Moe Lane

…So wonders Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion.  I believe that the answer is the same as what happens to any cargo cult organization designed to fake a genuinely populist sentiment fails (as they usually do): it withers and dies, and then vultures pick at the corpse.

Besides, this new Eff Tea group is really much more suitable for the Online Left: no need for a movement, anything resembling actual participation, or even a more elaborate message.  Just buy the T-shirt and m0ve, as they say, on.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The Huffington Post is highly upset (but hiding it fairly well) that Sen John Cornyn of the NRSC is happily using the awkwardness that is the Alvin Greene candidacy for pushback against the Left’s peculiar notion that the Democratic party is somehow the mainstream one of the two in American politics.  Normally, I wouldn’t care overmuch for how much this upsets the HuffPo; but it’s funny to see a website so discombobulated that it can’t even keep track of its own argument.  To wit:

And yet, the unemployed veteran — who never did any formal campaigning — has been the most covered candidate of any running for office this cycle.

[snip]

And to the extent that voters are not aware of how odd both he and his campaign truly are, the impression can be left that it is a high-profile Democrat (not some mysterious eccentric) whose skeletons are being dragged out of the closet.

Bolding mine, in both places.  It’s one or the other, HuffPo.  You can’t complain about Alvin Greene being the subject of massive media attention and then pretend that the voters aren’t then going to be aware of the… unique nature… of who Sen Cornyn’s talking about.  OK, fine, you can, but it just won’t work.

Unfair?  Since when did the Huffington Post care about fairness?  As I like to say: Karma.  It’s what’s for dinner.

Moe Lane

OK, I’m no Lord [Pollington] [oops!], but let’s unpack the Mason-Dixon poll for FL-SEN – which is bad news for Charlie Crist, and seriously bad news for the Democratic party of Florida that everybody expects Crist to join, just as soon as he can manage.  Below are the three major match-ups:

• If the race is Marco Rubio for the GOP, Kendrick Meek for the Democrats, and Crist as the ‘independent,’ then the result is Rubio 38 / Crist 33 / Meek 18.
• If the race is Rubio for the GOP, Jeff Greene for the Democrats, and Crist as the ‘independent,’ the result is Crist 39/ Rubio 38 / Greene 12.
• In the primary, Meek leads Greene 40 / 26.

By the way: this represents a serious loss of support for Crist from Mason-Dixon.  Back in May Crist and Rubio’s numbers from that pollster were more or less flipped. (more…)

Kennedy Kennedy Kennedy.  They’re trying to recruit Victoria Kennedy (Ted Kennedy’s widow) for the seat for 2012.  They actually tried to get her to run in 2010, but she refused – and she’s supposedly refusing now, but apparently the possible challengers to Scott Brown have already been collectively weighed by the state party, and found wanting. So there seems to be no better options for Massachusetts Democrats right now, which is as funny as it is unsurprising.

Now, the objective merits of a Victoria Kennedy candidacy can be argued – if you believe this Boston Globe puff piece, both she and her husband only used boats because walking on water takes too long to get anywhere – outside of the context of Massachusetts politics… in much the same way that a Jeb Bush 2012 Presidential candidacy can be objectively argued outside of the context of national politics.  Subjectively, however… this will hardly sound disinterested, but I can’t imagine that Massachusetts Democratic politicians are honestly enjoying the prospect of the ‘Kennedy seat’ surviving.  Scott Brown’s win earlier this year was the first time a Senate seat for MA changed hands in over a quarter of a century: does that state really lack for ambitious politicians who are tired of waiting for their chance*?

Moe Lane (more…)

Apparently, people don’t get less susceptible to monosodium glutamate as they get older. And yes, I looked up the details of the stuff just now and nobody’s yet proved a conclusive link between it and people getting knocked on their butts after having some. I consider the question, ah, moot at this point.

So Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA) has told off progressives: he insists that they must only attempt to mount primary challenges to ‘conservative’ Democrats in districts where the Democrats have a lock on the seat anyway. If they don’t, well, apparently the response then is to suffer – or perhaps move: Rep. Frank didn’t say so, but it seems a logical enough alternative.  No, really, that’s what he said… while couching it in terms of going out in November and voting for the Democrats that they hate anyway:

“I said don’t defeat conservative Democrats in November . . . the place to do that is in the primary,” Frank said Friday in an interview. But Frank added his caveat that such a primary challenge should only come in districts where a more liberal candidate would win in November.

Now, putting aside the fact that this effectively restricts liberals to their current urban reservations ghettos enclaves (a seat with a ‘conservative’ Democrat in it is pretty much the definition of ‘at risk’ these days, and they won’t get less risky because of a successful primary challenge from the Left), the amazing thing about this statement is not that a Democratic, supposedly liberal politician is making it, or not even that he’s making it in public.  It’s that Rep. Frank felt perfectly comfortable telling that to the faces of a bunch of progressive activists.  It is fascinating to witness the sheer contempt that the Democratic party has towards its own base; for contrast, imagine what would happen if a conservative politician went to CPAC or the RedState Gathering to tell the activists found there that they must only primary challenge moderate Republican incumbents in districts where the GOP was going to win anyway.  Let me put it this way: the response would involve the words “rip,” “head,” “defecate,” and “neck.*” (more…)

I think that I’m going to read a book.

‘Don’t run against your own party head in the election.’ You’d think that this would be elementary political wisdom, much like ‘never get caught with a dead girl in your bed,’ ‘never pick a fight with a group that can plausibly use a ten year old precocious moppet as a spokesperson,’ and/or ‘never use the American flag to strangle a three-legged puppy on national television.’ But apparently Tim Kaine – nominal head of the DNC – feels the need to warn his own party’s legislators to ix-nay on the unning-ray against Obama-way:

“Democrats who kind of are afraid to be who they are, or are pushing back on their leaders, I think they’re crazy,” said Kaine during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “You can’t win as a Democrat without energizing Democratic voters, and if you pour cold water on them and think you’re going to win, it’s tough….The good news is this is not what I’m seeing generally, as I travel around.”

Apparently Fox News felt like being helpful, because the rest of the article provided amusing selections from all those politicians that Kaine didn’t see running away from the President (but felt the need to lecture anyway).  And if that wasn’t enough, Kimberly Strassel (H/T: Hot Air Headlines) looked at the three House Democrats who have most successfully pretended to be conservatives*: not unsurprisingly, they’re also doing distinctly better than their colleagues in equally at-risk districts.  I understand that Kaine needs to spin this, and he certainly needs to spin this now that it’s becoming increasingly clear that the DNC’s disastrous performance in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts was an appetizer for Democratic disaster in November, and not the main course; but he could have come up with something better, surely.  Something not so evocative of panic.

Hey, what about calling Republicans racist?  It’s not like the Democrats go often to that particular well.

Moe Lane

*There is no such thing as a conservative Democrat.  A ‘conservative’ Democrat will happily caucus with a party that puts its doctrinaire liberals in leadership positions, and that particular vote invalidates any supposedly ‘principled’ stances later.  Walt Minnick, Bobby Bright, and Gene Taylor (the three mentioned by Strassel) are as much enablers of Pelosi/Waxman/Frank as are Charlie Rangel, Alan Grayson, and Carol Shea-Porter.

Never forget this.

The reviewer liked it a lot, but…

It doesn’t matter if older critics like The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt don’t get it, because they’re from a generation that’s largely incapable of “getting it”. That’s not a knock against the 40 and older folk—it’s simply a cultural incompatability, as proven by nearly every single negative review of the film. (No, seriously, check their ages. The majority of them are over 40.)

I mean, I’m forty.  And I’m trying to get together enough free time to see it this weekend.  So I find this news problematical.

Sour and not recognizing your greatness and not properly appreciative of all the wonderful things that your party has done to them. And you’re very, very, very indignant that they’re not running around singing your praises… and more importantly, that they’re not planning to particularly vote for most of your colleagues.  So I guess that means that, instead of the voters not really caring about those little, porky amendments:

…what actually happened is that they didn’t really care for those amendments.

Oops?

Anyway, Hot Air’s ‘looking forward’ to you running the Democratic side of the Senate next year; my hope that you won’t be able  to do is not quite dead.  After all, we’ve gotten CT-SEN down to single digits already and it isn’t even Labor Day yet.  Hey: can’t win if you don’t bloody try…

Moe Lane

…I did have Aaron Burr on my list (there must have been a glitch in the final total). For that matter, I had precisely two people on my list (Burr and Benedict Arnold) and stopped there because those two raised the bar pretty freaking high… although I would have probably added the Rosenbergs, if I had thought of them.

This isn’t meant to be a criticism of John’s polls, by the way: they’re interesting and fun.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is available via Steam for cheap; it looks interesting, but I heard that there are bugs and no patches for ‘em. Anybody got an opinion?