Glen Beck takes her out.

This is a worry for me about out-of-nowhere Tea Party candidates.

GOP candidates tend to have histories and are vetted. Now, those histories have baggage -- yes, they do tend to be more establishment, more insidery, etc.

On the other hand, we know more about them, as a general rule.

The Tea Party is not just comprised of strong small-government conservatives. A lot of crazy bastards have jumped on the bandwagon, a bunch of disaffected fringey malcontents who have been frustrated for their whole lives at never having been in "real politics," always shut out of real politics by the, erm, exoticness of their views.

These people, I think, want to hijack what is mostly a conservative movement and harness it to their own weird ends. The remaining Paulites. The few remaining Perotists. LaRouchies -- remember them? They were the ones with the Hitler signs. And a bunch of doctrinaire libertarian types, the ones, I mean, who don't want to talk about real issues before us but always want to engage in nothing but college bullshit sessions about the ideal state. Crank libertarians, I mean. The kind that just want to argue about the gold standard and lighthouses and nothing else all day.

I don't think they'll be successful in doing that. They will attempt to claim leadership of the movement -- they'll just assert they are leaders, and expect people to follow. But the movement will say "Screw you, weirdo, who asked you to lead?"

But I do think some of them may slip by, flying that Tea Party flag, which is a respectable outside-party flag, and hiding their real flag.

Which, in Medina's case, is the flag of 9/11 Trutherism.

We caught her, thank goodness.

But we have to be on guard for this. There are a whole pack of opportunistic weirdos who cannot fly their own flag without being laughed off the ballot, so they'll instead fly the Tea Party flag.

"Tea Baggage:" Coined by Dang in the thread.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (292)
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The woman indeed is charismatic and great at announcing the broad themes of a winning conservative platform.

Washington » The snows that obliterated Washington last week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.

...

More important, she has locked herself firmly in the populist embrace that every skillful outsider candidate from George Wallace to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton has utilized when running against "the political establishment."

...

Palin's final answer to Wallace showed how perfectly she has come to inhabit that part. When he asked her what role she wants to play in the country's future, she said: "First and foremost, I want to be a good mom and I want to raise happy, healthy, independent children. And I want them to be good citizens of this great country.

"And then I do want to be a voice for some common-sense solutions. I'm never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I'm not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I'm going to fight the elitist, because for too often and for too long now, I think the elitists have tried to make people like me and people in the heartland of America feel like we just don't get it, and big government's just going to have to take care of us.

"I want to speak up for the American people and say: No, we really do have some good common-sense solutions. I can be a messenger for that. Don't have to have a title to do it."

This is a pitch-perfect recital of the populist message that has worked in campaigns past.

Unfortunately, she still has trouble convincing a majority of even the GOP that she's ready for the top slot.

There is a growing sense that the former Alaska governor is not qualified to serve as president, with more than seven in 10 Americans now saying she is unqualified, up from 60 percent in a November survey. Even among Republicans, a majority now say Palin lacks the qualifications necessary for the White House.

Palin has lost ground among conservative Republicans, who would be crucial to her hopes if she seeks the party's presidential nomination in 2012. Forty-five percent of conservatives now consider her as qualified for the presidency, down sharply from 66 percent who said so last fall.

Among all Republicans polled, 37 percent now hold a "strongly favorable" opinion of Palin, about half the level recorded when she burst onto the national stage in 2008 as Sen. John McCain's running mate.

Among Democrats and independents, assessments of Palin also have eroded. Six percent of Democrats now consider her qualified for the presidency, a drop from 22 percent in November; the percentage of independents who think she is qualified fell to 29 percent from 37 percent.

If only 45% of conservatives consider her qualified, that's a problem. I don't know, and I have long not known, if this can ever be surmounted. That is a big hole to dig one's way out of. It may be unfair that she's in that hole, but she is.

Posted by: Ace at 08:34 AM | Comments (628)
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Gallup's first (I think) poll of 2012.

This isn't all good news -- a hypothetical candidate is actually stronger than a real one, because a real opponent has flaws, limitations, and unappealing political positions that a hypothetical candidate doesn't (or, at least, has fewer of: here we can guess the hypothetical opponent has some of the typical drawbacks of any GOP candidate).

Obama actually declared he was an empty vessel into which the public can pour its hopes; essentially he ran his whole campaign as that hypothetical candidate, offering as few commitments and facts about himself as possible. The public was invited to believe he was anything they wanted to believe he was, and they took him up on that.

A real GOP candidate will not have that advantage, as the media won't permit it, and will tie that candidate down with as many specific, vote-losing positions as it can. No GOP candidate would ever be allowed by the media to run as an empty vessel.

Still, Obama's number is 44%, which is far enough from 51% to say he's got some work to do. Sure, 2012 is a long way off, and sure, the economy should be (hopefully) growing by then, if weakly, but oftentimes early impressions are hard to change.

On the other hand: Clinton started out weak but by 1996, with the economy growing, was thought to be all but undefeatable. Hard to see how Obama manages that with a far more severe recession and a host of policies seemingly designed to keep us in recession forever, but the American economy is hard to kill.

Clinton also moved hard to the center after 1994 -- tough to see Obama doing that.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Underwater in Quinippiac: Except for a couple of dodgy Big Media polls, every poll finds what Scott "Adolf Hitler" Rasmussen does.

Some details:

Quinnipiac
2/2-8/10; 2,617 registered voters, 1.9% margin of error
Mode: Live telephone interviews
(Quinnipiac release)

National

Obama Job Approval
45% Approve, 46% Disapprove

Inds: 40 / 49

Economy: 41 / 54

Health Care: 35 / 58 <

Job Approval / Disapproval
Dems in Congress: 28 / 63
Reps in Congress: 28 / 61

State of the Country
26% Satisfied, 73% Dissatisfied

Here's a really key question:

Which comes closer to your point of view: Democrats in Congress are not considering Republican points of view in pushing legislation or Repubilcans in Congress are misusing the filibuster to block legislation?

46% Democrats pushing legislation, 37% Republicans misusing filibuster

And health care is still unpopular:

From what you've heard or read, do you mostly approve or mostly disapprove of the proposed changes to the health care system under consideration in Congress?

35% Mostly Approve, 54% Mostly Disapprove

The media keeps pushing on us poll questions that state something like 63% of the country still wants Republicans and Democrats to "work together" on a health care bill.

That question must be read in context with two facts in mind:

First of all, the fact that the public may want the parties to "work together" on the issue says nothing at all about what they have in mind as a hypothetical final product of such cooperation. In other words, it could be that -- and does indeed seem to be that -- the public wants the parties to "work together," but work together on a a bill that is much closer to the GOP's idea of reform than Obama's. It seems that's the case, because whenever the public is asked about this bill -- and Democrats have promised vague "improvements," so the public is probably thinking about this bill plus some "improvements" -- they reject it.

The media keeps acting as if this poll finding indicates the public wants some rinky-dink compromise with the Pelosi-Reid-Nelson-Obama bill and then they'll be happy. No. Other poll findings disprove that.

Second of all, there are some things the public is always in favor of, and it's a mistake to read much into such questions. Of course the public wants the parties to "work together." They also want the parties, I'm sure, to show more civility, act more statesmanlike, and only cross streets at green lights.

Such vague nods to what is basically just good behavior is hardly an endorsement of anything resembling the Frankenstein monster the Democratic brain trust has cooked up for us.

But the media keeps brandishing that -- 63% of the public wants the parties to work together on this -- as if it's a win for Obama. No, it's not. Much of the public wants Obama to fashion a more conservative and less "comprehensive" solution, which he won't do.

They keep saying that the public is against the bill, but, in positive news for Obama, they want the parties to keep working together on it.

How on earth is that positive news for Obama? Why is it when the media sees the public wants some compromise on this issue, they immediately assume the public means they want the GOP to make concessions to Obama?

I was asking that rhetorically. I know why.

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 AM | Comments (130)
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I should probably leave this for Ace because I honestly have no idea how to do any snark about this.

I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government.

Follow the link for an extensive take down of this nonsense.

The only thing I have to add is that during Obama's State of the Union he said the war in Iraq was ending but made no mention of who actually won, no mention of the troops who actually won the war, no mention of the families who sacrificed to make the 'ending' possible.

Now thanks to Joey B. we know who really deserves the credit...him and Obama but mostly him.

It's equal parts funny and disgusting.

Via The Corner.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:24 AM | Comments (79)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:21 AM | Comments (109)
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On February 4, the quasi-humor, quasi-news, quasi-BSing-for-the-sake-of-BSing website FITSNews ran a story that was almost accurate:

Anyway, in the long and storied history of utterly retarded legislation in South Carolina, we may have finally found the legal statute that takes the cake for sheer stupidity, which we think youÂ’ll agree is saying something.

It’s called the “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” and it requires terrorists in South Carolina to … get this … register with the S.C. Secretary of State’s office before they start plotting to violently overthrow the government.

From the law:

Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, of this State or of any political subdivision thereof by force or violence or other unlawful means, who resides, transacts any business or attempts to influence political action in this State, shall register with the Secretary of State on the forms and at the times prescribed by him.

In fact, that law wasn't aimed at terrorists at all. It was created in 1951 and aimed at communists. The tip-off to this is the language "overthrowing the government of the United States...by force or violence." which is what was in the Communist Party platform before the government started putting people in jail for that kind of thing and they changed it. (Another likely tip-off should have been the $5 fee for registration. When was the last time you paid a government fee that was less than $45?)

But whatever. FITSNews chuckles at those silly South Carolinians with old legacy laws on the books and life goes on.

Unless you're an idiot named Daniel Tencer writing over at Lefty website The Raw Story and nutbar conspiracy theorist website Prison Planet who...shall we say, embellished a little bit:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states...

From there it went to Huffington Post and DKos and that's when it went viral. Now idiot Leftists all over the web are chortling about it and claiming it was recently passed by the "scared" South Carolina legislature. One tard then sent it to me, calling it South Carolina's "terrorist registration law."

Congratulations, Leftists. You are dumb.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:29 PM | Comments (82)
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Good evening and happy Hump Day all.

The Big Sandy Machine Gun Shoot 2010
Twice a year MG Shooters of AZ sponsors the Big Sandy Shoot for 3 days in the beautiful Arizona desert. The firing line in a quarter-mile long and anything that shoots, fires, cycles, detonates, or just blows up good is welcome. It's a perfect opportunity to show off your machine guns, cannons, RPGs, and flame throwers. This year's shoot will take place on Mar 26-28 so get your weaponry ready.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:57 PM | Comments (746)
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Karl Rove thinks I'm wrong, but put me on the side that says "negotiating with the President at the desperation show is a bad idea." The only card Obama and the Democrats seem to hold is this incessant nag that "Republicans are obstructing progress."

And that seems to be about it. Which every poll we've seen for the past 6 months indicates that a majority of Americans are just fine and dandy with (us doing all that obstructing.)

Why cede that advantage? As has been pointed out a gazillion times (by Chuck Todd even), Republicans do not have the votes to obstruct a damned thing. Dem infighting is obstructing "progress" on health care.

Other Dem operatives are testing for more salable points, like Paul Begala crabbing about insurance companies on Imus' show, but that's a loser. A majority of Americans have already evaluated that claim against what they fear they will lose, and made their choice.

I think Obama could have made this sale, that those darned Republicans just won't negotiate, maybe back in the late summer, when the tea party movement was about to crest, and the Dems hadn't begun their procedural shenanigans, their last minute bribes and arm-twisting and Christmas Eve roll calls. But not now. Opposition hasn't waned, it's intensified. That anger manifested itself a few weeks ago in Massachusett[e]s.

Consider it this way, assume for the sake of argument the Republican leadership follows my advice (which is goofy, I'll admit but work with me). How does the Democrat response make their plan more palatable? "Those darned old Republicans just wouldn't even work with us so we're gonna grab that plunger and shove it through just like we've been threatening to for weeks, for you America."

I just don't see it working to our advantage. But then I'm an idiot.

Update [PA]
Virulent, teabagging racist declares Obama "clueless" and proclaims we're "doomed". Scott Brown? Nope. Palin? Nope. DeLay? Nope. Darth Cheney? Nope. Paul Krugman? Yep. There's nothing to be gained by bipartisan cooperation with "clueless" dipshits who are "dooming" the nation.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:08 PM | Comments (239)
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Are your politicians tone deaf? Exhibiting a "cognitive blindness"? Displaying an apparent inability to read the emotions of others?

...tamping down a person’s emotions seems to interfere with the ability to read emotions in others. Says study leader David Havas: “Botox [also] induces a kind of mild, temporary cognitive blindness to information in the world, social information about the emotions of other people” ..

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:51 PM | Comments (94)
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I'm starting to get the idea that Ben Nelson really likes being a Senator and wants to be seen kicking Obama as much as possible for the next two plus years.

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson joined a bipartisan effort on Wednesday to block the administration from trying the Sept. 11th suspects in civilian courts.

Nelson (Neb.) signed onto legislation offered by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) to require military commission trials for those suspects. Nelson made the announcement in a conference call with reporters, primarily citing the costs of security for the trials.

“I believe that given the severe costs and security risks associated with holding these trials in civilian court, the best course of action would be to use military commissions,” Nelson said. “When the Justice Department announced late last year that they intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 9/11 co-conspirators in civilian courts in New York City there was an outcry about this plan and the effects and the costs it would inflict on New York and all Americans."

This was the second effort by Nelson to distance himself from Obama and Harry Reid. Yesterday he voted against Obama's idiotically pro-labor nominee to the NLRB.

It's funny but all those lamenting the death of bi-partisanship seem to ignore the cross aisle interest in killing these civilian trials. It's almost as if bi-partisan means Republicans caving into Democrats and not the other way around.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:17 PM | Comments (83)
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