Step 1: We Admitted We Were Powerless Over the Democrats ; That Our Party Had Become Unmanagable

The Politico polls a bunch of hooked-in people to get their opinions on the GOP's road to recovery.

"What Are You, A Bunch of Jesus Freaks?"

I just wanted a good, cheap way to pull out one of Ted Turner's golden oldies as a subject line.

But seriously, here's the ad of the week, brought to you by your friends at the NRSC...remember cute little Liddy Dole? Our little gal is all growed up and plays hardball in North Carolina. She's behind in the polls, so had to go all Jesus-in-the-temple-with-the-moneychangers on her opponent.

Personally, I find it a little bit annoying when anyone, pro-, anti- or ambivalent when it comes to the Lord decides to talk about their own religious beliefs in support of their candidacy. Keep it between you and your God; I'm happy for you.

But making implications about someone else's religious beliefs really puts you on the Musings Shit List.

Just in Case You Forgot

Coming up on 7 years ago, some bad people did some very bad things in America.

The Republicans think, I guess, that you might have forgotten. So they made up a video of what happened to show to their delegates and the nation during the convention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Olbermann went nuts over it, and, as usual, he was a little bit too melodramatic, but we agree that it was really kind of creepy how they threw this in there.

I know what the cynical me thinks that I'm supposed to take away from their decision to show this video...

Republican Party Seal?

House Republicans pulled a nice little stunt yesterday.

After Madame Speaker decided to call it quits for the traditional August recess, they still wanted to talk about energy.

Problem is that she had it cut...the lights, mics and even CSPAN were cut out, but the Party of Lincoln stayed on the floor for several hours.

With Democrats out of the chamber fuming, the Republicans were left there to play with themselves.

They finally gave up several hours later, to cheers and a "USA!" chant from the gallery, singing God Bless America.

Indeed...

One of the Good Ones

It was a bummer this morning to wake up and read about Tony Snow going down to colon cancer.

There's no shortage of people who have differences with his politics or association with Fox News, but I always got the impression that he was a true believer in what he was going out and speaking for...a quality that there probably is a shortage of when it comes to national politics.

The GOP Is Screwed

An only-slightly-modified version of Drudge's page this morning.

John Edwards Was Right

I was looking over how the GOP primaries had gone by state to confirm what I already knew...and you did, too. There are two Americas.

Comparing the clusters of Romney, McCain and Huckabee wins, you see that, while not perfect, they pretty much show that the people who found Huck and Romney to be solid men capable of leading this country are citizens of Dumf**kistan.

This is more a state of mind(lesness) than something that can change when one moves, but we are starting to suspect there is something in the water in them parts.

(click to enlarge)

Guy Smiley

John McCain was the man with the shit-eatin' grin last night at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA.

He flew into town after handily beating the Stormin' Mormon in Florida and then picked up the endorsement of America's Mayor for dinner before the debate.

After that, he was just playing with Mitt's head for the rest of the night.

In the last week, he's really got him rattled by continually pulling out a quote where Mitt talks around whether or not we should have timetables for withdrawing from Iraq.

McCain is clearly taking some liberties with the context in which the word was used, but it's telling as all hell how things like this can get under Romney's otherwise flawlessly-healthy skin. I saw flashes last night of the South Carolina debate when the same thing happened. Mitt, when faced with someone who keeps tweaking him really has a hard time masking his frustration.

(As another example, recall how bent out of shape he got when an AP reporter kept insisting last week that Romney had a "Washington lobbyist" as a honcho in his campaign.)

McCain, of course, just sits back with an incredibly self-satisfied face as Mitt tries to clean up the mess he made on the floor.

At the end of the day, unfortunately, Ron Paul summed up their argument most accurately. He pointed out that it's just two guys who essentially agree on Iraq arguing about technicalities for show.

Ron Paul is currently polling at 5%.

The L Word in Florida

While I guess it might be halfway clever (well maybe not) for me to superimpose McCain's and Mitt's faces into this picture, why soil something so pretty.

Anyway, the word that Ronald Reagan turned into a cuss word in some circles, is being thrown around quite, uh, liberally down in the armpit of the nation.

"We May Be Against Gay Marriage, But We'll Engage in the Occasional Three-Way When Our Personal Gratification is at Stake"

Well, with Mitt pulling off a must-win in Michigan last night, this has started to look more and more like we're building up to the kind of brokered convention that Mr. Klora taught us about in high school history class.

"The smoke-filled back rooms where deals were made and candidates anointed..." he said with a tone of voice usually reserved for ghost stories.

I'm just not so attached to any of the candidates at the moment, so it's not nearly as heartbreaking as it is exciting to watch!

I'll have to find a podcast later on of the Dem debate from Sin City last night. I caught the first half hour, but decided to hit the hay...and I'll try to find some time during the day to put up a posting on the question ManTan should have (but I can wager didn't!) ask the Democrats last night.

Stay tuned...

Romney Gets the Most Votes in Ames; Huckabee Wins

One of the truisms I learned in Mr. Horvath's government class is that the primary season is all about 
expectations.

If you're supposed to win, you better win big.  If you are supposed to get nothing and wind up with 10 votes, you really win.

We saw this yesterday at the Ames Iowa Republican straw poll.

Flipp Romney, who spent like a drunken sailor, came out on top, but for that kind of bling, he should have.  Mike Huckabee, running a comparatively shoestring campaign came in second with 18% of the vote.  He was closely trailed by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback with 15%.

The votes that #s 2 & 3 got represent the conventional wisdom 'base vote' 
of the party. 

Notably, the no-shows Giuliani, McCain and Thompson barely even registered yesterday.  You do need to organize in Iowa and they consciously stayed out of this one.

The next exciting thing to watch is how Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada jockey for position in how they time the dates of their caucuses/primaries to maximize influence (money) in the upcoming season.

Romney's Change of Heart on Abortion

At the GOP debate last night, Candidate Romney explained away his change of heart on abortion in a very slick way. He's becoming quite adept at this, but one has to wonder who he thinks he's fooling.

When he ran for the US Senate against Ted Kennedy, Romney charactarized himself as pro-choice. About two years ago, curiously coinciding with when he probably had to start acting on his Presidential aspirations, he became pro-life.

Last night, he explained to the audience, that included Nancy Reagan, that his change of heart was due to some more thought about cloning and how it related to the issue.

It's hardly worth mentioning what a deception this is.

Could I be converted to an anti-gas-station-holdup guy only after taking an economics class? Could I become anti-nuclear war only after earning a masters degree in physics?

This guy is just too slick for me and it will be a cold day in hell when I vote for him.

Thoughts/Observations on the GOP Debate Last Night

I was engrossed in a work problem durnig the debate, so my attention was not completely on it.  Hence just the bullet-point things that come to my mind as I listened last night.  More to come later.

• Caliphate was a term in Rudy's debate prep book.  He used it twice, both in explaining the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims and in a more generic description of the Middle East.  First time I recall hearing this term being used to a wide audience like that.
  
• Some push for the sainthood of John Paul, I may just be in favor of candidacy for Dr. Ron Paul.  Is this guy a true conservative's dream candidate or what?  And, if all else fails, why not Rupaul?
• I would like to think I follow these things somewhat closely.  I have to admit that I was caught off-guard to see Jim Gilmore up there last night.  I knew he had been toying with the idea of running, but they've not been making his candidacy too exciting.  And a little helpful advice to the candidate...get a SEO person working on your campaign website!  I can't find you and had to  link to Wikipedia!
• I'm torn on the idea of whether I like the "gotcha!" quiz questions.  Tommy Thompson was asked about the death and injury count in Iraq and Rudy was asked to explain the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims.  I don't need to have it explained to me why it's important that they know that, but something about the way in which they're asked (and the repurcussions for failing to be able to recall facts on a dime) turns me off.
• Did John McCain put on shoulder pads in that jacket or what?  Compare his Reaganesque physique with a jacket on to the comparatively-slumped Rudy!

   

Sorry about the size of these photos.  I'm not dedicated or smart enough to snip them down.

• It was rather embarassing, but predictable, when they did a show of hands for candidates who don't believe in evolution.
• Unless I missed it, they did not push Governor Romney on the issue of his lifetime NRA membership.  In case you haven't heard this one, it's a real hoot.  I bet he drummed up this one from Dick Morris or called in a favor from Bubba.  He's a lifetime member not because he's been a member his whole life, but because within the last year or so he bought a lifetime membership.
• While he's still a bit too close to the morality-regulators, Sen. Sam Brownback did come off as more reasonable than he could have.  I'm not counting him completely out of the horserace yet, although I dread having to decide between Rudy and John Wayne next year.  One area where Brownback signaled he's ready to play the game is when he conceded that he would be able to run with or support a pro-choice candidate were they to become the party nominee.

Gary Hart on Rudy Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani, seen here snuggling up against the ass of his police chief, Bernie Kerik
 

I've often wondered how Rudolph Giuliani gets away with running so hard on a terrorism/9-11 campaign in his bid for the GOP Presidential nomination.

To date, my criticism has mainly focused around the question of what actions he took post-9-11 that either made a real difference in the so-called war against terror or that distinguished him from any other person with a high profile office.

Former Colorado Senator and Presidential hopeful Gary Hart, however, takes issue with the behavior of Mayor Happy Pants before 9-11 and what he did (or didn't do) with information he had that could have prevented terrorist actions.

It's not reasonable to think that Mayor Rudy could have single-handedly prevented the terrorist attacks on 9-11.  However, by running so hard on his own credentials (as yet largely unknown to me) and of questioning the abilities of those on the other side of the aisle to deal with terrorism as effectively as a Republican like George W. Bush, he simply invites these sorts of questions.

Game on.

Obama's Debate Prep

Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty posts up an interesting thought on Obama's debate performance the other night.

While his style reflected excellent preparation for the medium (televised, on-stage debate), he really can stand to use more time simply getting comfortable with the issues they are going to be discussing during said debate.

The example that comes to my mind immediately is when moderator Brian "Man Tan" Williams pressed him on what he, personally, had recently done to become more "green" in his everyday life.  Obama fumbled around talking about a campaign initiative to send volunteer to go out and plant trees.

Williams, to his credit, would have none of this Barack Appleseed nonsense, and pressed the issue. The wunderkind never got his bearings after that, mouthing off some lame, vague reference to installing longer-lasting lightbulbs.

Some good advice here. We'll see what happens.

I'm anxiously awaiting a bit more of a bloodbath when the GOP hopefuls take the stage this coming Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA.