More Evidence that Centrists Democrats Are Dead

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ben Smith of POLITICO is reporting that the Democrat leadership Council is on it’s last paws and about to go belly up. This is one more little hint that the centrist, the moderate, or the “Blue Dog” Democrat is truly an extinct animal in America today. The Donkey’s big tent is more like a birdcage cover any more and apparently that cage holds only the red crested, double fisted, lefty bird.

The Democratic Leadership Council was the “iconic” centrist Democrat political organization founded during the Clinton years that had quite a lot of influence at the time. Many styled the DLC as the rebirth of the Democrat Party after the failures of the liberal wing in the 60s and 70s. But as the years have worn onward, there have been fewer and fewer centrist Democrats to be had with few of them in any position of power in Washington. With the Pelosi/Reid/Obama wing of the Democrats gaining power the Democrat Party itself has marched quickly toward the far left leaving the small coterie of Blue Dogs on the outside looking in.
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More Evidence that Centrists Democrats Are Dead”


Politico Says Florida’s Allen West Will Become the Alan Grayson of the Right?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Lt. Col. Allen West is one of the most stand up guys you’ll ever meet. He first came to the public eye when his interrogation of an Iraqi yielded lifesaving results even as it was a bit unorthodox. His professional handling of that incident put him on a track to run for Florida’s 22nd District House seat, a race he won handily despite the left’s unhinged attacks upon him.

West ran a clean campaign in Florida’s 22nd. He avoided over-the-top attacks on his opponent and did not indulge fits of name-calling. This is not to say that he soft-pedaled his opinions on just how wrong the Democrats were as he sought to delineate the policy differences between himself and the left he was battling. But West did campaign with a serious tone and an even-tempered demeanor. He was not an arm waver, he did not indulge flights of fantastic conspiracies, nor did he employ vile attack ads in his race. Pointed rhetoric? Yes. Obscene, wild-eyed, foaming at the mouth attacks? Not at all.

With that said, why does Politico seem to think that Allen West is on track to become the right’s version of the despicable Alan Grayson, also a Floridian?
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Politico Says Florida’s Allen West Will Become the Alan Grayson of the Right?”


In Which I Come to Meghan McCain’s Defense… Sort Of

-By Warner Todd Huston

Politico must feel it has a delicious little story of media feuding to report upon. Recently Meghan McCain shook her head in amazement that President Obama would stoop so low as to appear on a Ryan Seacrest show. Seacrest has shot back at McCain snarking that McCain herself tried to get on his show, so what’s the deal with her criticism he wonders? For its part Politico is lapping it all up. But the whole story misses an important point, one that mitigates in favor of McCain’s point.

When it was announced that President Obama was going on Seacret’s show, McCain was somewhat aghast at it all. Of the plans, McCain said, “there is something so unbelievably desperate and sad about the president going on Ryan Seacrest -exactly WHO is on his communications staff?” She went on to say, “it is belittling to The Office of The Presidency. But at the end of the day, it’s all good things for Republicans…”
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In Which I Come to Meghan McCain’s Defense… Sort Of”


Politico Lying about Palin Again?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Radio host Mark Levin says that Politico’s piece slamming Sarah Palin today is an outright lie, at least as far as his part in the story is concerned.

In a long piece by Jonathan Martin about how he thinks Sarah is wrecking havoc on GOP politics across the country, he says this

According to a source familiar with the situation, she backed out of planned interviews with conservative talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin the morning she was scheduled to talk to them. And her multiple schedule changes so annoyed Glenn Beck that he finally decided not to have her on his radio or TV show to promote the book.

Levine says that this is flat out untrue. On his Twitter feed, Levine wrote:

This is a flat out lie. Sarah Palin never backed out of any interview with me. Period.

One wonders why Martin didn’t actually practice proper journalism and check out the claims of his “source familiar with the situation” and call Hannity and Levine and see whether or not it was true from their perspective?

So much for “journalism,” eh?

On her Twitter feed, Governor Palin tsked Mr. Martin:

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny…ya just made big mistake lying about Levin, Beck, Rush…U can lie about me, but taking on the Big Guns? Not smart

She cracks me up.
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Politico Lying about Palin Again?”


Politico Ignores Dems. Culture of Corruption to Talk of GOP’s ‘Offbeat Candidates’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Interestingly, Politico is trying to rearrange this election’s narrative from the real one of widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Democrat status quo to one of “offbeat GOP candidates” that will “hurt the GOP.”

Gee, why would that be, eh?

As Democrats all across the land are either stepping aside so as not to face difficult reelection campaigns, or losing their incumbent seats to primary challenges, the latest polls show the GOP beating the heck out of Democrats on a generic ballot. Further, Republican voters are energized as never before and 57% of poll respondents even say that the Democrat’s agenda is “too extreme.” But even with all this Politico sees defeat in the wind for the GOP. They’d be about the only ones that do, too.
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Politico Ignores Dems. Culture of Corruption to Talk of GOP’s ‘Offbeat Candidates’”


Is The Tea Party Like A Starfish, Like the Apache… Like al Qaeda?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Politico’s Kenneth Vogel has an interesting piece on a book that Tea Party activists are starting to glom onto as an administrative guidebook of sorts. The book, “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” is a book that explains how leaderless organizations work and can be effective. Of late tea partiers have accepted the tome as a way to explain the success of their movement as well as a way to legitimize their hold on a certain amount of power into the future.

The book, written by two lefty Stanford MBAs, has become what Vogel calls an “unlikely” guidebook for a conservative movement.

The principle of the book is in its title. The spider of the title is the typical top-down organization. Cut the spider’s head off and you have a dead spider and presumably, in the analogy, a dead organization. However, a starfish can regenerate itself if it loses an arm. Further that severed arm can also become a starfish that lives on because there is no “head” per se in a starfish. Cut up a starfish and you have many smaller starfish, not a dead one.

The thought is that the tea party movement is like a starfish. No head, no hierarchy, no way to “kill” it in the traditional sense.

Now, I must say one thing about Vogel’s piece. It will certainly destroy the left’s contention that the tea party movement is an “astroturf” effort. For the entire first year of its existence the left has tried to claim, falsely, that the tea party movement was invented by Fox News, or is a top-down creation by folks like Dick Army, former Congressman and top man for FreedomWorks.
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Is The Tea Party Like A Starfish, Like the Apache… Like al Qaeda?”


Politico Misleads on NJ Gov. Chiristie’s Immigration Position

-By Warner Todd Huston

This morning Ben Smith of Politico posted a story that essentially mislead readers about what newfound conservative hero Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey thought about immigration. Smith’s article spun Christie into an “amnesty” supporter when it doesn’t seem he is. One has to wonder why Smith did this?

Among many other issues, in the multipage interview with Gov. Christie Smith broached the immigration issue. Being a governor, Christie is faced with as much trouble over the issue as any other, of course, but Smith’s characterization of Christie’s position on immigration would tend to make one feel that Christie is an amnesty supporter. In fact, Smith seems to impute several ideas or feelings into Christie’s replies that may not have been in them at all.

First off, Smith says that Christie had “long declined to ‘demagogue’ the issue” of immigration. It does not seem, however, that Christie has ever claimed to have a long record of refusing to “demagogue” the immigration issue.
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Politico Misleads on NJ Gov. Chiristie’s Immigration Position”