'Nothing is inevitable here'

SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. -- 6:30 p.m. -- The rally just ended, but not before a group of us reporters were hustled over to an adjacent building where Sarah and Todd Palin greeted the "overflow" crowd -- folks who had been too far back in line to make it into the rally. The fans were thrilled, and I was an arm's length away from the Palins as they signed autographs. Pretty cool.

5:30 p.m. -- The beginning of the event has been inexplicably delayed. She just took the stage, and the national press actually arrived after she did.

4:20 p.m. -- Walked down the line of people waiting to get inside Heiges Field House to see Sarah Palin. The line is at least a half-mile long, and it's about 35 degrees outside. Just ran into Byron York of National Review, who drove up from DC for the event.

4:50 p.m. -- Opening act for the rally is country singer Sarah Marince. She sounds good. She doesn't look bad, either.

5:10 p.m.: OK, now I'm totally embarrassed. Just briefly interviewed Sarah Marince, who is only 18 (younger than my eldest daughter). She is from Moon Township, Pa., near Pittsburgh, and was "discovered" by the McCain campaign Aug. 30 in Washington, Pa. The campaign held a rally there the day after Palin was announced as running mate, and the organizers asked if there was a local performer available for the event -- Sarah got the gig, and has since appeared at "like, 18 rallies," she says.

Is she a Republican? "Of course!" she says brightly. She's wearing big peace symbol earrings, and nobody seems to mind. She lives part-time in Nashville and her mother is her manager.

PREVIOUSLY: An icy rain didn't stop thousands from turning out for a McCain-Palin rally this morning in Hershey, Pa., and they were fired up by John McCain's never-say-die speech.

"Let me give you the state of the race today," the candidate said. "There's one week to go. We're a few points down. The pundits have written us off, just like they've done before." (Damn those pundits!)

Most polls show the Republican trailing by double digits in Pennsylvania, a statistic belied by the enthusiasm of the crowd inside the Giant Center at Hershey Park.

"My opponent is working out the details with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid of their plans to raise your taxes, increase spending, and concede defeat in Iraq," McCain said. "He's measuring the drapes, and he's planned his first address to the nation for before the election. I guess I'm old fashioned about these things I prefer to let the voters weigh in before presuming the outcome. . . . Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit."

A planned outdoor rally in Quakerstown, Pa., was canceled due to the weather -- 43 degrees and rainy -- and McCain flew to Fayetteville, N.C., for an event, while Sarah Palin will come here to Shippensburg University for a 5 p.m. rally. A long line is already queued up outside the Heiges Field House. I'm temporarily filing from the Starbucks at the university library, where I just overheard a student on her cell phone: "Dude, Sarah Palin's here. . . . Yeah, I saw her and I was like, 'Wazzup?'" (She explained was just kidding with her brother.)

On the road again

About to leave for Hershey, Pa., to cover a John McCain/Sarah Palin rally, then travel to Shippensburg, Pa., for a Palin solo rally. So, assuming that rabid Republicans don't kill me -- I will be wearing media credentials, after all -- expect light blogging today.

Meanwhile, check out the latest at RightWingNews and The American Spectator. Or if you want some really dirty Maverick-Barracuda infighting, try this story by George Stephanopoulos. If you want some good news, however, try this.

R.I.P., Dean Barnett

"SoxBlog" used to be Hugh Hewitt's right-hand man at Townhall. Died today at age 41 of complications of cystic fibrosis.

Ace is mourning the loss of Dean's "wicked pissah" Boston accent.

Guilty, guilty, guilty!

Good riddance to a pork-barrel Republican:

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has been convicted of lying about free home renovations and other gifts he received from a wealthy oil contractor.
The Senate's longest-serving Republican, Stevens was found guilty on all seven counts of making false statements on Senate financial documents.
The verdict throws the upcoming election into disarray. Stevens is fighting off a challenge from Democrat Mark Begich and must now either drop out or continue campaigning as a convicted felon.

Why didn't Stevens resign months ago? This is the same question I asked with Bob Ney two years ago. Where do these Republicans get the idea they can survive scandals like this?

'Trust us, we're professionals'

John Gizzi reports that a group of Republican consultants running the party's "independent expenditures unit" are selectively pulling the plug on conservative candidates. Michelle Malkin is furious. Yesterday, I said:

There is a reason that the Republican Party has lost nearly all its grassroots energy, and it has a lot to do with the profligacy and incompetence of the overpaid "professionals" who run these campaigns. . . .
Campaign professionals are living large, billing everything to the expense account and throwing fat consulting contracts at their buddies. They get paid whether the candidate wins or loses, so it's not like they actually care what happens.

Most grassroots conservatives I talk to aren't so cynically specific about what's wrong with the GOP, but there is a definite sense that there is a problem at the top levels in Washington.

Boffo box office for Obama

Andrew Breitbart:

The making of the Barack Obama franchise far exceeded the skill set of Washington's best. In fact, the recipe for Mr. Obama's global popularity can be attributed less to political minds and chance than to the enduring power of Hollywood. . . .
With its emphasis on star power, the Obama campaign from Day One emphasized the candidate's perfectly cut presidential presence.
From its skillful editing to its out-of-control budget and its relentless marketing, Mr. Obama's team played a different game at a different level than Sen. John McCain and his traditionalist staff.
For starters, top minds in Washington assessed an inexperienced ultraliberal of partial African heritage with the name Barack Hussein Obama as a hard sell.
But in his look, tone and temperament, Mr. Obama resembles some of the top domestic and foreign box-office titans of our time.

Unless, of course, hicks in sticks nix pics.

Giant blog woman endorses Obama

I never realized Megan McArdle was a terrorist-loving radical Marxist who hates America:

Yes, I still support Obama . . . .

A pro-Obama libertarian -- kind of like the Mensheviks who supported the Russian revolution. When she ends up in a gulag, she'll have second thoughts.

Glenn Reynolds sells his soul

To the New York Times. That a pioneer of New Media would allow himself to be published in Pinch Sulzburger's Pravda-on-the-Hudson just goes to show you that every man has his price. If Obama were smart, he'd send Professor Reynolds a little e-mail, obliquely mentioning the possibility of an appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Swooning for 'oleaginous'?

I love good language, and was amused by this liberal blogger who paused amid an article blockquote to "swoon" for Robert Draper's use of the phrase, "the oleaginous Alaska network dominated by Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens."

This is actually a clever double entendre. Oleaginous means "oily," and certainly oil is a major factor in Alaska politics. But the secondary meaning of oleaginous (when applied to a person) is "slick" or "slippery," especially someone who greases their way to success with obsequious flattery. You can easily imagine that the Alaska old-boy network is crowded with characters like that. So oleaginous works both ways in this context.

A really clever phrase is always a pleasure, as with Tim Cavanaugh's description of L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten as a "sanctimonious endomorph."

Romney aides slagging Palin?

This infuriates me:

Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading ant-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. . . .
Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a "diva" and was going off message intentionally. The former and current Romney supporters further are pushing Romney supporters for key Republican jobs, including head of the Republican National Committee.

I'm not sure this is true, but it infuriates me either way. If it's true, then the Romney people are collaborating with liberals in their anti-Palin crusade. If it's false, then somebody's trying to do a pre-emptive strike against Mitt.

I have been harshly critical of the McCain campaign, but I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm a journalist, not a political operative, and I'm not trying to get a job in anybody's 2012 campaign. These GOP campaign professionals are a different breed. When someone's selling loyalty as a commodity, caveat emptor.

When Hope fails

Folks in Massachusetts are discovering that Democratic promises don't necessarily add up.

Professor Obama on 'economic justice'

What do you think he's talking about?

The "failures of the civil rights movement . . . dispossessed people"? Really, what do you think he's talking about? It ain't "middle-class tax cuts," I tell you that. Obama in 2001:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Obama wants a Constitution that requires exactly what its framers intended the Constitution to forbid. That's they kind of postmodernist crap they teach at Harvard Law nowadays.

UPDATE: ABC via Hot Air, Team Obama claims:

It’s just another distraction from an increasingly desperate McCain campaign.

But it didn't come from the McCain campaign, it came from Obama. How is it that Obama advocates "redistributive change" in 2001, but if any critic calls attention to Obama's own words, it's a "smear"? Next thing you know, we'll be told it's "racist" for Republicans to quote Obama.

A sucker is born every minute

Somebody at AOSHQ actually went out as a volunteer for the McCain campaign. Yeah, the same campaign where the top-paid staffer for the week ending Oct. 10 was makeup artist Amy Strozzi. They've paid $36,000 to Strozzi since September (and another $18,825 to hairstylist Angela Lew) and you're volunteering to go door-to-door for nothing? Chump.

There is a reason that the Republican Party has lost nearly all its grassroots energy, and it has a lot to do with the profligacy and incompetence of the overpaid "professionals" who run these campaigns. Lots of conservatives don't even open mail from the RNC anymore -- just throw the fundraising letters straight in the trash. Why give money to people who are only going to use it to hire idiots like Peter Feldman?

Campaign professionals are living large, billing everything to the expense account and throwing fat consulting contracts at their buddies. They get paid whether the candidate wins or loses, so it's not like they actually care what happens. And you're going to let them make you work for nothing? Like the GOP is an orphanage or a soup kitchen, a charity that needs volunteers?

Harvard genius vs. college dropout

Ross Douthat (Harvard '02) vs. Rush Limbaugh, who dropped out of Southeast Missouri State in 1971:

[Limbaugh's argument] has a certain surface plausibility - just enough, I suspect, to be persuasive to the many, many conservatives eager to be convinced that the '08 outcome had everything to do with John McCain's heresies and the treason of the Beltway elites, and nothing whatsoever to do with them.

In other words, Rush's 20 million listeners are what's wrong with the Republican Party. If only they'd listen to these young Harvard graduates who know everything . . .

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Linked at Conservative Grapevine.

TNR misses the point

Noam Schreiber of The New Republic infers that complaints from supporters of Sarah Palin about McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace are somehow related to Wallace's ties to CBS news.

In fact, Wallace is a Bush loyalist, and if you think Wallace's old boss Jeb Bush isn't looking ahead to 2012 -- if you think the Bush clan doesn't views Palin as a potential threat to their dynastic succession -- you're crazy.

If Palin is suspicious of her handlers, it's like that old joke: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't really out to get you.

Palin coming to Pa. on Tuesday

She will join John McCain at a Tuesday morning rally in Hershey (a 100-mile drive for me) and then do an afternoon event solo in Shippensburg (a 50-mile drive for me). Meanwhile, Fred Barnes has a piece about the anti-Palin punditocracy:

In judging Palin, it comes down to who is more credible. Is it those who've worked with her, or know her, or have at least met and talked with her? Or those who haven't? The answer is a no-brainer. Okay, I may be biased on the subject of Palin, having been impressed after spending nearly two hours with her on one occasion and an hour on another.
My advice is ignore the critics who know far less about Palin than she does about foreign policy. A good example is Ken Adelman, who headed the arms control agency in the Reagan administration. Adelman recently endorsed Obama and said he "would not have hired [Palin] for even a mid-level post in the arms control agency." Well, I know both Palin and Adelman. And Ken, I'm sorry to tell you, but I think there are an awful lot of jobs in Washington that Palin would get before you.

Fred is a squish on immigration and his fawning hagiography of Bush infuriated me, but I agree with him about Palin's critics, who are clearly trying to make her the scapegoat for Republican failures she had nothing to do with.

One reason Palin is so disdained by the elite punditocracy is that Team Maverick botched the rollout, which allowed the MSM to depict her as a shallow, clueless lightweight -- the perfect scapegoat for the know-it-all pundits. It is to Palin's credit that she reportedly recognizes the gigantic PR blunder committed by her "campaign handlers." Unlike any of them, Palin has actually worked in a newsroom.

That there's funny . . .

. . . I don't care who you are!

The 'pro-life Democrat' scam

This would be amusing, were it not so sad:

The political advertisement that aired in Montgomery, Ala., spoke plainly to conservative voters' values. As an image of three toddlers in diapers flashed across the screen, a narrator intoned that Mayor Bobby Bright, who is running for Congress, "supports their right to life."
The anti-abortion pitch is standard fare in Alabama's Second Congressional District, a deeply conservative area that President Bush carried twice and that has been represented in Washington by a Republican for four decades.
What makes the spot unusual is that Mr. Bright is a Democrat. And that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been pushing hard for Mr. Bright's election, paid for it.
In fact, Mr. Bright is one of a dozen anti-abortion Democratic challengers the party has recruited to run for the House this year and has aggressively supported with millions of dollars and other resources in culturally conservative districts long unfriendly to the party.

On this issue, there is no arguing that the Democratic Party is completely controlled by Planned Parenthood, NARAL and Emily's List. Obama will name pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage activist judges to the courts, and a Democratic-controlled Congress will pour even more money into Planned Parenthood's coffers through Title X. And yet some people are foolish enough to believe that there is something to be gained by voting for "pro-life Democrats."

Remember the "conservative" Democrat Jim Webb, who won the Virginia Senate race in 2006? Webb gets a 100% rating by NARAL, a 100% rating by the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, and rates 85% with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Meanwhile, Webb scored an F from the American Taxpayers Union.

The idiots who vote for "pro-life Democrats" don't pay enough attention to realize they're being bamboozled, just like they don't notice that "Catholics for Obama" shill Doug Kmiec is funded by George Soros.

Irony triumphant

Multiple layers of irony are being exposed in the denouement of this campaign, including "Cakewalk Ken" Adelman's Obama endorsement and the choice of animal-rights kook Matthew Scully to write speeches for moosehunting Sarah Palin.

The latest irony? Remember John McCain's screwball idea of naming Andrew Cuomo as SEC chairman?

"Andrew Cuomo has distinguished himself by going after wrongdoing on Wall Street -- that's exactly the kind of bulldog we need at the S.E.C. to fight for American investors and taxpayers."
-- Peter Feldman, 9/22/08

Peter Feldman -- that name ring a bell? He was the guy pushing the Ashley Todd hoax to the media. None of the liberal bloggers trashing Feldman for pushing the hoax seem to have noticed his previous role as the "Republicans for Cuomo" spokesman.

National Greatness redux

David Brooks offers a historic pedigree for big government:

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom.
But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility. This tendency began with Alexander Hamilton, who created a vibrant national economy so more people could rise and succeed. It matured with Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Republicans, who created the Land Grant College Act and the Homestead Act to give people the tools to pursue their ambitions. It continued with Theodore Roosevelt, who busted the trusts to give more Americans a square deal.

The problem is that (a) Brooks' argument lacks a basis in historical and political fact, and (b) his "third tendency" is practically identical to "orthodox liberalism" and inimical to limited government.

First, Hamilton did not "create a vibrant national economy," and I defy anyone to demonstrate that he did any such thing. Hamilton was an advocate of various policies, but these policies did not in any sense "create" the American economy, which is a product of the labor and intelligence of the American people. The Homestead Act is utterly useless as a model for future policy for the very reason that there are no longer any Western lands to give away. And the efficacy of Teddy's "trust busting" is by no means universally applauded by economic historians.

What do Hamilton, Lincoln and Roosevelt have in common, other than occupying pedestals in Brooks' mental pantheon? All were advocates of protective tariffs.

So if Brooks wants to endorse the protectionism of Patrick Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, et al., he could have found no better historic icons than Hamilton, Lincoln and T.R. Exactly how Brooks proposes to pursue "National Greatness" without the protectionist measures advocated by his idols, he doesn't say. However, he does proclaim:

The Hamiltonian-Bull Moose tendency is the great, moderate strain in American politics. In some sense this whole campaign was a contest to see which party could reach out from its base and occupy that centrist ground. The Democratic Party did that. Senior Democrats like Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and Jason Furman actually created something called The Hamilton Project to lay out a Hamiltonian approach for our day.

The Rubin/Summers faction is not calling the shots at the Obama campaign, nor do they have any influence with Howard Dean, who calls the shots with Democrats in Congress. The "Hamiltonian tendency" of the Democrats is a figment of Brooks' imagination, the same imagination that conjured up the "National Greatness" concept that has done so much to lead the GOP to ruin.

UPDATE: Linked in Pirate's Cove roundup (which features a haunting hottie).