And more news from Iraq.

Meanwhile, Marines are preparing to take Ramadi.

It's too early to claim victory yet, but the early indications this new surge is more effective than we could have hoped.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 PM | Comments (89)
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Nutroots provocateur Mike Stark -- last seen bulling his way to get within knife's reach of George Allen -- snuggles up to Michelle Malkin in an uncomfortable moment.

He's looking to create some kind of incident. (Hopefully, that's all he's looking for.)

He really has no idea just how bad it will be when he does so.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 PM | Comments (30)
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Ode To The Wingman.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:37 PM | Comments (21)
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Dirty, fithy, sodomaniacal Scandi icewops.

Thanks to Rocketeer.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (41)
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The Mitt people are being all Shouty McShoutertons now. I don't want to criticize them, though, because they have the nicest deep-blue t-shirts and I'm hoping ot score one.

Michelle Malkin has more coverage of the day. Not that it's a big deal, but Ann Coulter's bomb-throwing sort of vindicates John McCain's decision not to attend. Not too much fallout, but unlike Gingrich, Giuliani, and Romney, he won't be slapped up by the MSM for attending a conference where Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot.

Mitt's Here Now... waking along blog row. Captain Ed is asking him questions. Another guy is peppering him about flip-flopping. Couldn't hear it all, but he's talking up the fact he has a gun in his house (owned by his son) and believes in the Second Amendment, whatever that means. (I just mean saying you "believe" in the 2nd Amendment could mean pretty much everything.)

He also stressed that he was a religious man, reflecting the values of the American public. That may have been prompted by a question about his Mormonism; not sure about that, but that would be a likely context.

Oh Lord: Now the Brownbackies and out-shouting the Mitters.

If the primaries are going to be decided by synchronized screaming, Brownback's got the nomination all but wrapped up.

But that's how they decide the Democratic primaries, not the Republican ones.

Andrew Sullivan Is Apparently Here... I so look forward to seeing him at Patrick Hynes' happy hour thing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (32)
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No, really, she said that. Well, she said she would say that except she didn't want to be ordered into rehab. Audio at the American Mind.

Every time she comes here she seems to have an obligatory attention-getting ill-advised slur at the ready. Last year it was "Raghead talks tough, raghead gets bombed." The year before, I think, was the suggestion that Justice Stevens' creme brule ought to be topped with a dash of rat poison.

I don't know what it is about CPAC specifically that makes her think she has to turn the Outrageous! Meter up to 11.

Damn, I missed her speech... everything's running late here so I don't know when people are really speaking. Got lost in the hotel for 45 minutes and just completely missed her.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (301)
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Egyptian Sandmonkey saw him speak (hey, he called himself that, not me) and wonders if he's running for Al Qaeda Rush Chairman, damn glad to meet you.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (15)
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A black candidate who's family owned slaves?

Well hot damn-- he really is trying to heal the rifts that divide us.

In related news, Al Sharpton was just quoted as saying "Mother fucker!"

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (22)
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I'm trying to listen, but Sam Brownback has this Praetorian Guard of college supporters carrying about signs and bursting into cries of "BROWN-BACK, BROWN-BACK, BROWN-BACK!" every five freakin' minutes.

I really wish they'd stop. This sort of thing is so... Manson Family.

General impressions, though I didn't see or hear much of it:

A much more firey, animated speech than the one he gave at the NR Symposium. Unlike Giuliani, he was eager to discuss social conservative agenda items, ranging from keeping taxes low (something Giuliani hinted at in discussing his own eoncomic record, but did not in fact make any promises going forward), encouraging marriage prior to childbirth, strengthening the American family, etc. "Strong military, strong economy, strong familes" was his rhetorical punchline (finished up with a rousing cry of "God Bless America.")

He's definitely an attractive guy and very articulate and forceful in speaking. Really, it's far too early to write off Mitt Romney, as some seem to.

Thinking about his speech and Giuliani's, I now realize a rhetorical tactic of Giuliani's. Romney was very forward about advancing family values and the like. Giuliani, meanwhile, discussed his first principles -- freedom, accountability, safety, order, pro-business policies, etc. -- and kept noting that other positive goods would inevitably flow from such policies. He didn't name all of those positives, but one can guess he's talking obliquely about the issues he didn't mention in his speech -- if there is more hope and less hopelessness confronting welfare-trapped young girls, he suggests (again, implicitly), fewer out of wedlock births (and fewer abortions) will reslut as a natural consequence of young girls simply having some alternative to the permanent welfare culture, and will derive more self-respect from working than they can get from attracing irresponsible men to have sex with them.

Again, he didn't say this, but kept hitting the "broken windows" theory of social cohesion -- take care of the little things, and the big things will begin taking care of themselves. Actually, maybe here it's "take care of the big things and the smaller things will take care of themselves," depending on your priorities, but that seems to be his thinking. His implicit message is that he doesn't have to bother pushing an overtly pro-family agenda, because taking care of the economy, defense, and crime will naturally combine to enanct a pro-family agenda of their own.

So maybe here we have a hint as to how Giuliani intends to avoid criticism of his social liberalism -- his claim is that just like government doesn't actually have to begin its own businesses to create businesses -- it simply needs to create the proper economic environment for business, and then people will create businesses themselves -- he doesn't have to bother being a Culture Czar, as a better, safer, more prosperous society is naturally one that creates the right social climate for good social outcomes.

Eh. It's something, I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 12:33 PM | Comments (40)
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It was standing room only to the point the fire marshall forbade any additional spectators. I tried to get in, teling a guy "I'm, uhh, media or something?," to which he responded that the fire code didn't have special blogger exception.

Which reduced me to watching the speech on closed circuit TV, which is kinda dumb, given I could just watch the entire conference at CSPAN's website. Which is what I'll probably be doing now.

Giuiani's speech seemed the most anticipated. Every tv had dozens, maybe thirty, of people gathered round watching him, making it hard as hell to navigage one's way through the rabbit warren of the hotel's exhibit hall.

The speech was a good one, though I snarked it was the best presidential speech for the 1992 elections since at least 1992. Many of the points Giuliani hit in order to demonstrate his executive exerpience and leadership, but he was talking about what have become decidedly second-order issues by now. Crime? Not as scary now. Welfare reform? Well, everyone now agrees with it -- or at least only the angry/unhinged left doesn't, and even they're too cowed to say boo about it anymore.

Mostly he talked about first principles -- freedom, accountability, private solutions, and "ultimately the profit motive" -- and while this is standard boilerplate for Republican candidates he has the genuine executive experience to weave in anecdotes illustrating each. A Senator may be able to boast of his work in committee on an issue; Guiliani can speak of actualy reducing crime and lowering the welfare roles. Not talking about issues or revising leglisative language, but actually doing. So this part of the speech was more effective than a similar version of it given by a hundred other candidates.

Addition: During this part of the speech he spoke at length about the need for school choice and general improvements in education. He was forceful in noting that man parents do not want to send their children to the horrid schools that they are, by law, required to send them.

On foreign policy, he sounded a bit like Chuck Hegel, offering a vision of a peaceful America which only goes to war as at last resort (and sometimes too late, he noted, citing WWII), but which would much rather sell foreign citizens stuff than fight with them (or, as a second-best possibility, buy from them). It was a bit of classic GOP peace-through-superior-economic-firepower bit. However, while he expressed this as America's default desire, he stated clearly that such a default policy was suspended in a time of war.

Getting into terrorism, he said all the right general things while offering no specifics. He only mentioned Iraq once, and in passing (only noting that Democrats were uncomfortable with the war, because of pre-9/11 thinking) and mentioned Iran not at all. Mitt Romney was more specific about Iran at the NR Symposium last month, but specific in a way that failed to excite the audience, menitoning "engagement" and "pressure" as the keys to defanging the Mullahs. Giuliania avoided the rheorical error here by simply avoiding the entire subject -- but, of course, offering no hint whatsoever as to what his plan as regards Iran might be.

Beyond that, he repeated that the US must remain on "offense," including military offensive strikes as well, and most continue engaging in electronic surveillance, "interrogations" (note he did not say "coercive" interrogations, just interrogations, as everyone would agree with; the "coercive" was implied, and yet he did not say so). He also expressed the hope -- a rather daffy one, it seems at the moment -- that just as Japan and Germany ultimately became our allies after WWII, so too "would the people we now consider enemies" be our friends at some point in the future.

Correction: He did speak about Iraq for a paragraph or two, likening it to the Battle of the Bulge, where the great general Eisenhower made a mistake, but (this was the subtext) a mistake that still had to be vindicated. He was speaking here not of Iraq being a mistake, but of specific desicions being miscalculations like the Battle of the Bulge, and that such mistakes did not invalidate the necessity of winning the war.

He also likened George Bush to Harry Truman, in that he was confronted with a radically chaged world, and the decisions Truman had to make -- the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, etc. -- are similar to the ones Bush was confronted with, and that the Cold War might have gone on forever -- if not have been lost at some point -- had he not made those decisions.

Apologies for forgetting this part of the speech earlier.

...

Possible, I suppose; that was my hope for Iraq. But that seems a long way off now.

It is almost unnecessary to even note that he did not address abortion, gays, guns, or immigration. The entire speech was about Reganite economics, creating the proper incentives, protecting the public's greatest right, to walk about freely without fear of crime or terrorism, etc. The speech was smart in that respect -- everything he said had conservatives nodding in agreement (punctuated by warm applause). It was a good speech -- Michelle Malkin, I heard second-hand, liked it an awful lot -- but one that entirely avoided all the difficult areas of Giuliani's politics.

The speech did not disturb the status quo -- anyone inclined to support Giuliani remained inclined to do so (perhaps slightly more inclined to do so, as it was a good speech), but anyone still questioning whether he's got the conservative chops remained with all the same question marks they had before.

It should be said, though, that even in this very conservative gathering, an awful lot of people seemed pretty enthusiastic about him.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (126)
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