Oh Man...
— Ace

Look, I hate to be the bearer of unfortunate truths but...

It is what it is.

O'Donnell tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that while she does pay rent on what is technically her legal residence with campaign funds, she also has a separate permanent residence, the location of which she won't disclose "for security reasons." O'Donnell said that her campaign office and home were vandalized in 2008, and she's fearful that her opponents will do the same this year. Says O'Donnell:

They’re following me. They follow me home at night. I make sure that I come back to the townhouse and then we have our team come out and check all the bushes and check all the cars to make sure that—they follow me.

That’s what’s disgusting, as you can see from the YouTube videos. They knock on the door at all hours of the night. They’re hiding in the bushes when I’m at candidate forums. In 2008 they broke into my home. They vandalized my home. They wrote nasty notes on my front door, on my front porch. They jeopardized my safety. They did the same thing to our campaign office. They broke into our campaign office. They vandalized our campaign office. They stole files. My campaign signs that had my picture—they put a spear in my mouth poked out my eyes, and cut out the part of my heart, and wrote nasty names all over those campaign signs.

I would be a fool to be pressured into disclosing where I live, when I know that the stakes are even higher this time. What makes me think they wont do the same distasteful things they did in 2008 when the stakes are even higher, when we’re even more viable. I mean come on, John, you’re a class act. You don’t want to—you know that this is a security issue. You know what they’re capable of.

Is O'Donnell suggesting that Castle supporters vandalized her office in 2008, when she was running for Senate against Joe Biden? “I’m not sure who did it, but I know for a fact that Mike Castle and [Delaware GOP chairman] Tom Ross were campaigning against me,” O’Donnell says. “They’ve been sabotaging my candidacy since 2008. So who knows who did it back then.” O'Donnell says there are no police reports of the 2008 break-in because she didn't want to make an issue of it at the time. She claims to have pictures of vandalized signs.

She also won't rule out a third party spoiler bid, should she lose.

More about this candidacy at Townhall. Mark Levin continues supporting her... but only because he hates the living guts of Mike Castle. Which, yeah, I get it.

But.

But.

Jim Geraghty links this "trainwreck" interview, which I don't think is really a trainwreck.

The problem is the interviewer is so antagonistic it comes off as an ambush, which makes her seem sympathetic. A lot of it is quibbling over her self-puffery about "winning two counties" (out of three) in Delaware in 2008. (She didn't, and didn't even come close in one of them.) But, whatever, insurgent candidate, sometimes you have to bend the truth, maybe.

To be fair, she also says she had nothing at all to do with that Liberty.com gay-affair thing, and disavows it, saying "Take the high road."

That's perfectly possible. When you're a little itty-bitty candidate you can't be too choosy about who will work for you, since no one wants to. You might have to settle for the bottom-feeders.

Still, all that, sure, sure, the system is pounding an underdog upstart, yeah, but... there's this following business.

I'm sure this all appears very unseemly to O'Donnell's supporters. The establishment media all ganging up on this upstart to aid a RINO.

I know it looks ugly.

All I can say is... Well, either she was followed and vandalized and all that in 2008 by Mike Castle (who wasn't even running against her; and her own bid was a forlorn-hope give-up by the party) or she wasn't.

It's kind of one or the other.

One thing, though, is that there are "campaign trackers" who go around with videocameras taping candidates as often as possible. To catch them in a "Macacca" moment. So it's not at all kooky to suppose she is being taped in public, frequently, by Mike Castle's people.

In fact, that's surely happening.

But... it's also sort of SOP at this point. It's not something to get all weird about. It sucks, yeah, but this is how the game is played. Everyone's taping everyone, hoping for that golden gaffe.

To defend her a little more, too: I'm told that in that video where her body-people get in the faces of tapers -- yeah, those guys are probably Castle campaign trackers.

So, in that case, it's really not a thug jumping ugly with an average citizen. It's one political pro getting in the face of another political pro. Kind of like a papparazzi knocking over a person to get a picture -- if that person is an ordinary citizen, we say it's bad. If the person knocked over, though, is just another papparazzi, we say, who cares. It's how they play their dirty game.

But, still. Altogether: I just don't find this candidacy credible.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (189)
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Oh My Dear Sweet Lord: Rightwing Tea Party "Anti-Immigrant" Extremist Turns Out To Have Been Convicted For... Human Smuggling of Illegal Immigrants
— Ace

So... this guy's a rightwinger because in his general screed against parasitic human babies he mentioned he didn't like "anchor babies" either?

Turns out his relationship with illegal immigrants was a little more complex than that.

James Lee, the bomb-laden gunman who was killed by police in the lobby of the Discovery Channel, was once convicted and imprisoned for smuggling illegal immigrants into the country from Mexico.

The revelation that Lee had once smuggled illegals contrasts sharply with a hate-filled manifesto he left behind in which he describes illegal immigrants as "disgusting filth" and their children as "anchor baby filth."

Note that ABCNews leaves you with the impression that that was his sole motivation. They do not mention the leftwing eco-terrorist agitprop at all. To ABC, and its made-ignorant readers, Lee was an anti-immigration extremist, period.

Precisely as I said he would be.

Thanks to Pundit140.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (82)
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New 'Contract With America' On The Way?
— LauraW

Stumbled on this last night while flipping channels. Watch Juan Williams take a breath and lean back a little when he hears the word 'contract' after the .40 mark.

For some reason this made an impression on me last night. This morning I remembered Juan's reaction more dramatic than it really was.

Ah, well.
That's what happens when you're up late making smoothies out of Lysol and lawn mushrooms.

If there is a new Contract- and there doesn't have to be- I just hope it's not stupid.

Republicans have a great opportunity right now not to be lame-o.
Guys.
Please.
Don't be lame-o.

Posted by: LauraW at 11:26 AM | Comments (60)
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This Ad Is Genuinely Funny
— Ace

Genuinely.

"I love what I'm getting out of you, Blue Cougar!"

Obviously, I agree wholeheartedly. I always find a danger with conservatives is this: Because we all sort of... are rejectivists of the system, we sort of have a distaste for conventional politics, we look down on that as sort of join-ey, something liberal.

We sort of want to engage in para-politics, something akin to politics but not actually part of the political process. As the ad mentions: Writin' emails. Lettin' liberals know our home is our castle.

I asked my friend steve_in_hb why he never voted, despite having some fairly firm political beliefs, and I think he encapsulated the rejectivist conservative opinion on this pretty succinctly. He said:

"Voting is for fags."

And it's one of those jokes, you know, like most jokes: Yes, it's a joke. Yes, his tongue is firmly in cheek. Yes, he was just trying to get a laughing rise out of me (and succeeded).

But yes: It is also sort of true.

Now, in a serious way, he wouldn't say this; but he would say something about the pointlessness of a corrupt system and so on.

This is always, always a danger for conservatives, and what keeps our representation below what it ought to be: a rejectivism that leads many to not even bother to vote at all, despite having very, very strong opinions about which candidate ought to win what race.

Friends, the time for living off the political grid is over. It's time to engage.

Voting is a right won for us by force of arms, by the blood and courage of strong men, and a responsibility passed down to us from them, our debt back to them. We honor them by voting and we dishonor them by standing on the sidelines, passively allowing our political destinies to be determined by other people.

Good men died for this right, and killed for it. It is precious as blood. It's not to be cast aside as a cheap bauble.

I really do read too many people expounding on the Constitution and then, when asked, stating that voting is beneath their dignity.

I don't know. Seems to me there's a major disconnect there. Unless you've earned the right by other means (such as serving the country's armed forces), I'm really not sure you've earned the right to disclaim about the Constitution if you can't even be bothered to take a ten minute trip to the post office and sign up to be counted as a Citizen of the United States of America.

Ah: A way to put steve's joke is this: Voting is for goody-goods who believe in "civic duty" and all that rot.

Conservatives, often, are very anti-bullshit; they like cutting bullshit out of their lives. But for too many, they toss "voting" into the bullshit column (and then wonder how we wind up with the Mensa Chapter Presidents we call Senators).

Conservatives like to style themselves (and frequently are) rebels, sort of outlaws, sort of loose cannon mavericks who play by their own rules and get their badges and guns taken away every week from their constipated Sergeant when they blow up a truck full of liquid nitrogen in pursuit of a hot-rod smugging Krugerrands and sex-slaves.

And then that leads to showing "rebellion" by not participating in voting.

I think what this ad is getting at isn't portraying conservatives as bumpkins, but this sort of Rebel Without a Voter Card as a bumpkin, a bumpkin who's deluding himself into thinking he's actually "teaching the system a lesson" by writin' emails and otherwise consigning himself to political irrelevancy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (97)
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McConnell: No Way I Get Displaced as Leader Next Year; I've Already Got the Votes Lined Up
— Ace

I wouldn't usually link this (kind of minor and speculative and divisive) except I was just having this exact discussion in the O'Donnell/Castle thread.

It's no sure thing, despite him brave-facing it:

Though several Tea Party-backed Republican challengers – including, most recently, Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller – have said they won’t commit yet to backing McConnell, fueling speculation of a possible leadership challenge, the Kentucky Republican said he isn’t worried about such chatter.

I would bet on McConnell, if I were a betting man, but I'm not a betting man, because there's no such thing as a sure thing. And he's not a sure thing. He has a big group of Tea Party candidates coming in -- some, like Rand Paul, who had to defeat his own hand-picked candidate -- and others just generally opposed to business-as-usual in DC, more shake-it-up types. You add them to Jim DeMint's Hooker-Lipstick-Red Caucus and there is some chance of a new leader (minority leader or, more likely, majority leader).

Now, the GOP is notoriously antagonistic to drama and palace coups and people jumping in line, but, as you all know, the party has become a bit more unexpected and dramatic lately.

I'd bet on McConnell, but I wouldn't bet much. FWIW, I think... I'm meh on him. I don't dislike him, I don't resent him, I understand the need for tactics and stuff, but I also don't really find him much of a spokesman.

He doesn't rev me up. I don't think he revs anyone up. He sort of seems somnolent by genetic disposition and conscious choice. Whenever I have trouble sleeping I count Mitch McConnell's jumping over a fence.

Still, all this excitement and stuff in the party -- we've got a lot of it. We might want to avoid making things too exciting. We're casting a Senate, not The Expendables here.

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (174)
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Israel-Palestinian Talks A Success Because....They Agreed To More Talks
— DrewM

This is the beauty of diplomacy (smart and otherwise)...there's always another day, another meeting, another agreement which will save the day.

The next round of talks has been scheduled for the 14th and 15th of this month and according to CNN's Ed Henry, that's apparently a big deal.

Officials close to #Mideast talks told me last wk key barometer of success would be whether there was specific sked for 2nd round of talks

Why so soon for round 2? Because things are going so well or they just wanted to shoehorn them in before Israel's self-imposed settlement freeze expires on the 24th?

Meanwhile back in the real world, Hamas says, have fun in DC guys but don't expect anything to change back home.

Operations of resistance will continue and the measures by the occupation and Fatah will not block them," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Abbas is to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the State Department later on Thursday for the first direct peace talks for 20 months, but Hamas remains opposed to negotiations with Israel.

"Mahmoud Abbas does not have the right to speak for the Palestinians, nor to represent them and therefore, any results will not be binding on the Palestinian people," Zuhri said.

This is the problem with the American and European approach to Israel and the Palestinians. The Israelis have been told for decades they must make tangible concessions to people like Arafat and Abbas in the name of peace. In return all they ever get are promises the Palestinian side can not and will not be able to deliver on. That's assuming the Palestinians really ever wanted to honor their commitments, which is debatable at best.

Going back to the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, the Wye River Plantation summit, the Gaza pullout, the Gaza war, and even the latest Hamas attack leading up to this round of US presidential legacy building talks, Israel is simply held to a different standard than the Palestinians.

This may make for good political theater in Washington, London and Paris but in the real world, it means nothing will ever change. If you really want to see "peace in the Mideast", it needs to begin with forcing the Palestinians to get their act together internally and accept Israel as the Jewish state. Pull that off and the rest might just follow.

Until then? Set another meeting date and declare victory. Rinse, lather and repeat.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:11 AM | Comments (67)
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Oh, No: Coast Guard Responding To Another Possible Rig Explosion in Gulf
— Ace

A possible explosion; I don't really understand why there is some doubt about whether there was an explosion or not.

All 13 workers are accounted for.

Thanks to circa.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (142)
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More On Rightwing Survivalist Tea Party Extremist James J. Lee
— Ace

This Ain't Hell actually talked to him at a protest.

He was carrying the sorts of signs that rightwingers are known for.

Thanks to DrewM.

Posted by: Ace at 07:41 AM | Comments (74)
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Romer Scuttles While the Job Market Burns
— Geoff

My GDP-jobs correlation is crap? Run away!!

The national unemployment rate for August will be released tomorrow. Although it's become useless in a technical sense, it has still retained its political clout. For example, since various oddities in the labor market have kept the unemployment rate under 10% for the past 6 months, the Obama administration has narrowly avoided being drawn and quartered by the public and the press. It's been a miraculous escape, particularly when we find the exiting head of the Council of Economic advisors, Christina Romer, finally admitting that the Stimulus failed.

In fact, she admitted more than that - she finally 'fessed up to what we'd been telling her since the Inauguration: she and her cronies didn't have a clue as to what they were doing.

...we, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP and unemployment would break down

I emphasized the last part because all of their predictions, and all of their claims of jobs saved, have been based on the assumption that the old relationships between GDP and unemployment still hold. more...

Posted by: Geoff at 07:09 AM | Comments (89)
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Stay Classy, Christine O'Donnell
— Ace

She didn't make the charge; a firm employed by her did. She's not commenting.

A conservative firm until recently employed by the Delaware primary campaign of conservative Christine O'Donnell against Rep. Mike Castle casually leveled an extraordinary — and unsupported — charge of a gay affair against Castle in a video posted to its website today, the ugliest salvo yet in an extremely bitter primary.

Walker said he had no compunction about repeating the rumor about Castle because "he's a threat to American sovereignty."

He didn't offer any evidence for the claim.

She cannot win in Delaware, which is usually among the ten most Democratic states in the union. Allow me to be a little elistist -- what in this odd biography says "serious candidate for Senator"?

I was already predisposed to endorsing Castle, feeling this was a bridge too far (or a RINO too far), and then I recalled who Christine O'Donnell was -- she's a fill-in guest on Hannity and other talk shows. She has always grated on me, because she always seems pretty unprepared (or just not really a strong thinker), and tends to just repeat the same three or four obvious bullet-points.

If I have turned the channel off almost every time she's been on, I do not see how she is going to wear well in Democrat-stronghold Delaware.

When we were trying to get Scott Brown elected, some objected that he was a RINO. I said at the time: This is a gift from God. It is unseemly to look down one's nose at a gift from God and ask, "Couldn't you have gotten something better?"

I do not know why it is that Mike Castle is running 12 points or so ahead of his Democratic rival. It could be partly due to his despised RINOism, of course. And it's also due to personal characteristics which he alone possesses and cannot be transferred to O'Donnell -- like, as the state's only at-large Representative (the state has only one Rep.), he knows everyone in the state, has campaigned statewide nine times before. For whatever reason, the voters trust him, seem to like him. (Well, "like" as much as one can like a politician.)

For whatever reason, they've decided he's okay by them. And preferable to a Democrat. And so he polls 10-12 points ahead.

Meanwhile the latest Rasmussen poll puts O'Donnell ten points behind Coons.

And on that point, I ask, where is the plausible pathway to candidate growth? What is the realistic plan for getting O'Donnell up from ten points down to at least even?

Here's the trouble:

1. Ideologically, she is strident and hardcore. This means she's out of sync with Delaware. In 2008, Joe Biden trounced her (no one really wanted to run against him, except O'Donnell) 65%-35%, his largest margin of victory ever... and voters also sort of knew he wasn't even going to be Senator, he was going to be Vice President.

2. Often a compelling biography can make up for some mismatch here (like, Joe Miller's West Point, Bronze Star Desert Storm, Yale Law super-bio), but O'Donnell's is not only not strong, it's noticeably weak. I look at her bio and I sort of see my own. She might as well just say "Sketchy Blogger/Drifter" at the top of the page.

3. A new candidate can often be expected to grow into a good speaker and media-player as she learns the craft, just as a rookie quarterback can grow into the roll. But to the extent Christine O'Donnell has a job at all, it's speaking on FoxNews and CNN when they need someone last-minute. So she does in fact have experience, much more experience than your average neophyte politician. And I'm sorry to say, five or six years at this and she's simply bad at that job, and I cannot for the life of me imagine how she suddenly gets better when we need her to be better.

So where is the plausible pathway for growth? I don't see it. There are three critical areas for candidate success, and she is a... I hate picking on an underdog, and she's a nice lady and all that, but in all three areas she fails. Rather badly.

Now I'm not in love with Mike Castle. He supported cap and tax in the last go-round. That is one my Rubicons... almost my abortion issue, or my 2nd Amendment issue, if you know what I mean. One of my Big Ones. One of the things that get me going emotionally.

I'm not going to tell you he's not a RINO. He is. Straight-up, no chaser. He's a RINO.

But I also know that if he's elected, he votes for a Republican for control of the Senate. (A silly rumor undoubtedly peddled by O'Donnell's supporters notwithstanding.)

That is to say: We cannot win full control of the Senate without a Republican in this seat. This seat has long been one of the seats we were just assuming we would win. Because Castle has been comfortably out front for a long, long time.

This is not some longshot pick-up where it really makes little difference because we have no realistic chance anyway, so might as well swing for the fences. We have been counting this as an easy pick-up. When you read "Republicans will pick up at least 7 seats" this is number two or three on that list, after the gimme Arkansas pick-up.

And we're going to toss this away? For what?

She can't win. Period. So it has to be kept in mind, in doing political calculations: When you vote for her, you are not just voting for someone with a slightly smaller chance of prevailing in the general election. You are voting against someone with a 90% chance of winning in favor of someone with a 0% chance of winning.

Okay, maybe not zero; one can never say zero. Fine. 1%.

The vote for her would not be strategic, or aimed at a plausible victory scenario. It would be pure RINO-punishing (and cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face). If RINO-punishing is the only thing that matters -- and I stress: Castle is a RINO, and I sure the hell can't claim he doesn't deserve to be punished -- then vote for her.

If something more tangible than protest and punishment is sought, vote for the guy who's way out ahead of the Democrat. RINO or not. (And just to be clear-- RINO.)

Mike Castle will vote against us on 30% of stuff. You will not like him. I will not like him.

But I will like him better than the Democrat Coons, voting against us on 88% of stuff. And yeah, in a blue state, with a strong Democratic majority, he can afford to be one of the solid liberal votes for Obama's socialist agenda. Because he is not going to have to worry about losing his seat for voting too liberal.

The pathway to success is to change Blue to Purple, and Purple to Red, and Red to Even Redder. We are doing that. We are trading in RINO Murkowski for a Senator more in sync with a true red state.

But as we trade in, we can't move by more than one color. We can get a purple guy elected to a blue state, a red guy (like Angle) elected to a purple state, and a hooker's-lipstick-red guy elected to a red state.

We cannot get a super-red person elected to a blue state. Period. The anti-Obama factor gives everyone about an 8% bump. Add that to Christine O'Donnell's 35% (from last time) and she gets to 43%.

That's what we call a loss.

Strategically, we go easy on this one, we bank the sure thing and call it progress, because it is progress. If we gamble, we lose. It's not even a gamble. It's just tossing a stack of chips back to the house for no reason.

Uggh: This may be excusable. I know I wouldn't excuse it if she were a Democrat.

I won't lie and say this would be a huge campaign issue. It wouldn't be. But combine this with the "That's the rumor" thuggishness and it begins to paint a rather shabby picture.

So: Bio is out. Ideology is out. Media savvy is out.

Character is.... well, questionable.

What exactly will we be running on, I'd like to know.

That thanks to Gabe.

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 AM | Comments (324)
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