John McCormack is a respectable, professional sort of guy. Not like all those fashionably-dressed Town Hall Terrorists the media is always so very, very worried about. The scariest thing about him is the nagging sense he might have gone to a better school than you.

He asked her three questions. This "startled" her, according to the cop who then interviewed McCormack.

I spotted Scozzafava later as she was walking to the parking lot, and asked her: " Assemblywoman, do you believe that the health-care bill should exclude coverage for abortion?" She didn't reply. I asked her twice more. Silence.

After she got into her car, I went to my car and fired up my laptop to report the evening's events.

Minutes later a police car drove into the parking lot with its lights flashing. Officer Grolman informed me that she was called because "there was a little bit of an uncomfortable situation" and then took down my name, date of birth, and address.

"Maybe we do things a little differently here, but you know, persistence in that area, you scared the candidate a little bit," Officer Grolman told me.

"[Scozzafava] got startled, that's all," Officer Grolman added. "It's not like you're in any trouble."

That was good to hear.

Ah, well. Good to know that despite being liberal, at least she's also "scared" by reporters in suits.

In case you've missed this (I missed it, but you probably didn't) Scozzafava is a ludicrously liberal candidate the Brain Trust at the RNCC decided was just the perfect candidate for NY's 23rd district (a vacancy was caused by the retirement of a Republican, who left the seat to become Army secratary).

She supported Obama's spendulus, is supportive of higher income taxes, supports card check, supports gay marriage, and is very pro-abortion.

I know, I know: You're wondering, "How did we luck out into this super-awesome candidate? It's like I've died and gone to Heaven and I finally get to cast a vote for George Washington!"

She was picked by 11 county Republican chairman who thought she "could win."

The next month, the district's 11 Republican county chairmen gathered at a pizzeria in Potsdam to pick a nominee. They were looking for someone with name recognition who could prevail in a shortened campaign when the economy was voters' top concern. Ms. Scozzafava, a former small-town mayor who has served for a decade in the state legislature, seemed the right choice.

Ms. Scozzafava spent 20 years as a stockbroker. Her family has owned the same auto-parts store in Gouverneur, N.Y., for decades. In March 2008, upset at the sex scandals surrounding former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his successor, David Paterson, Ms. Scozzafava sent a letter to her colleagues blasting an Albany social life "that is somewhere between 'Girls & Boys Gone Wild' and a sorority-fraternity style mixer."

She appealed to the Republican chairmen. "We asked, is it possible to put in place a Republican candidate that uniformly stands for all the conservative values of the far right, but is unelectable?" says William Farber, the Hamilton County chairman. "I would much rather have a candidate like Dede Scozzafava that I don't agree with 100% of the time, but always has been honest and forthright."

As Allah points out, the previous Republican won with 60% of the vote in this district. Now, if this were a case of attempting to play on the Democrats' field, attempting to steal a seat from them, I might be tepidly supportive of this candidate. (Tepidly.) Even if she'd be an awful Republican, at least the Democrats would have to spend money to oppose her and take the seat back.

But this does not seem to be a liberal district. For example, the man she would replace, John McHugh, seems strongly pro-life, which is to say, he's a more or less conventional conservative on this issue.

So what, exactly, is the thinking here? If McHugh could manage 60% wins on a strong pro-life platform, why is it that we need a strongly pro-abortion candidate to woo the district?

On issue after issue, she's not merely moderate or squishy. She's outright liberal. Card-check is unpopular with any but the most liberal representatives in the safest liberal districts. But to win this seat, we, the Republican Party, need to embrace the end of the secret ballot in union balloting?

Um... why?

Fortunately a conservative has entered the race -- Doug Hoffman, who appeals for help on Michelle Malkin's blog.

There is a small problem with supporting Doug Hoffman, but it's not really a problem at all. By splitting the party, we've allowed the little-regarded Democratic candidate to pull into a small lead.

But so what? Scozzaflava would be no better than any Democrat -- in fact, she may even be more liberal that the Democrat running.

Furthermore, all of the candidates are now in the 20s and 30s, so Hoffman has a fairly good chance of winning -- especially after Scozzaflava's supporters, who mostly support her on Rep. Peter King's theory that we need to be "united" as a party, realize that she's actually doomed to lose and switch support to the much-better candidate Hoffman.

And lastly -- this is actually great for us, because it allows us to repudiate this style of sell-out thinking before the actual big election in 2010. By demonstrating to the party now we're supportive of conservative candidates, and in fact would rather lose a race than have a liberal inflicted on us, we can teach them a lesson about candidate recruitment in the upcoming elections.

A lot of elections you'd kinda hate to lose. This loss would be nothing but win. We can afford this loss, if it gets us more conservative candidates for 2010.

And besides -- I still think Hoffman has a good chance of winning.

His donation page is here.

Again, I have to repeat: I'm not really against tactical nominations. If this were a swing district, I wouldn't oppose a moderate candidate. If this were a Democratic district, I wouldn't oppose a fairly liberal candidate. Based on the demographics, those would be cases where "the most conservative candidate possible" might not be a very conservative candidate at all.

But here, we have a decade's worth of elections proving that conservative candidates not only win NY23, but win by comfortable margins.

So why the supposedly "tactical" choice of a liberal here?

The Club for Growth, by the way, is buying ads in favor of Hoffman.

Honestly, there's no downside for us here in supporting Hoffman. If he wins -- which he just might; Scozzaflava's supporters apparently animated by the notion that she "can win" will abandon her when it's clear she can't -- awesome.

And even if he doesn't win, and the Democrat wins -- still good. Still sends a message about the candidates we're willing to support and the ones we'd rather actively work against. It's the right message to send, win or lose.

Another Point: Although I don't need to be sold on the idea that supporting Hoffman is win-win, Mallamutt adds:

Since its a special election, why not support Hoffman? 1) its not like this district holds the balance of power for the House 2) the winner will only have 13 months in office and 3) even if Hoffman loses, he builds up name recognition for the 2nd shot, has an organization in place to survive the primary (which will occur in what, 7 months?).

That too.

Posted by: Ace at 04:49 AM | Comments (356)
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OK anyone who has seen the kind of stones and judgment shown by real poker players in Barack Obama stand up. I'm not seeing any takers. I think most of you, like me, have seen a naif outmatched by everyone he has tried to play strategery against.

Well here is a look at him using poker as a political tool, and we all know he is all about being a political tool.

Talking points from outside the reading list include the role the game played in Barack Obama's early elective career. As a writer, professor, and community organizer,

Read girly man or cakeboy.

Obama was greeted coolly by some of his fellow legislators when he arrived in Springfield in 1998 to take a seat in the Illinois Senate. How was this ink-stained, poshly educated greenhorn supposed to get along with Chicago ward heelers and conservative downstate farmers? By playing poker with them, of course.

Well c'mon why would a bunch of knuckle-dragging union thugs object to an Ivy league pretty boy.

"When it turned out that I could sit down at [a bar] and have a beer and watch a game or go out for a round of golf or get a poker game going," Obama recalled, "I probably confounded some of their expectations." He was referring to the regular Wednesday night game, called the Committee Meeting, that he and another freshman Democrat started. While the stakes were kept low, the bottom line politically was that poker helped Obama break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.

Stakes kept low, because cakeboy is much better at giving other people's money away than his own. Anyone wanna bet that he appeased lost money to these Putinesque criminals Illinois politicians like he was giving away missile defense?

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 07:20 PM | Comments (49)
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About freakin' time, although I can understand him trying to do the right thing and let the CinC make a decision. The problem is Obama sent both his pro back-stabbers, Emmanuel and Axelrod out to try and screw the military on Sunday. Now the last pro has lined up in favor of strategy over politics.

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY JET – The Obama administration needs to decide on a war strategy for Afghanistan without waiting for a government there to be widely accepted as legitimate, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

Gates' comments put him at odds with top White House
and NATO officials who are balking at ordering more troops and other
resources to Afghanistan until the disputed election crisis there is
resolved.

Obama's political hacks are starting to assert themselves in areas of military strategy. This Sunday was a blatant attempt to blow smoke and try to pretend the election corruption was a game changer. Hardly, it was par for the course. What is changing is the President's commitment to the promises he made on the campaign and up through August when health care began to crash and burn.

Obama owes the troops that he has sent to war an answer. Do you support our national security or your political aspirations?

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 06:35 PM | Comments (64)
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The one that Gordon Brown was referring to by saying we have "50 days to save the world from irreversible global warming."

The accord to be born at Copenhagen -- to feature binding emissions-reductions
targets, adaptation measures and their funding -- is due to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012. Several meetings have tried to prepare a negotiation text for Copenhagen, but Brown admitted that a lot of work still needs to be done.

Monckton spoke about the proposed treaty at a speech in St. Paul last week, and gave some insights into just how awful this stupid thing will be. LauraW tipped me to the video over the weekend:

"So at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement and took over Greenpeace so that my friends who founded it left within a year, because they'd captured it, now the apotheosis is at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view, he's going to sign. He'll sign anything - he has a Nobel Peace prize of course he'll sign."

Yep.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:32 PM | Comments (185)
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Welcome to Monday all. It's Day 85 in the great White House shunning of Fox news. And it looks like they've decided to escalate the war a bit. Now they're trying to put Fox News beyond the pale and get other news networks to ostracize them too:

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is "not a news organization."

"Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way," Axelrod counseled ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "We're not going to treat them that way."

Fox News is now officially and publicly on the White House enemies list. So if Fox starts getting excluded from press pools and conferences, then we'll know that we've entered the Putin-Chavez zone. (thanks to GD for the tip) more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:59 PM | Comments (1060)
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Obama's got two accomplishments: Jack and Squat.

President Barack Obama is falling short as Democrats' leader in the fight for health reform, according to a freshman Dem lawmaker.

Freshman Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) openly lamented the Obama administration's calculated decision to let the House and Senate craft their own health bills, with the congressman blaming the president for the vast discrepancies between the two bills now.

"The Senate bill and the House bill are on different planets," Massa said during an appearance on the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show" podcast. "And they're on different planets because, as much as I want this administration to succeed, they did not present a piece of legislation to the United States Congress.

"We still don't have a piece of paper that says what his plan is. We're kind of like pilots flying blind," he added.

Why? Is it because he's feckless, inexperienced, and politically cowardly?

No. ABCNews thinks he's "too nice" to make "tough decisions."

To borrow a joke from a commenter: Charlie Gibson just asked, "What is ABCNews?"

Incidentally, according to Rasmussen, support for ObamaCare is at 42%, with 54% opposing.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

WaPo: New Poll Finds "Clear Majority" Now Favor Public Option: I find this difficult to believe, but for what it's worth:

[M]ajorities now back two key and controversial provisions: both the so-called public option and a new mandate requiring all Americans to carry health insurance.

Independents and senior citizens, two groups crucial to the debate, have warmed to the idea of a public insurance option, and are particularly supportive if it were administered by the states and limited to those without access to affordable private insurance, as stipulated in some versions of the legislation.

...

Overall, 45 percent of Americans favor the broad outlines of the proposals now moving in Congress, while 48 percent are opposed, about the same division as in August at the height of the angry town hall meetings over health care. Seven in 10 Democrats back the plan while almost nine in 10 Republicans oppose it. Independents divide 52 percent against, 42 percent in favor of the set of reforms.

...

On the issue that has been a flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent are opposed. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support had been at 62 percent.)

If run by the states and available only to those who lack affordable private options, support for a public plan jumps to 76 percent. Under those circumstances, even a majority of Republicans, 56 percent, would be supportive, about double their level of support without such a limitation.

Can someone explain to me how the thing is disfavored 48-45 when two of its most obnoxious provisions, the government option and individual mandates, command, supposedly, such high levels of support? And, by the way:

Twice as many see the plan as leading to too much, rather than too little, government involvement...

So most of the lack of support can be attributed to it being too statist, not statist enough.

I genuinely have no theories on this: How can it be the public gives the non-plan only a 45% level of support (according to the WaPo) poll but is apparently keen on the government option and higher taxes?

And... Republicans supporting a version of the government option?

My urge is to say "biased sample/skewed questions," but the poll finds less than majority support for the plan. So...?

Posted by: Ace at 01:58 PM | Comments (196)
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Ann Althouse asks, perchance, if he's heard of "Rush Limbaugh" at any point in the past two weeks.

What produces this odd claim is Krugman's cheerleading for the co-authors of Freakonomics -- who are now publishing SuperFreakonomics, which knocks global warming theory a bit -- to be ripped apart by his leftist cohort:

I have a theory here, although it may not be the whole story: it’s about careerism. Annoying conservatives is dangerous: they take names, hold grudges, and all too often find ways to take people who annoy them down. As a result, the Kewl Kids, as Digby calls them, tread very carefully when people on the right are concerned — and they snub anyone who breaks the unwritten rule and mocks those who must not be offended.

Annoying liberals, on the other hand, feels transgressive but has historically been safe. The rules may be changing (as Dubner and Levitt are in the process of finding out), but itÂ’s been that way for a long time.

And if you read the Freakonomics guys post on this, you'll see that liberals are not, in fact, "too nice" to do anything, including simply make stuff up to smear opponents.

But you already knew that.

Ah, Finally Found It: An old essay I wrote that seems on-point here.

Paul Krugman fancies himself as "too nice" to do various underhanded things to those on his Enemies List. He makes this assertion even as he approvingly links a smear on a pair of writers on his Enemies List.

One of the biggest problems liberals have -- in fact, it's sorta the sine qua non of liberalism; that which makes them liberals in the first place -- is the astonishingly broad chasm between liberals' self-conception of themselves and an objective, accurate assessment of themselves.

Again, I don't want to claim that liberals have cornered the market on inflated self-opinions. However, it seems to me that conservatives have far less reservation about admitting they often act due to simple self-interest. Oh, we're not eager to offer that admission. But because we believe that human beings are inherently flawed -- and on this point religious cons and non-religious cons agree, although not for the exact same list of reasons -- we're less hung-up about admitting we act in our own self-interest for no particular greater good or noble purpose.

Liberals have a big-time hang-up with this. Try extracting this admission from a liberal sometime even in the most nonthreatening way. Most will simply not admit it. Or it will take you two and a half hours you'll never get back.

This is, it hardly needs be said, an enormous bit of self-deception on the part of many liberals. (Generally, the less humorous ones, which is most of them; the funny ones, seeing the flaws of humans (including themselves) more clearly have a much easier time with this.) They have a large amount of self-esteem riding on the proposition that they act almost entirely selflessly and thinking only of others in their daily lives.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (232)
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In Dave in Texas' post noting that a defense of Rush Limbaugh is essentially a defense of our collective right to express our political preferences, he gets this strange rebuke from TMK.

I know you don't. That is why you will continue to vote for the "lesser evils" over and over, you will keep working for the freshly-regulated businesses that genuflect the current administration, keep politely paying all the taxes and taxes and buying overpriced goods with your ever-more devalued currency, keep collecting your entitlements "because I payed in so I earned this money," always under the delusion that you will somehow "win" by doing this.

You will basically do what it takes to stay "safe," like every coward who has ever lived.

I've been wondering about this for a year now: Is this really a fight about ideological purity or a fight about emotional purity? Because no matter how many times a conservative might tell a TMK-type "I agree with you," TMK-types can't take "Yes" for an answer.

They don't seem interested in intellectual agreement, but in emotional agreement: "You must match my precisely level of frothing outrage on each of these particular topics or else you're a 'coward.'"

Lighten up, Francis.

TMK is permitted to pursue his Fantasy League Politics as he likes. In his Fantasy League Politics, there simply is no "left" which needs to be countered, and no "center" which needs to be courted. And, actually, there's not even a "center-right" he needs to ally with.

In his Fantasy League Politics, only the harder, more frothy right exists, the same as in many Fantasy Baseball Leagues where either the AL or NL doesn't exist. So he only drafts politicians from that particular division in that particular league.

I'm really annoyed but this unending Angrier Than Thou stupidity masquerading as More Ideologically Pure Than Thou. (And the latter is kind of annoying, too, but at least that's about something.)

Just tired of it. Just tired of people who don't seem to possess any sort of emotional intelligence or restraint endlessly lecturing the rest of us on how we're killing the party by not behaving like arrogant, angry assholes 24/7.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (562)
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If you had "Murky Election Results In Afghanistan" in the pool, you win!

"We would love the luxury of this debate to be reduced down to just one question -- additional troops, 40,000," Emanuel told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "This is a much more complex decision."

"The question, though... does not come [down to] how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?" the chief of staff added.

Yes, the Afghanistan election was filled with fraud and there's talk that Karzi might not submit to a possible runoff after his provisional vote totals were lowered due to fraud.

The question for Mr. Emanuel is...so what?

Afghanistan, according to Obama,

"...(I)s not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity," Obama told the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars conference -- cautioning that the insurgency would not be defeated overnight. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."

Granted, all Obama statements come with an expiration date and the above is 2 months old, but winning a war of necessity has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the Afghan central government.

Yes, COIN Operations should be done in support of an indigenous government but it doesn't have to be a fully functioning and legitimate central government.
There are regional and traditional governing bodies we can work with to provide security and use as a means to funnel construction project money. The idea that our national security is being held hostage to the purity of the Afghan elections is a laughable as it is scary.

While Obama plays Hamlet on the Potomac, Al Qaeda continues to train terrorists who want to attack western targets.

Of course, what our national security is actually being held hostage to is Obama's desire to hold his left wing base together through the health care fight. Quite the profile in courage our Nobel Peace Laureate in Chief is.

More: I've heard Mark Steyn point out that we are doing things backwards with our national building efforts. The national level government is usually the last thing that a real nation has. Government should not be imposed from the top down but built from the bottom up.

Think of the US. We went from the towns and county government to state (colony), a loose federation to a more central national government (too much so in my opinion but that's another discussion).

This is isn't some crazy hope that Afghanistan will develop along US lines but simply a way to point out what works in the real world. We are developing a central government there because it is easier for us to work that way, not because the Afghans necessarily want of need it.

If we are going to have this 'strategic pause', I would hope that that's the kind of thing Obama and his team are considering and not how to simply get the hell out of Dodge without paying a political price.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:03 AM | Comments (245)
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Earlier this month Obama was pretty excited about Iran's agreement in principle to export the majority of its low-enriched uranium. This would supposedly slow down the mullahs ability to build a bomb (as if they would really ever do that).

Now it turns out 2+ weeks later, Iran is saying...No.

Behold the awesomeness of Stupid Power!

Iran signaled ahead of international talks Monday that it will not meet Western demands for a deal that would move most of its enriched uranium out of the country and delay its gaining the ability to make a nuclear bomb.

Tehran says it needs enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, but the West fears it could be used for weapons. The U.S. says Iran is now one to six years away from being able to make such arms, should it choose to.

Iran's state-run Press TV cited unnamed officials in Tehran as saying the Islamic Republic was looking to hold on to its low-enriched uranium and buying what it needed for the Tehran reactor abroad.

Such a stance would likely doom the talks, with neither the U.S. or France accepting such terms.

As for Obama's charm offensive (holiday greetings, showing respect to killers by referring to Iran as "The Islamic Republic" and such) is clearly paying dividends...for the Iranians.

Seems the mullahs are grateful to Mr. Peace Prize for new material to mock the US with.

"The Deputy Foreign Minister of the United States [sic] tried on three occasions during the meetings to meet Jalili, but Jalili did not accept..."

..."The Deputy Foreign Minister of the United States at this meeting also said that some discussions about lack of respect for human rights are being discussed. Jalili addressing this American authority says that we too have heard that Obama has said that you will end torture in the United States, after which the American authority looked down..."

Read the whole sad thing.

On the upside, it doesn't seem the US representative at the talks apologized for the US. It seems Obama likes to save that job for himself.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:18 AM | Comments (141)
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