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How I learned to stop worrying and love the Rom?

"Actually, Mitt is a very funny guy," a warm and engaging Ann Romney told "E.T" host Nancy O'Dell the other night, explaining "He doesn't comb his hair when we're, you know, not going places. It's like all over the place … Maybe we need to take a picture of what he really looks like when he's not working." Mrs. Romney won our heart and mind three weeks back with her decisive victory in the Democrats' faux "War on Women." Like Sarah Palin, she "fights like a girl." Click here to watch full interview.

“The fact that he didn’t talk about his campaign I thought was very touching to me," newly promoted Greenland, NH Police Chief Tara Laurent told ABC News, describing her unexpectedly emotional response to Mitt Romney's "secret trip" — reporters had not been notified — to the town's police department yesterday. The Republican presidential candidate had come to offer his condolences for the loss of veteran Police Chief Michael Maloney, killed three weeks ago while serving an arrest warrant:

Everyone here is in the grieving process, and anyone who is willing to come in and acknowledge that and make the officers and everyone feel good is welcome …

It seemed genuine, he wasn’t here to tell us to vote for him.

"This is what exhausted looks like (pic of nate coming home other night)," twittered Romney son Matt the other day, doing his part in the family-wide effort to humanize Mitt Romney in the hearts and minds of a skeptical electorate.

"It seemed genuine." The chief's sentiment recalled another Granite Stater's words half a decade ago when then Senator Barack Obama visited neighboring Portsmouth, NH with pandering promises of hope and change:

“I don’t think he came here with a political speech. He came out to celebrate New Hampshire, and we Democrats have been waiting so long for this,” said Andrea Goldberg, a longtime activist and state human service worker.

“I think he was genuine, charismatic …"

As we commented at the time in our prescient post "Did Obama just call me a racist?":

There's no question Obama knows how to pour on the charm and make Democrats "feel good about themselves"…

Swept up in the locals' devotional hysteria, however, the media didn't seem to notice. Folks hear what they want to hear.

“Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order,” quipped candidate Romney yesterday in response to his opponent's craven attempt to "hog credit" — a disgusted Navy Seal's words — for last year's Osama bin Laden raid. Above, campaigning yesterday with running-mate longshot Sen. Kelly Ayotte in Portsmouth: "Campaigns enjoy generating 'veepstakes' speculation because it provides an extra dose of local and regional media coverage in battleground states such as NH," explains Seacost Online's Michael McCord. This small-government Tea Partier liked what Romney was saying: "Regulators are multiplying like 'proverbial rabbits' under Obama’s administration, and small business owners, such as commercial fishermen, are suffering from strict government regulations and rising fuel costs." (Rich Beauchesne photo)

Is that what's happening to us now? Among the walking wounded emerging from our Republican-primary foxhole to look around at what's still standing, are we hearing what we want to hear from the Romney campaign now that we've given up the ghost of our preferred candidate? As we twittered through the continuing fog of battle yesterday:

Slow to warm up, I'm appreciating @MittRomney more each day as he becomes the voice of sanity in the madness that is #Obamaworld.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Arrangement in Gray and Black

"Arrangement in Gray and Black Fur," popularly known as "Little Kitteh" by Sissy Willis. Digital image. Click here for full size.

"Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1," popularly known as "Whistler's Mother" by James McNeill Whistler. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Howard Kurtz and the media's "astonishing slowness" on Trayvon Martin

Once again the people sitting in their living rooms in their pajamas are way ahead of the lamestream media, who appear to prefer peddling their tired racist narratives to getting the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

"On Reliable at 11, Derek McGinty, Lauren Ashburn, Eric Deggans on media's astonishing slowness on Trayvon Martin killing & Sharpton's role," Howard Kurtz twittered the lineup for his Sunday show "Reliable Sources" this morning. We appreciate his candor but couldn't resist a little snark in our reply:

Astonishing? I saw it right away. It's why the bloggers and tweeters are leaving Palin's "lamestream" in the dust. :)

Breitbart's Ben Shapiro was on top of it from the start:

We will not stop vetting the media, including Al Sharpton! Persist we much!

Bill Hobbs cut through all the speculation and irresponsible "reportage" [rhymes with garbage] that had whipped up some of our more suggestible fellow Americans into a frenzy:

I have no idea what REALLY happened in Trayvon case, & neither do you. Nor does Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton.

As we've been twittering ourselves the last couple of days:

Sensed in my BONES, from the moment it entered my consciousness that Sharpton was involved, it was laced w lies.

SHARPTON'S INTEREST TOLD ME IT SMELLED: Zimmerman was on ground being punched when he shot Trayvon Martin.

So creepy watching lamestream media fall for the latest iteration of Sharpton & Co's tired old narrative.

Now that our "mainstream" betters are starting to ask the questions they should have asked two weeks ago, how will they handle the poison and vitriol of the virtual lynch mob being fomented by members of the New Black Panther Party and other spawn of President Obama's old Harvard Law mentor Derrick Bell's Critical Race Theory?

#LynchMob: RT @dangainor: Terrorists: #NewBlackPanthers offer $10,000 bounty 4 capture of shooter Zimmerman http://bit.ly/GOZ0Gr #Trayvon

Our buddy Pete DaTechGuy isn't holding his breath:

Martin Killing #msm outrage; Black Panther bounty, Black youth killed in cities by other blacks #iseenothing

What's it going to be, Howard Kurtz?

Update: Soros-backed MoveOn is gloating:

The Department of Justice has announced that its Civil Rights Division, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will investigate Trayvon Martin's death. This is a positive step.

However, the Sanford Police Department has a history of failing to successfully prosecute crimes when the victim is African-American and the alleged assailant is not. Sign the petition to the Department of Justice telling them to launch an investigation of the Sanford Police Department.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Santorum in Gettysburg: A new birth of freedom?

Rick Santorum talked to supporters at a rally (above) in Moline, Illinois yesterday on the eve of Tuesday's primary, which he's projected to lose to Mitt Romney. Tonight Santorum is in the "next must-win state, Pennsylvantia," where he gave "his own Gettysburg address," following Romney's victory speech, which picked up on Santorum's signature theme. More on that below. (Charlie Riedel / AP Photo)

"The issue in the presidential race is not the economy," but an oppressive government that's taking away people's freedom, Rick Santorum told a Rockford, Illinois rally yesterday on the eve of tonight's primary, even as "polls show the economy is the foremost issue for American voters." But polls, like interviews, are only as good as the questions asked, and we think the WSJ's William McGurn is onto something when he speaks of a candidate "disdained by a media [pollsters included] that literally cannot comprehend what he is saying." Counting himself "among the conflicted," McGurn weighs the pros and cons of "The Improbable Mr. Santorum": 

That he is where he is, despite his baggage is more than the latest manifestation of Anyone But Romney. It suggests that a sizable part of America hungers for a leader willing to address the connection between human freedom and larger truths, difficult as that can be.

The press would have us believe that these are zealots itching to make contraception illegal. In reality, they are folks who understand that the combination of expanding government and a permissive society is, in the long run, as lethal to the American Dream as bad economic policy …

Outgunned in both staff and money, disdained by a media that literally cannot comprehend what he is saying, disliked by many in his own party and loathed by the opposition for the same thing — his beliefs — well, there is something admirable about a man who takes it all and refuses to be silenced.

The media may not get it, but it looks like Romney himself is paying attention, as Fox News analyst Dana Perino noted moments ago, dissecting the frontrunner's victory speech:

There's a new theme that he's starting to use: Economic freedom.

Sounds like Romney's channeling Rick Santorum's "connection between human freedom and larger truths," as Santorum himself reiterated just now in his own after-primary speech following Romney's (rough transcription):

The foundational issue in this race, the one that is the cause of the other maladies we are feeling, all boils down to one word, and that's the word freedom.

Governmor Romney is now adopting that theme in his speech tonight, but I've been focussed on this theme in town halls and gatherings across the nation for months. And I know the anxiety people have about an ever-expanding government that is trying to trample our freedoms, whether economic or religious, building a dependency, and if Obamacare is implemented, every single citizen will depend upon the government.

The people I've talked to want someone to stand and fight, not because it's what some pollster tells them to say or because it's on a teleprompter. They want someone who's going to take that power in Washington and give it back to the people

Santorum wrapped things up by referring to some of his rivals' flip-flops, including Gingrich's infamous climate-change endorsement sitting on a couch in front of the Capitol with Nancy Pelosi, then closed the deal with this zinger:

I'm not going to change with the climate.

Update: Speaking for the talking-head community Wednesday morning, WaPo token "conservative" Jennifer Rubin pegs us:

Sure, there are bitter dead-enders who insist Santorum is still in the fight and who are certain if the voters only understood that Romneycare has an individual mandate Romney’s support would crumble. But these will, if they haven’t already, be seen as cranks.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

It's the ObamaCare, stupid! "I believe Rick Santorum is our man"

"There is hope for our Nation again / Maybe for the First time Since we Had Ronald Reagan," home-schooled Tulsa, Oklahoma sisters Camille and Haley Harris of First Love Band (above) sing their hearts out in a foot-tapping, All-American video that's gone viral: "Yes I believe Rick Santorum is our man! / Game ON! He's got the Plan /  Lower Taxes, Raise Morale, To Put the Power in our Hands."

"This race is coming down to the economy, the deficit and control of your life, which is ObamaCare," an upbeat Daniel Henninger quoted Rick Santorum on the campaign trail Super Tuesday Eve in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, noting parenthetically that "there was no mention of contraception, gays or the role of women."

In August, no one thought this guy would be toe-to-toe with the Romney machine in March. What happened?

I went to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Monday to find out. Out of 1,189,530 votes cast the next day in bellwether Ohio, Mr. Santorum lost to Mitt Romney by only 10,288, at last count. He's doing something right, and what one learned in Cuyahoga Falls, an Akron suburb, is that it doesn't have much to do with the famous Santorum controversies over social issues. It's about ObamaCare. And it's about the idea of freedom.

A mind-focussing, dueling-videos embodiment of the cultural-wars divide: This season's wholesome Heartland hotties' First Love Band Santorum video (top of post) vs the steamy "viral video of 2007," Obama Girl's "Crush on Obama (above) that includes raunchy double-entendre subtitles like "Universal health care reform / it makes me warm … Up in the Oval Office you'll get your head of state … I like it when you get hard on Hillary in debate." Take your pick.

While mainstream media types were obsessing all week over an Obama-friendly, manufactured crisis — Don't ever let one go to waste! — that the White House and its fellow travelers were frantically trying to spin as a Republican "War on Women," Rick Santorum was quietly going about his rounds under the radar in towns like Cuyahoga Falls. Henninger explains:

In any other election, complaining about the size of government might be GOP boilerplate. Not now. Mr. Santorum put the current moment's elevated concern about government in broader context. Of regulation, he said: "There's been this huge explosion of the federal government … I've talked to so many business people who say, 'I could live with Clinton, Bush, it was a little better, but I'm spending all my time trying to figure out what this president is doing next to me.'"

Henninger nails it this morning on Fox:

The deficit, the economy and the right to run your life … I think Santorum has tapped into something that none of us had recognized.

I think he's finally found his way to an idea that resonates. Under Obama, government has gottten bigger and bigger. It's gotten too big. Obama is impinging on their space.

The day Santorum's status rose is the day he turned to Mitt Romney and took apart RomneyCare piece by piece. It is that word, the mandate, the forcing mechanism that resonates.

"Something that none of us had recognized." Ties in nicely with the Twitter hashtags of the week, #VetThePrez and #VetThePress as the late Andrew Brietbart's re-enspirited Breitbart.com and Michelle Malkin's new curator-rich Twitchy.com flood the social media space with the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

We know it's unfair, but compare this image of First Love Band's littlest player (above) with the sluttish Obama Girl of half a decade ago. :)

This just in on Fox as we go to press:

A good day for Rick Santorum. He swept Kansas caucuses with 57% of the vote.

"This election is about big things … We have to have a nominee who can get up there and draw a clear contrast with the President of the United States."

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Sarah Palin dazzles CNN poobahs

"If there's one particular issue that breaks the camel's back with respect to this election, that is the issue of Obamacare," says Oklahoma primary winner Rick Santorum this evening, addressing supporters in his neck-and-neck Ohio victory speech. "Once the government has control of your life, then they've got you." (Getty images)

"You lucked out," joshed Sarah Palin moments ago as she granted a spur-of-the-moment mini-interview to an ecstatic CNN reporter lurking on the fringes of the Wasilla polling place where Sarah and Todd were exercising their franchise this evening. Flashing only a metaphorical ankle in response to the reporter's question, the Mama Grizzly taunted:

"As I said, anything is possible and I don’t close any doors that would be open out there" …

Asked to list what she sees as the top campaign issues, Palin said it is a “combination of the economy and military needs” …

"Things are up in the air. I don't know. Anybody but Obama."

The boys and girls back at CNN headquarters were giddy — pardon our wordplay — peeing in their pants at the thrill of it all. One of them, possibly Anderson Cooper, seemed surprised at how alert Governor Palin was, articulate and up on current events, nothing like the clueless caricature spun out of thin air in the wake of Katie Curic's gotcha interview back in the fall of 2008. For those attuned to her dog whistle, Palin's vision of the Shining City has been out there all along. Bored with their own tired narratives, is the lamestream media ready for a fresh look?

As we go to press:

Rick Santorum has won the Republican primary in Oklahoma, according to exit polls, his second victory of the night after Tennessee.

Oklahoma is a key win over well-funded rival Mitt Romney, signaling that the GOP race is likely to extend long beyond this Super Tuesday.

Update: Newt's the one, Sarah tells Neil Cavuto on Fox Business News:

It is tough for me to spin out of a question like that when it comes from a Fox reporter. If it comes from another reporter, I can spin out of it. Since it came from you, I will tell you, I won’t sound like a politician and I will tell you who I voted for tonight … My preference tonight was for the cheerful one.

Crossposted at Riehl World View. 

An Army of Andrew Breitbarts

"She just paints whoever inspires her," twittered Mandy Nagy — aka Liberty Chick — last summer, referring to her mother's expressionistic portrait of Andrew Breitbart (detail above). "This is my war cry for 2012. You need to join me in my war against the institutional left. This is not your mother's Democratic party. Duh!" the social-media provocateur extraordinaire told a CPAC12 audience recently.

"We've lost our Samuel Adams," twittered Mark Tapscott midmorning. "Thoughtful, passionate, complicated. Actually challenged liberals to be better at arguing for what we believe in" said liberal FoxNews contributor Sally Kohn. Back to blogging!" admonished comrade-in-arms Susie, aka Stoutcat, adding her tears to the torrent of heartbreak, fond memories and renewed resolve that drowned out all else in our twitterstream and on Fox as word emerged, disbelieving tweet by tweet, of Andrew Breitbart's untimely death at age 43 from natural causes. Susie's hashtag, a play on Glenn Reynolds's Army of Davids, resonates:

An Army of Andrews [#armyofandrews]

Like the conspiratorial "dog whistle" of our statist adversaries' nightmares, Breitbart's passing was a call-to-arms for the freedom fighters to ratchet up our defense of the Shining City. "In his honor, I'll fight harder," vowed Lori Ziganto, aka Snark and Boobs, and from our twitterfriend Rachelle Friberg, gratitude and sorrow:

"Thank you, Andrew Breitbart, for inspiring young blogging journalists like me. You will really be missed :(

"I am Andrew Bretbart right now, and if you are a blogger on the right, so are all of you," declared Peter of DaTechguyBlog:

On the left there are plenty of people celebrating (literally on twitter right now) but the line from Spartacus was never more true than today:  He'll be back and he'll be millions.

I know because I'm one of those millions, and if you are a blogger or radio host on the right who has gotten involved in the last few years, so are you …

He understood better than almost anyone else that it was the stories the media refused to cover, more than what they actually said, that really was the lifesblood and power of the MSM leftist bias

To your stations, bloggers, and disintermediate at will!

Update: "God bless you, Andrew. Rest in peace, friend. We will continue the fight," promises that other tireless disintermediator of the powers that be, Sarah Palin:

For me, just one of those memories was in Pella, Iowa, last year after the premiere of “The Undefeated.” Andrew held court in the restaurant at the local hotel talking about his favorite topic: how “culture is upstream of politics” and how conservatives must be unafraid to fight the leftwing media, cultural, and political establishments. The loss of his voice in this fight will be deeply felt, but thankfully his work lives on at his “Bigs,” and thank God for his inspiration and leadership.

Update II: Professor Reynolds links. Be sure to check out related links, including this from that other professor, at Legal Insurrection:

I've often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

Tuck and Sissy say "I do" at Chelsea City Hall Wednesday, February 14, 1973, Mummy's birthday. Happy Thirty-second, sweetheart! ~ February 14, 2005.

It's our 39th (!). In celebration of the day of our nuptials, republication of our February 14, 2005 post "My Romance doesn't need a thing but love":

Notes from the snail blog (wedding album) of the occasion:

Justice of the Peace: Do you, Mary Loddy Jameson, promise to love, honor and obey?

MLJ:  I can't.

Love and honor? No problem. Obey? No way. But we got away with a lot 'cause we were so cute and pretty in pink.

See also: My romance doesn't need a thing but food and I'll drink to that (below, February 14, 2004):

Eggs Bennie, fresh-ground coffee and a champagne toast to the morning after our Thirty-first: 

No wonder we're so old!

Nonsense. The heart that loves is ever young.

Whitney Houston: If I should stay I would only be in your way

Singer Whitney Houston's untimely death at the age of 48 today has derailed the political clown cars off Matt Drudge's top of the fold and filled the Twitter stream with currents of emotional angst revealing more about the twitterers than Houston herself. We'd never thought much about the legendary singer one way or the other till tonight, when we heard of her passing, googled and discovered the transcendence of her Gospel-trained pop sound: I will always love you. We'd heard it before, just never made the connection. Breathtaking.

It was going to be all about Mitt Romney's twofer tonight and tomorrow on the Sunday talk shows — winning the CPAC straw poll and then the Maine caucuses! — but now a transcendent singer has died at 48, and politics will just have to wait. It's Whitney Houston 24/7 till further notice:

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, died Saturday. She was 48.

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

According to tweeter vbspurs, who notes "Harris Faulkner admits on air that Fox News is reading tweets for breaking news," this is the "last photo of Whitney (a bit macabre, apologies): true Hollywood club, where she performed last night."

"It's a lifetime battle, just like alcoholics anonymous," Fox News forensic expert Michael Baden weighs in on the developing story of what may have happened to precipitate Houston's death "on the eve of the Grammy Awards." Lots of chatter about her allegedly abusive ex, Bobby Brown, who is said to be "beside himself" at the news. A lumper, not a splitter, we're not much interested in the gory details. It's the universal themes, what we can read about ourself in her words: 

The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

How Obama learned to stop worrying and love the super PAC

Obama "SuperPac" flip-flops "performance wear for politicians determined to win at any cost." Romney "SuperPac flip-flops, available with a variety of quotations, not shown. Click here for larger image.

"If we fail to act, we concede this election to a small group of powerful people intent on removing the President at any cost," fast-talking campaign manager Jim Messina wrote in an email to the little people following a conference call with major bundlers last night, attempting to shift the blame for his boss's flip flop on super Pacs onto the opposition:

"The main engine of Romney’s campaign has an average contribution of roughly $150,000. The stakes are too important to play by two different sets of rules."

The President had "reversed course by deciding to encourage Democrats to donate to big-money groups that he previously denounced [back in August of 2010] as representing ‘a corporate takeover of our democracy’ in order to help his re-election bid":

Before giving the go ahead, President Obama bemoaned the "negative" tone of the super PACs, political action committees that have become dominant fundraising vehicles since the Supreme Court’s controversial ‘Citizens United’ decision two years ago.

"The real story here," notes our friend Pete of Datechguy's Blog, "isn’t that he is taking the money, but the whys and wherefores listed by Politico":

But that wasn’t enough, sources say, to pull in major players such as George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steve Bing and others into the game. And many top Democratic donors were afraid of giving to Priorities USA until Obama made clear he wouldn’t stand on the sidelines and criticize their efforts

Like our own Massachusetts Junior Senator Scott Brown's limousine-liberal challenger Elizabeth Warren, faux populist Barack Obama has depended upon the magician's trick of misdirection to draw our attention away from the major gifts of the influential "1 percent" to focus on the small contributions of the great unwashed "99 percent." Warren is still peddling that snake oil, but Obama has finally pulled back the curtain, signaling his own "small group of powerful people" that it's now okay to contribute to an outside super PAC supporting his re-election:

The Obama campaign’s decision to promote Priorities USA arrived soon after new fundraising reports showed that American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS — two Republican super PACs associated with GOP strategist Karl Rove — raised a hefty $51 million last year while Democratic groups collared only $19 million.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Santorum: It's the authenticity, stupid!

"Unfortunately for [the MSM], Stacy McCain and I were there," writes Peter Ingemi of DaTechGuyblog, on the scene at a Rick Santorum Town Hall in Concord, NH yesterday in the run-up to Tuesday's primary. "I shot the entire exchange, and when you watch it, two things are clear: 1. Santorum is on the offensive, NOT the defensive. 2. The students are unable to cope with his arguments." (Jim Cole/AP)

"Is this any way to pick a president?" asks Charles Krauthammer rhetorically, answering his own question with a resounding "Yes!":

Absolutely. It works. It winnows. And it has produced, after just one contest, an admirably worthy conservative alternative to Romney.

We were thrilled to see the venerable Dr. K. had come to the same conclusion we had, as argued in yesterday's somewhat controversial (among our twitter friends) post, "Amazing Grace: Is Rick Santorum the new Sarah Palin?" The very adjectives we and Charles — May we call you Charles? — chose to describe the man of the hour are eerily similar:

Krauthammer: From the rubble emerges Rick Santorum. But he isn’t just the last man standing. He is the first challenger to be plausibly presidential: knowledgeable, articulate, experienced, of stable character and authentic ideology.

Willis: Now a larger audience is getting a taste of this authentic, thoughtful, knowledgeable, deliberative, experienced, articulate, principled, humorous and good-hearted man, very much a formidable opponent in any debate with the current Leader of the Free World. And this "flavor of the week" appears to be sticking to the ribs.

"But because he was such a long shot, his record did not receive much scrutiny," notes Krauthammer:

It will now. He is no austere limited-government constitutionalist. He participated in George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism, which largely made peace with big government. Santorum, for example, defends earmarks and supported No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It’s a perfectly defensible philosophy — but now he’ll be called upon to actually defend it. (See Rush's defense, "Mantra: Santorum is a 'Big Government Conservative.'")

Enter, stage left, "The Meat Grinder." Brent Bozell:

Santorum, like the other authentic conservatives, are too “far right” to win. Ann Curry started the meat grinder. “So is he going to have to change his conservative message as he's looking into north, looking into New Hampshire, which is a much less conservative state?”

Fortunately, the media isn't going to get away with it this time:

1. Intrepid bloggers and reporters like our gumshoe buddies Pete Ingemi of DaTechGuyblog and Stacy McCain of The Other McCain and The American Spectator are on the ground in New Hampshire holding the lamestream media's feet to the fire (See picture caption above).

2. Santorum's not a man to change his message to suit his audience. As Stacy writes: "Santorum is unapologetically the same staunch conservative in the Granite State that he was in Iowa and — judging from the applause during the town hall forum sponsored by the Southern New Hampshire 9-12 Project — God is still more popular here than some Republicans may suspect."

It's the authenticity, stupid!

Update: We love our Granite-State buddy Tom Bowler's comments:

Will Sissy Willis do it again? Having pushed Scott Brown across the finish line in the Massachusetts race for "the Kennedy seat" can she pull off a repeat for Rick Santorum?

Sissy, you might just make a believer out of me.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Amazing Grace: Is Rick Santorum the new Sarah Palin?

"I believe in free people and free markets," Rick Santorum told a spirited and well-informed town hall audience last night in Brentwood, a few miles down the road from our hometown, Exeter, New Hampshire. We caught the event in C-SPAN reruns this morning and were struck once again at the disconnect between old-media caricatures of "Soaring Santorum" and the man himself we're coming to know and admire through a full panoply of media, old and new. More on that below. Program Note: We're heading up to Manchester Saturday for "an evening of ruminating, riffing & debate watching" with National Review's Jonah Goldberg and company.

"The interest was palpable in Santorum’s first New Hampshire event since the caucuses," reports the Boston Globe as the former Pennsylvania senator steps up to the "very short but open window" of opportunity [Dana Perino's words on Fox this morning] to grab the nation's attention in this frenetically condensed primary season. First a few facts and then a bit of commentary:

The former senator from Pennsylvania has been a frequent, if under-the-radar, presence on the stump in New Hampshire for the past four months. But after surging to within eight votes of winning Iowa Tuesday, Santorum faced a standing-room only crowd at the Rockingham County nursing home hall …

The room, which had capacity to seat 160 people, was packed with voters and journalists standing in the aisles and lining the walls. It was a sharp contrast to his 100-plus previous town halls in New Hampshire, some of which attracted just a few dozen people … A campaign aide said Santorum plans to stay in New Hampshire through the primary Tuesday.

"This economy is suffering because this administration is crushing it with regulations," Santorum told town hallers last night. "Why are they doing it?" Because they know better than you. They don't trust you to make those decisions … The principle reason I'm in this race is because of Obamacare because I think Obamacare will turn every American into a dependent American … and the more dependent he can make you, the more power he has over you ….Obamacare is the tipping point." If you have the time, be sure to listen to the whole thing. See also James Pethokoukis's "Santorum vs. Romney is a conflict of conservative visions" for an enlightening discussion of two political world views, "traditional conservatism vs modern, free-market conservatism."  

"It's all about media and momentum," says Fox political analyst Larry Sabato, seemingly troubled that "the process is being rushed. One reason why no big themes are being developed is because there isn't time." But there IS time, Dr. Sabato, and there ARE big themes if you know where to look, that "panoply of media, old and new" where fans of the Shining City can disintermediate the lamestream media narrative at will: C-SPAN, blogs, facebook, twitter, not to mention the town halls themselves, under the radar till Tuesday's "unexpected" Iowa caucus results.

Now a larger audience is getting a taste of this authentic, thoughtful, knowledgeable, deliberative, experienced, articulate, principled, humorous and good-hearted man, very much a formidable opponent in any debate with the current Leader of the Free World. And this "flavor of the week" appears to be sticking to the ribs. As Fox anchor Bret Baier just retweeted:

RT @jeffzeleny Santorum not only draws big crowd, he holds their attention in Northfield. Long answers, but classic NH Q&A voters have been craving. #fitn

Like those NH voters, Tea Partiers like us — behind enemy lines here in Taxachusetts — have been craving "long answers." To our surprise, "Darwinian Libertarian" that we are, we haven't been so energized by a candidate's words and manner since that day in late August of 2008 when Sarah Palin burst onto the national stage.

Update: Bruce B. AKA Chickelit in twitter:

Santorum has many of the same archenemies in the media as Palin--so there's that similarity too.

BTW, I think your blogpost took heuvos. I hope you're not attacked.

Update II: Santorum's "Faith, Family & Freedom" tour schedule via our behatted men on the spot, longtime Santorum supporters Stacy McCain and Pete Ingemi. Here's the latest:

Axis of Fedora Update Manchester NH 12:50 p.m.

Greetings From the Granite State!

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Have yourself a merry little blogiversary: Now we are eight.

Little Kitteh, above, trips the light fantastic in our Christmas card, now in production. The message inside: "Let your heart be light." Next year all our troubles will be out of sight?

In celebration of our blog's eighth anniversary tomorrow, December 12, we proudly republish our very first post ever, "The tidings that dare not speak their name." It features our Christmas Card of that year, an image of the homestead festooned with the lights fantastic, and a fearless, politically incorrect challenge to those who would wilfully misrepresent the Establishment Clause of our Constitution's First Amendment. An early stirring of the Tea Party spirit that would rise up to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet?

"Chelsea-by-the-Sea at Christmastime"

December 12, 2003. We wish you a Merry Christmas!

As we wrote last year, that was it, a blogpost of exactly 68 characters that could hold its own today in the fast-moving, 140-or-fewer-characters world of the Twittersphere. We were delighted to note that Glenn Reynolds has more or less declared victory in the war this Army of Davids was waging back then:

I GUESS THE "WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS" HAS BEEN LOST, THEN: Obama lights the National Christmas Tree, says ‘Merry Christmas’ three times.

Not that there aren't still some air-headed holdouts.

Update: Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit — the fellow who named the blogosphere — sends "Best Wishes To An OG Blogger:

Happy Anniversary, Sissy!

You’ve made a difference!

Update II: Fun and funny Chris Muir of Day by Day in the comments:

We need wonderful writer young'uns like you! ;)

I'm you: Elizabeth Warren channels Christine O'Donnell

"So maybe if I tell you a little about myself, it will explain something about why I'm running for the United States Senate," says Soros-backed "everywoman" — and method actress extraordinaire — Elizabeth Warren in an all-about-little-old-me video at her campaign website.

"My mom and dad worked really hard. My dad sold carpeting, and then fencing, and ended up as a maintenance man. When I was in junior high he had a heart attack, and we lost our car," lip-biting Scott Brown challenger Elizabeth Warren (above) — her voice breaking — explains "why she'll fight for Massachusetts' working families in the United States Senate." A self-made millionaire, Harvard Law School professor and author of President Obama's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, limousine liberal Warren has taken a page from last year's Delaware Republican primary Tea Party winner Christine O'Donnell's playbook. Warren's subliminal message to the weak-minded among us looking for a savior? "I'm you." And apparently it's working:

Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren released her second video advertisement on Monday, which portrays her as a “gutsy” political outsider with “fresh ideas” …

Various people in the ad describe her as an “everyday kind of person,” someone with “everyone’s best interest at heart,” a “strong voice for the middle class,” and “tough.”

And this:

Poll: Elizabeth Warren soars 7 up over Scott Brown.

"I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you."

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but in Massachusetts you can come close. Check out the body language of Democrat establishment pick for the former "Kennedy Seat" Elizabeth Warren (left) and much-ridiculed grassroots Tea Party challenger Christine O'Donnell (right), who beat the Republican establishment pick in the primary but lost in the general last year: The coy, tilted head, the earnest, moist eyes, the pursed lips that seek to soothe. And the words:

O'Donnell: "None of us can be happy with what we see all around us: Politicians who think spending, trading favors and backroom deals are the way to stay in office. I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do.

Warren: "I want there to be a level playing field. I want small businesses, I want families to have a real chance. I want Washington to not to be on the side with the big corporations, but to be on their side."

Cosmic convergence? Or just a cynical, poll-tested Democrat establishment ploy to restore the "Kennedy Seat" to its rightful owners?

Update: Good advice from Chris Bennett in the comments:

"Cosmic convergence"? Or witchcraft? Let's put Warren in the dunking chair, just to be sure.

Update II: Burn, baby, burn:

“Karl Rove is not telling the truth, and I think anyone who is not telling the truth shouldn’t be running ads in this race," she told the Herald. Warren has said she supports negative ads from outside groups so long as they are telling the truth, while U.S. Sen. Scott Brown has said he believes all outside groups should stay out of the race.”  

We're not amused with Scott Brown's disingenuous dismissal of "outside groups," by the way. If it weren't for the disintermediating social-media nationalization of his 2010 special election, Democrat establishment candidate Martha Coakley would be our junior senator today.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Over the river ...

Over the river and through the woods to Goompa's house we go. Too much sadness. Lost our baby boy -- How can it be three years now? Tears at the remembrance of holding him in our arms.Then our angel baby last April. Michelle Malkin knows where we live:

Whoever said “time heals all wounds” has only known superficial hurt.

Traditions. Thanksgiving dinner with family. Ghosts.

Then comes our new love, Little Kitteh, walking us back to the endless astonishment of life in the round. She hopped up onto the Thanksgiving table to check things out. Nose to candle flame, first time, thrashing retreat (above). Nothing broken, but lesson learned.

Then comes Goomp's magnificent Purrky (foreground above) for a staredown. Look to the animals, Mummy always said.

I am Little Kitteh. You may pet me now.

Jeb's lame ultimatum: Are you with the sane Republicans or Not?

"In South Carolina this afternoon, TX Gov. Rick Perry held a press conference to detail his economic plans," writes PJ Media's Bryan Preston: "The very first reporter tried distracting him by bringing up the birther nonsense. Perry was having none of it; he cut the reporter off in mid sentence, said the issue is a 'distraction' and put the focus right back on his plan … Every reporter who brings this up from now on should be treated with equal or greater contempt." Good to see a potential POTUS refusing to let the lamestream media control the narrative spin.

"Are you with the sane Republicans or Not? GOP voters need to decide," writes the WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, reporting on the contents of an exclusive and perhaps unwittingly snotty e-mail statement from Jeb Bush regarding the recent Rick Perry "birtherism" flap:

Republican candidates should categorically reject the notion that President Obama was not born in the United States. It is a complete distraction from the failed economic policies of the President.

You need to get out more, Jeb. As we wrote in comments at Commentary's Facebook page in response to Peter Wehner's similar scolding of the Perry campaign for lacking "discipline":

Seems to me the pussyfooting advice of old-school campaign advisers cautioning against saying anything controversial drains the life out of the authentic — if sometimes unpolished — American voices of the Tea Party favorites whose vision has given us hope of regaining the Shining City.

It was Sarah Palin's fierce determination and authentic American voice that had energized us back when we were holding our nose at the prospect of voting for John McCain as the lesser of two evils in the 2008 presidential election. We used to like and admire Jeb as an effective and accomplished former Florida Governor but haven't been able to stomach his condescending brand of "sane" Republicanism since he "gratuitously dissed Sarah and thereby all her fans back in February of 2010" with this little gem:

I mean, I don't know what her deal is. My belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity.

"What a pompous busybody," we wrote in a twitter exchange with protein wisdom, who caught the conscience of Jeb the would-be kingmaker in 140-or-fewer characters this afternoon:

Next up, he'll tell us how sane people are supposed to speak to the Hispanics. Complete with flow chart.

Update: Perry's poke on Obama's birth certificate has had the desired effect, explains Richard Viguerie:

Obama has ignored it and the blue-nosed gentry of the Republican establishment, such as Jeb Bush and Karl Rove, have all risen like cussed-out Sunday school teachers to chastise Perry. In the mean time, conservative voters in the upcoming primaries have been reminded that there’s only one good ol' boy running who gets the joke, and that’s Rick Perry.

Cross-posted at Riehl World View.

Herman Cain: Shall we have a cigarette on it?

"What can Herman Cain have been thinking," the lamestream are scratching their heads, shocked, shocked at what subliminal messages may be lurking within Herman Cain's new "I am America" ad.

"LOVE @THEHermanCain's cigarette ad. MSNBC going berserk but covering it," we just twittered:

Two messages: Get the nanny state off my back; Obama lies, smokes & denies.

"We can do this. We can take this country back," says Herman Cain's chief of staff Mark Block in the Herminator's controversial new ad. Update: Mark Block is a charmer. Tells Megyn Kelly there was "no subliminal message," just connecting with real Americans:  … the Cain Train is on a roll … the Cain message is resonating with Main Street America." Why no traditional organization? "It's a people's campaign. It has grown from the ground up."

Ed Driscoll just retweeted us, so we must be onto something. Willy Geist on MSNBC's "Way Too Early" is blustering with righteous indignation. What kind of a message is that to send our children? Light[en] up, friend. We're not a smoker, but some of our best friends are. Beyond that, get off our back, Big Government elitists who know better than we what's best for us. Authenticity and responsibility for our own life choices: There's a message for our children. Spin at will.

Update: Smitty at The Other McCain makes a fine point:

Great ad, but the smoking at the end makes little sense, except to floutaunt the rules. And if you’re going to do that, why not play the Ladd Ehlinger card?

And from Mark Hemingway on twitter last night:

This is either the best or worst political ad in history. 

Update II: Professor Jacobson detects "a subliminal message of defiance":

Now if he were carrying a rifle too, it might have been the best ever.

That "best ever" link goes to our own Ladd Ehlinger's Dale Peterson ad of last year!

Update III: The mighty Mark Steyn gets it:

He’s got my endorsement just for Mark Block’s cigarette exhalation. Haven’t seen anything like that since Sammy Davis Jr. took a drag in the instrumental break of “With A Song In My Heart” at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of decades back.

Update IV: Tweet of the day from @proteinwisdom:

Be honest: "Let's move!" w/ Michelle Obama? Or "Let's have a smoke, then chat up some chicks in a bar" w/ Cain's campaign guy? No brainer.

Must be one of those "dog whistles" that only members of the tribe can hear.

Update V: Huffington Post's Jason Linkins thinks it's all about tobacco:

Cain has also worked closely with cigarette manufacturers in the past. As the head of the National Restaurant Association, he lobbied against higher cigarette taxes and smoking bans in restaurants.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Occupy Wall Street: What rough beast?

"The Occupy Wall Street movement is growing, and lots of activity is taking place in social media," writes Social Media Research Foundation Director Marc Smith of Connected Action, who generated the "NodeXL SNA Twitter Map" above tracing the connections among people who tweeted the term “#occupywallstreet yesterday. Click here for larger image.

"DUMB MOBS," we tossed into the twitterflood of #occupywallstreet commentary this morning as Mark Steyn's "pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world" slouched inchoately towards a public square near you, even as "progressive" opportunists seeking to distance themselves from their own crony-capitalist corruption were scrambling to align themselves with the delusional "99%." Howie Carr said it best:

The fact that the national Democrats are trying to throw in with these layabouts tells you all you need to know about both groups …

In a few months, we’ve gone from grassroots to George Soros astroturf. From Arab Spring to Irish Spring.

Smith's "Node XL SNA Twitter Map" brought to mind this image from an earlier post comparing the flocking behavior of Darwin's Starlings on Otmoor to the behaviors of humans signaling each other on Twitter: "Individuals, but moving in a single entity. And the reason for this behavior? Well, thousands of eyes looking for predators on the roost site. Nothing could escape their gaze, no raptor could surprise this soaring mass of bird flesh … The birds are also maneuvering for position, social position."

We were intrigued with the elegance and suggestiveness of "sociologist of computer-mediated collective action" Marc Smith's visualization (top) of who was twittering whom yesterday on the topic de jour. We were unsurprised to see the likes of MSNBC harpie Rachel Maddow (nearly 2 million followers) and Soros sucklings Media Matters (40 thousand plus) amongst the "top most between users," but it wasn't only the well funded who were able to wield influence. The map was "scaled by numbers of followers," our side of the aisle was having a lark shining the light of truth, justice and the American way on #occupywallstreet's "faux poos," and there was Big Journalism's own diggrbiii (7 thousand plus followers) among the top 10. Quality, not quantity?

We're hard-wired to read into things, to divine patterns that may at some level, at some moment of danger, be key to our survival. The analogy of smart-crowd twittering with coordinated starling swooping seems obvious, but what else?  A human fetus, perhaps? Take another look. The foreboding of Yeats's "The Second Coming" comes to mind: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …"

'Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you," John Adams wrote Abigail in 1800 in a much-quoted letter that resonates in this time of turmoil: 

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

"The Littler 99%" posted by Dan of criticalmass and twittered with the hashtag #OccupySesameStreet. Compare little girl's wish list with actual "demands" posted by Occupy Wall Street bottom Mom's basement dwellers. 

Having failed to study history, the great grandsons of great grandsons of our Founding Fathers have become Mark Steyn's "zombie youth 'occupying' Wall Street … contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts."

Update: Cool. Link at New York Times Business Day's Twitter article.

Update II: Maggie's links. Thanks, Bird Dog!

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

"It was one of those great, only-in-America Judeo-Christian moments"

"You've got to believe you are here for a reason," Senator Joe Lieberman told Sarah Palin back in the fall of 2008 when she was losing her bearings in the tense, over-scripted days leading up to her vice presidential debate with Senator Joe Biden.

"It was one of those great, only-in-America Judeo-Christian moments," Senator Joe Lieberman told a delighted American Enterprise Institute audience yesterday evening, retelling the tale of a fateful meeting between him and Sarah Palin on the eve of her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden October 2, 2008:

So I'm supporting my dear friend John McCain in 2008, and it's the fall, it's about a week before the vice-presidential debate … Governor Palin was in a hotel in Philadelphia practicing for the debate … The McCain campaign was in a panic. She just wasn't registering, wasn't doing well.

Then Steve Schmidt, who was John's campaign manager, said to me, "Do me a favor. You've got something in common with her that the rest of us don't have … You're both religious. So go in and talk to her. Maybe pray with her" … 

So I went in, and she opened right up: "I'm off today. It's a bad day." Without washing dirty laundry in public, she was not happy with the McCain campaign: "They're not handling me right."

"You've got to believe you're here for a reason," Lieberman told her:

And she laughed and said there must be a reason. It's so unbelievable that I'm here running for vice president.

Lieberman cited the Book of Esther:

…  that part where her uncle [cousin?] Mordechai tells her to go to the king to ask him to save the Jewish people from the evil prime minister, and then this sentence, when she's reluctant, perhaps this is the reason you were brought to the king's palace: If you don't do it, somebody else will come along, and she said "Oh, that's great."

We'd never heard the story before, but a little googling reveals it was used for a bit of proto Palin's-an-idiot spin at the time:

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman thinks that in order for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to beat her Democratic rival, Sen. Joe Biden, in tonight’s debate, she needs to keep it from turning into an “IQ test.”

What Lieberman was getting at was not at all that Sarah was dumb:

“What she needs to do tonight is get this public consideration of her back to who she is and her strong points and, frankly, get it away from being a, kind of, IQ test — she's plenty smart — getting it away from being a, sort of, final college exam,” Lieberman said on MSNBC …

“Whether she can answer every detailed question, I don't think that ultimately matters to the American people,” the Connecticut senator added. “She doesn't know every detail, all the questions senators deal with, but, frankly, that's her strength.”

“I think the point is, who is she as a person? I think that's what people are ultimately looking for,” Lieberman said.

Everything happens for a reason? We're hard-wired to see patterns. Palin/Lieberman 2012?

Update from CT4Palin on Twitter:

Lieberman will be Palin's Ambassador to Israel. :)

And John Bolton for Palin's Secretary of State.

Update II: Bill Quick of Daily Pundit links:

Well, she keeps saying it’s going to be an “unconventional” campaign. Of course, Lieberman is an “independent …”

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Greta Van Susteren takes Tucker Carlson to the woodshed

"A mother does the same, c. 1897," Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

"The public shaming of Tucker Carlson. Cybervillage disapprobation of "elders" like @gretawire [Greta Van Susteren's twitter handle] shape moral behavior," we twittered as the smoke began to settle this morning in the aftermath of a fiery flame war that had erupted in the blogosphere and twitterspere in response to "Mike Tyson: Sarah Palin met ‘the wombshifter,’" a gratuitously coarse Jeff Poor journalistic effort published by Carlson's The Daily Caller Friday evening. At issue were Tyson's foul-mouthed comments spun off from spurious allegations made by author Joe McGinnis in his hit piece, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, to the effect that a young Sarah Palin had had a one-night stand with basketball star Glen Rice back when she was a sports announcer on Anchorage TV station KTUU. Greta takes no prisoners:

I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson. He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.” It is even the headline. Do you know what that means? Figure it out. It is really vile. It is not just smut … this is violence against women.

Tucker should have used  judgment, a sense of decency and not promoted this denigration — a good journalist, a responsible journalist uses judgment. Tucker did not …

I don’t like it when I see that my friends do disgraceful things — but we need to start calling out even our friends to stop this. Tucker has daughters and a wife, and I would think he in particular would not want to be a purveyer of smut (and this is actually more, this is violence against women) and allow this to be posted on his website …

I keep asking myself, why would Tucker allow this to be posted on his website?  I am suspicous his website is not doing well and this is one quick last breath to create buzz to keep it afloat.

Ouch, squared. Moral education in the venerable Judeo-Christian principles that guided our Founding Fathers in fashioning the Shining City may have fallen out of favor amongst the establishment elites of our nation's mainstream institutions, but we old-fashioned Country Class types are firing at will, disintermediating the powers that be through the new media. As Jedediah Bila, herself a writer for Carlson's publication, twittered this afternoon:

I stand with gretawire. As a freelance opinion contributor to The Daily Caller, I'm very disappointed re editorial judgment.

And to her fellow Daily Caller writer Matt Lewis Jedediah affirmed:

I have publicly praised The DC many times for giving me the freedom to speak my mind in my columns & not censoring me.

I call it like I see it. If I go to bed at night knowing I stood up for what I think is right, I consider it a good day's work.

And a final word from Tammy Bruce, who salutes the man in the trenches who fired the first shot over Tucker Carlson's bow* early Saturday morning:

In Palin Report I mistakenly credit the excellent Gateway Pundit for 1st calling out DC. It was in fact the magnificent Dan Riehl.

Update: Twitter friend and filmmaker extraordinaire Ladd Ehlinger goes for the jugular. Don't get on his wrong side!

Update II: DaTechGuyblog links:

Tucker Carlson vs Dan Riehl? No contest.

Update III: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update IV: Dan Riehl,  Stacy McCain and Nice Deb link.

Update V: Love this from Cybrludite in the comments:

*Should that have been "a shot fired over his bow... tie"?

Sarah Palin: The Tea Party is real winner of the debate

"I was very pleased with this debate, and, you know, very excited about the validation of the Tea Party movement," Sarah Palin told Greta Van Susteren last night in a meaty analysis of the CNN/TeaPartyExpress debate that echoed our own take and set our woman-up, fight-like-a-girl heart on fire. Listen to full interview here.

While some of our favorite bloggers and columnists and talking heads debated the winners and losers of last night's CNN/TeaPartyExpress GOP primary debate, a shoot-to-where-it's-going, not-to-where-it's-been Sarah Palin disintermediated the usual premise of judging these contests. As she explained to Greta Van Susteren in a landmark "On the record" post-debate interview last night:

Here they hook up with a major news network, CNN — and more power to CNN for allowing that validation — of this grassroots Tea Party movement.

Participants from all over the nation being able, as a voice of "We the people," asking questions of these potential presidents …

The winner in this really, I believe, was the Tea Party movement.

"Greta, this is one of the reasons that many of us really love your show because you have been one on top of this issue from day one, talking about the fraud, the waste and the crony capitalism." From opposite ends of the political spectrum, the two women seem to have forged a sisterly bond through their shared mission to fight corruption wherever they may find it.

Palin and Van Susteren — the conservative Mama Grizzly and the liberal Fox News show host — may seem an odd pairing. A tough questioner, Van Susteren earned Palin's trust early on by giving her a fair hearing where others, even Fox libertarian Judge Napolitano, were buying — and promulgating — the "lamestream media's" Palin-is-Stupid narrative spin. Fortunately the Judge finally came to his senses.

 

"I'm not gonna let the media dictate when a drop-dead date should be," Palin answered Van Susteren's inevitable will-she-or-won't-she question:

In the meantime, I'm getting kind of a kick out of this, and I have to be honest with you. Getting a kick out of getting out there, giving a speech, making some statements about things that must be discussed, and then the very next day watching some of the candidates get out there and discuss what it was that we just talked about, like the corruption, the crony capitalism, the waste, the fraud … That perhaps is my role right now, is to get people talking about the issues that the American people deserve to hear discussed … I'm gonna keep doing that!

Mark America at US for Palin develops the theme in his must-read "Only One Republican is Shaping the Debate":

While it is true to say the Tea Party won the debate, it’s likewise clear that the themes Governor Palin has been discussing since 2008 are really the foundation of the ongoing Republican discussion.

See also Dana Loesch's insider's analysis "CNN Shows MSNBC How a Debate is Done."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Rick Perry: "Galileo got outvoted for a spell"

 

As a Palinista from day one, we're still  "undecided," but we loved this from Texas Governor Rick Perry (above) at last night's GOP primary debate: "Galileo got outvoted for a spell … Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeapordy." This morning irony-challenged MSNBC talking heads joked about whether Perry saw himself as Galileo, unaware that it is they themselves, our friends on the left side of the aisle, who are the Roman Inquisitors of our day.

"You yourself have said the party is in danger of becoming anti-science. Who on this stage is anti-science?" MSNBC whatshisname taunted flat-earther Jon Huntsman at last night's Republican primary debate. Darwinian libertarian that we are, we've been horrified for some time at the left's conflation of the science of evolution that we embrace with the mumbo-jumbo secular religion of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. We've been on the left's AGW case for two decades, at least, since Andrea Mitchell (God bless her now in her time of genuine sorrow) acknowledged her lack of objectivity way back when:

Clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy.

Now, when up-till-now AGW proseletizer Nature Journal of Science is finally acknowledging they got it wrong — Can you say cosmic rays and the sun? — our friends on the left side of the aisle continue to bury their heads in the sand. As we've said for a zillion blogyears, it's the importance of being noticed — aka tribalism — stupid.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Anti-Palin tempest in a teapot? "Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell"

"This has been a long tease with Sarah Palin, and at some point that tease has just got to go away. What's going to happen next," snickered Laura Ingraham (above left) to guest Ann Coulter last night as the two blonde bombshells shared what struck us as a covenly caterwaul over the Mama Grizzly's disintermediating GOP primary tactics. Twitter buddy Charles @repub9989 thinks it's a jealous-woman thing, but then there's Red State's Erick Erickson's complaint. See below for more, and click here for The Right Scoop's video.

"Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell," twittered Moe Lane this afternoon in response to our attempt to defuse a friendly-fire incident over our blogfriend's preference for announced Lone-Star candidate Scott Rick Perry (thanks to chickelit in the comments for the correction) vs our own first love, unannounced shoot-to-where-it's-going Sarah Palin:

Oh. Didn't realize you were a Perry supporter. Just retweeting a tweet that made sense to me. Reminds me of the fog of war.

We were but two hand-to-hand combatants in an army of cyberwarriors locked in a fiery internecine battle that erupted this morning between Palinistas and everyone else on our side of the aisle in the wake of a dishy catfest last night between mischief-maker Ann Coulter and host Laura Ingraham, subbing for O'Reilly:

Coulter: Most Americans don't want Sarah Palin for President, but she's become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party. She's just "The One" to a certain segment of right wingers, and the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this — no conservative on TV will criticize Palin because they don't want to deal with the hate mail.

Ingraham: People like Palin to show up at these events and whip up the crowd. There's a place for that, and I think we need that. but people, when I talk to them, they seem to be desperate and hungry more than ever for real substance, beyond kind of the sloganeering and the bumper sticker stuff.

Bring on the smelling salts. Then there was Red State's Erick Erickson, "all wee weed up over Palin," as Dan Riehl so memorably puts it. We particularly liked Rants for Reasonable People's PolitiJim's open letter to Erickson:

Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who comment how many ended up as 'the tea party?'  When the 'big government' republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain - Palin was a sign of hope.

Update: Memeorandum links Erick Erickson's "Enough."

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Palin Undefeated: It's the crony capitalism, stupid!

This weekend Steve Bannon's Palin documentary ‘The Undefeated’ will be available On Demand and Pay-Per-View from a major cable or satellite company near you. We wrote about the movie — sight unseen — last June in "Palin Undefeated: 'A story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters.'" Now we can put our money where our mouth was, in the comfort of our own home. Above, sugar-and-spice Sarah (center) with her siblings.

Funny how incurious the "intellectually curious" hive mind of the left can be when it comes to all things Sarah Palin. The latest is a classic blinders-on, Journolist-talking-points-in-hand "review" of Steve Bannon's Palin Documentery "The Undefeated." (h/t Tim Graham of News Busters). Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday is the mouthpiece of this particular outpouring of Palin envy. A few excerpts and then our take:

Based on her modest demeanor and record of budget, energy and ethics reform in Alaska, it’s easy to see her appeal to McCain, who called Palin while she was at the Alaska State Fair to ask her to run for veep. What "The Undefeated" doesn’t explain — in addition to the title "Undefeated" when Palin was, actually, defeated in 2008 — is how a woman whose early career had been dedicated to transcending partisan politics became such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump. Instead, Bannon sets Palin up as a victim — of liberals, of establishment conservatives and of the "lamestream media" that his subject has become so skilled at manipulating (a talent the filmmaker strangely neglects to mention).

About that title, "The Undefeated." Ever heard of wordplay, Ms. Hornaday? Sarah Palin may have lost an election, but she fights like a girl! Disintermediating the powers that be, she picked herself up and got back in the race. The words of Sun Tzu come to mind:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Then there's Hornaday's fixation with "trascending partisan politics." You see a lot of that from the left, presumably hoping to catch the eye — and poll-tested votes — of the mushy middle. How could a "non-partisan" Palin who rooted out corruption in her OWN PARTY become "such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump"? It's the crony capitalism, stupid. Real Clear Politics has the scoop:

In her speech at the bucolic National Balloon Classic field in Indianola [tomorrow], Palin will lean on loaded phrases like “crony capitalism” and “permanent political class” in laying out her view of the U.S. political system’s deep-rooted ills, according to a source close to Palin and familiar with the content of the speech.

And this from National Review:

“She will also talk, more broadly, about how she is not enamored of the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who do not deserve to be elected if they only continue the status quo,” the source continues. “She will discuss corporate lobbyists, White House operatives, and others who enable the vested interests.” Many of the themes from her recent Facebook post, “Conquering the Storm,” will be mentioned.

Will she or won't she? Dan Riehl says "yes" on Twitter:

Overseas trip had to be Palin's last check box. She's getting in.

Disintermediate at will:

The former Alaska Governor is scheduled to attend the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, where she will speak alongside global economic leaders like Larry Summers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The conference begins Oct. 11, the same day as the GOP primary debate hosted by Bloomberg in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Update: Doug Ross Larwyn's Lynx link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.