The Democrats Won't Win By Losing

One of our readers referred me to an interesting article last week. The article was at Politico and it was titled “Good News, Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!” The gist of the article is that the Democrats will be better off losing the Senate to the Republicans, as appears inevitable. The article makes some interesting points, but ultimately it is just sour grapes and it relies on biased assumptions.

According to the article, the issue is this. The Republicans will win the Senate. Far from being upset by this, the Democrats should be ecstatic because “the Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap operate hit peak suds.” Specifically, the author thinks the Tea Party candidates will turn the Senate into a “sit-com” as “grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz” go to war with the GOP leadership. This will push the Republicans to the loony fringes and turn the public off. Hence, in 2016, the public will be ready to embrace the Democrats with big sloppy wet kisses.

As proof, the author claims that Mitch McConnell has mapped out a confrontational strategy with Obama, whereby the Republicans will include all kind of fringe things in budget bills and dare Obama to veto them. He also claims that while the Republican leadership has defused the worst landmines in the primaries, they’ve done this by papering over their differences with their fringe. Finally, he notes that the Republicans no longer even talk about the things they normally stand for like cutting taxes.

I would add that, superficially, there is additional support for this in proclamations by fringers like Mike Huckabee who threatened this week to leave the GOP for failing to obsess enough about gays and abortion.

So this all sounds reasonable, right? Well, no.

The problem with this idea is that it fundamentally misunderstands much of what is going on. For starters, when has the opposition not mapped out a confrontational strategy against a president from another party... especially such an unpopular president? This idea means nothing, especially as McConnell is far too savvy to be pulled into anything stupid. In fact, even the author notes that the GOP leadership killed off any more shutdowns. So why should we believe that once McConnell controls the Senate, with few Tea Partiers in the Senate, that McConnell will suddenly let them run wild or embrace their lunacy to keep the peace? Don’t forget, this is the man who just successfully defended himself against the combined weight of every single Tea Party group in the country to win a crushing win in his primary.

Next, the author completely underestimates the importance of what happened in the primaries. The leadership didn’t rid itself of the fringe by “papering over” their disagreements! Ha! They went to war with the fringe -- Ted Cruz even whined about fringers being carpet-bombed by the evil leadership. The result was a party that crushed its fringe and retook control over itself. Not a single Tea Partier won a victory in this primary over an establishment candidate. And the effect has been dramatic. Indeed, since the end of the primaries, notice that you hear almost nothing but whimpers from the likes of FreedomWorks and the nutjobs who lost. Most disappeared back into the woodwork and the rest are busy trying to salvage their fundraising. Even Cruz has barely said a word against the party in months.

So what about calls to break away? Going into the primaries, the fringers genuinely thought they had the backing of the people. But the primaries exposed them as what they are – a fringe, even within the GOP. They know now that forming a separate party would do nothing but make them even less relevant. So now we know that not only can the party afford to lose them, but they can't afford to leave the party. This has become a paper threat.

For these reasons, this author is flat out wrong if he believes the GOP will stage a civil war. Not to mention, the Senate isn’t that kind of place anyways. The Senate is not a democracy and the Senate leader has too much power for a couple of malcontents to cause any real trouble. All they can do is talk, and the GOP leadership has an effective strategy to neuter that now.

As for not talking about tax cuts, the reason is that no one is listening to that issue. The Republicans have failed to sell the benefits of tax cuts for too long and the issue has gone cold. Instead, the public is worried about a lack of job, the cost of healthcare, the damage of Obamacare, the effects of the failure of Obama’s presidency, and protecting our society from intruders and foreign diseases and foreign religious nuts. You don’t talk tax cuts in that atmosphere.

The author also takes a shot at the GOP for failing to implement the recommendations of their post-2012 “autopsy,” but again, that shows a lack of knowledge. All the autopsy really said was that the GOP needs to implement a better technological approach to voter outreach. That has nothing to do with controlling the Senate.

This whole article strikes me as biased sour grapes. This author has a leftist view of the GOP as hopelessly fringey and he just assumes the GOP will act like Huffpo’s worst nightmare says they will. But the GOP is much better controlled and far less fringey than it was in 2012. Moreover, political parties have ways to hold their worst instincts in check when they assume power. Look at the Democrats, who squandered a supermajority in 2008-2010 because they were afraid to pull the trigger on anything. Look at Newt in the 1990s, who could have taken Reagan’s ideas to an extreme as all the think tanks on the right wanted, but who mainly tinkered with House procedures and then passed only a handful of truly significant bills.

I’m not saying things will go well or that talk radio will stop its fratricidal war against the GOP, but I am saying that the GOP is highly unlikely to implode through extremism because (1) it killed its extremists, and (2) the natural instinct of parties in power is to pander to the public to get more power, not go on an ideological revolution... and Mitch McConnell is too old school and savvy not to know that.

Thoughts?

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It's The End of the World As We Know It...

Of all the things to write about, I have decided to turn once again to Micheal Savage. Why? Because Savage has given us a dire warning that should shake us to our very cores: we have one month left to save the country!

Savage has written a new book. In it, he apparently claims that from the moment of his election, Obama set out to cause an American Civil War by letting in a "flood of Central American illegal aliens and the entry of the Ebola virus to the U.S." Savage sees this as the "worldwide left... attempting nothing less than a socialist takeover of the world economy and global politics." He even claims that Biden admitted this when he stated the other day that the "post-World War II order is literally fraying at the seams." He then pounces:

“What was he trying to say?” Savage asked. “Was he playing like he’s suddenly discovered what he’s done to the country? And now he’s triangulating his opposition to make believe he’s the savior? It’s not just a joke,” he told WND. “We’re at the end of the road here.”

Hence, we must impeach Obama now!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!

Ok, let me point out first and foremost that if you believe anything Savage says, then you are probably a paranoid moron. Sorry, but it's true. Now let's take down this particular idiocy.

(1) When Obama took office, he had no idea that there would be a flood of Central America kids shipped north. So how likely is it that this was all part of some nefarious plan to cause a civil war? Oh, that's right, facts don't matter to the paranoid. Further, there were only about 30,000 of these immigrants. Compared to the two million immigrants the US adds each year, that's not even noticeable. Moreover, they're kids. Are we to believe that an "army" of 30,000 Hispanic children will undo the US? If that can happen, then we've got bigger problems than Obama.

(2) Biden is a big enough fool that anyone who looks for meaning in his words is an idiot. And to take something Biden said that's actually sort of right and to then spin it into an admission of some secret plot Biden is aware of is just downright moronic. No one... no one will ever make Biden part of their conspiracy. So if this is the best Savage has to support his claim, then he clearly pulled his claim out of his butt.

(3) Savage hasn't noticed, because I guess his bunker doesn't have much access to the real world, but the worldwide left no longer exists. It has devolved into a series of small whiner groups who each want separate things and don't really have a plan to get any of it. He also seems to have missed the fact that every leftist cause is imploding the world over. China, the last communist regime, declared that to get rich is glorious. Go capitalism! Whoops. The big socialist Eurozone has imploded in mess of budget cuts. Venezuela went socialist and they don't even have toilet paper anymore. Leftist politicians are on the run in Brazil and Argentina. Environmentalism collapsed in Copenhagen, thanks to Obama's indifference. Feminists pushed hard for laws requiring equal pay and that didn't happen... anywhere. The third world has rejected almost all of Western leftism as "cultural imperialism." The left was pushed out of the Middle East entirely as it was replaced with Islamic-based governments. And so on.

(4) If Savage really is worried about all of this, why is he trying to stop the civil war? Shouldn't he be hoping for the civil war, since the civil war will give him a chance to defeat Obama and restore America to its Ebola-free glory? Oh wait... Savage doesn't actually want that. He just wants to sell you his book. As an aside, Savage goes out of his way to claim that he didn't write this book to make money because, by gosh, he doesn't need the money. snicker snicker Yeah, sure.

You know, the only reason I actually wrote about this was just to point out how far Savage has descended into retardery. There is so much to be upset about with Obama that I wish people with the power to reach the public would do an honest job of pointing those things out. The economy stinks and Obama's policies have made things worse, especially if you are young, poor or black. Obamacare made medicine more expensive for everyone, did nothing to improve quality, and only improved access marginally by giving it out for free -- something that could have been done without all the disruptions. He's done nothing to improve education. He's done nothing to improve race relations. He's done nothing to heal any of the rifts this country has. He's done nothing to improve our standing overseas. He's gotten us into wars that seem both endless and pointless the way they are being fought, which means soldiers are dying for no apparent purpose. He's done nothing to secure people's homes or pensions. He's done nothing to make Wall Street bailouts less likely or to free up credit for Main Street or to make life easier for small business.

This is what we should be focusing on with Obama, not some fantasy plan to cause a civil war in the US, not some paranoid idea that he wants to give us all Ebola by bringing a handful of patients here for treatment, not nebulous paranoid claims about Obama being a secret Muslim or imposing black power or some other bit of racist paranoia.

When you have someone as inept and disastrous as Obama, you don't need to invent paranoid fantasies to rally the public against him. And if you want proof of this, consider the fact that his approval ratings crash when Obama is in the news, and they rise when fringe-Republicans are in the news attacking him. This isn't hard folks... it just doesn't make Michael Savage any money.

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Mississippi Burnout

by tryanmax

Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran’s runoff election victory over his primary challenger on Tuesday sure has brought the ugly from the Tea Party. Not only has Chris McDaniel, the Tea Party’s candidate, been taking the loss like a spoiled child, but the entire far-right radio/blogosphere is having fits. Here are the highlights I have come across.

First, the loser himself. “There is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.” These are words from McDaniel’s non-concession speech in which he repeatedly accused the Republican Party of losing its conscious. This from a man who’s supporters broke into a courthouse.

Next up, with three hours a day to bloviate, you know you’re going to find some gems from Rush Limbaugh. Liberal detractors have seized on his ill-advised (unadvised?) choice to refer to the black turnout in favor of Cochran as “Uncle Tom voters.” In context, Limbaugh was playing off a routine slur hurled at conservative blacks, but it still doesn’t play well.

Beyond riffing on liberal prejudices, Limbaugh has characterized the support Cochran received from black, most likely Democrat voters in Mississippi as somehow illegitimate. I don’t like open primaries myself, but Limbaugh’s comments had easy racial overtones that were a little uncertain even to me, a longtime listener.

Other radio personalities, such as Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, were quick to dismiss their own influence on elections. Suddenly, they weren’t interested in the elections they were so deeply invested in the day before. Now they just care about “the culture.”

Sarah Palin chimed in, calling Cochran’s aggressive door-to-door get-out-the-vote campaign “shenanigans.” (Incidentally, this flies in the face of claims that Cochran won via a media carpet-bomb campaign.) Again, the overtone is that Cochran had no business courting black voters. Palin also took issue with Cochran campaigning on things he’s done for his state’s benefit, like securing relief following Hurricane Katrina and getting funds for special education. In Palin’s book, that’s running on the Big Government ticket.

Ted Cruz echoed a different theme also heard on talk-radio—that the McDaniel loss is actually a victory. By this reasoning, if you take out the Democrats, then McDaniel won amongst Republicans. This form of analysis is again rife with racial implications. Besides, both candidates knew the rules going in. Only one actively courted the black vote in the runoff.

In addition to these incautious statements, most of the tea-party-sphere has launched into the usual theories about the establishment and the mainstream media that get more conspiratorial sounding each time they are repeated. This can only help to make the GOP look sane in comparison. With the Tea Party to triangulate against as well as the current administration’s incompetence, this looks like good news for the GOP this fall.

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Sorry Drudge, The Unidos Estados Has Been Cancelled

OMG! The US is being overrun by brown people! Drudge screamed last week: “Hispanics to be majority within 25 years” and “Illegals pour into US”! Is he right? Hardly. Let me point out a few things, like some recent “inexpiable” changes in demographics.

Let me start by reminding you that Drudge, like his talk radio fellow travelers, is a fear monger who maintains his white, angry, scared audience by telling them that the gays, the browns, the blacks, the atheists, the Muslims, and the feminists are quickly securing the country and will soon be coming for them. But it's all garbage. So what about his headline: “Hispanics to be majority within 25 years”? is Drudge right? Well, no. If you followed the link on this headline, you would not have found an article discussing demographic trends. You would not have found an article from the Census or some new study. What you would have found is an article about a GOP candidate who claims that Hispanics will be the majority ethnicity in Texas in 25 years. In making that claim, he cites to a Gallop poll, which doesn’t say anything of the sort. It says instead that Hispanics favor Democrats. That's it.

So you tell me: was Drudge's use of the headline fair? Well get to the other one in a moment.

The idea of an Hispanic takeover of the US has been popular among racially-conscious talk radio and their opposite numbers in the Democratic Party for some time. The problem is that reality doesn’t cooperate with their thinking. Here’s the problem. They have taken a couple data points at their most extreme and then extrapolated that as a permanent thing. It’s like realizing that I gave you a dollar at noon, two dollars an hour later and four dollars an hour after that and then extrapolating that to tell the world that I will be giving you $256 in ten hours and millions by morning. Good luck with that.

What has happened is this. Hispanics have been the fastest growing group in the US because of two factors: immigration combined with a higher birth rate than everyone else. Taking this higher growth percentage than everyone else and projecting it into the future unchanged eventually leads to Hispanics becoming the majority.

But that’s not how humanity works. It also ignores the inputs, as I’ve written about before. Indeed, I’ve mentioned twice that the first big problem with this is that the majority of the growth rate for Hispanics has been immigration from Mexico, and that is coming to an end. Mexico’s economy is recovering and their birthrate has plunged well below ours. The end result is that there just aren’t enough Mexicans to go around anymore and they are choosing to stay home rather than come here. Because of this, Mexican immigration peaked in the 1990s and has been falling since. The last several years have actually shown a net ZERO in terms of Hispanic immigration. In other words, for every Mexican who came here, one left... yet Drudge says “Illegals pour into US!”

The result of this is that the same doomsday demographers who were sure we would become the Unidos Estados are now putting off that day. But never fear, they say, it’s still coming because those dirty browns breed like cockroaches!!

Only, they aren’t doing that in Mexico anymore. In fact, the birthrate in Mexico crashed from 6.7 in 1970 to 2.2 in 2012 and is approaching the same level as white European or even northern-Asian levels. Similar declines are taking place in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador – the biggest contributors to Hispanic immigration to the US.

What’s more, the Hispanic birthrate in the US has been plunging. In the 1990s, when Mexican immigrants first began to arrive in record numbers, the Hispanic birthrate in the US was about 3.0. At the same time, the black birth rate was 2.1 and the white birthrate ranged from 1.7 to 1.9 depending on the year. But these numbers don’t remain constant. By 2008, the Hispanic birthrate had fallen to 2.7. Then in 2008, something dramatic began. The Hispanic birthrate began to crash. By 2012, it fell to 2.19... just above the replacement rate of 2.1. Birth rates for Hispanics stayed the same in 2013, while whites and blacks both showed a slight increase, while Asian births fell by 2%.

In other words, these el cucarachas that were going to breed us out of existence suddenly were only turning out just enough kids to keep their population level. Moreover, Hispanic immigration had gone to net zero. That means no growth.

Hispanics are currently about 15% of the population. Based on everything we know, they are likely to top out at 17% of the population. And as we’ve pointed out before, they tend to meld into the white population fairly easily.

So much for Democratic dreams and talk radio fears.

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And The Idiots Implode

Just a couple of quick points tonight... telling points about the future.

● RIP The Tea Party: The Tea Party continues its march toward political oblivion. For some time now, I’ve told you that the GOP has learned to fight back and now intends to shut out the Tea Party crazies. The Tea Party recognized this and whined and whined and whined, especially about loyalty... hypocrites. Ted Cruz actually whined about the GOP leadership “carpet-bombing” the Tea Party.

Anyways, when the GOP first started fighting back, the Tea Party decide to put all of their eggs in one basket as a determined show of force. If they could execute Mitch McConnell, then the GOP would learn not to resist them. That was the plan.

Thus, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, every other Tea Party luminary, the Senate Conservative Fund and every other Tea Party group endorsed and donated to McConnell’s opponent Bevins. For months, Rush and Hannity and the other Talk Radio nut jobs smeared McConnell with any lie and distortion they could think of. They made it very plain: You could not be a reel ‘merikan and not see McConnell as worse that Pelosi.

I told you, however, that McConnell would win easily because the GOP had learned to beat the crazies. And that is exactly what has happened. McConnell crushed Bevins by a mile on Tuesday.

Naturally, the Tea Party is now trying to back away from this. This has taken several phases. First, they started saying about two months ago that winning wasn’t their intent. Instead, they claimed it was enough to raise awareness. That’s called “managing expectations” and that’s horseship. Secondly, many are now disclaiming Bevins as a real Tea Party candidate because (1) he lied about supporting the bailout, (2) he lied about his education, (3) he suggested that gay marriage would allow parents to marry their children, and (4) he gave a campaign speech at a cockfighting rally. In reality, however, he’s no different than the other crazies they’ve been backing all over the place. The only reason they want to disavow him now is because his was the race they couldn’t win... so they want to pretend they weren’t involved in the race. Drudge actually described Bevins as McConnell’s “ ‘Tea Party’ Challenger,” in quotes, to suggest that he wasn’t really Tea Party. Presumably, the establishment falsely labeled Bevins as Tea Party.

One article tonight laughingly claimed that the true Tea Party victory in this election cycle was in Nebraska, where the winner (Sasse) is an insider if ever there was one, is a friend of Mitch McConnell, and was originally framed by the Tea Party as the evil establishment guy until they switched sides and turned on the Tea Party candidate, re-framing him as the evil establishment guy. Apparently, this “victory” shows that the Tea Party is still strong.

In the end, the Tea Party isn’t going away anymore than Sarah Palin is going away, but they are finished. Tonight was the last nail the coffin needed. The money and the voters have jumped ship back to the GOP. It’s over.

● RIP The Democrats: This does my heart good. The Democrats are freaking out about the midterms. They are freaking out because they have no message as their push to raise the minimum wage (their only idea) hasn’t caught on with the middle class, and no one likes the things they’ve done. Heck, despite its faked success, Obamacare remains about as popular as herpes, as does Obama himself. Anyway, check out this quote about the Democrats’ feelings about Obama from Politico

Anxious Democrats point to Obama’s low-40s approval ratings as the kind of anchor-round-the-neck numbers that could cost the party real ground in the House, and enough Senate races to lose the majority. His failure so far to present a broad, compelling message on the economy — beyond an emphasis on raising the minimum wage that’s fallen flat with middle-class voters — has, according to internal Democratic polling and focus groups, left that group without a clear sense of what he or the party stands for beyond helping the poor.

Aww. I feel so bad for them! LOL! Actually, no I don’t. This is a party who has been relying on the GOP imploding going into the election. The GOP ended that danger by executing its turds. Now the Democrats have nothing they can run on and so much they need to run away from... Obamacare, record unemployment, falling incomes, 10 million under-water home loans, still too big(ger) to fail, not a promise kept, international humiliations, insults and injuries galore. Good luck with that. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.

● RIP Inevitability: Finally, Hillary’s campaign is suddenly in serious trouble. Ha ha. It all started when Karl Rove noted that Hillary’s medical record might be relevant because it sure looked to him like she had suffered head trauma when she fell.

BANG!! Faster than a speeding bullet, things blew up on Hillary. Experts appeared who commented on her appearance, the medical glasses she wore, and everything else that indicated she’s just too old and perhaps too concussed. The media tried to defend her, but once this genie got out, it spread. Soon even Democrats like Obama-clone Deval Patrick were saying that “inevitability” (the word associated with Hillary) is an ugly thing. There is now a very real chance that Hillary will ultimately fail before she even reaches the starting point in the primary race. If that happens, then the Democrats have no one with a name they can run... the cupboard is bare.

Interesting times.

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The Fringe Loves Squatters, Hates The Constitution

It was apparently a good weekend to get your fringe on. First, the birthers were back. Trump promised to build a giant placebo to keep out all the Mexicans. And Jay Carney used photoshop to make it look like he owns more books than he does AND he collects Soviet propaganda. See! See people! If only the MSM would tell the TROOTH about these things! Then the public would be with us openly instead of secretly! And those aren’t even the BIG story! The BIG story was how fascist Obamaholderreid wants to strip reel ‘merikan Al Bundy of his property rights. But we faced 'em down!

//sarc off

Most of the land in the West belongs to the federal government. At one point, the feds were giving it away to anyone who would take it in the hopes that people would move from the East to the West. Later, when the West was more established, the feds stopped giving away public land, but they agreed to allow people like ranchers to graze their cattle on public land for a small grazing fee. Ditto miners and oil drillers and others. Indeed, this land is administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is charged with maintaining and administering public lands for the benefit of the public. This includes allowing private use of the land when that fits the BLM’s mission.

This is where the Bundy family comes into the picture. Somewhere in the late 1800s, the Bundy’s moved to Nevada and built a ranch. They took advantage of the fed’s policy of opening public lands and let their cattle graze on public lands near their ranch.

To hear the fringe tell it, the Bundy family was given the right to use this land forever until the evil BLM decided to save some turtle. At that point, the BLM ruthlessly tried to throw the Bundy's off the land they've been using since before Jesus was a child and have a forever right to use. When the saintly Bundy's resisted, the BLM appeared out of the blue with shock troops, tasered Bundy's helpless son, and would have made the whole family disappear into black helicopters if not for a couple of reel patriots like the nut jobs at InfoWars exposing the TROOTH.

Um... no... not even close.

Somewhere along the way, the BLM was told by the EPA that some rare turtle in Nevada needs protection. At that point in the 1990s, the BLM had no legal choice but to do what they could to protect that turtle. The BLM responded by limiting grazing rights for everyone in those areas to 150 head of cattle per permit. This included the Bundy’s. The Bundy’s, however, ignored this change by BLM in the grazing policy. Moreover, they stopped paying the renewal fee for the grazing permits.

Now, let me be clear because this is where the lunatics stop listening. The Bundy’s have NO right to graze on public land - no matter how long they've been doing it. They are entitled to do so only so long as the BLM has that land open for grazing. Moreover, they need to follow any terms and conditions or limits BLM places on that grazing; the Bundy’s can’t claim more rights than BLM is willing to grant. Nor can the Bundy’s claim what is called adverse possession because (1) you can’t do that to the government, (2) they don’t otherwise meet the requirements either, i.e. their possession was not adverse and they didn’t hold themselves out as owners. So the Bundy’s can’t claim the land is theirs, they can’t claim some sort of right to graze, they can’t claim more rights to graze than BLM grants them by permit, and they didn’t even pay the permit to get those. They are essentially grass thieves... or squatters.

The Bundy’s kept right on grazing, however, so the BLM went to court. On issue after issue, injunction after injunction, appeal after appeal, the Bundy’s lost. They lost every single legal battle for more than 20 years. Eventually, Bundy gave up on the court’s giving him what he wanted and he tried a different approach: he claimed that he does not recognize the existence of the Federal Government: “I don’t recognize the United States Government as even existing.” He then claimed to be armed and threatened anyone who tried to interfere with his cattle grazing.

BLM went to court and got another order to have the Bundy cattle removed. Bundy appealed and lost again. Bundy then removed his cattle. Only, they didn't stay away. For the next eleven years, Bundy snuck his cattle onto the land, sometimes mixing them with others and even leaving them unbranded in an attempt to keep investigators from knowing whose cattle they were. The BLM investigated however, and by June 2011, the BLM issued another cease and desist order.

Bundy then told BLM he would round up their cattle as ordered. He lied. Rather than round up his cattle, he began to build improvements on the land to make it easier to feed and water his cattle – something that has never been allowed. BLM contacted the Clark County Sheriff, who tried to broker a deal. At that point, Bundy threatened a “range war” if anyone tried to remove his cattle. BLM went back to court and got an order allowing them to remove the cattle.

That is where we are now, only with a couple hundred yahoos out there trying to menace the BLM agents as well. As an aside, these fringers are claiming Harry Reid's son is behind this because he wants to claim the land for a CHINESE!!! solar company. They heard this from pathological liar Alex Jones. The trouble is that it's false. The land Reid wants to use is miles away and this issue arose 10 years before Reid got into politics.

So here is who this patriot of patriots is. He is:

1. A man with no legal right to use the land he claims as his property. He is a squatter who is claiming property rights he doesn't have.
2. A man who litigated for more than 20 years and lost every single time... all affirmed on appeal, and when he lost he suddenly started claiming that the Federal Government doesn’t exist.
3. A man who failed to pay the grazing fees that would have let him continue with fewer cattle.
4. A man who has lied and failed to keep “his word” on several instances.
5. A man who has used threats of violence to try to keep the government from legally evicting him, and who then whines about BLM showing up with armed agents.

This Bundy guy is the exact opposite of everything conservatives hold dear. We believe in property rights, yet this guy is a squatter claiming entitlement to property he does not own and has no rights over. We believe in rule of law, which means an equal application of the law to all. The BLM has more than bent over backwards to give that here. Not only have they spent almost 30 years in court trying to get this resolved (winning at every step), but they have patiently tried to resolve this when they could have legally evicted Bundy at any point. Heck, they've even offered to give him rights to which he's not entitled to settle this. Conservatives cannot claim to support rule of law and then argue that the law cannot apply in this instance. Conservatives also stand for law and order and Bundy is violating that. Bundy has refused repeated valid court orders, he's failed to pay to keep his permits, and he's threatened violence if anyone tries to implement the law. That flies in the face of conservatism. Bundy is also a liar and a sneak, which I would hope are not conservative traits. Finally, note that Bundy doesn't claim some right under the constitution, instead he claims the federal government isn't a legal organization. That's about as far away from conservatism as you can get.

There are times the Federal Government is abusive and needs to be stopped. But latching onto "heroes" like this only discredits our side. Yet, here the far right embraces this nutjob as a hero.

This is what I've been warning people about with the fringe. These people are not conservatives -- they are militia types, tax dodgers, racists, anarchists, and they have worked their way onto the conservative side at the moment because they see an opportunity to warp conservatism to their cause. They do not believe in rule of law or property rights or even limited government, they believe in the abolition of the federal government, separatism and anarchy. They only hide behind terms like "rule of law" and "property rights" to trick people like you into thinking their goals are legitimate. Don't fall for it.

** By the way, the Feds have backed off for the moment and the fringe is crowing about the feds being cowards, because that's how they think. The truth is that this is effective law enforcement. The smart play is to wait for the militia types to go home and then grab Bundy when you can do it without shooting a hundred people. That's also the exact opposite way a supposed totalitarian regime would handle things.

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Rush To Judgmental

by tryanmax

Against my better judgment, I still occasionally listen to The Rush Limbaugh Show, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else, these days. As I tuned in today (Thursday), I was treated to a particularly spectacular display of idiocy on Rush’s part. I want to share it because it perfectly demonstrates just how off-the-rails the right-wing fringe has become in their messaging.

On occasion, Rush will entertain a caller who tries to challenge him. This is so that Rush might demonstrate his greatness in taking the caller down, usually after the caller has hung up. Today, the sacrificial lamb was a 33 year old guy from Ft. Myers, FL named Ian. Ian would fit right in here at Commentarama, and with a little luck, maybe he’ll Google himself and join us one day.

Ian was attempting to explain as we have often discussed here the problem with Republican, conservative, and especially Tea Party rhetoric. The subject was about reducing the size of government. Ian’s point was that the typical right-wing approach, talking about slashing programs and regulations, makes average voters nervous and vulnerable. He said that conservatives need find a way to discuss these ideas without sending the message that they would leave those in need of government programs out to dry.

Ian was very articulate explaining how media bias distorts an overly complicated message and also spoke about the role charisma plays. Personally, I think Ian talked circles around Rush.

Unfortunately, Rush runs the show. Throughout the conversation, he characterized the electorate as spoiled children who need to be confronted and made to fend for themselves. Then he denied that any conservative has ever uttered such a thing as that. He twisted Ian’s words to their opposites. Despite being a mass-media personality with a national reach, Rush tells Ian that politics is a one-on-one affair with no appealing to the masses. He pooh-poohed charisma. Countless times he pulled the old “give me a specific example” ploy. It was a childish display, truly.

At the end of it all, Rush feigned astonishment that anyone could possibly think conservatives, with all their talk of “rugged individualism” and “self reliance,” would mean that people should go it alone without any help or assistance.

Rush really began to flex his muscles after Ian was off the phone, calling him a coward and likening him to Pajama Boy. You see, in Rush’s world, the “conservative message” is all about tough love. There is no other way to discuss shrinking government, increasing independence, or any of the other things that conservatives stand for. Anything other than harsh rhetoric is “coddling.” It doesn’t matter if Ian or anyone else believes in reducing the entitlement rolls—that’s not enough—they have to be willing to get in the faces of those taking government assistance.

Somehow, this is expected to win the day. It reminds me of the “girls love jerks” trope you see on TV, where the guy wants the girl but she isn’t interested until he bombards her with verbal abuse. Except that isn’t the way the real world works, either in relationships or politics. They completely missed the joke. (For the record, it’s the guys who are charismatic jerks—like Obama—who get the girls/votes.)

Something about Ian’s call must have really struck a nerve with Rush, because he kept talking about it for the rest of the show. (I know what it was; it was that he had a point.) But as Rush kept talking, his message got less coherent. He kept insisting that “on your own” doesn’t really mean “on your own.” Then he’d lament that people just aren’t tough enough these days. If Rush is to be understood (a dubious contention), conservatism is about sending the message people need to hear, even if we don’t plan on following it up. It’s either a profoundly messed-up line of thinking or it’s a disturbing revelation.

Rush and the fringe right have gone so far off the rails that they are no longer merely confusing rhetoric for message, they are confusing tone for ideology. Anyone can be aggressive about anything, but Rush and the right have stopped scrutinizing ideas and are looking only for vitriol and a few key buzzwords to form their alliances. Ian made it clear repeatedly that he and Rush were on the same ideological page. But because Ian wanted to put it in an appealing package, Rush dismissed his loyalty to it.

And if any proof is needed that Rush wasn’t listening to a word Ian said about anything, one only needed to stay tuned until about an hour after Ian hung up. Rand Paul came up briefly when Rush pressed Ian for who he thought delivered the conservative message in an appealing way. An hour later, Rush claimed that Ian had contradicted himself and made Rush’s point, that the conservative message can win when delivered clearly by someone likable.

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Hannity's "Winning" Agenda

Sean Hannity is one of the bigger dipsh*ts on the air. Even before talk radio turned poisonous and stupid, Sean was out there spewing nonsense. Yesterday, he started his show by blasting the evil Republicans for surrendering and collaborating blah blah, as usual. Then, in the midst of his verbal diarrhea, he suddenly mentioned that he has an agenda for 2014. I thought I’d take a look. First, let me say that I do give him credit for not just listing abortion, gays and Mexicans as his brethren do. That said, his agenda is crap. Check this out.

Hannity starts by chest pounding about his view of why reel America exists and what the constitution means. Having actually studied the document and how it has been implement, I can tell you that Hannity’s view has never been true. I doubt he cares. Having riled up his reel ‘merkican listeners for an America that never was, he strikes with six areas he thinks are important:

The Economy
Healthcare
Energy
Term Limits
Immigration
Education

This isn’t the worst start I’ve seen, but notice a couple things. There is no mention of jobs. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, the public no longer connects “the economy” with jobs, so right away this will not send a warm fuzzy. Similarly, where is there any obvious mention of protecting my pension, saving my house which is underwater on its loan, unrigging the stock market, protecting Main Street from Wall Street, or saving my butt from student loans? Where is consumer protection? Environmental protection? How about civil liberties, protection of privacy, not getting droned as I drive to work? And if order of listing approximates importance, will mothers be thrilled to see that education falls below “term limits” in importance?

Anyway, that’s just an initial thought that only arises because due to prior stupidity, conservatives have lost the trust of the public, so they get less time to sell their ideas. That means you need to show the public right away that you are offering something different. At first glance, this REEKS of more of the same. Now let’s look at the details:

● The Economy: Here come the jobs, right?! No. After considerable amounts of doomsdayism, in which Hannity assures us that the nation is on the verge of collapse because of various boogeymen and that we are now a nation of leeches, Hannity proposes paying off the federal deficit in six years by cutting spending 0.01%. Then he proposes following this up with a Balanced Budget Amendment.

Oy. First, his math is nonsense and his numbers are bogus. So this whole thing opens with a fraud. Also, if you really could pay off the debt with a “one penny cut,” doesn’t that expose the doomsdayism as bullsh*t? More to the point though, why should the public care about this? The public cares about jobs. This plan won’t generate a single new job. If anything, people will be worried it will kill jobs.

...and the public tunes out.

As for the Balanced Budget Amendment, it takes only seconds to see how pointless that is. Budgets are about projections and you can get around any amendment with phony projections. In fact, states have been making a mockery of this for years. Not to mention, “balanced” does not mean less spending, it can just as easily mean higher taxes. Also, this idea is unconstitutional (a document Hannity should read someday), and there is no conceivable way a court could enforce this. This is a delusion.

Finally, he proposes creating a percentage limit on any individual’s tax liability. Not only will this be seen as conservatives again sucking up to the rich, but Hannity doesn’t even offer a percentage – he hints at 35% or 40%.

That’s it. There’s no mention of jobs. There’s no plan to make employees cheaper, to raise incomes, to let people keep more of what they earn, to spark innovation, or to protect your assets or your house or your pension. Basically, Hannity is pandering to budget wonks and millionaires.

...and the public tunes out.

● Healthcare: Hannity has a simple plan: let everyone have a health savings account, which they can then use to pay for concierge medicine! Woo hoo! Only, everyone can already have a health savings account and that doesn’t solve ANY of the problems that made the public see a healthcare crisis: cost, access or quality.

Moreover, the problem with concierge medicine is that it only works at the general practitioner level. It doesn’t do jack for you if you incur the big ticket items like cancer or heart attacks... the things the public worries about.

...and the public tunes out.

● Energy: Energy. Huh. No, the public’s not screaming about the cost of energy. In fact, no one’s really talking about it and it rates really low on the issues that matter to voters... 11th. Let’s see what Hannity says, shall we?

First, he rails against environmentalists. ...and the public tunes out.

Next, he tells us that we could be out producing Saudi Arabia in terms of oil and gas if the Democrats would let us. And that states that are currently drilling for oil and gas have slightly lower unemployment. Ergo, we drill.

Ok, for starters, we already out produce Saudi Arabia. It happened a couple weeks ago – in BOTH oil and gas. Secondly, the drilling states he talks about have lower unemployment because they tend to be sparsely populated and they are importing workers. Third, this is happening without any help from Washington, so what exactly does Hannity think he’s going to add to the mix? More importantly though, why should average people care? Unless you’re in the oil or gas industry, this won’t create a job for you and no one is screaming about the cost of energy right now. This may be a good thing, but it’s hardly something voters will care about.

...and the public shrugs their shoulders.

● Term Limits: WTF? This is so typical of “conservative” thinking: tinkering with the procedures. There is nothing substantive here and the public doesn’t care.

...and the public tunes out.

● Immigration: This is interesting. For about a week, Hannity supported immigration reform. Then he got smeared as a RINO and he raced back into the cult. What he does here is cite to the completely discredited Heritage Foundation report to tell us why we shouldn’t allow illegals (or any immigrants actually) into our country. Then he quasi-asserts a link between 9/11 and our unsecure borders. He then concludes that we need to protect our borders... and whatever we do after that is up to you. Interesting. It sounds like Hannity actually understands that you can’t deport 11 million people but he doesn’t have the guts to say it to his listeners.

In any event, close to 70% of the public wants immigration reform and Hannity’s proposal here is to adopt the tactic conservatives used to try to stop immigration reform. That's a non-starter.

...and the public tunes out.

● Education: Here’s Hannity’s final shot to reach someone outside of his base. What does he propose? School choice.

...and the public tunes out.

See, the problem with school choice is this. Conservatives have been so hell bent on smearing and destroying public education at every turn that when they say “school choice,” it comes across as a tool meant to deprive public schools of funding and the best students. However, the vast majority of parents like the public schools. They want solutions to make those schools better, and “school choice” does nothing in that regard.

Fortunately, the GOP is making real strides improving public education and creating a school choice system within the public schools. But that’s not what Hannity is selling.

So what do we have here? Well, Hannity creates an agenda that fails to address a single issue that would appeal beyond his own talk radio base. He offers nothing to improve anything the middle class cares about. He wastes his time talking about procedures, proposing solutions that have been repeatedly rejected, and pandering to the wealthy. And he doesn’t even come close to overcoming the lack of trust conservatives have earned on these issues. Think about this the next time he criticizes the GOP... or offers to sell you his book.

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Analyzing A Drudge Poll

The Drudge Report is an interesting site. Drudge picks and chooses his headlines carefully to feed an alarmist worldview. He loves to blow up isolated incidents into themes. His headlines are often inaccurate, sometimes to the point of being exactly backwards of reality. And yet, he’s become the trusted source of news for a good many conservatives and fringers. Indeed, he’s pretty much become the sole research tool for most talk radio hosts. Anyway, he just did a poll and it had some interesting results.

The poll in question asked his readers to pick their current Republican candidate for 2016. Here are the results in order:

RAND PAUL ... 30.75% ... (67,958 votes)
TED CRUZ ... 28.52% ... (63,030 votes)
Other ... 6.91% ... (15,271 votes)
JEB BUSH ... 6.3% ... (13,922 votes)
SARAH PALIN ... 5.21% ... (11,507 votes)
CHRIS CHRISTIE ... 4.84% ... (10,706 votes)
RICK PERRY ... 4.4% ... (9,715 votes)
MIKE HUCKABEE ... 3.74% ... (8,254 votes)
PAUL RYAN ... 3.61% ... (7,974 votes)
BOBBY JINDAL ... 2.96% ... (6,538 votes)
DONALD TRUMP ... 1.86% ... (4,106 votes)
RICK SANTORUM ... 0.9% ... (1,995 votes)

There is much to consider here.

First, this poll reminds us that Drudge is about ratings, not serious politics. We can see this in the choices he offers. Notice that he’s excluded Marco Rubio, who keeps coming up as the front-runner in more scientific polls. He’s also excluded Scott Walker, who has a growing network of supporters. What this suggests is that Drudge, like the rest of the fringe, sees Rubio as finished because he offended them with “Amnesty.” The fact that more than 60% of Republicans support it, has never appeared on Drudge’s pages and doesn't seem to enter his thinking. His dismissal of Scott Walker is more curious, but is likely because Walker doesn’t make Drudge headlines. So Drudge excludes two top tier candidates, yet he includes professional clown Donald Trump and Reality TV queen Sarah Palin. What does that say about Drudge’s worldview? That he’s not serious.

Secondly, this tells us that Drudge’s audience is what people suspect – rather far right. Current Tea Party favorites Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin together took 65% of the vote. Establishment candidates Bush and Christie totaled only 12%. By comparison, the Drudge Wing of the party represents less than 20% of the Republican Party in other polls. So Drudge's audience is the inverse of reality.

Third, Rick Santorum is toast. The Republicans have an annoying tradition of handing the nomination to the second place runner in the prior primary season, but clearly that won’t be happening here. Santorum ran second last time, but can’t even get half of Trump’s score and doesn’t even score within the margin of error. In fact, Drudge’s audience is overwhelming made up of the people who voted for Santorum in the 2012 primary and yet they are showing him no love now.

Fourth, Rick Perry’s efforts are not paying off at this time. For many months now, Perry has been doing his best to court conservatives. Yet, he can’t even muster 5% among the very people who would form his base.

Fifth, the bloom is fading on the Cruz rose. I’ve actually seen this coming for a while now. Cruz lost support when he pushed the shutdown and then admitted he had no plan to turn that into a victory. That was when non-fringe conservatives started to abandon him. When they turned on him, he started getting ugly press. Then he made the mistake of hypocritically disavowing the shutdown, of launching random criticism, of engaging in an obsessive war against Mitch McConnell and of flip flopping on John Cornyn. All of this has actually caused some supporters of his that I know to call him “a nut job.” His loss of strength is reflected in this poll as well as he’s down to 29% support among an audience that should be his base. Six months ago, he was closer to 40% support.

Sixth, the slight preference for Bush over Christie is interesting. This fits something I’m sensing, but don’t have real evidence for yet. Right now, Christie seems to be the establishment candidate, and by extension, the nominee. But Bush’s name keeps popping up as a better choice for the establishment as a means of maximizing conservative support without choosing a conservative candidate. If I had to put money on it right now, I would bet that our ticket will be Jeb Bush for President and Rand Paul for Vice President... and I will become a terrorist. I guess we’ll see.

Thoughts?

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Misreading The War On Women

Last week, I pointed out that the fringe gets a really distorted view of reality from their leaders. To give you a sense of how distorted, let's take apart an article published at the Daily Caller about the “War on Women.”

According to the article, Pelosi and Reid are planning to use the “War on Women” playbook for the 2014 election. The author, however, dismisses this as “overplayed propaganda” and she asserts that it won’t work because the Democrats are “missing the big picture.” Hence, she boldly declares, “As a Republican woman, I say bring it on.”

Oh boy.

While it will certainly play well with the fringe, the assertion that the “War on Women” attack is “overplayed propaganda” is ridiculous. In 2012, the Democrats won a stunning statistical victory among women. They won single women by 40%. That's not 40-39, that’s a 40 percentage point difference. In other words, seven of every ten of these women voted for the Democrats. That means their “War on Women” strategy was amazingly effective, and dismissing it as “overplayed propaganda” is wishful thinking. Instead, we need to find a way to defuse it.

The author argues that this has already happened, but her argument is seriously flawed. According to her, women will now reject the “War on Women” meme because of Obamacare. See, a recent poll showed that 60% of women oppose the disastrous law. Ergo, argues the author, they will shun the propaganda of the “War on Women” playbook and will turn out to help us thump them Democrats good.

Yikes. There is so much wrong with this assertion.

First, there is no indication in that poll or any other poll that opposition to Obamacare translates into voting out the Democrats. And what the author ignores is that outside of a tiny minority, people make up their minds how to vote based on general affinity with a political party rather than the basis of single issues. So opposition to Obamacare is just one fact to weigh against things like the “War on Women,” it is not a trump that will overpower all other issues. In fact, if it were such a trump, then we would see it in the generic polls, but we don't. To the contrary, the Democrats lead the Republicans 41% to 37% in the generic polls. This would not be true if her assertion were valid.

But wait, she adds, a study by some group found that supporting Obamacare cost incumbent Democrats 5.8% at the polls in 2010. Add that to the fact that sitting Presidents lose seats in midterm elections and “[the] Republicans are once again on solid ground.”

//sigh

Ok, let’s unwind this. First, this would again show up in the generic polls, but it doesn't. Secondly, this effect was not repeated in 2012, and there's no reason to believe that this issue would vanish in 2012 only to return in 2014. Public anger doesn't work that way. It sparks, then it dies. It doesn't come and go. More importantly, she misunderstands the dynamic of the last couple elections. Obama had MASSIVE coattails in 2008 when he won and his party way over-performed what one would expect from a normal election. The result was that the Democrats won many seats they would not normally have won. Thus, 2010 represented a normalization in many ways as the Republicans won those seats back. By comparison, in 2012, Obama had no coattails and did not over-perform. If anything, he underperformed for a winner. That suggests there aren’t any overextended Democratic seats to be lost in 2014.

And keep in mind that even in 2010 (and in 2012), the Republicans failed miserably in Senate races, i.e. races that didn't involve gerrymandered constituencies.

Further, the 2010 victory was spurred by low Democratic turnout and exceedingly high Republican turn out. Turn out should in theory favor the Republicans in 2014, except that these days the fringe pride themselves on not voting. And if they didn't turn out in 2012 when the election of Republicans could have stopped the law ever being implemented, there's no reason to think they'll turn out in 2014 when there's no chance of influencing the law and after years of smears by the fringe against the Republicans.

Finally, the author tries to bolster her argument by claiming that Democratic lies about Obamacare also will bring out these women: “If the implications of the healthcare law weren’t enough to turn away women voters, the lies Democrats have told them should.” Yeah, right. Except, this is all already calculated into the opposition to Obamacare, and all these lies were well known in 2012 and didn't swing women to the GOP.

All right. So what's the point? The point is that these are the kinds of articles that flood The Daily Caller and Breitbart and other fringe sites. Articles like this provide false confidence and keep the right from asking the basic questions they should be asking: why did women abandon us in record numbers, what about the “War on Women” proved so effective, and how do we win women back? The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have a problem. This article and the hundreds of others like it and the parrot effect of talk radio keep the far right from realizing that.

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The Fringe Is Routed

This comes from many months of careful observation, hence it's long. But it's worth reading. While talk radio hosts continue to talk up their heroic Ted Cruz and his secret army of reel ‘merikans who are only minutes away from sweeping away the hateful GOP, the truth is that the fringe has lost and is in full collapse. Here is what you won’t hear from talk radio.

● Embracing The Enemy. In 2010, the Tea Party caught people off guard by unseating a handful of Republican moderates who had been in their seats for a very long time. At first, this was a good thing. But then the Tea Party morphed into crazytown and their primary goal (only goal actually) became making war against the GOP. (Michelle Malkin has actually admitted that "[t]his to me is much more fascinating than the usual left-right battles.")

The GOP, most of whom sit in safe seats, suddenly realized that the new danger didn’t come from the Democrats to their left, it came from a challenge to their right. Thus, the GOP embraced the Tea Party to protect themselves from challengers. And for the next three years, the GOP kowtowed to these people.

Unfortunately, trying to appease the insane never works and the GOP discovered that nothing they did was ever enough. No matter what the GOP did, the fringe continued to hate them and to try to destroy them. Moreover, the more entangled they become with the fringe, the further away they drove the public. As a result, the GOP has been flirting with permanent minority status.

● The First Victory. After November 2012, things changed. The GOP decided that they needed to move away from the fringe and they began the process. They developed a strategy for dealing with fringe candidates, tested it, and are now applying it. At the same time, they started introducing an agenda to turn them back into a responsible party again. The results have been dramatic, even if they are largely behind the scenes.

The strategy they employed started with this. When Liz Cheney decided to attack Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi, the fringe jumped onboard as usual. This was one of about a dozen attempts to "primary" sitting Republicans. At the time, groups like Tea Party Express and Freedom Works declared that Cheney would sweep to victory, as would a dozen others, and they would finally unseat the RINO leadership.

But this time, the GOP fought back. First, they gave a massive number of endorsements to Enzi and they made it clear that they would not simply stand on the sidelines. They also ridiculed the Senate Conservatives Fund (Cruz’s group) as being in the business of replacing Republicans with Democrats, which is essentially all Cruz has accomplished. The results were strong and immediate. Cheney’s candidacy collapsed and she withdrew for “family health” reasons.

Within days of her withdrawal, the fringe did what they always do: they disowned her. Indeed, a number of people who had been praising her as a reel ‘merikan only days before suddenly dismissed her as an establishment carpetbagger. Cult-like groups always work this way because they cannot afford failure. More was coming...

● The Turning Point. As Wyoming played out, Ted Cruz decided to make a power play in Washington. He saw an opportunity to embarrass the GOP leadership by demanding a shutdown. He figured that the GOP leadership would never act so irresponsibly, so he was safe making the demand because he knew they would never give him what he wanted. Essentially, he had a free pass to thump his chest and claim to be the only courageous Republican. He also used the opportunity to spread the idea that the public was secretly with him and that they would rally to a shutdown, which would expose the GOP leadership as out of touch. Again, he could make this claim because he knew it would never be tested. He even got the House GOP backbench to support him in an effort to make Boehner look like a fool.

It was a fantastic bluff. Not only did it allow him to define himself as better than everyone else in the GOP, i.e. as the only genuine conservative in a nest of RINOs, but it let him offer the Kool-Aid of the “secret majority” to his fringe audience all without any fear that his claim would ever be exposed. The fringe, naturally, jumped on this like retards humping a doorknob and they all parroted how cowardly the leadership was and how Cruz must be made the new leader.

Then it went wrong. Boehner shrewdly gave Cruz what he wanted and the government shut down. This became the real turning point. See, it turns out the public did not support Cruz and the fringe. To the contrary, around 90% blamed the GOP for shutting down the government and felt they had acted irresponsibly. Moreover, the deal that was needed to end the shutdown wiped out sequestration. Cruz had, as usual, set the cause of conservatism back.

More importantly, however, while this was going on, Cruz’s behavior exposed him. When the shutdown first happened, Cruz actually refused to say whether or not he supported what had been his own idea. He was waiting to see how it played. And when it went sour fast, he denied that this had been his idea at all. Even four months later, he continued to deny this. Said Cruz on Face the Nation:

“I didn't threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don't think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted to fund the federal government.”

Of course, evidence to the contrary abounds all over the net.

What this did was expose Cruz. Intelligent conservatives would now see that he was a liar who used them for personal gain, and they talked about how shocked they were when he admitted that he had no exit strategy for the shutdown, i.e. no purpose in doing it. Conservatives like Kelly Ayotte apparently met him with quite a fury. And when Cruz tired again recently to cause a shutdown and then forced the GOP to vote for the budget to overcome his filibuster, he found no supporters. The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page even called Cruz, “the Minority Maker” and chastised him for making the GOP “walk the plank on a meaningless debt ceiling vote.” Outside of the deep fringe, the love and blind faith is gone.

● Open Season. Immediately after the collapse of the shutdown, Boehner verbally attacked the fringe by calling groups like The Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks “ridiculous” and claiming they had “lost all credibility.” Blogs like Hot Air quickly mocked this as a tantrum and called him whiny, but they missed the point. Boehner’s message wasn’t intended to win the fringe, it was intended to tell the rest of the GOP that it was open season on the fringe. And open season it became.

Since Boehner’s comments, there have been a steady stream of attacks on the fringe from people like Tom Coburn, Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin. The GOP changed its election rules to make it harder for small candidates to win primaries and to force everything to wrap up quicker, i.e. to make another Santorum unlikely. The GOP also fired companies who had worked with Cruz’s anti-Republican PAC. Iowa’s governor is doing his best to make the Iowa GOP mainstream by driving out the fringe. Mike Huckabee essentially likened the fringe to the Nazis, which brought howls of anger from various blogs. John McCain, who had planned to retire, now will likely run for a new term because fringers in Arizona censured him for “associating with liberal Democrats” and he plans to spite them. Everywhere, the establishment is fighting back and more and more conservatives are switching sides to join the establishment against the fringe.

● Routed: The Battle of Kentucky. With things going poorly for the fringe as recognized conservatives started deserting the cult and speaking against them, the fringe needed a big victory. They chose to attack a man they saw as a soft target: Mitch McConnell. McConnell is a fairly reliable conservative, though a practical one, and he and Boehner have become the fringe’s boogeymen, an odd package of spineless dupes and evil RINO geniuses who are simultaneously incompetent yet manage to dominate and frustrate 60 million conservatives. They saw McConnell as the perfect target because unseating him would be a huge show of their power and they believed he was vulnerable to a primary challenge. So they decided to support his Tea Party sponsored opponent: Matt Bevins.

In fact, “support” is an understatement. Like Hitler at Stalingrad, they are pouring everything they have into this fight. Everyone from groups like the Club for Growth to Sarah Palin have sent money and endorsements to Bevins. Every single fringe group you can think of is involved in this effort. Talk radio has repeatedly and unanimously pimped for Bevins and torn down McConnell. The idea was this: if the fringe can win this one huge victory, then it can wash away all the defeats it has suffered in primaries, special elections and with all their candidates going down in flames to the Democrats in 2012. More importantly, they can regain their ability to rule the GOP by fear. That was the plan.

But the new GOP tactics have proved extremely effective. Bevins was close until the GOP started attacking the fringe as crazy, as having no end game to their strategies, and as aiding the Democrats. And after the Cruz shutdown debacle, things started to go wrong. The latest poll has McConnell beating Bevins by 42 points.

This is an epic disaster for them. Indeed, the fringe has completely lost its influence, and they know it. What is most telling has been the change in rhetoric. After promising, a month or so ago, to unseat two dozen Republicans in the primaries, the same groups now are saying that they didn’t expect to win any of those contests, but it was enough to raise awareness of the issues. That’s loser speak. At the same time, the fringe starting whining about how unfair the GOP has been treating them. Even Cruz whined about this, stating that the GOP was “carpet-bombing” Tea Party candidates and that they should focus on the big bad Democrats. This is how people talk when they know it’s all over... and note the hypocrisy.

At this point, Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks is still promising to unseat 28 GOP incumbents blah blah blah, including Eric Cantor and John Boehner, but no one is taking that seriously. In fact, the GOP is so confident that they’ve gone from the defensive to the offensive. First, the Chamber of Commerce came out and supported any GOP candidates who would oppose Tea Party candidates. Now former Rep. Steven LaTourette has founded a new PAC whose goal is to “beat the snot out of Tea Party Congressional candidates.”

All of this smells of a route.

● Where Things Stand. So where do things stand? The fringe is still speaking of their glorious victories to come, but from the sound of things, there will be no more Tea Party victories in primaries. A good number of Tea Party congressmen may also lose their seats. The GOP is slowly working on an agenda that will align it with the public and the actual GOP base again – not the fringe. For example, with polls consistently showing that even 60% of the GOP base wants immigration reform, its interesting to note that every single GOP candidate for President has endorsed the idea even as the fringe views this as heresy.

Meanwhile, a number of prominent conservatives started talking about an agenda – an agenda that goes against everything the fringe stands for. The article about Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin the other day is just the latest example. Even people like Rand Paul, who the fringe assumes are with them, have distanced themselves. In fact, in a very telling comment the other day, Rand Paul said this:

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party. . . and it has to be a transformation, not a little tweaking at the edges.

So we need to become hard core “conservative,” right? Well, no. Here’s what he said next:

“Republicans haven’t gone to African-Americans or to Hispanics and said, ‘You know what? The war on drugs, Big Government, has had a racial outcome. It’s disproportionately affected the poor and the black and brown among us. There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party. It’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”

That is the complete opposite of what talk radio preaches about needing to become a smaller, nastier, more pure party.

The fringe is bleeding support too. Indeed, there was an interesting poll the other day, whose import was missed. The poll asked Republicans who they would support for 2016. Despite the fact that Ted Cruz was the only reel ‘merikan on the list, he scored a pathetic 12%. The other 88% were spread around various people who have all been accused of RINOcy. This means that the fringe is down from a high of around 20% of the Republican party to 12% tops. That’s a loss of 40% in six months and makes them about the size of Ron Paul’s support in the past.

Interestingly, I’m seeing evidence too that many of the fringe are giving up on the GOP and going back to whence they came in third parties.

Does this mean Cruz is finished? Hardly. The fringe only listens to talk radio and talk radio won’t tell them any of the things above because that would harm their ratings. To the contrary, if you listen to Rush or Levin or the rest, or you read HotAir or Breitbart, you will hear a steady stream of how Cruz and his army of reel ‘merikans are about to win victory after victory over Boehner and McConnell, who will soon be replaced. And then they will explain away the divergence from reality with tales or RINO traitors and magic. Because of this, Cruz, the phony-outsider, will get to continue to milk the fringe for money and he can continue his war against the GOP... but his influence is over. Things are changing a lot.

Thoughts?

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Why Leftist Talk Radio Is Doomed

There was an interesting article last weekend at Politico about Leftist Talk Radio. They were lamenting the fact that the right has monopolized talk radio and they put together a plan for the left to get back into the game. It’s a silly plan but it’s worth discussing because it shows how delusional they are. The plan came in five parts, most of which were fantasy or denial. Let’s examine each.

(1) We Need A Sugar Daddy: "You got money, Mr. Billionaire? Me make radio long time." Apparently, they want a billionaire like the Evil Koch Brothers™ to fund Leftist Talk Radio no matter how much money they lose. Normally, I would say that’s a silly plan but that seems to be how the left works: it’s essentially owned and operated by billionaires... like Haim Saban (Hillary Clinton’s sugar daddy), Warren Buffett (Barack Obama’s sugar daddy), George Soros (Sugar Daddy of the Progressive Movement), Carlos Slim (the New York Times’s sugar daddy), etc.

The problem with praying for a sugar daddy, however, is that money isn’t the problem: lack of popularity is the problem. In fact, this billionaire idea is pure denial. This is leftists thinking that somehow they’ve been kept from reaching the public by “right wing radio station owners.” Hardly. Leftists have had dozens of chances to get radio programs, television programs, and even whole networks (MSNBC) and channels (NPR)... and the public ain’t buying it.

(2) Somebody Famous Save Me: Leftist Talk Radio needs a star! LOL! Uh, yeah. But they need to make a great video first before they can get Eddie Van Halen. This is what is called a paradox and it’s amazing they would toss this out there as a solution. If Leftist Talk Radio needs a star, they’re going to need to earn it, and that means coming up with a formula that pulls in listeners first.

(3) Who Needs Radio: Sour grapes time. Did you know that radio is dying? Maybe getting on the radio isn’t worth it after all? You know what Leftist Talk Radio should do? They should do something different that reaches more people in a better way... use technology to do what no one else has done and win the day. Woo hoo!

Yeah. Good luck. First of all, that's just platitudes - there's no substance here. Secondly, this is what podcasting was supposed to be and internet radio and youtube and all those things that turned out to be so obscure that only a handful of people pay any attention to them. Like it or not, the public gets their news through (1) television, (2) radio, and (3) a handful of internet portals. That’s it, folks. The further you get from those, the more you disappear into the mist.

(4) Market Timing: Elections are always good for talk radio, so maybe with an election coming up, now would be a good time to do something! Yep, only, the “something” is the problem.

(5) Don’t Shill For The Democrats: Finally, let’s talk substance, because this is where the answer lies. Of course, they struggle getting there. Their main point is that they need to stop being shills for the Democrats.

Oh boy. First, let me point out that the fringe left, which is where their talkers come from, are not shills for Democrats. Sure, they pimp for people like Obama and Pelosi, but that’s because they view those Democrats as fellow travelers. As anyone who ventures to leftist sites can tell you, when they don’t think a Democrat is far left enough, they have no problem tearing them apart. And if they don’t like the Democrat, they will stay home or vote freak, just like the fringe right. So let’s not pretend that Leftist Talk Radio was destroyed because it was too loyal.

The problem has been winning over an audience. For some reason, which I’m about to explain, Leftist Talk Radio has not been able to win an audience. The Politico article attributes this to leftists being too “professional” and not entertaining enough, but that’s a crock. There is nothing professional about the left. They have copied the exact formula all the right-wing guys use... seething anger, style over substance, pick your facts carefully, make grandiose pronouncements about the end of the America, etc. They are clones. It just hasn’t worked on the left. Why not?

Well, having given this some thought, the problem is that the fringe left isn’t built the same way as the fringe right. The fringe right follows one ideological goal, whether they want to believe this or not: NO! They are opposed to everything. That makes them a very easy audience to grab, because they all have the same interest, and it makes them easy to sell... you just have to hate everything unless the public hates it, then you embrace it. Simple.

The fringe left isn’t built that way. The fringe left consists of a half-dozen small groups, each of whom cares ONLY about their issue. How do you attract an audience when your potential audience wants to hear only environmentalism or feminism or race baiting or socialism or gay issues or anti-corporate rants or anti-military rants or anti-religious rants... and not a word about the rest. That’s the real problem on the left. The Democrats have overcome that because they can pet each group and tell them "You're my favorite." But talk radio can't do that. And that is why I think Leftist Talk Radio is doomed, because there is no common interest that unites the left. That means there's no solution that will let any one talker get a large audience.

Interesting problem.

Thoughts?

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Let's Move On

Our fringe has become a problem. They offer nothing but ignorance, hypocrisy, and unfocused hate, which they aim at the Republicans. They are disloyal and destructive, and I have been trying to stop talking about them because it’s pointless to engage them and dangerous to humor them. And, frankly, I’m sick of them. But something happened Sunday needs to be called out. Then it’s time to move on.

Our fringe is a problem. They are 6% of the American public (twice as large as gays, half as large as Hispanics or blacks, just smaller than Jews and Muslims) who act like a doomsday cult and the other 84% of the public pretty much despises them. What’s more, they have become obsessed with destroying the Republicans and every conservative who doesn’t foam at the mouth like they do.

Fortunately, everything I’ve seen tells me that they have peaked at something less than 20% of the GOP, and their influence is waning because their own disloyalty makes them unreliable. And I’m seeing a lot of signs that the Republicans are moving on from them, including a lot of big name conservatives like Tom Coburn, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, etc. There are even signs that Rand Paul is avoiding them. The writing is on the wall.

What will probably finish them off is the re-election of Mitch McConnell. For many years, the fringe dictated Republican policy, even as they falsely whined that the Republicans were under the control of secret RINOs. Lately, the Republicans have started fighting back and they seem to have found a formula to defend themselves against the fringe: full and open support of the people the fringe attacks. This is bad news for the fringe. So they, led by Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, have chosen Mitch McConnell as a demonstration of their power. If they can unseat McConnell in the primary, then they believe they can cow the Republicans back into line. But in taking this risk, they are exposing their weakness to the Republicans. If they lose, then their influence will be destroyed within the Party.

My money is on McConnell.

In any event, I am done with them. It’s not productive to whine and scream about traitors and doomsday. It’s pointless to discuss a quasi-ideology that is irrational and can’t even define itself except as requiring the outing of the disloyal. It is dishonest to make up facts, to invent secret truths, and to try to trick people into following you. So from now on, I have no intention of talking about these shits anymore because they are simply not relevant to America’s future.

Instead, I’m going to talk about conservatism, something people like Levin, Savage, Rush, Beck, Hannity, Bachmann, Cruz, and the rest know precious little about. I’m going to start Wednesday by talking about the agenda I wrote about and we’ll see where that takes us. It’s time to talk about America.

But first, there was something that happened this Sunday that needs to be called out. The fringer in question is a local radio host named Jimmy Lakey. Lakey is another Levin/Beck/Limbaugh. He banks on his audience being low-information listeners who simply lap up the lies he spews as he tells them they are superior Americans while he warns them that they can’t verify the things he tells them because some mystery conspiracy won’t let this information out... except to him. Here’s what he did Sunday.

As I was preparing to watch football, I suddenly got a call from a relative. They were deeply worried about “what was happening in DC” and they told me to turn on Lakey. So I did. Here is what Lakey said:

1. There are over a million veterans in DC right now.
2. They are trying to protest something (unexplained) which is bad for Obama.
3. Obama fears them and said something (unexplained).
4. This caused them to start toward the White House to voice their objections.
5. The evil tyrant Obama (with the full support of Boehner... naturally) “called out the riot police.”
6. There are "riot police surrounding the White House right now!"
7. There are reports they’ve fired tear gas into the crowd.
8. But don’t expect to find this on the news because the MSM won’t tell you about this. “Only a couple images have leaked out onto the net.”
9. Then he finished with a gratuitous attack on the Republicans for “being identical to the Democrats blah blah blah” and not supporting the veterans.

Glenn Beck then put this on his website (complete with video) and Drudge linked to it too.

None of this is true.

Based on the photos, there were only a couple thousand people tops... maybe less than 2,000. See below.

What they wanted is not clear and Lakey sure as hell didn’t know. But one thing is clear: the White House does not call out riot police. They don’t have any. What happened is that a group of about eight to ten DC police or Park Police (it's not clear which) came to the fence near the White House to talk to a group demonstrators. They were surrounded by more journalists than protestors. They spoke briefly with the leader of the rowdies and then left.

As anyone who has lived in DC can tell you, this is for show. This is what they always do when protest groups come to town... and Glenn Beck knows it! There are segments of these groups who like to get arrested for fundraising purposes, and the DC police come out and negotiate that so no one gets hurt. It's all for show and only those who want to get arrested. Then everyone goes home. These cops left after less than two minutes. No one fired tear gas... no one even had tear gas. Watch the video and you'll see that the cops didn't even raise their voices.

Lakey's presentation is a lie. It is the same type of lie all these guys keep inventing. They make things up to sell you the idea that they are “genuine” and everyone else is a traitor. They make things up to scare you. They play on your ignorance of the law, of the constitution, of how the government works and of world events to sell you a doomsday version of the world to outrage you. Then they feed you this line of shit that they are the only ones who can tell you the truth because everyone else is trying to suppress the truth. It is despicable.

There is no Republican plot to shutdown Levin as he argues. There is no secret informant telling Beck that the Republicans are plotting against Beck or Freedom Works as he and they claim. The media does not control the net. The media does not control Fox News. The Republicans are not in league with the Democrats. And the fringe has done more damage to the Republican brand with the public in the last few years than decades of Democratic attacks. Seriously, stop believing a word that you hear from these people.

That’s my final word on the matter. Talk radio is dead to me. It’s time to move on to something constructive. It’s time to talk about conservatism. It’s time to take an optimistic look forward, as Reagan did, and ask ourselves how we make America better and help her live up to her potential.

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Ted Cruz's Demise Part Deux

So he is a RINO traitor after all! LOL! Grab some popcorn and enjoy this interesting twisty little story of the slow-motion demise of Ted Cruz.

On Sunday, Chris Wallace of FOX mentioned that the Republicans are upset at Ted Cruz. Specifically, he told Karl Rove that as soon as he announced that Ted Cruz would be a guest on his show this week, he received unsolicited “opposition research” against Cruz from certain un-named Republicans.

Naturally, the immediate assumption was that it had to be the evil RINO Republican Leadership who can’t stand a gen-you-ine conservative finally fighting back after the Republicans caved in to Obama on everything he ever wanted!!!! Indeed, the Daily Caller guessed that this must be the result of anger at Cruz “because Cruz and fellow Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee decided to devise a strategy to defund Obamacare without consulting Republican leadership.” And clearly, those RINO leaders don’t like the gen-you-ine Ted Cruz exposing their cozy relationship with Obama, right? Sarah Boo Boo Palin even demanded that Wallace disclose his sources so we can rid ourselves of their evil.

As an aside, Glenn Beck is calling for the “impeachment” of Boehner, McConnell, McCain and Lindsay Graham... oh, and Obama. Maybe we can add this to the list of charges?

Well, not so fast.

See, it turns out that the anger at Cruz isn’t coming from the Republican Leadership, aka the fringe right’s greatest boogeyman. No, it’s coming from, well, the fringe right.

Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy said Friday that the conservative House Republicans are angry and frustrated with Ted Cruz who has “abused” House conservatives. Apparently, he dun whipped them into a fightin' mood... made them go full retard... and then he refused “to get in the ring” when the time came.

Duffy notes that House conservatives were furious at Cruz all summer “as we were the punching bag and bullied by some of these Senate conservatives” with ads and fundraisers accusing the House of failing to defund Obamacare. This hurt them with their own followers who began to doubt their qualifications as fringers conservatives. Then, when they returned from the summer break and voted to defund Obamacare...

“[Cruz] sent out a press release while we were on the floor voting saying that, ‘Ah, we can’t really hold the Senate, we’re not going to filibuster, we’re not going to fight, and the House has to hold.’”

Hm. And how did that sit with House conservatives? Said Duffy:

“I have to tell you what, you should have been on the floor or back in the cloak room. There was so much anger and frustration because, again, we’ve been abused by these guys for so long.”

Tisk tisk, Sen. RINOCruz! Duffy thinks it’s time to “call them out” on their “hypocrisy” as “these big tough conservatives who know how to fight but will never get in the ring.”

I’m not surprised. From what I’ve seen, Cruz is an insider trying to trick the fringe into supporting him. He talks tough and attacks all the fringe’s enemies: the Apostate Rubio, Boehner, McCain, Graham, McConnell, the generic “establishment,” Mexicans, and sometimes Obama, and he panders to the fringe verbally (though he always throws in caveats the fringe overlooks). What he doesn’t do, however, is ever follow up his words with deeds.

That strategy worked for Obama – pander to the morons but don’t do anything that can be traced back to you specifically, and then run as a moderate in the general election. But it won’t work here. The fringe right is much more cannibalistic than the fringe left ever was and if you don’t lead every suicide charge, they will denounce you as a traitor. And that is what is happening now.

In fact, it looks to me like Cruz is in trouble. First, he gets accused of starting the “defund Obamacare” pointlessness to distract people so the RINO leadership can sneak through AMNESTY Ahhhhhh!! They’re under my bed! Now he’s being attacked openly for never going full retard with the rest. And more ominously, someone (probably a gen-you-ine conservative) is passing out “opposition research” against him.

Unfortunately for Cruz, I don’t think there’s a way to turn this around. The conservative fringe and the public are polar opposites and you can’t win a general election by being seen as pandering to the conservatives fringe. But Cruz has embraced them too closely to escape the association as all the other Republican presidential candidates have. So Cruz may soon find himself a man without support.

It will be interesting to see what his next couple moves will be.

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