nominee in 1996 against Bill Clinton. But Mr. McCain put many of those doubts to rest yesterday with a thundering speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. He couldn't have asked for a better platform -- Mitt Romney had just used the same stage to suspend his candidacy, thus giving Mr. McCain a chance to present himself as the de facto GOP nominee to the party's most enthusiastic activists. Mr. McCain knew he was addressing a crowd with whom he had many policy disagreements -- from campaign finance reform to global warming. He didn't pretend to paper those over, but instead asked his audience to "examine the totality of my record." He pointed out he has consistently voted for prolife causes for a quarter century, pledged to appoint judges who would strictly interpret the Constitution and laid into the departed GOP Congress for tarnishing the party's fiscal conservative credentials. "I will not sign a bill with any earmarks in it," he said to thunderous applause. He then roused the crowd again by pointing out that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. He clearly won over a lot of skeptical conservatives. I was in the green room where many prominent CPAC speakers had gathered to watch the speech, and where Mr. McCain had mingled prior to mounting the stage. "It was a great speech, with a perfect tonal pitch," said Don Devine, a former Reagan administration official who is normally a dour pessimist when it comes to GOP electoral chances. "I think he could beat Hillary." Ken Blackwell, a former GOP candidate for governor from Ohio, called the speech "the start of a great conversation with conservatives and much better than I expected." Even Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader who has clashed often with the Arizona senator in the past, grudgingly acknowledged that he might bring himself to vote for Mr. McCain in the fall -- a
major concession from someone who has publicly stated that the party's new presumptive nominee has been "the most destructive force against [the GOP] of any elected official I know." John McCain strode into the toughest imaginable audience of conservatives yesterday. While he didn't exactly conquer them, he left them feeling hopeful that he will run a spirited campaign based on their fundamental principles. "He said all the right things, and if he now delivers, we have a chance to unite the movement," concluded Richard Viguerie, a conservative who spent much of the last few months denouncing most of the GOP field for apostasy. Even a week ago, I couldn't have imagined John McCain leaving such a positive impression on the hard-bitten conservatives at CPAC. But he did, and he now has a real chance to lead a united party into the fall campaign.
Contentions McCain’s Triumph Today
John Podhoretz What John McCain delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference was a nearly perfect political speech in a nearly perfect setting. The rhetorical dynamic was to present McCain as an “imperfect servant” — first of his party and then of his country. This had the effect, first, of creating a mood of rueful modesty, which are the necessary critical grace notes for any speaker trying to make a case before a partly hostile audience. Any hostility shown him by the audience — and there was some — seemed unreasonable and ugly-spirited given the outstretched hand of the speaker. The purpose of the speech was for McCain to make the case that he is a conservative, and indeed, it was a speech rooted in conservative philosophy, featuring two (count-’em) quotes from Burke on the nature of liberty and the threats to it. But he did far more. He outlined the substance of his campaign against the Democratic nominee, whichever of the two it might be, as a consequential contest: Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad. It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs. No candidate in this race could have made the case against the Democrats so plainly, or presented the choice in November in terms more direct and clear. McCain may not have been Barack Obama, summoning his flock to the mountaintop for a hope-in, but this was catnip for conservative Republicans. He began in a mild spirit of abashment, moved to conciliation, then to polemic, and concluded with high patriotism: You have heard me say before that for all my reputation as a maverick, I have only found true happiness in serving a cause greater than my self-interest. For me, that cause has always been our country, and the ideals that have made us great. I have been her imperfect servant for many years,
and I have made many mistakes. You can attest to that, but need not. For I know them well myself. But I love her deeply and I will never, never tire of the honor of serving her. If he can do half as well at the Republican Convention in August, McCain will prove himself as formidable a foe as the Democrats could fear and as Republicans could wish for.
McCain’s Speech: A Solid Start
by Jennifer Rubin McCain did himself a lot of good in his CPAC speech. The crowd gave him a very friendly welcome. The only boos I could discern came during his discussion of immigration reform. Throughout the speech he was interrupted several times by healthy applause. Specifically, he did six smart things: First, he did not deny there are real differences between him and the assembled. He said : “Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years. I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is. And it is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative. Further, I hope you will grant that I have defended many positions we share just as ardently as I have made my case for positions that have provoked your opposition. If not, thank you for this opportunity to make my case today.” Second, he essentially said “No hard feelings. I will listen to you.” He explained: “We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won’t continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.” Third, he reviewed both his record and his campaign, making the point that he has and will stick by basic conservative principles including low taxes, fiscal discipline, Second Amendment rights, appointment of conservative judges and vigilance on the war on terror. (He cleverly reviewed the nonpandering he did in Iowa [on subsidies], in Michigan[on an auto bailout] and in Florida[on catastrophic insurance] which his opponents did not resist.) Fourth, he stuck to his guns. He explained he learned that comprehensive immigration reform was a non-starter and would pursue border security first. The crowd greeted that pledge with applause. However, he made clear that there will be a point at which “we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.” Even that drew a smattering of applause. Fifth, he explained the gaping differences between the Democrats and him on taxes, judges, the Iraq war and health care. Finally, he was gracious toward Romney, revealed the two had agreed to sit down and talk and reached out to his supporters. McCain is learning the necessity and importance of magnanimity. He even took up the smart Andy McCarthy’s suggestion on FISA.
In short, McCain did himself no harm in the general election and began the process of mending fences. He showed good humor and grace. If conservatives choose to snub him, they at least will not be able to say he did not try.
Captain's Quarters The Opening
Yesterday's speech to CPAC gave John McCain an opening to rational consideration of support by conservatives, and it didn't come in the necessary phrases of rapprochement. John McCain made an offer to conservatives for access and influence. Will they take it, or will they walk away and leave McCain to make that offer to other Republicans and centrists? McCain focused the latter part of his speech on the big issues that he says will define the election -the war, the Democratic insistence on statist policies, and entitlement reform. He concluded that part of the argument with this (emphasis mine): These are but a few of the differences that will define this election. They are very significant differences, and I promise you, I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this country safe, proud, prosperous and free. We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won't continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord. If conservatives hear that carefully, that is an invitation to the table. They should accept that invitation and start seeking to fill the seats. McCain will eventually have a need for advisers on a myriad of public policy issues, and we can test the offer by pushing for more conservative voices in that inner circle. McCain already got a head start in this regard by bringing Ted Olson and Steve Forbes onto his team, but especially on energy and immigration, we can press for more influence. One reason Mitt appealed to conservatives was his ability to listen and learn. Mitt became more conservative the longer he was in office, while the perception of McCain has been the opposite. McCain has always been his own man, and that will not likely change now; in fact, it's been part of McCain's appeal, especially on fiscal discipline and the war. A presidency is a lot different than a legislative term, however, and an executive has to appoint a lot of people to carry out policy in detail. Conservatives can put themselves in position to fill a number of slots -- but only if they help put McCain in office. As I believe Georges Clemenceau once said, in order to get a seat at the feast, one has to help set the table. This is the choice facing conservatives. Either we help set the table and join in public policy and use our influence to help shape a Republican administration, or we abandon McCain and get four or eight years of statist policy that could take a generation to undo. Even worse, the conservatives might watch McCain get elected without their assistance -- and watch themselves get marginalized as a movement for a very, very long time. Most of the people here at CPAC understand that choice very well. A few still do not. Fortunately -and this is Mitt Romney's generous gift to the Republicans -- the factional war has ended, and we can hope that the long run-up to the convention will give an opportunity for the visceral reactions to
McCain's nomination to fade. McCain can assist that by fulfilling his promise yesterday to bring more conservatives onto his campaign for counsel.
Is MS-NBC Biased? Are You Kidding?
After Chris Matthews dismissed Hillary Clinton's political qualifications as limited to her husband's infidelity, her supporters roared until squeezing a very public apology from the MS-NBC talk-show host. Now David Shuster, another MS-NBC on-air personality, will cool his heels for an undetermined length of time for accusing Hillary of "pimping out" her daughter politically, and Hillary may refuse any more debates on the so-called network. Howard Kurtz has the story: In case there was any doubt, using a prostitution metaphor for the daughter of a presidential candidate is not a good career move. MSNBC suspended correspondent David Shuster yesterday for an undetermined period for making a disparaging on-air remark about Chelsea Clinton. Meanwhile, officials in her mother's campaign raised the possibility of punishing the news channel by boycotting future debates. While filling in as a host Thursday, Shuster was discussing the 27-year-old's role in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign with two guests when he asked: "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Howard Wolfson, the campaign's communications director, called Shuster's remark "disgusting," "beneath contempt" and "the kind of thing that should never be said on a national news network." Wolfson appeared to suggest that Clinton is reconsidering an agreement this week to participate in an MSNBC debate Feb. 26 in Cleveland, saying: "I at this point can't envision doing another debate on that network." ... Wolfson noted that MSNBC's Chris Matthews expressed regret last month for suggesting that Hillary Clinton's political success can be traced to sympathy stemming from her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky. "At some point you have to question whether there is a pattern at this particular network," Wolfson said. What? MS-NBC biased? Oh heavens, could that possibly be? Before the Left gets particularly outraged by that particular idea, let's recall that this is the network that airs Keith Olbermann, who saw Peter Finch's performance in Network and didn't realize it was satire. Their supposed news anchor spends every night ranting about conservatives and Republicans, daily issuing them the title of "The Worst Person In The World", which ignores people like Richard Ramirez, Ali Khameini, Osama bin Laden, the Castro brothers, and so on. And yet, Republican presidential candidates have regularly appeared on MS-NBC, despite the almost relentless bias against them on the cable channel. They haven't even demanded Mr.Meltdown recuse himself from the proceedings. Apparently, they don't feel as though the pettiness and rancid commentary at MS-NBC can knock them off their stride. Hillary feels differently -- shouldn't that say something about her candidacy? For the shock, shock! of suddenly discovering the bias at MS-NBC, Wolfson gets the Captain Louis Renault Award. I'd give him the Peter Finch Award as well, but Olbermann wins that as a lifetime achievement award. As for David Shuster, he deserves a short time in the penalty box for using a prostitution term to describe anyone on a news show. It's not just offensive -- which it is -- but it's intellectually lazy and a lame attempt to sound "down wit' it", something of which we don't need any
more from television. The phrase doesn't even really apply to what Shuster meant. Hillary asked Chelsea to call superdelegates, which she did, but apparently didn't want to talk to the press. How exactly does that make Hillary the Pimp Mommy, anyway? Forcing her to talk to the press would have qualified in a way, but then Shuster wouldn't have had anything about which to whine on national TV, either.
Is This What Burkle Bought?
In the beginning, everyone assumed that the Clinton machine would dominate fundraising in the Democratic primary. Although it raised prodigious sums of money, Barack Obama managed to keep pace all through 2007. Now, as Obama has also kept pace with Hillary in delegate counts, the Clinton machine appears to have begun running dry: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced yesterday that she had lent her campaign $5 million, a remarkable twist for a candidate who raised more than $100 million last year that came as she and Sen. Barack Obama continued to spar over which of them was the Democratic winner in coast-tocoast Super Tuesday balloting. ... At her campaign headquarters in Arlington, Clinton defended her maneuver, executed last month but kept under wraps until yesterday, to add money to her campaign coffers. News of the $5 million transfer came as a surprise to Clinton donors who had assumed her campaign, which raised $100 million last year, would keep pace with Obama's. Earlier this month, Obama announced that he had raised $32 million in January alone, and aides said he took in an additional $3.5 million yesterday. ... It was unclear whether news of Clinton's financial stresses would affect her fundraising. Top fundraisers said they did not learn of her move until after Super Tuesday's contests, suggesting that the campaign was aware it could be a public relations blow. Hillary raised $13 million in January, much less than half of Obama's total. She now faces the prospect of a tour through Obama's territory with no lead in delegates and a huge gap in financing. The money gap could tamp down her advertising and event staging, leaving a clear field for Obama in Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana, and Nebraska. Even Washington DC and Washington state look grim. The massive loan may not seem unusual given Mitt Romney's self-funding, but Mitt has plenty of his own money. Where did Hillary get $5 million to loan a presidential campaign? Bill and Hillary have done well on the speaking circuit, and Bill recently got $20 million or so for backing out of his partnership from Ron Burkle. At the time, speculation had Bill wanting to eliminate any potential conflicts between Burkle's business and Hillary's election. Now, however, one has to wonder whether Burkle may have attempted to float money into Hillary's campaign while bypassing campaign-finance regulations. Did the $20 million, which came just two weeks ago, actually represent a fair-market settlement for Clinton's services and ownership stake in Yucaipa? Or did Burkle inflate it in order to allow Hillary to "loan" herself $5 million to keep pace with a surging Obama campaign? The Clintons always seem to live at the nexus of questions regarding cash and politics. Whether we talk about Norman Hsu or Ron Burkle, their opacity in financial operations suggests a very, er, flexible attitude towards ethics in government -- and serves as a reminder why so many people oppose a Clinton Restoration.
Neal Boortz SO ... DID HE SAY THE RIGHT THINGS?
This for all of you "die-hard Reagan Republicans" out there ... you know, the ones who are acting like you're not going to support John McCain in this year's election .. and who may even sit this one out. By now you should have heard about McCain's speech yesterday before CPAC. Here are just some of the things McCain said he would do:
• • • • • • • • •
Continue to carry the fight to the Islamic radicals and goons wherever we can get to them. Close the borders .. tight .. before any consideration is given as to what to do with the illegals who are already here. Not sign a bill with earmarks in it. ANY earmarks in it. Reduce the size of government. Not allow the expansion of entitlement programs Make the Bush tax cuts permanent Cut corporate tax rates. End AMT Develop free market solutions for health care, and respect for the right of free individuals to make choices for themselves.
I don't know, but that sounds like a fairly good conservative platform for me. Sure, there are things that I, as a Libertarian, would change. For instance, not only would I block the expansion of entitlement programs, I would start a rollback. Making the Bush tax cuts permanent would not be enough .. there's the FairTax. And then there's my idea for a 10th Amendment Commission .. and I would like to see the systematic elimination of all government schools, beginning with transferring power to local governments and mandating voucher and school choice programs as a prerequisite for any school to get any federal government money at all. But .. McCain is the guy. He's going to be the nominee unless something really bizarre happens. If you don't support his candidacy .. if you sit out the election .. just how much influence do you think you are going to have during his presidency? That is ...if your actions don't put Hideous Hillary in office.
IGNORE 'CLIMATE CHANGE' ...
... go to jail. That is according to one scientist, David Suzuki, who says that political leaders who ignore the science behind climate change should be thrown in jail. At a conference in Montreal, he said that politicians should be held legally accountable for ignoring the science. In fact, he goes as far to say that it is an "intergenerational crime." Now the back pedaling begins. A spokesman has now said that the call for imprisonment was not meant to be taken literally. Yeah, right. I think the same should be said about their incessant alarmism over global warming. Here's the exact quote. Dr. Suzuki said, "What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act." Remember ... look into this nonsense and you'll see that the whole global warming scam is all about weakening the American economy and assaulting free enterprise.
Hopefully you will remember an article I mentioned on the air earlier this week. The newspaper article contained all sorts of dire global warming predictions .. and then carried a quote from a University professor. An assistant MUSIC professor. Yeah ... let's take that seriously.
Washington Post The Apostate Sheriff
How Bush Begat McCain by Charles Krauthammer On Super Tuesday, John McCain secured the Republican nomination. How did that happen? Simple. In the absence of a compelling conservative, the Republican electorate turned to the apostate sheriff. In the beginning, there were two. There was America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, determined to "go on offense." And there was America's maverick, John McCain, scourge of Iraq wobblies. Both aroused deep suspicions among conservatives. Giuliani's major apostasy is being pro-choice on abortion. McCain's apostasies are too numerous to count. He's held the line on abortion, but on just about everything else he could find -- tax cuts, immigration, campaign finance reform, Guantanamo -he not only opposed the conservative consensus but also insisted on doing so with ostentatious selfrighteousness. The story of this campaign is how many Republicans felt that national security trumps social heresy. The problem for Giuliani and McCain, however, was that they were splitting that constituency. Then came Giuliani's humiliation in Florida. After he withdrew from the race, he threw his support to McCain -- and took his followers with him. Look at the numbers. Before Florida, the national polls had McCain hovering around 30 and Giuliani in the mid-teens. After Florida, McCain's numbers jumped to the mid-40s, swallowing the Giuliani constituency whole. On Super Tuesday, the Giuliani effect showed up in the big Northeastern states -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut -- and California. McCain won the first three with absolute majorities of 51 percent or more. And in California, McCain-Giuliani (plus Schwarzenegger, for good measure) moderate Republicanism captured 42 percent of the vote. Elsewhere, where Giuliani was not a factor, McCain got no comparable boost. In Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, he could never break through even 37 percent. The vote was divided roughly evenly among McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney (trailing). But these splits were not enough to make up for the winner-take-all big ones, all of which McCain won. The other half of the story behind McCain's victory is this: There would have been a far smaller Republican constituency for the apostate sheriff had there been a compelling conservative to challenge him. But there never was. The first messianic sighting was Fred Thompson, who soared in the early polls, then faded because he was too diffident and/or normal to embrace with any enthusiasm the indignities of the modern campaign.
Then, for that brief and shining Iowa moment, there was Huckabee -- until conservatives actually looked at his record (on taxes, for example) as governor of Arkansas and listened to the music of his often unconservative populism. That left Romney, the final stop in the search for the compelling conservative. I found him to be a fine candidate who would have made a fine president. But until very recently, he was shunned by most conservatives for ideological inauthenticity. Then, as the post-Florida McCain panic grew, conservatives tried to embrace Romney, but the gesture was both too late and as improvised and convenient-looking as Romney's own many conversions. So late and so improvised that it could not succeed. Yesterday, Romney withdrew from the race. Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan. They refuse to accept that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. But there's an even more profound reason why no Reagan showed up this election cycle and why the apostate sheriff is going to win the nomination. The reason is George W. Bush. He redefined conservatism with a "compassionate" variant that is a distinct departure from classic Reaganism. Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives such as George F. Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively). Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain. Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He's kept us safe. He's the original apostate sheriff.
The Corner Thoughts on the Current Mess [Victor Davis Hanson]
There were four developments that got conservatives into this mess — the inexcusable increase of federal spending from 2001-05 (that gave mendacious Democrats room to fabricate that the tax cuts had caused the red ink), the sordid scandals of 2005-7, the tentativeness in the war (cf. the 1st pullback from Fallujah, the reprieve to Sadr, the retreat to compounds in 2006, etc), and the complete unwillingness to close the border. McCain was involved with only one of these. On these four critical issues, would McCain be far better than Clinton or Obama? He is good on earmarks and pork barrel spending, and hates deficits; he is without scandal and, while terribly wrong on McCain-Feingold, is a corruption fighter; and he is aggressive on the war and wants to win. The problem with his prior support of immigration "reform" was not just that it would lead to ever more illegals and make a mockery out of past federal law, but that he either ignored criticism or impugned the motives of those who were genuinely worried about open borders and the travesty of the law, but themselves were neither racists nor without compassion. So on 3 of 4 critical issues, McCain in strong, and on the 4th he is now on record in speeches and ads that he would close the borders first. His views on religion, abortion, gay marriage, guns, etc.
please mainstream conservatives; on global warming, Guantanamo, campaign financing, etc. hardly. How then to recapture the base? I don't think the attitude "they have nowhere else to go" or "we don't want to lose moderates by moving right" will work, especially if Obama is the nominee. It would be better to get a base conservative on the ticket. And when you look around at the necessary requisites: youth to balance McCain's age; strong base support; energetic; an experienced campaigner; not afraid to mix it up; geographical balance; economic experience and Wall Street fides; you inevitably keep coming back to Romney. He would unite the party, not just by gaining the VP spot, but by acknowledgment that he would then be best positioned to assume the top spot after McCain. It would reassure conservatives on immigration, tax cuts, etc. And Romney's last two weeks of speeches revealed a charismatic figure unlike that seen most of the campaign. Their animus is no greater than between Bush I ("voodoo economics") and Reagan in 1980, but would be a genuine gesture on the part of McCain, to think of the base and swallow his seeming anger at Romney. The alternative is a Republican loss, and likely increased Democratic control of the Congress and soon a trifecta with the Supreme Court. We would witness a new generation of European-like tax increases, unnecessary new programs, negotiated or unilateral surrender in Iraq, loss of what has been achieved in preventing another 9/11 (a return to the Sandy Berger/Albright response to terrorists in the late 1990s when our embassies were leveled and Pakistan got the bomb), 2-3 far Left Supreme Court justices, and the race/class/gender industry given official sanction. The idea that feuding conservatives would each not make some sort of concessions to prevent all that is lunatic.
Times, UK Latte liberals v Dunkin Donut democrats
Trouble distinguishing between Obama's policies and Clinton's? Here's a consumer's guide by Gerard Baker I'm not sure when the term latte liberal replaced the old champagne socialist as the favoured term of derision for the well-heeled leftie but it looks an increasingly useful metaphor for understanding how the deadlock in the Democratic presidential primary election might be broken. The two candidates have fought themselves to a standstill. In the closest race in any US presidential primary campaign in decades, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are more or less tied in total votes received and in delegates elected for the party's nominating convention. Super Tuesday, when almost half the country voted in the nearest thing ever to a nationwide primary, was supposed to break the logjam but has merely tightened it. The reason the race is so close has nothing to do with policy differences. I'd wager that not one voter in a hundred could name with any confidence a single difference between the two candidates'
stances on the war in Iraq, healthcare, taxes, public spending, abortion or anything else. That's because there isn't one. The fault lines in the contest instead fall largely along differences in identity - ethnic and gender - and values. Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton have, as we have noted before, both established massive, almost identically sized coalitions of voting blocs aligned along these cleavages. Mrs Clinton wins heavily among white women, older voters and Latinos. Where they voted in large numbers on Tuesday, she won by large margins. Mr Obama won states where his following of younger voters, African-Americans and white men predominated. But one other critical factor - the one that may ultimately determine who wins this race - is whether the voter is sinking or swimming in the modern economy. Mr Obama wins disproportionately among people who may be considered the winners in the global economy: the well educated, the mobile and the financially secure. Mrs Clinton's voters are the strugglers, the class that feels itself left behind by an increasingly unfair global economic system. Consider the exit poll from California, the largest state to vote on Super Tuesday. Mrs Clinton's largest single demographic voting bloc was those who did not complete a high school education, where she won 82 per cent, against just 15 per cent for Mr Obama. The more educated you became from high school drop-out, through high school graduate then some college, college graduate and finally postgraduate - the more likely you were to vote for Mr Obama. The only category he won, in fact, was the propeller heads with postgraduate degrees. Income was another crucial determinant of whom you voted for: 59 per cent of those earning below $50,000 went for Mrs Clinton against 33 per cent for Mr Obama. The only broad income category won by Mr Obama was the top one - more than $100,000. (Intriguingly, in California there was one exception to this rule. The super-earners - those earning over $200,0000 - went narrowly for Mrs Clinton. I can only think this was because of all those louche Hollywood types who long for a return of the moral compass of the Clinton years. Jack Nicholson was making calls for Hillary on Tuesday, telling people to vote for her because “she was the best man in the race”.) The saliency of economics then, is crucial. Those who said the economy was the important issue facing the country went for Mrs Clinton by 20 points. Those who thought Iraq was the main issue chose Mr Obama by five points. This is where coffee preferences come in. Among voters whose voting choice is not based on identity politics, Mr Obama's supporters are the latte liberals. These are the people for whom Starbucks, with its $5 cups of coffee and fancy bakeries, is not just a consumer choice but a lifestyle. They not only have the money. They share the values. They live by all those little quotes on the side of Starbucks cups about community service and global warming. They embrace the Obama candidacy because to them he transcends traditional class and economic divides. He is a transformative political figure - potentially the first black man to be president - and is seen as the one to revive America's faith in itself and restore America's status in the world. For these voters the defining emotion is hope. Mrs Clinton is the candidate of what might be called Dunkin' Donut Democrats. They do not have money to waste on multiple-hyphenated coffee drinks - double-top, no-foam, non-fat lattes and the
like. Not for them the bran muffins or the biscotti. They are the 75-cent coffee and doughnut crowd. For them caffeine choice doesn't correlate with their values but simply represents a means of keeping them going through their challenging day. Though they don't doubt that global warming is important, they think it can wait. They want to make sure first they can pay the heating bills. They're not in favour of the Iraq war but neither are they so focused on restoring America's image in the world. They're not necessarily racist, it's just that they're not especially animated by the idealism represented by the first black president. For them anxiety, not aspiration is the defining factor. So who prevails? That may well depend on the state of the economy. The more voters worry about it and the less they focus on ideals, the better Mrs Clinton's chances. For her, bad news is good news. As it happens, the latest figures out this week suggest the US is now very probably in recession. Unemployment is rising, house prices are falling, stock prices are slumping, spending is fading, confidence is sagging. There's a whiff of panic in the air. Last week the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by more in the space of eight days than the European Central Bank has done in its entire existence. People are trading down from Starbucks to Dunkin' Donuts. These may not be the best circumstances for Mr Obama's soaring rhetoric of hope in the future. His hope has to be that things do not get so bad that fear overwhelms it. In 1992 Bill Clinton rode to an election victory under the slogan, “The economy, stupid”. Sixteen years later, we could say, given the apparent inevitability of a recession and given Mrs Clinton's strong following among the less well educated in American society, that it is an even more fitting message for his wife.
Investor's Business Daily - Editorial The Sun Also Sets
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun. Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles. To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And they're worried about global cooling, not warming. Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century. Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle. This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe. Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere. Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment. In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately. As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun. For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years. R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales." Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet." Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth." "Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had." In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures. A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz. The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures." The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures." But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.
Popular Mechanics Navistar’s Fuel-Efficient LoneStar Semi Truck Is Lustworthy, Luxury Showstopper: Live at the 2008 Chicago Auto Show
CHICAGO — At what was by far the most jam-packed unveiling of the entire show here so far,
Navistar International today took the wraps off its new flagship truck, the LoneStar. This monster is the big-rig equivalent of a Harley-Davidson dresser, with a huge chrome grille and lights galore. But there’s some green poking through that smoke: As part of Navistar’s Advanced Classics line of Class 8 trucks designed with advanced aerodynamics, the LoneStar is projected to be 5 to 15-percent more fuel efficient than traditional trucks.
The sharp look leads to clean driving, which equates to to an annual cost savings of $3,000 to $8,000 per truck. The LoneStar will be offered with Cummins ISX deisels ranging from 435 to 600 hp, or with Caterpillar diesels ranging from 435 to 550 hp. And, since it’s a big rig, you have a choice of 10-, 13-, 15- or 18-speed transmissions. Automotive-style features built into the LoneStar include tandard ABS brakes, roll stability control, traction control, Bluetooth for hands-free phoning, a leather-wrapped steering wheel hanging over dash and gauges with rosewood or titanium trim.
Inside, the LoneStar’s closer to a private jet than an 18-wheeler. You can opt for wood flooring in the sleeper cab, a sofa-bed, swivel chairs, closed “airline” cabinets for storage, a Monsoon stereo system with 11 speakers and a pull-down bed with a 42-in. mattres. Plus, it comes lined with workspaces for plugging in laptops and a mini fridge. When can we move in?
The LoneStar will be available for order from nearly 900 dealer locations in North America beginning in April, with delivery slated for this fall.
Borowitz Report Hillary Sells Own Tears on eBay
‘Hail Mary’ for Cash-strapped Campaign In a bold strategy to raise funds for her cash-strapped presidential campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced that she was selling her own tears on the popular auction site eBay. After lending her campaign $5 million of her own money prior to the Super Tuesday primaries, Mrs. Clinton’s resources were reportedly tapped out, leading her to auction off vials of her own tears with a suggested opening bid of $10,000. While the posted eBay description of her tears does not attribute any healing properties to them, it does claim that their historic value could be priceless. Mrs. Clinton’s decision to auction off her own tears, while admittedly an unorthodox strategy, was not nearly as unusual as some of the other fundraising ideas floated by her campaign in recent days, sources said. According to sources close to the New York senator, Mrs. Clinton had toyed with a number of unusual strategies, including marrying former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. “From where we sat, it was a win-win situation,” one campaign aide said. “Hillary would have access to $200 million, and Mitt would get one step closer to the White House.” Reportedly, the plan to marry Mr. Romney broke down when a representative for the former governor conveyed the message that Mr. Romney did not believe in polygamy. “Hillary cried when she heard the news about Romney,” the aide said. “But hopefully, those tears will find a buyer.” Elsewhere, a new study shows that spending hours on a cell phone may affect the quality of one’s sperm, raising hopes that hedge fund managers may have trouble reproducing.