Why Edwards (really) lost

A rather silly exchange between Ed Kilgore and Jonathan Cohn debating the metaphysical significance of the John Edwards campaign.

Five words, guys: John Edwards is a loser.

Does the title of a Zappa song, "Bobby Brown," ring a bell?

Who is John Edwards? A sharp lawyer who became immensely rich from his uncanny ability to persuade juries in tort-hell districts to award outlandish punitive damages in product-liability cases.

No one who knows anything about the dishonest craft of such legal parasites can respect them. "Punish the accused by making a lawyer rich" -- if they were for once ever compelled to reveal their true motives, they'd starve.

Ironically, Edwards then made a political career of blaming "corporate greed" for the loss of American manufacturing jobs. How stupid can people be?

Well, stupid enough to elect Edwards to the Senate in 1998. That was the year of the "Lewinsky backlash" against Republicans, and Edwards had the good fortune of going up against an exceptionally clueless (even for a Republican!) one-term incumbent, Lauch Faircloth.

For the next six years, Edwards was a non-entity in the Senate, and probably spent less time in North Carolina than he did in Iowa and New Hampshire.

As a presidential candidate -- which seems to have been more or less his full-time avocation after 2000 -- Edwards had exactly four strengths:

• 1. He was fabulously rich, and thus could afford to travel a lot to Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as to fundraising events in California and New York. Campaigning on his AmEx, as it were.


• 2. He was good-looking. Tall, slender, toussled hair, boyish face -- the kind of dime-store JFK knockoff that Democrats always swoon for.


• 3. He was Southern. Ever since the Mondale (Minnesota) and Dukakis (Massachusetts) debacles of the '80s, Democrats have been almost hysterically obsessed with finding well-spoken, presentable Southerners who, they hoped, could enable them to break the electoral lock that the GOP supposedly gained because of Republican strength in the booming Sunbelt. The logic of this has been much-debated among Democrats in recent years, but we'll leave that.


• 4. He could talk class-warfare populism like he invented it. His famous "Two Americas" shtick wowed 'em in Des Moines in 2003, and made him the darling of the union goons and other such nitwits who think Robert Reich is an important economist.

But for some reason, the Democrats who loved Edwards could never bring themselves to acknowledge his three glaring weaknesses:

• His voice and mannerisms are not overtly masculine.

Bill Clinton has that hoarse, guttural voice, and that grizzly-bear physical presence -- he's roughly the size of a defensive end -- that together convey an inarguable masculinity. Even his political adversaries admit that Clinton dominates any room he's in. Edwards has none of that. He's the Barney Fife of politics, something that comes through very clearly on TV.

• His biography doesn't fit his message.

Edwards does a lot of poor-mouthing about the circumstances of his raising. "Mah dadduh wukked in th' mill," he'd say in his deepest drawl, as if the Edwards family was living hand-to-mouth in a tar-paper shack. His father was, no doubt, a hard-working man, but he was in fact a foreman in the mill. By the standards of the South in the 1960s, the Edwards family was middle-class. And Edwards, the adult political candidate, was certainly never poor --he was very, very rich. If there is one thing that middle-class voters can't stand, it's a rich politician telling them how he wants to help the poor.

• Class warfare is no long a winning political proposition in America.

No doubt, a politician or pundit (e.g., Paul Krugman) who serves up that "blame Corporate America" scapegoat rhetoric can attract many fans or followers. But in the wake of the Reagan revolution, in arguably the most free and prosperous economy in world history, it is difficult to hoodwink a majority about such things. This is why Democrats have resorted so often to identity politics in recent years. College-educated suburbanites making $100,000+ a year can be convinced by the pretzel-logic of identity politics that they are nonetheless "oppressed" because they are a member of some designated victim group. Identity politics thus functions as an electoral substitute for the waning power of AFL-CIO class-solidarity politics.

Ask anybody in North Carolina: Edwards was lucky to get the running-mate nod in 2004, because he could never have been re-elected to the Senate in his home state. He was a lightweight do-nothing, who only got 51% against the doomstruck Faircloth in '98. Anyone who ever expected him to do great things nationally -- including Edwards himself -- was living in a dream.

No liberal analyst would ever divulge such blunt truths to liberal readers, who resent the disturbance of their dreams.

Dear Uncle Jimbo

("Wisdom," she said!)

Uncle Jimbo of BlackFive is a great guy. But he seems to misunderstand the situation:

I am asking all of you to chill out and quit fanning conservative hate of John McCain. You can feature reader email outraged that the shamnesty King will destroy us all, but you all have spent months stoking those fires and made sure he was damaged goods.
So time to decide what's important to you, ideological purity or making sure we are not subjected to 8 years of President Obama.

With all respect, sir:

• 1. The issue is not whether conservatives hate John McCain. The issue is that John McCain hates conservatives.
• 2. Who has been "fanning conservative hate" and "stoking those fires," except John McCain himself?
• 3. If he's "damaged goods," that's not my fault.
• 4. "Ideological purity," my foot. I was actually willing to vote for Giuliani. No kidding. He was, at least, a tax-cutter who had cleaned up New York.
• 5. Politicians must be accountable for their records. John McCain's record in public office is crystal-clear. And his record makes him unelectable. Period.

Right now the liberal MSM are playing all nice with Crazy Cousin John, hoping the grumpy, old, bald guy will get the GOP nomination. Once he gets the nomination, however, there will be no more playing nice, and every scandal and skeleton in his closet will be dragged out for public display.

If he gets the nomination, it will not be my fault. I am trying to warn you. He cannot be elected, under any imaginable circumstance. The Democrats know this, which is why they treat him with such "respect."

John McCain is a "lose-lose" candidate for the GOP: He will almost certainly lose the election if nominated, but even if he were elected, he would be a bad president, and thus his election would hurt the GOP in the long run.

I tried to explain in an e-mail to a friend earlier tonight: Loyalty must be based on mutual obligation. It is a reciprocal duty. I am loyal to you, you are loyal to me, and this mutual obligation creates mutual benefit.

Loyalty can be betrayed, and it can also be abused.

John McCain has repeatedly betrayed his loyalty to the Republican Party, disparaging its voters, its activists, its leaders, and its policies. How, then, is it possible for John McCain to turn to Republican voters and say, "Vote for me, out of loyalty to the party?"

If you offer to be a doormat, don't be surprised when people wipe mud all over you.

America is yet a free country. No one can silence me, and no one can tell me how to vote.

John McCain will never be elected president. The fact that he seems to think he can be elected president speaks ill of his judgment.

Meanwhile, I see that my dear friend Don Surber seems to have made the same mistake as Uncle Jimbo, in thinking that the problem between McCain and conservatives is somehow the fault of conservatives.

To reiterate: Politicians are responsible for their own records -- the votes they make, the bills they sponsor, the statements they issue. It is McCain's record that is the problem, and not something that Malkin or Ingraham or Limbaugh said about McCain.

What seems to be going on here is an attempt to transfer responsibility, so that McCain is not responsible for his own words and deeds. It's like Hillary claiming that Bill's problems were due to a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

A good old childhood friend of mine, a career Navy man, has met John McCain, likes John McCain, and voted for John McCain in the Florida primary. It's a free country, and I bear no ill-will against my old friend. In fact, I bear no personal ill-will against Crazy Cousin John -- I'm sure if it weren't for politics, I'd be happy to buy him a beer. But that does not change his record as a politician, does it?

UPDATE:
A response is due to commenter "tgmb," who says I've "gone beyond the pale," in asserting McCain's unelectability, etc., and demands that I "prove it."

Dear "tgmb," there are several obvious points to be made:

• McCain is old, bald and grumpy.

The last bald man to be elected president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose election occurred just seven years after his command of the Allied forces that defeated Hitler in Western Europe. In 1952, there were hundred of thousands of soldiers alive who had served under Ike's command, revered him as their victorious chieftain, and this alone virtually guaranteed his election. LBJ, Nixon and Bush each had thinning or receding hair at the time of their elections, but neither was bald.

Welcome to the TV age, for better or worse. If John McCain was young, cheerful and hirsute, he might become president. If I was good-looking, I might be Sean Hannity. QED.

• McCain's record puts him at odds with large numbers of his own party.

What McCain has done with his "maverick" stance is sort of an inversion of Bill Clinton's famous "triangulation." Clinton stood against the Democratic Party's weakest policies -- especially its Dukakis-era rep as the soft-on-crime, pro-welfare party -- and was thus able to flummox the GOP. McCain has stood against some of the GOP's strongest policies (he voted against tax cuts!) and has caused nothing but joy in the hearts of Democrats.

You cannot win elections by running against the people, and McCain's three-year crusade for amnesty was -- as polls eventually revealed -- a direct attack on the basic sensibilities of about 70 percent of American voters who still hold to the old-fashioned notion that laws should be obeyed.

McCain's attempt to mimic Clintonian triangulation has gained him no real support among Democrats (who praise his "courage" and then go back to their partisan ways), while alienating a huge swath of the GOP coalition.

• We've seen this aging war-hero gambit at least twice in the past 12 years.

In 1996, Bob Dole was the courageous war hero whose biography was supposed to be the only thing necessary to defeat that dastardly Clinton. Dole was a war hero! Clinton was a draft-dodger! Who could argue with that?

Look it up: Dole got a pathetic 40.7% of the popular vote. The Democrats, apparently learning nothing from that example, tried a similar gambit with the nuanced Sen. Kerry in 2004, with less than victorious result.

American voters nowadays just don't rush to the polling place, panting for the chance to vote for the hero of a war that happened decades ago. Whether voters should be so indifferent to military service is irrelevant to the fact that they are indifferent to military service. Being a decorated veteran doesn't hurt, but it doesn't really help that much either, especially when ...

• McCain is a lousy candidate.

Some people don't get this. "But, wait -- the media love McCain! How can you say he's a lousy candidate?" McCain has never had to run for an election in a genuinely competitive partisan environment.

Arizona was for many years perhaps the staunchest conservative Republican state in the nation. The famous hero of a recent war, McCain had the backing of influential forces (the Arizona Republic and his second wife's family fortune) that helped him win a contested Republican primary for the 1st District seat in 1982, and he cruised to victory in the general election against a token Democratic candidate in an overwhelmingly GOP district. He was then practically anointed Barry Goldwater's Senate successor in 1986, and has never been seriously challenged since (as senior incumbent senators seldom are).

In this, you see, McCain is totally un-Reaganesque. California was no GOP haven when Ronald Reagan decided to run for governor in 1966. Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent, was heavily favored to win. But Reagan was simply one of the most brilliant political campaigners in American history. To the extent that California was considered an electoral lock for the Republicans in the 1980s, it was the force of Reagan the campaigner that made it so.

Whatever his merits as a man or as a politician, McCain's biography does not indicate that he is prepared for what will face him if he wins the GOP nomination. In this, alas, he again resembles Bob Dole, who did just fine when campaigning for re-election as the folksy senator in Kansas, but proved dreadfully out of his league when facing Team Clinton in 1996. And finally ...

• McCain's lacks the presidential temperament.

Good presidents, especially in the TV age of constant media scrutiny, tend to have a laid-back, easygoing manner. Ronald Reagan was the classic example of this. Though hard-working and energetic, Reagan had a certain sort of inner cheerfulness. He could become angry, but he didn't "blow up" and start screaming at people. He was neither nervous nor brittle.

Look, I've worked more than 10 years in Washington, DC, which is the world's largest small town. It's not hard to learn which people are the proverbial "bad boss" types, and John McCain's hot temper is legendary.

By all accounts, when he is relaxed, John McCain is a fun-loving, joke-telling sort of guy. But do some research and I think you will find abundant testimony that he is thin-skinned and tends to take criticism or opposition as a personal insult.

"tgmb," you say, "Fine, you don't like him."

That's not it at all.

It has nothing to do with liking or not liking somebody at a personal level. Hey, I'm kind of a hot-headed maverick myself, and if it weren't for the political thing, I'd bet I'd love to hang out with Crazy Cousin John. But he's running for President of The United States, and that is a whole different thing. I love my wife, but I don't know if I'd endorse her for president.

The 'ethics' scam

"Independent watchdog," my foot:

Several news stories ... have pointed out that much of CREW’s funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes. And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have targeted Republicans.
But in some cases, there appear to be deeper links between the agenda of the donor and CREW’s attacks.
In February 2006, CREW asked the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group, and its sister organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom, which CREW claimed are “front organizations for for-profit industry entities.”
The complaint noted that the Center for Union Facts Web site had “negative information about unions,” including the Service Employees International Union. Later that year, CREW launched a Freedom of Information Act request, followed by a lawsuit, to get the Department of Labor to hand over documents regarding the department’s contacts with the founder of the two centers.
On Sept. 1, 2006, CREW received $75,000 from the SEIU, according to documents that the union filed with the Department of Labor.

Read the whole sordid tale.

In summary, CREW appears to be just another DC pay-to-play operation, fronting as an "ethics watchdog" outfit.

Scamming in the name of "ethics" -- brilliant!

There is a reason that the No. 2 religious faith in Washington is Cynicism. The No. 1 faith in DC? "In God We Trust."

Anti-McCain coalition building

"McCain Derangement Syndrome." Yeah, Roger, McCain is definitely deranged. It's hereditary, y'know.

"Some people on the right are starting to sound almost Kossack-like." Heh.

Had to drive to Bethesda today to get vaccinated for yellow fever and typhoid, preparing for the journey to The Very Dangerous Foreign Country, where if the mosquitos don't kill you, the water will. (Nurse: "The parasites have a cycle, so even after you come back, if you start getting a fever, go straight to the hospital." Oh, sweet.)

Listened to talk radio there and back. Rush Limbaugh wasn't really going all-out on "Juan McAmnesty," but he didn't have to -- his callers did the job. A Republican activist from Michigan named Laurie called up and ranted against Crazy Cousin John in no uncertain terms. She will not vote for him, period.

Limbaugh then took another call, and ended the segment by telling the second caller, "The people in the Republican establishment do not understand, Laurie's sentiment is widespread out there." Widespread, indeed.

After getting my vaccinations, I spoke briefly to a buddy at a public-relations agency (he's planning a send-off party in my honor). He was likewise bummed by the Florida result, but mentioned the Citizens United anti-McCain ad.



My friend said Citizens United is putting some serious money into the ad buy, which will naturally generate lots of "earned media."

Driving back, I heard Sean Hannity lead his opening hour with a mock "McCain was right, conservatives were wrong" routine, very deadpan.

Then switched over to Glenn Beck, who appears to share my "fight while there's still hope" sentiment, saying of McCain:

This guy is the biggest two-faced son of bitch you can ever imagine. ... A Republican president who's not a Republican. ... (If McCain is elected) we are dead ... taking us to a progressive Hell.

(Yes, I can drive and take notes at the same time)

Beck also had Michelle on his show today. From the Beck transcript:

GLENN: Have you ever seen such an audacious slap in the face to the American people as this?
MALKIN: I haven't felt one like this in a long time, Glenn. I'm still reeling from it. But I do hope that as more people find out about McCain's open border roots that they won't buy the dye job that he's given himself and the instant immigration makeover that he's trying to sell to conservatives and Republicans.
GLENN: Okay, I want you to lay it -- two pieces of audio, one from John McCain being asked about it and then another piece of audio from the gentleman that is now working with him. So you tell me the best time to play it while you explain what he's doing right now behind everybody's back.
MALKIN: Sure. Well, last month I received a tip from a concerned reader and she had listened to John McCain speak to the Hispanic Republicans in Nevada at a conference and apparently at this conference McCain was trying to tout his connection to a man named Dr. Juan Hernandez who has been named the national director of Hispanic outreach for the McCain 2008 campaign. This reader of mine was appalled when she learned of this hire and it had exactly the opposite effect that apparently McCain wanted it to have. This was supposed to be reassuring to Hispanic Republicans that this guy had been hired as outreach. My colleague at hotair.com, Bryan Preston, confirmed this staff hire and, in fact, on John McCain's daughter's campaign website, there's a lovely, cozy picture of Juan Hernandez pivoting with Meghan McCain and Mark MacKinnon who is the campaign guru for John McCain. Well, who is this guy? I'm quite familiar with him. I've debated him several years on the cable TV circuit because he's one of the most ubiquitous ethnocentric open borders zealots on the scene.

Go read the rest.

Nearing home, I dialed up a young volunteer for the Romney campaign. She said she had been discouraged last night by all the defeatist rhetoric at The Corner and elsewhere, and that my "Despair is not an option" post was the first hopeful thing she'd read. She told me about an upcoming Romney event, the date and location of which suggests a bold strategy. She also mentioned that Laura Ingraham was "brutal" on McCain this morning. I told her to spread the word: Hold the fort, the cavalry's coming.

Bryan Preston summed things up pretty well:

First, we conservatives are the bedrock of the GOP and ... our values are the party’s engine. They’re the party’s future. They’re worth fighting for, even if we’re outnumbered by the influx of independents in what was supposed to be a closed primary, and even if we end up with an imperfect party nominee because of that.
So we fight on.

Here's what I see: Conservatives have been distracted for weeks now. First, there was the Iowa-related panic about Huckabee. Then there was all that stuff with the Ron Paul newsletters. Then, there was a detour into watching the Hillary-Obama-Bill race-baiting trainwreck. And, of course, the MSM's spin machine was chaffing the air with the notion that The Big Story in Florida would be Rudy's Last Stand.

Time was wasted, energy, emotion and resources dissipated. Then came Tuesday night. Conservatives who'd spent the past couple of weeks doing a schadenfreude dance over Hillary's meltdown suddenly turned on the TV, saw Crazy Cousin John with 36% in winner-take-all Florida and said, "Holy crap. How did this happen?"

That madman may be less than a week from locking up the GOP nomination and today, Wednesday, a lot of conservatives are bumfuzzled, bewildered and confused. They log onto someplace like The Corner and get a relentless drumbeat of defeatism, "reconciliation," and so forth.

Just wait. People will shake this Florida hangover. There is a debate tonight. In all likelihood, McCain will be overconfident, and Mitt knows the game is on the line. A gaffe by McCain and/or a few really solid punches from Mitt -- hey, by Thursday morning, Mitt might be sailing high again.

Something important: Stop quoting polls. Polls are not votes. With this short six-day run from Florida to Super Duper Tuesday, with Rudy dropping out and so many other dynamics in play, there is no way in the world that pollsters will be able to tell us in advance what will happen on Feb. 5. The reporting of polls can, however, have the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy, tending to drive a bandwagon effect.

There is an anti-McCain coalition building, but it may take a day or two to show its strength. Be patient.

Finally, let El Rushbo demonstrate the proper attitude:

(HT: Hot Air)

UPDATE: Linked at Memeorandum. (Click that link, or a puppy will die.)

It. Is. Wednesday.

A friend of mine just replied to my previous question:

OK, we've got Rush, Levin, Ingraham, Malkin, surely we've got Michael Savage. Who else?

With ... this answer:

John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most "electable" Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn't lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.

Read it all.

OK, let's see Crazy Cousin John withstand that -- Coulter blasting away 24/7 on Fox News all the way to the convention.

I remind everyone that Crazy Cousin John didn't even attend CPAC last year. He hates the conservative base.

UPDATE: Sorry, Stanley. No "reconciliation" is possible. Or desired. What is desired is his defeat, one way or the other. The man must be made a watchword for the ages, an enduring symbol of what happens to backstabbers.

Sexy vs. Grumpy

Look, if you're one of those people who fetishizes over "electability" (greetings, Mr. Podhoretz; howdy, Mr. Kristol), the now two-man race between Romney and Crazy Cousin John is a no-brainer.

MITT ROMNEY

• Tall, handsome millionaire with a gorgeous head of hair.
• Operates on the "one life, one wife" principle.
• Has never co-authored an amnesty bill with Ted Kennedy.
• Known to inspire devoted man-crushes in otherwise sensible (and inarguably hetero) Republicans.

CRAZY COUSIN JOHN

Eh ... not so much.

I report. You deride.

Never, ever will I forget the profound sense of betrayal that I felt on May 25, 2006 -- a date that will live in infamy -- when Crazy Cousin John somehow persuaded 22 other "Republican" senators to join him in supporting the McCain-Kennedy Destroy America Act of 2006 (MKDAA06), the most heinous sellout since the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty of 1939. By comparison, Quisling, Iago, Catiline and Judas were men of honor.

At that time, I was blogging in support of "Donkey Cons" (buy TWO!) and dubbed "The 'Y' Party" those so-called "Republicans" who voted for MKDAA06. I wrote at the time:

The "Y" Party is a criminal conspiracy to defraud American voters of their country. And it is a vast conspiracy indeed, involving the president, the vice president, and 23 members of the United States Senate who -- it was revealed on Thursday, May 25, 2006 -- committed perjury the day they were sworn into office.

It was true then, it's true now, and the "Republican" author of MKDAA06 doubled down by pushing a gussied-up retread of the same duplicitous scam in 2007. He is a monomaniac, determined to "elect a new people," as Brecht said. Rejected by conservatives in 2000, he has returned the rejection with compound interest.

To make an analogy, Crazy Cousin John is to the conservative cause as a dog is to a fire hydrant.

I'm told that Mark Levin has resolved to quit talk radio if Crazy Cousin John wins the GOP nomination. Levin is a brilliant legal scholar, and surely recognizes these basic principles:

• There can be no liberty without law.
• There can be no law without sovereignty.
• There can be no sovereignty without citizenship.
• There can be no citizenship without borders.

Amnesty is the negation of fundamental legal principles. It is an insult and an injury to the rule of law.

Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty in 1986, but mercifully did not live to see the consequences. Surely, were he here today, Reagan would say of Simpson-Mazzoli that it was a mistake, just as was his 1967 signing of California's "therapeutic abortion" law.

While Crazy Cousin John has admitted that his 2005-07 "shamnesty" crusade was a political mistake, he has never admitted that it was a moral mistake. It was a solemn oath foresworn, a trust betrayed, an act of sadistic cruelty and treachery.

The GOP Establishment, attempting its patented "Harriet Miers Move," is trying to tell conservatives that we have no choice in the matter.

To which I proudly answer, "F--- You, GOP Establishment."

Look, my last day on the job was Monday. For good or ill, I am my own man now, and a week from now, I'll be on my way to a Very Dangerous Foreign Country. So if I never work another day as a neutral, objective journalist in Washington, so be it. But the neutral, objective fact is that, by sponsoring MKDAA06, Crazy Cousin John sold out his party, broke his oath of office, and conspired with the Chappaquiddick Swim Champ to destroy our nation.

The Neidermeiers of the GOP Establishment tell us that McCain's narrow victory amongst his fellow geezers in Florida means that it's over.

"Over?"

OK, we've got Rush, Levin, Ingraham, Malkin, surely we've got Michael Savage. Who else?

UPDATE: Long, long ago, when I was a newbie blogger, someone gave me some sage advice which can be boiled down to four words: Trackback like a mofo.

Nothing gets your name out there like trackbacking at those major blogs (including Malkin, Hot Air and OTB) that allow trackbacks.

On those slow days when you get Site Meter Fever with overtones of bloggernoia (defined as the irrational fear that your failure to get linked by Instapundit is the product of a vicious conspiracy) the traffic produced by trackbacks will comfort you.

Look, kids, I remember when Jammie Wearing Fool first started blogging, when that blog was just Marty, and he got maybe 500 hits a day. But he stuck with it, blogged regularly, and trackbacked diligently. JWF was always showing up in the Hot Air trackbacks. Pretty soon, he became a familiar presence in the blogosphere, part of the conversation.

It took JWF six months to get his first Instalanche, but now look at him: 80,000+ visits per month (projected 27K/wk.)* and growing. Heck, if he keeps it up at this rate, pretty soon Insty will be trackbacking at JWF -- and it's just a simple Blogspot operation!

Blogging is not rocket science, but it requires persistence and trackbacking like a mofo.

UPDATE II: Apparently, great minds think alike. (Rusty, you ought to give Vinnie a raise!) And that's another trackback.

UPDATE III: I originally goofed that figure (*) by misreading the Site Meter and failing to do the basic math. You don't want to know how stupid my original number was. The point is, now it's right.

UPDATE IV: Also linked at Memeorandum. (Click that link. All red-blooded patriotic Americans click Memeorandum links. If you don't click that link, you are un-American.)

UPDATE V: Linked at LGF. Thanks! Also linked by Jeremy Lott at AmSpecBlog.

Despair is not an option

A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.

-- Vince Lombardi

Tuesday night, I took a break from cleaning out my desk to attend an event with some young conservatives. About 9 p.m., one guy checked his Blackberry to see the Florida results, and the reaction -- I said they were conservatives, didn't I? -- was disappointment at the news that Crazy Cousin John had narrowly edged Mitt Romney in the winner-take-all primary.

The next reaction was equally predictable: "Oh, McCain's got momentum ... going to be hard for Romney to recover by Super Tuesday" etc., etc.

In other words, despair and defeatism, an acceptance of what The Experts have said would be the inevitable consequences of this event.

Don't quit, boys. For God's sake, don't ever quit. So long as there is room for hope, so long as victory is a possibility, so long as you have strength for the fight, you owe it to yourself to keep hoping and keep fighting.

Hope and courage must always go hand-in-hand. If you will spread hope and encouragement in this dark hour of disappointment, you will do more for your candidate than you know.

"Look," I said to my young friends, "starting Wednesday at noon, Rush Limbaugh is going to pull out all the stops. He's going to hammer McCain with everything he's got. He's going to come at him from every angle, for three solid hours, and then he's going to do it for another three hours on Thursday, then Friday, then Monday, then Tuesday. You can count on 15 hours of Rush doing all he can to persuade conservatives not to vote for McCain, and that's got to have some effect. Romney made it close in Florida, and a week is forever in politics. ...."

Et cetera. There is room for hope, and therefore there is no room for despair.

Listen up, Romneyites: You've got Rush Limbaugh on your side, and that's the kind of message-power that no other candidate can match. Rush spent a couple weeks on a Stop Huckabee jag, and then he spent a couple of weeks messing around with the whole Obama-Hillary matchup. But that's over now.

John McCain may be only 6 days away from locking up the Republican nomination, and Rush Limbaugh is 100% dedicated to preventing that. Do not underestimate that, and therefore do not despair.

Huckabee got 14% in Florida. He's your biggest obstacle to defeating Crazy Cousin John.

I'm not trying to pull a Hugh Hewitt here. This year's crop of Republican candidates was never ideal. My favorite candidate (Duncan Hunter) never had a chance, and my next favorite (Fred Thompson) never gained momentum. So if Romney is my favorite of the remaining candidates, neither am I a starry-eyed true believer.

Still, many of my personal friends have been Romney supporters since 2006 (or even earlier) and even Romney's harshest critics must admit, he's got presidential hair.

Great hair + El Rushbo = ??

You've got a good candidate and a good chance. Commit yourself to victory, spread hope and good cheer among your comrades, and give it your best shot.

Besides which, Crazy Cousin John is crazy. He's got six days to bite his tongue and try not to say what he really thinks, and he might actually slip up and say something so crazy that he effectively defeats himself.

And then there's "Amnesty Mel" Martinez ...
.
UPDATE: Thanks for the Hot Air headline link. Malkin, of course, is all over it. And if you liked this post, here's something new that I promise you're going to love.

UPDATE II: Sorry if this was a dead link for a few minutes this morning. Meant to add an update and republish, and instead did "save as draft," a too-easy error on the new Blogger software. Bryan links, and Hot Air commenter BobH laments:

Seems like Bob Dole all over again….

Exactly, and brought to you by the same GOP Establishment who brought you that previous grumpy old loser. For some reason, the GOP Establishment has a predisposition to sourpusses who are disdainful of the party's conservative grassroots. It's almost like they want to lose.

Temper, temper

Ramesh Ponnuru sought confirmation of Crazy Cousin John's reputation for having a bad temper behind closed doors:

McCain stood in the middle of the GOP cloakroom and yelled at several of his Senate colleagues because they deigned to have a vote — to have a vote — on Inhofe's "English As the National Language" amendment to the 2006 immigration bill. He accused conservatives of being "divisive" and "insulting" Latinos for suggesting that immigrants ought to learn this language. He was nasty and unhinged. About 10 staffers witnessed this. He delighted in telling the conservative senators there that they were destroying the party with these efforts.

Via Dan Riehl, who says:

There are three things to be troubled with about McCain here, his disdain for conservatives, his temperament, and his problem with wanting Latinos in America to speak English.

Ace of Spades:

Can you smell that pipin' hot Straight Talk crackling on the skillet?

Ace links to K-Lo:

I talked to Rick Santorum briefly tonight. He told me that he “can’t in good conscience give details about what happened in senator-only meetings.” ...
Senator Santorum stands by what he’s said about his former colleague. He went on Hewitt, Levin, and Ingraham, among others to warn conservatives about his experience working as a member of the Republican leadership with Senator McCain — an experience that he largely found frustrating, especially (but not only) on social-conservative issues.

It's the temperament thing. Never mind Crazy Cousin John's deviation on this or that issue, it's his stiff-necked, hot-tempered, go-it-alone attitude that has made him unpopular with Santorum and many others. If he's denied the GOP nomination, I'd almost expect him to do a third-party Ross Perot move, perhaps in cooperation with Bloomberg.

.

UPDATE: Almost forgot it's primary day in Florida, as Michelle Malkin reminds us, while exploring a supposed "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans. I don't doubt the existence of the gap.

Republicans are in the final year of a two-term GOP presidency that has, in one way or another, managed to disappoint almost everyone. Think back to the Florida election lockdown of 2000, how hard Republicans fought to ensure that Bush wasn't cheated of his victory. Whatever the accomplishments of the Bush administration, they haven't exactly lived up to the desperate effort it took to get him elected. The way Bush dissed the party's base on amnesty was particularly galling: Hey, if we'd wanted open borders, we could have just let Gore win it.

Hard to get excited about the Florida primary. The big "news" is that Rudy Giuliani, having staked everything on this one state, is going to suffer a humiliating third-place finish. Or maybe fourth, if Huckabee can get a strong turnout of evangelicals.

As to whether Romney or Crazy Cousin John finishes first in this winner-take-all primary, I don't think ultimately it will be decisive in who gets the nomination. If Crazy Cousin John wins, that only means that he'll come under more critical scrutiny, generating a backlash heading into Super Duper Tuesday.

Just imagine what Rush Limbaugh will be saying on Wednesday, if Crazy Cousin John wins in Florida ...

KO disses MK

It was inevitable, I suppose. The Sweetheart of The Blogosphere(TM) has been named Worst Person In The World by Keith Olbermann.

As Allah says, MK's remark that President Clinton "got a lot of passes" from the media during his presidency makes her guilty of denying "the Olby Creation Myth" about the Lewinsky scandal.

Politics and show business often attract unstable personalities who engage in irrational behavior. For a middle-aged professional broadcaster like Olbermann to stake his career on being the most openly left-wing anchor in television was, and is, a very stupid and dangerous thing to do. The entire idea of the "Worst Person In the World" segment is absurdly childish. And picking on MK is symptomatic of a disordered mind.

James Joyner:

While I realize that “Worst Person in the World” is one of Olbermann’s shticks and that it’s meant to be hyperbole, it’s really a bizarre title to bestow for expressing an opinion on such a minor issue.

Like I said, symptomatic of a disordered mind. Give a guy like that a cable TV show, let him feed poison into the minds of a few hundred thousand similarly disturbed souls and what do you get? Well, consider the "fan mail" generated by Olbermann's attention, as MK herself describes it:

Ooh, the first of the enlightened liberal acolytes of Olbermann writes to tell me to go back to pole-dancing. Progressive!

Why is Keith Olberman so vicious? What prompts his rage? It's really simple: If you disagree with him, you are denying the validity of his vision. And his vision is what makes KO special, see?

To tell KO that he's not special, to deny his genius, his greatness, his absolute centrality to Life In The Universe ... how cruel can you be?

.

UPDATE: Linked at Memeorandum.

You know how those people are ...

Feminists, I mean:

In short, gang raping of women is commonplace in our culture both physically and metaphorically.
This past week, we witnessed just such a phenomenon involving men who are afraid of a powerful woman. Hillary Clinton, in her quest for her Presidential nomination, has in fact endured infantile taunting and wildly inappropriate commentary. Indeed we have witnessed almost comical attacks by John Edwards who in turn sided with Barak Obama as both snickered at Clinton's "breakdown," which consisted of a very short dewy-eyed moment. Now John Kerry, who should certainly know better after his own "swiftboating," has joined the playground gang.

Meanwhile a separate release accuses Ted Kennedy of "betrayal" of women for endorsing Obama. Hat tips to Hot Air and Ace of Spades, who observes:

In related news, Mary Jo Kopechne died of psychological vehicular manslaughter.

Lie down with crackpots, wake up with atrocious metaphors.

UPDATE: Marty at Jammie Wearing Fool writes:

It will be most curious to see the next card the increasingly desperate Clintons now play.

Given that Team Clinton just dispatched a surrogate to accuse a black man of perpetrating a "gang rape," I think the next card has already been played -- as usual, off the bottom of the deck.

Greenwald: Have sock puppet, will travel

UPDATE: Welcome Dan Riehl readers.

I had no idea of the pros and cons of the FISA bill currently making its way through the Senate, but if Glenn Greenwald is against it, it's probably a good thing:

Today, there is a genuine opportunity -- the first in a long time -- for Senate Democrats to take a meaningful stand against the lawlessness of the Bush administration. Whether they are willing to take this stand largely depends upon how much citizen demand they hear from Americans like you and me.
The Bush administration has been trying to bully Congress into passing a law that would legalize vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers for the President to spy on Americans. The law also provides full immunity to telecommunications companies
which enabled the Bush administration to spy on you without the warrants required by law.
Worse, if telecom amnesty were granted, it would result in the immediate dismissal of numerous lawsuits against the telecoms, thus extinguishing the only remaining means for discovering what our Government really was doing over the last seven years as it illegally spied on our telephone conversations and emails.
Please call your senators and demand they filibuster to stop telecom immunity right now

-Glenn Greenwald Salon.com

Therefore, I am duty-bound to urge you to call your senators and tell them that passage of telecom immunity is absolutely essential to the preservation of our American way of life.

Call this the Anti-Greenwald Principle: Anything endorsed by that idiot is a bad idea; anything he opposes is a good idea.

It's kind of like the Chappaquiddick Codicil: Never support anything supported by drunks who drown their campaign aides. If Ted Kennedy votes to adjourn, honorable men are duty-bound to vote to stay in session.

BTW, how much does Salon.com pay Greenwald to attach their name to partisan petitions?


UPDATE: A pro-Greenwald commenter weighs in to accuse me of being "simplistic":

The issue is not Greenwald, it's the Fourth Amendment and the right of the people to challenge the government in court. ...

And the commenter misses the point that telecom immunity is about protecting private industry from greedy trial lawyers. The issue is billable hours, which is the only motive of the parasitical ambulance chasers trying to get their sticky fingers into the pockets of AT&T, et al.

Really, it's a beautiful con by the legal left: Convince a bunch of gullible liberals that you are "fighting for the cause," then line your own pockets with fat fees.

The pro-Greenwald commenter further asks:

If Greenwald wrote that he loved his mother, would you quit loving yours?

No, if Greenwald wrote that he loved his mother, I'd suspect that he'd actually chopped her into a hundred pieces and fed the remains to his cat.

P.S.: Greenwald is a lawyer. Reckon he's getting a referral fee for this advocacy? Or is he being paid by DFA? Either way, he doesn't strike me as a pro bono shill.

Olympic flip-flop finals

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin really doesn't like Crazy Cousin John:

I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with schmypocrite.

* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *

Considering the Olympic-caliber double-reverse backflip that Crazy Cousin John performed on the issue of "shamnesty" -- a coalition-killing scam he twice attempted to ram through the Senate -- it ill-behooves him to call Mitt Romney a flip-flopper.

At risk of being accused of "objective opinion," I will praise Romney for this swift response:



(Hat-tip: Bryan at Hot Air.) Speaking of Hugh Hewitt, I remind you that he's executive producer of a new documentary, "Article VI," which explains why anyone who votes against Romney is (objectively) un-American and un-Christian.

Meanwhile, it looks like Mittens is gaining in Florida (objective good news) and let me complete this shameless sellout by reminding everyone that CPAC is Feb. 7-9. (Only $125 for a three-day pass.)

Crazy Cousin John skipped CPAC last year, a profound diss to the conservative movement when even arch-liberal Rudy Giuliani was not ashamed to plead his case to the GOP base. Of course, St. Mitt of Romney was there. (Sorry about the jokes, Mitt, but if I don't throw in a good shot now and then, someone might accuse me of being "objective.")

'Undocumented people'

This is the kind of PC nonsense that drives me nuts:

"Barack Obama has not backed down" on driver's licenses for undocumented people, said Federico Peña, a former Clinton administration Cabinet member and Denver mayor now supporting Obama. "I think when the Latino community hears Barack's position on such an important and controversial issue, they'll understand that his heart and his intellect is with [the] Latino community."
(Emphasis added.)

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.) Let us disassemble the aforesaid nonsense:

• The phrase "undocumented" is a dishonest attempt to assert that the distinguishing trait of these people is their lack of documents, as if they'd simply misplaced their paperwork, or failed to fill out some goverment appplication. In fact, they are lawbreakers whose very presence in this country constitutes a federal crime.
• Note the automatic (and false) conflation of "undocumented people" with the "Latino community." The Obama spokesman would have you believe that all "undocumented people" are Latino and vice versa, so that any criticism of policies that encourage illegal immigration is de facto hostility to Latinos, rather than a legitimate policy disagreement.
• There is no such thing as the "Latino community." Ask a Mexican his opinion of Guatemalans, or ask a Guatemalan his opinion of Argentines. My pastor is a native of El Salvador, my daughter's boyfriend was born in Argentina, I count many people of Cuban and Puerto Rican ancestry among friends, and I think it fair to say that these proud American immigrants (and their children) are profoundly indignant when they are indiscrimately lumped into the "Latino community."
• The reference to how this policy position reflects Obama's "heart and his intellect" is exactly the kind of pandering that disgusts me about post-Clintonian politics. It's "The Vision of the Anointed" writ large. Public policy ceases to be about policy, instead becoming an expression of enlightened moral sentiment: I care, therefore I am.

There is no limit to the asininity that can be justified by that kind of irrational gush. And this particular policy stance by Obama is utterly asinine. It's like supporting the legalization of methamphetamine in order to demonstrate one's sympathy for the "meth-head community."

(For the record, I am not -- repeat, not -- asserting that Latinos are analogous to meth-heads. It's just that I'm suffering an awful head cold today, and medical relief was delayed due to the restrictions on cold medication caused by the meth epidemic. That is a good example of how tolerance of lawbreaking tends to create problems for the law-abiding, just as the illegal alien influx has cast a undeserved shadow of suspicion on legal immigrants, Latino and otherwise.)

Despite the PC language, the San Francisco Chronicle points out the likely impact of Obama's endorsement of licenses for illegals:

It's a huge issue for Latinos, who want them. It's also a huge issue for the general electorate, which most vehemently does not. Obama's stand could come back to haunt him not only in a general election, but with other voters in California, where driver's licenses for illegal immigrants helped undo former Gov. Gray Davis.

Driving "is a privilege, not a right," to quote that notorious hatemonger, Sen. Christopher Dodd. Even if you don't favor mass desportation of illegal aliens (like Dora The Explorer), it makes no sense to grant them licenses.

To start with the most basic question, how are they going to drive, if they can't even read the signs? Having spent 10 years in DC, I can tell you that most drivers on the Beltway -- native or immigrant -- can't seem to grasp the meaning of simple words like "merge" and "yield." What will happen, then, if licenses are granted to illegals, many of whom are illiterate even in their own native languages?

Before Bob Jansen can teach English to the adult immigrants in his lowest-level class, he has to show about a quarter of them how to hold a pencil.
Adult education teachers like Jansen are finding themselves starting from scratch as uneducated immigrants and refugees from conflict regions of Africa and rural areas of Mexico and Central America flock to the United States.
An estimated 400,000 legal and 350,000 illegal immigrants are unable to read or write even in their native language, according to a July 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington think tank.

Also from MPI, here's a report on the impact of "limited English proficiency" students on U.S. schools.

The point is not to derogate immigrants, but to demonstrate that public policy has public consequences, and that our unlimited sympathy for, inter alia, Sudanese refugees can never justify an unlimited commitment of taxpayer resources -- which are, after all, finite.

To pander on the campaign trail, by suggesting that one's support for an unwise policy is a measure of one's moral virtue, is the abnegation of sound statesmanship. It would be a sad irony if this foolish stance cost Obama the Democratic nomination, and delivered it instead to Hillary Clinton, arguably the most inept panderer in American political history:


UPDATE: While I was composing this post, Michelle Malkin weighed in, with this hilarious video of the Chappaquiddick Swim Champ:

Romney-Steele '08?

Jimmie at the Sundries Shack has an excellent suggestion:

The candidate that seems least flawed to me - Mitt Romney - is still not conservative enough to earn my vote. But he could be. If he chose the right running mate.
Choosing a running mate before we’ve even gotten to Super Tuesday is…well, let’s just call it highly unconventional. . . .
Mitt Romney needs Michael Steele.

Hear, hear. Martin Knight at Red State has a similar view.

I was very impressed with Steele's performance on "Meet the Press" in October 2006. Steele ran circles around Ben Cardin, and Steele's subsequent defeat in the Senate race was more attributable to the situation -- running against an anti-GOP tidal wave in an overwhelmingly Democratic state -- than a reflection on Steele's performance as a candidate.

Like Romney, Steele is a "Blue State Republican" who has had to campaign and govern in an environment that is hostile to his conservative values. I've had the opportunity to meet Steele, and can attest that Steele's cheerful, upbeat -- dare I say, Reaganesque? -- conservatism is for real.

Here's video of Steele doing a "HamNation" interview with the Sweetheart Of The Blogosphere(TM):

Steele is telegenic and has a disarming sense of humor (notice how, about 2:30 into the video, he laughs about "slogging uphill" in heavily-Democratic Maryland) and would certainly be valuable to the GOP ticket -- especially after Team Clinton finishes its trademark character-assassination campaign against Barack Obama. (Hat tip: Memeorandum.)

Of course, Steele is a Republican loyalist and cannot afford to take sides in a contested primary race, but it would certainly do no harm for Romney (or Huckabee or Crazy Cousin John) to start mentioning Steele as a potential VP nominee for '08. That would be the kind of rumor I'm sure Steele would be flattered to deny.

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UPDATE 11:15 p.m.:

Headline of the day: "Obama completes endorsement sweep of loathsome Massachusetts senators."

As much as conservatives have complained about the Republican field this time, pity the poor Democrats who have to choose between (a) the Team Clinton dirtball operation and (b) the favorite candidate of the Chappaquiddick Swim Champion. Assuming, that is, that not even liberals are foolish enough to vote for (c) former Sen. Barney Fife.

My late, great Aunt Barbara

Barbara Ellis was for many years recognized as one of the finest science teachers in Georgia, a distinction that only begins to tell what a fascinating personality she was. The obituary from the LaGrange Daily News is brief:

Mrs. Barbara Kirby Ellis, 66, of LaGrange, passed away Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at Hospice LaGrange.
Mrs. Ellis was born November 17, 1941 in Winter Haven, Florida, the daughter of the late Hermit and Eucal Moses Kirby. She was a member of the First Baptist Church on the Square and MENSA. She was a retired educator from the Troup County School System.
Survivors include her loving husband of 45 years, Casper Ellis; a daughter and son-in-law, Pepper and Chris Hagebak; a son and daughter-in-law, Scott and Robin Ellis all of LaGrange; grandchildren, Amber Ellis, Caleb Ellis, and Saga Hagebak; a sister Pat Huber of Atlanta and several nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be at 2:00 Saturday at Hunter-Allen-Myhand Chapel with Rev. Kathy Lamon officiating. The family will receive friends at the funeral home one hour before the service. ...

There is a lot that a simple obituary can't tell, but then again, there are a couple of things there I didn't know:

• Aunt Barbara was born in Florida. Our folks came from Randolph County, Ala., so how is it that Aunt Barbara was born in Winter Haven? Well, my maternal grandfather, Hermit Kirby, was a very entrepreneurial man, and one of his enterprises involved real-estate development in Florida. My Grandma Kirby used to talk about the Great Depression, and she'd quote my grandfather (who died before I was born) as saying, "If a man wants to work, he'll find work." That attitude explains why Grandpa Kirby did not merely survive the Depression, he thrived.
• Aunt Barbara was a member of MENSA, the international society of those whose IQ scores place them in the top 2%. I'd forgotten about this, although now I vaguely remember Aunt Barbara telling me about applying for membership, just for kicks.

Of course, no one who knew her could doubt that Aunt Barbara was a genius, and a polymath, to boot. Her interests were wide-ranging and eclectic, and her mind was a storehouse of knowledge and abilities.

One little anecdote: When I was about 21, and still planning on a career as a rock star (before I settled on being the Karaoke King), the family gathered for its annual Christmas party at my Aunt Pat's house.

That year, Aunt Barbara had decided to study palm-reading, and offered to read each of our palms. When it came my turn, Aunt Barbara said that my "fame" line was very clear -- which I, of course, took as a certain sign that I was destined for rock-and-roll greatness.

But what about my "fortune" line? Surely a famous rock star would be fabulously wealthy? Aunt Barbara gazed at my palm. "Well, Stacy, I've got to tell you ...." Great wealth did not appear to be traced among the furrows of my palm.

This disturbed me. Who gets famous without also getting rich? Serial killers?

Ah, but in looking back, I realize that Aunt Barbara thus predicted, in Delphic manner, my career in the newspaper business, where notoriety is seldom accompanied by an equivalence of remuneration.

Speaking of which, following my own bad example, Aunt Barbara's daughter, my cousin Pepper Ellis Hagebak, has joined the ranks of ink-stained drudges, penning a weekly column for the LaGrange Daily News. Here's part of her most recent column on her adventures as a cat-sitter:

I recently read an article claiming that home alarm systems were a waste of money, and possibly dangerous. . . . I’m going to dig that article up and write its author a strongly worded email. . . .

I simply walked into the house and promptly forgot the alarm code. I punched in what I thought was the correct code again and again, only to hear the impatient “Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!” as the system begged me for the series of numbers that would put it to sleep.

It gave up before I did, and everyone between Hollis Hand and LaGrange College was treated to a siren wail that threatened to deafen small animals and knock birds from the sky. . . .

“Hello! This is Amelia from Acme Alarm Systems. Is everything all right?” . . .

I chattered away, telling her about pet sitting and how long it had been since I’d had to remember that particular code. We talked about the weather. I think I gave her my email address.

But when she asked me for the password, I drew a blank. I couldn’t remember it to save me. I stalled, humming into the phone while I racked my brain. I remembered my driver’s license number. I remembered my SAT score. I remembered the preamble to the Constitution. But I didn’t remember that one itty-bitty word.

"I remembered the preamble to the Constitution" -- great punchline.

Pepper's only been at it a few months now, but she shows an excellent sense of comic timing (nature or nuture?) and she's already got the key to good column-writing: Make every word count. Don't just write, but re-write -- improve and polish it. If you're writing one column a week, there's no reason to publish your first draft. Keep re-writing it until you think it's perfect, then print it out. Now, read over the printed version, and mark the typos and less-than-apt phrasings. Correct it on the computer, print out the improved version, and repeat the process.

Pepper tells me she's already starting to experience the unparalleled pleasures of being a local newspaper columnist, with people stopping by her frame shop to tell her how much they love her latest column. There is no celebrity so rewarding as the celebrity enjoyed by a small-town newspaper columnist. When I was a columnist for the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, I could cash a check in the grocery store without showing ID -- that is what I call famous.

My friend Don Surber -- of the Charleton, W.Va. (not London) Daily Mail -- can probably share some other tales of small-town celebrity. The great thing about small-town celebrity is that, unlike the paparazzi-plagued celebrities of Hollywood, you get fans who are also genuine friends. You don't get rich, and you're not going to be on the cover of US Weekly, but there's nothing like being the local columnist when you walk into your favorite diner and the waitress tells you how much she loved your latest column.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Pepper's husband Chris Hagebak is an excellent artist. He has his own gallery next door to the frame shop where Pepper works but, apparently, doesn't have his own Web site. Call me, Pep -- we'll fix that.

UPDATE 8:45 a.m.:

Correction: Chris does have a Web site. It's just that I had the surname spelled wrong when I was Googling.

'Pusillanimous nancy-boy'

Mark Steyn's next book title? "Pusillanimous Nancy-Boy" ... or, perhaps, "Obfuscatory Suffix":

Diana West thinks that my column on excessive deference to Islam reveals me as a pusillanimous nancy-boy because right at the end I use the word "Islamist". She thinks "Islamism" is a linguistic dodge that attempts to draw a false distinction between Islam in general and a, er, few bad apples.

(Via Memeorandum.) Steyn a "nancy-boy"? Tell it to the Canadians!

BTW, it's good to see Diana West blogging.

The reason I resigned from my job in August -- storming out the door in a fury -- was because the multitudinous obligations of my job prevented me from writing up the hourlong interview I did with Miss West when her book, "Death of the Grown-Up," was published last year.

I had allowed myself to become overscheduled, and my job at that point consisted of four different jobs, with three different bosses. As a result, there wasn't enough time to do the job I actually wanted to do, namely writing -- and I hadn't had a real vacation in years.

The fault was entirely my own. This is a point -- personal responsibility for one's own career failures -- that I've tried to get across to some of the young people I've mentored. If you ever find yourself in a job situation that's making you miserable (if not, indeed, driving you to an early grave), you have no one to blame but yourself.

There are other people who are happy and successful in their jobs. If you are an unhappy failure -- and that's how I felt on that August afternoon -- whose fault is that?

After I quit in August, my bosses talked me out of an immediate resignation and rearranged my duties. Then I got a deal to go to Sudan and work on a book project. Pretty cool. So now I'm going out the door with a smile on my face.

This happy ending never would have happened, however, except that I was willing to admit my own responsibility for my own failures.

Hugh Hewitt, movie mogul

A new documentary, Article VI, will be screened Thursday, Jan. 31, at the Heritage Foundation.

According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Hugh Hewitt is executive producer of the film, which features interviews with, inter alia, my friend David French. (David is now a captain in the Army Reserve, deployed in Iraq.)

Since David is co-founder of Evangelicals For Mitt, and Hewitt is ... er, famously objective, I think it safe to suppose that the object of this documentary is to convince Americans that voting against Mitt merely because of his Mormonism would be an act of unconscionable bigotry.

You can view a trailer here (hey, Team Mitt, how about a YouTube trailer?) and there is a Facebook page for Thursday's screening here.

The Osmond factor

Mike Huckabee has Chuck Norris. John McCain has Sylvester Stallone. What's next in the "celebrity-endorser death match"? Mitt Romney deploys ... Donny Osmond:

Last May, Georgia’s Secretary of State Karen Handel had a leisurely, get-to-know-me session with a visiting Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. . . .
Handel wondered out loud whether Romney knew Donny Osmond, who was rumored to live in Utah. He said, yes, he knew the family. . . .
She still suffers from puppy love.
She has “The Best of Donny Osmond” on her iPhone.
“It is a specific age group. It’s for those of us who are between 40 and 48,” Handel explained. . . .
The next month, Handel found a follow-up conference call with Romney on her calendar.
“The phone rings, and it was ‘Hi, Karen, this is Donny,’ ” Handel recounted.
“Donny who?”
“Donny Osmond.”
Handel confirmed widespread reports that teenage-style screaming echoed through the state Capitol. But she says the conversation itself was a blur.

Hey, Mitt: Any chance you could line me up a phone call from Marie? Or just e-mail me the digits and I'll make the call myself.

.

UPDATE 5:20 a.m. 1/28/08

Linked by Don Surber, who apparently doesn't want a phone call from Marie.

.

UPDATE 7:30 a.m.:

In case anyone's forgotten, let me remind you that the Osmonds actually produced some excellent Motown-influenced power pop:

One of these days ...

... I intend to clear up some mistaken impressions that have been fostered online.

But this is not that day. I just finished writing a 1,200-word feature (note the time), spent an hour-and-a-half driving home, and now have to get some sleep. And I'm one day closer to a monster of a deadline on May 1. Plus, I've still got to get vaccinated some more before I go to Sudan in mid-February.

Just in case anyone was wondering, finishing up around the office is taking a bit longer than I'd previously thought. My last day is Monday, May 28.

Yet this business of mischaracterizing the meaning of someone's remarks, and thereafter citing one's own mischaracterization as evidence of opinions that the person has never avowed -- it's dishonest and spiteful, Heidi.

Oh, almost forgot: Found out late Tuesday that my Aunt Barbara is in ICU and is not expected to recover.

They refused to fire me ...

... so I had to quit:

From: Robert Stacy McCain
To: Tom McDevitt
Cc: Wes Pruden, Fran Coombs, David Eldridge
Date: 01/16/2008 08:53 AM
Subject: RESIGNATION, EFFECTIVE JAN. 23

Friends:

You may recall that I attempted to quit The Washington Times in August 2007, and was persuaded not to do so by Wes Pruden and Fran Coombs. Well, Wes and Fran are leaving now, so I suppose now is as good a time as any for me to go.

My last work day in the office will be Wednesday, Jan. 23, though cleaning out my desk may take a few days longer.

In December, I signed a contract to produce a 70,000-word book by May 1, and have done a good bit of research, but have only had time to write 4,000 words so far. The business of producing the "Culture, Et Cetera" page five days a week, together with blogging and other duties at the paper, is really incompatible with the kind of work this book needs, including a two-week trip to [Very Dangerous Foreign Country] next month. (I've got a doctor's appointment today to get my first round of vaccinations for the trip.)

In 1997, my wife and I knelt together in our home in Georgia, and prayed that I would be hired by The Washington Times. Every time I've become dissatisfied with this job, my conscience has chastened me for my sinful ingratitude, knowing that I was complaining about an answered prayer.

When we loaded our belongings into a U-Haul truck and rolled north up I-81 in November 1997, we brought with us an 8-year-old girl, Kennedy, and twin 5-year-old boys, Bob and Jim. Kennedy's now a college sophomore doing a year abroad in Argentina, and the boys are 15. Meanwhile, we've added Jefferson, now 9, Emerson, now 7, and Reagan, now 5. So we've doubled our blessings and undoubtedly contributed to our nation's health care crisis, while also warming the globe for Al Gore. (Though I'm still not sure which of John Edwards' "Two Americas" we're part of, I know I don't want Hillary's village anywhere near my kids.)

Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned in the past 10 years is that the institution of The Washington Times is greater than any individual employee. Magical things happen when you pick up that phone, make a call and say, "I'm from The Washington Times." I've met TV stars, intellectuals, and political leaders. Publicists send me free books by famous authors and practically beg me to interview their clients. This kind of VIP treatment can create the impression that it's all about you. But it's not you, it's really the power and prestige of that name -- The Washington Times, America's Newspaper -- that opens all those doors for you.

As you might expect, then, it is with great sadness and reluctance that I have decided to resign from a job for which I prayed, at a paper I love so much. Or, at least I think I'm resigning. In my typical careless way, I haven't actually bothered to check the company's personnel policies. I've got three weeks vacation coming to me, and a huge pile of accumulated sick leave, and it might be more to my advantage to get fired instead of quitting.

Maybe David, Fran and Wes can decide between them who gets the pleasure and honor of finally firing me. Or perhaps you'll want to leave that task to John Solomon, so he starts his tenure as an instant hero to the SPLC, Media Matters and a thousand left-wing bloggers by ending my dreadful reign of terror. (Hey, I mean, if you believe that kind of stuff ….)

Whatever The Washington Times becomes without me, history indicates I'll never become more than I have been at The Washington Times. Let's face it: People routinely leave this place thinking they're going on to bigger and better things, and then promptly disappear. I swear last week I saw Bill Sammon's picture on a milk carton.

So that's me -- another loser wandering off the floodlit stage of The Washington Times, and into the darkened wings of journalistic obscurity. If you ever want an encore, just give me a call.

Sincerely,

Robert Stacy McCain

P.S.: I promise not to kick any doors or shout any profanities on my way out.

P.P.S: David, how about posting this e-mail on our Web site, so FishbowlDC links to us and at least we get some extra traffic out of it?

* * * * *

Well, David didn't do what I suggested -- another brilliant McCain brainstorm rejected! -- so I guess my personal blog is now scooping my employer. (Is it still too late to get fired?)

Over the years, there have been all kinds of wild rumors about me, my bosses, and The Washington Times. Now it can be revealed that one of those rumors was true:

Indeed, I must finally confess, I am The Karaoke King of DC.

(Notice, however, that Patrick Gavin mistakenly describes me as "a karaoke king," rather than "The Karaoke King." A correction is long overdue, Patrick.)

To prevent the spread of still more gossip and slander, then, let me try to explain the actual facts behind my decision to resign.


Opportunities and omens

First of all, as stated, I am under contract to produce a 70,000-word book by May 1. It involves traveling to a Very Dangerous Foreign Country (no, not Canada) and as anyone who's ever written a non-fiction book will attest, that final deadline crunch is always a soul-consuming nightmare.

Second, because The Washington Times staff is so small, there is no "backup" person cross-trained to fill in as "Culture, Et Cetera" editor: The page is published 260 days a year, and one person must edit (and sometimes write) the content for all 260 pages. So if I wanted to take three days off, I had to do an extra three pages in advance before I could leave. In effect, this means I haven't had a real vacation since 2003.

Given those realities, imagine trying to carve out, between now and May 1, enough free time to finish a 70,000-word book.

Third, John Solomon has just been named executive editor of The Washington Times. From what David Bossie told me at Monday's premiere of "Hillary: The Movie," Solomon is a great guy and an excellent reporter. (Anyone hated by Media Matters can't be all bad, even if he did commit the otherwise unforgivable sin of working for The Other Paper.)

Naturally, Solomon's first few weeks will be spent familiarizing himself with newsroom personnel at The Washington Times -- during the very period that I would be trying to juggle the "Culture Et Cetera" editor's job with the insanity of a book deadline.

In terms of making a good first impression on the new boss, this scenario had every omen of a career catastrophe.

Another answered prayer, you see.

A crisis and a lesson

The crisis that caused my August 2007 newsroom blowup and attempted resignation was, in the final analysis, the result of my conviction that I was in the wrong job -- right newspaper, just the wrong job. The "Culture Et Cetera" editor's job involves a lot of tasks that I've never been able to enjoy (e.g., putting together what's called an "advanced tout"), and those unwanted duties prevented me from doing the kind of work I'm best at.

Thus came that Tuesday in August when my editing duties had prevented me from completing the feature interview I wanted to write. Somebody was hassling me about something else, and I replied, "OK, how about instead, I resign in disgrace?"

Walked straight to my boss's office, said some choice words, and then stormed out, intending never to return. As far as I was concerned, at that minute, I was unemployed.

They talked me out of it, but I never could shake the conviction that I was in the wrong job.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Being "Culture, Et Cetera" editor can be a very sweet job at times. It's amazing who you can meet and what you can do, when you're the guy in charge of filling up 120 column inches of some of the most valuable news/feature space on the planet, five days a week.

And then there are those times when you've spent an hour fruitlessly searching for a wire story that can be edited down to serve as the 200-word "extra" on the page, and you think to yourself: "This is not what I came to Washington to do."

Yeah, somebody's got to do that stuff, but ... doing it for four years in my mid-40s? When I was a national award-winning columnist before I ever left Georgia? Nope, sorry.

You take the good with the bad, but I've always had a low tolerance for compulsory, anonymous drudgery. Still, I never forgot that I had prayed to be hired by The Washington Times, and if I was stuck doing such thankless tasks, surely God had a purpose. There must be some lesson here.

There was. I figured it out after John Berthoud died. This isn't the place to explain the whole thing, but just ask yourself how a man can spend his career as a leading activist in Washington, D.C., and never make a single enemy.

God said, 'Go'

So then I got the book deal. And then John Solomon was named as Wes's replacement and Fran's resignation was announced.

It was like God said, "Go."

Departing with sorrow and reluctance, then, I hope that I may -- as my resignation e-mail said -- eventually be called back for an encore.

Wednesday afternoon, I met with Fran and David, and we were all surprisingly cheerful, despite the uncertain future that faces each of us now. Like I told Dave, if you can't laugh in the face of danger, you're not a Christian.

Given that the "Culture, Et Cetera" page is planned in advance, there are several feature stories I've committed to write for the page that can't possibly be published before my last work day in the office next Wednesday. Also, my notoriously messy desk will have to be cleaned out.

Therefore, if I correctly understand how my departure will play out, my byline will appear a few more times while my three weeks of unused vacation time is burned off. And who knows? Maybe the new editor will let me do some freelance contributions in the future -- perhaps even some reporting from the Very Dangerous Foreign Country to which I must travel. So maybe I can stave off the fog of journalistic obscurity that has enshrouded others.

(You think I'm kidding? I watched a PBS special recently in which a reporter for Knight-Ridder explained how he had published articles in late 2002 and early 2003 clearly documenting the bogusness of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, yet nobody in Washington paid any attention. Right story, wrong paper. Welcome to the milk carton brigade, Warren Strobel.)

For 10 years, it has been my distinct honor and privilege to work for The Washington Times, which with unnecessary modesty calls itself America's Newspaper. I've spent the past decade telling my kids that their father works for the most important paper in the world -- and that's a neutral, objective fact.

Nothing can compare to the repeated thrill I've had of meeting new people, reaching out to shake their hand and proudly saying, "Hi, I'm Stacy McCain, from The Washington Times."

If I could stay, even in the wrong job, I know I'd never leave.

But God said, "Go."

Is Hannity a heretic?

Being a Protestant myself, I've got no dog in this fight, but pro-life Catholics are fighting mad at Sean Hannity:

"I have no problem with birth control. It's a good thing," Mr. Hannity has said, prompting the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, to send a mass e-mail last week calling the Fox News Channel and talk-radio host's repeated public defenses of contraception "just devastating for the faith of others who may be weak or vacillating in this area."
One thing that angered some Catholics was a TV "debate" in which Mr. Hannity lectured Fr. Euteneuer, saying that the priest was not "facing reality" about the need for contraception. Catholic author Amy Wellborn was shocked by Mr. Hannity "running all over" a priest who leads a major pro-life organization, and later criticized the popular Fox News host ...

Please go read the whole thing.

To understand why people like Jill Stanek and the American Spectator's Lisa Fabrizio are miffed, you've really got to watch the video:

Reaction to this is gathering steam -- as of early Thursday, discussed in 243 blog posts, according to Google, including Roman Catholic Blog, Wisconsin Catholic Musings, Bro Robin, Karsten Nordmo, Mark Shea, Travis Boudreaux, Return of Scipio ...

The controversy is unlikely to go away, if only for the reason that this involves Catholic pro-lifers, the people who turn out by the thousands to march in Washington in the freezing cold every January on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Just remember that The Washington Times was the first newspaper to report this story.

UPDATE: Linked at Hot Air, where AllahPundit sez:

[I]t’s as pointless debating this issue as it is abortion or evolution, but the thought of Fox’s resident hammer going after a man in a white collar is irresistible.