As ruling class Republicans sulk, O'Donnell runs and Palin lurks

Here are some bedrock facts that received no shrift at all in the hullaballoo over Christine O'Donnell's decisive capture of the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Delaware.

Led by stalwarts such as Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, a posse of writers for National Review and Senate Republican leaders, the anti-O'Donnell coalition came down squarely on the side of Mike Castle, whose RINO (Republican in Name Only) credentials are impeccable.

Castle, who is Delaware's sole representative in the House, even voted for the cap-and-trade bill, which, in the midst of a long and relentless recession, would have imposed new costs on American manufacturers and further reduced exports.

This is not vaporous economics. It is bedrock. Establishment Republicans preferred Castle, whose vote could, at some future date, enact cap-and-trade, a thinly conceived scam that would enrich corporations such as General Electric, which have bet the farm on a green future even though the scientific evidence underlying the green movement continues to fade toward irrelevance.

In other words, the Republican establishment was willing to gamble on a RINO who has signed on to a social engineering scheme whose purpose is to further empower government and force Americans to drive cars they don't want and live the way government bureaucrats say they should live.

Delaware's voters gave the ruling class Republicans the response they deserved. Her name is Christine O'Donnell. If the ruling class Republicans don't wise up soon, they will get another answer they won't like. Her name is Sarah Palin.

Republican establishment is at sea and a movement is afoot

It is not enough now to elect candidates who lean rightward of Obama. We need people who understand that trillion-dollar deficits and socialized medicine are not inconveniences. They are not annoyances. They are not setbacks. They are not unpleasantnesses. They are not regrettable episodes. They are not divergent views, odd turns, eccentricities. They are not even outrages and atrocities. THEY ARE IMPOSSIBILITIES.

Only candidates who understand that the only answer to "yes, we can" is "no, we cannot" are worth fielding. That is the whole point of sideswiping the political process with a third-party non-party wrecking crew who hold their teacups with monkey wrenches. The Republican establishment is asea and a movement is afoot. This is all coming to a head in November, when we will see who is really ahead and, derivatively, what lies ahead. (Plenty of lies ahead in the campaign, that’s for sure.)

The biggest winner of all is Sarah Palin, who has been tarred by our feathered friends as the ultimate in unelectable.

How to skewer the NYT and the ruling class in one short piece

Sex. Drugs. Violence...and $44 sea bass. It's a fight for the ages, brought to you by the New York Times as it struggles to keep the nation safe for the ruling class. Call it Sarah Palin, The Sequel. Except we're talking about the Republican senatorial candidate in Connecticut, Linda McMahon.

You can say the same thing about McMahon that Charles Hurt of the New York Post said about Palin, "that one of the most appealing things about [her] is the people who hate her." From the moment McMahon announced her run for the United States Senate, the New York Times has led the Northeast political and media elites in an effort to stop the self-made millionaire and former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO from winning the Republican primary and then, now that she has won, stop her from succeeding in her quest to replace retiring Democratic Senator Chris Dodd in Connecticut.

The media and political elites, led by the New York Times, hate her -- this...this...this "Yankee Doodle Daffy," this "truly humiliating" excuse for a political wannabe who dares to challenge the Times and its Connecticut cohorts with ideas originating from a lifetime spent successfully building a company and creating jobs. She created and built WWE into a $1.1-billion cable entertainment powerhouse. As she tells American Thinker, "I know what it's like to earn a living, to create jobs, to run a company. More and more people are realizing that we need real people who have worked in real businesses in Washington."

But not at the influential New York Times. Times columnist Gail Collins explains the view from media and insider central: McMahon's entrepreneurial savvy is good only for its "entertainment value," as business experience means nothing when it comes to public service. What's the big deal about a billion dollars, Times writers ask? After all, Times publisher and chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger moved that and billions more in shareholder value, too, although in the other direction. Sure, she "made a mint," but off...wrestling?! "Seedy and small-town," Collins declares.

Besides, McMahon is running against a New York Times darling: Richard Blumenthal, an ultra-liberal Democrat whom the Wall Street Journal labeled an "aggressively anti-business" state attorney general, a graduate of both Harvard and Yale who prides himself on being a "big, from-Washington-to-Hartford, I-know-them-all insider," and an activist who has used the courts to push a global warming agenda. Just what Connecticut needs in the U.S. Senate, Times writers enthuse: an insider with transformative ideas who has spent his life in government.

"I believe in people keeping their own money," McMahon tells American Thinker from her campaign headquarters outside -- and not inside -- the state capitol. "I believe that, if left alone, people will build businesses, create jobs, and provide employment. We need to keep government off their backs -- it's their money, their lives."

(snip)

But "other people's money" is what it's all about for the Times. That's why Collins, when McMahon asked to meet with her and "just let her know more about me," insisted that McMahon drive down from Connecticut and meet her at a restaurant just on the other side Central Park from her home.

As Bart Simpson says, "Woo Hoo!" Sistina, where each week they "fly in most of our ingredients directly from Italy and the Mediterranean, where the wine cellars feature "the most prestigious labels in the world." Home of the $44 sea bass, the $27 meatball (singular) appetizer, and $100 wine. Times shareholders fed Collins...well, very well. That's what they do at the Times. Expense accounts, you know, other people's money -- it's a ruling class thing.

And they say wrestling is sleazy.

48% view Obama's views as extreme, whatever that means

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now regard President Obama’s political views as extreme. Forty-two percent (42%) place his views in the mainstream, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

By comparison, 51% see the views of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as mainstream. Thirty-five percent (35%) think Clinton’s views are extreme. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided.

Among five top contenders for the White House in 2012, only former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is viewed as more extreme than the president. Just 38% say Palin’s views are mainstream, while 55% regard them as extreme.

Mitt Romney, the ex-Massachusetts governor who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is considered mainstream by 45% and extreme by 33%. Twenty-two percent (22%), however, are not sure about his views.

Forty-four percent (44%) say the views of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, another unsuccessful 2008 GOP hopeful, are in the mainstream. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think Huckabee is extreme, and another 18% are not sure.

It’s important to note that the questions did not define “mainstream” or “extreme.”

An Alaska fisherman's perspective on Sarah Palin, the doer

The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets it…It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, it’s about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.

1- Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governor’s office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican’s “Corrupt Bastards Club” (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing “la la la la” (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar. But while you’re thinking, I’ll continue.

2- Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So, she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called “ACES”. Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them “don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out.” They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.

3- The other thing she did when she walked into the governor’s office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as “pork”. She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the “when-hell-freezes-over” stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, we’ll pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governor’s jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning—I imagine—that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.

4- Now, even with her much-ridiculed “gosh and golly” mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.

5- For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

6- President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona . Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I won’t be holding my breath.

By the way, she was content to to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.

Obama endorsement toxic in Pennsylvania and Illinois

Raleigh, N.C. – Democratic U.S. House incumbents could be in big trouble in Pennsylvania, which has up to eight vulnerable seats held by their party, several of which only recently switched from GOP control in the Democratic wave elections of 2006 and 2008. The GOP holds a 48-39 generic-ballot advantage among likely voters in the Keystone State.

In Illinois, Democrats are in safer territory, defending no more than three swing seats and holding a 46-40 lead over the Republican Party. Nearly all of the tenuous Democratic seats in both states, however, are in heavily white, suburban, exurban, or small-city districts that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004, and they could show an even greater Republican trend than the overall statewide figure.

In Illinois, Democrats are actually slightly more unified around their party’s candidates for Congress than are the Republicans, but independents go for the GOP by a 40-25 margin. In Pennsylvania, Democrats, as in the gubernatorial race, are suffering from significant and equal proportions of Democratic voters going for the GOP and remaining undecided, such that only 72% of Democrats support their party’s generic Congressional candidate, considerably lower than the 84% of Republicans who go for their party.

The relatively few Pennsylvania unaffiliateds favor the GOP, 42-19.

In Pennsylvania, 49% say Obama’s support would make them less likely to vote for his endorsed candidate, to 20% who say it would make them more likely, and 31% who say it would make no difference.

Sarah Palin is also pretty toxic, but has slightly better numbers overall. Republicans are more favorable to her support than Democrats are to Obama, and independents only buck her endorsement 21-36, versus 15-50 for Obama.

Obama, naturally, fares somewhat better in Illinois than does Palin, though his support is still seen as a negative.

“Pennsylvania is going to be a particularly tough state for Democrats this year, but even Illinois isn’t much better,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

If you're gonna have a new (nonliberal) world order, you gotta have new words; that's why some of us (Palin) say "refudiate"

Just before noon on Sunday, July 18, 2010, Sarah Palin enriched the English language. Referring to the planned Islamic center near the 9/11 site in New York, she tweeted: “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.”

Presumably, Palin was wavering between “refute” and “repudiate,” and, in the heat of the tweeting moment, typed or BlackBerried or iPhoned or texted the new amalgam, “refudiate.” Pedants in the blogosphere got all huffy. Palin decided to double down. A few hours later, she follow-up tweeted: “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

Gotcha.

So let us celebrate the new term “refudiate.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with “refute.” It means, according to Webster’s Third, “to overthrow by argument, evidence, or proof; prove to be false or erroneous.” Nor is there anything wrong with “repudiate,” meaning “to cast off ... to refuse to accept as having rightful authority ... to refuse approval or belief to.” And they’re distinct. To refute is primarily an intellectual act; a thinker refutes a claim or an argument. To repudiate is a practical or political act; a political party repudiates a sect that holds a discredited (and perhaps refuted) argument. A refutation that isn’t followed by a repudiation is just talk. A repudiation that doesn’t include a refutation is just arbitrary action.

The case for linguistic innovation is this: We need a word that captures and conjoins the meanings of refutation and repudiation. And we need it now. To save the country from the ravages of contemporary liberalism, we have to refute liberal arguments and see liberal politicians repudiated at the polls.

So the conservative agenda is, in a word, refudiation. Indeed, given the dramatic moment at which we have arrived, one might say that we now have the prospect of a grand refudiation of liberalism.

The meeting of intellectual refutation and political repudiation is, after all, the usual prerequisite for the establishment of a new political order.

Palin ranks first in favorability among Republican hopefuls

PRINCETON, NJ -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is the best known and most positively rated of five possible contenders for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Her 76% favorable rating among Republicans is higher than those for Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Bobby Jindal.

Huckabee and Gingrich have similar 64% to 65% favorable ratings among Republicans, Romney has a lower 54% rating, and Jindal, less well known even to Republicans, has the lowest positive rating of the five.

Obama's bid to remake America heats up market for conservative books

NEW YORK (AP) - These are boom times for conservative authors.
Michelle Malkin's "Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" spent weeks at No. 1 on The New York Times nonfiction list. Sales have been strong for Dick Morris' anti-Obama "Catastrophe" and the reissue of "The Five Thousand Year Leap," by W. Cleon Skousen.

And Sarah Palin may top them all.

In a feat usually reserved for the likes of J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown, Palin's book was No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com just two days after Harper announced it had moved up the release date from the spring to Nov. 17 and that the memoir's title was "Going Rogue."

Palin's 432-page memoir, still No. 1 on Friday, has been given a first printing of 1.5 million copies and booksellers have begun fighting for sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cut the $28.99 list price by more than half, to $13.50, and Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com are offering "Going Rogue" for $15.65, a 45 percent discount.

Although she resigned abruptly last summer as governor, and the Republican ticket of Sen. John McCain and Palin was decisively beaten in the 2008 election, "Going Rogue" will surely outsell the memoir of her Democratic counterpart, Vice President Joe Biden, and likely approach the million-selling heights of President Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

Sarah Palin attacks Obama regime, AP defends

Sarah Palin, on her Facebook page, attacks the Obama regime's "death panel" as "downright evil." The AP, in what pretends to be a news account, counter-attacks, arguing that "millions of Americans already face rationing, as insurance companies rule on procedures they will cover. Denying coverage for certain procedures might increase under proposals to have a government-appointed agency identify medicines and procedures best suited for various conditions."

If a one-time news agency functions as a flack for the Democrat Party and its office holders, shouldn't it have to pay taxes?

Alaska joins state rebellion against feds

"Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.

Just weeks before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, according to a Tenth Amendment Center report. The resolution "claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."

Alaska's House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

(snip)

While seven states – Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana – have had both houses of their legislatures pass similar decrees, Alaska Gov. Palin and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen are currently the only governors to have signed their states' sovereignty resolutions."

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104524

Sarah Palin tries to do something that needs doing

So, Sarah Palin plans to campaign for conservative issues and candidates, whatever their party affiliation. Good for her. I look foreward to hoots of derision from the political hacks, self-hating king-makers, machine thugs, bribe payers and bribe takers, self-dealing vultures and laughing stocks whose reckless disregard for the national interest is sinking the American ship.

I don't know whether Palin will succeed, and neither does anyone else, which is not to say that pundits won't soon be telling you when and why she will fail.

What we do know is that pursuit of self-interest, at the expense of the national interest, by politicians has brought the United States to a point where collapse or chaos is a plausible result.

Chaos was the objective of Saul Alinsky, godfather of community organizing and mentor of President Barack Obama. To achieve it, he tried to overload whatever governmental system he hoped to defeat.

What has Obama done to overload the system?

He has advocated economically damaging remedies for global warming during a period of global cooling.

He has pushed for radical changes in health care, making the American system more like Canada's, even though Canada's is infamous for its long wait times and unavailabilities. In my neighborhood, Canadians are forming collectives to insure themsleves for care on this side of the border.

He has spent trillions of dollars, driving up the national debt and testing China's willingness to continue funding that debt. In any event, interest costs of the debt will rise, putting additional drag on a flagging economy.

Not everyone is applauding this insanity. There are conservatives in the Democrat Party as well as the Republican Party, and among independents. Can they be rallied to oppose the destruction of America?

We don't know because, until now, no one has tried except the rare, quixotic third-party presidential candidates.

If Palin can do it, even on an ad hoc basis, good for her.

Here's a slogan: "We stoppped Hitler, Tojo and Stalin. We can stop Obama."

Another reason to put Sarah Palin on GOP ticket

"Sarah Palin took her revenge on Sen. John Kerry — who'd expressed a wish that she, not Mark Sanford, had vanished — speaking to Alaska National Guard soldiers in Kosovo:

"He looked quite frustrated and he looked so sad — I just wanted to reach out to the TV and say, 'John Kerry, why the long face?'" she said of watching Kerry's jab."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/
Palin_John_Kerry_why_the_long_face.html