Battle Cry: If Not Now, When?

Erick Erickson urges Senate Republicans to fight ObamaCare with every parliamentary means available:

Some might argue that Republicans should not look "obstructionist." But they are wrong -- the vast majority of Americans don't like this bill and don't want it to pass. The Tea Party movement was the upheaval of millions of ordinary Americans who are scared and angry about the out-of-control growth of the federal government, federal spending, and the national debt. They want to see the Republicans obstructing passage of this bill and if they think the Republicans are not fighting with every tool they have at their disposal, then any advantage that the Republicans think they will get in next year's elections from such a bill being passed will evaporate.

Erick makes reference to the Doug Hoffman campaign in NY23, which is the subject of my 1,400-word article in the December-January issue of The American Spectator:

Yates Walker ate breakfast in the Blue Moon Café on Main Street in Saranac Lake, New York, on the morning of November 4, and delivered an after-action report on the battle that had just been fought in the upstate 23rd District.
"We took a CPA from 9 percent to 46 percent in two and a half weeks," said Walker, a young veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division who had been hired 18 days earlier to work on Doug Hoffman's congressional campaign staff. "I couldn't be prouder." . . .
Hoffman's surprising surge in the closing weeks of the three-way special election in upstate New York had, in Walker's words, turned the bespectacled accountant into "an electric symbol of conservatism." . . .

You can read the whole thing. That article was written in the Buffalo airport, where I had these thoughts:

As I was lashing together my article, it seemed to me that the tipping-point of the Hoffmania momentum shift was Oct. 16, when the Siena poll showed Hoffman surging while Scozzafava had fallen behind the Democrat. That was the same day Michelle Malkin's column called Scozzafava "An ACORN-Friendly, Big Labor-Backing, Tax-and-Spend Radical in GOP Clothing."
Two weeks later, the final Siena poll confirmed what the Hoffman people had known for some time: Dede was heading for a weak third-place finish. So the RINO quit and repaid the GOP Establishment by endorsing Democrat Bill Owens. Exposing RINOs as untrustworthy creatures was worth whatever damage might be suffered by having Owens in Congress -- until next year, when the freshman Democrat will face a re-energized GOP grassroots in NY23.
Go back and read my "Memo to the Grassroots." I didn't know it at the time, but that Hot Air Green Room post was written the same day that Yates Walker decided to hire on as manager of the Plattsburgh office of the Hoffman campaign. Yates was just one of several people who helped turn the Hoffman campaign into such a stunning dynamo of grassroots energy. . . .

Those of you who followed my coverage of the NY23 campaign may remember Yates Walker from this video:

The meaning of NY23 has been twisted beyond recognition by the MSM, as I explain in the Spectator article:

Op-ed pundits and TV talking heads portrayed the battle in the North Country as evidence of an intraparty schism, a Republican "civil war," but in fact the ideological factor of right vs. center was less important than the uprising of the party's rank and file against a GOP establishment that grassroots activists consider out of touch, politically inept, and hamstrung by favor-swapping among well-connected Republican insiders. . . .
One GOP Internet operative of libertarian leaning saw the lesson of the NY23 fight as a training exercise for the bigger battle in the 2010 midterm elections, comparing it to the way Web-savvy liberals lined up behind Howard Dean during the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. "Right now, we're where the Democrats were with Dean in 2003," the Republican operative said, remarking on the left's online advantage that the GOP has struggled to overcome. "We're getting there, but we're not there yet."

Perhaps the most important lesson of NY23 is the value of time. That wild three-week Hoffman surge that began in mid-October produced spectacular results, but it was just a little too late.

Had more conservatives jumped onto the Hoffman bandwagon in August -- when Erick Erickson did -- maybe Scozzafava could have been driven out of the race a couple of weeks earlier. Instead, she got about $1 million from the RNC and NRCC and hung in until the last weekend before Election Day, then endorsed Bill Owens, making just enough difference to elect the Democrat by a margin that, in the end, amounted to about 3,200 votes.

A similar situation exists with ObamaCare, where the White House and Harry Reid (whose poll numbers are in the toilet) want to hurry the bill through the Senate during the holidays, when most people aren't paying attention. Erick Erikson is urging Republicans to fight now -- delay the bill, at risk of being called "obstructionist" -- to give the grassroots more time to put heat on the issue. He quotes Winston Churchill:

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival.

The odds still favor opponents of ObamaCare, and the National Taxpayers Union is calling for Tea Party people to attend a Code Red Rally at the Capitol on Tuesday with Laura Ingraham.

Where will you be Tuesday? Are you ready to fight? If not now, when?

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

Lisa De Pasquale: Best. Column. Evah!

"The 23rd district of New York is a Petri dish for the future of the Republican Party. There are three candidates in the race -- Democrat Bill Owens, newly-crowned Republican Dede Scozzafava and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. Thanks in large part to bloggers like Erick Erickson and Robert Stacy McCain, the race has garnered national attention. In the modern media era, even the most obscure election can set the motion for a conservative comeback."
-- Lisa De Pasquale, conservative genius

NY23: It's your call, Mike

Erick Erickson at Red State scooped me today on the Pawlenty story, but that's OK:

With the news today that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the three-way congressional race in upstate New York's 23rd District, now the pressure is on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to follow suit. . . .

You can read my latest at The American Spectator, and let me call your attention to the real juicy stuff:

Huckabee finds himself in an awkward position . . . Huckabee is due to speak Tuesday night in Syracuse at a New York Conservative Party awards dinner but, as he told [Neil] Cavuto, he won't be giving "an endorsement speech."
Huckabee's speech was scheduled before the NY23 election became the focus of a national political maelstrom. Most New York media expect Hoffman also to attend Tuesday's dinner, although the congressional candidate has not yet publicly announced whether he will attend.
Some Hoffman campaign officials are concerned that, if Hoffman shows up at the Syracuse dinner, it might be viewed as distracting from Huckabee's spotlight. Conservative Party officials don't want to put pressure on their Republican guest of honor. Huckabee won't endorse Scozzafava, and he certainly wouldn't support the little-known Democratic candidate Bill Owens. Therefore, Huckabee's status as a "friendly neutral" in the three-way election may be the best the Hoffman campaign can hope for. . . .

You see the difficulty here for both Huckabee and Hoffman. Huckabee's now a Fox News superstar, and endorsing Hoffman might be a bit too much at a time when the network is fighting the Obama administration's charges that Fox lacks journalistic credibility.

Erick plays rough by including Huckabee together with Mitt Romney in his ultimatum to 2012 hopefuls. Although I've often criticized Huckabee for his political deviations, he seems like a nice guy who means well and, if the Hoffman people don't want to put him on the spot, I'm inclined to go easy.

BTW, my sources don't expect Romney to endorse Hoffman. Ain't gonna happen, I'm told. Still, to recall a famous phrase, do you believe in miracles?

UPDATE: Remind me to chew my sources a new one for not giving me the heads-up on this:

(Hat-tip: Hot Air.) So much for the Huckabee-can't-endorse-because-of-his-Fox-contract theory, I suppose . . .

HOFFMANIA: CATCH IT!

Our complete coverage of the NY23 special election

'I Ain't Got Time to Bleed'

Action-movie fans will remember that line spoken by Jesse Ventura's character in Predator, and it characterizes my attitude right now regarding the political situation in general and Doug Hoffman's NY-23 special election campaign specifically.

My friend Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican has pointed out that, in 2006, my friend Erick Erickson of Red State (like many other conservatives) refused to support Libertarian candidate Bob Smither in Texas.

Like the NY-23 race, that 2006 Texas congressional election was a unique situation -- long story, no time to explain now -- and many people misunderstood it. My good buddy Stephen Gordon was on the Libertarian Party national HQ staff at the time, and he was in that Houston suburban district up to his eyeballs.

Gordo made it clear to me that the GOP's idea of running a hand-picked write-in candidate (lonnngg story) was a guaranteed loser, a harebrained scheme that would surely fail. If conservatives wanted to stop a Democrat from winning that seat, their only viable option was to support the LP candidate, Smither, who was a solid citizen, not any kind of radical wacko, and much preferable to the Democrat Nick Lampson.

However, unless you knew the specific on-the-ground details (which Gordo spent hours explaining to me in phone calls from Texas), any conservative Republican might reasonably think that Tom DeLay and the local GOP bosses knew what they were doing.

But they didn't, and Lampson stomped the crap out of DeLay's handpicked successor (who had a hard-to-spell hyphenated last name, a big reason why the idea of her as a write-in candidate was so ROTFLMAO ridiculous). The Democratic pick-up could have been avoided, if any influential conservative at the national level would have listened to Gordo. Three years ago, I was even less inlfuential than I am now, and no other conservatives of greater influence were listening to Gordo and so . . "For want of a nail," as they say.

Erick Erickson was not alone in making the mistake he made. So I have no problem with Erickson for not having backed Smither. A mistake is not necessarily a sin, and Erickson's willingness now to back the Conservative Party candidate Hoffman in NY-23 might indicate that he's learned from the mistake he and others made three years ago.

Whether there might be future occasions when similar calculations of principled pragmatism lead Erickson to back an LP candidate, who knows? We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Whatever happens in the future, or whatever happened in the past, it is absolutely vital in this time of crisis that all friends of liberty focus laser-like on doing now the things that must be done now. I can't fix what went wrong in 2006 and, if there is still any bad blood between my friends Dondero and Erickson, I don't have time to negotiate an armistice.

Right now there is a battle being waged in upstate New York that may, to some important extent, determine the future of this nation. Meanwhile, in Washington, a tooth-and-nail struggle rages over the ObamaCare abomination. There is too much important work to be done now for anyone who is a genuine friend of liberty to be engaged in intramural score-settling.

There are now 17 days until Nov. 3. Let us lay aside everything incidental and focus all our efforts on doing what must be done now, or our common cause is surely doomed.

Like that squad of commandos in the jungle, faced with a deadly and relentless foe, we are in a fight for survival. And I ain't got time to bleed.

UPDATE: Rhymes With Right, a Texas GOP activist, puts a more detailed account of the 2006 Sekula-Gibbs fiasco in the comments. He makes mention of a meeting where the GOP "leadership" declared that it would be "out of order" to make a floor motion in favor of LP candidate Bob Smither who was already on the ballot. My man Gordo was on the phone telling me all about this, live from the scene, when that dirty little deal went down.

This is how the "Establishment Insider" crowd operates, see? Just like the House GOP "leadership" forced Jeb Hensarling to walk the plank for Scozzafava, the GOP "leadership" in Texas forced the local parties to walk-the-plank for Sekula-Gibbs. And this is just what Cornyn and the NRSC want to do by shoving Crist down the throats of Florida Republicans.

This kind of crass manipulation of the GOP mechanism by the insiders is absolutely deadly, in terms of destroying grassroots enthusiasm, and that's what Not One Red Cent is about: Fighting back against this kind of corrupt, crooked, backroom "kingmaker" crap.

As for the inside-libertarian-baseball criticisms from my friends Mr. Knapp and Mr. Dondero, it is beyond the scope of my influence to convince Erick Erickson or anyone else of what course of action they should take. Nobody in the GOP has ever solicited my advice, and on those rare occasion I've played armchair strategist by volunteering my advice, they always ignore me and do the opposite.

So none of this is my fault. If you're looking for a scapegoat, Blame Erik Telford. (I always do.)

Everybody's in Atlanta, why not me?

First it was Little Miss Attila, and now Moe Lane announces his departure to my hometown for this weekend's big Red State Gathering, where the attendees will celebrate the absence of the conspicuously uninvited Native Son.

Last weekend, after I described my trip to Richmond for Liberty 101 -- the Virginia Tea Party Patriots are wonderful people -- I got a worried e-mail from Ben Marchi, Virginia state director of Americans For Prosperity, as a result of these paragraphs:

Of course, my feelings were still sore that AFP's Erik Telford insulted me by leaving me out of next month's RightOnline National Conference in Pittsburgh with Michelle Malkin. When I mentioned Erik's name, Ben reminded me that Telford recently made No. 2 on Keith Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" list. As usual, Olbermann gets the facts wrong -- Telford's No. 1.
That surge of registrations for RightOnline the past two days was caused by my friends signing up for a seminar Telford left off the Pittsburgh conference agenda: "I've Got T-Shirts Older Than You, Punk: Stacy McCain Explains Why He Just Beat the Crap Out of Erik Telford in the Sheraton Lobby." But I digress . . .

So I sent an e-mail back to Ben and explained that I wasn't really angry at Telford. He's a nice kid and I was only joking about the beating.

Well, probably joking. It's been years since I've risked an assault charge by giving some ungrateful punk the thrashing he so richly deserved, but just because I've become a top Hayekian public intellectual -- the pinnacle of journalistic respectability -- doesn't mean my enemies should feel they can grossly insult me without fearing the violent consequences.

These kids, they don't know from Gonzo. Back in the day, when Hunter S. Thompson was living the precarious and poverty-stricken freelancer's life, it became his habit to respond to rejection notices and unfruitful job applications with outrageous letters full of hyperbolic denunciations and threats.

People who actually knew Thompson understood that these letters were, for the most part, just writing exercises. A writer improves his craft by constant practice, and if you have just been denied the opportunity to get paid for your craft, why not exercise the rejected skill at the expense of the philistine wretch who failed to recognize your genius?

Long after he became famously successful -- genius must ultimately have its reward -- Thompson never forgot the experience of poverty and obscurity. For example, one reason he took such great delight in becoming a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner in the 1980s was that, 25 years earlier, his application for a reporting job at the rival Chronicle had been rejected. And then there was this 1972 love-note to a good buddy of his:

"Dear John . . .
"You skunk-sucking bastard . . ."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, letter to John Chancellor of NBC News, Sept. 11, 1972, reprinted in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

Thompson's unpredictable sense of humor made him a constant source of carnival amusement for his friends. So as Moe and Attila relax and enjoy their cocktails Saturday evening at the Red State Gathering, they should not dismiss the possibility that their conviviality will be disturbed by a sudden Gonzo episode:

"Sweetheart, give me a cold Corona, with lime," I told the redhead behind the bar, loud enough to be heard by Miss Attila, sitting at a table in the corner with Moe Lane. As usual, Attila was zonked on gin and entirely oblivious. But Moe glanced over and froze with the shock of recognition. I nodded at him and smiled, tossed a $10 on the bar -- the redhead was cute and the service was prompt -- grabbed my Corona and strolled casually to their table.
Strolling casually was difficult, considering I was jacked up on no fewer than six cups of truck-stop coffee I'd consumed on my 700-mile drive from Hagerstown. I'd made it in just a shade over 14 hours, although I could have done it in less than 11, if I hadn't been forced to exit I-81 south of Bristol to elude the Tennessee state trooper who blue-lighted me when I flew past him at 110 mph.
With my thorough knowledge of the region's back roads and a half-mile head-start -- the trooper must have been a rookie and was just a tad slow on the jump -- I knew he'd never overtake me. But like the moonshiners used to say, you can't outrun the Motorola, so I'd been forced to park the rented Mustang for half an hour behind a Pentacostal church near Walnut Hill while half the law-enforcement personnel in Sullivan County raced back and forth on the Blountville Highway trying to find me. I sat there on the front steps of the church, reading that morning's New York Times, smoking Camel Lights and enjoying the show until I was sure they'd called off the pursuit.
Given that the trooper had never gotten close enough to see my tags, I was reasonably safe from further harassment, but now there was a BOLO for the Mustang, so I had to wind my way through backroads until I picked up I-26, then cut back over to I-81 and kept it cool all the way through Knoxville before opening it up again once I made it on I-75.
So it was nearly 8 p.m. when I handed the keys to the valet in front of the Grand Hyatt, grabbed my satchel and tried to be inconspicuous as I pushed through the side door and crossed the lobby to the men's room.
Quickly washing, shaving and brushing my teeth, I changed clothes and looked as sharp as a CEO when I re-entered the lobby and approached the concierge, handing him the satchel containing my toiletry kit, washcloth and dirty laundry.
"No problem, sir," he said, handing me a ticket in exchange for a $5 tip.
"You're a gentleman and a scholar, Reginald," I replied, with the manic sincerity of a man who'd had nine hours sleep in the past three days, including a fitful 90-minute nap in the front seat of the Mustang in a truckstop parking lot near Adairsville.
Moe Lane knew none of this, of course, and my stroll across the Hyatt bar was supremely casual.
"Stacy!" he said. "What the . . I mean, what's with the tux?"
Attila stared glassy-eyed, predictably having skipped dinner to start in on the gin at five o'clock. She seemed to be trying to form the words of a greeting, but I just smiled, took a big swig of the Corona and pulled up a chair.
"Oh, my buddy Phil Kent invited me to a state GOP fund-raiser, and I thought I'd swing by over here and see how things were going."
"Stacy!" said Attila at last, putting her hand on my wrist.
"Sweetheart, how are ya?" I said, but she was too far gone to comprehend even this simple pleasantry, much less formulate an answer.
"Stacy!" she repeated, but then was distracted when the waiter walked past our table. She grabbed him and thrust her empty glass at him, demanding more gin. I turned my attention to Moe.
"Hey, good to see ya, man. Where's Mr. Erickson?" I said, taking another long drink from the Corona and trying to be as nonchalant as possible.
"Oh, he's still finishing up at the reception. I'm sure he'll be here in 10 minutes."
Still nonchalant, I shook my head and finished the Corona with another long gulp. "Too bad. Can't stick around. I've got to run back over to Phil's party. But maybe I can drop in and say howdy to Erick on my way out. Where's the reception?"
Moe told me the name of the ballroom and I nodded as he told me which floor it was on.
"Thanks, buddy," I said, then reached inside my jacket and pulled out the souvenir Bowie knife I'd bought for $30 at that Adairsville truck stop. Now my eyes gleamed crazily as I briefly brandished the seven-inch blade. "I've got some old business to settle with Mr. Erickson tonight . . ."
With that, I stood up and, holding the knife down beside my leg as if to conceal it, walked quickly toward the side door, glancing back just once to see Moe frantically typing a text-message into his Blackberry. Perfect.
Ditching the knife in the nearest trash can -- definitely $30 of fun -- I headed up the corridor to the pay phones, dropped in some change and made a quick call. After hanging up, I went around the corner, down the hall and turned left, back into the lobby. The concierge spotted me as I strode cheerfully toward him, holding the ticket for my satchel. He took the ticket and handed me the bag with a smiling "thank you, sir."
When I walked out the door, Phil's car was waiting. I threw the satchel in the back seat, climbed in and closed the door.
"Stace, old buddy, how's it going?" Phil said. "It's been a while."
"Yeah, too long, Phil. But you know how it is -- busy, busy, busy."
He wheeled the car through the driveway, but stopped when he heard the sirens of the Atlanta P.D. cars that came screaming down Peachtree Street toward us.
"Wow? What's that?" Phil said.
"Ah, some drunk woman was getting rowdy in the bar. She started talking a lot of crazy stuff about a knife. I guess somebody finally called the cops."
"Yeah, that happens a lot around here," Phil said, turning onto Peachtree after the cop cars had roared past.
"Yeah, I said. "It happens . . ."

Merely another hypothetical scenario, you see. No way I would actually do something that crazy. Even if I had time to drive to Atlanta this weekend, the gas alone would chew up the commission check that just came in the mail this morning, and my wife wants to make the overdue car payment with that. On the other hand, if a couple dozen readers were to hit the tip jar today . . .

Well, I probably still wouldn't drive to Atlanta just for the fun of startling Moe and Attila by my unexpected arrival, but isn't it important for them to think I could?

(Erick: No need to pay me for promoting the Red State Gathering. It's entirely my pleasure, you skunk-sucking bastard.)

UPDATE: Thanks to Steve Givler for playing the Grammar Nazi in the comments. "Strode" is just one of those irregular past-tenses that sounds so weird that it doesn't occur to the ear naturally, and I tend to write by ear, having paid only enough attention in freshman comp class to slide through with a B. Nothing against English majors or Advanced Grammar classes, you understand. Some of my best friends were English majors. NTTAWWT.