GOP VP DOA

Immediately after finishing a gloomy assessment of Republican prospects in November, I saw Michelle Malkin's reaction to the news that open-borders Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is now considered the top contender for GOP running-mate:

Can someone please fast-forward to 2012? Please.

Agreed. But if things keep going in the current direction at the current rate, there won't even be a Republican Party by 2012. I couldn't help but think of Dante's inscription at the portal to Hell:

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I'm tired of hoping that the Republican Party will ever recover its senses. Conservatives are like a battered wife in an abusive relationship with the GOP, except that we can't even get a restraining order.

Or maybe I'm just depressed.

Polls and possibilities

As of today, the Real Clear Politics poll average shows Barack Obama at 47.8%, John McCain at 43.3%.

Obama has just weathered two months of unceasing bad press, beginning with the first ABC News story about Jeremiah Wright on March 13. Then there was Bittergate (April 11), his poor performance in the Philadelphia debate (April 16), his defeat in Pennsylvania (April 22), Wright's media tour (April 25-28) and flag-stomping Bill Ayers (May 5).

After all this, then, Obama holds an average lead of more than 4 points in eight polls done since April 30. Moreover, in two of those polls (CBS and ABC) Obama hit 51%. McCain has not hit 50% in a head-to-head matchup with Obama since an early January USA Today poll.

With even James Carville now ready to stick a fork in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and an Obama-McCain general-election contest now all but certain, those polls should give pause to pundits who are busy plotting scenarios in which John McCain wins in November.

Is a McCain victory even possible?

Well, anything is possible, I suppose, but it's hard to see it as a likely scenario. Bush's approval numbers continue to reach new nadirs, the wrong-track numbers are near the 80% level, and Democrats have a double-digit edge in generic congressional numbers.

So far as polls can forecast, then, Republicans are sailing for a November electoral disaster on the scale of 1964 or '74. Meanwhile, we see the GOP standard-bearer distancing himself still further from the party's conservative base, e.g., endorsing the global warming hoax.

What we don't see, however, is conservative pundits bluntly acknowledging this pessimistic picture, or naming names in terms of who is responsible for the startling decline of GOP fortunes since 2004.

On Jan. 20, 2005, the political forecast was for continued Republican dominance. Within 22 months, however, the GOP lost its congressional majority. The party establishment apparently learned nothing from that mid-term defeat, and so the downward spiral of Republican fortunes appears likely to continue this fall. By Jan. 20, 2009, Democrats will control the White House and both houses of Congress, and the GOP will be right back where it was in 1993.

If conservative pundits do not begin assessing blame for this looming debacle, other pundits will. And those other pundits will blame . . . conservatives.

'Indistinguishable'?

Thanks for the traffic, Michelle Malkin, but I was stunned at your statement that Bob Barr is "virtually indistinguishable from all the other remaining presidential candidates" on illegal immigration. As I report at the American Spectator blog:

"If a person is illegally in this country, the taxpayers of this country and the government of this country owe them nothing," Barr said.
"This notion that government owes something to people, simply because they're here, does not resonate with me as somebody who believes in responsible government. If one were running a charity called the United States of America, that would be one thing. This is not a charity, this is the people's business. . . . I disagree with the [1982 Plyer v. Doe] court decision . . . that decided that children of illegal aliens, people who are in this country unlawfully, have a right to a public education paid for by the taxpayers of this country. That is an improper, irresponsible decision."

For some reason, none of the MSM reporters at the event thought that quote newsworthy. But it's certainly distinguishable from anything John McCain has ever said.

UPDATE 5/13: A source in the Barr campaign tells me they were bombarded Monday with hostile, vitriolic e-mails from John McCain's supporters. I myself was unaware that See-Dubya is a McCainiac, as indicated by his comment on my Monday morning post:

Ron Paul grew a moustache?

By which See-Dubya apparently means to dismiss Barr as an anti-war crackpot. Well, Barr's never trucked with Truthers, at least. And the Spectator's Philip Klein sees a difference:

On international affairs in general, his tone was a lot more measured than what we've seen from Ron Paul -- there were no stinging critiques of U.S. as an imperialist nation.

Barr voted for the Iraq War, but now believes it was a mistake and wants to "set in place a plan" to "dramatically decrease the military, the economic, and the political footprint we maintain in Iraq."

But his language remained cautious. He opposes precipitous withdrawal, and described it as "foolhardy" to announce a timetable for pulling out of Iraq.

"Only a fool would signal to whoever their adversaries are when we would be drawing down our troops," he said.In response to another question, he added that "the doctrine of preemptive war has no basis in traditional and historical notions of America's security."

Barr's a big boy who can defend himself, but I have a hard time reconciling the way some of my friends are now calling for conservatives to rally 'round the GOP banner with the way they were talking in January and February.

I turned on the radio Monday morning and actually heard Laura Ingraham making apologies for John McCain, the same day he moved to Bush's left on "climate change." Now he's not just a RINO, he's a green RINO -- and he approves this message:

Gag me with a renewable energy source. Drew M at AOSHQ:

Boy, I am glad I live in NY and don't have to feel bad about not voting for the guy . . .

Yeah, Maryland is also deep Blue, so I get a free vote, too.

It's Barr Day!

Raining cats and dogs in DC -- we had flood warnings last night -- as I get ready to head down to the National Press Club for Bob Barr's 11 a.m. press conference. As I explain at the American Spectator blog:

Hate to spoil any surprises, but as a general rule, politicians don't book an NPC press conference to announce they're not running for president.

The L.A. Times today mentions Barr in talking about Ron Paul's forces opposing Sen. John McCain inside the GOP:

Paul's candidacy [is] a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party's most conservative conservatives. . . . [T]hat situation could be exacerbated by today's expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party's presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.

Ralph Z. Hallow of The Washington Times has a story about Republicans who fear the potential impact of a Barr LP candidacy:

Republicans, both publicly and behind the scenes, are saying that a Barr run could hurt him financially and sink Mr. McCain's Republican candidacy in the general election, likely against Sen. Barack Obama.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Times today that "Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion."

Electing the co-author of McCain-Feingold would threaten no libertarian values?

BTW, back in February, I was the first journalist to report on the "Draft Barr" movement that led to this campaign. That movement was hatched during CPAC. I first heard about it Feb. 8, a few hours after Barr introduced Ron Paul:

What did she get for $20 million?

Hillary should demand a refund:

Clinton aides continued to insist that she will remain in the race even while confirming that she is $20 million in debt. "The voters are going to decide this," senior adviser Howard Wolfson said on "Fox News Sunday," acknowledging the $20 million figure. . . .

As of a month ago, most of that debt was reportedly owed to the firm of former Clinton top strategist Mark Penn:

A source who has had close connections with Penn got word to me that he believes the Clinton campaign is $10 million in debt to Penn, Schoen & Berland, which is owned by Burson-Marsteller. The campaign's March report to the Federal Election Commission recorded indebtedness to the company of nearly $2.5 million (with its expenses for the month listed at $3.1 million).
My sources suggest that Clinton's full indebtedness may be revealed only gradually. This money link helps explain why Penn is still around even though organized labor demanded his scalp last summer and he is blamed inside the campaign for failing to perceive the public's demand for "change."
Just how much money Clinton owes Penn could cause major difficulties. If not repaid
promptly, would it constitute an illegal financial contribution? Because the British WPP owns Burson-Marsteller, would that debt constitute an illegal foreign contribution?

This is one of my pet peeves about political professionals in both parties. The top operatives get rich running campaigns, and they get paid whether the candidates win or lose. There is a built-in bias for operatives to respond to every problem in the campaign by saying, "The solution is to give me more money." The pollsters always want more money for polling, the media strategists want more money for ads, etc.

What results is a high "burn rate" -- spending campaign funds as fast, or faster, than they come in. These contributions often come from true-believer types, in response to "urgent" appeals to the effect of, "Help us save America!"

Those donors are getting ripped off, if that money goes mainly to line the pockets of some bigshot operative. And how can a candidates, in good conscience, ask students and housewives to work as unpaid volunteers while, at the same time, the campaign is pouring out millions in fat fees to expensive consultants? The consultants, strategists, and pollsters get paid, win or lose.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There are McMansions in Virginia horse country -- and yachts on the Chesapeake Bay -- that were paid for with consulting contracts on losing campaigns.

Liberal love

Got this e-mail today:

wow
you are really a piece of pure, rancid filth.
but, then so are most fascists and cheney regime apologists/supporters/ass lickers.
what an utter waste of flesh you creeps are.
have a nice day!!

My correspondent didn't say what I'd done to upset him, but I suppose it was my argument that Halliburton/KBR cannot automatically be assumed responsible for the rape of one of its contract employees in Iraq.

That argument was linked at a left-wing blog, where it was suggested that I was endorsing rape. In fact, I was arguing against the "sue somebody" mentality of tort lawyers who will seize on any opportunity to stage courtroom raids on the profits of major corporations:

Americans routinely sue their employers for millions, then have the effrontery to complain about the lack of "good jobs."

Because KBR is (or was) a subsidiary of Halliburton, and because Cheney was once CEO of Halliburton, some people are willing to believe anything bad they're told about the company. As I said, "the facts of the legal case remain to be examined," but it seems to me a stretch to assume that KBR bears civil liability for a criminal act like rape, an act that the company itself surely condemns.

Why do our ACLU-loving liberal friends never extend the "presumption of innocence" to corporations? Do the stockholders of KBR have no rights?

Media bias in 1,311 words

Newsweek's 3,400-word preview of an Obama-McCain general election campaign draws a 1,311-word response from John McCain campaign aide Mark Salter:

The Obama senior staffers were described as idealists and decent sorts, and [ju-jitsu] experts who could use Republican Party smears and deceitful tactics against their authors. I’m sure both David Plouffle and David Axelrod are fine, upstanding citizens. But the former ran a campaign for Senator Torricelli and the latter worked on the campaigns of Mayor Daley. I don’t remember those campaigns being notable for their delicate courtesy and softball tactics toward their opponents.
Without a trace of skepticism, your reporters embraced the primary communications strategy the Obama campaign intends to follow: any criticism of their candidate is a below the belt, Republican attack machine distortion that should discredit the authors. And any attempt by our campaign to counter that suggestion will be dismissed as a rant.

(Via Hot Air Headlines.) What any media critic should notice about the Newsweek article is that it starts with a leisurely 320 words humanizing Obama -- feet up on the table, adjusting his socks, etc. -- before introducing the Republican opposition thus:

The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities.

Then a Clinton adviser is quoted saying their campaign has been holding back on negative attacks on Obama, but:

The Republicans "won't suffer from such scruples," this adviser says. Sen. John McCain himself has explicitly disavowed playing the race card or taking the low road generally. But he may not be able to resist casting doubt on Obama's patriotism. And the real question is whether he can -- or really wants to -- rein in the merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet and fund the "independent expenditure" groups who exercise their freedom in ways that give a bad name to free speech.

The "merchants of slime and sellers of hate who populate the Internet"? Right. And they're all Republicans.

What I gather from this Newsweek article is that there isn't a single conservative with any influence in their newsroom. Otherwise, at some point in the editorial process, somebody would have called Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe into a conference room and said, "Uh, guys, let's go over this story. What's the concept here?"

This isn't an opinion column. It's the cover story. You cannot flatly assert, without evidence or argument, that the GOP's electoral success is entirely dependent on "merchants of slime."

The article describes David Bossie of Citizens United as being "already deep into a mudslinging campaign against Obama." What has Bossie done? He's commissioned a documentary film about Obama. Bossie's a conservative, and I presume that the film will be as effective as "Hillary: The Movie," which Citizens United released in January. In fact, I interviewed Boss at the movie's DC premiere:

"We already have our research staff working on Obama and, if he is the nominee, we will have a film out this summer, just like this one," said David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United and executive producer of "Hillary: The Movie," which premiered last night in Georgetown.

That movie wasn't just right-wing "mudslinging," and I don't expect the next one to be. To characterize a critical documentary as "mudslinging" is to dismiss and malign it -- and the Obama movie is still months away from completion.

A very bad idea

Nude vacation resorts. Notice that none of the nude vacationers pictured in this New York Times travel feature are young and attractive.

A bunch of ugly old naked people? That's not a vacation. That's day shift in a nursing home: "Are you ready for you bath, Mr. Ferguson?"

People have been pushing this nudism thing for years, and yet the people involved with it continue to be the same old freaks. Nudism sounded interesting back in the '60s, when groovy hippie chicks were getting naked at Woodstock or letting it all hang out at a commune in the woods with a Zen guru. Far out! Peace! Love!

That all ended when the hippie chicks discovered capitalism, which eventually led to nudie bars. None of those women in the New York Times article about nudist resorts was good-looking enough to work in a nudie bar. Heck, a couple of those dames looked like they could be bouncers in a nudie bar.

So, basically, this $300-a-night nudie resort in Mexico is about a bunch of sick old freaks and their fat ugly girlfriends walking around naked.

Paying $300 a night to hang out naked in Mexico with a retired insurance executive named Bernie? No thanks, I'll stay home.

Say it ain't so, Rush!

Rush Limbaugh:

"One of my next objectives is to try and convince Republicans to cross over and vote for McCain down the road," he quipped.

(Via Hot Air.) Not me. McCain threw away that chance when he tried -- not one, but twice -- to push amnesty through the Senate. No votes for amnesty and no votes for those who voted for amnesty. Ever. Period.

Confused women in W. Va.

A mass mailing leads to mass confusion:

The Secretary of State's office is reminding first-time voters that the deadline to register to vote in Tuesday's primary already has passed.
Betty Ireland said she's worried that a mass mailing aimed at getting young women in West Virginia to register to vote might cause confusion.
A group called "Women's Voices. Women Vote" sent out more than 16,000 mailers to unmarried women in the state after April 22, the last day to register in time to vote Tuesday.
People who've never voted can still register, but they won't be eligible to cast a ballot in the primary.

Confused women, running late. No surprise there.

You may remember "Women's Voices. Women Vote" (WVWV) as the group responsible for the suspicious North Carolina robo-calls. WVWV has received grants from the left-wing Tides Foundation. In March, WVWV was one of several groups (including La Raza, ACORN, Move.org and the AFL-CIO) that announced a coalition to make "the most expensive mobilization in history" for voter turnout this year.

Can't wait to see Don Surber's reaction to this news. What? West Virginia women weren't confused enough already, without these "outside agitators" coming in to confuse them further?

One question

Why hasn't he resigned already?

Vito Fossella's admission that he fathered a love child exposed another of his lies: He had told his girlfriend he was separated from his wife, the Daily News learned
Friday.
Retired Air Force Col. Laura Fay told those around her recently that the Staten Island congressman had split with his wife, Mary Pat, one source said.
"Fay thought - up until the release of the statement - that Fossella was separated," said the source, who is familiar with the relationship.
The source said Fay learned of the lie when a friend who saw a draft of Fossella's statement realized it didn't say he was separated.
Fossella, who has always stressed "family values," admitted Thursday in the statement that he fathered Fay's 3-year-old daughter during an illicit affair.
The revelation came a week after he was charged with drunken driving in Alexandria, Va., and seemed to tear apart the family.

Let's face it: When the phrases "love child," "illicit affair" and "drunken driving" occur in the space of six paragraphs about one congressman, that story is eventually going to end with "resigned in disgrace." Some scandals are survivable; this isn't one of them. Why is Fosella delaying the inevitable?

UPDATE: Just got an answer:

GOP strategists are debating whether he should resign or announce that he will not seek reelection in November.

"GOP strategists"! Your married Catholic congressman fathers a love child and gets busted for drunk driving, and you need "GOP strategists" to tell you what he should do? This reminds of the "GOP strategists" who thought Bob Ney could try to hang on in Ohio. Instead, he waited until August 2006 to announce he wouldn't seek re-election, and helped drag down the entire Ohio Republican Party with him.

OK, if only "GOP strategists" are allowed to participate in this discussion, I hereby declare myself a "GOP strategist": Vito Fossella should have resigned long ago, but at this point, first thing tomorrow morning will suffice.

The right history of the Left

Kathy Shaidle reviews Daniel Flynn's new book:

[T]he Left has always attracted very peculiar people who’ve preached very peculiar "solutions" to life's "problems." In fact, the sameness of the Left as chronicled by Flynn actually illustrates the conservative view of life: that human nature is fallen, universal, and cannot be permanently altered for the better through education or engineering.
Certain leftist types turn up again and again through the centuries, brought back to colorful life in Flynn's book: fanatics, altruists, adventurers, splitters, spiritualists, free spirits, and one particular type Flynn dubs the "puritanical perverts": Alfred Kinsey, Timothy Leary, and other "overbearing personalities whose zeal for sex, drugs, or whatever other pleasure made them paternalistic libertines."
What they all have in common, Flynn writes in Conservative History, isn't a "laundry list of complaints and wishes" so much as "an attitude": "It is, in its simplest form,
scorn for what is and hopes for what could be. The ideology's appeal exists in neither the experienced past nor the concrete present, but in the imagined future."

By all means, read the whole thing. I first encountered Flynn through his excellent 1999 pamphlet, Cop Killer: How Mumia Abu-Jamal Conned Millions Into Believing He Was Framed. That pamphlet demonstrated Flynn's deep understanding of how liberal media engage in what can only be called propaganda -- dishonest communication intended to propagate false belief. In Cop Killer, Flynn explains the facts of the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner, facts that Mumia's media enablers routinely ignore. No honest person can read Cop Killer and still buy into the "political prisoner" nonsense promulgated by the "Free Mumia" idiots.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the author of Cop Killer should win praise for his latest work.

Did KBR rape Jamie Leigh Jones?

UPDATE: Greetings TBogg/Firedoglake readers. In fact, contrary to what you read there, I am a former employee of The Washington Times (resigned in January) and this post is not about "the bitch obviously had it coming," it's about whether KBR should be held corporately responsible for criminal actions it neither authorized nor condoned. -- RSM

She'll get her day in court:

A Houston woman who says she was gang raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle late Friday when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring her case to court instead of forcing her into secretive arbitration proceedings with Halliburton and KBR. . . .
Jones says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

I don't think she's doing the lawsuit to get rich. Her lawyer, yes; herself, no. She'll get hers from the book deal and the movie rights. Excuse my extreme cyncism, but Jamie Leigh Jones' story has got "NYT bestseller/Oscar-winning movie" written all over it.

Gang rape is a crime, and the perpetrators should be punished, but Halliburton didn't rape Jamie Leigh Jones.

Halliburton hired Jones, and also apparently hired her rapists, but gang-rape was not any part of Halliburton's policy. They're in the engineering services business, not the rape business. They don't make a profit from rape, and yet somehow are being held financially liable for the criminal conduct of the persons unknown accused of raping Jones.

There was also an alleged cover-up:

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

If, as she alleges, security officers destroyed evidence of the rape, then by all means those security officers should be held accountable, just as the rapists should be held accountable, and whoever imprisoned her in a shipping container should also be held accountable. However, this kind of accountability -- punishing actual wrongdoers -- is not what the Jones lawsuit is about. What this lawsuit is about is a tort lawyer financially raping the stockholders of a major corporation.

The cost of this lawsuit will be borne by stockholders in Halliburton/KBR, stockholders who were not party to the crime, who would never condone such crimes, and who yet are being held accountable for these crimes. How so?

In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.
"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."

In other words, it's like the "hostile environment" aspect of sexual harassment case law, the Catch-22 of equal rights. On the one hand, if KBR had refused to hire a woman for Iraq contractor employment, they'd have been guilty of illegal discrimination. On the other hand, they send a 20-year-old blonde into a male-dominated work environment in the middle of a war zone and she gets raped, and the corporation is held liable for the crime.

Did the board of directors approve a "boys will be boys" directive for KBR's Iraq barracks? Which vice-president of KBR signed off on the memeorandum that "created" that "atmosphere"? But the lawyers for Jones know that the jury that hears the case won't think logically. Instead, the jurors will decide that KBR is rich, and the plaintiff is poor, and something bad happened, therefore the company should shell out millions of dollars -- and the tort lawyer will buy himself a new houseboat.

In its own way, this is a legal abuse as bad as the McDonald's coffee lawsuit. I have all the sympathy in the world for a rape victim, but sympathy is not law.

The employees who go to Iraq to work for KBR are all adults. One wonders what policy KBR might have instituted to prevent male-female fraternization in its Iraq barracks without being accused of illegal discrimination.

Given that such fraternization was permitted, the law of large numbers would suggest that among the thousands of men working for KBR in Iraq, some few would be willing to participate in a gang-rape. (She says she was drugged; claims of being dosed with "date-rape drugs" mysteriously proliferate in the era of Jello shots. Note that Jones was below the legal U.S. drinking age at the time of this incident. Don't 20-year-olds ever get just plain-old drunk anymore? What did gang-rapists do before the discovery of Rohypnol?)

While the facts of the legal case remain to be examined, I have a hard time figuring exactly how the rape of Jones results in corporate culpability on the part of KBR. Americans routinely sue their employers for millions, then have the effrontery to complain about the lack of "good jobs."

Mr. Reform's glass house

Kind of a problem to be the candidate who crusaded to "get big money out of politics," then you pick a lobbyist to run the Republican Convention:

The public relations executive whom Senator John McCain’s campaign had chosen to run the Republican National Convention this summer resigned his post on Saturday after a magazine reported that his firm had lobbied for the military junta that runs Myanmar.
The executive, Doug Goodyear, said in a statement that he was stepping down as the coordinator of the convention, which will be held Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”
“I continue to strongly support John McCain for president and wish him the best of luck in this campaign,” the two-sentence statement concluded.
Mr. Goodyear is the chief executive and a founding partner of the DCI Group. . . . He offered his resignation after Newsweek reported that his firm had been paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the junta.

See, that's why I'm "The Other McCain," to make clear the distinction between myself and McCain-Feingold, Kennedy-McCain and now Myanmar McCain.

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Michelle Malkin, who notes this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review column about Myanmar McCain's "outreach":

McCain had made significant progress in reaching out to conservatives over the last month or so. But his La Raza embrace is a serious lapse of judgment, one of a number of lapses that, if the primaries are a valid indicator, could lead to a full quarter of the Republican electorate staying home on Nov. 4.

Reaching out? I certainly didn't notice any "reaching out" to conservatives, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. Did he call for the repeal of McCain-Feingold? Did he repudiate No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug bill? Did he at least do the Obama "mistake" move and "distance himself" from Ted Kennedy?

No, he did none of these things. He's an unrepentant RINO -- a La Raza RINO! Good luck with that in November.

UPDATE II: A second McCain campaign aide has resigned over ties to DCI.

UPDATE III: Linked at Free Republic, where someone posted this clever Photoshop job:

Hillary's volunteers

Georgetown University law professor Heidi Li Feldman hits the road for Hillary, cross-posting at Taylor Marsh's site:

I am passing through Boonsboro, on the cusp of West Virginia. Not 100 miles from DC and we are in the Shenandoah mountains. Farms, cows. More cows. Getting out this way sparks many thoughts. ...

Actually, Dr. Feldman (since Boonsboro is just a few miles down MD-66 from my house) you're in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Shenandoah Valley (like the river for which it is named) is south of the Potomac River, on the Virginia/West Virginia side.

But yeah, "farms, cows" -- although most people in rural areas nowadays aren't farmers and don't live on farms. They live in the small towns or in the new developments. Many are retirees, but others commute to jobs in bigger places like Frederick, Hagerstown, Martinsburg or the Dulles region. I commuted all the way from Hagerstown to DC (about 150 miles round-trip) five days a week for nearly five years. Dr. Feldman continues:

Literally just crossed into West Va. Crossed the Potomac after Antietam Battleground. Not far from Harper's Ferry where John Brown made abolitionism famous. Not a bad jumping off spot to fight for the cause. ...

Antietam National Battlefield Park, to be exact. I'd be happy to give you a guided tour sometime (my Facebook profile picture was taken at Burnside's Bridge). And abolitionism hadn't been exactly obscure before the perpetrator of the Pottawatomie massacre showed up in the Old Dominion. But I digress. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Headed straight to the Clinton campaign office. Just saw the first Clinton yard sign just outside of Shepardstown.

Shepherdstown, where I covered Hillary and Chelsea on Wednesday. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Campaign staff in Charlestown: Clinton roaring in other parts of West Va., but in this pocket, eastern area, things are tighter. So they were delighted to have us turn up. We headed out with signs and spirit. ...
Hit the campaign office in Charlestown, West Virginia at 3:30 or so. Focus for the day: visibility. Paint the town with a presence for Senator Clinton.

This is what's called a "honk-and-wave." Perhaps not the ideal way for a campaign to utilize the skills of a Georgetown law professor. The Eastern Panhandle is the most affluent part of West Virginia (lots of prosperous retirees), it's home to Shepherd University, and also has a larger black population than the rest of the state, so it is one of the better Obama regions. Other Obama bastions in the state are Morgantown (where the state university is located) and the state capital, Charleston (not to be confused with Charles Town). Dr. Feldman continues:

Erin and I, another out-of-stater who had arrived to help, gear up. I put stickers all over myself, grab a placard. Erin, grabs a big triple sign. The campaign asks us to go to Martinsburg, a town about 20 miles away. Nisha, the campaign rep, explains that there is a major mall there and they need us to get people's attention. . . . I slap a sticker on my forehead. But Erin makes me take it off, which I do only because she sticks some extras on my back.

At this point in the narrative, I was wondering: "Who's Erin?" Is she the "loyal spouse" referred to as providing "crucial help" in Dr. Feldman's personal blog? One of those "Massachusetts marriages"? Couldn't find enough biographical material online to confirm or deny such a suspicion, although Dr. Feldman does refer to her "calico catties," which means she's definitely . . a cat blogger. (Lesbians I can cope with. Cat-blogging law professors? Shudder.) Dr. Feldman continues:

Erin is a champion hand-waver. She just connects with the drivers who see her waving. Meanwhile, in my demure and shy way, I'm jumping up and down with my placard. Right away we get positive feedback: many folks -- of all ages and races (many blacks, many whites, some browns) -- give us a thumbs up. If they honk for Hillary, I do a little jig for them and that seems to make the next car inclined to honk too. Meanwhile, the brave Erin kindly continues to act like she knows me and is not afraid.
Of course, not everybody who sees us is so thrilled we are there. Most are courteous, a very few quite rude. The occasional person shouts to us, in a not unfriendly way, "I like Obama." To anybody who shouts out this difference of opinion in a civilized manner, I shout back: "Free speech -- I love that!" And I do. Often, the other person gives me a smile and a wave.

I like how Dr. Feldman makes mention of the diversity (blacks, whites, browns) of the passersby in West Virginia, as if to point out it's not all toothless hillbillies. I wonder if the "few very rude" reactions are (a) Obama supporters, or (b) Republicans who haven't gotten the "Operation Chaos" message yet. Dr. Feldman continues:

Martinsburg is a like a lot of towns in this country. There are literally two sides of the tracks. We are at the mall on the less wealthy side. The area is not poverty-stricken, but it is just the sort of place that needs somebody with Senator Clinton's economic plans and commitment to universal healthcare. And it is easy to see why Senator Clinton can win West Virginia in a match up against John McCain. These people seem down to earth, they know about needing energy and commonsense to solve problems. Senator Clinton's style and ideas definitely seem to resonate with them.

Among the reasons Martinsburg is not "poverty-stricken" is that, for starters, it sits alongside I-81, about 20 miles south of I-70 and about 40 miles north of I-66.

That is to say: Taxpayer investments in transportation infrastructure have helped spur economic development in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Down in Georgia, where I come from, every small-town Chamber of Commerce is all about roads, roads, roads, because they know that means jobs, jobs, jobs, which in turn means growth, growth, growth. Build good roads, keep the taxes low, educate your workforce, and the jobs will come. (Right-to-work laws are also a big help.)

Martinsburg has benefitted economically from its proximity to Virginia, which has followed the same "Sun Belt" growth strategy as Georgia, while politicians in West Virginia have been slow to figure it out. For so long, West Virginia was all about resource extraction, and seems to have developed a class-warfare politics with the mine operators and the UMW as the dominant competing interests.

But once coal-mining was mechanized (resulting in greater efficiency and fewer of those pick-and-shovel jobs) West Virginia seems to have had a hard time letting go of the industrial-era politics of the past. Thank God that Georgia had forward-looking political and business leaders, or Georgians would still be sitting around, poor as dirt, complaining about low cotton prices and the closing of the textile mills.

OK, so much for the lecture on political economy and post-industrial development. Back to Dr. Feldman:

I drove a a 30 or 40 mile circuit around the area today. Lawn signs everywhere: in front of homes, at intersections, alongside farmers' fields. Signs for mayoral candidates. Signs for people running for sheriff. Signs for people running for county clerk. And in one patch, big signs saying "No Zoning" - obviously in that area there's a ballot question on the issue! . . .

God bless the anti-zoning people. Zoning is fascism, a violation of property rights. Back to Dr. Feldman:

Saw some [signs] for Senator Clinton, some for Senator Obama. No clear majority either way, based on my entirely unscientific viewing. What stood out loud and clear was an absence of McCain signs - although there were a fair number of ones for Ron Paul. Guess what this means? Based on what I can see of their signs, the people of West Virginia are not jumping to vote for John McCain. But the Democratic Party has to give them a candidate they can get behind, who will bring them to the polls to vote Democrat in November.

We'll see. Counting yard signs in May isn't likely to tell us much about election returns in November. Paying too much attention to broad trends in partisan alignment can lead to overlooking the fact that elections come down to the candidates. A good Democratic candidate can win in a Republican state (e.g., Webb in Virginia) and a good Republican candidate can win in a Democratic state (e.g., Schwarzenegger in California).

Dr. Feldman's comment about the number of Ron Paul signs echoes the remarks of an Obama operative in West Virginia I spoke to last week. This operative, a young Harvard grad, was impressed with the level of support for Ron Paul he'd encountered in the state.

A big part of the Ron Paul boom is anti-war conservatives, and another part is hard-core First/Second Amendment types who don't appreciate being muzzled by McCain-Feingold. A big part is undoubtedly the libertarian "Potheads for Paul" factor: People who (a) like low taxes and (b) don't want The Man kicking down their doors to seize their weed. West Virginia is apparently home to a goodly number of these free-market aficionados of the illegal smile.

Ultimately, the 2008 presidential race may boil down to whether Ron Paul's "Weed, Not War" vote can be corralled by the former CIA man, former federal prosecutor, former Republican congressman, and National Rifle Association board member who authored the first congressional resolution to call for the impeachment of Mrs. Clinton's husband (before the Monica Lewinsky scandal). And Bob Barr is holding a press conference Monday.

Don't mean a thing . . .

. . . if you ain't got those swing states:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's top aides [Friday] accused Sen. Barack Obama of ignoring West Virginia, saying Democrats must win the state in the fall and using her 43-point poll lead there as evidence that her longshot bid deserves to run its course.
"What is the basis for the so-called 'presumptive nominee' not competing in a state that would be a key swing state?" Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson asked reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, adding that a Tuesday victory could be a turning point for his boss.
A 15-point win for Mrs. Clinton, "in an atmosphere in which she is being written off and told to leave the campaign, if voters hearing that in West Virginia decided to choose to affirm her candidacy despite that, I think that would say something significant about her ability to compete and win votes in a very tough environment," he said. Since winning North Carolina and coming within two points in Indiana, Mr. Obama has done everything to indicate he views himself as the Democratic presidential nominee -- avoiding engaging with Mrs. Clinton, and disregarding his rival's calls for a debate and pivoting toward the general election. . . .
Mr. Obama predicted a defeat in West Virginia on Tuesday, telling reporters Mrs. Clinton was likely to beat him by "significant margins," in both West Virginia and in Kentucky on May 20. In Kentucky she is favored in polls by 34 points.

Obama's dissing of Kentucky and West Virginia, on top of his losses in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana -- to say nothing of the DNC's stiff-arming of Michigan and Florida voters -- should be very troubling to Democrats. Do a little Electoral College math, and it becomes clear that Obama's painting Democrats into a corner.

Come November, if this all blows up in Democrats' faces, no one can say the warning signs weren't clear.

Obamessiah watch

Chicago is one of the most corrupt cities in America. It's also been a Democratic Party bastion for more than 70 years. Mere coincidence. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune writes:

The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.
Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer.
Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.
"I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," Obama told reporters and editors at a Tribune editorial board meeting several weeks ago. Yes, an excellent job.
Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley's spider. Almost, but not quite.

Rezko's a "mistake," just like Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are "mistakes." Any scandal that pops up, Obama says "mistake" and his media disciples nod their heads in worshipful silence. Speaking of Obama's disciples, the New York Times has a glowing Obama profile, celebrating his "pragmatic" politics, prompting this rejoinder from pro-Clinton Democrat blogger Jeralyn Merritt:

He dumped his Palestinian friends like Rashid Khalidi when he decided to go after the Jewish vote. . , . If I were a Palestinian, I'd be upset too. If I were a strong Israel supporter, I'd be nervous. See the Times article on pages 5 and 6, about how once he got introduced to Chicago's billionaire Crown family and sought its campaign contributions, he moved towards supporting Israel.

A political mirror, a chameleon, an empty vessel, a blank slate, a screen onto which desperate souls project their hopes. (Note to self: Buy DVD, re-watch A Face in The Crowd.)

UPDATE: Susan at Larry Johnson's "No Quarter" blog notes that Corrente Wire has excerpted and analyzed the NYT profile:

Others see his deft movements as a politician shifting positions and alliances for strategic advantage, leaving some disappointed and baffled about where he really stands.
“He has a pattern of forming relationships with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago. . . .
That seems to be a familiar pattern with Obama - it’s “buddies for life” while he needs them, then he forgets about them when they are no longer useful, or tosses them under the bus when they become inconvenient. This doesn’t bode well for the OFB …
… this hotshot “civil rights” attorney has nothing to show for his experience. Most people who run on their record have a record to run on. Even Rudy Giuliani made his name going after organized crime. …
It seems everything Obama does benefits Obama. Every job, every friendship, is just part of the same pattern.

Everything to everybody; Chicago's own Lonesome Rhodes. Another benefit of Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" is thus illustrated. By pushing the Democratic primary campaign further along, "Operation Chaos" has afforded the Clintonistas a greater opportunity to get bitter and cyncial about Obama and the Democratic Party machinery that apparently has delivered him the nomination.

Depending on the outcome here, we may be looking at a bumper crop of ex-Democrats in the near future. Disillusioned ex-Democrats are some of the most fierce and effective conservatives. I remind you that Ronald Reagan was an ex-Democrat.

Hillary: 'Endeavor to persevere'

A "private call," not necessarily a secret call:

Hillary held a private rally-the-troops conference call with her super-delegate supporters this afternoon, urging them to believe that "this race is not over," vowing to them she'd promote Dem unity after the primary, and conceding that she knows what they and the party are going through "is not easy." . . .
Hillary projected a surprisingly cheerful tone despite recent events, and if she is having doubts about what's going to happen, she didn't show it on the call. "Despite what some in the media are saying, this race is not over," she said.

That's the spirit! Gallantly fight on! If you have to retreat, make sure it's a fighting retreat.

P.S.: The title of this post is from "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

McCarthy: Naming names

That's Daniel McCarthy -- Tory Anarchist blogger and an editor for The American Conservative who name-checks me as attending a Cato Institute book forum featuring Ain't My America author Bill Kaufmann and "lots of people Dick Cheney would like to see in Gitmo."

National Review contributors please note that mere attendance at this event does not make me an "Unpatriotic Conservative." I'm just nuanced.

On the other hand, once the interrogation starts, I'll be glad to rat out my friends. None of that Fifth Amendment for me, thanks. I'm like Ron White -- I have the right to remain silent, I just don't have the ability.

Eddie Arnold, R.I.P.

Via See-Dubya at Michelle Malkin, one last tip of the hat to the Tennessee Plowboy:

The Hank Cochran-penned "Make the World Go Away," a defining 1965 No. 1 country hit which made the pop top 10 in both America and Britain, perfectly encapulates a sentiment common to everyone who's ever bred cattle or just eaten them. "Make the world go away/And get it off my shoulders/Say the things you used to say/And make the world go away..." Did any troubled, wishful lyric ever better express the appeal not just of love but of music itself?

My mother worked at RCA's Atlanta office in the late '60s and early '70s, and of all the stars who ever stopped by their office, Eddie Arnold was her favorite: A perfect gentleman who was unfailingly courteous and friendly toward the "little people."

One of the great secrets of success -- not just in music, but in anything else -- is to be nice to people, especially the "little people." Elvis Presley got his first break in music because he made an impression on the receptionist at Sun Records. If you think you're going to make it in the long run by sucking up to the rich and powerful while looking down your nose at ordinary people, you're going to be disappointed.