K-Lo advises John McCain

Via Hot Air, here's Kathryn Jean Lopez at the Corner:

If I were him and his campaign, I wouldn't argue he's "the true conservative " (i.e. at CPAC) — that turns conservatives who don't agree he is off. I'd argue, we have differences, my friends — including on the war (Gitmo, interrogation) — but here's why you should rally to me.

"If I were him ...." Sorry, can't finish that sentence.

The breach between Crazy Cousin John and his conservative critics is irreparable. What he did cannot be undone, and it is folly even to imagine it can.

John McCain wants to lead something other than the Republican Party that elected Ronald Reagan to the White House 1981. He is in defiant opposition to the Republican Party that captured Congress in 1994. His campaign is one of unlimited personal vengeance against the Republican Party that rejected him in 2000.

John McCain is out to destroy the Republican Party as we have known it, and he certainly needs no advice on how to do that, given how much he's already done.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat is every bit of 27, which explains why he can write a phrase like "the movement conservative establishment, from Rush and Hannity to the Club For Growth" without imagining the screams of "WTF?" from old dudes like me.

I mean, WTF is Sean Hannity's name doing in the middle of a formula for "the movement conservative establishment"? Hannity didn't get his first radio show (on a crappy college station in California) until 1989, then bounced around until ending up on Atlanta's No. 2 news-talk station in 1992, and didn't get hired by fledgling Fox News until 1996.

So how is it that a guy nobody ever heard of 10 years ago is now part of a supposedly all-powerful "establishment"? That's the kind of mythmaking that springs from the head of a guy as young as Douthat, who was a high-school junior when Hannity was still doing radio in Atlanta, and who thus views a big name associated with a relatively new phenomenon (Fox News) as part of an "establishment."

And the Club For Growth is of even more recent vintage, so WTF again?

Excuse me for being annoyed, but aren't there any grownups at The Atlantic Monthly who can tell these whiz kids that they don't know everything? Douthat just reified this "establishment" in such a way that many of his fellow greenhorns might actually imagine it exists.

UPDATE 9:40 p.m.: You got to hand it Hugh Hewitt. Despite all the ridicule he's taken for being such a homer for Romney, he keeps plugging away:

The fight against McCain-Kennedy in the spring and summer took about two weeks to first organize and then gather overwhelming strength.
The battle against Harriet Miers (yes, I backed the president on the losing side of that one so I recall it well) took a week or so longer.
But once the conservative voice begins speaking as one or nearly one, it is very effective, and that began to emerge on Thursday after the Reagan Library debate.

Indeed. As previously noted, even if polls have failed to register the full effect of the post-Florida backlash against McCain, Don Surber has demonstrated that, with 1,192 delegates needed to win, Tuesday's outcome will likely leave the delegate count at McCain 652, Romney 311.

Romney's still in the game, and with conservative voices loudly protesting the premature coronation of King John, there's still hope.

UPDATE 10:10 p.m.: The miraculous wild-card Giants just knocked off previously undefeated New England in one of the best Super Bowls ever, thus proving that the impossible can happen. But Jim Antle at the American Spectator has no hope:

The conservative establishment came around to Romney too late. ...
That's at least what I suspect. But I've been wrong before. We'll find out soon enough.

Yes, we will. The key for Romney is to knock down this premature "McCain is inevitable" meme.

Go bigtime with Rachel Marsden

At midnight tonight, Rachel Marsden launches GrandCentralPolitical.com, an ambitious effort to create a unique online opportunity for political activists:

“Anyone in the industry – or wanting to start a career in politics or political media -- can sign up for free and get their very own page on the site, in about 2 minutes. They can upload their resume, headshot, YouTube video demo, and experience, and be scouted by media outlets looking for guests, companies looking for lobbyists -- or politicians, public relations firms and even agents seeking new talent,” explains Marsden. “If they want, they can actively search for opportunities, and contribute to the bipartisan, international political magazine to showcase their talent to decision makers.”

Marsden is seeking to expand on the basic Hayekian insight of the blogosphere: The political elite don't have a monopoly on intelligence, knowledge or skill:

• The facts you know are as valid as (and perhaps more valid than) whatever's on the op-ed page of the New York Times or The Washington Post.
• Some ordinary guy with a cheap video camera and QuickTimePro can make a political ad as effective as anything produced by the big-money professionals.
• There is no reason why the cable networks must keep scheduling the same boring talking heads over and over, when there are literally thousands of activists capable of adding important insights to the discourse.

When Rachel told me about her idea, I was sufficiently intrigued that I volunteered to write a series of columns for her site, explaining (a) why the establishment punditocracy is fading and (b) why you can't become the next superstar pundit overnight just by blogging.

If you read my columns and say, "He's full of crap! I could write better stuff than that," that's exactly my point: How come I'm a professional journalist -- I get paid to write this crap -- and you're not? GrandCentralPolitical.com is about hooking people up with opportunities to get paid to do the stuff they already know how to do.

I haven't seen the site yet, but it was designed by TCVMedia, so it's got to be good.

Don Surber proves himself wrong

UPDATE 2:10 p.m.: "John and I will have a respectful debate," Hillary says.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Because Mitt Romney isn't running attack ads, some people see this as a signal he doesn't really want to win. Allah sees it otherwise, and reinforces my point (citing Karl at Protein Wisdom):

Karl reminds us that 45% of the delegates will still be in play after Tuesday, so McCain ain’t clinching anything this week.

* * *

I greatly appreciate the effort Don Surber has devoted to crunching the numbers on the Super Tuesday primaries, in an attempt to depict John McCain's nomination as a lead-pipe cinch: "The numbers crunch McCain’s way for a final decision on Tuesday." (Via Memeorandum.)

But while the title of his post is "It's over," what Surber has actually shown is that it's not over. Even according to his own math, Don has demonstrated, with 1,192 delegates needed to win, the current polls indicate an outcome Tuesday that will leave the delegate count at McCain 652, Romney 311.

This has been what I've been trying to say all along: Despite his post-Florida momentum, McCain is nowhere near locking up the nomination.

The MSM (and McCain's Republican supporters) are trying to paint McCain's nomination as a fait accompli in order to (a) hurt Romney's fundraising; (b) discourage his supporters; (c) cause a "bandwagon effect" in McCain's favor; and (d) prevent Romney from getting anything but more discouraging press coverage.

It won't work, because a lie cannot defeat the facts, and a free people cannot be permanently deceived. When Wednesday morning comes, and Romney is still a viable candidate, a lot of Republicans will recognize that they've been the target of a dishonest propaganda campaign, and there will be a monster backlash against McCain.

Don, I love you, man, but this fight may very well go all the way to Minnesota.

P.S.: Don't miss Daily Pundit's analysis of the GOP race.

Most awkward MSNBC segment ever

(Greetings, AOSHQ Morons!)

Somehow, I don't think this anchorette babe knew what she was getting herself into when her producers booked Marty Beckerman on the show:


I first found out about Marty several years ago through his book, "Generation S.L.U.T.," a novel-with-essays that -- despite its bizarre title and even more bizarre content -- offers a fundamentally thoughtful and critical perspective on contemporary youth culture. It's a graphic depiction of the dehumanizing effects of growing up in a hypersexualized society without norms or proper adult supervision.

Being an inverterate bibliophile, I spotted "Generation S.L.U.T." on the discard table at the office where the book review section dumps the extra books it's not planning to review. When I began reading the book, I was stunned. Space does not permit a complete description of the book, but it culminates with a booze-and-drugs-and-sex party -- at an upscale home where the self-absorbed parents are obliviously AWOL -- when a teenage girl is sadistically gang-raped and the crime captured on video for Internet distribution.

It's a tragedy of degradation, and the perceptive reader recognizes that Marty is portraying (from an obverse perspective) exactly what such cultural conservatives as Wendy Shalit, Diana West, Danielle Crittenden, Dr. Miriam Grossman, Kay S. Hymowitz, Robert H. Knight and Dana Mack have been trying to warn America about for years: In the post-"liberation" era, adolescence has become a toxic playground of depraved sexuality characterized by selfish cruelty and conducive to disease, personality disorders, and crime.

Here's my Amazon review of "Generation S.L.U.T.":

Beckerman is completely insane -- and that's a good thing. What he has done is to throw back the curtain to show us the horrible moral decay that has afflicted the children of the Woodstock Generation. The graphic language and sexual content may shock adults, but this is how young people talk and what young people do. Just when you think to yourself, "That's too far-fetched to ever happen," you turn on the TV or pick up a paper and see that it already HAS happened: Teenagers posting self-porn on the 'Net, the Duke gang-rape case, etc. Despite its pornographic content, Generation S.L.U.T. is fundamentally a socially conservative book, and Beckerman's a Robert Bork for the MTV era. Marty shows us the emotional and physical wreckage wrought by the serial betrayals of the "hook-up" age among kids with too much privilege and not enough supervision.

The phrase "a Robert Bork for the MTV era" is, of course, a reference to Bork's classic "Slouching Toward Gomorrah" -- although I doubt Beckerman appreciated the intended compliment, and obviously no president would ever think of nominating him to the Supreme Court.

After reading "Generation S.L.U.T.," I was able to locate Marty online and began an e-mail correspondence that eventually became an actual friendship, based on the fact that he's one of the few people I know who's crazier than I am. I enjoy making friends with crazy people because, as I explained to Marty, it's such a relief occasionally to be the second-craziest guy in the room.

Marty is very much a cynic, but he clearly realizes that the culture in which he has been raised -- he's still only 25 -- is profoundly abnormal and unhealthy. This is a conservative realization, even though he's hardly a conservative in a political sense. (He has described himself as a libertarian, and has written rather viciously about his contempt for what he sees as the illogic and hypocrisy of typical specimens of both major parties.)

Marty is also funny as hell. A lot of people don't "get" Marty's deadpan absurdism, his purposeful affronts to good taste, or his self-deprecating penchant for embarrassing revelations. In person, he seems quiet, serious and (usually) polite, which is why inviting Marty to a party is always a risky proposition.

Thus with the MSNBC anchorette babe who finds herself at a loss to react when Marty puts John McCain's habit of using the phrase "my friends" into the context of the Hanoi Hilton. Offensive, tasteless, insulting -- I dare even say such a joke is un-American.

But that's Marty. He is an intrinsically flawed human being -- and he knows it. That self-awareness amounts to an approximation of the Calvinist conception of Original Sin, which was why, in one of our first e-mail exchanges, I suggested he investigate the dynamic young evangelist Joshua Harris, whose theology is essentially Calvinist.

Marty's Facebook page describes his religion as "Jewish - Self-Hating," and he's a contributing editor at the Jewish humor site Jewcy.com. Despite his youth and precocious success, he's already gone through one of those soul-scorching nightmares that makes the book business so traumatic, with a two-year drought caused by a major publisher canceling his contract after he'd already completed the manuscript of a time-sensitive non-fiction book about politics. (Offhand, I'll guess the marketing department was to blame. A good rule of thumb about the book biz: When in doubt, always blame marketing.)

Marty says the experience nearly made him an alcoholic. Having undergone some tribulations of my own, I spent a lot of time commiserating with Marty by phone and e-mail, and occasionally in person. But now he's emerged into the sunlit uplands of success and sobriety, with a new publisher and a steady gig in New York.

So I'm happy for Marty. And even if his jokes about Crazy Cousin John were tasteless to the point of being unpatriotic, I'm sure Mitt Romney appreciated that expression of support -- and maybe that Supreme Court nomination isn't as far-fetched as I thought.

P.S.: Marty took a cheap shot at Michelle Malkin; I replied. (And in case you don't get the reference to "self-abuse," you can read Marty's tale of woe here, although I must add VERY STRONG CONTENT WARNING.)

CPAC Fever!

Hot Air's got it! Michelle Malkin 's got it! Now we learn that even the President and Vice President have succumbed to the pandemic of CPAC Fever:

Both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are scheduled to address the more than 6,000 activists attending the 35th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this week in Washington.
Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain and Ron Paul also are slated to speak during the three-day event that begins Thursday at Washington's posh Omni Shoreham Hotel.
"For the first time, we will have both the president and vice president speaking in person," said Larry Hart, Director of Government Relations for the American Conservative Union (ACU), which has organized the yearly event since its inception in 1974.
News that both Bush and Cheney will speak at CPAC may add to the record-breaking attendance already expected this year for the nation's largest annual gathering of conservative activists.
"We're on pace to be higher than last year's 6,300, which was a record," said CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale. "Obviously, we don't know what on-site registration is going to be." ... (MORE)

Read the whole thing, because that is some damn fine reporting.

And guess who else is burning with CPAC Fever?

Trout Pout Pride!

Becky Banks is program coordinator for Students For Life, and a couple of weeks ago, she appeared in a Hot Air video talking about the annual pro-life conference at Catholic University.

As seems obligatory whenever a female appears online, some Hot Air commenters were doing the hubba-hubba routine for Miss Banks, with comments including "fantastic" and "her boyfriend is a lucky man." But then came a commenter called "Funky Chicken," who said:

You guys think she is attractive? I was thinking trout pout and kinda fugly.

Funky Chicken, this is for you:

Master Chief Scotty vs. Coulter

Oooooh, boy. Nothing I like less than to see my friends at odds with one another, but I just got off the phone with my old buddy, Scotty the Master Chief, a veteran Navy guy who voted for John McCain in the Florida primary.

To say the Master Chief is angry with Ann Coulter's "I'll campaign for Hillary" stance would be a huge understatement. A lot of what Scotty had to say is unprintable, but I'll quote some of the rest:

"You're either on one side or the other. ... What she has to say doesn't mean a damn thing to anyone who's ever spent a day in harm's way in defense of this country. But I'm happy she's got the right to run her mouth."

Well, Scotty, that "one side or the other" thing is part of the basic problem, right?

BTW, Crazy Cousin John's getting a lot of backup from Navy guys -- Captain Ed Morrisey, for example.

In the latest news, the polls are tightening, and a column in the Boston Globe suggests Super Duper Tuesday may not prove decisive.

Courtesy of Hot Air, here's video of Ann appearing Friday on Neil Cavuto:


The Master Chief just got back from a training mission, but he's got my personal invitation to join me at CPAC -- we haven't seen each other in about 20 years, and it will be a great reunion before I fly off Feb. 11 to The Very Dangerous Foreign Country.

By then, Super Duper Tuesday will be over, and maybe this ugly internecine Republican feud will be calmed down, too. Saturday night, Ann Coulter is speaking at George Washington University, and I'm sure my friend Sergio Gor would be honored to have the old Master Chief in attendance.

Oh, shut up: Gallup counting "leaners"

It is utterly irresponsible to do this kind of crap in a national poll in a primary campaign.

National presidential numbers are nonsense, period. A presidential election is not a nationwide popularity contest, OK? It's 50 contests in 50 states.

But publishing as "news" a graphic that measures "leaners" at this stage of the game? That's insane -- just completely insane.

America is cursed with a media establishment that doesn't understand electoral politics and doesn't understand how to apply poll data to the political process, and therefore ends up pushing nonsense numbers and tendentious spin into the public discourse as if it were scientific proof of something.

And look how bloggers are rushing to imitate the MSM they claim to loathe: "This poll shows ...."

Well, OK, what does it show, you morons? What do you know about the sample demographics, the order and phrasing of the questions?

How about LOOKING AT THE DATE OF THE FREAKING SURVEY, FOOLS! It's a three-day tracking poll, Tuesday through Thursday. Considering that Monday and Tuesday's news was all about how Obama whomped Hillary in South Carolina, until suddenly the news was the Beatification of St. John, those "trends" you're seeing reflect short-term preferences of people who are apparently pretty damned fickle.

What do these polls tell you about the professionalism of each campaign's organizing staffs in any particular state? Nothing.

What do these polls tell you about preparations for last-minute contacts and get-out-the-vote efforts by each campaign and in each state? Again, nothing.

Or, say, what about sign-placement? Absentee-ballot and early-voting efforts? Robo-calls? Dirty-trick e-mails? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

A party primary is not a general election. Get that through your thick skulls, people. Apples and oranges.

Year after year, election after election, I watch the same crap happen over and over again. Every Election Night, when the actual votes are counted, and the paper's finished, I compare the result to the polls and laugh.

Do you people have amnesia or something? I remember the week before the 2000 election, Bush was pulling away, the trend clearly in his favor. Then the Democrats sprang that little DUI trick on Thursday, and five days later, we were looking at the worst-deadlocked election in American history.

You can go state-by-state, year-by-year and cite similar examples. In 2002, no important pundit predicted the fatal disaster that struck the Georgia Democratic Party on Election Day. The GOP defeated Tom Murphy in his Haralson County stronghold. Nobody, and I mean nobody, had predicted that.

There is simply no reliable way to predict what is going to happen on Tuesday until it happens. David Weigel says the winner-take-all factor in the GOP primaries means that McCain has it locked up. He may be right. He may also be wrong.

With a hotly-contested Democratic contest to keep Democrats from crossing over in open-primary states, and given the traditional advantage in organizing strength of social conservatives, I have a hard time imagining that Crazy Cousin John will just waltz away with the nomination on Tuesday. With both Fred and Rudy gone now, and Huckabee short on cash, the dynamic has changed a lot in a very short time frame.

If the GOP nomination is still up for grabs on Wednesday -- that is to say, if McCain doesn't have enough delegates after Super Tuesday to be the de-facto nominee -- all bets are off. And I think there's a very good chance that Romney can win enough states Tuesday to prevent McCain from locking it up.

If I'm right -- and I could be completely wrong, of course -- then Huckabee will drop out on Wednesday. That would mean (a) Romney could finally consolidate the Religious Right voters, and (b) McCain will have to withstand yet more withering scrutiny, and be booed loudly if he dares attend CPAC.

Between my gut and Gallup, I always trust my gut.

Saturday AM Surfing

Not to be missed this morning:

• Debbie Schlussel on David Lee Roth -- w/video! (via Hot Air)


• Slublog goes all-in for Romney, as does Bryan (via Ace)


• Iowahawk: Tony Arizona is ... Makaniak! Classic TV dialogue: "It's so crazy it just might work."


• Giant Libertarian She-Blogger Who Never Links Me: "The insurgents are now using mentally disabled women as suicide bombers. ... I don't know why this seems worse than just killing a lot of innocent people, but it does."


• Famous Gay Blogger Who Never Links Me: "Evil: Some don't want to use that word about the Islamofascists. But they use women ..."


• Major Newspaper I Used To Work For: "Iraqi officials ... said both of the women were mentally disabled." (My skeptical reaction: Maybe the officials used an Iraqi slang phrase for "crazy woman" that does not literally translate as "mentally disabled.")


• Famous Writer I Used To Edit: Talk radio hates 'em some McCain. (I always loved editing Don Lambro's stories, basically because Don's stories usually didn't need much editing. A great reporter, a smart conservative analyst, and a real prince of a guy.)
• JammieWearingFool: Super Blowhard XLII.


• Don Surber: The Week That Was.


• Hot Air: Tammy Bruce joins Anti-McCain Caucus.

(Y'know, if Alan keeps bringing the funny like this, they'll have to rename it "Colmes & Hannity.")

• Captain Ed is to John McCain as Hugh Hewitt is to Romney.


• Michelle Malkin speaks truth to power.

(Speaking of Michelle, have you noticed that she is actually on Fox more nowadays, despite her continuing Geraldo-inspired boycott of "O'Reilly"? She appeared on two different Fox shows Thursday. Fox needs to dump Geraldo and create a new weekend show, "Sunday News Foxes with Malkin, MK & KP.")

• Thomas Sowell on Crazy Cousin John:

Super Tuesday may be the voters' last chance to bring the so-called "straight talk express" to a screeching halt.

This morning's surf ends with yet another brutal takedown on Crazy Cousin John, this one from Karl at Protein Wisdom:

As Karl Rove put it in the 2000 campaign, ” Senator McCain is a 17-year Washington insider whose accomplishments are few and far between.” Not much has changed in the interim.

That was then. Now, I suspect Rove is the "secret" strategist behind the McCain bandwagon. That's why so many Republican know-it-all types keep trying to tell us it's a lead-pipe cinch for McCain. Just like they told us that Senate passage of the Rove-McCain-Kennedy-Martinez amnesty was a done deal.

New on Fox! 'Hannity & Coulter'

Funniest. Video. Ever. Watch until the end:



(HT: Hot Air via Memeorandum.)

Alan Colmes deserves an award for that performance. Perhaps the best segment in Fox News history.

"Increasingly likely" bullshit

Clarifying what I was trying to tell Michael Weiss, my thesis in one sentence:

When, under pretence of reporting on a political contest whose outcome is uncertain, a journalist implies an outcome in such a way that an uninformed reader might believe that it's all over but the shouting, that journalist has ceased to be a reporter and has become a bullshit artist.

"Broderism" is the great bane of American political journalism, and is one of the routine errors that has driven the profession into such a state of ill-repute that smart young people now avoid the "news industry" altogether.

Young people don't read the news, and they sure as hell don't want to write the news. They'd rather turn on Comedy Central and laugh at a parody of the news.

Political reporters need to be waterboarded until they agree to sign a pledge:

• Stop reporting opinion polls as if they were actual electoral results.
• Stop telling the reader what to think while at the same time pretending not to care about the outcome.

If you are genuinely neutral as to whether McCain or Romney wins the GOP nomination, why are you "reporting" it -- at a time when its a margin-of-error race in many states, and the situation is ultimately dynamic -- in such a way as seems most calculated to (a) discourage wavering Romney supporters, and (b) encourage undecided voters to climb aboard the unstoppable juggernaut of the John McCain bandwagon?

Under the actual political conditions that existed Thursday, placing the phrase "increasingly likely" in front of the phrase "John McCain nomination" amounted to cheerleading for John McCain. If you don't get that, then you should go back and re-read your high school psychology textbook. It's called the Bandwagon Effect.

This kind of dishonest (or perhaps naive) reporting is bad enough when a blogger does it at Slate. But for decades, we've seen it practiced by the most eminent and "respectable" reporters, at the most influential news organizations, and it's simply bad journalism. In an apparent effort to see the "Big Picture," the Broderites (Broderists?) feign omniscience, writing in a tone both bland and authoritative, endeavoring to hypnotize the reader into a trance state where he is what a psychologist would call "suggestible":

• Polls show ...
• Observers believe ...
• It appears increasingly likely ...

When those soft-sell tactics are employed in political reporting, journalism becomes a "profession" in the same sense that being a three-card monte dealer is a "profession." It's a racket, a con, a scam.

Suppose I were to try my hand at the scam?

Leading editors in Washington yesterday debated whether to report the unusual insights offered by a distant relative of Sen. John McCain.

This fierce critic of the Arizona Republican is himself an experienced journalist whose increasingly popular blog, dubbed "The Other McCain," has caused a buzz among political observers concerned that the revelations might stall the momentum of the elderly senator's campaign.

I should hope that any 10th-grader reading that sentence can spot the means by which "spin" is conveyed. (Pay attention, kids: This might be on your final exam.)

Reporters: Stick to reporting what has happened, and stop playing Carnac the Magnificent by pretending to see the future, OK?

A source close to J.P. Friere speculated that the recently-hired managing editor of The American Spectator might eat tacos at the National Press Club on Friday night. It appears increasingly likely that Mr. Friere will have a Corona beer with his tacos. ...

If Respectable Professional Journalists would stick to the facts, there might yet be hope for the future of Western civilization. Otherwise ...Hey, have any of you guys seen "Idiocracy"?

Dude, I got quoted in Slate

(Additional ranting here.)

How cool is that? Even if Michael Weiss's analysis is utterly wrong:

The conservative blogosphere is devouring itself over the increasingly likely prospect of a John McCain nomination. Party-line righties dislike the Arizona senator for his heretical views on immigration, campaign-finance laws and banning torture, while more moderate conservatives see his prescience about the surge, and his hawkishness in general, as true selling points.

Michael, I'm tempted to quote Mary McCarthy's famous remark about Lilian Hellman, but will refrain. A few brief points:

• If I am a "party-line righty," my only question is: Where's the party? I'm having a party at CPAC next week, and though the VIP guest list is exclusive, the guests are quite ideologically diverse (although uniformly fabulous).
• The conservative blogosphere is not, repeat not, "devouring itself." I have dear, close friends who are pro-McCain and others who are Pro McCain (in the sense that they're political professionals on the McCain campaign payroll). "Coalition politics" is an interesting concept, worth any amount of time you wish to invest in studying it.
• I do not "dislike" Crazy Cousin John, and the issue-by-issue stuff is only part of the problem. The senator is politically unreliable and temperamentally unsuited for the presidency. He cannot be elected president in any imaginable scenario, and in the event of an unimaginable scenario resulting in his election, would be a bad president. But that doesn't mean I "dislike" him. Hell, he could say the same things about me, and none of my friends would argue.
• Crazy Cousin John's nomination is not an "increasingly likely prospect."

This is what I don't like about MSM pundits, and I can't stand it when bloggers try to imitate MSM pundits by doing the same thing.

It's a form of journalistic malpractice called Broderism, a/k/a, Voice Of God Syndrome. It's why Americans hate the media, and if bloggers fall into the trap of Broderism, Americans will hate bloggers, too.

To quote my favorite conservative intellectual, Ace of Spades, "Stop telling me what to think!"

Now, Michael, I've gone way out on a career limb in my six-day campaign to prevent this allegedly "increasingly likely" disaster you're talking about. It's now 2 a.m. on Day Three, and your dishonest little game of using the loaded phrase "increasingly likely" is not helping matters at all.

(Introduction to Principles of Logic: Just because Bill Kristol believes an outcome is likely does not, per se, make that outcome likely.)

You got me, Michael? The senator is not the only crazy son of a bitch in the McCain family. I'm an obscure journalist with a crappy blogspot site, doing what little I can to help save the Republican Party from the worst mistake since ... well, I ain't got time for analogies right now.

Either get on this train, or get on the Crazy Cousin John bandwagon, but -- damn you, sir! -- don't try to play that "neutral objective" bullshit on me. Just because I'm not famous doesn't mean I'm stupid.

"Increasingly likely," my ass!

P.S.: Thanks for the link, Michael. God bless you. I'm sure you're a nice person, but us McCains are known to become abusively argumentative under duress. A deeply ingrained hereditary trait, which makes us great warriors, but lousy politicians.

Ditto, Mark

The Great One speaks:

I have to say that I fear a McCain candidacy. He would be an exceedingly poor choice as the Republican nominee for president. ...
McCain is an intemperate, stubborn individual, much like Hillary Clinton. These are not good qualities to have in a president. ...

Read the whole thing. And pay attention, America.

UPDATE: Bryan Preston says, Ka-Boom, and Barney Quick says, "Time is short. Get a clue."

Hottest ticket in town

The DC premiere of Article VI: Faith, Politics, America is tonight at 6 p.m. at the Heritage Foundation, and it's going to be standing-room only.

I just got a panicked phone call from a top young activist today who had RSVP'd this morning only to be told the event was full.

Made a quick call to publicist Audrey Mullen, who informed me that yes, the event was SRO but, as to my activist friend, "If she's with you, she's in." Sweet.

Audrey also informed me that, despite my mention that Hugh Hewitt is the producer, Article VI is generally about religious tolerance in public life -- it's not just a pro-Romney film. I finally found a YouTube trailer:

Right now, with my, er, post-Florida jihad against Crazy Cousin John, I guess I'm going to have to try to mend some fences and unburn some bridges. Strange bedfellows ...

Far out, dude!

Jen Haberkorn gets a huge scoop:

"I think we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Mr. Obama told an audience during a debate at Northwestern University in 2004.

(Via Memeorandum) The Washington Times also has video.

I'd blog more about this but, dude, I gotta go get me some grow lights and potting soil ...

UPDATE 2:30 p.m.

Yo, man, I'm back. I forgot to get the grow lights, but I did get this cool Zeppelin CD. Anyway ...

Oh, yeah, so it's not like I have any inside sources at The Washington Times, or anything, but this looks like a classic Team Clinton smear job, if I've ever seen one, man.

And you've got to figure this little bit of oppo-research had already been rejected by the NY Times, CBS, etc., before Team Clinton would ever give anything to The Washington Times. I mean, Hillary's people -- Sidney Blumenthal and that bunch -- they always resented the very existence of such a publication.

So, congratulations to Jen Haberkorn on the scoop. And congratulations to Senator Obama, on having driven Team Clinton to such desperation tactics.

I'll blog more about this later, but right now, I gotta listen to my Zeppelin CD. Hey, man, where'd I put those Little Debbies?

U.S. to GIs: F.U.! (DOT CYA)

Want to lock our troops out of your airport terminal? No problem, says the Department of Transportation:

The Oakland International Airport did not break any laws or regulations when it denied 200 Marines and soldiers access to the passenger terminal during a layover last year from Iraq to the troops' home base in Hawaii, the Transportation Department says.
Calvin L. Scovell III, the department's inspector general, blamed the mix-up on security concerns and a communication failure between the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department.

A "mix-up"! Just a harmless glitch, y'see.

The contract to allow military layovers at the California airport "did not require that military personnel have access to the airport terminal; it only required that military personnel be allowed to deplane and stretch their legs on stops lasting over one hour," said a report released yesterday to House lawmakers who requested an investigation into the matter.
The Sept. 27 layover was the last stop for fuel and food, but the troops, who were returning from a tour in Iraq, were denied access to food and bathroom facilities.
A Marine reported the incident to Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican and ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and said it "felt like being spit on."
Airport officials were concerned that the flight's ground staff could not provide "an\ adequate level of escort and control of such a large group of military personnel in or around the terminal area," the inspector's report said.

There is nothing so predictable in life as the inability of government bureaucrats to act in accordance with common sense.

Equally predictable: When a glaring screwup like this happens, no one in the bureaucracy will be held accountable.

The Decider has decided

New! Improved! Ultra Media Hubris(TM):

Reading this morning's analysis on line, I'm a little shocked by the number of people writing about the GOP race who think that "It's still competitive, it will go on a long time, they're really going to slug it out. ..." I think, to the contrary, that absent any dramatic developments this week, McCain is likely to put it away next Tuesday.

Thus spake Bill Kristol, the Only Republican Who Matters. (Via Memeorandum.)

You little microbes over there -- you voter people in, er, Oklahoma or Missouri or whatever -- nobody cares about your opinions of this so-called "primary" thing. Certainly, your opinions are entirely irrelevant to the calculations of Mr. Kristol, and your votes don't matter at all.

He Reports, He Decides.

C'mon, somebody, jump in here and help me out. Ace? Jeff? Rusty? Allah? Marty? You guys just going to roll over passively and let Kristol run this kind of oligarchic Murdoch/NYTimes self-fulfilling prophecy game?

I'm picturing Kristol on the air chatting with O'Reilly:

"Yes, that's right, Bill. Broad, sunlit uplands for Fightin' John McCain; the abyss of a new Dark Age for everyone else. The polls clearly indicate ...."

Here's the weird thing: I'm not sure that Kristol even likes John McCain or thinks he can win in November. (Although, if I correctly recall Kristol's enthusiasm for the Triumphant Dole Juggernaut of '96, Kristol could be afflicted by an obsession with geriatric war heroes.)

Maybe Romney let his Weekly Standard subscription lapse or something. This unexpected boomlet of GOP establishment zeal to nominate the old, grumpy, bald candidate -- and not the tall, handsome multi-millionaire -- just doesn't make sense.

Objectively, that is.

Hugh? C'mon, Hugh, I got nothing here.

Joyner in HDTV high cotton

My buddy at Outside the Beltway suggests that declining ratings at Fox News are due to the network's "inexplicable failure to offer a high-definition (HDTV) broadcast":

It had been quite some time since I’d watched cable news, since I find the Internet much more efficient for information gathering, but I finally turned back to it for the New Hampshire returns and was shocked to find that Fox was still broadcasting in standard def, which looks especially bad on a large screen plasma. I switched over to CNN, which has a crystal-clear hi-def signal, and never flipped back.

And since he tried shade-grown, hand-picked, organic Guatemalan dark roast, he's never gone back to Chase & Sanborn, either.

Looking back, I've always been underinvested -- to the point of near-obsolescence -- in consumer electronics.

For 20+ years, I've generally had little time for (and perhaps unusually low interest in) watching TV, and certainly have never become a connoisseur of superior electronic performance.

I've almost always worked nights, so I'm seldom home to watch prime-time. Popular series (e.g. "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Ally McBeal," "The Sopranos," "24") would be all the rage for years, and I'd only know the shows by reputation, or perhaps seeing the actors and actresses show up as guests on "Letterman," etc.

Being a sort of involuntary guinea pig in a two-decade TV-deprivation experiment, I think I can offer a few general assertions:

• The more you watch TV, the more you enjoy it.

TV-viewing is a type of skill, or perhaps a habit. The regular viewer develops customs and rituals, he learns to wield the remote adeptly, he can switch between programs or skip commercials with a deft flick of his thumb. Those who rarely view TV don't have that "groove," and sometimes cannot easily relax and enjoy a show.

• The cleverness of recent TV shows is completely overrated.

The characters are flat, the plots predictable, the dialogue cliched, the productions unrealistic overall. I hear people (including my wife) rave about shows like "Desperate Housewives" or "Grey's Anatomy," then when I finally get a chance to watch an episode, my reaction is invariably, "How could anyone possibly enjoy this crap? I was writing better dialogue when I was a freshman in high school!"

I attribute this differential reaction to my spending decades immersed in a text career, avoiding TV, while my acquaintances -- through steady viewing of TV -- had their tastes and perceptions molded by that experience.

Slightly related: I have one genuinely intelligent friend, about 40, who can cite from memory the plots of entire episodes of atrocious '70s/'80s sitcoms like "The Facts of Life." My advice that he retroactively file suit against his parents for child neglect has so far gone unheeded. That anyone should have part of their memory cells clogged with such anti-knowledge strikes me as a species of irreversible brain damage.

• Regular TV viewing cultivates an appetite for novelty.

My kids hate me because, despite our family's extensive collection of DVDs, I delight in watching certain favorites over and over. If I've gone more than a year or so without watching "Patton," I'll pop it in the DVD player and watch it again, enjoying it just as much as when I saw it in the theater at age 10. When ordering DVD's from NetFlix, however, my wife and kids never, ever pick some classic flick from the past. It's always new, new, new, and never mind how wretched, wretched, wretched.

• Commercials are unbearable for the non-regular viewer.

Those two or three minutes of waiting for the story to continue -- it just drives me nuts. Wasted time, and hectored by some fool chattering on about a product in which I have no interest. My wife gets upset if I switch channels during a commercial -- I'm paying a cable TV bill, and when I watch TV, I want to watch actual programming -- but my wife can't stand the thought that, before I switch back to the original show, she might have missed a setup shot and a few sentences of dialogue.

Well, those are a few general assertions. It's not a snob at all. I actually like watching TV, and I'm sure if I had time to watch more of it, I'd find more of it that I'd enjoy. And my assertions about this subject are by no means original.

I was heavily influenced by media theorists Neil Postman ("Amusing Ourselves To Death") and Sven Birkerts ("The Gutenberg Elegies") -- and anyone could probably buy their both of those books off Amazon for less than the cost of a new DVD.

No one actually will do that, but you could.

Testing 1-2-3. Is this thing on?

John McCain: Dishonest or Stupid?

Those are the possibilities as Bryan Preston sees it, and it's kind of hard to argue:



This is why it's so easy to dismiss the assertions of Michael Medved, et al., that McCain's problem with conservatives is entirely the fault of conservatives.

In this instance, McCain's insinuations are false, as any direct examination of Romney's statements clearly reveals. Yet this does not stop McCain from going back and repeating the insinuation.

McCain is trying to cast Romney as John Kerry, a characterization with no basis in fact. He attempts to create the appearance of an important policy difference where no such difference exists. Romney is completely committed to victory in Iraq. Romney has never proposed a time-certain pullout, which is what McCain is trying to suggest.

People who have watched McCain closely over the years recognize this as the man's habitual method of attacking fellow Republicans.

He routinely accuses conservative adversaries of arguing in bad faith. If you oppose McCain-Feingold, then you are pro-corruption, a greedy minion of Big Money. If you oppose McCain-Kennedy, then you are a racist who hates the Latino community. Et cetera. Ad infinitum.

It scarcely matters what the issue is, or what the merits on either side of the argument might be. Any Republican who disagrees with John McCain can expect to have his motives impugned and his character maligned. Bryan says:

[T]he entire exchange underlines the problem that he has with the base. We don’t trust him because of episodes like this. ... It’s disgraceful. Every time I start to get used to the idea of McCain as the nominee, he pulls a stunt like this and proves that he can’t be trusted.

I think, in fact, what this exchange actually underlines is John McCain's massive sense of unlimited personal entitlement.

Mortals do not have the right to argue with John McCain. To disagree with him is to insult him, as he sees it. He is omniscient and cannot possibly have his facts wrong.

So when McCain repeats the fact-deficient accusation, and Romney tries to defend himself, McCain can barely resist shouting: "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME, YOU GUTLESS PUNK!"

The temperament issue, you see.

And OMG, class warfare?

"I think that there's some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished."

-- Sen. John McCain, Jan. 30, 2008

This, coming from a man whose own political career was originally funded through his marriage to the heiress to an Anheuser-Busch fortune. Jaw-dropping hubris!

If McCain ever hoped to get any libertarian votes, he can kiss those good-bye. (Are you listening, young Paulistas?)

The Mediocre Communicators

After reading Michelle Malkin's blow-by-blow of Wednesday's debate, it seems blindingly obvious Mitt Romney should fire whoever he's paying to write his talking points or coach him in his communications -- or whatever he's paying them to do -- because the governor's getting royally ripped off.

Governor, stop telling people you were an executive in the "real economy."

We got that already, OK? We're not small children to whom you must repeat things.

Governor, you would serve your cause better if you would try discussing the economy (and government's burdensome meddling in the economy) in a factual, concrete way. Rattle off some numbers and statistics, talk about the value of capital investment in job creation, talk in specific, anecdotal ways about how regulation and taxation drive out investment, thereby leading to job losses, to wit:

"When I was governor, Major International Corporation X was considering a new plant in the United States. But I couldn't get the tax-and-spend liberals in the Massachusetts legislature to reduce Burdensome Tax A, and we have a real problem with State Regulatory Policy B, because of the powerful environmentalist lobby in our state.
"We tried our best to get that plant for Massachusetts, to create jobs for our workers, but eventually, the company built their plant in Alabama, where they don't have those kinds of taxes and regulations. So I know first-hand how Big Government causes us to lose jobs."

In other words, don't tell the people "This is who I am." That sounds like you're just bragging.

Instead, talk in a way that demonstrates superior knowledge: "This is what I know."

Reagan was a master of this -- listen to the part of his 1964 "Time for Choosing" speech where he's talking about LBJ's policies and about budgets and spending and taxes in very specific ways.
Facts, facts, facts. Don't talk about yourself, talk about the issues.

It's the damnedest irony in the world: The party made great by the Great Communicator is in decline because nowadays Republicans can't seem to master the basics of being even a Fairly Decent Communicator, and the GOP's speechwriting teams seem to be composed entirely of Michael Gerson clones ...

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ...

Oops. Sorry. Nodded off at the mere mention of Gerson. Bad habit.

Hey, now that I'm awake again, how about some truly bold suggestions:

Would some Republican please, for the love of God, try to sneak in an informed reference to Mises or Hayek or Friedman? I mean, Bastiat might be asking a bit much, but couldn't you at least give a coded signal to the economically literate that you understand how markets work?

How I yearn to hear some Republican candidate at least mention the name of an author and a book (the Bible doesn't count, Pastor Huckabee), thus to signify to the world at large that not all conservatives are anti-intellectual troglodytes.

Just imagine the thrill if, while discussing terrorism, a Republican presidential candidate adroitly referenced Nonie Darwish or Robert Spencer or Ibn Warraq. Wouldn't that be totally awesome? "A Republican! Who reads books!"

It's probably too much to hope for, I know.

For some reason, the political system now seems to favor candidates who are anti-book. The last Republican I ever heard name an author in public was Newt Gingrich. And while the conservative movement has some of the greatest communicators on the planet -- e.g, Rush Limbaugh -- it's as if nobody anywhere near a campaign headquarters ever thinks of making a call:

"Hey, you think maybe our guy could come down to Florida some Saturday evening, have a brewski or two with El Rushbo, smoke some good cigars, and try to figure out how to get our message across better?"

Limbaugh is a brilliant phrasemaker, a master of rhetorical combat, a "highly-trained broadcast professional," as he often reminds his listeners, and yet it doesn't seem his advice is sought out by GOP operatives.

For want of a nail ...