The Conservative Intelligentsia And Palin

Via Andrew Sullivan:

Great article by Mark Lilla in the WSJ about the death of conservatism

"The Palin farce is already the stuff of legend. [but] John McCain's choice was not a fluke, or a senior moment, or an act of desperation. It was the result of a long campaign by influential conservative intellectuals to find a young, populist leader to whom they might hitch their wagons in the future. And not just any intellectuals. It was the editors of National Review and the Weekly Standard, magazines that present themselves as heirs to the sophisticated conservatism of William F. Buckley and the bookish seriousness of the New York neoconservatives. After the campaign for Sarah Palin, those intellectual traditions may now be pronounced officially dead."

Irving Kristol's bitter capitulation to populism a quarter century ago was the harbinger. It's all been downhill since:

"Their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them."

One reason I believe the reconstruction of conservatism will require a generation's work is that the rot has gone so deep among so many with so much patronage. If it weren't for the blogosphere allowing new thoughts and debate to bubble up from below, and outside the Kristol-Lowry-Steyn axis, I'd despair.

Source: Andrew Sullivan

The Right Will Pull A 180

Oliver Willis asks some great questions, stressing the hypocrisy of the Right.

"How long:
- Before conservatives express their concern for government surveillance?
- Before the right thinks there’s too much power in the executive?
- Before the right complains about use of military power?

It is coming."

Source: Oliver Willis

Alaska: Where Corruption Is King

Alaska has some explaining to do. Their election numbers are well below the numbers they had from 2004:

"...the McCain-Palin ticket garnering 136,348 votes. In 2004, President Bush got 190,889 votes"

How do you have increased registration and a local on the ticket and get fewer voters?

Wait, convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens was re-elected. Research 2000 had reported in the days before the election that Democratic challenger Mark Begich, an Anchorage attorney, was leading the 84-year-old Stevens by 22 percentage points.

I smell some fraud.

Source: WaPo

The Bush Legacy Catch Phrase

You pick it, historic or all-time lows for: unemployment, retail sales, manufacturing, the stock market, service sector index.

This is what Bush has left for Obama:

Welcome to Washington, president-elect Obama. You'd better get used to hearing the phrase "at its worst level since ______ "

Yankees Are Due With Democrat In Charge

The New York Yankees are due to win the World Series as they have only won during Democratic Presidencies over the past five decades. 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 were Clinton. 1977 and 1978 were Carter. 1961 and 1962 were JFK.

With Barack Obama good for 8 years, this will be the new era of Yankee baseball, as well.

Shepard Smith Teaches Bill O On Journalism

Shepard Smith on Bill O'Reilly talking about Joke The Plumber and his 'death to Israel" claims. Smith called out Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, recounting:

SMITH: "And I think that some of this disinformation, some of the lies that show up on the Internet, are dangerous. And those of us who hold truth dear, it’s our job to set the record straight."

O'Reilly facetiously plays the naive Fox Is Pro-Republican?" card:

O’REILLY: "OK, but you work for the FOX News Channel, which is the most unfair channel and is always trying to get the Republicans elected. So you can’t be doing this stuff. You can’t be challenging Joe the plumber and Ralph Nader. […]"

Smith counters that college drop-out Sean Hannity has that job

SMITH: "That’s Sean Hannity’s job."

The Republican-on-Republican love is great after this defeat.

Source: ThinkProgress

Neiman Marxist

All that Joke the Plumber BS about spreading the wealth, seems Sarah Palin had a good grasp on spending other people's money when it came to unauthorized shopping. She even hooked up the First Dude with $40,000 in clothing. Can you spend $40,000 at a Chess King?

Now that the story has broke, the GOP is looking to get their money back.

"Sarah Palin left the national stage Wednesday, but the controversy over her role on the ticket flared as aides to John McCain disclosed new details about her expensive wardrobe purchases and revealed that a Republican Party lawyer would be dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession."

Now she'll have to go back to the Wasilla Wal-Mart she had built, maybe score some knock-off Uggs to compliment that $2500 Valentino jacket.

Conservative Meme: Hope McCain Dies So We Get Palin

So the news is finally covering how ridiculously uneducated Sarah "Wasilla Hillbilly" Palin is, the kind of person you see on Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" segments. Shockingly dumb.

Now we hear from the conservatives that, by voting for Grampy McCain, they were really hoping he would take a dirt nap early in his first term so they could get Palin as President. I shit you not. Spike his Viagra?

Conservative turd Glenn Beck on his show with Red State’s Erick Erickson:

BECK: "I mean, I have to tell you if I heard once, I heard 1,000 times from people, and I never said this, never said this on the air because you just don’t say these things, but I heard a million times from people, 'I’m going to vote for John McCain and, you know, I mean, he’s old. Maybe we get Sarah Palin in the first term.' You know what I mean?"

ERICKSON: "Exactly".

Conservatives hope the Grandpa guy dies so they can get the young hottie airhead. That's some real Country First logic. That's who is leading the conservative movement. Didn't Cheney set it up for the VP to run the show?

You can hear it on YouTube here, Source: YouTube

How Wrong Can You Be And Still Have A Job?

Continuing from my previous post about Republican commentators getting it 100% wrong and still having jobs, check this nugget:

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her ... Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now,"

- Bill Kristol, the man behind Sarah Palin, December 17, 2006.

Source: Salon via Andrew Sullivan

Universal Reboot

The world hits "ctr+alt+del" and reboots for Obama. CNN has a report on the world's view of the US.

Obama Gets North Carolina

No surprise, Obama gets North Carolina making it 364 Electoral votes. Missouri is still undecided, but it's 12 votes are looking Red.

Obama's Mandate

The Right Wing, people like Robert Novak, fear using "mandate" to describe what Obama has done. Novak writes:

"[Obama] may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities."

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, using facts, dismantles Novak's lame talking point:

"In 2004, George W. Bush won less than 51% of the popular vote, 53% of the available electoral votes, and enjoyed a vote margin of 3 million. In 2008, Barack Obama won 52.3% of the popular vote, 65% of the available electoral votes (67% after North Carolina is called for him), and enjoyed a vote margin of about 7.4 million. Novak insisted that Bush's totals "of course" constituted a "mandate," while Obama's do not.

Indeed, Media Matters had an item yesterday noting that after the 2004 race, when Bush won a second term with the smallest popular-vote margin since 1976 (excluding the 2000 election) and the lowest electoral vote count for an incumbent president's re-election since 1916, major media figures still rushed to award Bush a "mandate."

Obama not only cruised to a major victory, but his party saw major gains in the House, Senate, and state houses. If Obama doesn't have a "mandate" for his policy agenda, the word has no meaning."

Unlike Bush's faux mandate in 2004, Obama's mandate will actually have an effect and his policies will help change America.

Source: Steve Benen

Blue America

Here is a look at counties and how they voted in relation to 2004. Blue indicates increased Democratic voting, Red increased Republican voting.

There is a massive shift towards liberal politics, especially the youth vote. Bush has turned an entire young generation blue and Obama mobilized it.



Source: NYT

Right Wing Media: Buy A Clue

In sports, as a commentator, you have to be correct some of the time to keep your job. In politics you can be wrong, dangerously wrong, and keep your job.

All these bozos thought McCain was going to win, that Palin was a great VP choice and thought conservatism was doing just fine. Wake up.



Source: Oliver Willis

The McCain Belt

Cool map from NYT, shows the back-ass shitholes where McCain did better than Bush did in 2004:



Andrew Sullivan suggests, "Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose."

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Palin Farce Gaining Traction

Country first? Palin was clueless from Day One and they knew it. Didn't know Africa was a continent, thought it was a country? They hid this from the public for 2 months, bullshitting all of us. I'm sure a lot more will be coming out now.

Watch the video and think about how clueless McCain was to pick her in the first place. And, more importantly, how naive and unconcerned conservatives are to follow their unvetted muppet leaders.



UPDATE: Fox's Carl Cameron and Bill O discuss the Palin farce.

From The Pen Of: Tom Toles

For you strict Constructionists: