qotd – Page 2 – Moe Lane

QotD, Take These Changes In #RNC Debate Policy Seriously edition.

2012 burned just a few too many people just a bit too badly. Byron York:

…the party fully intends to change its debate structure. The reason goes beyond Republicans’ belief that holding 20-plus debates, as in 2011-2012, provides too much opportunity for gaffes and intra-party bloodletting. It also stems from GOP dissatisfaction with debates in which the moderators don’t seem to understand the premises of modern conservatism and engage in hostile or clueless questioning — or out-of-the-blue provocations like former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos’ queries about contraception at a 2012 debate in New Hampshire.

Just what the RNC will do is not yet clear. But it is serious. Look for real change to occur before Republican presidential candidates meet again.

I should note, by the way, that this has to be a dynamic process. We’re going to have to go in and check the system every four years.

QotD, Hey, NYC: Do You Miss Rudy Giuliani Yet? edition.

Bob McManus provides us with a scorecard:

For the record, former Rep. Weiner is the cyber-flashing liar, while former Gov. Spitzer is the whore-mongering semi-psychopath who was responsible for the Paterson administration, in all its bizarre pyrotechnics.

Not to mention, endless fodder for me and mine… and a positive encouragement for capital flight. Sucks if you live in NYC, though…

QotD, The Hill Tells A Fib edition.

Really? REALLY?

Few could have foreseen this White House struggling so much after Obama’s convincing 332-206 electoral vote victory over Mitt Romney last November.

Well. I guess that I’m one of the few, then.

12/08/2012:

…that’s why I am not as worried about Obama’s second term as some; I’ve seen his first term, you see. The major difference between that one and this one is that his own party had a vested interest in playing nice with the man running for re-election; but now that it’s clear that Barack Obama does not like other people very much, has no interest in stumping for his own side’s candidate, and simply does not like to exert any effort beyond the bare minimum: well. He wants to play aloof, then Harry Reid will happily become the most important Democrat in Washington DC by default.

Seriously, it didn’t take much in the way of precognition to realize that Barack Obama was going to flounder, once the main reason why the White House got up in the morning went away. I guess the Hill should read me more often…

Moe Lane

QotD, You Win Or You Die edition.

John Hayward over at RedState, in the process of reviewing WITH EXTREME SPOILERS the latest episode of Game of Thrones, makes this point about how the universe does not care about how unfair life is to any particular candidate:

A prospective candidate who thinks himself above the unpleasantness of the modern electoral arena should save his prospective donors a lot of money and take a pass on running.

Yes, yes, I know: half of you are still getting over the fact that RedState is doing something like reviewing GoT from a conservative/Republican perspective: and the other half of you are startled that this is being done by somebody who isn’t me. Personally, I’m just as happy to have other people be comfortable in their political geekery: it means that I’m winning. Besides, I’m not watching that show right now, either.

QotD, What Do They Have To Engage Them? edition

Jim Geraghty:

There’s some anecdotal evidence that a significant chunk of the Left’s rank-and-file started tuning out shortly after Obama’s second term began, and they’re not re-engaging.

[snip of a clip of Lefty blogger digby doing the digital equivalent of grimly looking at the steadily-decreasing level on the vodka bottle]

A lot of possible reasons for this — scandal disillusionment, the crash after the high of Hope-ium, a public starting to feel like they’ve heard of all of Obama’s rhetorical tropes before, overall exhaustion and boredom with politics as a whole — but this is not a development that the Washington conventional wisdom has even noticed, much less even begin to analyze or explain.

Continue reading QotD, What Do They Have To Engage Them? edition

QotD, Memorial Day edition.

C.S. Lewis:

We have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone, and there is still at least one vice of which they feel genuine shame.

An odder quote to use than most, but still apropos in this situation, methinks.

QotD, Lamar! edition.

Lamar!*

Major news outlets in recent days have reported that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is raising money from the private sector—including from health-care executives—for use by a private entity that is helping to implement ObamaCare. The entity, Enroll America, is run by a former White House aide.

The Washington Post quoted an HHS spokesman last week saying, “We requested additional money [from Congress] . . . but we didn’t receive any additional funding for the exchanges. So we had to come up with Plan B.”

My immediate thought was: Isn’t “Plan B” what got Oliver North in trouble during the 1980s?

Lamar! Continue reading QotD, Lamar! edition.

QotD, The Thing About #Benghazi Is That It Was Sadly Predictable edition.

Cynical, but more or less correct:

The hundred pages of Benghazi e-mails released this week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington.

Rather than reading these messages for their substance on Benghazi (on which officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack), try perusing them as an illustration of how the bureaucracy responds to crisis — especially when officials know they will be under the media spotlight.

What you find is a 100-page novella of turf-battling and backside-covering.

Also: damning. We were told that this administration was different, somehow. Which was, of course… a false thing, told to people who are now learning better, and we have to remember that people do not deserve to be lied to, even if they had been warned ahead of time. The point is that Barack Obama – and his entire staff, explicitly including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – is a creature of the system, not its nemesis.

QotD, This Actually Doesn’t Sound Too Bad, Compared To Today edition.

I mean, really: the situation in Chester Arthur’s day apparently had its points.

Henry Adams, the disillusioned sage of the era, famously described the political life of the country after the Civil War in less-than-glowing terms: “The government does not govern. Congress is inefficient, and shows itself more and more incompetent to wield the enormous powers that are forced upon it, while the Executive is practically devoid of its necessary strengths by the jealousy of the Legislature.” James Bryce, the English commentator who saw America with at least as much perspicacity as Americans saw themselves, remarked that “an American may through a long life never be reminded of the Federal Government, except when he votes at presidential and congressional elections, lodges a complaint against the post-office, and opens his trunks for a custom-house official on the pier of New York.”

Not perfect, mind you. I’m not actually a libertarian: I like having a comprehensive transportation net (which is something that a lot of political and economic theories seem to have a lot of trouble with, in my opinion). But it’d be better than the unholy fusionist Trinity of Keynes, Wilson, and Alinksy that we’re suffering from now.

QotD, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA (Breathe) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA edition.

(H/T Instapundit) This editorial had me …well, shrugging and conceding that there was a possibility… until this point:

And just in case Benghazi does end up costing [Hillary] Clinton the White House, there’s someone else ready and willing to take her place in the 2016 race.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Yeeeeeeah. Do you know what we do to liberal Democrats from Massachusetts who run for President in this country? Do you, do you? That’s right! We rip their hearts out and then throw the hearts on the ground and then we make them dance on their own hearts! We do that until they have no dignity left! And then we smack them in the face, laugh, and elect the other guy. Continue reading QotD, HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA (Breathe) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA edition.