Rush Pounds The Table

“When the law is against you, pound the facts, when the facts are against you, pound the law, and when they’re both against you, pound the table”.

Rush Limbaugh isn't working for John McCain for President.
He's working against any liberal (including John McCain) for President.

RUSH: I'll admit it. I don't know what the hell McCain is saying, other than he's spouting some liberal stuff in this speech at Annapolis today about the haves and have-nots. I agree with all that. But I will say this: If he's going to lecture the American people about who they need to be, he might be just a little bit off the mark. Let him attack the liberals (which he won't do). Let him attack the bureaucrats (which he won't do). Let him attack the judges (which he won't do). But the American people, generally, are the people who make the country work. It's sort of way off to start criticizing the American people in general. Look, I will admit I'm confused. If he can't give a speech where we can understand what he's saying, then it isn't a very good speech.

I know that emotion. I voted against George Bush.

Conservatives are stuck with a weak candidate and there's nothing to do but pound the table.

Why Obama is Ahead on Experience

Common wisdom says that time allows you to forget the bad and only remember the good. My wife assures me that this is how nature tricks us into having more than one child.

Having never been through childbirth I have to refer to other examples. Perhaps it's this selective amnesia that allows men to love again, to have just one more drink, or to bet heavily on the favorite in a playoff game - all the while going against experience that should inform better judgment.

Experience is the topic of conversation on the campaign trail on the eve of crucial Presidential Primary voting tomorrow.

John McCain has experience. He's pretty old for sure and he's been in the US Senate a long time. How does that work for him in a year when a large number of the US electorate don't remember Viet Nam, or the Moon landing or a time when nobody had steel belted radial tires and everybody had a dial telephone? McCain has never struck me as someone who was consulted a lot on domestic or foreign policy initiatives. But he will always have my thanks for working with Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to overthrow the incompetent leadership of Bill Frist in the Senate and work with the, "Gang of 14" to end an ugly partisan stalemate. His experience also includes the Keating 5 scandal and years of relationships with special interests and lobbyists. His comments about a hundred year war were immediately distorted by his opponents but the true nature of his words may actually be worse - indicating a continuing cold war "Bulwark of Demomcracy" mentality which is now about as quaint and useful as the Maginot Line.

Senator Clinton, as she constantly reminds us, has experience. The problem is that we also have experience - with her. A lot of us just don't like her. And her politicking has not improved her. The flattering sincerity of, "I'm honored" to be running against Senator Obama, followed within hours by a public scolding, "Shame on you Barack Obama" struck me as the kind of thing you dump a lover for. It's certainly not a reason to propose marriage. Perhaps she's hoping for the, "Experienced Woman Scorned" vote.

And that leaves Barack Obama. Without much national experience, he comes off looking better than either of his rivals because he has a lot less explaining to do.

All he has to do is win.

Running Against Hope

Frank Rich has written a brilliant op-ed piece in New York Times called, "The Audacity of Hopelessness"

This is insightful commentary on both the strategic and rhetorical shortcomings of the Clinton campaign.

Some Highlights:

"Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating."

"As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country."

Meanwhile on the right, the butchers of red meat radio are reminding us that Obama is actually half white...meaning what exactly? On Tuesday Sean Hannity went straight to race baiting with commentary about the black agenda of Obama's pastor. (It's a seemingly conservative agenda of personal responsibility and self reliance.)

I'm looking forward to having the right wing radio talkers expose themselves as ignorant boobs they are. They don't have the skill to negotiate the racial tightrope but they won't be able to keep off the race issue. That's all it's going to take to challenge the broadcast companies who keep putting them on the air.

UPDATE 2.26.08 - SPEAKING OF THE DEVILS

McCain Rebukes Radio Host For Obama Talk

Hey Mister, muzzle your dog.

It's Not About Race or Gender - It's about the GOP

OK,

This is a blog about media, not politics, but so much about the media and politics are one and the same - especially when voters choose candidates through the media. So I feel I have to say a few things about how the media - and the message of each candidate is playing in public. I'll do that by demonstrating how perceptive American voters are this year.

First, the Republicans. The last three months are too much to cover. However, let's recall last summer when Rudy Giuliani was the front runner. Mr. Giuliani chose a strategy that killed his campaign - i.e. don't campaign. His thought was that this was strictly a numbers game and all he had to do was win delegates in the large early states. He was wrong. The voters punished him for not being in the fight. He was seen as a "coffee cooler" to borrow a Civil War phrase - a man who sits out the battle with his comrades drinking coffee while others are at the front.

Romney was a shill from day one. A man of large personal fortune with no personal conviction that could be seen in his record. He couldn't raise enough money to compete so he spent his own cash for an agenda he may (or may not) beleive in.
It's pretty clear now though, that he has bought something that he hopes will be of great value in party politics...delegates that can be traded for influence, and a wedge he can drive against John McCain.

John McCain. He's such a maverick even he isn't sure where he stands. But actually, he's only a maverick in the terms defined by rigid right wing politics that demands an almost Kremlin like adherence to party discipline. This man had his arms broken and his teeth knocked out by the NVA torturers in Hanoi and voters respect the hell out of his fortitude. He's not likely to be much afraid of the right wing ideologues who are horrified to find they've been voted out of the Reagan life boat even as they declare mutiny against their new captain. In the mainstream, McCain gets points for this.

Huckabee is the Confederate Candidate. Don't underestimate this man who knows how to call up the mysteries of faith and the Old South in the same sentence - the same way Obama sweeps up the spirit of the Old Republic. Huckabee knows how to call up ghosts and they are named Jackson and Lee and Forrest. He is all about Southern pride and this is not a thing to take lightly into any American campaign. He doesn't have to win the majority to be a critical voice among Conservative GOP voters. Expect him to have good southern manners, but don't expect him to go quietly.

Ron Paul. He is the beloved uncle of this campaign and the GOP Ralph Nader if he isn't careful. We all hear his message of simpler times and of his love for Constitution and country. No one has said more on behalf of our early National values in this election. But the Civil War, two World Wars, the Cold War, Viet Nam and 3 wars in the Middle East stand between him and current global realities. I wish we could go back - but I'm not confident he could take us there even if he were elected.

Next time, the Democrats.