Right Wing Nut House

I’m a little bemused this morning reading lefty blogs who are chortling over Doug Hoffman’s defeat last night. Isn’t that sort of like someone who’s been thrown in a sh*t pile and accidentally discovering a brass ring?

It isn’t just the raw results that should give Democrats a cold chill. The internals of the exit polls reveal several key demographic groups moving strongly back to the GOP including ex-urban whites, as well as suburban women. If that trend continues - and at the moment, that’s a big “if” - the GOP is back in the national ball game with several states that were trending blue like Virginia inching away from the Democrats and returning home.

Of course, the low turnout in these elections make it difficult to really pronounce such trends as harbingers of victory for Republicans in 2010. But moderates and Blue Dogs on the Hill think they’re real enough, which should, at the very least, complicate matters for Nancy Pelosi as she moves the health care reform bill to the floor. I don’t think the results changed anyone’s vote - and that’s the problem for Pelosi. She’s still short a couple of dozen votes for passage of a bill with a strong public option and what happened last night will just make her job of arm twisting Blue Dogs to jump on board that much more difficult.

Of all the results that came in last night, Republicans can take the most heart from the Virginia governor’s race. It’s not that McDonnell won - that was expected. But his margin of victory was astonishing considering that Obama took the state by 7% last November. Deeds finished 12 points behind Obama’s total and the other two statewide races saw similar massacres of the Democratic candidates. Again, it is perhaps folly to read too much into this race, but if you were to ask Axelrod (and if you were able to get an honest response from him), I think he would say that they were most disappointed in what happened statewide in Virginia.

New Jersey is an entirely different narrative. It is pretty clear that Obama’s presidency was a non-player in people’s decision for whom to vote. The issue was a scumbag governor - period - and the clear desire of New Jerseians to kick the bum out.

Nate Silver:

Obama approval was actually pretty strong in New Jersey, at 57 percent, but 27 percent of those who approved of Obama nevertheless voted for someone other than Corzine. This one really does appear to be mostly about Corzine being an unappealing candidate, as the Democrats look like they’ll lose just one or two seats in the state legislature in Trenton. Corzine compounded his problems by staying negative until the bitter end of the campaign rather than rounding out his portfolio after having closed the margin with Christie.

That’s pretty convincing evidence that, at least in the New Jersey governor’s race, “all politics are local” prevailed.

Not so in NY23. I am very disappointed that Doug Hoffman lost. As in any vote, it was a variety of factors that did Hoffman in. Was he “too conservative?” I doubt that. Hoffman wasn’t a bomb thrower nor is he a radical rightie. He was a nice little “gray man” as I called him yesterday, who didn’t impress the locals with his knowledge of local issues nor set them on fire with his personality. And I think the enthusiasm felt for him by national conservatives never translated into support on the ground in the district.

The Dede Factor probably had something to do with Hoffman’s loss. How much is hard to say. And don’t forget the machinations of the national GOP and state party bigwigs who foisted Scozzafava on the district in the first place. If Hoffman hadn’t been on the ballot, I am not convinced she would have won anyway. Owens centrism contrasted badly for the GOP with Scozzafava’s center left voting record as well as her open embrace of such positions as pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. That would have kept many conservatives at home last night watching “V” rather than heading to the polls to vote for the likes of Scozzafava. The notion that she would have won if Hoffman had stayed off the ballot is just not supportable by what we know.

From some New York commenters and correspondents, I am told that redistricting will probably make this a safe Democratic enclave by the 2010 race. We will see about that. It could be that come the mid terms, very few seats in the country would be “safe” for Democrats unless the unemployment rate comes down significantly, and a way is found to lower the deficit. In case you didn’t hear, voters are indeed angry. They appear angry at both parties, but Democrats come in for the lion’s share of the blame simply by virtue of them being the “ins” at the present time.

If I were a Democrat, I would be relieved that the night wasn’t as bad as it could have been. As a nominal Republican, I am pleased but very cautious. I see nothing from those results that shows me the voter is ready to embrace the GOP as an alternative to Obama and the Democrats. I think there was a lot of “holding of noses” by people in Virginia and New Jersey when going into the polling booth. I sense little enthusiasm for choosing Republicans over Democrats - something that can be changed only if the lessons from last night sink in with the mossbacks currently in charge of the party in Washington.

What are those lessons? Listen to conservatives. Not the ones calling for a purge of incumbents that don’t measure up to some idiotic notion of ideological purity. That way leads to madness and defeat:

But their success in Tuesday’s upstate New York special election, where grass-roots efforts pushed GOP nominee Dede Scozzafava to drop out of the race and helped Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman surge into the lead on the eve of Election Day, has generated more money and enthusiasm than organizers ever imagined.

Activists predict a wave that could roll from California to Kentucky to New Hampshire and that could leave even some GOP incumbents — Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is one — facing unexpectedly fierce challenges from their right flank.

“I would say it’s the tip of the spear,” said Dick Armey, the former GOP House majority leader who now serves as chairman of FreedomWorks, an organization that has been closely aligned with the tea party movement. “We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today.”

“What you’re going to see,” said Armey, “is moderates and conservatives across the country in primaries.”

Dick Armey is a fool. He knows full well that incumbents challenged in a primary are much more vulnerable to defeat in the general election than those who run virtually unopposed. And why the challenge? Does the member have ethics problems? If so, then by all means throw the rascal out.

The idea that an incumbent has “betrayed conservative principles” might be cause for removal but who are these national conservatives that they think they can dictate to locals and define “conservatism” for them? They may have their own ideas on how conservative their member is and to have someone else tell them they’re full of it - especially someone from outside the state or district - is a real recipe for a civil war.

I am coming around to the notion that the GOP has to blow their opportunity in both 2010 and 2012 for anything to change. Losing when you should have had a slam dunk win (as I think 2010 should be) might wake up a few people who need a kick in the ass. And that includes throwing out the deadwood in Washington as well as putting the radical righties in their place. Both groups are dragging the GOP down and, like a drunk who has hit rock bottom, will only reform when the alternative is more unpalatable.

UPDATE

Pete Wehner points to something I hadn’t considered:

Among the important by-products of this election is that it will encourage many impressive and capable Republicans from around the country to become candidates. They now believe, with justification, that 2010 looks to be a very good year for the GOP. If an individual ever wanted to toss his hat into the ring, this is the time to do it.

I wrote in both 2006 and 2008 about the way the Democrats far outperformed the GOP in candidate recruitment, and how that factor was one of the primary reasons for their success. There are several factors that go into recruiting a good candidate including having a strong base of support in some part of the district, some nominal name recognition, and, as always, an ability to self finance is seen as a huge plus.

I am willing to bet that Hoffman was not the best conservative candidate available in NY23, although not knowing anything about the district I can’t say for sure. But if the GOP can attract some up and comers, as well as a few old political hands who are known in the district who might be encouraged by what happened last night, more power to them.

There is no way to adequately explain how royally delicious the irony that can be found in this post by Jon Walker at Firedoglake.

To those of us on both sides who look in askance at the excessively ideological fringes of both right and left, the echo that can be heard in Mr. Walker’s piece from conservatives is eerie:

Bill Owens is a conservative Democrat. He is arguably more conservative than the official Republican candidate was (Dede Scozzafava dropped out over the weekend). For example, his opposition to the public option puts him not only far to the right of the bulk of the Democratic party, but significantly to the right of the majority of Americans. He was selected because he fit the Rahm Emanuel philosophy that the only way for Democrats to win right-leaning districts is with conservative Democratic candidates.

The theory is that a center-right Democrat will win the entire Democratic base, most of the independents, and a few of the more liberal Republicans. That theory is getting blown out of the water in NY-23rd. Bill Owens’s remaining competition is the ultra-rightwing Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman. The vast majority of the district should be ideologically much closer Owens than Hoffman, yet Hoffman is leading in the polls.

If Hoffman wins it will be a big loss for the misguided ideal among some Democrats that the only way to win right-leaning districts is by diligently staking out bland center-right positions. Having a candidate that seems “real” and can really fire up the base is very important. People often vote because they feel elected officials are ignoring them and they want to send a message. Right now, there is a real populist rage out there directed at Washington in general.

Yep - even though the “vast majority” in the district should be supporting Owens because they are closer to his more moderate ideology, somehow, someone is playing a trick! Hoffman is leading in the polls? How is that possible?

Well, maybe the district is closer to Hoffman in their ideology than Owens. But that’s not possible because Hoffman is a radical, far right, loony tunes, ass-upside-down drooling righty.

Or, Mr. Walker has a hole in his head and his cranial matter has been leaking lo these many years.

Now read this from Mac Ranger:

The Republican Party wins ONLY when Conservatism is it’s core. Willy-Nilly RINOISM got us shalacked in 2006 and 2008. Trying to out liberal the liberals, quasi-Republicans made deals with the devil and got burned in the process.

Is that too remarkable for words? One state, two state, red state, blue state - it doesn’t matter. Those in thrall to ideology see things exactly the same only coming at the issue from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Politico had this piece of cheery news today; the True Blue Conservative Brigade will fan out across the country and attack those they see as too “moderate” to be Republicans - even incumbents!

Activists contend that the only way back to majority status is to embrace the conservative principles that the party jettisoned during the past decades once it became too enamored of power. To them, the issue is less about ideological purity than about the compromises they see the party’s Washington establishment making and what they contend is a lack of support for conservative candidates who are deemed unelectable by GOP solons.

“New York 23, on some scale, is the first battle of a larger internal Republican debate over how to define the party,” said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative who is challenging Crist for the Senate nomination. “They want us to vote for their candidates, but they don’t want us to run for office.”

Imagine the cheering going on at the DNC upon reading this. Millions and millions of Republican dollars being spent to kill each other off. Brilliant! And then bloodied and nearly broken, some poor senator or congressman goes into a general election nearly broke and facing a well funded, attractive Democratic challenger. The result? Pelosi and Reid laugh all the way to January and the swearing in of even bigger Democratic majorities.

As I’ve repeatedly said, the circumstances in NY23 are unique and serve the valuable purpose of telling those mossbacks in Washington to recruit good conservatives who will remain that way once they get to Washington. But sharpening the long knives for incumbents? To what purpose? It’s not a question of “victory at all costs” but rather “Who’s side are you really on when these actions will help only the Democrats?”

Now Mr. Walker does not go so far as to advocate the targeting of Blue Dogs although that has been suggested numerous times on liberal blogs. But I’m afraid he is dead wrong about Doug Hoffman - who apparently committed the cardinal sin of supporting Glenn Beck’s “9 Principles and 12 Values” which include such radically right wing subversive notions as “1) America is Good.” And for good measure, Mr. Hoffman informed Glenn Beck on his show that he was his “mentor” - a very polite response from an affable, polite man.

Actually, Hoffman is a nice, pleasant, gray little man who’s about as radical as a chicken breast, and a lot less loony than some of his national supporters who want to imbue the nondescript Mr. Hoffman with qualities that would have made George Washington blush. I like the fellow - especially the fact that he is an accountant. Just think of a Congress full of accountants instead of lawyers.

Now that’s a conservatism I would pledge my undying devotion.

But note the chilling similarity in the thought processes between Mac Ranger and Jon Walker. The “key to victory” is ideological purity. Never mind that the district had little interest in voting for Scozzafava once they found out she was not much of a Republican - even for a reasonably moderate conservative district like NY23. And the voters up there are apparently ready to reject a moderately left Democrat like Owens.

Hoffman probably wins because he got a boost from conservative activists who trashed Scozzafava (sometimes unfairly. As I said in this post, she is far from being a “radical leftist”), and propelled the GOP candidate to the front by dint of sheer enthusiasm and successfully portraying him as the only “real” Republican in the race.

If he loses? Well then it’s back to the drawing board. Maybe they’ll be able to find someone even more conservative than Hoffman because, after all, the reason he will lose is because he “just wasn’t conservative enough.”

Unless the GOP is very, very careful, that may be an epithet on the tombstone of many an incumbent when all is said and done in 2010.

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn’t been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a “conservative” reigns supreme all across the land.

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as “conservative” was leapt upon by these morons as “proof” that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of “conservative” depending on where you live doesn’t seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against “moderates” who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic “litmus tests” guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

Why the name calling? Why the harsh, unyielding language? Because I too, believe this country is in enormous trouble. But the way the base is going about trying to overcome the political deficit that George Bush and his cronies placed the Republican party will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. In truth, the gloating being done on the far right over the ravaging of Scozzafava has led to a belief that the template used to stick it to the establishment in NY23 can be grafted on to other districts where “RINO’s” are running - GOP incumbents be damned.

The RNC, the NRCC, and other conservatives like Newt Gingrich erred in trying to foist a liberal Republican onto the people of the 23rd congressional district. On this, we can all agree. But when I read bullsh*t like this, a cold chill goes up my spine:

This showed just how bad things have become. The Republican Party has been hijacked. Conservatives have been driven underground by the RINOs and the DIABLOs (Democrats in all but label only). This leftish creep was insidious until we got clubbed over the head when the ultra liberal media picked our presidential candidate — the Gang of 14 tool John McCain.

We all sucked it up. We went along. We embraced the ticket in the spirit of AROO — (any Republican over Obama) — and we held our noses until Sarah Palin came along. Ah, just a spoonful of Sarah helped the medicine go down.

But now it’s time to clean house. Newt and his ilk will be relegated to the dustbin of history, and deservedly so. Enough with the old, in with the true!

A couple of hundred thousand conservatives fill up the mall on September 12 and Geller thinks conservatives have been “driven underground?” What kind of utter nonsense is that? Geller is a full throated member of the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined “enemies” - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.

The idea that Newt Gingrich should be “relegated to the dustbin of history” - a not uncommon sentiment I’ve read over the past week - demonstrates a determined refusal to objectively analyze the political realities of the unique situation in NY23 and deliberately remain ignorant of the consequences that would have accrued if the Republican party had failed to support the Republican candidate in the district.

A good case can be made that Gingrich especially could have kept his mouth shut about conservatives rightly gravitating to Hoffman. His petulance with national conservatives who sought to replace the liberal Scozzafava with a more palatable choice was uncalled for and further demonstrates his unfitness for the presidency.

But kick him out of the party? Marginalize one of the only public intellectuals on the right who can speak to a broad cross section of America with authority and credibility? Perhaps that’s Newt’s real problem; the anti-intellectualism on the far right that sees any independent thinking deviating from their worldview as suspect. Or perhaps it’s just the idea that Gingrich, through his years of service to the conservative and Republican causes, has become a part of the establishment and hence, a target.

Who do these louts think the party establishment should have supported in NY23? There would have been no real difference if the DC Republicans had supported Hoffman or the Democrat Owens over Scozzafava. The result would have been exactly the same; the national party spitting in the face of local Republican organizations who chose Scozzafava - regardless of her admitted liberalism and regardless of whether her candidacy was rammed through by powerful New York state GOP bigwigs.

The pragmatism demonstrated by the national Republicans in giving Scozzafava the support they felt necessary for her to win is lost on the ideologues who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that majorities are crafted by addition, not subtraction. Scozzafava would have been a beastly congresswoman, as unreliable a Republican vote on the issues as could be imagined. But Congress is governed as much by procedure as it is ideas, and when the whip is cracked by the leadership, she probably would have been with the party most of the time.

In effect, the base is criticizing the Republican establishment for acting like a political party and not a college debating society. The advantage of belonging to the latter is that you can pick and choose members based on whatever subjective criteria you wish. Don’t like the cut of a man’s suit or women with red hair? Fine. But don’t apply your ridiculous litmus tests to a political party trying to fashion a majority.

If you wish to deny membership into your ever shrinking club of “true” conservatives to those who you think don’t live up to your narrow, parochial, rigid definition, that is your problem. But if you care one whit about the United States of America, you would swallow your excessively ideological outlook on politics, take off the blinders, and realize that a party made up of lockstep righties who think like you is not only impossible, but the effort to realize that goal would be monumentally stupid.

The childish view that most of the base has of what it takes to turn politics into a governing majority would be amusing if they weren’t so obstructive in realizing that goal for the GOP. And even if Hoffman goes down to defeat, the wrong lessons - as usual - will be drawn from the effort to elect him. Sending the establishment a message to work harder to find and support good conservative candidates who can win in different regions of the country is one thing. That is an effort worth making, and I applaud activists who are seeking to send that message to the powers that be.

But sending the message to not only seek out conservatives for office but also replace those who fall short of being “true” conservatives in the estimation of the base is loony. It is this kind of gunslinging that guarantees a Democratic majority. It would be a huge waste of resources to attempt such madness. But that is the goal of many in the base who can’t stand the thought of “moderates” calling themselves “Republican.”

I believe in party reform. I believe the GOP should be a friendly place for conservatives - however they define that label. I believe that good conservatives should be running the Republican party and the conservative movement.

But above all of that, I believe in victory. And if that is not paramount in your mind, then you might as well switch parties and vote for the Democrat.

WHAT ANTI-REASON CONSERVATIVES? WHERE?

Bill Quick:

All you need to do to keep track of the thinking in the credentialist, careerist (yes, that describes Moran to a tee - he’s been trolling for some sort of DC establishment GOP job for, like, ever) nuthouse wing of the faux GOP, is read Rick Moran - or as much of him as you can stand to swallow without retching.

I wouldn’t drum anybody out of the party over abortion (though it isn’t my issue) or gay rights, (which I’ve supported for ages), but I would like to see these phony Republicans and fake conservatives remove themselves to the party that mirrors their views.

As to the charge that I want a job in DC - been there, done that and have absolutely no desire to go back. Obviously, Mr. Slowwitted believes DC is the destination of choice for people who wish to make a living writing about politics. For a fellow who never tires of telling us (it’s on his blog’s masthead) that he coined the term “blogosphere,” he seems not to have heard of the internet. This marvelous invention makes working from the comfortable confines of my office here in Streator, Illinois (”Smack dab in the middle of Middle America”) for companies located in California a pleasant reality.

No matter. Quick, like most of the excessively ideological, rabid right, didn’t bother to read what I wrote and simply spouted that I was horrified at the prospects of “conservatives finally asserting themselves in the party that ostensibly claims to represent them.” That must have been in the bits I edited out because I don’t see me writing that anywhere in this particular post, nor do I agree with that notion generally. In fact, lo and behold, there is this:

Sending the establishment a message to work harder to find and support good conservative candidates who can win in different regions of the country is one thing. That is an effort worth making, and I applaud activists who are seeking to send that message to the powers that be.

I dunno, Bill. Sounds like I approve of “conservatives asserting themselves,” but what the fu*k do I know? I’m only the writer.

Quick suggests I change the name of my site. Before I do that, perhaps he should change his to “Idiot Child Pundit” since he gibbers like a two year old without making any sense about anything.

My latest is up at Pajamas Media about the conservative insurgency in NY23 that appears about ready to succeed in handing Doug Hoffman an unexpected victory.

A sample:

What has happened in NY-23 is that the newly empowered conservative base decided the national party had gone a candidate too far in choosing liberal Republican Scozzafava to represent them and decided on their own to adopt third-party candidate Doug Hoffman, while telling the GOP establishment to take a hike.

Why the national party believed this colorless career politician who supports gay marriage and would have voted for the stimulus bill represented Republican principles, much less conservative ones, will remain a mystery. Dan Riehl has uncovered some information that former GOP Congressman Tom Reynolds may have played a large role in choosing Scozzafava, but that only muddies the waters even further. Didn’t those numbskulls at the RNC and the NRCC even bother to check this woman’s credentials before giving her stacks of cash donated by good conservatives?

It may be understandable that they would choose a pro-choice woman to run in New York state, although the man the special election is replacing who served eight terms representing that district, John McHugh, was pro-life down the line. But pro-gay marriage? Where did that come from? And it should go without saying that Scozzafava’s support for the stimulus bill would have made her a pariah in the House Republican caucus since no other GOP congressman supported it.

All of this was known to the national party before they shepherded her choice through the selection process (rammed it through might be a better way to describe what happened). Also known to the GOP elites was the wave of discontent building beyond the beltway via the tea parties and the spectacular success of Glenn Beck, who has ridden the wave to fame and fortune.

And yet, still believing they were in total control, they proceeded as if the protests at health care town halls, the 9/12 phenomenon, and the tremendous grassroots energy those events unleashed didn’t matter. Or perhaps they believed they would be able to co-opt and use all that enthusiasm for their own purposes so they could continue with business as usual. Whatever they were thinking, they blindly allowed an old crony (Reynolds used to run the NRCC), to have his way in choosing a candidate that even Nelson Rockefeller might have had to swallow hard to support.

Hoffman, by the way, is not much more conservative than Scozzafava if you examine their positions on the issues. Dede’s problem was that she served 10 years in the Assembly and had a string of votes that she could be attacked for. But Hoffman is no wild eyed “Stalinist” as Frank Rich seems to think:

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.

The New York fracas was ignited by the routine decision of 11 local Republican county chairmen to anoint an assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, as their party’s nominee for the vacant seat. The 23rd is in safe Republican territory that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress in decades. And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. But she has occasionally strayed from orthodoxy on social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) and endorsed the Obama stimulus package. To the right’s Jacobins, that’s cause to send her to the guillotine.

Speaking as one who has been sent to the guillotine myself by those same Jacobians, Rich is full of it. Scozzafava was foisted on the district by NY state GOP leaders and especially former Rep. Tom Reynolds (former head of the NRCC as well) who decided one of his proteges should be the nominee. And while there is certainly a lot of anger that the establishment wanted to cram a pro-gay marriage candidate down their throat (a position not even mainstream in the Democratic party), the real rebellion in NY23 centers on the perception that despite the previous month’s activism, the party and the establishment wasn’t listening or “getting it.”

And Dede’s endorsement of Porkulus when not one single GOP congressman voted for it says volumes as well. In short, this cram down by party elites at a time when tea party activists had singlehandedly delayed Obamacare and became the only true organized resistance to the president’s agenda, smacked of disrespect by the GOP leadership who were benefiting from their activism.

I have written extensively about the dangers of this populist wave, and how it could easily become, if not as radical as Rich believes in his overactive imagination, then certainly a detriment to conservatism and GOP hopes in 2010. But the race in NY23 shows that there’s nothing for it now, the base has been empowered and the wave is on the move. My fear is that all this enthusiasm and resentment, and fear will be channeled into unproductive avenues and result in a lost opportunity in 2010.

Andrew Sullivan:

No one knows what might happen now. For the insurgents, it means a scalp they will surely use to purge the GOP of any further dissidence. But the insurgents were also backed by the establishment, including Tim Pawlenty, who’s supposed to be the reasonable center.

What we’re seeing, I suspect, is an almost classic example of a political party becoming more ideological after its defeat at the polls. in order for that ideology to win, they will also have to portray the Obama administration as so far to the left that voters have no choice but to back the Poujadists waiting in the wings. And that, of course, is what they’re doing. There is a method to the Ailes-Drudge-Cheney-Rove denialism. They create reality, remember?

From the mindset of an ideologically purist base - where a moderate Republican in New York state is a “radical leftist” - this makes sense. But for all those outside the 20 percent self-identified Republican base, it looks like a mix of a purge and a clusterfuck. If Hoffman wins, and is then embraced by the GOP establishment, you have a recipe for a real nutroots take-over. This blood in the water will bring on more and more and deadlier and deadlier sharks.

Scozzafava was no “radical leftist” as I point out here. No one who gets the endorsement of the NRA can, by any stretch of the imagination, be termed a “radical leftist.” And someone who opposes cap and trade, Obamacare, and much of the Obama agenda cannot be considered much of a leftist. Her support of card check is a natural given the number of union voters in the district which speaks more of her bowing to practical political realities rather than any deep, leftist ideological commitment.

And the danger, as I have constantly harped upon, is that the calcification of views by the base on issues will become so excessively driven by ideology and partisanship, that unless a candidate is marching in nearly 100% lockstep with them, they will be branded “Marxists” by Beck and “liberals” or “radical leftists” by everyone else.

But as I point out in my PJM piece, Andrew is wrong to conclude that this presages some kind of mass takeover by the far right. The circumstances in NY23 created a perfect storm for the bast that is very unlikely to be repeated in other congressional districts. If the base puts up primary challengers to those they consider insufficiently pure, the normal equilibrium of politics will take over and incumbency, money, and name recognition will overwhelm just about any challenge to the supremacy of the party establishment. In other words, if the conservative base thinks that NY23 is some kind of harbinger for the future, they will be royally disappointed.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t cheer them on in NY23. An establishment that gets too comfortable is no good to anyone. And the message I like being sent from this race is that putting up good, reasonable conservatives like Hoffman for office is usually better than the alternative.

Don’t bother looking for it because you won’t find any other report on this shindig anywhere else. The Ball was held in the bowels of the National Archives where artifacts like the alien spacecraft that crashed at Roswell are housed, along with Obama’s REAL birth certificate (he was actually born in Hoboken, NJ), and proof that Glenn Beck is a paid agent of Chinese intelligence sent to turn American conservatives into a bunch of weepy little girls.

The fact is, this was a top secret Halloween party sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and DIA - the real spooks. So well planned was this operation, that the FBI was engaged to run a counter-op; a full dress party at the Washington Hilton that featured 200 Special Agents who impersonated famous politicos in disguise. The press knew something was amiss because the partygoers didn’t drink half of what professional politicians imbibe when out on the town. But only a couple of bloggers - me and a gay mommy blogger whom I will not link to, figured out that the Hilton party was a scam.

Sure enough, my faithful Capitol Hill source came through for me once again. This source has fed me information in the past that allowed me to break several important stories such as the scoop I had about Nancy Pelosi’s tryst with Rush Limbaugh at the Fairmont in San Francisco, as well as the hot story I did on the Jay Rockefeller cross dressing episode at a football game in Morgantown (he was dressed as a WVU cheerleader). Now he has given me the low down on this Halloween soire.

I cannot vouch for the total accuracy of what follows. But here is the report from my trusted source on various Capitol Hill personalities who attended the Ball.

I will give you three guesses what Nancy Pelosi was costumed as and the first two don’t count. Yes, but not just any witch. Pelosi came decked out as the Wicked Witch of the West complete with real Ruby Slippers (supplied by Andy Stern of the SEIU). On her arm, a real Winged Monkey - or maybe that was David Obey.

Robert Byrd came as a ghost. The sheet he had over his head looked very old - as if he had used it for something else many years ago. The hood he wore was also quite striking. Black people were giving him funny looks all night long.

Harry Reid showed up in a Sweeney Todd costume. Many thought the scalpel he openly brandished had something to do with health care reform, although nobody took the Majority Leader up on his offer for a haircut.

Chris Matthews came dressed up as a lapdog. He was cute as a button - until he started to hump the legs of most of the females present. Urinating on every Republican he got close to did not endear him to partygoers either.

John Boehner wowed the assemblage with his costume - a striking representation of a eunuch. Like most of the Republicans, he got way too drunk and ended up at the close of the evening in a corner crying it was no fair that Mitch McConnell stole his idea for his costume. He thought of coming as a castrated pansy ass first.

New Gingrich, as befitting his status as a potential presidential candidate, came costumed as Ronald Reagan. There were 30 other Republicans dressed as The Gipper, all swearing they believed in RR’s agenda, and were loyal to his memory - at least for the night, anyway.

Barney Frank was impressive in his ACORN costume. But he bitched all night about the fact that all the other nut costumes had already been rented by the time he made it to the costume shop.

Michael Steele wore an unusual costume - the Headless Horseman. Nobody got it.

Keith Olberman was dressed as R.P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Or perhaps he was wearing that strait jacket for real. No one had the courage to ask.

Glenn Beck’s Little Miss Muffett get up was an inspired choice. He wept when he finished 2nd in the “Best Costume” contest.

Mike Huckabee was pretty scary in his George W. Bush mask. Or was it a mask?

Who was that politician dressed as a wolf in sheep’s clothing? No one is sure and the Secret Service Agents who surrounded him all night weren’t talking. Whoever it was, he had an aide that followed him around all night with a teleprompter.

There was no mistaking Joe Biden who came dressed in the same costume he wears every year; Bozo the clown.

Sarah Palin was lovely as the Queen of Hearts. She seemed to relish screaming at the top of her voice “Off with his Head!” at every Republican she believed wasn’t conservative enough. I think she was joking.

John McCain was great in his horse costume. Too bad the disguise got all turned around so that the back of the horse was what everybody saw. He kept insisting he was a “Maverick” except the only person who agreed with him was Arthur Sulzberger who showed up in a Leonardo De Caprio costume from Titanic.

A good time was had by all, I’m told. Winner of the “Best Costume” went to Rham Emanuel who looked truly spiffy in his Godfather suit. Funny, but by the end of the night, there were considerably fewer administration opponents around than when the party started.

They’ll turn up eventually - I think. Might I suggest dragging the Potomac?

President Barack Obama may be a cussed liberal, a naive child in some respects, a player of “Chicago Way” politics, and an arrogant chief executive with a thin skin.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t see him as a human being. And the burden he carries as Commander in Chief was brought home to him, I’m sure, last night with his unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base to welcome home fallen heroes.

Obama is a complex man who is still something of a mystery to the American people - at least those who don’t see him as the devil incarnate trying to set up a socialist dictatorship. There is a lot of fakery in being president no matter who you are, but when the genuine moments peek through, we get a glimpse of the real man whose job it is to protect us and the nation.

Some things, you just can’t fake. Clinton at Oklahoma City. George W. Bush talking about his son’s torments. Ronald Reagan at Point du Hoc.

And now, Obama at Dover:

The president arrived at Dover AFB at 12:34am after 40-minute chopper ride from the White House. An Air Force C-17 carrying the 18 fallen U.S. personnel had arrived at Dover before the president. Among the dead on board were 7 U.S. Army soldiers and 3 DEA agents killed when their MH-47 Chinook crashed at Darreh-ye-bum, and 8 U.S. soldiers killed when their STRYKER personnel vehicle was struck by IED blast in the Arghandab River Valley.

It was a somber event.

The military confirmed the name of only one of the soldiers whose transfer the President witnessed: Sgt Dale R. Griffin, from Terre Haute, Indiana, who served in Operation Enduring Freedom.

At one point before the dignified transfers, President Obama spent time on the plane, accompanied by just Beers, otherwise alone with the eighteen fallen

At 3:39 am the President walked up the ramp of the C-17 to attend a short prayer given by Major Richard S. Bach, an Air Force chaplain. Obama emerged minutes later, the last in a line of personnel, and stood at attention in the cool night breeze, his hands cupped at his side.

At 3:50 am the flag-draped transfer case–not a coffin or casket–was carried from the plane to a waiting vehicle while all those participating saluted.

Griffin’s family gave permission for the media to cover the transfer.

The three DEA agents killed were identified as 37-year-old Forrest Leamon and 30-year-old Chad Michael, both from Virginia, and 37-year-old Michael Weston of Washington. Weston, like Obama, was a Harvard Law School graduate.

Obama’s participation in this sad military tradition comes at a critical time for the President, as he weighs sending as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. President Obama continues to deliberate with his commanders and advisors and will likely announce his decision after the Afghan elections on November 7 and before he departs for Asia on November 11, though the announcement could come after he returns from the Asia trip.

The New York Times referred to Obama’s trip as a “symbolic event” designed to show the president is thinking deeply about what to do in Afghanistan. This may very well be true. But the president is not made of stone. And the emotion that animated his face during this solemn, heart rending ceremony showed that he understands his responsibilities. And his words a few days ago to Marines at a Naval Air Station in Florida reflected the seriousness with which he is approaching the problem. “I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way,” he told them. Would that President Lyndon Johnson have said something similar in 1964.

Whether he will do “the right thing” (whatever that is) in Afghanistan is an entirely different question. While I sympathize with his dilemma, I criticize the time he is taking to make up his mind. I know he is trying to build “consensus” in the government for his policy but it was apparent weeks ago that his administration is riven by this decision and that reaching a consensus is probably out of the question. Also, the issues he seems to be stuck over are political ones; more troops, or less certainly has a military component but in the president’s case, he is just as certainly looking over his left shoulder at the base of his support who either wants to wind the war down or start getting out of Afghanistan immediately. And he is almost certainly wrestling with the language of commitment as well for the same reason.

This goes to a very basic question we should be asking about this president; can he be decisive? Does he have the ability to “go it alone” if he is convinced he is right and so many disagree? Our policy in Afghanistan is a good test case for this yardstick of presidential leadership. So far, I am not impressed. Splitting the difference is not an option here. He either must go “all in” or start pushing away from the table.

And thus, his trip to Dover and a visit with the families of the fallen. Bush never got the credit he deserved for this painful presidential chore - made all the more searing by the stinging words of some family members who blamed the president for their child’s death. What few media reports emerged from these emotional sessions were difficult to read. But seeing Bush as a human being was not in the liberal’s playbook so these visits were either ignored or were churlishly commented upon.

I am glad the president made the trip. I wonder how or if it will affect his thinking on Afghanistan? Will it steel his resolve to formulate a policy that will give meaning to their deaths by trying to carry on and pacify the country, thus infusing their sacrifice with meaning? Or does he already see Afghanistan as a lost cause and will look for the quickest way out consistent with assuring the safety of our troops and leaving some kind of government in place that can fend for itself?

As I said, a dilemma to be sure. Whatever he decides, it can’t hurt that he will have the faces of the family members of our dead soldiers at the front of his mind when he finally makes up his mind.

My latest AIP column is up and it deals with the passage in the House of the Consumer Finance Protection Agency (CFPA) and how another alphabet soup agency will protect us from our own stupidity.

A sample:

I am often vexed lately when reading what our government is doing. On the one hand, I find it hard to fault the intentions of those who wish to make our lives “easier.” On the other hand, I want to throttle them for insulting my intelligence by proposing to do something for me that any reasonably aware 10 year old should be able to do for himself.

If the modern welfare state teaches us anything, it is that we must be cocooned and protected as if we were a newborn babe, or prevented from harming ourselves because we’re too stupid to know any better. It’s not enough that government warn us that the stove is hot. They must put on oven mitts for us and then place a 10 foot high sign in front of our face telling us not to touch anything.

I get this feeling of being patted on the head and told I’m a good boy when reading about the brand new Consumer Finance Protection Agency (CFPA) - another in a long line of alphabet soup government watchdog agencies who are ostensibly set up to protect us from rapacious corporations who would do us harm. And, as you might have guessed, the CFPA has also been constituted to protect us from our own stupidity.

In this case, it will be financial products from which we will be spared the consequences of any irresponsible, ill-informed decisions we might make. The stated reason is to prevent another financial meltdown like the one that occurred a year ago.

I am not against financial regulation - far from it. I am against government taking it upon itself to act as a knight protector against our own ill informed, lazy decision making.

There are already laws on the books to deal with unscrupulous mortgage consultants, crooked brokers, and other get rich quick schemers who don’t make any headway against those who conscientiously review and examine documents, ask questions, and generally take personal responsibility for their own decisions in financial matters.

If the crook lies, or misleads, he and his firm are not only liable for criminal penalties but losses can be recovered in civil court. The point being, we don’t need a whole new agency that will end up stifling financial innovation by limiting who can purchase complex financial instruments, while forcing financial institutions to offer “vanilla” products to consumers they feel are not savvy enough to understand risk.

Buying a mortgage is not rocket science. Sue and I took a night off from watching TV to read every word of the agreement, draw up a list of questions, and would not sign on the dotted line until every one of our concerns were met and questions were answered. We spent an hour with our insurance broker so that we completely understood that aspect of the purchase.

The potential for abuse by this agency is astronomical (the power to investigate and punish will be in the hands of the director - a political appointee). And there is the probability that fewer people will be able to get mortgages because the seller will not be able to offer a wide variety of solutions in order to get a customer into a home.

Credit cards are a different story, and I wholeheartedly endorse reforms in that area. But do we need a new agency for that? Or would common sense legislation that would prohibit industry practices that costs consumers and merchants billions of dollars in unnecessary fees be adequate?

The CFPA is good government gone wild. We don’t need it, and it should be defeated in the senate.

I have little doubt but that my plea not to make the NY23 race a litmus test for who get’s to play in the Republican party sandbox will fall on deaf ears, but it must be made regardless.

Yes, Hoffman is by far the better candidate than hapless Scozzafava - the winner of the Margaret Sanger Award from Family Planning Advocates. This is not the worst thing about her. But accepting an award named after the second most prominent and enthusiastic proponent of eugenics in history - after Adolf Hitler - shows either a shocking ignorance of what Sanger’s views on sterilizing and giving forced abortions to “undesirables” like blacks and immigrants actually were, or a political tone deafness that should disqualify her from big time politics.

Indeed, Scozzafava’s campaign has been marked by a not ready for prime time amateurishness, that includes the uproariously funny video of her standing in front of Hoffman’s campaign headquarters holding a press conference while “Hoffman for Congress” signs were arrayed en masse in the background. That, and other clueless statements have destroyed her candidacy so that the most recent poll shows her in 3rd place.

It is a mystery why the GOP establishment in New York and Washington chose her for the race. She apparently supported the stim bill - something no other Republican in Congress did - and she supports the anti-democratic card check bill being pushed by organized labor. For whatever reason, this seemed perfectly fine to Newt Gingrich (who has defended her) as well as the NRCC who flung $1 million into her lap.

But is she conservative enough to be a Republican?

The answer to that question is why I believe that who you support in the NY23 race should not be a litmus test for establishing a baseline for who can identify themselves as a “Republican.” Is someone who supports gun rights, is against cap and trade, opposes most aspects of Obamacare (including the public option), wants to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent while supporting a repeal of the death tax, supports earmark reform, voted against the Paterson budget, and has a decidedly conservative voting record on fiscal matters worthy of being identified as a Republican?

Apparently, not if you are pro-choice and pro-gay marriage.

I will grant that anyone who would have voted for Porkulus and card check should not be supported when a legitimate, reliable conservative like Hoffman is running in the same race.

But suppose there was no Hoffman? The national GOP erred badly both in Florida and NY23 not because they backed candidates who shouldn’t be Republicans but because there were excellent conservative alternatives to Scozzafava and Crist begging for their support. But we better get used to the idea that there are going to be candidates running in many northeastern/New England districts that wouldn’t fit in at a Louisiana clambake but would feel right at home at a Maine Lobsterfest.

Yes, there should be limits to who gets to wear the GOP label. But I don’t think Scozzafava comes very close to the barrier. Gingrich is wrong to label her a good conservative. And the national party was wrong to waste a million bucks on her. But this kind of hysteria from Malkin is almost inexplicable:

If you have given to the NRCC, RNC, or Newt Gingrich under the impression that they are using the money to support conservatism, you might want to ask for your money back.

As I mentioned in my column post on the NY23 special election, the NRCC is using conservatives’ money to back a radical leftist and attack a bona fide, viable conservative candidate for Congress in a safe Republican district. Gingrich has endorsed the radical leftist.

I love Michelle Malkin. She used to be a big supporter of this blog and showed me many personal kindnesses over the years. I used to work for her as comment moderator for her blog. She is a smart, usually savvy about politics, and an independent voice on the right.

But her description of Scozzafava as a “radical leftist” is off the deep end. Yes, she has appeared on the Working Families Party ballot line in New York - no doubt as a result of her stance on gay marriage and abortion (WFP is supporting Owens the Democrat in this election). And it is true that some of that party’s financial support has come from ACORN and SEIU, although referring to the WFP as the party of ACORN is an exaggeration.

But the complicated nature of New York state politics doesn’t make that unusual nor should it necessarily disqualify her from membership in the Republican party - nor should the fact that her husband is a union organizer. Scozzafava said she would have voted to defund ACORN as a result of the exposes done by Big Government. Is that something a “radical leftist” would do?

She supports the individual’s right to bear arms. Is that a position normally taken by a “radical leftist?

She supports the Bush tax cuts and repeal of the death tax. Radical leftist?

She opposes cap and trade. Radical leftist?

Are all pro-choice and pro-gay marriage politicians “radical leftists?” There is a libertarian case to be made for both so unless you want to brand the pro-choice wing of the GOP “radical leftists” I suggest we tone down the rhetoric a bit. (Not all gay marriage advocates are radical leftists either. Dick Cheney anyone?)

It’s one thing to oppose Scozzafava because there’s a better candidate in the race. It’s something totally different to slime her as a radical leftist when she clearly is not. That is hyperbole, and a gross exaggeration. Getting on the ballot line of as many parties as possible is the way the game is played in New York - one of the few “fusion” states left where a candidate maximizes their chances of winning by garnering the endorsement of parties from across the political spectrum. It makes for some strange bedfellows at times but is hardly cause to read anyone out of either party because they do what is necessary to win the election.

And to show where this kind of madness is leading, Malkin and others have now proclaimed New Gingrich not conservative enough because he endorsed the decision of the New York country organizations who chose Scozzafava. Gingrich was wrong to do so. But does this disqualify one of the leading conservative minds in America from a position of leadership?

Apparently Malkin also believes Gingrich unworthy because he once appeared with Nancy Pelosi in a commercial about climate change, took a charter school tour with Al Sharpton, and appeared with Hillary Clinton to promote some of his pet projects. Has it now become verboten to even appear with the enemy in a public forum? Supporting reasonable legislation on emissions, school reform, and support for some kind of health care reform is hardly leftist, or radical, or even very moderate - unless one’s definition of “conservatism” is so narrow that you could drive a piece of spaghetti through it.

If Malkin and those who join her in this pogrom keep it up, the next GOP convention will be just large enough to be held in my kitchen.

I understand and even agree with the notion that candidates like Hoffman are good for the party and that the GOP establishment definitely needs a wake up call. But trying to marginalize Newt Gingrich? Referring to a moderate Republican as a “radical leftist?” This is madness and can only lead to self destruction as conservatives actively seek out and destroy those whose views on a couple of issues are at variance with their own.

Fight against the Scozzafava’s in the party if you feel you must. Deny them leadership positions, choice seats on important committees, a speaking role at conventions - do all of that if you feel that strongly about it.

But once you start the process of subtraction from the party as a result of your disagreements on very few issues, there is only one way that the GOP will end up; permanent minority status with conservatives continuing to howl in the political wilderness.

I took some time this morning to do a little research on this issue, going back to last April when the first hint that Swine Flu would be a problem in the US was dropped.

In the ensuing months, the government conscientiously planned for an epidemic - a “worst case scenario” as laid out by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius back in July. Funds totaling more than $700 million were made available from HHS to purchase vaccines from the 5 remaining vaccine makers (a whole separate story of government interference in the market that reduced the number of vaccine makers by 2/3 over the previous decade), as well as help states and local governments gear up for the crisis. In addition, more than $3 billion in preparedness funds will come from the stim bill, as well as monies redirected from WMD funds.

This was all done months ago and would appear to show the Obama administration out front of the problem.

At a planning meeting in July, the government set a goal of having 120 million doses of the vaccine by mid-October, with 200 million doses by the end of the year.

Then in August, it became apparent that there were snafus in making the antigens that protect us from the Flu. This put the whole process of approval by the FDA back a couple of months.

Hence, large scale manufacture of the vaccine was delayed. And as it has been reported, the government hasn’t even come close to the 120 million doses promised. In fact, there are about 30 million doses that will have been made available by the end of the week. And even if the companies making it are at peak production (they are not quite there yet evidently), the goal of 200 million doses will also prove to be elusive. The companies may very well have been able to manufacture something close to that number, but foreign orders will cut into the number of US doses available anyway.

Federal officials had projected that 40 million doses would be on hand by Oct. 15, but not even 13 million doses had arrived by Tuesday.

“They [federal health officials] made some earlier projections, but it looks like a number of those projections have been overly optimistic,” said Dr. Ciro Sumaya, a professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, and a member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

On Tuesday, a top CDC official acknowledged that production of the vaccine was lagging, with a revised goal now of 50 million doses by mid-November and 150 million by year’s end.

So what happened. Whose fault is it?

In 2004, the shortage of Flu vaccine was George Bush’s fault. Just ask any Democrat:

As public health officials scramble to find more flu vaccine and experts debate how to increase the US supply, presidential candidate John Kerry hopes voters will come to one conclusion – the severe shortage the United States now faces is President George Bush’s fault.

Over the past several days, the vaccine shortage has been injected squarely into the presidential race, as Bush defends his administration and Kerry tries to hold him responsible for the loss of nearly 50 million doses of vaccine - half this season’s expected supply.

Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, released a radio advertisement yesterday stoking fears over the shortage as congressional Democrats blamed Bush for not addressing well-documented problems in the vaccine industry.

The British government closed down a vaccine maker because 50 million doses were contaminated - most of those earmarked for the US market.

And those “well documented problems” were the result of government policy going back to the Clinton administration, that allowed people to sue vaccine makers for adverse reactions to the vaccine - some of them ridiculous. This drove costs through the roof which convinced most vaccine makers to get out of the business altogether. You can argue about whether trial lawyers reaped the benefits of such a policy, but the result was the same; there are as many manufacturers of vaccine in the country as their are fingers on one of your hands.

But since the Democrats made blaming Bush a national pastime - even for stuff that was out of his control -shouldn’t we now turn the tables and blame Obama for this radical mismanagement in government planning? How could he be so far off in his estimate of doses that would be available? Was it incompetence? Stupidity? Wishful thinking?

Obviously, we can’t use the Bush standard of blame. Obama is smart. He’s competent. He sometimes speaks in complete sentences. He says “nuclear” and not “nuclar.” He wrote two books - yeah two.

Those are all good reasons to hold Obama harmless for the laughable-if-it-wasn’t-so-serious shortage of flu shots. Come to think of it, maybe the Democrats should have held Bush harmless for circumstances beyond his control too.

I can dream, can’t I?

Never mind. The real reason that there is a shortage of Swine Flu vaccine is very simple: it’s damned hard to make:

Experts such as Sumaya explained that glitches can — and apparently did — occur at several points in the complex process of developing a vaccine, especially for a virus that was first identified in April.

“It shows how there are many steps before you get a vaccine that’s available — the production, the testing, the packaging, the allocation and distribution. And there may be problems at every step, so as you go from one to the other to the other that slows things down,” he said Thursday.

Sumaya was attending a meeting of the CDC advisory committee in Atlanta, where the experts were collecting information on vaccine supply and demand, as well as getting up to speed on the latest H1N1 developments, how the virus is spreading across the country, how many people have been hospitalized and how many have died.

In explaining the vaccine delay, Sumaya said that, first, the H1N1 virus did not grow as quickly as expected during a half-century old — and often-criticized — egg-based production technique.

Second, he said, “because there was kind of a rush to get things done, there were some packaging areas that they [federal officials] had thought wouldn’t take long, yet they did.”

“Even in the distribution, to find certain target groups so it reaches them first, we have to have a sense of what is going on across the country, which is a dynamic situation,” he added.

Then there are the twin demands facing vaccine manufacturers to produce two different vaccines at the same time — one for swine flu and one for seasonal flu.

There’s a longer than anticipated time to grow the antigen, safely package it for distribution (that British contamination snafu in 2004 was the result of inadequate safeguards in packaging), and get it to areas of the country in some kind of rough prioritization.

No sense in blaming government. I think I showed pretty convincingly that the CDC and HHS have been on top of this problem from the get go. But their best laid plans came acropper when Mother Nature refused to cooperate in the growing of the virus in chicken eggs. That, and as always, there were apparently some questions about how safe the vaccine actually is. The anti-vaccination, psuedo-science crowd is making more and more headway despite the science showing that modern flu vaccines are safe and effective. Some people are going to die because they believed that crap. I hope the Luddites can sleep at night.

So even though it would be very nice to blame Obama for the lack of Swine Flu vaccines, we must content ourselves with the usual - making fun of his ears, calling him out for his inability to speak contemporaneously without a teleprompter, and criticizing him for getting up in the morning - all the important stuff.

And did you notice? He’s a black man.

One of the few commendable parts of the Stimulus Bill was the money devoted to seeking alternative energy sources. I don’t believe it will lead to “millions of new jobs” - that’s pure politics and doesn’t take into account the millions of “old” jobs that will be lost. Experts are divided whether there will be a net gain in employment - and we won’t see any evidence of that for a couple of decades.

But the president’s emphasis on developing these technologies is spot on. And, I think to a very large degree, his approach is a sound one.

Everyone agrees we must wean ourselves from dependence on foreign oil, and eventually we must radically alter the economy in order to deal with declining oil supplies.

It isn’t really a question of drilling. The fact is, the world is partially a victim of America’s success in in applying our soft power in ways that have caused an explosion of economic activity in the third world that has resulted in massive increases in demand for oil the world over. China and India - two huge nations - are seeing big increases in their energy needs every year. Coal is only a stopgap measure for both - not only for its problems with carbon emissions but the suffocating air pollution that goes with it.

Globalization, coupled with our developmental aid over the last couple of decades, has caused a revolution in living standards. OPEC nations are at near capacity in supplying clients with oil and the price remains high. This should tell you that the demand curve is outstripping supply. And the gap is getting wider.

(The question of whether we are already at “Peak Oil” production is separate to the question of current supply. There are encouraging signs of some new finds in South America and the Caribbean, but those fields will only delay the inevitable crunch by a few years at most.)

So the quest for renewables is both necessary and immediate. And the president has come up with a plan via the stim bill that will ratchet up research and development while allowing the market to pick winners and losers.

It’s really the kind of public-private partnership that we need to see the kinds of innovative technologies that will revolutionize the way we live and change the economy in ways we can barely fathom now.

Why not let the market handle the whole thing? Ordinarily, that would be the optimum solution. But we’re talking about dollar amounts for basic research that are far beyond the capacity of any company to pay for - or generate the speed necessary to make this transition before supplies really start to pinch.

The days when a Thomas Edison could fund his own lab and turn out miraculous invention and invention are gone. While we shouldn’t entirely dismiss the work of American tinkerers, the fact is, in order to overcome the technological and engineering problems associated with making us independent of foreign oil, develop “clean coal” applications, take us to the next level in solar, wind, and car battery power, and fix our electric power grid, it will take the massive infusions of cash into research that Obama is proposing.

Oversight, as this New York Times editorial mentioned at the time of the stim bill passage, will be vitally important:

Eighty-billion dollars is still a lot of money. And the federal agencies overseeing its disbursement must provide strong regulation and firm guidance to ensure that it is spent wisely. Money invested in a modern electricity grid, for instance, will have been badly spent if it is used merely to build transmission towers to move energy from old coal-fired power plants. It will be well spent if it helps move clean energy, such as wind and solar power, from, say, Texas, to distant cities that need it.

That is just one of many provisions that will bear close watching as the money flows to states, cities and businesses.

Yes, there is some waste in the bill - including monies earmarked for AMTRAK and a dubious high speed rail project. But there is also a long overdue $11 billion in grants and $6 billion in loans to develop a “smart grid” for our electrical needs. Europeans are far ahead of us in this area and once completed, the new grid will not only make our energy use more efficient, but also provide better service to electricity consumers while keeping cost increases down.

I am also a little dubious about the $25 billion the government is spending to “weatherize” homes and retrofit government buildings to be more energy conscious. Given past history, bureaucrats always seem to find ways to redefine what “retrofit” means. Look for a lot of bells and whistles added to government buildings without much in energy savings.

That said, we should be excited about a tenfold increase in monies given for research into better car batteries (they are improving almost every year), and a tenfold increase in developing “clean coal” technologies. Of the latter, I am less excited simply because the entire coal industry is going to be decimated if cap and trade goes through in the senate. Developing a costly solution for an industry that is being shoved to the sidelines may not be the most efficient use of that money.

But the $20 billion in tax incentives to develop alternative fuels and energy sources is the key. Note that the incentives will not favor one company over another and could set off a gold rush toward energy innovation that would almost certainly hasten improvements in these technologies. For instance, we will probably discover just how viable energy produced by wind power can be when used on an industrial scale. It won’t work everywhere - just as solar power will have its limits. But the trick is to come up with the right combination that will dramatically reduce our dependence on oil.

Obviously, no plan is without its drawbacks. It will take decades to see the kind of progress that will really make a difference. Alternative energy sources currently supply less than 3% of our needs. It will take a sustained effort over many years to bring these technologies online, and the national will to make changes in how we think of energy and how we use it. No easy task, that, as President Obama said at MIT yesterday:

Now, while the challenges today are different, we have to draw on the same spirit of innovation that’s always been central to our success. And that’s especially true when it comes to energy. There may be plenty of room for debate as to how we transition from fossil fuels to renewable fuels — we all understand there’s no silver bullet to do it. There’s going to be a lot of debate about how we move from an economy that’s importing oil to one that’s exporting clean energy technology; how we harness the innovative potential on display here at MIT to create millions of new jobs; and how we will lead the world to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. There are going to be all sorts of debates, both in the laboratory and on Capitol Hill. But there’s no question that we must do all these things.

Countries on every corner of this Earth now recognize that energy supplies are growing scarcer, energy demands are growing larger, and rising energy use imperils the planet we will leave to future generations. And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. From China to India, from Japan to Germany, nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to producing and use energy. The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation. It’s that simple.

I would quibble with the president and add that the bio-tech revolution - one we are currently leading but in danger of falling back - will also determine which nation “leads the global economy.” But he is correct to make the search for viable renewables into a race.

And given this excellent head start, I wouldn’t bet against America just yet.

UPDATE

Nick Loris at the Heritage blog also finds some good things in the president’s speech at MIT. But he also points out what I did - that the idea these programs will result in a net gain of jobs is dubious at best.

But the green stimulus, free lunch rhetoric neglects the costs, both real and opportunity costs, that come with a government stimulus. Heritage analyst Ben Lieberman writes that a green stimulus is actually a contradiction in terms: “Support for renewables would likely cost more jobs than are created. For example, subsidies for wind and solar energy would, at least from the narrow perspective of the wind and solar industries, create new jobs as more of these systems are manufactured and installed. But the tax dollars needed to help pay for them cost jobs elsewhere, as would the pricey electricity they produce.”

Our analysis of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill finds that there will be 1.9 million fewer jobs by 2012 after accounting for green jobs. Job losses would grow to 2.5 million by 2035. This makes us a cap and trade naysayer, who Obama attacks towards the end of his speech.

I really wish the president would simply stick to promoting these programs as a spur to innovation rather than some kind of jobs program. He is on much firmer ground, as Loris points out, when talking about the spirit of entrepreneurship that these monies will ignite.