In 1993, the big problems of the voting cities and states – crime, disorder and excessive local taxation – could convincingly be laid at the doors of out-of-touch Democratic administrations. Republicans offered credible alternatives: welfare reform, broken windows policing, and reform of government spending.

Today’s big problem is the economy of course. Republicans and conservatives would like to blame the recession on the president. In time perhaps that accusation will gain greater credibility. For now, though, it’s still George Bush’s recession and we remain George Bush’s party.

Huh? Frum has been arguing a long time that we need to remain “moderate,” i.e., he wants us to be George Bush’s party, now and forever. So why does he point that out as a negative here?

Why does anyone listen to this guy? He expects us to follow his advice for the future, yet in his announcement of the conversion of New Majority to FrumForum, he admits to incredible short-sightedness (emphasis mine):

From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.

Ah, way to be forward-looking, Mr. Frum! Of course I will trust the future of conservatism to you! Why wouldn’t I?

But I have been inspired. Not enough to write anything of my own, for the moment. But enough to think I’ll get back in the swing of thing in the next few days. The inspiration comes from Moe Lane, who offers the wittiest thing I’ve seen written in all the bloggery over Obama’s anf Oprah’s failure to ensure the enrichment of their Chicago friends with the 2016 Olympics at the expense of the general population of the city:

Wow.  Can the IOC come back tomorrow and eliminate Chicago from consideration again?  This is proving to be unexpectedly entertaining.

Like I said. Inspired.

Chris Matthews, adult adoption provider

Michelle Malkin has warned against the politicization of Kennedy’s death (Stacy McCain wasn’t listening), but, as Ed Morrissey points out at HotAir, that advice does not apply to Kennedy’s allies (even the media, who denies being an ally), and especially not to Chris Matthews who took it upon himself to make Barack Obama a part of the Kennedy family (metphorically) or,  Nancy Pelosi, who managed to hold out for several hours before issuing a middle-of-the night statement to reporters calling for passage of the health care bill in honor of Kennedy.

Expect a lot of what Michelle is calling “wretched excess” in the media coverage of Kennedy’s life. But what the hell, they said the same thing about us when Reagan died. Everyone’s entitled to be memorialized by those that love them best. (And if you say, “Yeah, but Reagan was a great man,” you’re proving my point.)

But memorializing is one thing. Using someone’s death to further a cause, as Matthews and Pelosi both did, is another. I don’t remember anyone saying, “In honor of the dearly departed President Reagan, we really need to dismantle the department of education.”

Kennedy’s dead and that’s that. The “Lion of the Senate” is entitled to be lionized by his . . . lionizers, I guess. And while I feel no need to politicize his death, I will sure politicize the politicization of it by The Left.

UPDATE: Professor Jacobsen is sympatico and reminds us that Rush was Right.

I will never vote for Mitt Romney again (and I did vote for him in the primaries); nor will I vote for Huckabee. I will vote for Palin or Jim DeMint if he happens to run. All the rest of the Republican establishment can go straight to hell.

Well, it’s hard not to feel likewise about the Republican establishment. But it’s hard for me to get worked up over a Sarah Palin candidacy. I like her, but I fear she has been too damaged by the media and her own performance during the campaign to recover, even with the election more than three years off.

Embarrassing and shameful!

. . . but also that some of it was hidden inside a box of Boca “meatless burgers.”

Even more embarrassing and shameful!

Hat tip to Fred Thompson, who made the point well this morning on his radio show: A man who eats meatless burgers has no business being in Congress, and he (Thompson) would rather admit to having $90,000 in cash in his freezer than admit to having meatless burgers in it.

Amen.

I woke up in the middle of the night and realized the trick.

You see, evil doesn’t just show up.  It disguises itself as something nice; so you’ll let it in.  It tricks you.

From there, she’s off to the races against a government takeover of health care.

But, to the vampire comparison . . .

It’s been a long time since I read Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, but I seem to remember that one characteristic of the vampires in King’s novel was that they could not enter your home unless they were invited. You’d think that would keep you pretty safe, right? Well, not so much. You see, the vampires were just so charming — with lies and promises — that they could convince you to let them in even when you knew they were vampires. It took great force of will to resist them.

So it is with statists and the public. The vast majority of people seem so charmed by statist promises that they are prepared to invite the statist in even though they know the statist will rob them of liberty. It seems like so few people even recognize the evils or end results of statism well enough to have the force of will to refuse its charms.

UPDATE (7/12/09): Mike at Cold Fury features this image at the top of his sidebar and has kindly extended permission for me to use it here to better illustrate the statist vampire:

Sue them, bankrupt them, ruin their lives, destroy their careers, shut down their blogs and other propaganda outlets, get ‘em locked up wherever possible. Kick them in the teeth again and again, until they howl in pain from the gutter they roll in. Scorch the very earth under their feet. Unleash pure hell on them, and make every single day of their lives a horror and a misery — just as they did to you, just as they’ve done to so many other decent men and women who have the temerity to disagree with their anti-American ideal of what this country should be. Liberal asswipes have gotten away with this sort of thing for far too long.

And here he was yesterday:

And for the rest of us, attack them we must. We must leave no stone unturned when it comes to Democrat Socialists at every level of government and their bought and paid-for media whores; we should mete out to them, measure for measure, the same vicious vitriol that they hurl at us. We should plow them under, bury them, and salt the earth over their heads. We should go after every last one of them — from Obama on down — not with open hearts and hands, but with clenched fists and hard-hearted ruthlessness.

It will never be enough merely to defeat them; we must destroy them utterly, with every means we can possibly find to use, fair or foul. From here on out, the question should never be: is this polite? Is this decent? Does this make us more like them than we’re comfortable being? Rather, it should be: is this effective? Does it lead us to victory? Does it assure that, when they smear and vilify us, they know there will be a heavy price to pay for it?

The stakes here are way too high to pull our punches in the name of supposedly fighting fair; the stakes are our country, our freedom, and likely enough, our very lives. Anyone who thinks these things not worth fighting hammer and tongs for ought to step aside until the dust settles.

I’m with him all the way, as long as he is not advocating throwing around lies and frivolous ethics charges. With the abundance of corruption in politics, we shouldn’t need either. But I’m all for exposing skeletons in the closet, as long as they are real skeletons.

Alaska should be safe, now, with Sarah Palin resigning.

But what the heck are we supposed to make of this? This may be a “new beginning” for her, but only in a personal sense. It’s hard to see her as a serious presidential contender in 2012. She’ll now be painted as a quitter in addition to  whatever other charges are leveled against her. And to the extent she was hounded from office by frivolous ethics complaints and the expense of fighting them, claiming to be worried about taxpayer money being wasted on those investigations is overshadowed by caving in to those tactics and can only encourage their more widespread use.

I’m afraid Ace and Allahpundit are right — her presidential chances are dead — and Smitty is dreaming. It’s a nice dream, but a dream nonetheless. Sarah’s finished. Though I’d love to be proven wrong.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey captures my thoughts:

I liked Sarah Palin and supported her inclusion on the GOP ticket last fall.  I thought she had more toughness than this.  It’s a big disappointment, and it’s the end of any hope of Palin getting taken seriously as a politician on the national level in the future.

UPDATE #2: With a link to Sister Toldjah, The Anchoress reminds us to maintain some perspective:

Sister Toldjah: has links to important stories you’re missing, while you’re either crying about Palin or laughing about her. Good point. Since we know nothing, it might be good to think about why Obama is against new sanctions against Iran, but strongly supporting them for Honduras.

UPDATE #3: American Power chronicles lefty reactions.

UPDATE #4: Hell, maybe OCBill, commenting at The Anchoress, has it right:

Career is not over unless she wants it to be. The “career over” people already didn’t like her. People who like her, mostly because of her ideas, will back her when ever she wants to come back into public life. Unless it turns out that she has a soulmate in Argentina.

Apparently, there are people who just are not going to let this thing die. I’m not saying that’s good or bad. Again, I haven’t really kept up with it. But in the process of following up on this, I’m glad to see a (new) conservative recognize what I see as the Republicans’ biggest weakness: a lack of drive.

Start with Stacy McCain’s profile of one woman’s mission (emphasis his):

Sunday I had a phone conversation with Cynthia Yockey in which she calmly and cheerfully explained that she was going to get David Letterman fired. Republicans are too willing to take that kind of abuse, Cynthia said, but she comes out of the gay-rights movement, and they don’t roll that way.

We talked a while, but the main thing I took away from the conversation was Cynthia’s determination to fight a one-woman campaign against Letterman. Even if no one else joined her anti-Letterman crusade, she would fight on alone. As long as it takes, whatever it takes, she has envisioned her goal, and intends to achieve it.

Dave has pissed off the wrong lesbian.

So, I headed over the Cynthia Yockey’s blog, “A Newly Conservative Lesbian,”where I see a series of posts regarding her quest. And this one really jumped out at me (emphasis in original):

Sebastian Gray, at HillBuzz, wrote about the difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding putting in the effort required to get what you want from government and corporations on June 12 when he predicted it would require 30 days of persistent, consistent effort to get David Letterman fired. He also wrote:

As a lifelong Democrat, I’m frequently perplexed by some of the behavior of all the Republican friends I made during the McCain/Palin campaign when those of us here at HillBuzz led Democrats for McCain efforts with our whole heart and soul.

Republicans give up so damn easy at just about everything.

OMG, he was right!

That’s it in a nutshell. Maybe it’s because Republicans have a tougher job. It is much, much easier to agitate as a “progressive” for change than it is to agitate as a conservative to change things back, which is what we have to do as conservatives. Otherwise, all we do is slow the rate at which society changes for the worse, instead of stopping it or reversing it.

I’m as tired as the next conservative of Republicans bringing knives to gunfights. But a campaign to get Letterman fired doesn’t really fit into the type of fight that conservatives have to wage in the long term. It far more resembles the typical lefty hissy fit in its origins (a “joke”) and objectives (getting someone to pay with their job). I’m not saying Cynthia Yockey is wrong to wage it, and it’s a useful campaign for exposing double standards (Letterman vs. Imus) if nothing else. And perhaps if it puts some fire in the bellies of conservatives that can be transferred to more long-term causes, it will be useful no matter how it turns out.

Anyway, McCain’s post about relentlessness brought to mind a movie. Not Rocky, Rudy, Norma Rae, or any movie similarly infused with the theme. No, for sheer relentlessness, what immediately came to mind was this infamous clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which suggests that relentlessness alone may not get us anywhere:

Admirable nonetheless, though. If we can employ that degree of relentlessness in smarter fashion, we’ll do OK in the long run.

UPDATE (6/16/09): Caught 15 minutes or so of the first hour of today’s Michael Medved radio show this afternoon, and he’s really against any further protest or effort to get Letterman fired, especially in light of Sarah Palin’s acceptance today of Letterman’s apology. (Notably, there is serious disagreement over whether Letterman delivered a “real” apology or one of the “non-apology apologies” that have become so popular the last ten years or so.)

Medved insisted that being conservative doesn’t mean you have to be “stupid and angry and agitated over something meaningless,” which is how he sees this issue. Most importantly, and most relevant to Stacy McCain’s praise for Ms. Yockey’s relentlessness, Medved also insists that the chances of getting Letterman fired are less then zero. In fact, he cited several examples of fruitless or even counterproductive protests against media (by the left as well).

There was an interesting diversity of thought among his callers. If, like me, you doubt the wisdom of a continued campaign against Letterman, you might want to track down a podcast you can find a podcast for this.

Morrissey closes his post with this:

In 2012, Republicans can point to the radicals Obama appointed to positions at OLC and show voters that he was lying about being a moderate. That’s where the effort needs to go.  Filibusters on appointments for ideological disagreements are every bit as illegitimate in 2009 as they were in 2005.

Morrissey is way too optimistic about 2012. I have no idea why he thinks the slobbering press coverage of Obama during the 2008 campaign will be any different then.  In that environment, how successful does he think Republicans could actually be at getting out the message he suggests?

And why not do both?  Threaten a filibuster and then, after the inevitable failure because of another “gang of 14,” hammer Obama in 2012?  At least if they do both, Republicans could say in 2012 that they tried to stop the radical train Obama had claimed not to be driving. Why not bring that up now instead of in 2012?

But I’m afraid that won’t happen because, bogus accusations from Kossacks and DUmmies notwithstanding, Republicans are always bringing knives to a gunfight.  They are so cowed by press coverage and distortions of their positions that they refuse to take any.

Case in point: the Democrats never had to actually filibuster Bush’s nominees.  All they did was threaten filibuster, and that was enough to keep them from coming to a vote. The Republicans should have actually forced them to drone on and on on the senate floor.  For every American that saw someone taking a principled stand, there probably would have been two that saw the Democrats as obstructionist.  Any objection I might eventually have to a filibuster would be for this reason only — purely tactical. But if they can accomplish the same thing just by threatening one, I’m all for it.

And does he think for one minute that if Republicans refrain from this, it will make any difference in the future? Charles Krauthammer pointed out in 2005 that the Democrats’ use of the filibuster was unprecedented in many ways:

This technique is defended by Democrats as traditional and rooted in history. What a fraud. The only example that comes close is Lyndon Johnson’s nomination in 1968 of (sitting) Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice. But this case is muddied by the fact that (a) Fortas was subject to allegations involving conflictsof interest and financial impropriety, (b) he did not appear to have the votes anyway, and (c) the case involved elevation on the court, not appointment to the court.

Even if we concede Fortas, that is one successful filibuster, 37 years ago, in two centuries of American history. In 2000, a small number of Republicans tried to filibuster two Clinton judicial nominees but were defeated in that attempt not only by Democrats but also by Republicans voting roughly 3 to 1 for cloture. 

***

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist seems intent on passing a procedural ruling to prevent judicial filibusters. Democrats have won the semantic war by getting this branded “the nuclear option,” a colorful and deliberately inflammatory term (although Republican Trent Lott, ever helpful, appears to have originated the term). The semantic device reminds me of the slogan of the nuclear freeze campaign of the early 1980s: “Because nobody wants a nuclear war.” (Except Ronald Reagan, of course.)

Democrats are calling Frist’s maneuver an assault on the very essence of the Senate, a body distinguished by its insistence on tradition, custom and unwritten rules.

This claim is a comical inversion of the facts. One of the great traditions, customs and unwritten rules of the Senate is that you do not filibuster judicial nominees. You certainly do not filibuster judicial nominees who would otherwise win an up-or-down vote. And you surely do not filibuster judicial nominees in a systematic campaign to deny a president and a majority of the Senate their choice of judges. That is historically unprecedented.

If Republicans want to take a really principled stand, the could threaten a filibuster now but propose to take it off the table if legislation or senate rules (I’m just not sure what is necessary) abolished the filibuster on judicial nominees (or at least appellate court nominees) forever.  The change would have to be very hard to reverse, so Democrats could not change it later when they see the political ground shifting.  I’d have a hard time swallowing this change, too, but at least it would make it easier to accept a refusal to a filibuster now.

Don’t expect a repeat of the Gang of 14. I doubt there are any Democrats right now who have the obvious need for media love that the Republicans in the Gang of 14 so obviously craved. 

Morrissey is, I think, naive on this subject. Look at history, and you’ll see that Democrats (and Republicans) have definitely sharpened their knives.

Start with the Supreme Court. Reagan had one nominee (Robert Bork) rejected, but his other three nominees to the Supreme Court — O’Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy — received unanimous confirmation, which would never happen today. Under Bush 41, Souter (apparently a sleeper agent for The Left) sailed through with only 9 “no” votes, but Thomas barely made it, 52-48. In President Clinton’s first term, while Republicans were still in the minority, his two Supreme Court nominees — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer — received only 3 and 9 “no” votes, respectively.  And that was after Ginsburg avoided answering nearly every question on the ground that it would be inappropriate to comment on matters that might come before her as a justice (an innovation Bush’s nominees likewise exploited, to some extent). Then the votes on Alito and Roberts under Bush 43 were 58-42 and 78-22, respectively.

On to the appellate courts, where it looks like both sides have sharpened their knives.  According to a report from the Congressional Research Service (PDF):

Over the course of five successive presidencies, the Senate confirmation percentage for a President’s circuit court nominations has declined.

The great majority of each President’s district and circuit court nominations have been confirmed, except for the circuit court nominations of Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush 

The confirmation percentage for district and circuit court nominations combined was greater than 60% for every congressional session from 1977 through 1990, whereas the district and circuit combined confirmation rate has been less than 60% for nine of the last 13 congressional sessions. !The average number of days elapsing between nomination date and confirmation has been higher for most Congresses in the post-1990 period than for prior Congresses. 

Starting with the 100th Congress (1987-1988), and in five of the eight Congresses since, an average of more than 100 days has elapsed between nomination dates and committee votes on either district or circuit court nominations, or on both. 

For almost every Congress in the post-1990 period, the percentages of district and circuit court nominations left pending at the end of the Congress were higher than corresponding percentages for the pre-1990 Congresses.

The Senate returned substantially more nominations during the 102nd, 106th, and 107th Congresses than during any other Congresses in the 1977-2002 period. 

The average number of days between nomination date and final action increased in Congresses ending in presidential election years. 

The vast majority of judicial nominations submitted during the 1977-2003 period received committee hearings and votes, as well as full Senate votes. However, the share of nominations receiving committee and Senate action declined during the 102nd , 106th, and 107th Congresses, and less than half of the circuit court nominations in the current 108th Congress received Senate votes on whether to confirm by the end of the first session.

Over the course of five successive presidencies, the Senate confirmation percentage for a President’s circuit court nominations has declined.

I’m afraid Morrissey’s argument is one for unilateral disarmament after one’s adversary has developed a new weapon. It would amount to a “nuclear option” that applies only when Republicans are out of power.  That’s not the high road.  That’s driving over it’s edge.

UPDATE and CORRECTION: 

I realized that in one place in the post I said not to expect another “Gang of 14″ yet in another said another “Gang of 14″ was “inevitable.” Hopefully, my meaning was clear from the context, but I should clear it up.  My reference to “inevitable” really meant that some Republicans would cave, not necessarily that they would have to join with Democrats to reach a consensus.  By saying not to expect another, I meant that Democrats have no incentive to join in one and won’t need to.

Now, for my updated thought . .  . I think the effectiveness of filibuster at enhancing 2012 prospects will depend largely on how well targeted the filibusters are. Morrissey advocates against opposing nominees because of ideological disagreements, but that is too absolute a rule. If filibusters are limited to the most radical fringe nominees, Republicans could later point to that exercise of discretion to say, “we weren’t obstructionist, we approved almost everyone; we reserved the filibuster  only for the most radical of the nominees,” then detail why those nominees were radical.  (Of course, if the filibusters fail, the nominees become appointees and we will have plenty of first hand experience with their radicalism.)

From what I’ve read, appellate court nominee David F. Hamilton seems to fit this description to a “T” — making it very smart for Obama to make Hamilton his first judicial nominee. No matter how well-deserved the criticism, Obama can argue that Republicans filibustered his very first judicial nominee and thus were obstructionists right out of the box.

UPDATE #2: Here’s a little Rule 2 for RSM’s generous response to my Rule 1 plea.