The feds are saying flatly that the Vegas ricin case is not related to terrorism but I’m not so sure.

The man who was staying at the Vegas hotel and is in the hospital in critical condition, who almost certainly manufactured the ricin from raw castor beans by following instructions in what authorities described as an “a book on anarchy,” is apparently obsessed with domestic animals:

Neighbors in Utah described Mr. Von Bergendorff as a peculiar loner commonly seen in brown slacks and a brown shirt. Pauline and Grant Dansie, who live three doors down from Mr. Tholen, said Mr. Von Bergendorff spent six weeks last summer searching their backyard daily for a missing cat that he eventually said he found.

“He’s just a little bit different,” Mrs. Dansie said. “He was so obsessed with this cat; it was really strange. He didn’t really act like he wanted to be a friend. I remember one time he put a cat trap out in our field, and he caught our neighbor’s cat. We told him he had to give it back.”

Mr. Von Bergendorff, who is believed to be a computer graphic artist whose work has appeared on several science fiction novels, appears to have a lengthy history involving pets and animals. The police also found three cats and an emaciated dog in his hotel room; the local shelter took custody of the animals, but the dog was so starved and parched it had to be euthanized.

Public records show that Mr. Von Bergendorff lived for several years in the 1980s and 1990s with a relative, Fred Bergendorff, in La Mesa, Calif. Mr. Bergendorff, who died on Jan. 27, was the founder of the Pet Place, a charity focused on assisting homeless pets, and the host of the organization’s long-running TV and radio programs in Southern California.

The Pet Place appears to be on the up and up – an earnest and effective organization that saves thousands of discarded animals a year. The board members and officers are all upstanding citizens from what information I can gather on the web. There isn’t a hint of radicalism associated with this excellent and caring organization.

But Von Bergendorff may have taken it upon himself to avenge the helpless creatures he cares so deeply about. How is anyone’s guess. The amount of Ricin he made would seem to indicate several potential targets. And since a deadly dose of the toxin could fit on the head of the pin, I leave it to your imagination how many people he might have killed with a couple of vials of the stuff that were removed from his room.

The death of his pet-loving relative relative on January 27 may have tipped him over the edge of sanity. A little more than 2 weeks later, he checks into a Vegas hospital (February 15) with respiratory distress – one of the major symptoms of ricin poisoning:

Inhalation: Within a few hours of inhaling significant amounts of ricin, the likely symptoms would be respiratory distress (difficulty breathing), fever, cough, nausea, and tightness in the chest. Heavy sweating may follow as well as fluid building up in the lungs (pulmonary edema). This would make breathing even more difficult, and the skin might turn blue. Excess fluid in the lungs would be diagnosed by x-ray or by listening to the chest with a stethoscope. Finally, low blood pressure and respiratory failure may occur, leading to death.

CDC investigators are on the scene at the hospital trying to determine if, in fact Von Bergendorff inhaled the ricin.

Other neighbors had an even bleaker description of the life led by Von Bergendorff:

A down-on-his-luck Roger Von Bergendorff lived at his cousin’s home for more than a year before moving to Las Vegas about a year ago, said Tammy Ewell, who lives across the street from Thomas Tholen in Riverton, Utah, and described him and his wife, Ellen, as close friends.

“He was very much a loner. I would say more or less socially regressive. He just barely got by in life. He’d just barely make it,” Ewell said. “Tom was the last resort.”

No word on how Bergendorff made his living in Vegas. The rate at the Extended Stay Motel would run him at least $1200 a month.

The major media won’t speculate on this angle of the story for good reason – no proof. But we have some dots and they can easily be connected with a little intelligent speculation. A man who has exhibited unbalanced behavior in his devotion to animals to his neighbors loses a close relative, goes off the deep end, and envisions himself as perhaps some kind of avenging angel. He acquires a book on how to make ricin in order to exact revenge on those he sees as harming pets or animals. His ignorance in how to handle the deadly poison results in his exposure and subsequent hospitalization.

It is not impossible for such a scenario to have occurred. And it would be interesting to see if Von Bergendorff had made any connections to radical animal rights groups although that idea would be a huge stretch. More likely, he’s a sad, lonely, disturbed man who, if left to his own devices, might have brought tragedy to many people.

The Clinton campaign today apologized to Barack Obama for what it called “an inadvertent slip” in one of its ads that ran during the run up to Super Tuesday.

The ad portrayed Hillary Clinton walking and greeting voters on a street in a small New Hampshire town.

However, photo enhancement techniques employed by bloggers zeroed in on a house down the street shown in the background. Then, using similar technology developed by analysts at the National Reconnaissance Office for our spy satellites, it was discovered that the house in question had a racist lawn ornament – a small, black jockey known in the lawn ornament trade as “Jocko.”

“This was a clear and deliberate attempt to bring race into the campaign,” said blogger Ann Althouse.

“It’s almost as blatant as subliminally using part of the word N***er in an otherwise harmless ad.”

The Clinton camp’s apology was swift. “Frankly, I don’t see a damn thing,” said campaign aide Harold Ickes.

“But we’ve been beat up so much on this issue we may as well apologize now and get it over with before someone really decides to make an issue of it.”

Althouse said her next goal was to find clues to who really is behind 9/11 in John McCain’s commercials.

I hate days like this. There are a lot of things I’d like to write about but really don’t have anything to add to the blogospheric cacophony. Not that I’m necessarily above stealing from other bloggers. But do you really want to read your umpteenth post for the day on how Hillary is finished (or not), or Obama is a dangerous liberal cult figure (or not), or McCain is a lying sack of turd blossoms who will destroy the Republican party (or he’s worse than that).

I know I left The Huckster off that list but is anyone writing about him at all?

Then I could have blogged about the FISA fiasco. But it just seems of late I’m suffering from “Outrage Fatigue” (a term I take pride in coining. Well…if not coining the phrase I certainly popularized it. Um…perhaps not popularized, more like “used it to its best effect.”) Try as I might, I found it hard to rant and rail against liberals for their incredibly stupid, delibertately dishonest caterwauling about interrupting the Tom Lantos memorial service with a procedural motion on FISA when it was the Speaker’s admitted fault that the motion was unavoidable under the rules and that a scheduling snafu had occurred to boot.

Did that stop the “Republicans polticize the dead” crowd from throwing a tantrum worthy of any two year old? Of course not. And to make the criticism ascend to the level of sublime irony, it seems our lefty friends forget that Google has gone public and is actually making a little money now. If I typed in the name “Paul Wellstone” and added “Memorial Service” to the search, you would come across a story so profoundly disturbing that you would be forgiven for wretching while reading it.

It seems the Democrats wanted to honor the late great Senator from Minnesota who tragically died in a plane crash a few days before the 2002 election with a “memorial service.” I put the event in quotes because whatever Democrats tried to call it, it became a hot house political rally for the left. Republican friends of Wellstone – and there were many who respected his honesty, integrity, and sincere desire to take others views into account – found themselves the target of political barbs. The White House offered to send the Vice President of the United States – he was disinvited. One speaker went so far as to demand that Norm Coleman exit the race and allow a Democrat to win.

I guess when liberals politicize a memorial service, it’s “speaking truth to power” and is perfectly acceptable. Like when Jimmy Carter alluded to government spying on Martin Luther King at Coretta King’s funeral – a veiled reference to the wiretapping controversies of the day. And Joseph Lowrey, at the same memorial service, excoriated President Bush for the Iraq War.

There have been other examples of the left using dead people like political clubs. Accusing the GOP of doing so when a simple reading of the rules would have given the lie to that meme propelled the left wingosphere beyond contempt and into the stratosphere of malicious mischief.

You can see my dilemma. Unless you can summon the appropriate amount of outrage, simply listing the transgressions of liberals for exactly that which they are taking the right to task becomes an exercise in boredom killing. Everyone knows that lefties are a bunch of hypocritical bastards with the morals of an alley cat and the brains of a marmoset. How many times can you say that and remain interesting?

There were other topics I could have written about today. Pakistan is set to elect a parliament on Monday. Musharraf has been making deals with al-Qaeda and the Taliban so quickly, he’s running out of white flags to run up Pakistani flag poles. Perhaps in spite of this, he is easily the most unpopular man in Pakistan. He envies George Bush’s approval numbers.

And yet, given that he has forbidden much international monitoring of the election, it is probable he will try to monkey with the results. He will almost certainly not try to engineer a victory for his party but rather deny the opposition a 2/3 majority which would result in his immediate and well deserved retirement. The US should condemn this election before it happens just to get a head start on the mayhem that will probably follow.

Kenya has been in the news recently as well. Not only is Obama’s good buddy Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe still winking at the violence being carried out by his supporters against the corrupt, election stealing government of President Kibaki and his Kikuyu tribe, but it now appears that the Germans of all people are offering Kenyans the opportunity to use their own power sharing agreement as the basis for a rapproachment.

I know there’s some really bad international relations joke in there but I can’t find it at the moment.

Other topics I could have written about were Lebanon (tipping toward civil war), Afghanistan (NATO is going to its grave with a whimper), Iraq (things aren’t as good or as bad as people are saying), GOP election prospects (where?), and the horrific tragedy at Northern Illinois University (talk about politicizing dead people…).

Any one of these topics I could have turned into one of my brilliant, penetrating, incisive essays, read by millions, and influencing the movers and shakers in government, bending them to my iron will.

But telling the world what to do gets boring sometimes so I’ll just sit here and shut up for the time being. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find something interesting to write about…

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker

Hard to guess what Obama’s game is here but in an interview with the Reno-Gazette editorial board, the Democratic contender for the nomination praised Ronald Reagan and gave some decidedly un-progressive reasons for his admiration:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

(Transcription from video courtesy of Open Left)

Many heads exploding today on the left. Matt Stoller:

It is extremely disturbing to hear, not that Obama admires Reagan, but why he does so. Reagan was not a sunny optimist pushing dynamic entrepreneurship, but a savvy politician using a civil rights backlash to catapult conservatives to power. Lots of people don’t agree with this, of course, since it doesn’t fit a coherent narrative of GOP ascendancy. Masking Reagan’s true political underpinning principles is a central goal of the conservative movement, with someone as powerful as Grover Norquist seeking to put Reagan’s name on as many monuments as possible and the Republican candidates themselves using Reagan’s name instead of George Bush’s in GOP debates as a mark of greatness. Why would the conservative movement create such idolatry around Reagan? Is is because they just want to honor a great man? Perhaps that is some of it. Or are they trying to escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years, as they did after Nixon, Reagan, and Bush I?

Mr. Stoller cannot be taken seriously if he actually believes that conservatives are trying to "escape the legacy of the conservative movement so that it can be rebuilt in a few years…" That’s the kind of shallow, vapid analysis one would expect from a partisan hack like Stoller but does not reflect the reality of what is happening on the right.

Indeed, others on the left have been pushing this notion that Reagan’s success as a politician was due almost entirely to his pandering to southern whites and playing the race card:

No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about "state’s rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi—the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for Reagan Democrats, peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.

Only those ignorant of the concept of federalism and Reagan’s commitment to turning back the tide of federal control – not in matters of civil rights – but in education and other areas where there was federal overreach. would posit the notion that Reagan was giving a “green light” to racists.

In fact, Obama’s analysis would seem to validate Reagan’s critique – that the government had “grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.” This disconent was fed by people like Carter who talked consistently about America’s better days being behind it and that we must learn to live with less. With that kind of attitude, there would still be a Soviet Union today and America would probably look a lot like it.

The hard left will never understand Reagan nor what his revolution was about or what it has wrought. Obama has made one of the more astute moves of the campaign – if he isn’t forced to backtrack and qualify his words about Reagan. By invoking The Gipper, he establishes a powerful connection with a true agent of change – despite the fact that his policies would serve to undermine most of what Reagan accomplished and represented. As long as he sticks with generalities and platitudes, he can obscure that part of his program.

Obama’s surprising words about Reagan won’t garner him too many GOP votes. But it will soften his image so that he doesn’t look like quite the progressive ogre many on the right would like to paint him.

ADDENDUM

Edwards may be able to get away with trashing Obama for these words of praise for Reagan but one wonders what the Great Triangulator is going to say about it.

Many moderates and independents are also fond of the The Gipper and in a general election, Hillary needs those votes to win. My guess is, if pressed, Hillary will say something like “I wouldn’t have put it quite that way…” and then acknowledge Reagan’s optimism and skill as a politician.

Meanwhile, the netnuts are beside themselves. I’ll have more reaction in a while as the wailing and gnashing of teeth continues.

Join me tonight from 8:00 PM - 10:00 PM Central time as results roll in from Iowa for a special two hour edition of The Rick Moran Show.

To help me analyze the results, I’ll have some top notch blog pundits live on the air throughout the evening.

8:00 – Capt. Ed Morrissey of Captainsquarters Blog.

8:30 Doug Gibbs of Political Pistachio

9:00 – Kevin Sullivan of Real Clear Politics Blog

9:30 – Shane and Frank from Political Vindication and Jazz Shaw from Middle Earth Journal.

As usual, we’ll be taking your calls. You can dial in at (718) 664-9764.

You can access the live stream by going here. Make sure you click on the “chat” icon and join in the fun in the chat room.

A podcast of the show will be available about 15 minutes after the show ends.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Not the best picture of Ebony

I told my Ebony that about 15 minutes before my friend of 16 years took her last breath.

She never tired of me calling her a “pretty girl.” As I would repeat the endearment over and over, her face would scrunch up in pleasure and she would purr loudly. She connected the same way if I repeated her name again and again. In the end, she couldn’t purr anymore, but her last hours were filled with emotion and pathos nonetheless.

The last few weeks had seen a change in her behavior. She was more demanding of attention, more vocal. She would actually jump on the back of my computer chair and butt her head against my shoulder if I didn’t drop everything and pet her, tickle her.

And then about a week ago, she simply began to disappear for long stretches of time, coming out only to nibble on some food and drink some water. She was under the bed or behind the couch, content to lie there for most of the day and sleep.

Then on Thursday, I went out in the morning to make some coffee and lo and behold, lying in the middle of the kitchen floor directly in front of the coffee pot so that I couldn’t miss it was a very dead mouse. And five feet away, lying on the floor and cleaning herself proudly was Ebony. I gave her some catnip and stroked her lovingly.

I didn’t see her again until late last night when she began a pitiful series of cries. After a few of those, Sue and I decided to move the couch and find out what was wrong. When we pulled it away from the wall, she was lying on her stomach, face down and obviously in bad shape.

Her breathing was very shallow and she was very weak. She couldn’t hold her head up. She trembled and she was very cold. We both knew then that the end was very near.

We laid her on her cat bed. Sue had some heating paks left over from when she had surgery so she heated those up in the microwave and placed them on top of the warm blanket we threw over her. We spoon fed her a little of her favorite food which she enjoyed immensely. The heat seemed to ease her breathing. And then, the death watch.

How do you say goodbye to a friend? For all the cats I have been possessed by, I had never gone through this. Previous kitties had been stolen or more likely killed by a car or captured by some family despite the tags I had on them. A couple of long time companions I had to give to friends when I moved to a new place that didn’t allow pets. But with all the cats I’ve loved, I never had to sit by and watch one as they died.

We talked to her constantly and stroked her continuously. Every once and a while, she would reach out and grab one of our hands and pull it tight to her chest, vigorously licking our fingers – an act that would make both of us dissolve in tears. She would also occasionally raise her head and look at me right in the eyes, reaching out her paw as if to touch my face. The effort would cause her to tremble and shake and she would fall back, resuming her struggle to keep breathing.

Her breathing got shallower and quicker. She slept a bit. I kept telling her goodbye but I think after a few hours, she couldn’t hear me. Her eyes were already glazed over and barely open. Then I dozed off briefly. When I awoke, she was gone.

Everyone owned by a cat has stories of their magic, their feats of athleticism, their maddening aloofness. My Ebony was no different. She was an extraordinary athlete who loved the outdoors, a tremendously attentive and loving mother, an affectionate and hugely entertaining companion. She had that cat sense of knowing when you needed company and when to avoid you. But mostly, she had that otherwordly sense of how best to fit in to my life, to be awake when I was awake and recognize the rhythms of my day.

Our other cats sense our loss and are depressed this morning. We have made a special effort to pay attention to them, to reassure them. Aramas, Ebony’s son and lover, is especially upset, walking around aimlessly and looking at us pitifully. He and the little one are now asleep and I hope they stay that way until after the burial.

Our Christmas season is darkened somewhat by the death of my friend. But we had been expecting the end for many months as her physical condition deteriorated. To have it happen early morning on Christmas eve was very sad. We had just trimmed the tree on Saturday night and were laughing about how Ebony would take up her accustomed spot, lying for hours on end on the stand cover underneath the tree, the colored lights reflecting off her shiny coat giving her a weird glow.

Instead, we will simply remember her and all that she gave us and thank her for being our friend.

Take one moderately conservative governor of a small southern state. Add a little cornpone humor, endow him with an unctuous speaking style, fill him with syrupy policy prescriptions. And then dump a truckload of socially conservative positions in the mix and what you have is the future mold of the Republican party candidate for president.

With the ascension of Mike Huckabee to near front runner status in the race for the Republican nomination, the Grand Old Party is looking at something of a hybrid candidate compared to past hopefuls; a “big government” conservative who projects a more moderate image on fiscal and economic issues but whose stand on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues matches those of the rock ribbed, grassroots Christian conservatives that increasingly are making a decisive difference in the primaries.

Not that the Christian conservatives didn’t make an impact in previous campaigns. But this is a different Republican party than the one that confidently put forth George W. Bush for a second term in 2004. The party’s losses in the 2006 election cut deeply into some of its traditional strongholds in the upper south and Midwest while nearly destroying the party in New England and the northeast. The color of the electoral map is beginning to match the mood of the GOP; getting bluer as time goes on. Even in the mountain west, a Republican stronghold for decades, is seeing serious challenges to Republican hegemony in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

There are as many reasons for this swing of the pendulum as there are pundits. But one basic fact overrides all others; the American voter is less conservative, more open to government solutions than they were just a decade ago.

And perhaps most importantly, they believe the Democrats can do a better job of dealing with issues that are most important to them.

For example, a recent USA Today-Gallup poll showed that the American people believe the most important issue confronting the country is the War in Iraq. By a 10 point margin – 48%-38% – voters believe the Democrats are better able to deal with the war. The second most important issue named in the survey was the economy. Voters feel Democrats better able to handle that issue by a 50% – 38% tally. The GOP scores with the third most important issue; illegal immigration. They maintain a plurality of 44% – 37% of support for their approach.

But a further sign that the Republicans are in trouble comes from their shrinking lead among voters who view Homeland Security/Terrorism as an important issue. From a lead of 58% – 36% on election day 2004, the Democrats have closed the gap to 48% – 38%. And with national security fading in importance as an issue, not only will the Republican advantage become less pronounced but the issue won’t cut against the Democrats so severely.

Beyond specific issues, a Pew Research poll found Americans growing less socially and economically conservative over the last decade while younger voters show more faith in government solutions to problems than their elders. And for the first time since the 1970’s, the phrase “The best way to insure peace is through military strength” garners a bare plurarlity who agree (49% – 47%).

All of this points to an electorate that would seem to be unfriendly to the kind of traditional conservatism candidates like Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Fred Thompson are running on. And this is where Mike Huckabee’s more moderate, government friendly kind of conservatism may play better among the general populace than his fellows.

Make no mistake. Huckabee is extremely conservative on social issues. Some of his utterances over the years raise the hackles of women, gays, AIDS patients, and those less outwardly religious than the Baptist minister.

But his record as Arkansas governor reveals someone who was more interested in results than ideology. He has earned the enmity of the conservative Club For Growth for his tax and spending policies during his 10 1/2 years as governor because Huckabee did some decidedly unconservative things while in office. He funded road building by raising taxes. He initiated a state sponsored health care program for kids. He raised taxes a total of 21 times, increasing the average tax burden on state residents from $1,969 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1997, to $2,902 in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005.

Huckabee has since embraced the so-called “Fair Tax” proposal that would tax consumption and not income. No one gives the proposal a ghost of a chance to win approval in Congress and the candidate’s adopting the idea may have been so that he could tap in to the grass roots enthusiasm for the measure. Fair Tax advocates are passionate about the idea and they have flocked to Huckabee’s banner since he is the only Republican candidate pushing the program.

Huckabee was extremely popular in Arkansas because he addressed the needs of the people and made government work efficiently to address their problems. As the country moves more toward the center, this is the message they want to hear from politicians. What traditional Republican candidates are offering may play well within the party but the broader electorate could ultimately reject. A candidate who can speak the language of government as helper without making it seem as if he is a traditional liberal while espousing conservative social views may be the wave of the future for Republicans. And Huckabee may be riding that wave all the way to the nomination.

UPDATE

Lest there be any confusion, this is in no way and endorsement for Huckabee or his policies. Regular readers know I can’t abide his shameless pandering to the Christian right nor his squishy foreign policy or blatantly liberal fiscal and tax policies.

But Slim Guy has it pegged in the comments – his appeal goes beyond Christian conservatives and has tapped a rich vein of “Main Street” conservatives – people who have an affinity for the religious right and who see the party as too “corporate” or beholden to Wall Street.

This is also indicative of an urban/rural split in the GOP that absolutely must be healed if the Republicans expect to win next November.

I’m running out of ways to make a play on words of Governor Goober. Pretty soon, I’ll be forced to simply call him stupid.

This past week, Huckafraud lied through his teeth about a cross being subtly but strategically placed in a campaign ad to make it appear the candidate was a preacher in a pulpit. He dismissed such thoughts as a conspiracy theory, saying that anyone who saw a cross rather than a bookcase also probably heard “Paul is dead” if you played the ad backwards.

But Dan Riehl proves how the lighting in the ad was manipulated. And beyond that, we’re talking about political advertising. There is not one thing in the foreground or background that isn’t deliberately placed. To expect anyone to believe otherwise is to believe in Santa Claus.

Buttressing the idea that the cross is deliberately placed is the fact that Huckabee not so subtly also mentions “Christ” in the ad. Now before people go ballistic on me, allow me to point out that by mentioning the savior, Huckabee deliberately excludes anyone but Christians from his Christmas message. This is extraordinarily unusual for a man running for president in a multi-faith country. And for Huckabee to deny that the ad was not targeted at the Christian right is ludicrous.

This has been my beef with Huckabee – his willingness to inject his religion and religious beliefs – subtly or not – into the campaign. It is done to pander to the Christian right and it is working. But Huckabee’s efforts to obscure his left leaning record on a variety of issues as well as blatant flip flops on some others and now this blatantly exclusionary commercial all add up to a slick, untrustworthy, dissembling man and unworthy to be considered for the presidency.

If that weren’t enough, now comes word that a member of his campaign or an “ally” depending on who you read, decided to tug on superman’s cape and criticize entertainer/pundit Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh describes the attack:

So the Huckabee Universe Guy said, “Honestly, Rush doesn’t think for himself. I mean, that’s not necessarily a slap because he’s not paid to be a thinker, he’s an entertainer. I can’t remember the last time he’s veered from the talking points from the DC-Manhattan chattering class. If they were praising Huckabee, he would be, too.”

That’s just… I can’t believe that there is a Republican alive today who thinks this, whether supporting the Huckster, Giuliani, whoever. Then this also, said the Huck forcer, “I have to think that he’s dying to have Hillary in the White House. Bill Clinton made Rush a megastar. Having another Clinton back in power would make him the Leading Voice of the Opposition, once again.”

Ed Morrissey chides the Hucksters for “Bringing A Water Pistol To A Firefight.” Limbaugh’s response proves the wisdom of that remark:

What this supposed Huck supporter… I’m not even sure it’s a Huck supporter. This sounds like something a Clinton person would say. You know, this is what the Clinton people believe, that Bill Clinton made my career, that all I want is somebody in office that can make me even bigger, and that I don’t think for myself. You people are just mind-numbed robots. I can’t believe there’s anybody on Huckabee’s staff that ignorant about what happens on this program. If this is indeed Huckster forces attacking Rush, then he’s got some people on his staff that are going to cause him problems because that’s just simply idiotic. This notion… I have to explain this too often, as far as I’m concerned. This notion that I was nothing, that I was just wandering aimlessly in the radio muck field until Bill Clinton came along, and voila! I blossomed into what I am today is frankly absurd. This broadcast commenced with 56 little radio stations and WABC New York on August 1st, 1988. By 1993, when Wilhelm Von Der Schlick Meister was inaugurated as president, number 42, we had 500 radio stations and our audience was at about 17-1/2 maybe 18 million people.

To buttress the idea that this indeed is what the Huckabee camp thinks of Rush and, more importantly, is part of an emerging strategy to create an “Us vs. The World” mentality among his supporters, here’s a great analysis by Allahpundit on a similar dustup the Hucksters are having with Ann Coulter:

The more the conservative world comes out against him, from Will to Peggy Noonan to NRO to Rush to Sean Hannity, the more he’ll be forced to pitch an “us against them” campaign to his supporters. He’s too far left on too many issues to tack right credibly, so the only way to keep them in the fold is to try to build on that religious and economic populism he’s peddling and make this a full-blown Cause against the conservative establishment. The trick is keeping the few truly big players like Limbaugh neutral, since they really do have the chops to tilt this thing in a two-man race. Sounds like it might already be too late.

Here is the conservative crack up writ large. Not a regional schism but rather cultural one. It’s the rural/devout Christian/big government/compassionate conservative wing of the party vs. the urban/secular/traditional/libertarian factions. I wrote about this urban/rural split in my Pajamas Media article:

It is more related to the urban/rural tensions in the party than perhaps any objection to Huckabee using his faith to energize the Christian right. Surely there are as many urban evangelicals as there are rural libertarians. But the heart of the party is still in the south and what used to be called “The Bible Belt.” These Republicans are more socially conservative than party members who live in the urban and suburban centers of the north and west.

They have stood by and watched as what they call the “Wall Street ” wing of the party denigrates their social agenda and takes their vote for granted. Supporting Huckabee and listening to the rest of the party wail about the candidate’s faith and unelectability only makes them more determined to support him. This also goes for the growing number of “Main Street” conservatives who have an affinity with the Christian right and have bought into Huckabee’s vision of a less corporate, more compassionate party.

Huckabee is running toward a gasoline dump with a lit match and no one appears able to stop him. Rudy is fading. Romney is dropping. Fred is struggling. McCain’s campaign is holding its breath, hoping not to get sidetracked by the coming New York Times hit piece. And emerging from all of this relatively unscathed will be the Preacher Man, fully able to exploit the cleavage between those who think he would be a disaster as a candidate and those who see him as the future of the party.

In this volatile race, anything is possible. And while it was not very smart to attack Rush Limbaugh (the campaign says it didn’t come from them) it is fully in keeping with a strategy that seeks to unite supporters as a Band of Brothers against those who would destroy them.

This may very well allow Huckabee to win the nomination. But what happens to the party and conservative movement as a result of his deliberate challenge to the establishment is another matter.

A good old fashioned Midwestern ice storm has arrived and we’re expecting almost 1/2 inch of ice to accumulate before it turns to rain later tonight.

I expect to lose power at any time – probably for at least 24 hours and maybe longer.

Same storm knocked out power to half of Oklahoma. Don’t know if it will be quite as bad as that but the radar does not look good.

We’ve got our flashlights and candles all set along with extra blankets. Sue won’t be able to go to work due to our depressed driveway being a sheet of ice already.

If you don’t see anything posted for a day or two, you’ll know why.