"Writing is a skill, not a talent, and thus one's ability as a writer can be improved by thoughtful effort. The problem with some people is that they graduate college as good writers, experience early success on account of that, and thus never devote themselves diligently to the relentless quest for improvement that could make them great writers."
Anti-Republican culture notes that two people who have campaigned in NY-23 may be the political equivalent of peanut butter and chocolate: Sarah Palin and Fred Thompson.
Besides the thought of both Rick Moran's and Charles Krauthammer's heads 'sploding, the title 'Arctic Fox' works on a number of levels:
The geographic allusion to Alaska.
The allusion to a slang term for, let's not deny it, a lovely lady.
The reference to Erwin Rommel, a.k.a. the Desert Fox. The current executive electees set a low bar for intellect, and remove the question of wisdom entirely. The Left acts as though they recognize this, and project their sad realizations about The One and The Deux on Sarah. Yet she flogs them deftly with a FaceBook page.
Questions about Fred's age and health would certainly require attention. The military situation could argue in favor of a David Petraeus, depending upon availability and platform.
So let's see if the Palin/Thompson Axis of Long-Absent Common Sense gels over the course of the 2010 campaign season. Yes, it's fun to speculate, but no, don't expect either one to overplay the hand. The Hucakabees, the Pawlentys, the Romneys, the Jindals, etc. will all make their plays. If you're not already planning to do so, get CPAC on your calendar. "The next CPAC will be held February 18-20, 2010 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington D.C." If NY-23 has whet your political appetite, you definitely want to show up and hear all of The Names That Matter give their pitches to a friendly crowd. I (gasp) even enjoyed Romney's speech.
Now, whether Sarah decides to mow down the field early, or save the ammunition remains to be seen. Will her book offer hints? Have you ordered a copy or five off of this blog? Why not?
At the Hotel Saranac, currently on a conference call with Hoffman campaign manager Dan Tripp. Will update . . .
UPDATE 5:40 p.m.: We had about 40 bloggers on the conference call, where we were joined by David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Mike Long of the New York Conservative Party and Erick Erickson of Red State, whose money quote was, "Victory or death!"
One Hoffman volunteer just reported that campaign internal polls show a very close race. Tripp says they're "feeling pretty good right now" but said, "we're going to be pushing like we're 10 points behind until 9 o'clock" -- which is when polls close.
Molly Line of Fox News is here at the Hotel Saranac. She says to tell y'all "hi." BTW, we made record time on Highway 3 on our way here. At 2:31 p.m., we were in Carthage, N.Y. At 3:09 p.m., we were on the other side of Star Lake. By 3:36, we were in Tupper Lake, and by 4:03, we pulled into Doug Hoffman HQ here in Saranac Lake.
It was at 3:45 p.m. that Ali Akbar got up his report of tires being slashed in Plattsburgh, via a Blackberry message. It appears, based on closer examination of the tire, that the Hoffman campaign worker ran over a bottle. But whatever the truth of this incident, I was too busy eluding the New York State Police to worry about it.
'I got better,' continued Newt. No, that's apocryphal. Newt:
He told The Associated Press he was disappointed, and "deeply upset" that Scozzafava endorsed Owens.
"How could she have accepted all that support?" he said, adding later: "I'm very, very let down because she told everybody she was a Republican, and she said she was a loyal Republican."
Pundette is having none of this:
But Newt's been around long enough to judge on the basis of actions, not protestations of loyalty, or labels. By that standard we gave up on the RNC a long, long time ago. We've given up on Newt, too.
Actions, indeed. Once the votes are all counted, it will be interesting to see if Newt makes any effort to rehabilitate himself. Sure, he's got a long way to go before anybody trusts him, but he is a sharp fellow, has connections and could make valuable contributions, if he justs recalls and adheres to his purported principles.
That quote is from recently elected Texas Republican Party Chairman Cathie Adams, who announced today that numerous county-level officials in their state will be switching this week from Democrat to Republican.
A veteran grassroots conservative activist, Adams described what appears to a strong shift toward the GOP in Texas. "Being an Obama Democrat is not such a popular label anymore," Adams said during a conference call with bloggers.
Texas GOP communications director Bryan Preston said polls indicate that 80 percent of Texas voters disapprove of the Obama administration's policies. Preston noted that many conservatives from Texas have served as volunteers in key campaigns elsewhere this fall, including the Virginia gubernatorial contest.
The new party chairman credited the Tea Party movement with helping raise awareness and involvement among conservative voters.
"These are people who are thinking for themselves," Adams said, describing her encounters with Texans at Tea Party events. She said the Obama administration's policies have awakened many conservative voters to the importance of being more active in the political process.
"People got complacent" in recent years, but now are "chomping at the bit" to become involved.
Texas Democrats Set to Switch to Republican All Over the State The Republican Party of Texas is pleased to welcome several Democratic officeholders who have decided to switch parties and become Republicans. At noon today in Palo Pinto County, Precinct 5 Justice of the Peace Bobby Hart switched his party affiliation and became a Republican. Three others Palo Pinto County officials indicated an interest in switching parties. Hart joins the ranks of the party that enjoys majorities in both houses of the Texas Legislature and holds all statewide elected offices. "Democrats like Judge Hart are joining a winning wave across this state and across this country,” said Republican Party of Texas Chairman Cathie Adams. “Americans are fed up with the Washington Democrats’ failing leftwing policies and government power grabs. We welcome these newly minted Republicans and anyone else who will stand with us for more freedom, lower taxes and smaller government.” In addition to the Palo Pinto County switch, the Republican Party of Texas has learned that two Democratic officeholders in McCulloch County will soon become Republicans, and several more in other counties all over the Lone Star State are also poised to make the switch, some as soon as this week. They tend to cite disaffection with the national Democrats' economic policies, and agreement with the Republican Party's stances on smaller government and individual freedom as the reasons for switching. All tolled, dozens of Democrats across Texas are known to be considering switching or are already in the process of doing so. There is no similar movement of Texas Republican officeholders leaving the party.
By the time you read this, Ali Akbar and I will be running east on State Route 3, en route to the hometown headquarters of the Doug Hoffman campaign.
Since Sunday night, the National Desk has been located at the luxurious -- but surprisngly affordable -- Best Western Carriage House Inn on Washington Street near downtown Watertown, N.Y. We've kept our exact location a secret because, frankly, we were too busy to cope with the hordes of adoring blog groupies who would have descended on our room had they discovered our whereabouts.
Speaking of lies, the timing of this post is, necessarily, something of a diversion tactic. Maybe we left two hours ago, or maybe we won't leave until 2 p.m. If the New York State Police knew exactly what time we left Watertown, they'd be able to deploy radar-equipped high-performance pursuit vehicles to intercept us. We've eluded their dragnet this long only because of being secretive about about our plans.
Cell-phone reception between here and Saranac Lake is atrocious, but Ali has Sprint premium 3G service on his Blackberry World Edition, so everyone can follow our progress via Ali's Twitter feed.
Wish us . . . wow, I started to say "luck," but this isn't about luck, it's about skill. And prayer.
It was Jeri Thompson who brought the Doug Hoffman - Dede Scozzafava race to Fred's attention. This is the one to watch. Jeri is every bit the ideological and intellectual match for her husband. She was gracious and gave me a quote to share with the readers of Redstate. "I heard Vice President Biden was here earlier today, I also understand that he revealed he was a lifeguard at one time. That surprised me. I didn't know you could swim with your mouth open."
The CA-10 race over on the left coast is also important. Granted, it hasn't pulled in Stacy McCain or the rest of the big names. Jumping in Pools thinks David Harmer can win today. So get out the vote on the left coast!
Update:Hot Air says there is a chance of an upset, so vote if you can!
The Watertown, N.Y., hotel that has been home of the National Desk for the past two days is across the street from a polling place. I just strolled over this morning and was greeted on the sidewalk by elderly volunteers handing out Hoffman sample ballots:
No such activity on the part of the Bill Owens campaign was evident at this particular polling place. Look at the sample ballot and you can see why this is so important to the Hoffman campaign: Owens is on lines A and E, Dede Scozzafava is on lines B and C, whereas Doug Hoffman's name appears only on line D.
This is why, in his speeches for the last few days, Hoffman has been repeating the mantra, "Vote 'D' for Doug."
UPDATE: Dave Weigel has a report on a Christian conservative door-to-door canvassing operation. BTW, this district has been overdone in terms of phone operations. People working on Hoffman's live phone banks have told me that many voters, after being bombarded by robocalls, are very irritable about getting called for the fifth, sixth or seventh time.
Seems like I recall this was where we were before being so rudely interrupted by important news:
Meghan McCain is a worthless, empty, woman with not much to offer the world. And, from what I hear, what she does have to offer to the world she offers to every and any man she meets in this world. But, that’s neither here nor there. These rumors have not been confirmed but, more importantly, they have also not been denied. . . .
"We defeated the Daily Kos candidate," said Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance, one of four blogger-activists on the ground in New York over the past several days as conservative pressure mounted on Scozzafava to withdraw. The other bloggers were Ali Akbar, Stephen Foley and Robert Stacy McCain . . . McCain was in the district first and has been filing reports on his personal blog, as well as at AmSpecBlog and Hot Air's Green Room. Akbar, Foley and Odom did their reporting for a new site called 73wire, which bills itself as a "collaborative, people-powered news project." . . . Odom said it was frustrating that more blogger-activists weren't in the district to cover the race and fight for Hoffman last week. The election is "our chance as conservatives to hit back" against the Republican establishment that backed the left-leaning Scozzafava over Hoffman, Odom said. But he said the bloggers who were there played a "significant role" in shifting the dynamics of the race. . . .
I'm sure I'll have more to say about this at some future point. The "blogger-activist" label is a little uncomfortable for me. I'm just a writer working via the medium of the Internet after 20-odd years in print.
Opinions? Yeah. But everybody's got an opinion. What we have done up here is to break news by working the phones, developing sources, and being on the scene where the story has happened. As I like to say, Old School in the New Media.
So I'll have more to say, but not now. We have to make the white-knuckle run to Saranac Lake in a few hours. Just read the whole thing.
And hit the tip jar. The New York State Police may not be so lenient if they catch us again. Note the hypothetical.
UPDATE: OK, less than 10 minutes after filing this, I immediately thought of other people who deserve a lot of credit, and couldn't sleep until I'd named a few:
Erick Erickson of Red State -- Erick is a conservative Republican and, at times, I've felt that the "Republican" part tended to dominate. But in recent months, Erick has become fed up with the backstabbers and sellouts, and he took the lead role in making the Hoffman campaign a national crusade for conservative bloggers. His leadership in this must be acknowledged.
Michelle Malkin -- A journalist by training, Malkin was one of the first conservative commentators to recognize and capitalize on the power of the blogosphere. Her Oct. 16 column made a difference, and she has followed up consistently, not only with her own posts, but also by throwing traffic at other bloggers who paid attention to NY23. Some bloggers think of Malkin's Fox News enormousness as making her "too big" to be counted among our number, but she often takes notice of even the smallest bloggers who do good work, calls them to the attention of a larger audience and, in so doing, expands the 'sphere. She deserves more credit for this than she gets.
John Hawkins of Right Wing News -- He has given posting privileges to lots of bloggers over the years, including me. In doing so, he has also expanded the 'sphere. Like Erickson (and Malkin, too), Hawkins has helped to draw the line in the sand against the RINOs who were trying to lead the GOP into political irrelevance.
OK, I've named five people whose contributions ought to be recognized and apologize to the many others who played a role but haven't been named here. Let's remember a famous quote:
"You can accomplish much, if you don't care who gets credit." -- Ronald Reagan
Jude Seymour of the Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times is a nice guy, who let me use his office computer two weeks ago when I first came up to cover this campaign. Exactly why he chose this occasion to spring a "gotcha" question on Doug Hoffman, I don't know. Watch the video, and make your own judgment. After the video ended, Jude found himself called before an impromptu meeting of the Conservative Journalism Criticism Squad. One reporter who shall remain nameless -- but who might be press corps pin-up idol John McCormack -- described Seymour's method as the "Inquisition" approach to journalism.
Me, I started out at a 6,000-circulation weekly in Austell, Ga. You don't do ambush interviews in that kind of situation. Maybe I'm really not ready for the big leagues. I report. You decide.
And hit the tip jar. I'd say you got your money's worth tonight, eh?
How about Dede Scozzafava? You know what? Dede Scozzafava has just screwed every RINO in the country by showing everybody who they are. . . . She has just put an exclamation point on the problem with RINOs. They eventually end up exactly where most liberals do. They're just a little slower in getting there. But they end up where liberals are. Scozzafava has screwed every RINO in the country. We could say she's guilty of widespread bestiality. She has screwed every RINO in the country. Everyone can see just how phony and dangerous they are.
UPDATE II: While I was working on the first update, about 10 p.m., the phone rang here at the National Desk in Watertown. It was Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent, asking about our plans for a bit of post-deadline socializing. And I freaking lost it.
Some of my friends may remember my newsroom blowup in 2007, when I cussed out Ken Hanner and kicked a steel door open on my way out of the Washington Times. Persuaded to reconsider, I eventually quit on good terms in January 2008.
OK, I'm hell on deadline. And my own shortcomings and sins are so glaringly obvious that it's hard for me to blame anyone else for my problems. I goof off and procrastinate when opportunity affords. But when deadline hits, I get kind of crazy. So this was all my fault. Mea culpa.
Still, sometimes, I get that Rodney Dangerfield don't-get-no-respect feeling and, under pressure, I can be even more of a total jerk than usual. Think of General Patton slapping that shell-shock case in Sicily.
So I had a screaming conniption. Impatient by nature, what I wanted to do at that moment in time was to finish the update, so that readers would have context in which to interpret the video. What I did not want to do was to answer the phone and have to think about the questions that Dave Weigel was asking about our post-deadline party plans.
Present at the time in the smoke-filled hotel room that is the National Desk were Ali Akbar, Kerry Picket and Hooah Mac. Surely, one of them would do me the favor of taking the phone and dealing with Weigel's questions. Uh . . . no. Because nobody owes me any favors.
And I freaking lost it. At one point in the two-minute rant that ensued, I was quite literally frothing at the mouth. A lifetime of personal frustration exploded upon friends who were innocent. For this unseemly tantrum, I apologize to all who were forced to witness it. Mea culpa.
However, next time I ask someone to please answer the phone while I'm on deadline -- I pray to God -- just answer the phone. That Jekyll-and-Hyde horror show was more frightening to me than it was to you, my victims. My wife will bake you brownies to compensate, and will never let me live it down.
This is Jason Shih. Jason was arrested last Friday for a plethora of charges, the largest for possession of Ecstasy with intent to distribute. He was also in possession of several tickets to a President Obama event in New Jersey which, his plummeting approval ratings notwithstanding, aren't as plentiful as leaves on the trees.
The Corzine campaign wants it made CLEAR that Jason Shih is in no way, shape, or form involved with the releection campaign; that Mr. Shih is certainly not an assistant campaign director or staffer for the campaign; that they have no idea who Mr. Shih would even be, let alone why he would claim such a status; or why he would claim that the car that he was driving at the time of his drug bust was rented by the campaign, or why there were tickets to an Obama rally and other campaign paraphernalia mixed in with the drug paraphernalia.
*ahem*
The mug shot comes from a story at The Leader, the local newspaper in that area. Eric Dondero, whose Libertarian Republican blog has been all over this story with both feet, got permission from the editor for any blogger to run with the shot so long as they gave the paper proper credit. Which I am right now. His blog is the first to run the photo of the alleged Corzine staffer, so do read his entire post.
Since the MSM isn't spending much time covering the story in any detail, I'd like to toss out a couple questions for those erstwhile blogger journalists who might be interested in conducting a little investigation.
1) Shih claims the car was rented by the Corzine campaign. Was it? If so, who authorized Shih to have the vehicle that night and what was he doing with it? 2) Lt. Cece, the backup officer on the scene, noted that Shih had several paychecks from he Middlesex County Democratic Committee, once of which was for him. What position did he hold in the MCDC and what vetting process was used before he was hired?
Thus far, neither the Corzine campaign nor the MCDC have been available to answer those questions. I would think that a determined blogger could spend a day working on getting those answers, don't you? They would prove enlightening.
Jim Fitzpatrick is secretary-treasurer of the Jefferson County (N.Y.) Republican Party. He has been a friend of Dede Scozzafava for 25 years, but after Dede committed bestiality -- love it, Rush -- Fitzpatrick is now on board for Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. This is a natural consequence of Dede's graceless exit. By backing the Democrat, she ensured that Republican Party officials (regardless of ideology) would shift to Hoffman:
Doug Hoffman the Conservative candidate for Congress (NY23) today received the endorsement of the Jefferson County Republican Party. Chairman Don Coon, "I spoke to Doug Hoffman about the campaign, and our issues down in Jefferson County particularly about Fort Drum and our local economy. I am confident that we will work closely together with Doug and our local elected officials to make sure that our local concerns are addressed in Congress. I am happy to endorse Doug Hoffman on behalf of the Jefferson County Republican Committee. Doug will be a champion for conservative values and will fight the Pelosi agenda in the Congress."
He's known as "Hooah Mac" at Red State, but the guys in his Army Reserve unit call him "Sarge." He's just back from an Iraq deployment and expects to redeploy in January. He hopped a flight from Minneapolis at 7 a.m. today, landed in Syracuse at 1 p.m., and by 3 p.m. was in the Watertown office of the Doug Hoffman campaign. He answered the campaign's call for "boots on the ground" against ACORN, Big Labor and the Democrats.
"This is what it's all about," Mac said, explaining why he decided to show up as a Hoffman volunteer.
Volunteers continue to walk into campaign offices all over the 23rd District. While I was at the Hoffman office in Watertown, a guy walked in with a slice of pizza and a chocolate Yoohoo. "Hey, I was just getting lunch down the street and saw your office," the guy said. Within minutes, he had been given a Hoffman yard sign and was signed up as a volunteer.
Both the pizza-and-Yoohoo guy and Hooah Mac may spend some time working the phones at a get-out-the-vote call center set up about a block away from the Hoffman office here. Among the volunteers working the phones there this afternoon was "Sapwolf," whom I'd met earlier today. The guy running the call center is named Ryan and he got kind of nervous when I introduced myself as a reporter. (It's OK. I'm not John McCormack. I understand.)
Hooah Mac talked a bit about the latest poll numbers, and he said, "In a way, Doug's already won" -- i.e., by driving Dede Scozzafava out of the race. Nevertheless, Mac decided to come to town and help push Hoffman over the finish line tomorrow.
The new message from the RNC today? "Vote Conservative." Yeah, thanks. Better late than never.
Power Line has the video, as well as enumerating all 111 new bureaucratic entities in the great big little bill. Here's the video:Someone needs to clue Mike Pence that the number of bureaucratic entities in the bill is a little tease. It's to celebrate the 111th Congress, over which Princess Pelosi presides. That Mike Pence has no sense of symbolism, and humor.
In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn't agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a "conservative" reigns supreme all across the land.
Whose goal is this 'ruling majority' again? What if Federalism reigned contra-supreme across the land, hm?
The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as "conservative" was leapt upon by these morons as "proof" that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of "conservative" depending on where you live doesn't seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against "moderates" who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic "litmus tests" guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.
No, Moran: the argument is that centralization has been the downfall of the country. Follow the links at the top of this post: the dollars are relatively honest on this one.
Why the name calling? Why the harsh, unyielding language? Because I too, believe this country is in enormous trouble. But the way the base is going about trying to overcome the political deficit that George Bush and his cronies placed the Republican party will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. In truth, the gloating being done on the far right over the ravaging of Scozzafava has led to a belief that the template used to stick it to the establishment in NY23 can be grafted on to other districts where "RINO's" are running - GOP incumbents be damned.
Why are you blaming Bush, Mr. Moran? The problems go to 1913. The very education problems you cite for ignorance of the definition of 'conservative' are rooted in this inability to analyze history. The Sixteenth Amendment, The Seventeenth Amendment, and the Federal Reserve Act have been the triptych of destruction over last century. Face it: Progressivism has been an ugly baby, along with the bathwater. Incumbency sucks. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy has born its inedible fruit. Skipping past the Gellar quotation.
A couple of hundred thousand conservatives fill up the mall on September 12 and Gellar thinks conservatives have been "driven underground?" What kind of utter nonsense is that? Gellar is a full throated member of the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined "enemies" - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.
The idea that Newt Gingrich should be "relegated to the dustbin of history" - a not uncommon sentiment I've read over the past week - demonstrates a determined refusal to objectively analyze the political realities of the unique situation in NY23 and deliberately remain ignorant of the consequences that would have accrued if the Republican party had failed to support the Republican candidate in the district.
I can nearly track you here. I think that Newt, and, by extension, the rest of the GOP brass, should be put on a re-habilitation plan. The essential problem is that all the professional pols have forgotten they work for the people.
You can blame the people, to a degree, for having been spectators these decades. Pre-internet, it was arguably less easy for information to swirl around. The shock felt high and low is about:
The people realizing that the professional politicians have an elitist view of the situation, and
The politicians realizing that the people are wide awake and rejecting that elitism, resulting in incontinence.
It's a national come-to-Beavis meeting. Between your Hamlet-esque navel-gazing and Pamela's sheer adrenalin, we'll get there. If we blow out a few GOP headz, so what? There is plenty of leadership below. It's the principles, not the personalities, silly.
A good case can be made that Gingrich especially could have kept his mouth shut about conservatives rightly gravitating to Hoffman. His petulance with national conservatives who sought to replace the liberal Scozzafava with a more palatable choice was uncalled for and further demonstrates his unfitness for the presidency. But kick him out of the party? Marginalize one of the only public intellectuals on the right who can speak to a broad cross section of America with authority and credibility? Perhaps that’s Newt’s real problem; the anti-intellectualism on the far right that sees any independent thinking deviating from their worldview as suspect. Or perhaps it’s just the idea that Gingrich, through his years of service to the conservative and Republican causes, has become a part of the establishment and hence, a target.
Newt needs to sweat a bit. He needs to be taken to the edge and shown the seriousness of the people.
Who do these louts think the party establishment should have supported in NY23? There would have been no real difference if the DC Republicans had supported Hoffman or the Democrat Owens over Scozzafava. The result would have been exactly the same; the national party spitting in the face of local Republican organizations who chose Scozzafava - regardless of her admitted liberalism and regardless of whether her candidacy was rammed through by powerful New York state GOP bigwigs.
The pragmatism demonstrated by the national Republicans in giving Scozzafava the support they felt necessary for her to win is lost on the ideologues who can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that majorities are crafted by addition, not subtraction. Scozzafava would have been a beastly congresswoman, as unreliable a Republican vote on the issues as could be imagined. But Congress is governed as much by procedure as it is ideas, and when the whip is cracked by the leadership, she probably would have been with the party most of the time.
I'll presume you wrote this ahead of her going into full-on Arlen Specter mode.
In effect, the base is criticizing the Republican establishment for acting like a political party and not a college debating society. The advantage of belonging to the latter is that you can pick and choose members based on whatever subjective criteria you wish. Don't like the cut of a man's suit or women with red hair? Fine. But don't apply your ridiculous litmus tests to a political party trying to fashion a majority.
See, here's the question: is the Constitution more important than the Party? If the Party (Democratic, Republican or both) is a major component of the problem, then what are you going to do? You can't bargain with cancer, Mr. Moran! And cancer is exactly what the last century of American centralization has been for the country.
Now, whole people are certainly more intelligent than lone tumor cells. So there can be room for getting people to re-examine their principles in ways that you just aren't doing with that lump in the lung.
But the crucial point is that More Of Same Will Not Do. Awake from your coma, Right Wing Nuthouse!
He's only 24 years old, but already this cub reporter for the Weekly Standard is followed everywhere in the 23rd District by adoring journalism groupies. McCormack is to would-be reporters what Joe Jonas is to middle-school girls -- the fantasy consummation of their fondest desires. By daring to ask Dede Scozzafava a few questions, young Johnny has accomplished the life's ambition of every j-school undergrad: He has "made a difference." McCormack files yet another exclusive report from today's Bidenpalooza in Watertown, where Secret Service agents were reportedly under orders to tase him if he tried to ask the VP a question. Other reporters at the Biden event -- including Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent -- struggle to keep pace with the brilliant blues riffs of "Johnny Lightning" McCormack, who also plays a mean bottleneck-slide guitar. A Syracuse TV reporter cleverly seats himself between Kerry Picket and Kara Rowland of The Washington Times. Life is good, until his wife sees this photo. Feisty, colorful Democratic State Party Chairwoman June O'Neill (left, in ill-fitting brown pantsuit) engages in shameless pre-Election Day demagoguery, to the horror of local schoolchildren and their parents (right).Network TV cameras wait for opportunity to add new footage for your "Joe Biden's Greatest Gaffes" DVD collection. Attacking the Wall Street Journal? Classic! Home-schooled children get a civics lesson, protesting the Biden/Owens/Pelosi/ACORN agenda while hoping to catch a glimpse of their hero, "Johnny Lightning" McCormack. Having despaired of getting any big scoops at the Biden rally, I walked outside and posed for a photo with local Palinista "Sapwolf," who crushed my ego by asking, "Hey, can you introduce me to John McCormack?" Sunday night supper in Watertown hotel where we staged last night's blogger conference call.
Just left the Bidenmania rally eight blocks from my hotel. The star of the show, really, was N.Y. Democratic Party State Chairwoman June O’Neill, a diminuitive fireball of liberal demagoguery.
O'Neill warned of "right-wing extremists who have brought their hate-mongering tactics to this district." (Unless I was mistaken, this must have been a reference to John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, who was at the event and being closely watched by local police, lest he start asking Biden questions.)
"We have to stop the madness," O'Neill told a crowd of about 200 Democrats who turned out for an event covered by about 30 reporters, including seven TV crews. "We cannot afford to let the right-wing extremists make a point in this district. . . . The right wing is not right."
O'Neill named Rush Limbaugh ("boo!"), Sean Hannity ("boo!") and Glenn Beck ("boo!") among the out-of-town right-wingers whom she accused of attempting to impose themselves on the defenseless citizenry of the 23rd Distict.
O'Neill was introduced by state Sen. Darrel Aubertine, who was offered the Democratic Party nomination and turned it down, thus forcing the Dems to go with Bill Owens, a Plattsburgh lawyer. Owens seems to be a nice guy, but he has zero name-ID in most of the 23rd District.
Hoffman continues to lead in the latest Siena poll and, at this point, the "undecided" poll respondents should be told to stay home. If you don't know whether you're a Democrat or a "right-wing extremist," you're too dumb to be allowed to vote.
Did Joe Biden make another gaffe in today's speech? I don't know. I didn't stick around for the whole thing. Unlike big-shot media types who have state-of-the-art Internet communication gear provided to them by wealthy publishers, all I had with me was some old-fashioned stuff called "notes" written on the back of a press release. (Somehow lost my pen and had to borrow a ballpoint from another reporter.)
Anyway, I figured I'd better get back here to the hotel lobby and poach their computer to file this, before I got totally scooped. C'est la guerre!
Democrat wins in NY-23 and New Jersey may not say much more than that. Indeed, if Democrats win there by narrow margins, it may say that, a year after Obama won the presidency, it takes nasty three-way contests for Democrats to win in Obama-friendly territory. The hope on the left is that NY-23 is a bellwether of intra-GOP warfare, or of the party being seized by "extremists." However, most such fights will happen within primaries, which allows more time for unification. And few of those will feature "Republican" candidates as liberal as Dede Scozzafava.
Likewise, if Tea Partiers get too carried away and full of themselves -- like the Nader Democrats of 2000 -- they will wind up handing the elections to people they really don't want running the country. The third-party threat is a good way to get the GOP establishment's attention, but, as they say, the value of the sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. Like a nuclear deterrent, it's a threat that's best not employed.
Karl displays a proprietary concern about the Republican Party being perceived as too "far right." This is what happens when Republicans internalize liberal critiques of conservatism and begin to believe -- as all liberals relentlessly proclaim -- that there is something wrong, inferior or shameful about being conservative.
Professor Reynold's concern is similarly unfounded. Talk of a third-party conservative movement is just that: Talk. Republicans who fret over such things are just worry-warts who still blame Ross Perot for the Clinton presidency. (In fact, the blame should be placed squarely on Bush 41 and the idiots responsible for the '96 Dole campaign.)
My advice: Don't let liberal spin to drive you into fear-based defensive thinking. The real danger to the Republican Party is not "extremists" or third parties, but rather the cluelessness of the Beltway GOP establishment.
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