Paul Mirengoff comments on Huckabee’s “I’d rather be in second place with honor than in first place with dishonor” quote – which’d seem to be a swat at current leader John McCain:

You can’t be in second place with honor once you take a shot like that at an honorable man.

I’ll chalk it up to the Hucker trying to coin a cute turn of phrase, and milling out a squib.

But it’s a dumb squib.

Hearing this from Michelle Malkin might jolt a few people awake…:

I need a man.

Luckily for Mr. Malkin, it’s just about politics.  And it’s a dang fine point:

A man who can say “No.” A man who rejects Big Nanny government. A man who thinks being president doesn’t mean playing Santa Claus. A man who won’t panic in the face of economic pain. A man who won’t succumb to media-driven sob stories.

A man who can look voters, the media, and the Chicken Littles in Congress in the eye and say the three words no one wants to hear in Washington: Suck. It. Up.

Someone who embraces limited government and a doctrine of supporting prosperity rather than subsidizing failure, maybe?

I don’t want to hear Republicans recycling the Blame Predatory Lenders rhetoric of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Jesse Jackson. Enough with the victim card. Borrowers are not all saints.

That’s my biggest worry about Romney’s victory in Michigan; the sound bites I’ve heard look like he got at least part of the win by triangulating toward the center.

Although I am nowhere close to finished deciding who I want to see get the GOP nomination for ’08, I have a name on my short list for 2016.  Michelle Malkin covers Bobby Jindal’s inauguration as Louisiana’s first non-white governor since Reconstruction:

The Daily Advertiser of Lafayette welcomes Jindal:

Today, Bobby Jindal becomes governor of Louisiana. He will face major challenges in his new position, particularly as he strives for adoption of his No. 1 goal – rewriting the state’s ethics code. Determined to make Louisiana ethics the “gold standard” for the nation, he will call a special session to deal only with ethics reform. If he fails, he will continue calling special sessions until the reform package is adopted.

We believe he can win the ethics reform battle and meet all his other challenges, which include hurricane recovery measures, health-care improvements, economic reform, improvements in education, successfully combating crime, increasing safety for Louisiana citizens and analyzing and monitoring state spending.

“Reforming Louisiana” would seem to be in a league with “Red Sox winning the Series” or “Reforming Jersey City”; impossible jobs that can be done (provided you get someone like a Curt Schilling or Brett Schundler or Bobby Jindal on the job.  What do they have in common?) 

Jindal has proved himself in the arena of government service. We first took notice of him in 1996, when he was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. That put him in charge of 12,000 employees and a $4 billion budget – in his first government job. He inherited a $400 million budget deficit and, in a relatively short period of time, turned it into a $220 million budget surplus.

If there’s anyone on the “Jindal ’16” committee reading this blog, please drop me a line.

I don’t “endorse” anyone – because, like, who cares what Mitch Berg thinks? 

And as I showed the other day, I’m still figuring out my short list of GOP candidates; JMac shows signs of joining Rudy, Mitt and Fred on my personal rotation.

First Ringer states a great case for Giuliani, though.

Or…is it?:

He’s down in the polls.  His cash is low.  TIME remarked that his “hang-on insistence is all the more puzzling because of his lackadaisical campaigning style.”  That he was “out of gas.”  Rudy?  No.  Reagan, before his stunning primary resurgence in 1976.

Of course, “America’s Mayor” isn’t the Gipper.  In fact, no one in the 2008 GOP presidential field was, is, or will be Ronald Reagan.  Nor should they try to be.  But while all of the Republicans contenders can lay claim to the heritage of Reagan’s presidency in various ways, whether in their communication style, conservative values or tough foreign policy, Rudy Giuliani’s best attribute in common with the Gipper is something conservative candidates have been short on recently – accomplishments. 

And what accomplishments (emphasis added):

While all remember what New York City used to be, few seem to remember the visceral disgust and hopeless that once shadowed Gotham.  New York was Dante’s seventh level, a city whose future seemed best depicted in movies like Escape From New York where the last vestiges of order had been stripped away.  It was the epitome of liberal mismanagement and it was beyond salvation.  Certainly New York couldn’t be saved and certainly not by a Republican mayor who espoused a law-and-order, fiscally conservative mantra.  Before Giuliani’s tenure, doing what he accomplished with New York wasn’t considered difficult – it was considered impossible.  And perhaps the great intangible of Rudy’s candidacy is how he did it – by utterly pissing off the liberal establishment.

Is he perfect – especially as a conservative?  Of course not:

But a presidential race isn’t a mix-and-match set where we can combine Thompson’s wit, McCain’s conviction, Rudy’s record, Huckabee’s charm and Newt’s brain in Romney’s body.  To ape Donald Rumsfeld, you go to an election with the candidates that you have, not the candidates you want. 

But Rudy Giuliani has made a political life out of doing the things that others say cannot be done.  At a time when the general public has doubts about GOP competency, Giuliani has demonstrated an agenda and a record that doesn’t ask for blind trust from the electorate but merely asks them to open their eyes to what he has accomplished.  

 Read the whole thing.

We – and by “we” I mean Republicans, conservatives and America – could do much worse.

I’m not the only whom events are dragging into near-existential political conflict.

Kouba writes:

With Duncan Hunter out of the race, it surprises me to no end, given that a few months ago I wouldn’t have given him the time of day, I am all but prepared to declare myself a McCain supporter.

I’m not quite there yet; I’m still sorting out who’s on the short list.

• Reagan said if you agree with someone on 80% of issues, give him the benefit of the doubt on the other 20 and support him.  Giuliani comes in somewhere between 65% and 85%, depending on my mood. 
• So, as a matter of fact, does McCain.  Thorley’s excellent defense aside (we did forgive Bush for signing McCain-Feingold; I respond that now – rather than after the election – is the time to register that displeasure, and so I shall), McCain-Feingold is a problem, and I plan on raising it until such a time as JMac is the candidate, in the unlikely hope he repudiates it.
• Do I dock points because someone seems too slick, smooth and polished?  If not, Romney looks good.  But is he a wartime leader?  That’s the $64,000 question.
• Fred?  Fred?  Any ol’ time, here.
• The Hucker has one advantage; he’d be better than any Democrat.   It’s not enough to get him elected, of course.  He’s got all of Bush’s weak spots ($pending) and none of his strengths. 

On the other hand, I do love a horse race.

The “bad” news:  yesterday’s New Hampshire primary clarified nothing.

The good news:  yesterday’s New Hampshire primary clarified nothing.

On the right side, frankly, the fact that the GOP race is wilder and woolier than ever is a good thing; if I have anything to say about it, it’ll draw people out in droves on Super Tuesday, especially to the Minnesota caucuses.  For reasons I’ve elaborated before, I’m glad to see McCain resurging, although I’m nowhere close to deciding who I want as a candidate yet.
As to the Dem side – more of the same.  Much, much more.

With the almost-irrational hype over Obama this past few weeks. I was starting to wonder if Obama wasn’t close to re-capturing the woozy hype of the Kennedy clan – the style-and-appearance-over-substance delusions that impelled a generation of Americans to vote for a slate of hug toys.  An irrational America is an America that listens to the Doors and thinks Abby Hoffman is groovy and that Kathleen Soliah is a solid citizen.  So I’m deliriously happy to see that rumors of Hillary’s demise are premature, and her semi-trailer full of negatives is still solidly in the race.

Note:  the first conservative candidate for whom I was ever genuinely active was Jack Kemp, back in 1988.  Kemp, along with Reagan, P.J. O’Rourke and Brett Schundler, is one of my lifetime heroes of conservatism.

GeeEmInEm notes:

Just days after I mourn the absence of a genuine pro-growth candidate in the GOP race, Jack Kemp comes out and endorses John McCain.

Snap.

While I take the endorsement as an article of faith, I take it nevertheless.

With this field, I’ll take what I can get.

Which, in my case, is “yet another reason to move JMac back onto my short list”.

“Zack” at MNPublius called last week’s brouhaha between Drew Emmer and my NARN colleague Michael Brodkorb and I a “GOP Circular Firing Squad”

Zack.  Bubbie.  It was a circular firing squad.  In the same sense that the 101st Airborne was, at Bastogne; facing outward. 

 (No, I’m sure “Zack” doesn’t get the reference.  It’s history.  Ask a Republican about it).

That is all.

I see politics – at large, and within parties – as a big game of tug of war. In the exact middle of the rope is a ribbon.

The difference between this and a real tug of war is that you will never pull the ribbon all the way to your side of the pit in the middle, to say nothing of pulling your opponents into it. Oh, it’s a goal – but it will never happen. So every so often – say, every four minutes, or every four years, whichever fits your metaphor better – the referee blows the whistle, and measures where the ribbon is. I’m rooting for the ribbon to move to the right – so I get into the scrum and pull for all I’m worth to get that ribbon moved.

Let’s stretch the metaphor even further. It’s not just a single tug of war; it’s a tournament. And the farther your side gets the ribbon to your side in the semifinals, the more of you will move on to the finals for the big championship round. The catch is, if people get too pissed off at the results of the semifinals and take their cleats and go home, you jeopardize your team’s shot at the finals.  Because the other guys will be pulling with all their might to not only get that ribbon pulled to the left; they want you, and the whole rest of the country, to fall into the mud pit.

We had one of those tugs of war Saturday on the NARN Volume III. Michael Brodkorb wrote about it on MDE;

The point of lampooning of Drew’s and Mitch’s posts was highlight a larger problem that I see that with a certain element of the conservative movement. Some people like to complain and act, while some people just like to complain. It was my opinion that Drew’s and Mitch’s posts were about complaining and not about acting. As I wrote, neither of them had done any volunteering for the Republican effort in SD 25, yet they were the first to complain about the loss. But they both complained because they care about the conservative movement in Minnesota. In reality, our very important conversation wouldn’t have occurred without Drew’s post. For that, we should all offer our sincere thanks to Drew.

The caucuses are a month away (more – much more – on this later). We’re in the semifinals, now – time for the tug of war within the GOP. It’s time for those of us who do stand for the First Principles of conservatism – liberty, prosperity, security, limited government, culture and family – to do what we can to move that metaphorical ribbon within the party to the right.  It’s the time when all of you who think Tim Pawlenty is a RINO, or that Jim Ramstad is too conservative, or who think that Norm Coleman is a Democrat in a nicer suit, or that we need Fred Thompson rather than Rudy Giuliani in the White House, or that the Sixth District needs a moderate rather than an evangelical conservative – need to turn out to the precinct caucuses on February 5.

You need to show up.

You need to vote.

You need to run for the delegate positions, promising to support conservative candidates and principles.

You have to volunteer for your precinct, district, congressional district, and the state convention.

You need to show up at the conventions, and vote for those candidates and principles.  In areas that swing between moderate, conservative and single-issue voters, you need to not only represent your principles – but be involved in the horse-trading that involves forcing the compromises that are at the very root of the word “politics”.

You need to help pull that ribbon to the right.

And then, when the conventions are over, you – we, all of us, conservatives and Republicans of all stripes, “moderates” and Buchananites and libertarians and Reaganites and every flavor in between, having fought the good fight for conservative principle to the absolute hilt through the caucuses and at each and every level of conventions, need to do something that hardly anyone talks about.

We need to close ranks.

Having fought – and, hopefully, won – the good, conservative fight at the caucuses and in the conventions, we need to get some perspective; while not all Republicans will meet a good conservative’s approval, it’s a safe bet that virtually no Democrats will. It will be time to realize that even an “imperfect” Republican is, in almost every case and on nearly every issue, better than a Democrat.

Because while I join many of you in disparaging the “Republicans in Name Only”, the “moderates”, the Republicans who are liberal enough to earn endorsement from the Strib, and get Lori Sturdevant’s approval, there are two reasons to suck it up and hold your nose and work your butt off, even for “RINO” Republicans, even if they offend some of your conservative principles.

The first reason: Every ten years, the state’s congressional districts are reapportioned. And the party with the most seats controls the process. And the DFL, if they are in control, will gerrymander the state’s districts to reinforce their control over this state.

The second: there will, in the next four to eight years, be between one and three Supreme Court seats opening up. And a Republican-controlled Senate will be better for seeing responsible, constructionist, sane judges confirmed.

And in neither case does it matter one iota if the GOP majority is 100% Reaganite purists or 40% Sturdevant-approved moderates. In these cases, literally, a majority that is 2/3 of “good enough” is better – as in, better for the sake of 10 years of state legislation and 20-30 years of SCOTUS decisions – than an ideologically perfect minority. When it comes to reapportioning the state and US legislatures, numbers count, and count drastically. If you don’t think it matters, then ponder if you will the way the DFL drew the legislative map in 1990; Minnesota’s legislative map looked like a Rohrschach blob, drawn to maximize the effect of DFL votes. It made getting any serious reform impossible throughout the nineties. It made it possible for the DFL to spend surplus after surplus, defeat concealed carry reform, create the Department of Children Families and Learning,  and impose the Profiles in Learning,  and fund and design the Ventura Trolley; for a decade (really, for the third of three decades) it allowed the DFL to spent money like crack whores with stolen Gold Cards. All because the GOP lost a bunch of Legislative seats in the eighties.

My favorite example – the one I’ve been dinging on pretty mercilessly for the last year – is the people who told me before the ’06 election (and after the convention) that they were staying home and not voting for Mark Kennedy because he voted for ethanol subsidies. And I’d like to look each and every one of them up right now, and ask “do you think Amy Klobuchar is any better on ethanol? Is a Supreme Court seat worth losing over ethanol? Do you think Amy Klobuchar is better on immigration, defense, education, life or even, ironically, spending – the issue that ostensibly kept you home – than Kennedy would have been?”

Is there such a thing as “going too far” in finding the point where princple and pragmatism intersect?  Of course.  But I’m at a loss to think of one in the running in Minnesota today.  To pick the most recent example, Ray Cox was far from my personal ideal Republican – he got a “26%” score from the Taxpayers League, and got the Strib’s endorsement, for crying out loud.  Would he be better to have in the Senate than DFLer Kevin Dahle?  Without question.  But to take Michael’s point – the time to argue that would have been before and during the endorsing convention. 

And don’t say you can’t argue with the party leadership.  Although I’ve criticized my district and state leadership in the past, the fact is that grassroots movements work.  Michele Bachmann upended the wishes of the CD6 leadership in ’06 by getting her base out in teeming droves that put wildebeest migrations to shame, upsetting many a CD6 establishment figure’s applecart – and winning the nomination, and the race.  Because conservatives turned out, and worked hard, to see their vision through.  Another great example – Tim Pawlenty; the governor was a pragmatic moderate in the House; it was the grassroots groundswell of support for Brian Sullivan that pushed him to the right.  While it didn’t make him a perfect conservative governor, it did make him a vastly better alternative than Roger Moe – all because conservatives got out and voted at caucuses and conventions.

So argue like crazy, today. Stand on absolute principle. Work your butts off for absolute rigid stiffnecked rock-ribbed conservative idealism. I’m going to; I don’t care if it offends the GOP or not! I’ll fight the good fight, and throw bricks at every part of the GOP that doesn’t measure up to the party I want to see…

…until the conventions. And then, starting with my BPOU, and then my Congressional Distict, then within the state, and finally with every other real American Republican nationwide. I’m going to make my notes for the next nomination and caucus cycle, file ’em away, and get out and try to get Republicans – even the lame, “RINO”, not-quite-conservative-enough ones – elected.

Because the big tug of war is coming next – and the Democrats’ philosophy has always been “compromise is for losers” (until they lose – then they whinge about the “need” for “bipartisanship” and “cooperation”), and moving that ribbon to the right isn’t just inside-the-party beanbag. It’s for laws. It’s for judges. It’s for your pocketbook and our kids’ education and our nation’s security, and all of the first ten Amendments and the unborn to boot.

And if that ribbon is one foot left of the center of that metaphorical pit because any of us stayed home because we didn’t like how the GOP’s tug of war ended up, it’s our fault.

Peggy Noonan has a take on the “why” of the Hucker’s win:

From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

We’ll get back to this.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools’ squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don’t admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don’t need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

Much has been written about Huckabee’s stealth liberalism, by much better observers than I. 

But the Huckabee’s great strength – “it’s the home, family, schools and culture, stupid!” – is also the deepest pitfall.  It points out an inward-facing, insular coccooning instinct that is the flip side of the post-cold-war euphoria that gave us Bill Clinton.  In 1992, the electorate said “History is over; let’s talk about underwear!”.  Today, it’s “the world is a dangerous place, here and abroad; I wanna focus on “here””.  It’s a current that melds nicely with Huckabee’s propensity to bury problems in money, and his foreign policy naivete.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs.

Sorta like that other candidate from Little Rock did. 

But history didn’t stop in 1992, and you can’t wish it away today.

Two of my favorite local center-right bloggers – Jeff Kouba and Jay Reding – write posts I’d like to have written myself.

Reding:

Obama, to his credit, does signal a break from the Clintonite school of politics which have corrupted American politics for years now. The “campaign war room” and the politics of personal destruction that marked the Clinton years hardly helped America’s politics. Getting rid of that would be a step in the right direction.

And Obama as “The New Carter”… 

The problem with Obama is that he’s winning on some vague notion of “change”—while doing little to describe what direction he’d take the country. Obama would be a formidable challenge for the GOP, but ultimately he doesn’t have the executive experience needed to be a successful President. He also votes like a doctrinaire liberal, which undercuts his ability to reach across party lines. He would do better than Edwards, but in the end his appeal is largely skin deep.

Place your bets…:

The worst case scenario is an Edwards/Huckabee match, in which case I’ll say to hell with it and end up voting for Ron Paul just out of spite for such big government paternalists. Ideally, I’d like to see an Obama/Thompson contest—Obama’s idealism is a nice contrast to the general pessimism of the Democratic Party, and Fred Thompson has the strongest grasp of policy. An Obama/McCain race would also be interesting for much the same reason.

I’ll differ from Jay here:  the worst case is an Obama/Hucker match; the media has carefully groomed Huckabee as America’s Second Choice against any Democrat, and the’ll call that marker in in spades.  And I’m nowhere near ready to count Rudy out of this.  But I agree; Thompson’s surge makes me want to hope “he’s just been pacing himself for the past six month”. 

And then there’s McCain; as I noted a few weeks ago, he’s so close to being acceptable. 

Cut Speech Rationing loose, JMac, and you could get yourself a supporter.  Have your people call my people.

Kouba:

This is why I think McCain will now be the likely nominee, because Republican voters will still value a strong candidate on national defense. On the Democratic side, we’ve already seen they want an American defeat in Iraq, and so Obama is perfectly acceptable on that count.

However, let’s not assume history has ended just because the surge in Iraq has produced encouraging results. Think back just a year ago, at the end of 2006 Iraq was in danger of sliding into the abyss. This election was supposed to be all about Iraq. Now it’s gone from the headlines.

We can’t allow ourselves to be fatigued. Our enemies still plot and scheme. We must resolve, as Churchill said,

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Yesterday was Dunkirk for conservatives – and supporting Mike Huckabee and Ray “26 out of 100” Cox and, really, any RINO (you hear me, CD3GOP?) is the march to the Dyle).

Will we have D-Day in October?

Stay tuned.

I used to make a concerted effort to read leftyblogs.  I did it for the same reason that I read things like Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries or Steal This Book – to know what the enemy believes, what motives him/her, to get an insight into how they think.

Lately?  Not so much.  Reading most leftybloggers is like listening to 14-year-olds argue.

Jane Hamsher – from “Firedoglake”, which, since the demise of “Pandagon” has been the “Norwegianity” of the national leftyblog scene – walks out onto rhetorical thin ice and starts doing a Dutch clog dance:

 Take, for example, supermodels. When you meet them you’re usually struck with the impression that something’s not quite right about them, and after a while it dawns on you that you’ve never met anyone quite this stupid who is so convinced that every word they utter is dripping with peerless insight…

[Really, Jane?  You meet a lot of supermodels?] 

Chris Rock has a whole routine about “model smart,” which basically means being smart enough not to walk out in the middle of traffic and get hit by a car. Which pretty much sums it up.

Er…indeed.

Let’s take a step back.  After the ’72 election, Pauline Kael is famously (and probably apocryphally) supposed to have exclaimed “How could Nixon have won?  Nobody I know voted for him!”

Apocryphal as that may have been, there’s a teaching moment there; someone whose entire world revolves around one region, social circle or professional clacque might just lack the perspective to comment coherently outside that circle.  It’s why Appalachian junk dealers are illiterate about nouvelle cuisine, and why Pauline Kael didn’t know any Nixon voters. 

And, I suspect, it might explain a lot – somewhat ironically, as it happens – about Ms. Hamsher:

Rush Limbaugh has a self-awareness problem.

It’s one you commonly see in celebrities — they form their self-image based on what those around them think, but those people are frequently responding to some combination of factors that may have nothing at all to do with who they are.

It explains a lot about the likes of Arianna Huffington and Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, to be sure…

Anyway, now we have Rush Limbaugh. He’s been putting out the message on behalf of the GOP to millions of the AM radio faithful so long he thinks he’s one of them, a “man of the people,” or as he likes to say, “part of the Cape Girardeau [Missouri]-Middle America axis.”

But Rush is no such thing. Unless his audience is composed of a lot more people making $35 million a year than I’m aware of, he’s an ugly weld spot between the corporatists and the rank-and-file within the party.

Let’s mark that idea – “Limbaugh is out of touch with the rank and file of the GOP” – for later use.  File it under “Jane Hamsher drops Acid” if you’d like – that, or show me that there are enough “corporatists” – as in, 20-odd-million – to make Limbaugh the biggest name in radio.

Hamsher invokes the “Sista Soulja” moment the Hucker is trying to create with Limbaugh:

 Huckabee knows that audience rather better than Rush does, at least the Southern contingent, and given the fact that the GOP has become largely a regional party, that’s a significant portion of Rush’s base.

That brings up a couple of interesting questions:

1. Does Huckabee “know” southern conservatives?  Given that he’s basically a pro-life, pro-NRA nannystater – basically Bill Clinton with some ethics?  (My guess:  exactly as well  as he needs to to win elections in famously-schizophrenic Arkansas)
2. Do Republicans know exactly how right Hamsher is about that “regional party” thing?  (The GOP is a regional party; it represents the “region” west of the Hudson, east of the Sierra Madre, and outside of Chicago).
3. How does Limbaugh manage to dominate political radio, what with his audience being only “corporatists” and all?
4. Does Jane Hamsher know more conservatives than Rush Limbaugh knows liberals?  (I’d suspect not just “no”, but “hell no”). 

Back to Hamsher:

Which is why Huck’s attack-by-proxie [sic] (“a DC based Huckabee ally”) is so spot-on, and amusing:

“Honestly, because Rush doesn’t think for himself. That’s not necessarily a slap because he’s not paid to be a thinker—he’s an entertainer. I can’t remember the last time that he has veered from the talking points from the DC/Manhattan chattering class. If they were praising Huckabee, he would be too.”

Chicken and egg, Ms. Hamsher.  If Huckabee were a conservative, you bet they’d be praising him!

But he’s not.

Rush rebounded by basically calling Huckabee a stupid hick:

He called the attacks “Clintonian” and accused Huckabee’s campaign of “trying to dumb down conservatism in order to get it to conform with his record.”

Given the region’s cultural persecution complex — not exactly a wise move.

Help me, here:  “conservatism” and “dumb” are southern-specific?

Who’s insulting southern culture?

More importantly – does Jane Hamsher think she’s equipped to serve as a cultural arbiter?

Exhibit A:

As a veteran spewer of right-wing talking points, Rush thinks he’s well aware of what’s going on here, and capable of combatting it with his usual armaments. He retorts by projecting onto Huckabee motivations that legislate the game he perceives himself as playing:

“Armaments?”  “Legislate?”  And what the hell does that last sentence mean, anyway?

“What was somewhat stunning about all this is that NO ONE in the GOP field, including advisers and staff, could possibly misread my 19-plus-year career the way Gov. Huckabee’s D.C. supporter did,” Limbaugh said. “Whoever said those things was essentially repeating the Democrat mantra of all these years: that I am just an entertainer, not an independent thinker, part of the Wall Street/D.C. axis. If it was someone on Gov. Huckabee’s staff or support team, it was just silly, uninformed and thus curious.”

Yeah except it isn’t a left/right PR game this time around, Rush. You’re taking arrows in the back.

Really?

An unnamed Hucker supporter took a specious – and just-plain-dumb – dig at Limbaugh; he/she wrote a rhetorical check that reality just won’t cash.

To wit:

Rush is betting that his listeners will see him as “part of the Cape Girardeau [Missouri]-Middle America axis.” The GOP elite have told him to take down Huckabee, and his ego is so engorged with money and seven years of right wing hegemony he thinks he can win that battle. He doesn’t see the weld spot preparing to crack.

Could someone please send me a nickel for every time the left has said Limbaugh was “out of touch” with Republicans, or that his support was all built on sand?

That’s just…model smart.

And Jane Hamsher thinks some (anonymous) Huckabee staffer speaks for the GOP rank and file, nationwide, more than the one person who, along with Ronald Reagan, made conservatism a genuine mass movement?  A man who goes on the air daily and by the end of the day has reached 20 million people – 19,990,000 of whom likely will be back the next day?

That’s just…leftyblogger smart.

(more…)

Fraters notes a piece by Kim Strassel that sums up my big problem with Huckabee (emphasis added by me):

Since the beginning of 2007, the Democratic National Committee has released 102 direct attacks on Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani has warranted 78; John McCain 68; Fred Thompson 21. Mike Huckabee? Four. The most recent of these landed back in March. GOP voters may not have examined Mr. Huckabee’s record, but the left has–and they love what they see.

The optimist and idealist in me wants to believe that the Media are just acting like Lori Sturdevant; lifting up the Republicans who act the most like Democrats (only to cut them down without mercy the moment they turn into actual Republicans.

The cynic in me counters; would the media be pushing a Republican they couldn’t turn around and destroy?

Elder:

Democrats love the smell of Huckabee’s ethical lapses in the past. It smells like victory.

Don’t buy it, Republicans. The media is setting Huckabee – and swing voters – for a big, fat, Hillary slapshot.

I’ve said it before; part of me wants to be able to support John McCain.

In many, many ways, he’s the best conservative of the bunch.  And, as Ed notes (in re a poll that shows him with the lowest negatives among the GOP field):

John McCain may get the best bump from this poll. People wonder whether he could win a Republican primary, but he has the lowest opposition numbers in both the general population and the unaffiliated population. His -6% in the latter group makes him the most electable among the front-runners of both parties. In a race where no one has captured the passion of the electorate, it could be enough of an edge for McCain to make the electability argument his own.

And, I suspect, he could fix that whole “nomination” thing in three not-simple-at-all steps:  repudiating the McCain-Feingold laws, getting religion on immigration, and making some kind of amend or another on the whole Gang of Fourteen thing.

Even two out of three would go a long way.

I want to support McCain, in many ways, sooooo badly.  And yet those three things are killers.

Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather, as I’ve noted in many, many places.  I started Shot In The Dark hours after reading “The Dish” for the first time, inspired by his take (at the time) on events and by the newfound technology that allowed any schlump with an internet connection to hang out a shingle as a pundit.

And while I’ve become estranged from my blogfather, as his true, not-very-conservative (or, rather, “conservative” that bears no relation to my own flavor of the movement) beliefs took over his presentation – I’ve honestly read The Daily Dish maybe twice in the last four years – I’ve always kept that notion in the back of my head; he’s this blog’s Dad.

And now, I’m done.  Sullivan shows us he’s working for the other side, in his rationalization for “endorsing” Ron Paul:  

I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time – the great question of the last six years – Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain’s position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.

Read the whole thing, if only to pound a stake through the heart of whatever admiration you may once have had for the guy.

Jeff at TvM points us to this excellent, thought-provoking, and – in the end – intensely frustrating piece on the GOP electorate’s second look (real or imagined) at John McCain.

McCain is the greatest frustration in my political life at the moment.  At least week’s debate party, I remember sitting, watching McCain speak, and thinking “damn – I wish I could vote for the guy!”. 

The Economist piece touches on McCain’s pros – and there are very, very many (emphases added):

Mr McCain is such a familiar figure that it is easy to forget how remarkable he is. He fought heroically in Vietnam, spending more than five years as a prisoner-of-war, when many other politicians of his generation discovered, like Dick Cheney, that they had “other priorities”. He has repeatedly risked his political career by backing unpopular causes. [Remember that – we’ll be returning to it – Ed].

Mr McCain’s qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he’s a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld’s sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.

Again, we’ll return to that.

Mr McCain’s qualities are particularly striking if you contrast him with his leading rivals. His willingness to stick to his guns on divisive subjects such as immigration stands in sharp contrast to Mr Romney’s oily pandering. Mr Romney likes to claim that his views on topics such as gay rights and abortion have “evolved”. But they have evolved in a direction that is strikingly convenient—perhaps through intelligent design. Can a party that mocked John Kerry really march into battle behind their very own Massachusetts flip-flopper?

One can expect that Romney’s “soul-searching” would be closely examined.  As someone who’s “flip-flopped” – or, alternately, “found reason to change his mind” – on gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and liberalism itself in the past 25 years, I can truly respect both informed changes of mind as well as “sticking to one’s guns”.  And on many issues – the war, gun control, spending – McCain is on the side of the angels. 

So what’s wrong?

The Economist piece comes close, without quite hitting it:

So why have so many Republicans written off Mr McCain? There are two reasons—one bad, the other more reasonable. The bad reason is that they worry that he is not really one of them. Mr McCain has broken with Republican orthodoxy on everything from tax cuts to campaign finance to immigration. But look at his record more closely and you discover that he is a Republican in good standing. His fights with his fellow Republicans have been driven by his (usually justified) conviction that they were betraying Republican principles. He opposed Mr Bush’s tax cuts because he thought they would create a deficit. He led the charge against pork-barrel spending and lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff because he thought they undermined the principle of small government. Immigration is a genuine problem: he is seriously at odds with the bulk of his party on the issue, though many independents would go with his plan.

The Economist brushes past the whole “McCain-Feingold” thing as if it’s no big deal – and emphasizes McCain’s “republican” qualifications while ignoring the “conservative” ones that are so vital. To many of us who are driven by “first principles” first and foremost, McCain’s dodginess on McCain-Feingold (and the “Gang of 14” debacle) are offenses not against the party (with which many of us have a love-hate relationship at best) but against the principles we espouse…

…as, indeed, does McCain himself.  Albeit frustratingly inconsistently.

I want to like McCain.  If he were to repudiate McCain-Feingold, I’d be more than willing to give him a second look. 

But that’s a big “but”. 

As a service to my audience, I provide you the following transcript.

It was surreptitiously recorded at a meeting of the Star/Tribune editorial board, sometime last week.  The source’s name can not be revealed, to protect her or his identity.  All names are redacted.

Transcript begins:

EDITOR A [MALE]:  It’s time to run another “Roodwip” story”.

COLUMNIST B[MALE] (Sotto voce, to COLUMNIST C [FEMALE]):  Psst – what’s “roodwip”?

COLUMNIST C [FEMALE] (Sotto voce):  “Republican” who’s disappointed with Pawlenty”.

EDITOR A: So – who do we use?  John Gunyou?

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  We use him all the time.  Too much.  We’re getting lots of mail from people saying he was the “Republican” budget director for a “Republican” governor that governed to the left of the previous DFL governor.  I think we should broaden our base of “dissatisfied Republicans”

EDITOR A: Why?  Wingnut readers are all stupid!

COLUMNIST C: Yaaaaaay!  Stupid!

EDITOR E [MALE]: Be that as it may, the wingnuts aren’t the audience.  It’s the “undecided voter” we need to address.  They need to believe that there’s a genuine current within the GOP to oppose the likes of David Strom and Tim Pawlenty.

COLUMNIST C: Booooo!  Strom!  Booooooo!

EDITOR D [FEMALE]:  Have a drink, L__i.  No, I hear you.  The question is, we keep using the same ones, over and over and over.  We’ve got Gunyou…

COLUMNIST F [MALE]: …who’s kinda played out

EDITOR D:  …I agree.  And there’s Elmer Anderson…

COLUMNIST B: …who’s dead…

EDITOR D: …and Arne Carlson…

EDITOR A:  We cant’ use him.  He’s still the sitting governor!

EDITOR F:  Er, no sir, that’s Tim Pawlenty.  Carlson’s been out of office for nine years.  But Republican have pretty well abandoned him.  Who else can we get?

EDITOR D: Well, it’s not easy.  Most Republicans do support the governor, and even more support the “no taxes” line, even if they don’t explicitly support the Taxpayers’ League.

COLUMNIST C: Booooooo!

COLUMNIST B: But I read that Republicans are getting upset about that type of irresponsible leadership!

EDITOR F:  Er, N__k?  You actually wrote that column?

COLUMNIST B:  Oh.  Well…

EDITOR A:  We need to find another “disaffected Republican”.  Maybe we need to do like the New Republic did and have someone just make stuff up?

EDITOR D:  Well, that’s the contingency plan.  In the meantime, though, I have one guy in mind…

EDITOR A:  And he’s a Republican?

EDITOR D: Yes!

EDITOR A:  Who does nothing but bitch about Republicans?

EDITOR D: Of course!

EDITOR A: And espouses policies that are not one iota different than those of the DFL…?

COLUMNIST C:  Praise be unto the DFL!

EDITOR D:  Duh!

EDITOR A (as trumpets sound a fanfare): As it is written, so shall it be done!

EDITOR F:  Er, a simple “make it happen” would do…

EDITOR A (irate, as trumpets fall silent):  As it is written, so shall it be done!

I had no idea meetings went like that…

To:    Messrs. Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain

From: Mitch Berg

Re:    Aaaargh

Gentlemen,

Please use the occasion of the New Hampshire caucuses to put Governor Huckabee out of our misery and make the media shut the hell up about him.

The forces pulling Mike Huckabee to the fore in Iowa are fizzling 1,300 miles to the east, where, in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney holds strong on issues and personal attributes — and unthreatened by the religion issue he’ll try to lay to rest in a speech tomorrow.

Romney, a Mormon, is being challenged in Iowa by Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose support has soared particularly in some core Republican groups there — evangelical Christians, conservatives and strong abortion opponents. But each of those groups is less plentiful in the New Hampshire electorate, and far more supportive of Romney.

Thank you.

I watched the debate last night with about 350 of my closest friends as well as the Patriot’s nightside host Rusty Humphreys out at the Minnetonka Marriott last night.

Quick impressions:

• Mitt talked too much.  He came across a bit like…a too-slick CEO.  Not that he didn’t have great points – but there were times he needed to stop short of where he did, and just talk less.
• Mike Huckabee presented himself very well, although occasionally at the expense of actually answering the question.  Perhaps he was trying to edge around the “nannystater” rep he’s gotten in conservative circles in the last few weeks.  Oddly, Anderson Cooper didn’t seem to press him to answer the question as much as he did other candidates.
• Giuliani looked nervous, and occasionally distracted.  As a rule, he gave good, solid answers (including, I think, to the “gotcha” question toward the end), but he could have come across better.
• Thompson seemed (a little) more “relaxed” than “asleep”.  He had some sound bite lines, but he didn’t get enough air time.
• It was the first time I’d seen Tom Tancredo in a debate.  He did well, not that it matters much.
• Duncan Hunter, on the  other hand – a guy I’d love to see as a front-runner – could have done a lot better. Part of it may have been lack of practice – I think they only got around to him two or three times.
• Ron Paul seems to be morphing into Ross Perot.  His crowd, incidentally, was out in force last night, with posters and a booth and a big, raucous turnout.  I’m pretty sure Rep. Paul won the straw poll (although I had to leave a bit early).
• John McCain is taking great pains to push his conservative credentials – understandable, given the audience.  At times I found myself painfully wishing he could go back in time and take back McCain-Feingold and the Gang of 14; he almost sounded supportable.  I feel the train has left the station for the Senator, and it made me just a little sad.
• Anderson Cooper is a twit.
• I loved the way CNN picked the two “gun nuts” and one literal “bible waver” that most perfectly fit the most caricatured stereotype of Second Amendment activists and Christians they could find.  And where I say “loved”, I mean “thought it was as predictable as…well, Anderson Cooper being  a twit.
• While I’m ambivalent about the “gays in the military” issue – I don’t personally see a reason to exclude them from military service – I confess that by nature of my background I’m loath to suggest imposing a rule on the military by complete fiat; “unit cohesion” is a matter of life and death.  I’m not entirely sold on the idea that gays in squads will wreck unit cohesion – the British military has allowed openly gay servicepeople for quite some time, and the British army has been famous for unit cohesion for a very long time.  That being said, General Kerr got way too much air time.  While King and I both commented “good question” during the General’s video appearance, the General’s open-mic harangue from the audience was long, preachy, and excessive. 

Anyone else?

UPDATE:   Michelle Malkin notes that there was more to the questions than met the casual eye:

Retired Brig. Gen./gays in the military lobbyist/Hillary-Kerry supporter Keith H. Kerr wasn’t the only plant at the CNN/YouTube debate. The plant uncovering is in full-swing over at Free Republic.

Example: “Journey,” a.k.a. “Paperserenade,” the girl who asked an abortion question, is a declared John Edwards supporter.

You couldn’t tell from the video that CNN aired, where she’s wearing a plain shirt:

But if you click through on her YouTube profile, you see her latest video in response to the candidates’ answers. And she’s prominently wearing…her John Edwards ‘08 t-shirt:

And on, and on, and on.  Read the whole thing.

And for the record (on the off-chance that anyone is keeping the “record” of my statements), I don’t care that they’re Democrats; merely that CNN presented them – I would suspect with full knowledge – as just regular folks.

Ed sums it up well:

CNN deserves the brickbats it will receive for its atrocious research skills. However, Republicans should be prepared to answer the questions the candidates received in this debate. At some point, this will cease being an intramural fight and we will have to convince all of America to vote for our nominee. That won’t happen if we can’t handle fastballs, with a couple of curveballs in the mix.

True.  As long as America knows that CNN is putting spit, pine tar, bondo and/or spackle on the ball without telling anyone.

CORRECTION:  Yep.  Pine tar is for bats.  I plead caffeine-deprivation.

CORRECTION 2:  Or not.  Sentence rewritten to cover all possible permutations.

Joe Kimball at the MinnPost briefly profiles St. Paul school board member Tom Conlon – the sole elected Republican in the city:

Conlon is the lone elected Republican Ranger in a city dominated by DFL office holders. Not since Norm Coleman changed his party stripes in Mayoral Term Two (1997) has there been another Republican elected in the city. Before that you have to go to the 1970s and ’80s with names like Ron Sieloff and John Drew and Joe O’Neill and Bob Pavlak.In those cases, Republicans were elected in St. Paul thanks to their personalities and connections, and despite their Republican affiliation. So, it seems, is the case with Conlon.

“Every time, I hold my breath, thinking: Is this the time they’re going to get me?” Conlon said Wednesday, before heading out to pick up lawn signs from supporters’ lawns all around St. Paul.

So what’s the secret? Conlon points to three things:

Read the whole thing. Note that none of the three things involve any help from the Republican Party, which continues to abandon the parts of the Fourth CD south of County Road C.

The other day, Pat Shortridge at TvM wrote one of the most insightful pieces I’ve ever seen on what ails the Minnesota GOP:

The Right side of the spectrum still doesn’t get it when it comes to the importance of local elections.  Our side gets all hepped up about the White House or a huge Senate race, over which we as citizens have relatively little control.  But when it comes to the areas where we can have the most impact – electing mayors, city councils, school boards, etc, – we are just giving it away to the other side, barely even in the game, with a very few notable exceptions.

I’ve kvetched about this for years; in my own district, the Fourth CD, the GOP barely shows up.  But for the odd Tom Conlon (the only Republican on the St. Paul School Board) or Bill Poulos or Georgia Dietz (who got elected to executive positions on the Highland Community Council), the Fourth CD is a wasteland for Republicans – even though the city and the first-ring burbs are clogged with people who should, by all rights, be amenable to conservatism; black parents disgusted by the collapsing educational system; Asians who embody free enterprise and  love of this country (how many of them or their forefathers crossed rivers under fire and oceans on rickety boats to get here?); Hispanics whose votes the Dems court, but whose industry and vibrant Catholicism the party piddles on; working people who are seeing their taxes rise and rise, for no rational return.

So why do Republicans not get that “government begins at home?” and that “politics is local?”

Because the enemy sure gets it:

Education Minnesota and its allies clearly understand what’s at stake.  Beyond the policy issues of any given election, they are accomplishing two critical things: (1) control over virtually all of the official information that gets disseminated and that the public relies on for its thinking about education issues, and (2) they are creating and constantly replenishing a political farm team.  Think about how many DFL candidates for the legislature in recent years have been involved in education policy making, either as school board members, teachers, activists, etc.

Shortridge nails the solution:

If the center-right is going to regain any standing, it must re-engage at the local level.  It’s all well and good for folks to engage in levy debates, but man, a whole lot goes on beyond that.  Our side – I include myself foremost in this – must start attending meetings, serving on committees, recruiting candidates, and running for office in our own backyards.  In scanning the election results, far too many races were uncontested or the opposition was token at best. 

The “warm body on the ballot” syndrome that especially besets the GOP in the Fourth and Fifth CDs – where a token GOP candidate will try to spare the party the embarassment of an open slot – is itself a symptom of the problem; endorsing names to run for the Legislature (to say nothing of Congress) that have no political history with voters of any party much less the non-political is a waste of time and effort at the very least – and at worst a Potemkin approach to politics; “See?  We have a party here!  Honest!”

The mere act of meeting every two years and endorsing a slate of candidates to stage hopeless, pro forma runs for office doesn’t make a party, much less a movement. 

Getting people – good, first-princples-based Republican people – involved at the grassiest of Minnesota Politics’ grass roots is where change really begins; where the GOP will start to actually contest control of the cities without which this state will never be in real contest.

Which means Republicans have to start running for those grassiest-roots offices; in Saint Paul, that means the Neighborhood Coalitions that control so much of the “on the street” effect of municipal government.  The GOP insurrection in Highland Park showed what can happen; Dietz and Poulos got Republicans to turn out, which in turn got a right-leaning council empaneled, which in turn uncovered epic rot at the district, a traditional DFL sinecure in “non-partisan” clothes.

More – much more – on this in coming weeks.

Stephen “Vodkapundit” Greene on his extended falling-out with the Libertarian Party – a topic with which I can relate…

…since his reasons were pretty much the same as mine:

If Libertarians couldn’t agree about the clear-cut case for war in Afghanistan, you can imagine how Iraq must have divided us. I had to stop reading Liberty months before my subscription finally, mercifully, ran out. Blogger friends of mine stopped emailing me. Ron Paul, whose name once graced the back of my first car, started sounding to me, less like a principled defender of American liberty, and more like a suited-up reject from the Summer of Love.

I stopped voting Libertarian for local candidates, leaving lots of blanks on my ballot. Next year, I’m not sure which party I’ll support for President, much less which candidate. From here, it looks as if the Republicans have become wrong and corrupt, the Democrats are stupid and corrupt, and the Libertarians have gone plain crazy.

It was easy tearing up my LP membership card. It’s quite a bit harder to find something to replace it. But I know this much: There’s no going back. Maybe there’s just too little room for principle in such a violent world.

And yet…

Then again, maybe leaving the Libertarians is like leaving the mob. Somewhere in the back of my mind there are echoes of Al Pacino. “Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in!”

No, I’m not thinking about being a Libertarian again; there are better ways to kick the GOP in the butt.

Sue Jeffers is not amused by T-Paw’s slip to the left:

OK Governor Pawlenty, we know you have jumped on the green band wagon. We got it.

 

We knew it with E-85, we knew it at the Governor’s Convention, we knew it with the Renewable Energy Bill, and we knew it with the Global Warming Mitigation Act. We heard you say loud and clear that global warming is “a huge and defining issue of our time.” We got it.

And it’s not just idle political chatter:

The cost to anyone who uses energy will be staggering.Conveniently ignoring the fact that there is nothing Minnesota could reasonably do which would noticeably impact the climate. In fact there is no proof that these proposals will affect global warming, positive or negative, even if every state in the nation, and every country in the world, adopted them.

I acknowledge that perfect is the enemy of good enough.  As a conservative, I’m keenly aware that politics is about crafting the most advantageous compromise you can manage.  Stomping ones’ feet and threatening to take your toys and go home if you can’t get a perfectly-conservative-enough candidate is a sign of immaturity, at least when it comes to making your politics matter in the real world. 

Still, our role is to push the conversation to the right.  And there’s a fair case to be made that TPaw needs that push. 

And Sue is pushing.

So Governor, hear this Conservative loud and clear: the defining moment will be when you find your backbone and lead and govern using conservative principles instead of supporting yet another invented liberal crisis. It would be much more effective if on your trip to the Arctic you would scope out the terrain and figure out the best spot to put the drilling rigs.

Strommie’s not thrilled either.

Huckabee stock seems to have taken a bath recently.

First Ringer sounds off with a resounding “sell” order:

Huckabee appeals to the media and pundits for two reasons. As a Baptist preacher who seems like a combination between Jerry Falwell and William Jennings Bryant, pundits believe his pro-marriage, pro-life preachings echo those of the stereotypical conservative while his “Cross of Gold” economic views have won him fans among the Manhattan/D.C. publishing nexus.

In other words – a Republican Lori Sturdevant would like, with a drawl?

Are Republicans ready – or interested – for a socially conservative Huey Long? Probably not. Populism has shallow roots in the GOP, even traditionally. One might have to go back to Alf Landon, nominated in 1936 amid the Kansas sunflowers and Republican dread over their election prospects, to find even a minor populist leading the national ticket. And given the results of that election, the argument for another populist nominee seems slight.

Huckabee – the man from Hopeless.

MDE reports that Rich Stanek isn’t going to run for Jim Ramstad’s 3rd CD seat.

Stanek, the Henco sheriff, would have made a great congressional representative – but would have had to spend a lot of time and effort fighting off recycled palaver over his past racist remarks and actions (for which he’s worked harder than anyone I know if in the public eye to atone, and for which even the crypto-maoist City Pages has (grudgingly) declared him rehabilitated – not that any of that matters to the local media).

He leaves behind a decent field of solid conservatives.

More – much, much more – on this race over the next 11 months.