Palin as litmus test?

Or perhaps Rorshach test would be the more accurate term. Pro-Palin blogger Joseph Sheppard argues that Sarah Palin's conservative admirers should, as a general policy, ignore anti-Palin bloggers.

Such a policy is wise where it is possible, and preferable to eternal flame-wars. And I say this not merely about the pro-Palin/anti-Palin feud, but as a general principle: If something irritates you, try to avoid it.

Take, as an example, Neil Young. His voice is lousy and he's a mediocre songwriter. As a guitarist, he's not bad, but not good enough to compensate for his deficits, especially as a singer, where he rivals Gordon Lightfoot for the Most Annoying Canadian Vocalist Lifetime Achievment Award. Therefore, whenever Neil Young comes on the radio, I change the station.

But there are occasions when I find myself trapped in a situation -- e.g., old buddies invite me to a dive bar with a jukebox -- where the avoidance strategy is impracticable, and the results can be tragic. Some idiot will drop a dollar in the jukebox and play "Ohio," and I find myself fighting the urge to begin loudly praising the National Guard and shouting imprecations against "hippie peacenik scum."

Is it just politics? No. Jackson Browne is somewhere left of Lenin, but he's a fine singer-songwriter. "Doctor My Eyes" and "The Load Out" are deservedly classics. Green Day are outright Marxists, but "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is nevertheless a catchy tune. R.E.M. are also generally a left-wing outfit, yet they make marvelous music.

No, Neil Young sucks. And if you disagree, we'll just have to avoid talking about it, because you'll only aggravate me. Same thing with Ann Coulter being a Deadhead, or Smitty's inexplicable affection for '80s metal. De gustibus non est disputandum.

Sarah Palin is a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. That fact should not be turning conservative friends into bitter enemies more than two years ahead of the 2012 Iowa caucus.

If you're a Palin fan and the very mention of Rick Moran makes the veins in your neck stand out, stop reading Rick Moran. If you're Andrew Sullivan and the very mention of Sarah Palin makes you start ranting like a madman . . . Well, I don't know. Smoke some dope or something.

Stop obsessing. Chill.

At any rate, Joseph Sheppard has made a useful suggestion. And don't get me started on Neil Young.

A: 'I think it’s a fair question'

by Smitty

Now if the question has the form: "Is it possible that the Climate Research Unit is playing games with the research?" then you're cool.

However, if the question is along the lines of: "What if other people make Barack Obama's birth certificate an issue?" then Rick Moran thinks you may be among the "simpletons and paranoid conspiracy freaks".

Re-read the quoted section of the interview, Rick, emphasis mine:

Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?

I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers.

Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?

I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you, too: I think our campaign, the McCain/Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were and perhaps what their future plans were. And I don’t think that that was fair to voters to not have done our jobs as candidates and as a campaign to bring to light a lot of the things that now we’re seeing made manifest in the administration.

For the record, (and I can't say whether Stacy would agree), the galactic coordinates where Barack Obama first drew breath have got to be the least important Constitutional threat at the moment. There are 12 trillion+ more sinister dangers (i.e., the national debt), than the question of whether Barack was born on Mars or in Hawaii. Even if you could conclusively prove otherwise, you'd require all three branches of the Federal government to admit they utterly tubed it when they installed BHO. So really, this isn't an issue likely to bear fruit, and therefore isn't worthy of attention.

Sarah gave it no attention. Can't you see that she's leaving it to "a small subset of the entire electorate cares?" She hasn't said anything more than "it's all fair game"

They are missing the point. Sarah Palin has said that these questions are legitimate, that voters have a right to know, and that "a lot" of citizens are concerned about it.

She didn't say what any rational person on the right or left believes: that questions about the president's birth have been settled by the state of Hawaii, that only a very small group of citizens are even concerned about the issue, and that an equally small number of people were even aware of the ridiculous controversy over Trig's origins.

Why, Rick, should she listen to you, me, or any other purportedly "rational person on the right"?

If anything, Sarah's biggest crime would seem to be cribbing from BHO's own playbook: leaving minions to do the rough work like pursue a birth certificate controversy, or a $400 haircut.

Maybe I'm in your "cotton candy conservative" category:

There is much wrong with many inside the beltway conservatives. I agree that they should be castigated for their hypocrisy; running as pious conservatives back home while playing fast and loose with conservative principles in DC. Such cynicism should be punished severely and I have no qualms about taking them to the woodshed for their sins.

But the world looks a little more complex to the "elites" than it does to most conservatives. In fact, many on the right reject complexity entirely, seeing it as just another excuse for a lack of adherence to principles among establishment conservatives, and others like Friedersdorf. It is their lack of fervency that is suspect, not necessarily any deviation from principle that riles the critics. That, and a slightly different interpretation of what "conservatism" is all about, convicts establishment righties of the crime of "not being conservative enough," and thus a target of the true believers.

So, Rick, if we can agree that every challenge, at a certain point in time, has some level of complexity, maybe we can agree that obfuscating is worse than oversimplifying. You can always add bureaucrats. Unlike a Danish whore, however, prostitutes of the organization chart nature won't go down or go away easily. They will, however, cook the books any way necessary to fulfill that great line from Civ IV: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy."

Chatting with Stacy today, I threw out the idea that the Democrats are the Harlem Globetrotters, and the Republicans are the Washington Generals. The pressing question of American politics is not whether we like the Globetrotters over the Generals, but rather whether we think this last century of exhibition basketball, with its debt, deficits, incumbency, and socialism, is the preferred governmental sporting model. Lefties and moderates take turns cheering for the Globetrotters and Generals, since the Progressives sold us this exhibition basketball shinola.

Has Sarah Palin offered a substantial alternative to exhibition basketball? No. She started her national phase as a VP nominee for a Progressive, moderate squish of a presidential ticket. Since then, she's given us a ghosted book, of which I haven't read enough to comment. Posts responding to yours about Sarah are by no means a gushing endorsement.

Returning to Palin Mainstreams the Birthers:

The problem is, unless the GOP — and that includes Rush Limbaugh and the other cotton candy conservatives who wield a lot of influence — stand up and denounce her in no uncertain terms, birtherism will have gone completely mainstream in the Republican Party. If that happens, you might want to forget about any significant gains at the polls for the GOP in 2010.

By her stupidity, she is now going to force every GOP candidate for the House and Senate to come out and declare whether they are birther nuts or not. Even if they’re not, being forced to answer in the first place makes the party look even kookier than it has to this point in time. You can bet Democratic opponents of Republican candidates will be asking whether they agree with Palin or not — and they will do it every chance they get. The press will gleefully repeat the question, no matter how many times the GOP candidate answers it.

What a sad, tragic, maddening turn of events.

Short: No.
Medium: You're headed for Sullivan territory.
Long: Your bogus presumption of mainstreaming has led to an unhinged conclusion about the direction of the debate.

My suspicion is that you're deriving great traffic from extrapolating far-fetched conclusions from simple statements. I admire your capitalism, sir. Also, do you think Mitt Romney a viable 2012 Republican candidate? I figure that you must, given his suave executive demeanor.

In the meantime, Dr. Smith prescribes moderate exercise for all the tension coming through your posts. Also, a healthy diet.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl has a more reasonable response than Rick Moran's.

UPDATE II (RSM): As Smitty mentioned in his American Glob interview, the risk of a blog partnership is that you sometimes work at cross-purposes. Just the other night, as I recall, I warned Smitty not to give into his temptation to whack the Rick Moran tar-baby. And while he was working on this post, I was working on a post -- which I may yet decide to publish -- whacking a better target: Andrew Sullivan. But never mind that right now.

In my opinion, Sarah Palin gave the wrong answer to Rusty Humphrey's question. I don't know if I've been interviewed on Rusty's show before -- I did a lot of talk radio while promoting Donkey Cons in 2006 -- and certainly have no more desire to attack him than I do to attack Palin.

However, Rusty's question was as misguided as Palin's answer. As I've said before, there is simply no political payoff to Birtherism. If and when conservative score political victories in 2010 or 2012, it won't be because somebody's found a "smoking gun" about the circumstances of Obama's birth. Instead of asking questions about a birth certificate, conservatives need to be asking questions that don't lead into a cul-de-sac of fruitless speculation.

We might say something similar about Smitty and Rick Moran going at one another. Rick's problem, I've surmised, is that he is cued into certain liberal media outlets and has internalized their spin on these kinds of stories. It's a GIGO situation.

I've been on Rick's blog radio show several times and hung out with him at CPAC, and he's always friendly. However, he and I perceive different political realities.

Why? I don't watch much TV, almost never watch the Big Three network news, don't even get CNN on my cable selection, and am always on guard against bias in any news I read. I know nothing about Rick's own news diet, but from the stuff he writes I'm sometimes tempted to think he's listening to NPR, watching Anderson Cooper and reading New Republic. NTTAWWT.

Smitty's problem, on the other hand, is that he's got Rick's blog in his RSS feed, so he sees at least the headline of every post Rick writes and madcap hijinks ensue.

Through long years of writing and editing other writers, I've learned that what you read influences what you write. For example, academic historians are bad writers because most of what they read is the work of other academic historians. And a lot of women journalists write in a lightweight style because they spend too many leisure hours reading novels and women's magazines.

Well, we bloggers have a bad tendency to read too many blogs. We get into the habit of looking for excuses to grab our flamethrowers and incinerate anybody who disagrees with us.

Never mind that this leaves a lot of charred corpses lying around. It also leads to bad writing and pointless arguments that are only interesting to the two guys wielding the flamethrowers.

Smitty is a very nimble writer, so his stuff is interesting to read even in this kind of situation. And I've won a few fans at gladitorial exhibitions of this sort. But . . . eh, I don't know. I've sort of resigned myself to letting Rick Moran be Rick Moran. Is that wrong?

I hope to be as smart as Rick Moran someday

by Smitty

Why didn't you think of the celery stalk analogy, Mr. Moran? Look at your blog: you're from a nuthouse:

But Palinites are universal resenters. I don't think I'd go quite so far as Taibbi and bring race into the picture, but clearly these are "traditional Americans" who see the country changing politically, demographically, ethnically and are very uncomfortable about it. Palin, by speaking to their fears on a gut level, offers a refuge of sorts from the storm; reassuring those who need it that they are not alone, that there are others who share their fears.

Let's work on the list:

• Politically - Progressives have legislated their way around the Constitution for a century. If you've noticed, and maybe you have not, there has been a 12 TRILLION DOLLAR BILL racked up. It's theft. Should we 'resent' evil? Should we say 'two tears in a bucket' and play through, hoping we die of old age before the crash? Should we write air-headed blog posts decrying the locution of someone, anyone, who happens to command the political capital to DO SOMETHING about it, potentially?
• Demographically - I can't even hazard a guess what you might mean here, Mr. Moran. But you've deployed an important sounding word, so I guess that makes you important. The people who seem freaked out about the demographics, if we mean the census next year, appear to be the left. They understand that an honest read of people fleeing confiscatory taxation in blue states are going to diminish the power of CA and NY, for example. Hence the need to position the books near the microwave, for easy cooking, so to speak.
• Ethnically - Is this a stealth race card play? The starboard blogosphere supports the gamut of genetic expression, AFAICT. Is this your way of slipping in a little hint of non-falsifiability, so that you can continue to write cheesy little posts about how the best of others falls short of your 'good enough'?

"speaking to their fears on a gut level"

How convenient of you to dismiss legitimate concerns as "fears". We have observed US politics as pure circus in the 111th Congress. Fine, argue that this is business as usual, but the fact is that the people are now paying attention. You can argue that the people have been asleep at the switch for a century. I'll give you that. However, the Congress works for the people, not the reverse. Labeling the popular dismay at the litany of un-representative moves undertaken by the Congress and Administration "their fears" seems, cheap, condescending, and in keeping with your usual style, Mr. Moran. Why are you such an apologist for what would likely be a full-on tyranny, had it greater competence?

Back you your post, Mr. Moran:

They will tell you it's all about "socialism" but these same folks didn't seem to mind much when Bush pushed the prescription drug benefit, or the huge federal interference in education represented by the No Child Left Behind legislation. If Bush had gotten half the resistance on NCLB as these folks are giving the Democrats on health care, the education monstrosity would have died in committee.

Does history exist for you prior to Bush43, Mr. Moran? At the age of 40, I can tell you that I was too busy being a squid, supporting and defending the Constitution, and placing excessive faith in my elected leadership until about age 35. Since then, after getting online and paying more attention to politics, and especially after the watershed event of Liberal Fascism, I've been studying the history of the decline of the three-branch, three-tier system of government in this country.

Fine, throw Bush43 under the bus, and Bush41 with him. But will you please apply your intellect to the deleterious effect of all of the legislation--entitlements, Community Reinvestment Act, etc., going back to the 16th Amendment, that short-circuit our Constitutional system? We've bought a momentary, unsustainable societal buzz at the expense of crushing debt, debased institutions, and the modern equivalent of aristocracy.

And you, Mr. Moran, seem to be strangely comfortable with this, posting superficially critical pieces, and supporting various GOP apparatchiks who are going to make appealing noises, while feeding the Federal beast. The problem isn't Democrat, Republican, Barack Obama or George W. Bush. The problem is the century of Progressive panem et circenses that must be rejected at all costs. Your calls for moderation are tantamount to a heroin addict confining the injections to the hours of noon to midnight. We need to get off the junk or just enjoy blowing the top of our collectivist head off. To tweak Nietzsche, socialism is the opiate of the bureaucracy, but addiction lacks middle ground.

Rick Moran dismayed concerning progress on Reagan re-birth effort

by Smitty

First, you rip Sarah Palin for quoting Ronald Reagan on the Rush Limbaugh show.

Now, you hammer her for not being Ronald Regan.

So, if we can arrange for the woman to give birth to Ronald Reagan, might that satisfy both you and Andrew Sullivan?

Look at you go, Rick, emphasis mine:

It is an insult to the man to even hint at a comparison. Where Reagan used his gifts of communication to inspire his audience, Palin uses her considerable ability to connect emotionally with people to breed anger and resentment. Where Reagan was a veritable font of ideas, Palin is a pale echo of dozens of conservative pundits who rely on talking points and tired, cliched, 1980s-era solutions to our problems.

No, those people were already bitter and clinging to their guns from the lefty ahead of you who smeared them.

Back at RWN, you close with:

The road to internet fame and riches is to agree with Palin, with the base, with big shot bloggers who get 10 times the traffic I do. So before questioning my integrity, you better have a damn sight more evidence than your idiotic, horse's ass opinion.

Since you bring up the topic of idiotic, horse's ass opinions backed with no evidence, perhaps you could elaborate on the who/ what/ where/ when/ why/ how that Sarah has "bred anger and resentment". Was it

• Sarah on the Internet with the FaceBook page?
• Sarah in the Bookstore with Going Rogue?
• Rick Moran in the blog spouting the watered-down Pelosi-isms?

Back on PJM you conclude:

It has been a year since she burst onto the national scene and she has done little to rectify the huge gaps in knowledge and nuance that exposed her as an intellectually unserious person during the campaign. And by that I mean simply that she has failed to apply herself in any meaningful way to the process of learning what she needs to know in order to become a successful politician. Not an academic. Not a pointy-headed elite at some think tank, but rather a thoughtful citizen of the republic who knows enough about the issues facing America to serve effectively.

Until she proves me wrong, I will continue to celebrate her as a cotton candy conservative with no more heft than the confection’s wispy strands of caramelized sugar that look so delightful but have little taste beyond a vague, sickly sweetness.

Oh, it all comes together now. We'll just have Sarah schedule a little trip to the circus with you, Rick. Dr. Helen Smith can chaperone, and all of the Oedipal challenges, cotton candy requirements, and what-have-you can be treated. Getting at your coulrophobia make take a little while--heaven knows this congress/ administration fuels mine.

Rick, you're an astute fellow. It should be obvious that Sarah Palin is keeping the powder dry. There just isn't any need for her to break out serious policy at this phase. If she gives the left anything that can be remotely turned into ammunition, then such will be used on her just as quickly as you can invent some failure of nuance therein.

Sarah can't stop a Congress stuck on stupid, and there really isn't any way to tell just how much legislative, economic, diplomatic, and military wreckage there will be by 2012. Little Miss Attila opines "I think she’s going to be an elder stateswoman." I don't foresee that. Real Americans are not going to sit passive while the loony left leads us into a Huxley/Orwell/Rand blend of hell.

We're also not going to be quick to chide with the kind of centrist, watered-down-Progressive, split-hairs-until-bald, vaguely academic, crypto-elitist fluff of the type spouted by some, whom the left like to label conservative, to a chorus of puking on the right. Or are you a Brooks fan?

I leave you with this, Rick:

"A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."
— General George S. Patton

The point is by no means to advocate violence. No, I want you to focus on the "far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow" half. This is something that a an actual leader like Sarah grasps intuitively. Someone who is not a leader would sit back, ponder, weep, gnash the teeth, wring the hands, and so forth. And no, people will oscillate between these categories over time and subject. But ponder Patton. Your inability to grasp Sarah's plan and execution method is a good sign. It might mean that those who hate America and the liberty for which she stands fail to grasp Sarah's plan as well. But this does not constitute evidence that she has/ lacks a plan.

We all await history's unfolding, and wish it was less "interesting".

Andrew Klavan introduces the 'Self-Rick Roll'

by Smitty

The Rick Roll
Every attempt of the mainstream media to shoot the conservative messenger proves to be a Rick Roll:

Klavan is rather gentle with his mockery. While the Loony Left has had a good run, the American Margaret Thatcher looms large today. Super Colossal, in fact.

So the question boils down to a watered down Star Wars scenario. Will the autocratic, socialist Chicago Empire, with its Debt Star

succeed with its propaganda machine against the Alaskan 'Rebellion' with the feisty leader?

Andrew Klavan's clip offers no prediction. The question will boil down to whether the American people have been sufficiently reduced to morons by the relentless propaganda mentioned by Klavan.

Not the Rick Roll
I happen to think that 1/3 of a million book sales on the first day answers the mail on that one. Also, keeping it mellow is desirable. Without going full-on Rick Moran (a Rick Roll of another sort), let me help The Blog Prof walk back on the Fort Bragg excitement. It's a good thing if the Army throws a wet blanket on a private citizen on a base tour.

Even if the POTUS is something of a wreck (which this blog has explored in ways others haven't dared), three years remain until the next election. Suck it up, America. But know two things:

• BHO is as much a reflection of an asleep-at-the-switch electorate in the Roaring 20th Century as he is anything else. Those of us who voted Ross Perot and then took the wrong lesson from Bill Clinton, continuing to vote GOP instead of realizing what a Progressive enabler the GOP has been since Reagan own our own tiny piece of the blame. (I-told-you-so from Kn@ppster in 3...2..1...)
• Personality politics plays to Alinsky. Admire Sarah for her political platform more than her platform soles. It's disgusting and horrible that Eric Holder has politicized the DoJ. Let us not support politicizing the military by having a media frenzy at Fort Bragg. The military has sufficient angst about the current administration and congress, and their non-command of the Constitution as it is. The mission is to hold everything together until the next election. Having Sarah stir the pot isn't helping anyone.

Rolling Rick
Speaking of Rick Moran, "PALIN AND HER SUPPORTERS IN A TIME WARP" recalls a Stacy-ism:

Just because you don't know what Sarah Palin is doing doesn't mean that she doesn't know what she's doing.

Let's enumerate:

1. Sarah goes on Rush Limbaugh.
2. Sarah describes the current economic situation in guarded terms, coloring very well within the lines in a straight Ronald Reagan play for her presecriptions.
3. You declare she's "living in a dream world - or time warp - if you believe that a little Reagan-like tax cutting will lift all boats."

Rick Moran ends with:

In total, I would have to say that the Sarah Palin phenomenon is poison for conservatism and deadly to the Republican party. But blinded by an inexplicable attraction to this polarizing, ill-informed, political Svengali, it is quite possible that the movement and the party will go down to defeat to the sound of thunderous applause.

OK, so let's wonder what would have happened if she's have said that BHO's economic policy has the appeal of a George Armstrong Custer battle plan? Had she offered more than modest and historically-founded proposals, she's have been open to attack for being inflammatory and gunning for BHO. The fake quotes would have had her seeing economic recovery from her house, just past Russia. And, when the un-baked numbers reveal the economy is in worse shape than she outlined, they'd give her a drubbing for not having analyzed things properly.

Sarah's position is that of Fabius Maximus. She puts out a book to introduce herself, goes on a tour, pockets some cash for the legal expenses, and lets BHO metaphorically consult the ropemaker's daughter for flying lessons. She has everything to gain and nothing to lose by her current course of action. And you know that. It's perfectly valid note with alarm the conservatives who're engaging more with hormones than intellect on topic of Sarah Palin. It's quite another to fail to give credit where due. Devil's advocate is a fine role, when played on substantial grounds, Mr. Moran. But when you say:

I fully realize my opinion of Sarah Palin is not that of a majority of true conservatives. But then, it appears that the majority would rather go down in flames with Palin than take down Obama in 2012.

I must reply that moderation has been caught swapping spit with Progressivism, which has put us $12 trillion in the hole. You can argue that correlation is not causation, and I'll sell you that argument for $12 trillion and a balanced budget. The most that moderation is going to buy us is a slight amount of time, tacitly asserting that it's not Already Too Late.

So, I don't care what name you slap on things. Doug Hoffman, fine. I don't care if the person just rolled out of the Star Wars convention sporting port and starboard hair-danishes. I just want some leaders who understand that a Federalist approach is likely the only thing that will preserve this country in any traditional fashion.