Mitt campaign seeks to avoid McCain blunders, runs risk of appearing lifeless instead

Reason to worry about Romney #9,361: if he thinks being not-McCain is enough to get elected, then doom will be his fate. From Politico, a lesson in what not to do:

Mitt Romney and his top aides are building a strategy, partly by design and partly because of circumstance, around what they consider John McCain’s disastrously run campaign in 2008.

The strategy: whatever McCain did, do the opposite?

Many of the current strategy discussions are centered on not falling into the traps McCain did: looking wobbly as a leader and weak on the economy in the final weeks of the campaign. The private discussions include ruling out any vice presidential possibilities who could be seen as even remotely risky or unprepared; wrapping the entire campaign around economic issues, knowing this topic alone will swing undecided voters in the final days; and, slowly but steadily, building up Romney as a safe and competent alternative to President Barack Obama.

Seriously? This is what we get. Avoid McCain’s mistakes. Granted, there were plenty. But that’s not what will inspire folks to vote for Romney. And make no mistake: the only reason some (myself included) were excited to vote was Sarah. It pains me to think Romney would choose a Portman over a Rubio to avoid looking risky when he desperately needs that injection of excitement.

So what if Christie reconsiders?

First, I admit to being a Christie fan. As the Governor of New Jersey, he has zealously taken on unions and fought to win.

That said, I agree with Allahpundit:

Anyway: Explain to me again why he’d supposedly be such a gangbusters candidate in the primary. He is, to be sure, a supremely gifted messenger on entitlements and public-employee unions, and he’s already accomplished something significant vis-a-vis the latter. Beyond that, what’s the argument for his candidacy? He’s been governor for just two and a half years, he believes in global warming, he’s questionable on guns, he seems to support comprehensive immigration reform, he backed Castle over O’Donnell (RINO!), etc. That’s not to say he can’t win — if we were willing to nominate McCain, we could nominate Christie — but I’m not sure why anyone thinks he’d necessarily settle far north of, say, 25 percent. He’d be dynamite at the debates, but the debates don’t matter much except to hardcore political junkies like you and me. Why risk running now and flaming out instead of staying put as governor, building a record, and then steamrolling into the 2016 primaries when he wouldn’t have to face a Democratic incumbent in the general?

He would be golden–just like Perry was–until asked about global warming, Second Amendment rights and Shamnesty plans.

And then folks like me would be left feeling jilted at the dance all over again.

I’ve long thought that Palin’s chances were destroyed. But unlike Perry, she thinks through (and posts on her Facebook page. Ha!) Obama administration policy positions and clarifies her own response. Detailed response. We can’t get that from Perry, and I’m wondering if we ever will.

What say you? Christie? Palin? Will someone else run or will Romney run away with this even though no one wants to vote for him?

Dude.

There’s nothing left to say after bumping around in SoCal on terribly patched freeways paid for with some of the highest taxes in the nation. But the unions still get their dues and illegals all have free healthcare or something, so who cares that the endless stretches of bumpy highway remind me of recovering socialist countries in Europe in the 80s. Dude.

Dude: Bachmann overtakes Romney in Iowa polling. No wonder T-Paw’s gettin’ nasty, eh?

Dude: Sarah Palin says she can win. But she’s not the “only” one who can.

Dude: Go hit Stacy’s tip jar. He needs it.

Dude: Boehner actually does have cojones. Hope he keeps ’em.

Dude: the government intentionally sold guns to Mexican drug lords and criminals to further the claim that our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is the “real problem” on the border. Using stimulus funds.

Dude: Obama owns the War in Afghanistan. How surprising our friends in the mainstream media haven’t reminded us of the fact daily, no?

UPdate: Linked as a Featured Blog by Pundette. Thanks!

“I like to say that for the black community, nothing will change until we learn to love our children more than we love the Democratic party”

So argues “Unlikely Supporter” Sonnie Johnson, a 30 year-old wife and mom.

Why so “unlikely” according to ABC News?

Oh, yeah, she’s black. Whoopsie, your liberal slip is showing:

The 30-year-old African-American mother and wife is featured in “The Undefeated” as one of the many people Palin captivated when John McCain thrust her onto the national stage as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. In Pella, Iowa today for the premiere of the film, Johnson said she latched on to Palin when the former Alaska governor took the stage at the Republican National Convention.

“We were watching it on TV and my daughter was like, ‘A girl can be president?,’” Johnson recalled. “And I said, ‘Yes, baby, girls can do anything.’ That was the moment — I saw that look in my daughter’s eye, that anything in possible. The next week, I went to my very first political event, and that was to see Sarah Palin. John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

Johnson has become increasingly involved in the tea party since then, speaking at tea party events around her native Virginia. She’ll give the keynote address at an event held by the Charlottesville, VA. tea party on the Fourth of July with her young daughter by her side.

Amazing, isn’t it, how our children can inspire pursuits never imagined?

The Lonely Conservative chimes in:

Good for her, for looking at the issues, rather than the party. Bad on ABC News for finding it so “unlikely” that Americans whose skin happens to be dark would support Sarah Palin, or other Tea Party candidates. But hey, at least they didn’t mock or belittle her as so many liberals do to those who step outside of their stereotypical boxes. And in all fairness, at least they told her story. I’m sure those who aren’t mocking Mrs. Johnson would rather just ignore her.

Ignore her, malign her. But Sonnie Johnson and the millions of other mothers–black, white and in-between–are a forced to behold.

UPDATE: linked as a Recommended Read by Pundette. Thanks!

The S.P. Bra

From a catalog received in yesterday’s mail:

S. P. Bra, named after a certain politician. It’s pretty, it works hard, separates the left from the right and moves the masses. Not bad for a bra. The S.P. is our go to everyday bra. Good for hunting, boating, public speaking and basically going rogue. Softly contoured cup for modesty and shaping. Jacquard textured fabric with mesh band. Underwire.

Heh. I’ll leave the photos to The Other McCain.

The emotional depth of liberals

Trig Palin celebrated his third birthday Tuesday. Predictably, liberals couldn’t help themselves and looked hateful and foolish as a result.  Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection responded: Trig Is A “Prop” To Them Only Because They Don’t Like Seeing A Child With Down’s Syndrome and quoted his inital assessment made in July 2009 (he’s prescient, eh?):

If Sarah Palin had aborted Trig, the left would have been okay with it. If she hid Trig offstage and out of sight, all would be good. But treat the child as you would any other child, and that cannot be tolerated.

There is something about a Down syndrome child in plain view which has exposed the moral and emotional bankruptcy of the left-wing of the Democratic party. And they hate Sarah Palin because deep down, they hate themselves for being who they are.

It’s incredibly sad to see people who argue Palin uses Trig as a prop. In their minds he would be better served institutionalized somewhere rather than out and about with his family. Is this what’s become of liberals? Hide debility in any way and argue for the lack of medical care since it’s all a waste in the end?

Wesley Smith concurs:

I have said that the source of some, perhaps much, of the irrational, seething hatred on the Left for Sarah Palin was her decision to give birth to Trig (who has Down syndrome) and openly love him unconditionally. (This isn’t the same thing as believing she isn’t of presidential material, which one can believe and not descend into venomous loathing).

I love it when friends claim Democrats are the compassionate ones, don’t you?

Palin to GOP: “Fight like a girl.”

Fabulousness.

Katrina Trinko at NRO:

In a speech in Madison, Wis. today Sarah Palin talked like a candidate, praising Gov. Scott Walker and blasting congressional Republicans for the budgetdeal.

“After some politics as usual and accounting gimmicks, we find out … it’s not even $38 billion dollars. It’s less than $1 billion dollars in real cuts.,” said Palin.

“That is not courage. That’s capitulation.”

Stating that conservatives would back the GOP if they fought, Palin criticized Republicans for failing to bring about change. “We didn’t elect you just to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic,” Palin said. “We didn’t elect you just to stand back and watch Obama redistribute those deck chairs.”

“Stand up, GOP, and fight,” Palin continued. “Maybe I should ask some of the Badger women’s hockey team, those champions, maybe I should ask them if we should be suggesting to GOP leaders that they need to learn to fight like a girl.”

Wow.

James Pethokoukis:

But all it took was one powerful, pugnacious and presidential speech — just 15 minutes long — for Palin to again make herself completely relevant to the current political and policy battles raging across America.

Pethoukoukis–among others–see this for what it … might be:

That line about fighting like a girl, as well as her “Game on!” declaration will surely reignite speculation about presidential plans. And understandably so. Frontrunner Mitt Romney continues to fashion and refashion a saleable explanation for his Obamacare-esque Massachusetts health plan. And while Tim Pawlenty scored a coup with the hiring of hotshot campaign manager Nick Ayers, his embryonic candidacy is still a work in progress. There’s enough voter unease that another Mitch Daniels boomlet seems to be in progress.

Will she run? Even many of those close to Team Palin have no idea. Palin herself may not have made a decision and may not feel she needs to until the autumn. But as it stands, she arguably represents the purest expression out there of Tea Party passion and free-market populist rejection of Washington’s bipartisan crony capitalism. If she ran, her high-wattage appearance in Madison shows just how dangerous her candidacy would be to a field of solid but stolid opponents.

I must commit to memory “solid but stolid.” It’s much nicer than I would’ve been.

Mr. West Wing all wee-weed up over a television show

Oh, my. We’re of the cable-less sort, so I’ve yet to see clips not on youtube or blogs.  But I want to sincerely thank Sarah Palin for the show on Discovery if only to see liberals wet their pants weekly over its content. 

Exhibit A: Hollywood dude Aaron Sorkin writing at HuffPo.  He whines:

“Unless you’ve never worn leather shoes, sat upon a leather chair or eaten meat, save your condemnation.”

You’re right, Sarah, we’ll all just go *&^% ourselves now. [My edit].

The snotty quote was posted by Sarah Palin on (like all the great frontier women who’ve come before her) her Facebook page to respond to the criticism she knew and hoped would be coming after she hunted, killed and carved up a Caribou during a segment of her truly awful reality show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, broadcast on The-Now-Hilariously-Titled Learning Channel.

Ooh! “Snotty!” The manicured claws come out! More:

I eat meat, chicken and fish, have shoes and furniture made of leather, and PETA is not ever going to put me on the cover of their brochure and for these reasons Palin thinks it’s hypocritical of me to find what she did heart-stoppingly disgusting. I don’t think it is, and here’s why.

Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

What a pogue.  “Like all my effete, liberal Hollywood friends, I enjoy buying my organic meats from Whole Foods, all wrapped up with cellophane–but only after I put on a glove to bag it in another layer of cellophane because I don’t want my hands to get dirty. Eeew! I like to eat it, and I like to wear it! But I’m not going to hunt it because that is so crass and beneath my station in life.  Besides, I wouldn’t be able to shoot let alone get the carcass home in my ‘Vette.  Because it might get dirty. Like you, you’re dirty!   And conservative and mean. Like all people with guns who shoot animals and dare call me out for eating them but passing judgement on you. We’re not alike. At all!”

Sorkin then goes on to moan a little more, like all sanctimonious meat-eating leather-wearing Hollywood liberals who would never kill and animal and eat it do:

I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing.

Hey, Sorkin, I tried and can find the distinction between you and Palin quickly, too.  I’d invite her to my  home. You, not so much. 

And as Gateway Pundit asked, so Michael Vick ate dog, eh?

Jackass.

Greg Pollowitz at NRO:

So as long as Aaron Sorkin has no idea how the animals are killed that fill his billy, cushion his buttocks, or shelter his feet, then it’s okay? I guarantee that caribou suffered far less than any of the farm-raised meat products Sorkin consumes every day. And his statement, “you enjoy killing animals” is ridiculous. She killed the animal for food. Again, Sorkin is happy to have someone else kill his animals for him, but those who actually do the killing are somehow “faux-macho s***heads?” If Sorkin is so against the actual killing of animals, he should grab a lettuce wrap and shut up.

Damn skippy.  Sorkin comes off as one of those arrogant know-it-alls who wouldn’t understand that hunting keeps animal populations healthy.  Hunters are good.  Yes, they have permits to prevent over-hunting.  And yes, they eat what they kill.  Proudly.

UPDATE: Dan Rhiel has the episode video.

UPDATE: linked & tweeted by Pundette.  Thanks!

Best idea evah: Palin for RNC chair. Update: Bummer.

I’m not sure how I missed this a few months ago, but Katrina Trinko on the Corner points out the idea isn’t a new one. 

From Politico:

The Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips has sent a letter to former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin  asking her to run for chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“In order for the Tea Party/Conservative movement to be successful, we have to have someone conservative running the GOP,” Phillips told POLITICO. “She is the perfect candidate. If she does not try, I am afraid we will end up with just another establishment flunky running the party and the [Republicans in name only] will control the party again.”

“She has a track record of cutting wasteful spending, which has occurred under the watch of Michael Steele,” he added. “Finally, she is simply a rock star. She can raise money like no one else out there that I can think of.”

In his letter to Palin, Phillips pleaded, “We need you as Chairman of the RNC. You have shown in the past no hesitation to take on the establishment…If we end up with establishment control of the GOP and their support for an establishment candidate in 2012, Obama and the socialists will have won.”

The argument has merits.  The fire Palin would draw as RNC chair–and the money–would divert attention from candidates.  She could continue sticking a fork in the eye of liberals.  Those in the party who question her governing might could sit back and relax. 

 

Kevin Williamson‘s original post in the wake of yet another Steel flub a few months ago:

Re: Steele and the RNC: Allow me to chime in with my usual observation on this subject: This is a job for Sarah Palin. Palin would be a much better RNC chairman than presidential candidate or freelance kingmaker. She’d raise tons of money and help recruit good candidates, i.e., she’d excel at doing the things Steele should have been doing instead of appointing himself Republican pundit-at-large.

A Chairman Palin would help set the right tone for the Republican party without having to get herself entangled in the minutiae of policy-development, which has not been her forte. Sure, she’d be polarizing, but so is Barack Obama, and these are polarized times. And it’s one thing to have a polarizing party chairman, another to have a polarizing candidate.

Anybody disagree?

Nope.

 

(And based on the comment thread at TMPDC, it would drive liberals insane.  All the more delicious, no?)

 

H/T: Memeorandum.

Update: Ah, easy come, easy go.  Sarah’s not interested.  This doesn’t bode well for those who worry she will run.  Or maybe it’s just meant to drive liberals absolutely nuts before ’12 even hits?  From her comments to ABC:

“I respect the desire to have someone in charge of the RNC who understands the wishes of the conservative grassroots and understands that power resides with the people and not the vested interests in DC. However, the primary role of the RNC chair seems be that of fundraiser-in-chief, and there are others who would probably be much more comfortable asking people for money than I would be, and they would definitely enjoy it more.”

Hey Maureen: Pot calling the kettle black? (and no, ma’am, I’m not racist).

The stupidity overwhelms me, but here goes anyway.  Maureen Dowd  spewing venomous vitriol in today’s NYT:

As I sat above the Hoover Dam under the broiling sun, I was getting jittery.

There was Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, speaking at the dedication of a bridge linking Arizona and Nevada 890 feet above the Colorado River.

As the politicians droned on and my Irish skin turned toasty brown, I worried that Governor Brewer might make a citizen’s arrest and I would have to run for my life across the desert. She has, after all, declared open season on anyone with a suspicious skin tone in her state.

Seriously?  Wait, wait, there’s more:

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women — Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine — have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

The Republican Mean Girls? Oh, Maureen, how quickly we forget.  Bushworld ring a bell?  How about this this this this this this this or this?  Lest I forget this?  If anyone knows how to “spread rumors,” sweetheart, it’s you, with a side of snide, snark, and belittling. 

Just saying.

What is it about women?  Women can be opinionated–if and only if said opinions remain in line with the sole tenet of lockstep liberal womanhood: abortion, abortion, abortion. 

I only wish I could vote for every single one of them–Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Sarah, Christine (and how could MoDo forget Nikki Haley?!)

If I were a Democrat, I could.  Sigh.  Such is life, no?

UPDATE: Allahpundit used MoDo’s screed as part of the Quotes of the Day.  Scroll through for some choice rebuttal from Dana Perino.