Right Wing Nut House

I like to think one of the reasons for the modest success I’ve enjoyed from this site is that my writing reflects many of the values, the thoughts, the dreams and hopes of Middle America. My heart is connected to the Heartland in ways I never understood until I returned from my life’s travels 15 years ago and settled in the Fox Valley in Northern Illinois. A distance of about 30 miles from where I grew up in suburban Chicago, it was a lifetime removed from Washington, D.C. and St. Louis where I spent my professional career. The pace and rhythm of life in Algonquin was slower, more deliberate, more conducive to reflection and introspection. I enjoyed it immensely and realized that here was where I was happiest, where I was most content.

Now, comfortably ensconced in Streator, IL, I am finding that the people and place are, if anything, more in tune with what is truly important in life; family, friends, God, and country. To a large degree this is a reflection of something that many in the political class either ignore or denigrate; that Americans are free to know exactly as much about politics and elections that they feel they must - no more, no less - and that this does not make them stupid, or unworthy, or sheep-like.

For Heartland voters, the big issues are subsumed and the election becomes quite personal. Who can I trust? Who do I like? Which candidate makes sense to me? And in these perilous times, perhaps the biggest question is which candidate can keep me and my family safe from the ravages of a dangerous world and unpredictable economy.

This back and forth about McCain’s fascism or Obama’s socialism is largely ignored in the Heartland. As is William Ayers and Obama’s strange and radical associates. As too McCain’s gaffes, Biden’s inanities, and Palin’s alleged unreadiness for office. The reams of paper and giga-bytes of bandwidth expended in promoting, defending, attacking, parrying, lying, smearing, and waxing poetic reaches the Heartland voter, if it ever does, as a confused jumble of noise. It is largely ignored.

Instead, voters out here depend on a well developed sense of being able to judge a candidate as a person - the famous formulation “Would you want to have a beer with this guy?” And surprisingly, a high standard of fairness is employed as part of that character judgement. Which candidate is playing by the rules? Which candidate is delivering low blows? Negative campaigning might “work” in the sense it pulls down the other guy. But it is done at a cost to the attacker.

All of the particulars of the race aside, my friends and neighbors are much too busy working, raising their families, volunteering at the local hospital or Salvation Army, and living simple, meaningful lives to embroil themselves in the issue of the day, the gaffe of the week, or the smears, lies, exaggerations, and deliberate obfuscations of the truth for which this campaign is known to those of us who follow it closely.

They might have a bare bones idea of Obama’s health insurance plan. The same for McCain’s education policy. But it comes to them as an echo from a far distant speaker. This disconnect from the “issues” of campaigns has driven liberals to distraction as they accuse Heartland voters of “not voting their interests.” Conservatives have lately - to their shame - been getting on Middle America for not caring about Obama’s anti-American and terrorist connections, accusing them of being deliberately unaware.

Both sides are laughably off base. Of course Heartland voters vote their interests. It’s just that their “interests” are not the same as liberals. And I have found a superficial knowledge of Ayers et al among my friends who, as they do with other attacks, tune out these matters as irrelevant to their vote. What they’ve heard of Obama - during the debates and some of his speeches - they like. But closing the deal with Middle America has proven to be a problem for Obama. Three days out from the election and I would say that Obama could win in a landslide - if Heartland voters could be sure of him.

It isn’t Ayers and Wright that appear to trouble my friends and neighbors. It’s that Obama is just not enough of a known quantity. But it appears to me that a majority of them - even some who claim to support McCain at this point - are willing to make a leap of faith and cast their vote for the Democrat.

Take my neighbors from across the street. Dana and Curt are about as typically Middle American as you can get. Married for 20+ years, two great kids, a dog, a comfortable house. Hardworking, God fearing, country loving Heartland voters living smack dab in the middle of Middle America. The campaigns have spent the equivalent of the Gross Domestic Product of some African countries trying to sway the Danas and Curts of America to vote for them.

How are they doing?

Three days before the election and Dana is leaning toward McCain but might vote for Obama. She is upset at what she sees as the unfair treatment of Palin. She hates being vilified for whatever her choice is going to be. And she wishes that no matter who is elected, that Americans support the new president.

I think that sums up perfectly where much of Middle America is at the moment. Not confusion, but uncertainty. Obama hasn’t yet closed the sale but the voters are unhappy with McCain as the alternative. And I sense the number of undecideds even at this late date to be larger - perhaps much larger - than is reflected in poll numbers.

I have gotten a lot of grief for my posts about the state of the race these last couple of weeks. I still believe that Obama will win rather comfortably - more than 320 EV’s and 5% popular vote victory.

But there is more than just a hope for McCain - more than perhaps I have vouchsafed his campaign these last weeks. If something happens these last 72 hours - if something is revealed or if Obama says something stupid - it could go south in a big way very, very quickly for the Democrat in the Heartland and the biggest surprise in the history of American politics might occur. Something similar could happen to McCain in that a 5 point margin could become a landslide of epic proportions for Obama. That might occur anyway if Obama’s support were to firm up - a distinct possibility.

I would give that scenario about a 30% chance while a McCain surprise comes in at less than 10% - diminishing the closer we get to the election. (Nate Silver gives the Obama blowout scenario a 38% chance of happening while a McCain victory of any kind tops out at almost 4%).

The election will be decided by Middle America. And I can’t think of any group to which I would prefer entrusting our country’s future.

This will be the 12th presidential election that I have followed closely in my lifetime. As a 10 year old growing up in suburban Chicago, I got hooked on politics watching the conventions that summer - two of the most dramatic party conclaves of the 20th century. For Republicans, there was the utter bewilderment and anger as the establishment couldn’t understand what was happening when Barry Goldwater’s insurgency overwhelmed the Rockefeller wing of the party and began the long slide of GOP liberals and moderates into oblivion.

For you younger folk, yes indeed there was such an animal as a “liberal” Republican. And to their eternal credit, they sided with LBJ and the Democrats in passing the two most important pieces of legislation of the era - the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. They also were solid internationalists, beating back the challenge of the remnants of the isolationist Taft faction who would have turned the United States inward at a time of maximum risk to what freedom existed around the world at the time.

Goldwater was right otherwise, of course. The GOP liberals sided with Johnson in his overreach in creating a welfare state that has now handed their ancestors tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities coming due in a few decades. The cry today of “We didn’t know” echoes hollowly. Of course we “knew.” Goldwater told us. Even liberal lion Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that the way the welfare state was set up, it would create a dependency among African Americans and destroy the black family.

As clearly as many conservatives saw the way that the welfare state was designed would lead to eventual catastrophe, I will base the following on my life experience and more than 40 years observation of politics and government; a Barack Obama presidency will result in a radical diminution of American wealth, American power and prestige, and inevitably, a loss of liberty.

Barack Obama is not qualified to be president of the United States. He has little interest in the nuts and bolts of how government works (yes, one can say the same of George Bush and look at us now). Unlike a Clinton or Bush #41 who enjoyed fiddling with the levers of government, enjoining the bureaucracy and Congress to bend to their wills, Obama literally doesn’t have a clue. He will be eaten alive by the striped pants set in the State Department. He will be gobbled up whole by the poverty lobby. And since he has little or no ideology or principles, he will sway with the political winds tacking hard left and then hard right until he angers everybody.

Oh, he will have a “plan” when he comes into office. The first 100 days will be a liberal paradise thanks to an increased and more leftist Democratic majority in the Congress. We will bail out homeowners, his buddies in the unions, finish the job of nationalizing most of our financial industry if not in name then certainly in the practice of it. He will set ambitious targets for carbon reduction. He will nationalize the health insurance industry. He will begin to raise taxes on the rich (a process that any first year government student could inform him will result in eventual tax hikes for all). He will begin to “re-regulate” - a process that will take many years but will eventually lead to where we were at the end of the 1970’s; strangulation and reduced competition in industries affected.

These are all things he has promised to do - and they will get done. But then what? After absorbing the idiotic, slavish, and nauseating comparisons to the greatest presidents in history, just what will this neophyte do?

Well, maybe he’ll start consolidating his power by moving to cut off opposition to what he plans to do:

he Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states — and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!

The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters — and possibly others — will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama’s historic campaign to become the first black American president.

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Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES’ Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain’s Straight Talk Express airplane.

After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.

Do you also feel the hairs on the back of your head pricking up in reaction to this move? A portend of what’s to come in Obama’s America?

Of course, we’re being silly our liberal betters tell us. No doubt the New York Times and Washington Post will have examples in their columns tomorrow of previous candidates who booted newspapers off their plane. It will be sold as just something that everyone does and there’s nothing to get alarmed about America. Just go back to sleep and don’t forget to wake up long enough to go to the polls on Tuesday and elect our Messiah.

Except this isn’t the Podunk Tribune we’re talking about here. These are three respected newspapers who happen to have critical coverage of a candidate who now deems it necessary to toss them off his campaign plane. No connection?

A sizable number of residents in Virginia buy and subscribe to the Washington Times. Obama is limiting a point of view that residents in perhaps the most vital swing state in America will be getting. Are we to believe that this is an accident? Are we to seriously consider that Obama isn’t trying to affect how reporters cover his campaign?

I would say to the Washington Post and New York Times there will come a day when you too will feel this rope around your neck and your freedom is affected because you are not behind The One 100%. Your cries of “We didn’t know” at that point will be ignored by a public who will wonder where were you when it started?

There’s always energy policy. As long as our economy is sluggish (thus dragging down the economies of most of the planet), oil prices could remain fairly steady, at or near where they are now.

Except they won’t. The Israel-Iran showdown is coming - probably sooner than anyone realizes. Simply put, the Israelis cannot afford to take Iran’s word - or the word of the IAEA - that Iran is not in the process of building a bomb. With their survival at stake, Israel will act pre-emptively and seek to take out or slow down the Iranian program. The resulting spike in oil prices will be a catalyst for Obama to push through a massive energy bill, the end result being anyone’s guess.

The foreign policy ramifications could be Obama’s first real “test” - Biden’s nightmare. Will Obama lead the charge in the UN to censure Israel? Would he cut off military aid? Don’t put it past him. Given his advisors and their views on our relationship with the Jewish state, anything is possible.

“We didn’t know” that he would sacrifice the safety and security of an ally will be the cry.

Meanwhile, less energy means less economic growth - or worse. Obama’s energy schemes alone could hamper the American economy for a generation.

“How could we have guessed?” will be the refrain.

Education reform will no doubt occupy an Obama Administration’s time. What kind of mischief could it cause if this beginner gave the education bureaucrats (no doubt staffed with Ayers-trained acolytes) their heads?

I am not necessarily worried about Obama’s cabinet appointments. It is the 3,000 or so other presidential appointments within his power that scares the beejeebes out of me. Coming as they will from academia and liberal think tanks, here is where the real radicalism of an Obama Administration would manifest itself. The cabinet secretaries are figureheads, chosen as much for how they come off on the Sunday news programs as how knowledgeable and competent they are.

The real power in these departments devolve to the under secretaries and assistant secretaries who are charged with implementing any decisions made by the president. “The devil is in the details” is a literalness I care not to discover when it comes to “school reform” or Obama’s health insurance plan. Unless someone is watching these underlings, the chances are good that they will interpret their mandate to act through their own ideological prism rather than any good intentions of Obama or their cabinet secretary bosses.

“Nobody told us” will be the excuse.

We saw some of this in the Bush Administration with science policy and other areas where lobbyists who had worked for one industry were then named to oversee that same industry in a federal department. This may be good for business but it is bad government. And Obama will probably not want to go to war with a lot of these folks since they will have been put in those positions by his far left base.

Finally, what will the world say when we sell out Lebanon in order to get Syria to play ball with the Israelis on a peace deal? There is only one thing we have that Syria wants - and wants more than anything; our continuing support for a free and independent Lebanon. They don’t want our money or our “good will.” They don’t want any trade agreements or trade goods. They want us to adopt a “hands off” policy on Lebanon so that when Syria moves back in (or their terrorist proxies in Hezballah engineer a takeover of some kind), we do nothing.

Obama wants to talk with Assad. Fine. His no preconditions pledge will come back to bite him in the ass - and not only in Syria. What possible advantage is there to the United States to have the American president meet President Ahmadinejad? “Good will?” Or the world will fall in love with us again?

Whatever small step made in service to internationalism a presidential meet with the Iranians would bring would be dwarfed by the mammoth propaganda coup that would accrue to the Iranians, granting them a legitimacy and stature far beyond anything they have had previously. A similar situation would present itself in Venezuela with a grip and grin with Chavez.

“Well whaddya know, who would have thunk it?” the voters will say.

But we know all this. The world knows it too which is why France’s President Sarkozy is so peeved at Obama. It isn’t meeting with an enemy that is at issue. It is the simple formulation that presupposes a huge advantage being given an enemy for absolutely nothing in return.

But at least we’ll all feel good about ourselves for being so “civilized.”

Obama will not sell us out to the UN. But I have little doubt that we will subsume our national interests in order to curry favor with the lickspittles there. This will result in an erosion of our position in the world and a loss of prestige - and worse. Nation’s that fear us now will not fear us under Obama. They won’t like us any more. They won’t be any more cooperative in keeping the peace. The difference will be that they will be able to cause trouble wherever they wish with no worries that the US would try and stop them - except at the UN. And we know how effective the UN is at dealing with the thugs, the miscreants, and the lunatics of the world.

So sometime in the near future - perhaps within a couple of years or more likely before Obama leaves office - people will wake up one morning and say to themselves, “How did this happen? How could we have known?”

It won’t be an acceptable question to ask then because everything that happens in the next few years will have been predicted by someone based on all the crap that the press either refused to cover or glossed over, denigrated, or called a “distraction” today.

The prospect of being slaughtered next Tuesday is concentrating the minds of some prominent conservatives wonderfully.

Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke, and John Hawkins are beginning to flesh out their thoughts on what a post election conservative on line community might want to accomplish in the future. Let’s take the meat of their arguments one at a time.

Henke:

Actually, I don’t think it’s ironic at all that the analysis of problems on the Right is similar to the arguments made by the Netroots Left. For one thing, the “claims made by Markos Moulitsas” are in many ways intentional recycling of the movement on the Right.

The underlying systemic inputs are very similar. The political/electoral culture and incentives, and the emergence of the internet as an important social and technological phenomenon impacted both the Left and Right at approximately the same time.

The difference in uptake and evolution is predominantly due to the political cycle. Democrats went through the wilderness from 1995 to 2003; they found their way from 2003 to 2008. Republicans entered their wilderness in 2007, though I would argue that the Right has been in the wilderness for longer. How long the Right wanders in the wilderness depends, in large part, on how seriously they take the lessons they can learn from the Left.

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Will the Right’s netroots movement look like that of the Left? To the extent that the tools, and the social/political dynamics, are similar, I’d say the Right’s netroots movement will look a great deal like that of the Left. The question is not what tools are available, but how they are relevant to the surrounding environment. The components will not be identical, but the basic concepts they represent should be very much the same. Or rather, they will be when the Right regains its footing.

Jon also notes that “the surrounding political environment” i.e., the conservative on line community’s relationship with the Republican party, has to change before much progress can be made.

Hawkins makes somewhat the same point and amplifies the idea of using the netroots model for the rightysphere:

Why has the left side of the blogosphere grown so much faster?

Personally, I think there are two reasons for it. The first is that the Right has a large talk radio presence while the Left doesn’t. That means on the left, strongly motivated partisans have little choice other than to flock to the blogosphere while on the right, they can simply opt to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham to get their daily fill of conservatism.

The other more salient reason for the Left’s growth is simply that they’ve been out of power and that has produced an anger and an energy that has driven them online. There was similar growth on the right during the nineties when websites like Townhall and Free Republic rose to prominence as a response to the Clinton years. If Obama gets into the White House, it will be terrible for America, but my guess is that the right side of the blogosphere will grow like a weed for the next 2-4 years.

The bad news is that the Republican Party looks at bloggers solely as an alternative means to get their message out. In other words, there’s a completely non-functional top down organizational structure. It’s non-functional because the Republican Party organizations and pols issue talking points and press releases, most of which are of no interest to bloggers, and they are largely ignored. In other words, they spend most of their time issuing unheeded orders to people who, by and large, think they’re incompetent and aren’t inclined to pay much attention to what they say.

There are exceptions: Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Thaddeus McCotter and a few others — but most of the Republican Party doesn’t really understand the blogosphere or know how to communicate with bloggers.

I would add to Hawkins excellent analysis that the GOP doesn’t want to understand blogs or communicate with bloggers because, in my opinion, they want to maintain control of the message. Not only, as John points out, does the GOP treat bloggers as an appendage of the Republican PR machine, but at bottom, there is a profound disrespect for the blogosphere (except for a select few who have proven useful to them) and they despise the independence of most conservative bloggers.

How many GOP functions will Michelle Malkin be invited to after skewering the party 6 ways from Sunday for immigration, corruption, and incompetence?

Finally, Patrick Ruffini riffs off of both men’s analysis and offers a challenge:

What will it take to turn this around? If you’re a conservative blogger, the question you need to ask yourself is this. Is the main purpose of your blog to express your personal opinion? Or is its primary purpose to build political power for a cause? If you cannot answer yes to the latter, you’re probably not going to be comfortable with making the changes necessary to make online conservatism a political force to be reckoned with.

This is not a criticism, but an observation. Most conservative blogs are still stuck in 2003 — both in terms of the overwhelming focus on media criticism and punditry, and the tendency to outsource electoral politics to the Republican Party. This was in some ways legitimate response to what was happening in 2003-4, when media surrender-monkeys were undermining the War on Terror, Republicans had a kick-butt political operation, and Kos was going 0 for 16.

I don’t fault bloggers for holding on to this point of view in 2003 and 2004. What is unfortunate is that they clinged to it in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and failed to pivot to the new reality, leaving the Republican Party without a powerful enough force to rein in the self-destructive tendencies of its elite.

Sadly, it’s human nature to cling to the frame in which you came up — traditional media people will never fully reconcile themselves to the blogosphere, talk radio people will always tend to view it as the center of the universe, and even denizens of the “new media” can become easily set in their ways. This is not unlike people who got rich on the housing bubble thinking it could never end. When things first start going wrong, it’s always just a momentary blip, not a sign of an impending crash. Only a catastrophic collapse is usually enough to make people rethink matters.

Building critical mass behind an independent online movement on the right will probably require new people. The old blogs that have been with us since 2003 will not go away. But they’ll need to be joined by people who care more about Indiana’s 8th district than Islamofascism, and MN-SEN more than the MSM.

Allow me to give the perspective of a blogger who has been online for 4 years and may have some unique insights into these matters as a result of my building a modest success of this site and my equally modest success at making a living as a blogger/writer/editor on the net.

All three gentlemen make excellent points about what needs to be done to improve the effectiveness of conservative blogs in making an impact on the political process. Certainly there are things we can learn from the left while at the same time, it is important to recognize that some specific tactics and structural components of the netroots simply aren’t transferable to the rightysphere.

Ruffini and Henke write for The Next Right, an online conservative community. This is the template used by the netroots to organize - large communities of online posters who rail against conservatives, exchange ideas, reinforce their own views on issues, and generally offer a comfortable, enjoyable place to belong.

That is the key - the need to be part of something greater than yourself - that drives the netroots and allows them to connect via these huge communities. The question is, can this model be duplicated by conservatives and further, is it desirable to do so?

Ruffini nails it with his description of conservative blogs being outlets mostly for punditocracy. My one foray into the real world of politics was my advocacy for Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign. This website alone raised more than $10,000 for the candidate in two blog blegs I organized and my efforts to unite conservatives behind Thompson’s fund raising activities in December and January were modestly successful. (I really can’t take much credit when Glenn Reynolds and other large bloggers linked and helped promote both fundraising efforts).

That part of it I didn’t mind. It was burying my native skepticism and critical eye in service to the candidate that discomfited me. In the end, I just couldn’t help myself and wrote critically of the campaign and candidate. But for a while, I was 100% with the program - and I hated every minute, every blog post and article I wrote in service to the cause.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually think Thompson would have been a decent president. He had certainly thought longer and more deeply about many issues than either McCain or Obama and his conservatism was informed by both a love of country and a deep, abiding respect for the Constitution and its principles. But he proved a weak, ineffectual candidate and it was a chore trying to defend him.

Ruffini seems to be saying that he wants bloggers who will shill for the cause. He appears to want bloggers who would subsume their independence and buy into the notion that the “primary purpose” of an individual’s blog is “to build political power for a cause.” That “cause” would be backing specific conservative candidates and issues.

One assumes this would be accomplished by adopting some of the online activist model created by the netroots - the most important in my opinion being the creation of online communities that I mention above. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this idea and I hope it is realized.

The problem, as Patrick mentions, is that many of us old mossbacks are stuck in 2003 and our blogging is unrelated to political activism, except in a roundabout way that presupposes our readers are forced to think about what we write and whose opinion might be altered because of the scintillating brilliance of our logic and reasoning.

Or not.

I am not so full of myself that I actually believe my writing makes a difference. But it is mine, my own, and not beholden to a group, a party, or a cause. I suppose that means I will be left behind when this new conservative on line community begins to take shape. That will be my choice and I will harbor little bitterness towards those who choose another path.

But is it the best way for conservatives to achieve power? Is it a way at all?

There is a definite push back on the right these days against the “elites” who make their living inside the Washington-New York axis; where conservative media and commentators exist side by side with their liberal counterparts and it is believed - wrongly in my opinion - that criticism directed at conservatives in flyover country for their passionate embrace of Sarah Palin and the emphasis placed on social issues like abortion is an attack on “ordinary folk” and indicative of the elites’ desire to be accepted at liberal cocktail parties as well as a lack of ideological purity.

I have written that this smacks of a nascent anti-intellectualism (to go along with the anti-science notions pushed by some of the social cons) and that this is an argument as old as the republic itself (populists vs. elites). Questioning the conservative bona fides of Peggy Noonan or David Brooks - two conservatives who have done more to promote conservative ideas than all of their critics combined - doesn’t make sense in any other context except as an indication that many on the right prefer purges to debate and the guillotine to reasoned discussion.

For their part, the elites are, well, acting like elites - seeking a top down, “Live from Mount Olympus” here it is, rubes, take it or leave it analysis that inherently questions the ability of “ordinary folk” to think and act in their own interest and march to their own drummer. The fact that the conservative movement needs both sides to reinvent itself and thrive is lost in recrimination and threats of excommunication.

I have taken my own shots at the anti-intellectuals because I think their take no prisoners attitude is destructive. And if Ruffini et al believes that these purists will be able to see beyond the end of their own nose and participate in any community or movement that isn’t in absolute lock step with their precious notions of who and what a conservative is, they have a lot to learn. Perhaps, as Hawkins points out, the netroots coalesced because they were in the wilderness for so long and that maybe a few years on the back benches in Congress will bring some sobriety to “the base.” I am not confident that will occur.

Last year, I was one of the few conservatives who attended the Yearly Kos convention at McCormick Place in Chicago. What I saw was startling and, for a conservative, not a little frightening. At the time, I was laughed at and roundly criticized for seeing more into what the netroots were up to than was possible. I don’t think too many conservatives are laughing now:

In the summer of 1980, I was a volunteer for the Reagan campaign in Northern Virginia. There were many of us who had come to Washington to work in Congressional offices or fill positions in the burgeoning conservative lobbying industry and “idea factories” that were popping up every other week, contributing to the intellectual ferment that made conservatism so dynamic. It was pretty heady stuff for a 26 year old political neophyte whose bookish ideas of government and the people who ran it was largely shaped by narrative historians and political philosophers.

What was striking at the time was how confident everyone was and how determined people were to bring about a conservative revolution that would sweep the old order away and bring to power those who truly believed in conservative principles. The ideas themselves were important but only as a means to an end. Shaping the ideas, framing them, and packaging them to move the voting public to cast ballots for conservatives was the subject of much discussion in memoranda, position papers, editorials and articles from the few conservative publications at the time.

Anyone who lived through those times and experienced the feeling that ideology and politics had merged so that the ends and means were exactly the same would recognize what is happening at YearlyKos. Top to bottom, inside and out this movement is first and foremost nothing less than revolution. The ideas driving that revolution are pretty standard liberal fare; anti-war, health insurance, environmental protection, education, and jobs top the agenda here at the netroots convention. But the way the issues are being framed by participants in the dozens of panel discussions, workshops, and forums is where the action is. The nuts and bolts savvy of the political activists fuses with the wonks and wise men of the left’s intellectual brain trust to turn out a brand new way to showcase these ideas to the public.

And the netroots are even farther ahead now. They are organizing not just at the state level but all the way down to the precinct level to make the gains they made in 2006 and are going to make next Tuesday into a permanent, liberal majority. This will drive the Republican party to the left - much as conservative success eventually drove the Democrats to the right - and make conservatism an ideology that will be on the outside looking in.

Unless our online conservative wise men like Ruffini, Hawkins, and Henke can figure out a way to tap the enormous potential of the rightosphere and turn its energies toward creating a network of conservatives that can challenge the left at every digital turn.

Every time I do a “Dead Parrot” post, loyal Republicans take me to task for believing the polls in the first place. They claim that the evil MSM is conspiring to dispirit GOP voters and force them to either put a gun to their heads or stay home on election day watching reruns of CSI: Miami.. I am told “McCain’s not dead, he’s closing.”

Of course, the evidence cited in defense of that notion is … the polls. So much for the the logic of the desperate.

Indeed, if you read what McCain’s pollster Bill McInturff says in this Hill piece, we see the perfect rationale for hope; everyone else is wrong but me:

Despite widespread polling to the contrary, McInturff wrote that “the campaign is functionally tied across the battleground states … with our numbers improving sharply over the last four tracks.”

The pollster said that the number the campaign is watching is “Sen. Obama’s level of support and the margin difference between the two candidates.”

“As other public polls begin to show Sen. Obama dropping below 50 percent and the margin over McCain beginning to approach margin of error with a week left, all signs say we are headed to an election that may easily be too close to call by next Tuesday,” he said.

McInturff noted that he is seeing “significant shifts in battleground states,” with “gains” that are sustainable with “non-college men,” rural voters of both genders, anti-abortion voters and “most encouragingly…we are beginning to once again get over a 20 percent chunk of the vote among soft Democrats.”

The pollster said a subgroup the campaign has long targeted, known to them as “Walmart women” and identified as not having a college degree and residing in households that make less than $60,000 a year, “are also swinging back solidly in our direction.”

He added that the campaign is “witnessing an impressive ‘pop’ with Independent voters.”

That “pop” you hear from the Indies is the bubble of hope that McCain can grab enough of them to overcome Obama’s lead among party registrants. The Democrat holds a 8 point advantage with self-identified Democrats over Republicans which would mean McCain would need at least 54% of independent voters (who make up about 27% of the electorate) to win the popular vote.

Throwing out the strange numbers offered up by Pew Research which show McCain trailing Obama 52-36 among all groups, their projection of the independent vote is in line with other pollsters. Pew has Obama ahead by 17 with this group, Zogby 15, Gallup 13. That’s an awful lot of ground to make up in a week in what all pollsters are saying is a pretty static race that hasn’t changed much in 3 weeks..

As for the rest of McInturff’s fantasy, did anyone else note that those voters are supposed to be the base of the Republican party? If John McCain is doing nothing more than solidifying his base with a week to go in the election, stick a fork in him.

Some of the state polls are just terrible for McCain. Obama is virtually tied in Montana. Montana? Good God! I remember when Republicans used to rack up 65% of the vote or more in Big Sky Country. On my radio show last night, American Thinker’s excellent political correspondent Rich Baehr pointed out that a lot of disgruntled Californians have been moving to Montana in recent years. These Democrats are taking advantage of the low tax, limited government, and low population density found in Montana the same way they filled up some of the open spaces in Colorado and are now making that state competitive.

And speaking of Colorado, the McCain campaign has basically conceded that state to Obama with even the RNC pulling out. Obama has a 7-10 point lead in the most recent polls and along with his overwhelming lead in neighboring New Mexico and a slight but significant lead in Nevada, it appears that a significant part of the Mountain West - as solid a GOP bastion since Goldwater as anywhere in the country - is about to topple to the Dems.

Elsewhere, Obama is tied in North Dakota, virtually tied in Georgia and Indiana, and ahead in North Carolina. These states are historically Republican - even in Democratic years. The fact that McCain doesn’t have the time or money to spend shoring up his support in these states is worrisome but not hopeless. If McCain can pull his national numbers up a couple of points, those states should be his by narrow margins (possible exception; North Carolina where African Americans are voting early in huge numbers). The same holds true in Arizona where some polls have it within 4 points but which should be safely red by election day.

But none of these states mean as much to McCain as the Big Three; Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Nate Silver’s 538 blog has no scenario where McCain can win if he loses Ohio and Florida and only a very slight chance if he loses Florida or Ohio.

McCain trails narrowly in OH and FL and there are some indications that PA is tightening up thanks to some good work by Palin who seems to be connecting with the rural/small town Pennsylvanians in the southeast and northwest corners of the state. These are conservative Democrats by nature and gave Hillary Clinton a huge boost in her primary win over Obama. They are older, Catholic, and socially conservative. If McCain can get some Hillary-like majorities in those counties (60-65%), it will offset Obama strength in Philadelphia and some of the industrial towns where unions are strong.

But Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania’s best politician, has proved in the past he can get his voters to the polls as well as anyone in the country. The PUMA’s are saying that Rendell, who supported Clinton in the primary, is going to mail it in on election day rather than go all out for Obama. Don’t believe it. Rendell is a party pro, one of the canniest. All Democratic governors want to deliver their states for Obama if for no other reason than it helps turn on the federal spigot for state funds. Rendell would be a fool to tank it just to slight Obama and give Hillary a chance in 2012. The risk is just too great.

But even if McCain can eke out a win in PA, there remains the problems of OH and FL to overcome. When all is said and done, Obama will have spent an incredible $40 million in FL alone. McCain has $86 million to spend on his entire campaign. That kind of money advantage simply cannot be dismissed. As for Ohio, Joe the Plumber has apparently helped there but the economy is going south very quickly in the Buckeye state with hundreds of employers shuttering their doors just since the financial meltdown began. Joe might be good for a couple of points but at this point, it doesn’t appear to be enough.

So it would appear that McCain still has an uphill climb in the Keystone state. Not impossible but with a week to go and constrained as he is financially (having to spend in Ohio and Florida as well), it will be a very difficult proposition to overcome Obama’s advantages.

During my show last night, I asked Rich the question you probably have about the polls; is it possible all of them are wrong? Have pollsters got it so wrong this time out that McCain is actually in better shape than he’s showing? Their numbers are, after all, based on turnout models that give the Democrats a decided advantage in party affiliation. What would happen if those 17 million evangelicals who came out and voted for Bush in 2004 did the same for McCain? What if the pollsters are overstating the total African American vote or the total vote of young people?

I know how tempting it is to believe that the polls are all deliberately biased against McCain and that he is really ahead. Or to believe that the numbers are so far off because of the uncertainty regarding turnout that they are totally useless.

But as a clincher as to how bad things are for McCain and how little chance he really has, his own campaign has seen the writing on the wall and has begun the process of absolving themselves from blame for the coming defeat. Campaigns who believe they can win or still have a chance don’t fire off salvos explaining their defeat one week before the election. While the numbers tell one story, the underlying trends regarding how people feel about the candidates, how people see their own future and what the future of the country looks like are most likely moving away from McCain. And judging by the amount of backbiting, it appears the campaign has determined that those trend lines may be very hard to reverse.

Obama gives his monarchical address tonight to the masses. We will probably have a much better handle on how big his margin of victory will be by Friday when the first results are factored into the daily tracking polls.

I am not optimistic that this address will hurt him in any way and could end up giving him a final boost toward a landslide win next Tuesday.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has conducted one of his famous blogger polls of the rightosphere, asking the top 240 conservatives their thoughts on the election.

Now, I have been blogging 4 years and John has been asking the top 240 conservatives their thoughts on everything from politics to culture during most of that time but somehow, my invitation to participate in his surveys has either been captured by my spam filter and devoured or was lost in the ether between John’s computer and mine.

Being the sensitive, modest, and retiring sort of fellow that I am, I have never said anything about it until now. Perhaps I am ranked 241 or 242, or, God help us, 243 in which case I should probably adjust my ego-o-meter and remove myself from the lofty perch upon which I have sat lo these many years, surveying the political landscape, all the time believing I was some kind of conservative sage - or some frothing at the mouth, fire breathing, rip snorting, bug-eyed, right wing nut.

Evidently not.

Now it could also be that John Hawkins doesn’t know me from Adam and could care less about my opinion. In that, he would be no different than the 99.8% of conservatives who surf the blogosphere. All bloggers have their groupies and since mine tend more toward the fat, middle aged, male and balding variety, I can’t say that I blame Hawkins for giving me a pass on his list of conservatives who are chosen to participate in his survey.

There is a third possibility, one that I am loathe to contemplate. In fact, the chasm that opens beneath my feet just thinking about the potentially life altering realization inherent in Mr. Hawkins’ failure to include me on his list of conservative bloggers is almost more than I can bear.

Perhaps there are some of you out there who don’t think of me as a “conservative.”

(Note: I’m sure Hawkins has his reasons for not including me and the following is in no way directed toward him)

And that got me to thinking. Since the right appears about ready to suffer a stinging defeat at the polls a week from today - an event that will result in civil war between various factions of conservatism - perhaps one way I can improve my position in the rightosphere would be by helping to define just what is a conservative? What do we believe? Should we give everyone a test and have them answer 20 questions on the nature of conservative thought? Or do we just let a bunch of ignoramuses who wouldn’t know Burke from Burger King inform us who is and who isn’t a person of the right based on their own narrow, illogical, and emotional criteria?

(How’s that for a “shot heard round the blogosphere” my knuckledragging friends?)

For it appears to me from my vantage point that we are entering a period where someone’s conservative bona fides will not depend on what he believes as an intellectual frame of reference that informs his stand on issues as much as how much he agrees with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter (I would include Michael Savage in that bunch but really now, doesn’t one have to be a human being to be a conservative?)

If it were just the titans of talk radio that most people who believe themselves to be conservative look to as a yardstick to measure one’s ideological purity, I could probably live with that. Hannity and Limbaugh are great entertainers and Coulter has a wickedly sharp pen that she employs against the left to great effect.

But beyond the marshmallow conservatism of Hannity and the more substantiative but graceless conservative pop served up by Limbaugh, there lies a whole slew of litmus tests where many of these conservabots will brook no opposition, no nuance, no independent thinking whatsoever.

A partial listing:

If you are pro-choice to one degree or another, you are not a conservative.

If you criticize the war or the military, you are not a conservative and unpatriotic to boot.

If you say anything nice about a liberal anytime, anywhere - if you agree with a liberal on anything or praise a liberal past, present, or future - you are not a conservative.

If you don’t agree that torturing the enemy is necessary and/or good, you are not a conservative.

If you say anything nice about any media besides conservative mags, talk radio and Fox News, you are not a conservative.

If you believe in evolution, you are not a conservative and are probably going to hell.

If you believe that there is a possibility of man made global warming based on scientific evidence collected so far, you are not a conservative and should probably be committed.

If you believe that Barack Obama is just a stupid liberal and not a clone of Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden all rolled into one, you are not a conservative.

If you believe that Democrats don’t have horns, a tail, and a pitchfork, you are not a conservative.

And most of all, unless you believe Sarah Palin is the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the bees knees, the cat’s meow, the apple of our eye, and the greatest thing to hit the conservative movement and the Republican party since Robert Taft first uttered the immortal words “US out of the UN” - you are not a conservative.

For my stands on any one of these litmus test issues, I have been branded a “liberal,” and a “moderate” and even worse “an elitist.”

So just what is it, as a conservative, that I believe?

I believe first and foremost in American exceptionalism - the idea that we are a different country and people from any other nation on earth.

I believe the free market economic system is the fairest, the most productive, and the greatest engine for human liberty ever conceived.

I believe that American defenses must be second to none - conventional and strategic.

I believe in a robust, forward thinking, “America first” foreign policy.

I believe in a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution and that a president should appoint judges to the federal courts who reflect that view.

I believe in the inviolable rights of private property as the guarantor of American liberty.

I believe in equality of opportunity for all Americans regardless of color, ethnic heritage, or national origin.

I believe America should strive to create the smallest government realistically possible, possessing the lightest touch imaginable on the individual citizen.

I believe in a just and moral society with a as clear a sense of right and wrong as is consistent with reality.

I believe that all of these things should be taught in American schools and that an appreciation of these values and qualities should be encouraged.

And I believe we should have the freedom to say what we think, write what we want, worship however the hell we please, do anything, go anywhere, and enjoy life according to our own lights - as long as we do no harm to anyone’s person or property.

I have written passionately in support of each and every one of these subjects over the last 4 years and have believed in them most of my adult life. And I refuse to be catalogued, pigeonholed, and denigrated as anything other than what I am - a strong, principled conservative who doesn’t care what the kewl kids are thinking and instead, bases his informed opinion on the specifics of an issue and how it fits (or doesn’t) into a logical, coherent set of moral and intellectual precepts.

The mindless barbarism of some conservatives (or more accurately, people who believe themselves to be “conservative”) who deign to sit in judgement on my core beliefs and determine, by the use of some completely arbitrary and idiotic litmus tests, whether they are “conservative enough” is symptomatic of a sickness of thought and reason that appears to me to be sweeping the right the closer we get to this election Armageddon. I don’t know whether it is simple hysteria that has clouded their judgement or whether they’ve come down with a permanent case of the intellectual runs. All I know is they are wrong - totally, completely, now and forever, 100%, fatally and tragically wrong.

So, I would say to my knuckledragging friends; you can take your litmus tests, your conservative measuring stick to determine the “purity” of my conservatism, your crazy conspiracy theories, your anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-elitist bullsh*t and stick it up your ass.

Don’t you know there’s a war on?

Stanley Kurtz of NRO gets it.

I have been waiting for someone in the media to lay Obama low with the correct interpretation of the candidate’s radical associations. Many on the right have made the mistake of pegging Obama himself as a wild eyed radical determined to create some kind of Marxist state out of America. I believe this wildly overstates the case. The danger of Obama is in his “soft” radicalism - a squishy new leftism where he doesn’t have the political courage to annunciate his true agenda while hiding behind banal platitudes and sugary rhetoric.

Kurtz, in going after Ben Smith of Politico who quoted one of the co-founders of the New Party Joel Rogers saying that NP had “no members,” and subsequently was forced to retract based on Kurtz’s brilliant brief on Obama’s ties to the radical Maoist party, shows the true nature of Obama’s radical associations and how they informed and affected his political life:

The larger point is that the very existence of so many of these radical political partnerships (and that is what they are, significant political partnerships, not mere “marginal relationships,” as Smith would have it) reveals a systematic pattern–a pattern that shows Obama to be a man of the left–so far left that he long had one foot out of (but also one foot in) the conventional Democratic mainstream. It’s true that the McCain campaign has not effectively made this point. Yet my Corner colleague Andy McCarthy has eloquently complained about that. The most important point is what Obama’s many radical political partnerships reveal about his overall perspective, and how his radicalism ties in to, and helps explain, even his more conventional-seeming Democratic liberalism. I have written extensively about all of this.

Radical or liberal? It’s not an either/or. What’s certain is that Obama is not the post-ideological, post-partisan pragmatist he presents himself as. The press has shamefully colluded in that false presentation.

“[O]ne foot out of (but also one foot in) the conventional Democratic mainstream…” describes Obama to a “T.” I don’t think there is any doubt now, with the discovery of this tape of Obama from 2001 (soon, no doubt, coming to a McCain campaign commercial near you), that as a young politician, Obama flirted with radical ideas including a transformative “redistribution” of wealth that would radically alter the American economy and society.

Courtesy of STACLU, here’s a partial transcript:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that. (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Huey Newton (or Jeremiah Wright for that matter) couldn’t have said it better.

Newton and Bobby Seale created the Black Panthers first as a self-defense organization concerned with stopping police brutality in black neighborhoods. But it wasn’t long before militant blacks, rejecting the mainstream civil rights approach of Dr. King and others, began to agitate for more direct political action, believing socialism and redistributive policies would do more for “equality” than the incremental changes sought by SCLC and NAACP.

Obama’s criticism of the mainstream civil rights movement echoes that of later day activists who believe the movement isn’t doing enough about Black poverty and economic “injustice.” This is the legacy of the Panthers and the “Black Power” movement of the 1970’s. In this way, Obama’s friendship with Wright and Father Pfleger (a great admirer of the Black Panthers), makes perfect sense. As does his association with William Ayers whose SDS leadership made him an ally with Newton and the Black Panthers back in the 70’s.

We know now that as late as 2001, Obama was flirting with radical redistribution as an engine of gaining Black equality. So the question is, when did Obama change his spots - or has he?

Obama was attracted to Wright, Pfleger, Ayers and the rest initially because of his flirtation with radicalism as a way to change the economic and social structure of the United States. It was why he became a community organizer. Changing the country one neighborhood at a time is straight out of the New Left playbook.

But it is equally apparent that there came a point where Obama rejected radicalism as a solution and thought to remake the Democratic party - to mainstream some of his ideas - by adopting the tactics of the New Left (framing social change and economic redistribution as questions of “fairness”). This is exactly what the New Party was attempting to do; pull the Democratic party further left by offering up candidates who believed not in Marxism but New Left ideas of “social justice.”

Contrary to what some believe, the New Left is not specifically a “socialist” movement although it has many members who are open socialists. The idea is not to have the “people” take over the means of production or to outlaw profit but rather use the government to enforce utilitarian and Utopian schemes of “fairness” and “equality.” They seek the Leveling” of America - with them at the top of the economic and political heap as sages who know what is best for the rest of us. This is evident in the left’s constant caterwauling about ordinary Americans “voting against their own interests” in electing Republicans. Well, if people aren’t smart enough to know what they want, Obama and the liberals will tell them.

Even Obama haters out there have to admire the way he has obscured this message with a combination of liberal boilerplate and soothing nostrums about an American paradise where there is no argument, no bitter partisanship, only peace and harmony.

Steve Chapman correctly understands that this is a message that cuts across religious, racial, and even party lines. But he misses the big picture by failing to see beyond the pretty words and banal solipsisms to discover the hard edge of New Left advocacy.

The America Obama wishes to recreate - even revolutionize - is not based on Constitutional principles or even tradition (which classical liberals like Hubert Humphrey always acknowledged as a source for change) but rather on the far more problematic ideas of social democracy espoused by late-19th and early 20th century “progressives” who believed that government could be “perfected” using scientific principles found in sociology and psychology.

One foot in and one foot out of the Democratic mainstream - that’s Obama. And he has used his associations with radicals his entire political life as stepping stones in his very liberal district. He may not have entirely abandoned his flirtation with these radicals. Indeed, he appears to have used some of their ideas to flesh out his squishy ideology. But does he share the “communist” (small “c” he calls it) views of Ayers or the radical black theology and political ideas of the Black Panthers with Wright-Pfleger?

I think clearly he does not. Obama does not seek to overturn America as much as he wants to alter the parameters of the social contract between the people and the government. He doesn’t want to do away with this compact and replace it with something else. He wants to nibble around the edges and “reform” the way that the American people interact with their government. This means more dependence, less freedom of action for the individual, an imposed sense of “community,” more strictures on the economy, and a war against “greed.”

This may seem radical enough to many. And indeed, with a Democratic Congress more ideologically in tune with the radicals, it is possible that they will push him further to the left than he wishes to go. But whatever occurs, there is little doubt that if he wins, it will be a triumph for the New Left and a reward for their patient undermining of the American experiment for more than 40 years.

The answer is, yes - I prefer to go down in flames, hitching a ride with the Valkyries to Valhalla rather than cheerleading for a man who would choose a woman as his running mate with such a wretched moral sense.

I have, with few exceptions, tempered my criticism of John McCain’s proposed policies during this latter part of the campaign, concentrating instead on the horse race because frankly, there are many conservatives more qualified than I and more familiar with the issues who are doing a much better job than I could in making the conservative case for McCain despite his more problematic stands on issues.

I have also, for the most part, given a pass to McCain on the question of judgment, although I think the post mortems on McCain’s campaign will reveal some monumental blunders on the economic crisis as well as their electoral strategy (where they expended limited resources).

On the question of the Palin pick, however, I have had no such qualms in supporting McCain. Marc Ambinder (no fan of Palin) explains why the Alaska governor was really the only pick McCain could make:

A Sunday morning quarterback still makes a persuasive argument for picking Palin. In this environment, the Republican candidate could only win if he consolidates his base and wins a majority of persuadable votes; the Democrat simply has to turn out Democrats. Though McCain at one point wanted to pick Joe Lieberman, he’d have cut a leg from the stool and replaced it with one that, aside from his party affiliation — independent Democrat — has no real appeal among independents anymore. One step backward and no steps forward. By the time the news began to leak out that McCain wanted Lieberman, the trail balloon was also leaky. Republican delegations made it clear that they’d walk out on McCain. We still don’t know why McCain decided that the risk wasn’t worth taking — that’s for another Draper piece — but we know that he suddenly shifted back to someone who had impressed him early on, someone who, at the time, could check the two boxes: excite Republicans and convert independents and persuadables.

Whether the vetting was complete or rushed, whether Palin and her advisers were completely forthcoming about her record…. again, wait for the Draper piece. The point here is that the choice was defensible. That almost every piece of information that has come out subsequent to the pick has hurt Palin can be interpreted in several ways: either the media was preordained to crush her spirit from the beginning, or the McCain campaign didn’t know about them, or they’ve been distorted beyond any sense of the rational.

I would add that Palin defenders have hit the nail on the head when they make the case for distortion, bias, double standards, and outright lies and rumors being printed by the MSM. The case of Palin’s belief in creationism is a perfect example. The rumor started on a site written by a Palin hater in Alaska that she believed people walked the earth with dinosaurs and that she wished to teach creationism “alongside” evolution in Alaskan schools. The rumor was printed verbatim and passed off as truth in the Los Angeles Times among other outlets.

Palin never said any such thing nor does she believe that creationism has a place in a public school curriculum. It was a lie made up out of whole cloth, swallowed by the press, and given wide distribution by liberal blogs who never bothered to check the provenance of the story. Pattericio points out that the Times never retracted one bit of the story.

Ambinder makes the same case I’ve been making since Palin was chosen; that McCain basically had no choice but to pick her. (For your Romneyites I only have one word: Mormon).

But this doesn’t negate certain facts. Palin is unready to hold high office and won’t be, in my opinion, for perhaps a year. The public isn’t buying the counter argument and her negatives are so high now she has become a huge drag on the campaign with two groups that McCain absolutely must win over if he is to win; white women and independents. Palin may have solidified the base but you don’t win too many elections getting 30% of the vote.

No doubt a large part of the problem has been the unfair treatment she has received in the media. But you can’t just explain away the voter’s unhappiness with Palin by ascribing all her negatives to media bias and manipulation. The American people are a little smarter than that.

Perhaps they sense something about her that Palin worshipers fail to see. It certainly doesn’t help Palin’s case when she makes a statement like this:

Brian Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition?

Sarah Palin: [Sighs] There’s no question Bill Ayres, under his own admittance, was, um, one who sought to destroy, er, our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities, that, uh, er, that would be unacceptable. Uh, I don’t know if you’re going to use the word “terrorist” there, but it’s unacceptable and, uh, um, it, er, would not be condoned, of course, on, on our watch, but [sigh] I don’t know what you’re asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayres as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.

Brian Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers, protesters in cities where fires were started, molotov cocktails were thrown, people died.

Sarah Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayres anyone else who would seek to campaign to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

There is no mistaking her answer. I sought out a fuller transcript in order to ascertain her exact words as well as her full response and any follow up question asked by Williams.

Sarah Palin is refusing to call people who would bomb abortion clinics terrorists. Yes, she condemns their actions. But she is parsing the definition of terrorism so as not to offend that small, but vocal part of the conservative base who may not see clinic bombers as heroes, but refuse to place their actions in a a moral context that equates the tactics of the jihadis with the Eric Rudolphs of the world.

This is moral cowardice. The purpose of bombing abortion clinics (it hasn’t happened in a decade) is exactly the same as fanatics who set off car bombs in crowded markets; that is, to intimidate and to terrorize people.

Have Muslim fanatics set off more bombs than Christians? Of course they have. But if you are going to base a moral judgment on numbers of dead, then you are probably able to parse the moral guilt of Hitler compared to Stalin - or perhaps Hitler compared to Idi Amin. The death of innocents perpetrated for political ends, be it fewer abortions due to the terrorizing of women and fewer abortion clinics due to their destruction, or the blowing up of a marketplace to intimidate and frighten people into abandoning support for their government is terrorism. It is always terrorism. It was terrorism yesterday, it is terrorism today, and it will be terrorism tomorrow. And anyone who can’t make the moral judgment that this is so is, in my opinion, a coward - especially since if Palin had admitted that bombing abortion clinics was terrorism, she would have angered a small but significant part of the conservative base.

Don’t believe me? Here are some observations by those moral titans in the anti-abortion crowd about whether bombing clinics is terrorism:

“No, you pro-abortion baby killing fanatics are the terrorists. What is a terrorist? Someone who murders innocent people. That is YOU. You pro-abortion babykillers murder innocent children each and every day.” — Rev Donald Soitz.

“We have shed the blood of the innocent in the womb, and we are now reaping it in the streets.” — Rev. Flip Benham, Operation Rescue

Ever since then, whenever someone brings up a terrorist attack carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, you are expected to practice the Fairness Doctrine and give appropriate lip service to the “Christian” attacks on abortion clinics in order to demonstrate that neither side is beyond reproach. Of course, there is something to be said about the fact that when “Christians” attack, they are not supported by a body of religious figures that can be recognized as a legitimate authority, are wholly condemned by the Christian community both far and wide, and are doing so not for religious reasons but because in their minds these abortion clinics are clinics of death where babies are daily being killed and thus their existence means the continued death of another child. Somehow it’s hard to generate the same feelings against someone who wants to preserve life as it is to generate against someone who uses planes as torpedoes. But I digress.

Perhaps the most telling thing about how absurd this argument is are the simple numbers. A simple glance indicates that, across America, there have only been 168 attacks against abortion clinics since 1982, the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Bureau reports. These attacks come with surprisingly little casualties, and most attacks are rather measured in property damage, rather than human lives lost. Therefore to run it on average, every year there will be six or seven abortion related attacks across America, with a marginal increase in these numbers in Canada and Australia (one in Australia’s history, for example).

Moral equivalency between jihadis and Christians is not, cannot be based on comparative body counts but only on the intent of the attacker - the only possible moral context you can place any attack on innocents. Palin’s parsing is an ignominious example of a politician who would rather pander to the extreme of her base instead of taking a clear, unambiguous moral stand against political violence. She should be condemned for this by those on the right who claim moral ascendancy over the rest of us due to their religious beliefs as well as any thinking conservative who cares about the moral standing of our candidates.

My latest column at PJ Media is up and I am sure you are going to love it. Judging by the comments left already, I am going to be even more popular with the conservative base than I am already - if that’s possible.

What’s it about? It’s an article that refers to Obama as “Lucifer” and bemoans the loss of freedoms we would have seen if John McCain had lost the election. But of course, McCain is going to win in a landslide so we don’t have to worry. I look at Obama’s nefarious plans to nationalize the snack food industry which will force Frito-Lay to cook all their snacks in mink oil as well as his probable cabinet appointments that include William Ayers as Secretary of Domestic Terrorism and Jeremiah Wright as Special Assistant to the President for Anti-Americanism.

I also delve into what agenda the new Republican majority in the House and Senate will take up once President McCain takes ofice.

I also include a paragraph or two on the best, most painful way we can execute elite conservative traitors like Peggy Noonan, Mark Frum, and Christopher Buckley. You won’t want to miss that one.

Finally, I look at Obama’s trip to Hawaii to see his seriously ill grandmother which, as we all know, is just a stunt, that he doesn’t hold any love for her whatsoever, and that his real reason for going to Hawaii is to personally fight off the courageous suit trying to force Obama to come clean about his Indonesian (or is it Kenyan?) birth by that lover of puppies, kittens, and even the occassional Jew Andy Martin.

A sample:

[A]uthenticity intruded yesterday on this little Kabuki dance we call a presidential campaign. With less than two weeks to go in the campaign and the race still considered close by many, Barack Obama is flying 5,000 miles to Hawaii in order to visit the woman who took care of him and taught him so much during his formative years.Madelyn Payne Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandmother, lies seriously ill in her home following what the Honolulu Advertiser has learned was a fall resulting in a broken hip several weeks ago. The 85 year old former bank vice president suffers from osteoporosis and has weakened considerably over the last few months. She was discharged from the hospital early this week and by some reports, is sinking.

So there’s something for every one in this piece - well, everyone with half a brain anyway.

At the risk of being seen as “not helping” John McCain and “giving up,” allow me to take you on a little tour of the electoral battlefield today.

If there are any sharp objects within reach, I suggest you move them. Better yet, put them under lock and key. I am about to crack open the gates of hell and give you a peek at what’s inside.

As “The Dead March from Saul” plays on my headphones, I am forced to report that John McCain is approaching “Dead Parrot” status in the race for the presidency. The campaign is trying to convince us that John McCain is actually alive and still breathing while all other signs point to him being an ex-presidential candidate.

Don’t trust the polls? I wouldn’t either. In fact, a good case can be made that almost all the polls are undercounting Obama’s support and the Illinois senator is even further ahead than the polls indicate. (Read this piece by conservative political guru Michael Barone on polls.) This is because there seems to be a truly remarkable and historic dynamic at work in America. Early voting in states like NC, FL, and Ohio have shown extraordinary turnout among African Americans and the young, voting for Obama by huge margins (Pew has this early voting 58-34 for Obama while Zogby gives Obama a 21 point lead nationwide among early voters.)

Is this a trend? Can the votes of these early birds tell us anything? There isn’t much history so we can’t be sure. But since most early voters appear to be Democrats, that may say something significant about who is excited about this race.

You stunned him just as he was waking up!

Regardless, it would appear that the models that pollsters are basing their horse race numbers on may be flawed thus not giving us a true picture of Obama’s support. If you read this excellent piece by Nate Silver on his blog 538, you get a good sense of how accurate the daily tracking polls are performing, their pluses and minuses and a little history of the polling company. Nate concludes that the Gallup poll that tracks likely voters using the increased African American and youth turnout in their model (Gallup LVII) is probably as accurate a daily indicator as you can get. In that poll, as of yesterday, Obama had expanded his lead to 10 points.

I hasten to add that historically, the youth vote doesn’t seem to materialize on election day and African Americans only make up around 11% of the electorate. But in 2004, after the left spent about $60 million on a massive get out the vote drive for younger voters, turnout in the 18-24 category surged 16% to around 47% of that age group. With the possibility that the 2008 election will see some kind of breakthrough in the youth vote (some analysts are projecting based on primary participation a 60% turnout) and a huge surge in African American votes, Obama could tip some close races in red states and make this race an electoral landslide.

He’s not dead. He’s just resting.

Indeed, the numbers are very bleak for John McCain in states that he absolutely must hold to reach 270:

Colorado: Obama +5 (Rasmussen)
Georgia: McCain +2 (GQR)
Missouri: Obama +5 (Rasmussen)
Missouri: McCain +1 (Suffolk)
North Carolina: Obama +7 (PPP)
North Carolina: Obama +3 (Rasmussen)
Virginia: Obama +10 (Rasmussen)
Virginia: Obama +6 (Survey USA)

These are all polls conducted in the last three days. In addition, older polls show Obama up in Iowa (+13 by Survey USA), Nevada (+5 by Rasmussen), and New Mexico (+13 and +7 by Rasmussen and Survey USA respectively). Also, Obama is within 2 points in Indiana and a virtual dead heat in North Dakota.

These are all red states won by George Bush in 2004. McCain trails by more than 7 points in every single blue state. Where can McCain make up the difference? He is slightly behind in both Ohio and Florida - a loss of either one of those states would doom him. But a loss of just two of any of the 10 states listed above would also kill his campaign.

With two weeks to go, McCain will be scrambling just to hold on to formerly safe red states like IN and NC. Historically, when a candidate is forced to defend territory that should have been in the bag at this late date, he is finished.

The internals for McCain are just awful. Pew measures not just raw numbers of support but also issues and candidate qualities as well as voter attitudes. These are many of the same things that a campaign’s internal polling seeks to discover. Let’s take a look at what John McCain has been reading recently with his morning coffee:

Obama’s gains notwithstanding, a widespread loss of confidence in McCain appears to be the most significant factor in the race at this point. Many more voters express doubts about McCain’s judgment than about Obama’s: 41% see McCain as “having poor judgment,” while just 29% say that this trait describes Obama. Fewer voters also view McCain as inspiring than did so in mid-September (37% now, 43% then). By contrast, 71% of voters continue to think of Obama as inspiring.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Oct. 16-19 among 2,599 registered voters interviewed on landline phones and cell phones, finds that McCain’s age also has become more of an issue for voters. Roughly a third (34%) now says that McCain is too old to be president; in the Sept. 9-14 survey, just 23% said this. At this stage in the 1996 campaign, about as many voters (32%) said Republican candidate Bob Dole was too old to be president.

[snip]

A steadily growing number of voters say that McCain has been too personally critical of Obama: 56% say that now, up from 42% in mid-September. By contrast, just 26% say that Obama has been too personally critical of McCain, which is largely unchanged from mid-September (28%).

In recent weeks, McCain has lost support across the board. Most notably, he now trails Obama decidedly among political independents (51% to 33%). Yet he also has lost support among some voting blocs that previously had been strongly in his corner, including white evangelical Protestants and white men. McCain continues to lead Obama among older white men, but even here his margin over Obama has narrowed since mid-September; McCain now leads among white men age 50 and older by 54% to 38%, down from a 27-point lead in mid-September.

Losing independents by 18 points is significant. Indies were supposed to be one of his strongest supporters. In fact, given the disparity in party registration, McCain would need gain well over 50% of independents in order to come out ahead.

Finally, what about all those Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton who were supposed to go for McCain?

Among Democrats, Barack Obama is now winning 88 percent support, comparable to John Kerry in 2004 or Al Gore in 2000. And there are a couple of points’ worth of undecideds left in there, so it’s possible that Obama could scrape up against the 90 percent number on election day.

By contrast, John McCain is winning the support of just 85.3 percent of Republicans, well down from Bush’s 93 percent in 2004 and 91 percent in 2000. There are some undecideds in there as well, so his numbers should improve some, but McCain is likely to underperform Bush by several points.

Is there any good news for McCain at all?

Yes there is. Pew shows 23% of voters undecided (although 61% expect Obama to win). This large number is due to the fact that Obama has not quite “closed the sale:”

For all of Obama’s current success, however, there are some signs of vulnerability for his candidacy that could present opportunities for McCain. First, while somewhat more voters see Obama as well-qualified than did so in mid-September, only about half (53%) say this trait describes him; 72% say McCain is well-qualified. Second, swing voters continue to represent nearly a quarter of the electorate (23%). Notably, swing voters are less likely than all voters to say that McCain would continue Bush’s policies. They also express far more confidence in McCain than Obama to handle national security issues.

“He’s not dead - he’s pining for the fjords.”

A bolt of lightening from overseas could still make this a race. But it appears unlikely - unless al-Qaeda wishes to take a hand in the contest at which point all bets are off.

As long as I’m in the process of ruining your day (and mine), let me give you some background on how the House and Senate races are shaping up. You may wish you stayed in bed.

From the Democracy Corps (Jim Carville’s Think Tank):

The latest congressional battleground survey by Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, part of our weekly tracking of the most competitive Republican House seats, finds that Democratic candidates have improved their standing and taken the lead, even closing in on the Republicans in the bottom tier of supposedly toughest seats. With our finding last week that Democratic incumbents have surged in the most marginal Democratic seats, Democrats are poised to make stunning gains on a battlefield that is still expanding at the Republicans’ expense.

In the top tier of races, the 20 most vulnerable Republican seats, Democratic candidates are beginning to pull away, doubling their 4-point lead from last week to 8 points. Meanwhile, Democrats in the next two tiers remain within striking distance, trailing their Republican opponents by just 2 points in the second tier and 3 points in the third and holding the Republicans under 50 percent in both.[1] The result in Tier 2 is unchanged from a week ago, but the Democrats’ deficit in Tier 3 has been cut in half since last week and has closed a remarkable 13 points since we first surveyed these districts two weeks ago. Seats that once appeared out of reach are now very much in play. We will bring more Republican seats into our next survey.

The Blogging Caesar is a little less pessimistic. He bases his totals on races where the probability of a pickup is “strong” - which translates into a lead of 16% or more. Right now, he has the Democrats at a projected +12 with another 20 races he designates as “Weak” or “Moderate GOP Hold.” (In 2006, the Democrats defeated 15 Republicans who had received 55% or more of the vote in 2004. That would translate as a “Moderate GOP Hold” in Caesar’s calculations.)

Just how long could Obama’s coattails be? The young may be more willing to split their vote but African Americans could tip the scales in a couple of dozen of these races. As for independents, they are polling more liberal this time around and with a decided animus toward the GOP. I haven’t taken a really close look yet at most of these competitive House race (that’s my task over the weekend) so I can’t really give a good guess as to just how many seats the GOP will lose. It will almost certainly end up being a minus 20 net loss and perhaps more if the trends we’ve seen continue.

The Senate, if possible, looks even bleaker. Three seemingly safe incumbents are fighting for their political lives including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Georgia’s Saxbe Chambliss, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi who won the special election to fill Trent Lott’s seat. All three are “Weak GOP Holds” at the moment. if you include the 8 GOP seats that are now listed as “Strong Democrat Gains,” you have the Dems with a net gain of 11 seats and the loss of the filibuster.

(If you haven’t subscribed to Election Projection, I strongly urge you to do so. Caesar is top notch and non-partisan.)

Despite what you might think, I get no pleasure out of being the bearer of bad tidings. And I might add that you will note there is not one link to a “MSM” site. These are all respected professional polling and analysis sites. While a Nate Silver may be a Democrat, his professional reputation depends on accurate information and spot-on analysis. And Pew Research has proven to be accurate and reliable forecaster in the past.

As in 2006, I will pull no punches these last weeks. If you come to this site, you will get my honest opinion based on the best, the most professional analysis available. And right now, it appears that my worst fears are being confirmed and that the 2008 election may very well go down in history as a transformative moment - a point in time when the nation made a collective decision to veer left in its policies and politics. And given the rout in the House and Senate that the GOP appears to be headed for, it will be a very long time before the party will be able to get its act together and challenge the Democrats again.

What’s so bad about “spreading the wealth?”

That question has been put to me by more than one of my liberal friends since Obama told Joe the Plumber that’s what he intended with his tax policies. It’s a fair question and to answer it, we must look at the most enduring principles in American history - our foundational beliefs that define who we are and why we are an exceptional nation and people.

Our nation was founded on the rock of life, liberty, and property. These three principles are immutable. They are not only enshrined in the Constitution to one degree or another, they are part of our national DNA. They are every American’s birthright.

The more religious among us believe that two of these rights - life and liberty - are granted to us by God at birth. I would go a step further and say that our very birth as humans defines these rights. No God is necessary to confer what is ours by right of being born.

Advocating for the natural rights of man have fallen out of favor with many on the left in recent years. It screws up their entire worldview to have to deal with the fact that even a baby who comes into the world in North Korea possesses these rights the moment the child draws its first breath. And it is an uncomfortable truth for them to have to deal with the idea that it is government - and only government - that is capable of taking those rights away.

That North Korean baby is born with exactly the same rights to life and liberty as any American child. This is self evident, as Jefferson said. Twisted strands of logic that seek to deny this fact notwithstanding, the real difference between liberals and conservatives on this issue is how does one define “liberty.”

For 220 years, liberty in America has been a constantly evolving concept, becoming more and more inclusive and expansive as our revolution and drive for constitutional government began the first real age of the common man. And the engine of change that drove this concept has been the possession of private property being the guarantor of liberty.

Few governments on earth have taken such an expansive view of private property rights. Superficially, we tend to see “property” as land, or a house, or our private possessions. But over the years, we have expanded that definition to include exigencies that our Founders could never envision. We now recognize intellectual property - artistic creations, patented ideas, etc. - which has grown in importance as the world has become more global in commerce and exchanges of culture. This website is my property despite it having little, if any, intrinsic value.

And, of course, our money is our property. Except that there are many on the left who either don’t recognize that fact, or seek to undermine the entire concept of private property altogether in order to “share the wealth.”

Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic:

But let’s get back to this apparently controversial phrase–which, I gather, is going to remain prominent in McCain’s campaign rhetoric over the next few days. What, exactly, is so awful about “spreading the wealth”?

Government performs certain essential functions, from education to national defense. It must raise money to do that. Charging everybody the same tax rate might sound simple. But it would actually impose a much harsher burden on the poor, since they end up spending much–if not all–of their incomes on the basic necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter. As one famous 18th century philosopher argued,

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expen[s]e, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

Another rationale for progressive taxation is the fact that random chance has profound effects on everybody’s financial well-being. (A guy named John Rawls once wrote a thing or two about this.) Mandating economic equality–i.e., carrying out a truly socialist agenda–would obviously be wrong. But there are compelling moral and economic arguments for asking the fortunate to pay a little more in taxes, in order to blunt the influence of chance on people’s lives.

Among other things, it’s not clear how long a capitalist society would even survive without at least some redistribution, given the likelihood that–without it–the poor would get poorer and the rich would get richer.

Cohn has thrown up a gigantic strawman - that conservatives don’t support “progressive” taxation. There may be a few conservatives out there who, in the real world, actually oppose the idea of the rich paying more in taxes than the middle class. If there are, they are not taken seriously nor should they be.

But there is a reason Cohn erects that very large, very ugly scarecrow. It is to avoid calling attention to his attack on private property; the idea that forced altruism is a legitimate reason to take an American citizen’s hard earned money (property).

There is nothing “moral” about paying taxes. We pay taxes, as Cohn points out, so that government can provide those things that we, as individuals, are unable to provide for ourselves. Cohn is silent about what percentage of our property should be taken by our local government, our state government, or our national government (and therein lies another difference between the left and the right), but let us agree that Cohn is correct and that we must grant government the right to reach into our pockets and take what is necessary to defend us, to keep us safe, and to protect us from the depredations of our neighbor.

(I doubt whether Cohn would agree with my statement above about citizens granting the government any such right - but of course, that is what makes us exceptional as a nation. In America, it is the people who inform government what it’s powers are, not the other way around.)

It is not within the rights granted by the people of the United States for government to force people to be charitable. Altruism at the point of a gun defeats its purpose and abjures the idea that money is property and that taking a citizen’s property and giving it to another without consent is inimical to those rights that have been a part of America since our founding.

We consent to fund social welfare programs because we recognize that for the good of all, the poor must be fed and clothed and given a helping hand in order to become productive members of society (I realize this is a fantastical notion and that social welfare programs have, in fact, accomplished exactly the opposite - making people more dependent on government. But we’re talking theory here, not reality.) But when the left talks of “spreading the wealth,” they are not talking about those who possess the least amount of property among us. They are talking about funding programs that benefit the middle class - people who have but just not quite as much as others.

There is no “moral” component to this arrangement. There is no compact between the people and government to “spread the wealth.” Liberals may wish this were so but then there are those pesky private property rights which should be inviolate but that have been under attack recently and the very concept of any property being “private” has actually been questioned:

The New York Times following the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision:

The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday that the economically troubled city of New London, Conn., can use its power of eminent domain to spur development was a welcome vindication of cities’ ability to act in the public interest. It also is a setback to the “property rights” movement, which is trying to block government from imposing reasonable zoning and environmental regulations. Still, the dissenters provided a useful reminder that eminent domain must not be used for purely private gain.

Note the use of quotes for the term property rights, as if the words had no meaning outside of a few mossbacks who actually take the Constitution at its word.

With this mindset, it becomes easy to justify the government forcing citizens - rich or otherwise - to become philanthropists. And that is exactly what liberals are seeking; a transfer of property from one class to another in the name of what their idea of a “just society” might be.

There is no difference between taking a slice of your house and giving it to someone else - deserving or not - and taxing you for the same purpose. This is why the left uses “moral” arguments to advance their case when the moral parameters of the issue surrounds the very notion of private property instead of some civic certitude that it is “immoral” to oppose the seizing of such property.

If the government wishes to fund middle class entitlements - that is, property seized from those better off and given to those who may have less but are capable of taking care of themselves (the very definition of “spreading the wealth”), a conundrum arises that cannot be addressed by any moral argument about some citizens “deserving” or being “entitled” to have the government reach into their neighbor’s pocket who, either through his own efforts or Mr. Cohn’s “chance,” have more property. Once we start down that road, there will be no limit, no brake on what the many will be able to demand from the fewer.

Why are the American people so resistant to the idea of “spreading the wealth?” Because they realize better than liberal elitists that eventually, the hand of government will be reaching into their pocket, seizing their property, in order to fund the next egalitarian scheme from Washington. There is a fine old tradition of opposing “leveling” schemes in America. And “spreading the wealth” smacks of such nonsense. It is against the concept of private property for it to be appropriated by the government for other than utilitarian purposes. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, train the tragically uneducated, give the poor the tools to become productive taxpaying citizens with a job and hope for the future. It is part of the compact we live by as Americans that this has become a vital function of government. (At what level of government these services are best offered may be debated - not their necessity.)

So we are not talking about denying government assistance to those who can’t live without it. We are talking about taking from those who have and giving to those who don’t have quite as much. There is a huge, fundamental difference that escapes our friends on the left because to them, private property is determined by what the government allows you to keep not what citizens allow the government to take.

It is why liberals are opposed in principle to “giving” a tax cut. They’ve got it all wrong. The government doesn’t have the right to “give” the taxpayer anything. It’s the taxpayer’s property to begin with. How can government “give” what they don’t possess? A tax cut simply allows a citizen to keep more of his property that was never within the government’s purview to decide its provenance.

This has been sort of a free wheeling, stream of consciousness essay that allowed me to clarify my thinking about what is really at stake here when we are looking at what almost certainly will be a lurch to the left this coming election. Even if McCain can pull it out, we are going to have the most liberal Congress since at least the early 70’s and perhaps going farther back than that.

Aside from fighting the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine, I see fighting to protect private property rights - and all that concept encompasses - as the preeminent job of conservatives for the next few years.