Explosive Allegations in Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case

Part II coming on a little later this morning, with Megyn Kelly:

See also, "Former Justice Department Lawyer Accuses Holder of Dropping New Black Panther Case for Racial Reasons."

Also, at Pajamas Media, "PJM Exclusive: Unequal Law Enforcement Reigns at Obama’s DOJ."

A New Generation Must Stand for Truth ...

A couple of weeks back, Rob at Say Anything suggested the potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitch Daniels' call for a "truce" on social issues was a "breath of fresh air."

I can understand the sentiment, but I'm certain that the other side won't observe a truce. The radical left's degradation and decay has made long inroads in society. There's never a breather in the battle for right and goodness. And in thinking about this I'm reminded of the most powerful political ad from campaign '08, and perhaps of all time. "Life, faith, and family ... now more than any other time in history ... a new generation must stand for truth ...

Scott Brown's Daughters

I think last night really demonstrated the immediacy and power of Twitter. When Scott Brown announced that his daughters were "available," Kathleen McKinley sent this tweet in real time:

I saw a few more tweets from women bloggers who were similarly shocked. It wasn't the high point of Brown's speech, but he's easily forgiven considering the emotional high of the moment.

It turns out that Glenn Beck's not cutting Brown any slack:

I wish Beck would have laid off this bit, especially since he's ostensibly on Brown's side, but what can you do.? The show must go on. Dan Riehl has more:

Oh, I know. It's just comedy. But it won't be in two years when liberals supporting Brown's opponent troll it up to initiate a discussion around Scott Brown's victory speech - without the context of the whole thing. Nah, they'll just be citing a former CPAC speaker to engage in smear tactics against Brown because Beck is being given political credibility by the Right.

Most won't appreciate that, now. But Beck's radio show which, truthfully, relatively few people listen to compared to the other national hosts, will provide the Left with a treasure trove of remarks taken out of context to hurt the Right at the polls. But, why should Beck care? He's getting paid for it, after all.

Pennsylvania Conservative Council in 2010

My good friend Skye (pictured), who blogs at Midnight Blue Says, commented at my Facebook page yesterday, saying her PACC meeting was "inspirational." Skye's talking about the Pennsylvania Conservative Council, a citizens' activist group located in West Chester, PA . The website is here. As Skye wrote a year ago upon founding the group:

After months of planning, We have crafted a mission statement, composed our by-laws, elected a steering committee and put together the framwork that is PACC. We have focused our activities towards letter writing campaigns, seating Republican committee members and running for elected office. No small task, indeed, with guidance from the local GOP and a state legislator we have made significant inroads towards our stated goals. Together we can build a better Republican party.

Skye and PACC did fabulous work in last November's election, campaigning and organizing for conservative candidates in the West Chester Area School Board elections. Sky's got a couple of posts on their success electing their slate. See, "We Did It - CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEW MEMBERS OF THE WEST CHESTER AREA SCHOOL BOARD!," and "WCASB Race in Detail."

Skye's also been busy completing some of her studies. She just earned her professional certificate in infection control. And on top of that, she's been super involved with photography and charity work.

As a professor of political science, and a tea party patriot, I'm really inspired by Skye's commitment to conservative values and her work putting them into action. I look forward to learning more about PACC and Pennsylvania's grassroots conservatives in 2010.

FreshJive Calls Out Obama: 'A Devastating Take on the Iconic Obama Poster'

Mediaite's got the story, "'Hope Is Fading Fast': A Devastating Take on The Iconic Obama Poster." But Rachel Sklar, the author, gives FreshJive short shrift (via Memeorandum):

This shirt will probably cause a more conflicted reaction as Democrats debate whether it’s fair or unfair, and Republicans will probably love it. What makes this image significant, of course, is that it comes from the left ...

Well, yeah, sort of.

Actually, those on the right have seen way more clever posters, signs, and t-shirts all year -- at the tea parties and town halls. This one's cute, but not so orginal as to knock anybody's socks off.

It is important on the left, but also inaccurate. The reaction on the hard left is not conflicted. Radical blogs like Firedoglake have been hammering the "corporate" Democrats for some time now. (Frankly, Jane Hamsher's a commie tin-pot dictator-in-waiting.) And Josh Marshall's pissed that the party can't overcome GOP parliamentary procedures slowing down the ObamaCare monstrosity. Folks like this want radical change, "structual change," in response to the perceived "political polarization" that's causing a breakdown of "informal rules." Ezra Klein's also called for an end to the filibuster, and Scottie Lemieux also repudiates long-standing congressional rules protecting minority rights in favor of giving Dems power to ram down their unpopular policies -- and thus implement tyranny of the majority (isn't that just what radical leftists really want?).

What's good about this is that, yeah, for all of his own radical proposals, on some issues President Obama is trying to hold onto the political center (look at his Afghanistan decision to back McChrystal's troop surge), lest his "fading hope" turns out to be a political avalanche of dissatisfaction among moderates. So, as the radicals pull Obama leftward, back over to his own communist ideological inclinations, we'll seen even more of a rightward acceleration among independent moderates, who're already bailing on "hopenchange," as they say screw that with socialist extemism.

In short, the Democratic-left is fubar. Everyone's tired of Obama's s***.

Mission Accomplished: Racial Guilt Healed, Now Let's Put Conservative Back in Charge

From Gary Andres, at the Weekly Standard, "Mission Accomplished: Why Democrats Lost Ground in 2009":

Pundits and analysts are scratching their heads to explain Democratic defeats in Virginia and New Jersey last week, particularly examining what caused massive shifts toward the GOP among independent voters in those two states.

Explanations include brilliant Republican campaigns, bumbling Democratic efforts, tea-party conservatives surging, or dispirited liberals just staying home. Some even argue the issue matrix flipped again--last year voters wanted more government intervention; now suddenly they want less.

All of these explanations are plausible. And some even include a few kernels of truth. But there's one you may not have heard. Call it the "mission accomplished" thesis. It goes like this:

Barack Obama's victory was more about a cause than a campaign. It transcended issues such as health care reform, climate change, or embracing a new progressive agenda. It was in part about repudiating eight years of George W. Bush, especially his efforts in Iraq. But it was also about achieving a moral imperative--helping elect the first African-American president who promised to change the language of politics in this country ....

And then Obama won--a victory these voters savored.

Yet his 2008 win also contained another conclusion: Mission Accomplished. They could move on.

More at the link.

Andres mentions this theme as the central metaphor in HBO's documentary, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.

McCain Continues to Prove Himself the Enemy of the Grassroots

My latest essay at Pajamas Media is up today, "McCain Continues to Prove Himself the Enemy of the Grassroots":

The timing was impeccable. On the day after HarperCollins released the cover photo for Going Rogue — Sarah Palin’s highly anticipated autobiography — Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s former chief campaign advisor, predicted that if Palin were to win the 2012 GOP nomination, “we would have a catastrophic election result.” It was Schmidt, a veteran Republican strategist, who first advised Senator McCain to select Palin as his running mate in 2008. And it was Schmidt who first criticized Governor Palin within the McCain camp as “going rogue.” Asked how Palin’s book might describe their relationship during the election, Schmidt suggested that perhaps he was the “anti-rogue in the running of the campaign.”

Schmidt’s comments provide a nice backdrop to a recent report at Politico (”McCain’s Mission: A GOP Makeover.”) It turns out that the Arizona senator has been positioning himself as a major power broker within the Republican Party hierarchy. He is identified in the article as the party’s titular head; and the erstwhile presidential nominee has been raising money for moderate GOP candidates and hitting the campaign trail for pragmatic allies. As noted in the article:

“I think he’s endorsed people with center-right politics because he has an understanding that the party is in trouble with certain demographics and wants to have a tone that would allow us to grow,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is McCain’s closest friend and ally in the Senate.

“At a time when our party is struggling and has a lot of shrill voices and aggressive voices, he’s one that can expand our party,” said John Weaver, a longtime McCain friend and strategist.

This meme of McCain’s reemergence as the GOP’s elder statesman and centrist savior is not likely to go down well among grassroots conservatives.

Read the whole thing at the link.

Mark Levin on Glenn Beck: 'Mindless', 'Incoherent' (AUDIO)

Not the most attactive YouTube, but it's worth a listen. Mark Levin's actually combining his own attack on John McCain with a condemnation of Glenn Beck's endorsement of "The One" over "The Maverick." Robert Stacy McCain's got a long but interesting analysis, plus more at Memeorandum:

See also, Right Wing Nut House, "IS GLENN BECK 'THE ENEMY'?"

Republicans and the Social Media Revolution

Back in February, interestingly, I thought Meghan McCain had a good point when she argued that "Republicans don't get the Internet."

Not any more.

With Americans witnessing the dramatic impact of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, which along with Fox News has been the main outlet breaking the ACORN prostitution scandal, we're really seeing the power of conservative online politics hitting home. The Washington Times featured an item yesterday describing Breitbart as a "conservative rebel with a cause." And because the leftist press is irked at their comeuppance at the hands of a couple of brilliant young conservatives, they're now sliming James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles like only true dirtbags know how.

That's why I find this piece at the Los Angeles Examiner puzzling, "GOP Fails to Recognize Power of the Internet." The author, Jim Kouri, argues that "Say what you will about the left-wing bloggers and left-leaning Internet web sites, they are a power to be reckoned with, according to a growing number of conservatives." Yet Kouri provides no quotes from conservatives to support the statement.

No matter.

This is something I've been thinking about this last couple of weeks amid the Big Government ACORN rollout. I recall earlier arguments that the party out of power will be most adept at deploying new social media for political action. Daily Kos, once the granddaddy of radical left wing blogs, is now a shadow of its former self. Daily Kos' traffic numbers in 2009 are down substantially. Jon Henke wrote a dramatic post in April comparing Kos' numbers to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air (a difference of 15 million visitors in Hot Air's favor over the March-April timeline). As Henke added then, "I suspect we'll be rediscovering something we had previously learned in the 90's and 00's: the Internet is good for insurgencies and opposition."

This is a good social science topic, by the way. Facebook and Twitter have been driving conservative mobilization all year, and while much of the activism is explicitly non-partisan (protesters are mad at both parties more often than not), events will clearly benefit the GOP when next year's elections roll around. Conservatives not wanting to waste a vote will rally to the Republican banner in the years ahead. And if the GOP doesn't learn the lessons of 2008, when small-government conservatives got pushed aside by the nomination of John McCain, the party may as well sit on the sidelines of power for a couple of more cycles.

An interesting related essay: "The Obama Roadblock: Why He's Sagging Online" (via Memeorandum).

The GOP and the 2010 Midterms

Track-a-'Crat gets the video hat tip, but check out Frank Donatelli, "2010 Will Be a GOP Year":

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the party not in control of the White House has gained seats in every off-year election after a president's first election except for two times (1934 and 2002). Off-year dynamics are different and by the time they roll around many of the themes dominant in the presidential election have faded. Most importantly, new presidents and their administrations almost always overreach. And Barack Obama and his Democratic Party are overreaching in a big way.

A great essay, at the link.

Related: Chris Cillizza, "The Most Important Number in Politics Today." ("45 - That's the percentage of voters who believe that President Obama lacks a 'clear plan for solving this country's problems' in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.")

McCain Was Right on Fiscal Fundmentals!

Via Memeorandum, "On Spending and the Deficit, McCain Was Right":

Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history … Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets."

That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago. And Obama foresees, for years to come, deficits that dwarf those he felt so passionately about way, way back in 2008.

Everywhere you go on Capitol Hill, you hear echoes of the last campaign's spending debate. So on Thursday morning, as the budget fight raged, I asked McCain about the president's seemingly forgotten concern about deficits. McCain doesn't like to rehash the campaign - "The one thing Americans don't like is a sore loser," he told me - but when I read him Obama's quote from the debate, he said, "Well, there are a number of statements that were made by then-candidate Obama which have not translated into his policies."

That's an understatement. The deficit issue could be one of the most, if not the most, consequential of Obama's unkept campaign promises. Just how consequential was made clear last week in a little-noticed conference call featuring Budget Director Peter Orszag. Orszag was trying to explain to reporters how the Obama administration calculated its rather rosy forecasts for economic growth. Near the end of the call, he was asked whether deficits along the lines of those predicted by the Congressional Budget Office are sustainable."

There's more at the link.

Cartoon Hat Tip: Political Pistachio.

House Democrats Pass $819 Billion "Porkulus" Bill

In one of the most amazingly corrupt feats of political gamesmanship ever, the Democratic House majority rammed through an $819 billion economic recovery plan yesterday without a single Republican vote, COMBINED with the defection of 11 Democratic representatives. A bipartisan opposition! Now that's what I'm talking about!

Robert Stacy McCain quips:

Man, if all it took to get Republicans to vote conservative was to elect a Democratic president, this is a change I can believe in.

And don't miss Rush Limbaugh at the Wall Street Journal:

There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

I believe the wrong kind is precisely what President Barack Obama has proposed. I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all - I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party. This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.

Supporting Obama (Grudgingly) is About America Winning

Dan Nexon just about flipped his lid when I wrote my election night (meltdown) post on Barack Obama's eminently dishonest victory on November 4th. Since then I've repeatedly stated that while I couldn't disagree more with Barack Obama and the far-left agenda that he represents (or that'll he'll implement via his cabinet appointees and his extreme left legislative agenda), I will nevertheless support Barack Obama as my president AND in time of emergency I would not hesitate to serve my country while a Democratic administration resides in Washington.

A lot of conservatives aren't going to accept Obama under any circumstances, considering his surreptitious campaign, his history of radical training, ideology, and activism, and the media and popular personality cult that's metastasized around him. Having said all this, I have to agree with Nikki's post on the need to support the Democratic administration come January 20th:

I WANT MY COUNTRY TO SUCCEED, under this administration and any other. Its not about my party being in power or my agenda winning, its about America winning. Strange concept isn't it? Americans winning regardless of who is in power. A President is not like your favorite sports team. You should never cheer for the failure of any sitting President as you have done with this one. I am officially the opposite of a democrat ... objective and fair. I will not rip for the sake of ripping. I will give honest and well-researched opinion even if it means I am a RINO to my cohorts. Few are the courageous who speak without caring what their own colleagues will think and dems are squeamish little pansies when it comes to truth. The opposite of policy will not be mine. My opinions are not written to win friends and influence people. Its what I think ... you can tell me where I am wrong, which I rarely am ... HA! So take it up the shoot like a colonoscopy dems, you are now accountable. I hope you can take the heat, at least my heat will be honest and not out of derangement. MWAH!

I know a lot of my readers cringe at the thought of supporting this administration (and I can think of a few who are "not so courageous"), but Nikki's right: We will support the government of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, even if for all intents and purposes we'll have a facsimile of such at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

God bless this country, now and for eternity.

Obama to Escape Damaging Campaign Finance Audit

The Politico reports a genuinely disturbing story on campaign finance in the aftermath of Barack Obama's deceitful underground fundraising operations that propelled him to the White House.

President-Elect Obama's fundraising practices will not be audited because he chose to go without public financing (a system's designed to take corruption out of politics), while John McCain's campaign is looking to a long period of government auditing (go figure?):

Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.

Especially galling is the fact that existing suspicions of massive financial improprieties are focused on the Obama campaign, not McCain's:

Allegations that the Obama campaign was willfully allowing foreign donations and excessive donations blossomed in the conservative blogosphere and prompted the Republican National Committee to file an FEC complaint.

Seizing on Obama’s reversal on a pledge to accept public financing if his Republican opponent agreed to do the same, as well as his campaign’s refusal to voluntarily release the names, addresses and employers of donors who gave less than $200 each – a group that accounted for about half of the more than $600 million that the campaign had raised through the end of September – the RNC asked the FEC “to immediately conduct a full audit” of all of Obama’s contributions.

It’s very rare for a complaint to trigger an audit, campaign finance insiders say.

I wrote about this in a Pajamas Media essay, "Obama’s Fundraising Fraud," where I concluded, "the Democratic nominee may now be running the biggest underground finance operation since President Nixon deployed the “plumbers” as his key operatives for CREEP in 1972."

No wonder some Democrats are worried about an Obama impeachment!

Out of the Wilderness: Conservative Comeback Awaits

In the weeks leading up to the conclusion of the 2008 campaign, a number of bloggers predicted an Obama victory, and many started planning ahead for the long road to a conservative comeback.

I discounted such talk, for example, in my post, "McCain's Path to the White House."

In that entry, I cited Robert Stacy McCain, "The Other McCain," and his essay, "How John McCain Lost." Robert pegged September 24 - the day John McCain suspended his campaign to return to Washington to work on the Wall Street rescue - as the beginning of the end for the Arizona Senator.

In response, after providing an analysis of the Electoral College projections, I suggested:

The election's still close.

McCain needs to focus his core message now more that ever, hammering his ace cards of experience, accurate instincts on the economy, and unshakable patriotic convictions. That's the Maverick's path to the White House.

I wish my prediction was accurate, although at the time I knew I was really hoping against hope. Nothing seemed to go McCain's way in the last month. Even the presidential debates - in which McCain performed extremely well - we're interpreted as Obama wins, simply for what I thought was Obama showing up, looking moderate and contemplative, and not making any gaffes. Amazingly, we now have news that even the Obama campaign itself understated international threats as a way to tamp down public reservations on his foreign policy inexperience.

That's all under the bridge now: Conservatives of all stripes of will need years to regroup and find their way back for the GOP's return to power.

In an e-mail to me, Robert suggested the McCain camp veered far from bedrock conservative principles, and ignored warnings from the right-wing base while running the GOP ticket into the ground:

That is to say, the idiots running the McCain campaign, who repeatedly rejected sound advice from conservatives, spent the last three weeks of the campaign LYING about their prospects for victory, urging conservatives to believe in a cause they knew to be hopeless. And now those same lying idiots are trying to blame Sarah Palin for their own blunders.

The Reaganauts had a saying, "Personnel is policy." For too long, conservatives have accepted incompetence as a policy because incompetent personnel have escaped accountability for their errors. These self-dealing GOP incompetents need to be called to account. And those of us who saw through their barrage of [baloney] ought to get some credit for being right.

In reading bloggers and pundits the last few days, the dominant meme is that the GOP must return to Reaganite conservatism, i.e., consistent ideological principles focusing on low taxes, low spending, traditional social values, and peace-through-strength intenationalism (or thereabouts).

Yet, some have argued that the Reagan legacy is a chimera, and that it's time for a new generation of leaders on the right, and a new generation of ideas. For example, the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru wrote:

Republicans have a history of moving right after defeats, embracing Ronald Reagan after Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford had failed, and Newt Gingrich after George H. W. Bush had. Each time the party thrived as conservative independents and Democrats joined it. Many conservatives think that the party will succeed again just as soon as it ditches the big-spending, soft-on-immigration George W. Bush. But Republicans succeeded on those previous occasions because they addressed the concerns of the day for the vast middle class; moving right alone was insufficient.

As it will be in today’s very different political landscape. Based on the exit polls from 2004 and Tuesday, Republicans have lost more ground among self-described moderates than among conservatives. Even if Senator McCain had won the same percentage of conservatives that President Bush did in 2004, he would not have won. Moving right will work only if moderates are given a reason to move right too.

Michael Medved took up the issue as well, in his essay, "Was the 'Maverick' Too Moderate to Win?":

Some of the nation’s most influential conservatives (on talk radio and elsewhere) have begun promoting the odd idea that John McCain lost the election because he ran as a “moderate” and a “maverick” rather than a “true conservative.” According to this argument, the GOP nominee could have won the White House had he only “taken the gloves off” and run to the right, without apology. This logic suggests that candidates fare better when they display ideological rigor and consistency, and that Republicans can never succeed by going after moderate and independent votes.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to test this theory. McCain appeared on the 2008 ballot with some of the nation’s most outspoken, hard line conservatives, who won nomination for governor or US Senator. If the argument is true that you can win more votes by appealing to right-wingers, rather than aiming for the center, then conservative Senate and gubernatorial candidates should have out-performed McCain, particularly in solidly Republican Southern or Midwestern states....

In fact, McCain ran well ahead of Republican nominees for Senate and governorships almost everywhere – except in those cases when statewide GOP candidates had cultivated their own reputations for independence, centrism, and ideological flexibility.

The key point for both Ponnuru and Medved, from what I gather, is that there's more of an emotional appeal in the call for a return to conservative values than a rational one.

I'm not out to settle the matter here, and Robert will vigorously disagree (samples galore, here).

I'm neoconservative. I want national greatness in foreign policy, traditional values in social policy domestically (especially on abortion, marriage, and race relations), but I'm more flexible on the scope of state power in addressing economic concerns and providing public goods (within reason).

Going forward, the party must pay heed to the demographics of election 2008. Barack Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote, and also 62 percent of the Asian American vote. First time voters turned out 62 percent for the Democratic ticket, and Obama won 69 percent of the college-age cohort (see also, "Youth Vote for Obama Bodes Ill for Future of GOP").

Moreover, Barack Obama indeed appeared moderate to many voters (taking 60 percent of the centrist electorate), despite GOP attacks to the contrary (the attacks, of course, may ultimately prove prophetic, giving Republicans an opening to campaign against an ideological, overreaching Democratic Party).

Personally, I love Sarah Palin, who for all of her red-meat bona fides with the conservative base, is also pure neocon on American exceptionalism and moral clarity.

On that point, then, perhaps the various factions of the conservatve movement can unite, forging a way back from the wilderness.

Bachmann and Burner: Epic Electoral Fail for Netroots

I want to highlight the dramatic electoral significance of Representative Michele Bachmann's reelection to Congress from Minnesota's 6th district, and the defeat of Darcy Burner, the Democratic congressional candidate for Washington's 8th district, who has now conceded the election to incumbent Dave Reichert after a close race.

Together, the reelection of Bachmann and defeat of Burner mark a startling defeat for the 2008 netroots campaigns of Daily Kos, Firedoglake, Open Left, and their "Blue America" coalition of Internet activists (see also Memeorandum).

After Bachmann appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" in October, where she questioned Barack Obama's patriotism, the big blogs on the left raised close to a $2 million for Bachmann's challenger, El Tinkleberg. Leftists charged Bachmann with "McCarthyism" after she recommended the media look into the degree of anti-Americanism in Congress. While the left was outraged, Bachmann's comments were met sympathetically from her constituents, who said she had no need for apologies. The following comment, in response to some of the angry commenters at the Wall Street Journal, is also telling:

Come on ... let’s be sensible here. Michelle was baited over and over into those questions by Chris Matthews anyone who isn’t a blind partisan could see that and I have watched that interview 4 times to be sure she wasn’t being outright hateful.

She is a good woman and will get the job done ...

Now, Darcy Burner's case is in some ways an even more striking repudiation of the hardcore netroots left than is Bachmann victory.

One of Burner's biggest assets to the left was her leadership in proposing a widely distributed plan for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Called "A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," the proposal was anything but. The plan called for a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq at precisely the same time that the Bush administration offered a new strategy for victory under the counterinsurgency doctrine of General David Petraeus. Like Barack Obama, Burner wanted to throw in the towel - capitulating to and enabling our terrorist enemies - after the U.S. government had in fact shifted to a new military doctrine that was based on some of the very criticisms the left leveled at the administration earlier in the war (not enough troops going in, poor doctrinal foundations for victory, etc).

But more than this, Burner's what the netroots call "the quintessential Blue America candidate," which is to say, her issue positions are representative of the brooding Bush derangement which is the hallmark of the radical left contigents.

Now, there's a lot of triumphalism on the left following Tuesday's results, for example, in Dave Neiwart's claim of a sweeping repudiation of conservatism in the United States:

No, this election was about one thing primarily: a sweeping repudiation of movement conservatism.

The breadth and depth of Democrats' victory was a loud shout from the American public: We have had enough of this crap.

Actually, as I noted last night, Barack Obama's margin of victory - in both the Electoral College and the popular vote - was less-than-middling by historical standards.

A slight majority of Americans nationwide voted for the change represented in Barack Obama's historic candidacy. But to argue for a sweeping repudiation of conservativism is innacurate. If any candidate should have been "sweepingly repudiated" as a "movement conservative," it's Michele Bachmann (who's frequently slurred on the left as a rightwing extremist of the "lunatic fringe"), who won reelection even after the RNCC caved to pressure from the PC attack dogs on the left.

So, Bachmann's win, and Burner's loss, combined with other indicators, like the decisive defeat of same-sex marriage at the polls across the country, reveals both the limits of left's ideological electoral program, as well as the strong basis for a conservative revival as early as 2010.

What's Puzzling You is the Nature of My Game...

Barack Obama has been elected 44th President of the United States. I laid out some of my earlier disappointments here, after Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination in June. Tonight, with the Democratic victory, Americans can rightly celebrate this historic milestone. Obama has achieved a phenomenal success, and it's not without the indomitable measure of his ambition and perseverance in pursuit of a dream.

Yet, the President-Elect is in many ways the least known candidate in the history of American presidential elections. The American public - simply exhuasted after eight years of President George W. Bush and his policies - has put caution to the wind and invested amorphous hopes of change and a better future in a man who has spent less than four years in the U.S. Senate, with a good two of those years spent campaigning for the very office to which he can now claim a popular mandate.

We do not know all that we can about Barack Obama. It's not for a lack of trying. Millions of bytes of digital space, and tens of thousands of dead trees, have been utilized to tell this man's story - over these last couple of years - of reaching the pinnacle of success and power in the American mainstream.

Yet, for all of this, mystery shadows our historic moment. A darkness of ignorance envelopes this candidate, his campaign, and his victory. I'm not fully in accord with Stanley Kurtz, the scholar who has done more than anyone to unearth the revelations of Obama's radicalism, when he says that Obama's been revealed for who he is:

Obama is clever and pragmatic, it’s true. But his pragmatism is deployed on behalf of radical goals. Obama’s heart is, and will remain, with the Far Left. Yet he will surely be cautious about grasping for more, at any given moment, than the political traffic will bear. That should not be mistaken for genuine moderation. It will merely be the beginning stages of a habitually incremental radicalism. In his heart and soul, Barack Obama was and remains a radical-stealthy, organizationally sophisticated, and — when necessary — tactically ruthless. The real Obama — the man beyond the feel-good symbol — is no mystery. He’s there for anyone willing to look. Sad to say, few are.

No, I differ: As we saw this last week - with the release of the audiotape of Obama's comments to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he indicated he'd "bankrupt" coal companies that refused to line up in lock-step with liberal-Democratic cap-and-trade environmental policies - much more will come out on Obama's oppositional, dramatically unconventional past. No, there's still much to be learned about this man, the man from Chicago, by way of Harvard and Honolulu, who more than any other political aspirant in our great national experiment, has slid under the radar of critical examination and everyday skepticism.

As readers know, I find a lot of comfort in music, in my considerable personal love of rock-and-roll. I'm sure I could find some classic tunes that might do justice to the moment, something, perhaps, like Bill Clinton's inauguration, when Fleetwood Mac performed "Don't Stop (Thinking 'bout Tomorrow)."

But what I've returned to is, in fact, Barack Obama's favorite band, the Rolling Stones, but not, perhaps, his favorite song, "Sympathy for the Devil," in the video above, with lyrics here (and John Lennon at 4:45 minutes, "Imagine!"):

If you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste; use all your well-learned politesse, or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Yes, that's right ... if you meet him, look out, give him some sympathy. Bow down low, "The One" is here, and you must pay due penitence for the sins of your fathers, your white fathers. If not, he'll lay your soul to waste with the phenomenal power of the American state - a state structure now to be captured - more heavily than ever before - like nothing James Madison envisioned - by the largest radical left-wing interest group contingent in U.S. history.

Oh sure, Obama will govern from the center: He'll have to, lest he risk a violent conservative reaction. But the tide has turned for this moment, and traditionalists just better hold on tight. This next four years will be unlike anything we've ever seen. Lyndon Johnson did not have the nihilist netroots blogosphere to harass his administration into conformity; and Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats weren't delivered to the progressive hordes who seek to break bread with our mortal enemies. No, things are different today. Meet the new boss.

Now, let me disabuse my relentless left-wing critics: Barack Obama is not a communist in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist mold, as seen in the widget above-right.

He is, however - whether folks want to acknowledge it or not - deeply in solidarity with many of the forces arrayed against the U.S. This I believe of Barack Obama: Not imminent physical destruction of our nation (though not completely discounted), but destruction nonetheless. Destruction of the moral light that never lets the malignant growth of evil roll across the land. No, America's enemies will get a respite, where they can regroup and reconsider what they want from America. There will be a reckoning, at some point, of course. Because even those who have been hoodwinked by the hope-i-ness of change will not long tolerate the yoke of Third World despotism and terror over this proud nation. A despotism seeking to behead the American individual, and the culture that bore him - all of this, dearest Americans, faster than you can say Madrid 2004.
My masthead is now black in mourning for the missed opportunity of victory in John McCain's moral right and history. This change is permanent, at least as far as my current state of mind dictates. The Obama Soviet "Yes, We Can" widget, above right, is temporary, and will likely come down upon the resumption of regular posts. I don't know when that will be, however. I may take just a day off from blogging, or a month or two. But rest assured, dear readers, American Power will be back, stronger than ever, to pick up the flame of moral clarity and to enjoin the ideological battle that stands before us.

As always, I'll visit and comment at the blogs of all those who visit here.

The continuity of American democracy was confirmed today. Whether the results portend a long-term realignment of party coaltions and moral priorities remains to be seen. In any case, as John McCain would say: Stand with me, my friends! Fight with me! Fight for what's right for our country!

Despair not, for the present concatentation of forces is temporary ... I guarantee it.

An Election Day Prayer

Please reflect on a most profoundly spiritual election-day essay from one of my readers, Brenda Giguere: "Election Day Prayer":

Dear God,

For weeks now I have tried to be optimistic, but in my heart I have been preparing for the worst. I pray our country makes the right choice. If we prevail it will be by the slimmest of margins. We have much work to do regardless of who takes office, but if we lose our great nation to a dangerous radical leftist, we will need to call upon all of our collective strength to save the greatest nation the world has ever known from self-inflicted mortal injury. This bad situation didn't happen overnight. I should have been paying more attention; I thought I was, but clearly it wasn't enough.

I've always loved my country, though, and never took it for granted. We are doing so much good in the world; we've achieved so much here at home. Good people are living their lives and pursuing their dreams. I've always felt fortunate to be here.

We have millions of decent people, people who want to work hard and be part of what America should be. These people do not hang anyone in effigy, even on Halloween. They do not cheat when voting or making campaign contributions. They do not cheer in approval as a candidate flips a bird during a speech, or joke about gang-raping a mother. They don't storm into campaign offices and use mace. They don't have friends who stomp on the flag or damn our country from the pulpit, or set off bombs that kill police officers on our own soil.

We have true friends who are counting on us, and can't worry about false friends that want to drag us down.

We don't laugh at common people because we are the common people, the good people.

Regardless of the outcome, I am making a vow within this prayer: I pledge a committment to my country- not an apologetic country that would capitulate to our enemies, but a country founded on the Constitution, a country strong and clearminded enough to defend it.

It's true that I'm unhappy about the huge ideological chasm that has cracked open within my own family. But I am grateful to have met so many people online, my new friends from all across the globe who feel like I do. You people are my new family, and I am making a pledge to you as well, that I will do all I can, regardless of what happens this week, to stand alongside you and be part of America's solutions as best as I can. Thank you and bless all of you.

Whoever and whatever you are, dear God, you know that my religious beliefs are essentially Christian, although you know I'm still more of a seeker than one who serves. But I will defend the Judeo-Christian core of our great government and pray for our deliverance. The good people of the world of all beliefs who try to follow your commandments need to stand together.

Thank you for hearing my prayer. People always pray when they're in the foxhole, I know, but I will never ever forget the sick and anxious feelings I felt on this day, no matter how things turn out. It's the worst feeling I've ever had in my life, not merely another election.

We have much to do.

And now, I want to make one final statement in writing. I pledge alliegance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Amen.

Your Humble Servant...

Please read more of Brenda's posts at her blog, Hollywood Does Conservative.

One Man, One Woman: Can We All Agree?

Josh Marshall's right up there in gold medal territory for sleaze this election (a close contest with Andrew Sullivan), so I'm getting a kick out of the reader backlash he's getting for Yes on 8 advertisements running on his blog, including this one right now:

One of the key arguments against Proposition 8 is that it allegedly promotes hate and intolerance.

But look what Marshall reports:

I know many of you consider this ad both inappropriate and tasteless ...

Now, some of the emails we've gotten have been very heated and even angry. I understand and respect those sentiments. I especially understand the feelings of our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered readers, many of whom feel that a site they've read, supported, turned friends on to, etc., has in some way betrayed them. It really pains me to hear this. And I really wish I weren't faced with this choice. But I am. And for the reasons stated above this is the one I have to make [to continue to carry the advertisement as a matter of fairness and principle].

The "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered" readers (ayatollahs) mentioned are, frankly, just as intolerant to Yes on 8 supporters as is Iran's regime is to homosexuals.

Totalitarianism knows no national boundaries, and it's clear that the readers at Talking Points Memo don't care about the democratic process - and mark my words, this kind of reaction to a simple, automatically-generated campaign ad is just a glimpse of what's ahead for free speech under a far left-wing Obama administration, which will be completely captured by the progressive-radical interest group alliance of the Democratic Party.

You'll Always Find Us Out to Lunch...

Well, we're down to the wire of an agonizingly long election.

I think I'm pretty much tapped out on pithy one-liners and enlightened prose discursions. So, I'll just let the Sex Pistols express how I'm feeling right now, considering the (apparent) over-dermination of a Barack Obama electoral victory tomorrow. Please enjoy, "Pretty Vacant":

There's no point in asking
You'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's too all much
You'll always find us out to lunch
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty we're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
A vacant...

Now before any (lefty) readers blow this off as sour grapes, remember ... I'm a political scientist, and there's oftentimes more emotion than reason in voter decision-making, as Larry Bartels explains at today's Los Angeles Times:

In 1960, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan described "the general impoverishment of political thought in a large proportion of the electorate." Shifts in election outcomes, they concluded, were largely attributable to defections from long-standing partisan loyalties by relatively unsophisticated voters with little grasp of issues or ideology. A recent replication of their work found that things haven't changed much....

Voters' strong tendency to reward incumbents for peace and prosperity and punish them for bad times looks at first glance like a promising mechanism of political accountability, because it does not require detailed knowledge of issues and policy platforms. As political scientist Morris Fiorina has noted, even uninformed citizens "typically have one comparatively hard bit of data: They know what life has been like during the incumbent's administration."

Unfortunately, "rational" rewarding and punishing of incumbents turns out to be much harder than it seems, as my Princeton colleague, Christopher Achen, and I have found. Voters often misperceive what life has been like during the incumbent's administration. They are inordinately focused on the here and now, mostly ignoring how things have gone earlier in the incumbent's term. And they have great difficulty judging which aspects of their own and the country's well-being are the responsibility of elected leaders and which are not.

This election year, an economic downturn turned into an economic crisis with the dramatic meltdown of major financial institutions. John McCain will be punished at the polls as a result. Whether the current economic distress is really President Bush's fault, much less McCain's, is largely beside the point.

Or, as Johnny Rotten might say:

Don't ask us to attend
'cos we're not all there.
Oh don't pretend 'cos I don't care
I don't believe illusions 'cos too much is real
So stop your cheap comment
'cos we know what we feel...

Anyway, thanks, dear readers, for tuning-in here at American Power throughout the year.

As always, I'll have more later... until then, vote life.