The New York Observer has a fascinating article examing Neddy Lamont's all-but-dead campaign for the Joe Lieberman's Senate seat.

That Lamont is polling poorly is old news, so old its dates from the first day of the general election. None of this came as a surprise to just about every pundit in the country--Lamont won the ultra-liberal vote in the primary, but the general election was about real folks--working class Democrats, independents, Republicans, etc... I don't recall seeing a single prediction by anyone without a compelling interest in the campaign, that Neddy would actually win.

Still, you go through the process because the other guy might screw up, John Kerry might say something stupid--you never know.

Such are the fortunes of campaigning--at least when you have the nutroots involved.

...and we're off to the races--nutroots, Democrat party elite, Ned Lamont, Lamont's campaign team--the finger-pointing is already pretty intense.

Still, bloggers held Mr. Wolfson responsible for the campaign’s derailment. This month, the left-wing Huffington Post compiled its readers’ grievances about the fizzling campaign into a premature concession speech for Mr. Lamont.

“I turned my campaign over to hired guns who think that running to the middle is a winning strategy—even though it’s proven to be a loser time and time and time again,” the post read.

In a recent post for his popular left-wing political blog MyDD, Matt Stoller called Democratic leaders “moral lepers” for abandoning Mr. Lamont.

“What I have seen in this race is a complete abrogation of responsibility on the part of everybody except the netroots and Ned Lamont,” Mr. Stoller said in a telephone interview. “Trusting these people is a huge tactical error. Never trust anything that these insider Democrats tell you,” he said, adding, for good measure, “Bill Clinton is a liar.”

Bill is a liar? Talk about your slow learners. Maybe people who don't do their homework end up writing left-wing blogs [yeah, low blow, but I just couldn't resist...]

Matt Stoller's comments reveal an amazing naivete for a grown man. Trust? The nutroots are simply way out of their league. Any successful politician (working in elective office or not...) knows that what makes a deal work is that all the parties involved have an interest in making it work. On that basis, what are the respective interests of the nutroots, Ned Lamont and Democrat party officials?

Nutroots obviously wanted to push out the moderates in their party.

Ned Lamont just wanted to get elected to the Senate.

Democrat party officials wanted neither.

I'm was actually very surprised they got as far as they did. Although the nutroots are fantastically naive, the Democrat elite were clearly asleep at the switch to let themselves be put in a position where they had to alienate what everyone had to know, was the eventual winner of the general election.

That fact doesn't argue well for a Democrat victory, and we've seen other evidence of disarray. The Crats are in an awkward spot--if they win control of the House, its generally conceded that it will be really a matter of the Republicans losing rather than the engineering of a victory. If they lose, we'll see the Lamont Lament by an order of magnitude.

The Drudge flash of today warned that several "smartcards" have gone missing in Tennessee.

I have seen the future and there are lawyers in it.

Like the past three elections, this one will be close and ultimately be settled by lawyers and not votes.

In 2000, they blamed butterfly ballots, in 2004 they blamed optical scan. This year the stage is set for blaming rigged voting machines for the coming Democrat loss.

Of course if the Democrat win in court, it was justice. If the Republicans win in court, it will be a travesty. Not since 2000, will it be so clearly a judicial judgment call. Its conceivable that lawyer will be able to disqualify all the votes from a particular voting machine, tactically selecting machines in precincts for legal attack.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the accusations being made about the electronic voting machines are true or not--the left has managed successfully to get the issue into the news cycle.

Perception is now reality.

While I don't agree with Krauthammer's pessimism on the elections this year, he does make some excellent points in his premature post-mortem of the "Republican loss".

What to say about such a victory? Substantial, yes. Historic, no. Before proclaiming a landslide, one has to ask Henny Youngman's question: "Compared to what?" (His answer to: "How's your wife?") Since the end of World War II, the average loss for a second-term presidency in its sixth year has been 29 House seats and six Senate seats. If you go back to Franklin Roosevelt's second term, the House loss average jumps to 35. Thus a 25/6 House and Senate loss would be about (and slightly below) the historical average.

I did not know that, not being old enough to have a political memory much past Jimmy Carter, but its interesting to contemplate the implication that even if Democrats win the House, they will have underperformed. If they don't, its a sign of weakness so profound that it argues for imminent political extinction.

The last scenario appears likely considering that shockingly strong economy and the continuing perception that Democrats are criminally irresponsible on security issues. Now I am sure some of my liberal readers will disagree-vehemently, pointing to issues like spending, etc..., but its an unavoidable fact that security and the economy are the main issues of concern for the majority of Americans.

In any event, the argument will be decided shortly.

More importantly, what does a weak victory or even a loss by the Democrats mean for the political future? What does it mean for the Republicans?

That's a discussion for November 8th (or later?)

Democrats are very, very busy conducting voter ressurections. Wait, you mean registrations, right? No I mean ressurections. 10,520 dead people are still on the voter roles in St. Louis and they are registered Democrat 4 to 1. They'll all be voting today. I predict, with complete certain, the polls will be open late in St. Louis due to "irregularities".

The Jim Webb campaign has actually complained to the FBI that the George Allen campaign is engaged in voter suppression efforts by--you guessed it--calling Crat voters and telling then they vote on Wednesday, or that they'll be arrested if they show up at the polls today.

Allen's GOTV must be just humming along if his campaign has so much time (not to mention lack of originality) to play "stupid Democrat" tricks. If I was a Democrat, I would be insulted that my party's candidate thought I was so stupid that I would fall for that crap, but then again, elitist sentiment is something you take for granted with the Crats.

I think a lot of this is an attempt by Democrats to squirm out of the expectations they've created for themselves. As noted the other day, the sixth year in a two term presidency is historically a time when Congress experiences a large shift, and even if the Crats win enough seats to gain control of the House and the Senate, it will be a below average transition by historical standards.

Should they lose?

Catastrophe of biblical proportions--dogs and cats living together.

The New York Times reluctantly admits that they've jumped the shark.

“Two years ago, winning 14 seats in the House would have been a pipe dream,” said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic organization. Now, Mr. Bennett said, failure to win the House, even by one seat, would send Democrats diving under their beds (not to mention what it might do to all the pundits).

“It would be crushing,” he said. “It would be extremely difficult.”

Mr. Cook put it more succinctly. “I think you’d see a Jim Jones situation — it would be a mass suicide,” he said.

...this by the way is the serious analysis.

There is simply no way, short of winning 35 seats in the house and running the table in the Senate, that the Crats can come out of this looking good. In my view, the "concern" over voter suppression and voting irregularities is just a way for them to cover their butts.

Its a big butt though, and they will need more material...

That's right folks--the polls aren't even closed and the moonbats have declared the vote stolen

And shoot me for saying this, but it won’t be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they’ll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.

For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We’ve found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here’s how they’ll do it, in three easy steps:.

The three easy steps are throwing out registrations, insisting on voter ID and spoiling ballots.

I kid you not.

The fact that this woman will be the new Speaker of the House was always a considerable concern for me. Less so because of what she'll do, because frankly, the Crats have no mandate, having run on nothing.

No what worries me is the perception by U.S. enemies. What happens in the next few months may mean the difference between life and death for many, many people all over the world. Its not just Americans who perceive the Democrats as weak. Right now in Iraq, you've got to figure that you just lost the Americans as a guarantee of security and you'd better make a deal with the Sunnis or Sadr, or whoever you local warlord is.

Its a hell of a thing to have to hope against all hope that the Crats will act responsibly in government. We are all literally in the hands of some of the biggest idiots in the world. Your children's lives could be miserable indeed.

I'm not going to have a lot of time today to blog, because frankly, I've been stealing time from my renumerative activities to pump it up pre-election. Nevertheless some thoughts on last night's rout.

Republican losses appear to be below average for the historical 6 year itch, but in my view that is less about inevitability than systemic problems in our political system that just breed overreach like a carcass breeds maggots. In one of those ironies I love to observe so much, small government conservatives succumbed to feeding at the trough as if they were northeastern liberals. Paradoxically perhaps, throwing out the Republicans was actually a good sign that the real brake on government spending still has plenty of pad left. If voters continue to abjure the excesses of government, then it bodes well for the country's economic well-being.

That's about the only bright spot, if you can call it that, that I can find.

Today, millions of Islamic extremists who might have been on the fence, are now volunteering for Jihad. Crats will be fuming to hear it, but let's face it--years of defeatist, isolationist and traitorous speech and behavior didn't go unnoticed. Bush and the Republicans were perceived as tough and resolute, and now Bush is a lame duck (Rumsfeld will probably resign at this point...), and the cut-and-run party is calling the shots.

Now some will argue no doubt that we have yet to see what Democrats will actually do, but you would be missing the point--just as this election was engineered by the mainstream media by a relentless one-sided propaganda assault on the American people, the facts are meaningless in light of the perception that has become "reality". The Democrats foisted the big lie on the American people that terrorism is a bigger problem today because of Iraq, but I'm here to tell you, terrorism is going to be a lot bigger problem today and tomorrow because the Democrats won last night.

Americans will die at the hands of terrorists as a result of this election. The only thing we don't know is how many.

One thing we do not have with the Democrat victory is a mandate. The Democrats forfeited that by running Republican lite candidates and foregoing a platform. That of course doesn't matter, Democrats can do whatever they want at this point and likely will. Their actions in the next couple of years will determine whether they can stay in place in the next election or be summarily dumped as a bad idea. Nancy Pelosi is probably pretty happy today, but the reality is that the entire future of the Democrat party is in her hands. If she doesn't have the stuff to maintain party discipline through 2008, she will have lost a one-in-a-generation opportunity. How tough will that be? Plenty tough. All the big egos and chairmanships go to unreconstructed liberals. It will be like herding cats. The left-wing of the party is going to be incredibly restive, demanding impeachment, withdrawal from Iraq, yada-yada-yada. There is nothing in Pelosi's background or legislative history to suggest that she has the skills for the job this is going to be.

While I think this election was bad for the country, its ironically very good for conservative bloggers like yours truly. I will be on Nancy Pelosi like white-on-rice and I won't be alone. One of the inescapable conclusions conservatives have to draw is that the mainstream media was very effective in creating a national monologue. Its true they are in decline, its true that talk radio is bigger than ever, its true that the blogosphere is a burgeoning influence, but its still penny-ante stuff when compared with the relentless barrage of a thousand voices singing from the same hymnal. We reach the Republican base, but clearly not enough of that somnambulent middle to make a case.

The reality of Iraq isn't the stupid contention that Bush doesn't have a plan, but that there is no clear, easy way to victory. Yet all the public heard was "Rumfeld's an idiot". Rumsfeld is probably the single most important Defense Secretary in the history of this country for one simple reason--we are in the midst of a revolution in military affairs.

What that means is that for whatever reasons, a core competence of the dominant power is rendered irrelevant, or a new dimension of warfare creates a new core competency. Or both. This is really what the war on terror is all about--a new kind of war for which we our strengths are irrelevant and in which the enemies strengths have no answer.

Have you ever heard of a Secretary of Defense getting the flack that Rumsfeld gets? To the point where he is an election issue? There is a simply reason for that--Rumsfeld is stepping on a lot of toes trying desperately to reform the military to meet the challenge of the new paradigm. The problem is of course is that every officer with a career is going to fight him tooth and nail to protect his turf.

About a week ago, I read a chilling quote from a soldier in Iraq

"It's frustrating, because it's hard to get into the fight," said Staff Sgt. Robert Wyper, 26, of Riverside, Calif., a squad leader with Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment. Wyper rides around the Mosul area in a Stryker armored vehicle. He has fired a total of four rounds from his weapon since he arrived in August, while several other soldiers said they had never pulled their trigger during their deployments. "The combat we have is on the enemy's terms," Wyper said. "You can shoot at the enemy, but how do you shoot at an IED?"

That is a perfect description of a revolution in military affairs--all our training, weaponry, superior numbers, superior technology--useless in the face of an enemy that simply doesn't engage our strength but rather assaults us where we are weak.

How are more troops a solution for this problem?

How does pulling out of Iraq confront the new paradigm in military affairs to assure that we will remain the dominant power? Pulling out is simply a retreat and a confirmation that history's judgment is irresistible.

No dominant power has EVER survived a revolution in military affairs.

If you want a picture of what it will look like, read up on the Vikings campaign of rapine, murder and plunder.

Hey, but what the hell--you're an optimist, right?

Bush might as well go to.

Well, perhaps not.

Bush's press conference has squarely put the ball in the Democrats court. He's cleared the table by getting rid of Rumsfeld and replaced him with someone from the Iraq panel (which means of course that he has to be confirmed...).

Its the Democrat's war now.

The main advantage is that while people and U.S. soldiers will be dying in Iraq at the same rate they were before, you won't be hearing about it on the evening news. The drive-by media will simply switch gears and focus on the positive--at least I hope so, because that might give us a chance to avoid the coming dark ages.

There was a complete absence of fraud during this election.

No voting constituencies were repressed.

All the voting machines worked perfectly.

No court challenges have been filed.

The "Broken Government" has been fixed.

Overnight.

Amazing isn't it?

heh

Wes Clark emailed me today and I thought I would share with you his sentiments.

Dear Mick,

Yesterday, we Americans took a stand against the politics of personal destruction -- rebuffing the onslaught of negative advertising and dirty tricks. Voters let themselves be heard and ordered a change in government, giving Democrats the opportunity to serve the nation and to provide the leadership that's been missing these past six years in Washington. With this opportunity comes great responsibility, and we must take the challenges ahead seriously, soberly and with clarity of purpose -- on issues like health care, the economy, education, and most of all, Iraq and national security.

I'm speechless. I've heard the Senate minority leader call Bush a loser in front of school children and television cameras. Failure, liar, moron. Any of these epithets sound familiar? I think Tom Foley may have some pointed comments about who engages in the politics of personal destruction. I think they are still trying to put Tom Delay in jail.

We could learn a few things about personal destruction from the Democrats and frankly, I think we should use everything they taught us. We should set goals--say putting ten Democrats in prison in the next two years. Its shouldn't be too much of a problem--I think we're probably half-way there with Harry Reid. Did you know that Mollohan got reelected? Bob Ney goes to prison for playing golf on Abramoff's tab, and Mollohan makes millions in sweetheart realestate deals.

I like the clever bit at the end--listing the three things we know Democrats think are important--creating a huge new bureaucracy to socialize health care, fixing the "rotten" economy with higher taxes and rewarding teachers unions for their support. and then tacking on the important issues of Iraq and national security.

It is a mistake for Democrats to celebrate rather than understand the meaning of yesterday's election. America is looking for leadership right away, and Democrats should push forward a 3-point plan to address the crisis in Iraq and refocus our national security efforts:

1. Change the course in Iraq. Democrats must pressure George W. Bush to listen to the generals on the ground and the whole range of experts -- not just the GOP -- on how to change the course in Iraq. We must work with regional powers, promote gradual transformation and stability, and regain the 'strategic consent' for the long-term U.S. influence in the region. We must use the situation in Iraq to propel us toward this larger goal, and in doing so, we will also find the right way to wind down our deployment there.

Why must we wind down our deployment "there"? Ask a Democrat friend of yours and see if you get a straight answer.

2. Rebuilding alliances to address the real national security threats. We must bring our allies into the reconstruction of Iraq to ensure shared responsibility for the ongoing stability of Iraq itself and the region as a whole. We must provide real oversight on government contracts in Iraq; we cannot continue to allow no-bid contracts to Halliburton. And by bringing our allies together, we can finish the job in Afghanistan, and more effectively hunt down Osama Bin Laden and contain Iran and North Korea.

Yeah, that the problem in Iraq--accounting irregularities.

3. Address energy independence and global warming as national security issues. We must put a policy in place to lead us to energy independence and away from the volatile and conflict-ridden regions where, today, the "geostrategic risk premium" is adding billions of dollars to the costs imposed on the American people. Our reliance on oil also impacts global climate change. As I have stated before, global warming has serious national security risks: stretching our military resources to deal with catastrophes (like Katrina) and increasing the potential for conflicts due to the displacement of people, competition for scarce resources, and adverse effects on agriculture.

You see the big problem is that you're scared of the wrong thing--Islamic radicals who want to cut of your head, rape your daughters and make eunuchs out of your sons are not the problem. Climate change is the problem and taxes are the way to fix it (actually they're the way to fix everything...).

Thanks to your help, we have a real opportunity to change the course in Iraq and fix our national security policy. And it's only possible because Democrats now have the power in Congress to stand up to President Bush and make change happen. You helped us make history last night, and I can't thank you enough for what you've done.

In this election cycle, WesPAC helped 42 candidates win their races across America, including 25 candidates who flipped their seats from Republican to Democratic seats. Our Clark community raised over $1 million for candidates, not to mention the millions of hours of volunteer time members of the Clark community provided to campaigns in every corner of our nation. And I am most proud of the fact that at least 6 veterans were newly elected to the House and Senate yesterday. What a tremendous victory for America -- and it wouldn't have been possible without the hard work that you and I and hundreds of thousands of Democrats put in over these last 24 months.

Last night the American people spoke, loud and clear. Now we have our marching orders. It's time to change course. It's time to lead.

Sincerely,

Wes Clark

I agree, but somehow I am less than sanguine about the Democrats ability, will or honesty when it comes to reducing spending, protecting our borders, keeping taxes low and preventing the dark ages.

Few people get under the skin of the left the way Ann Coulter does. I think its because she afflicts them with the truth the way Van Helsing afflicts Dracula with the cross.

Her column this week is no exception.

But according to the media, this week's election results are a mandate for pulling out of Iraq (except in Connecticut where pro-war Joe Lieberman walloped anti-war "Ned the Red" Lamont).

In fact, if the Democrats' pathetic gains in a sixth-year election are a statement about the war in Iraq, Americans must love the war! As Roll Call put it back when Clinton was president: "Simply put, the party controlling the White House nearly always loses House seats in midterm elections" -- especially in the sixth year.

In Franklin D. Roosevelt's sixth year in 1938, Democrats lost 71 seats in the House and six in the Senate.

In Dwight Eisenhower's sixth year in 1958, Republicans lost 47 House seats, 13 in the Senate.

In John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson's sixth year, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate.

In Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford's sixth year in office in 1974, Republicans lost 43 House seats and three Senate seats.

Even America's greatest president, Ronald Reagan, lost five House seats and eight Senate seats in his sixth year in office.

But in the middle of what the media tell us is a massively unpopular war, the Democrats picked up about 30 House seats and five to six Senate seats in a sixth-year election, with lots of seats still too close to call. Only for half-brights with absolutely no concept of yesterday is this a "tsunami" -- as MSNBC calls it -- rather than the death throes of a dying party.

That probably explains why we aren't seeing reports of mass hysteria and clinical depression among Republicans.

The Democrats say they are ready to lead--but lead where? the campaign, but their own admission (as if we couldn't see for ourselves) was based on "we are not Bush". For all the conciliatory bullshit we've been hearing yesterday, the fact is that there is no political price to be paid for obstructing a Democrat agenda. In fact, if there is any publicly-ordained agenda to be mandated, its to win in Iraq.

There is a considerable irony that the Democrats have painted themselves into a corner--essentially promising the American people that they can implement the Bush agenda better than Bush can do it.

The people in my district, overwhelmingly Republican, reelected Jim Matheson, a Democrat with 60% of the vote. Frankly there was no reason not to--Matheson has been consistently conservative and very focused on issues important in southern Utah. That's the pattern for success for Utah Democrats, but their Achilles heel has always been the national party. At some point, usually when their party is in power, they will need his vote on some issue that will be anathema to Utahns, and that will be the end of his political career.

Or not.

This is the subtle portent of Joe Lieberman's campaign--when faced with a choice between supporting your party or supporting your constituents, the latter is the better political choice.

Obviously the Democrats have a range of incentives to insure proper liberal voting behavior--committee assignments, campaign money, etc... But none of that does any good when you've brutally offended the sensibilities of the conservative constituencies in your home district--hence the value of the Joe Lieberman precedent.

Matheson is essentially a canary in the electoral coal mine. His party has been out of power since he was first elected, but now he faces an ambitious, very liberal leadership in a House configuration where his vote could make the difference on close tallies. Does he follow the Lieberman rule and defy his party, or does he cave and derail a promising political career?

I'm willing to bet its the latter, which makes Democrat control of the House (and the Senate?) highly problematic.

To anyone who has been paying attention, it has been clear that the Democrats engages in a massive disinformation campaign right from the word go.

Joe Wilson got front page coverage for his charges that Saddam never approached Niger to buy yellowcake (uranium oxide). Bush's subsequent claims about Iraq's activities in procuring yellowcake from Africa were the beginning of the "Bush lied" meme that swept through the left.

Joe Wilson was part of a plot by unknown agents in the CIA (unknown to the public at least) to discredit the Iraq policy. Subsequently, Wilson's claims were completely discredited--but not nearly as publicly as his accusation were.

Plame-gate was the derivative scandal--an ironic attempt to accuse the Bush administration of what the Democrats have been doing since the beginning--politicizing the war. The New York Times leaks national security secrets so often, bin Laden has a TimesSelect subscription. Yet the Bush administration found itself the target of a fishing expedition for a non-existent crime--the outing of an agent who had been outed twice before and was working as an analyst. Never people to put all their eggs in one basket, Democrats tried mightly to equivocate on torture.

Most recently, the Democrats mined the armed services themselves for disaffection they could use. in April, six retired generals simultaneously provided the media with critiques of the war and specifically Donald Rumsfeld. You might remember this.

"Donald Rumsfeld is not a competent wartime leader," said Batiste, wearing a pinstripe suit, calling himself a "lifelong Republican" and bearing a slight resemblance to Oliver North. "He surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates who do not grasp the importance of the principles of war, the complexities of Iraq or the human dimension of warfare. . . . Bottom line: His plan allowed the insurgency to take root and metastasize to where it is today."

Yet as Greyhawk notes, unofficial hearings by the Democrats yielded these earthshattering departures from Rumsfeld's incompetent plan.

...Batiste and his colleagues offered their solution: more troops, more money and more time in Iraq.

"We must mobilize our country for a protracted challenge," Batiste warned.

"We better be planning for at least a minimum of a decade or longer," contributed retired Marine Col. Thomas Hammes.

"We are, conservatively, 60,000 soldiers short," added retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of building the Iraqi Security Forces.

In other words, "stay the course", build-up the Iraqi security forces, get public support.

Sound familiar?

You've been played--again--by the Democrats and their allies in the media. Greyhawk comments:

Go back and read the first links I've provided above and you'll discover - if you didn't know already - that the generals' criticism of Donald Rumsfeld was little more than the sort of inter-service competition for defense funds that has defined the upper levels of the Pentagon for years (and that Rumsfeld tried to eliminate). While this year's rhetoric admittedly rose to new and desperate levels, the underlying argument was perhaps thinner than most previous "peace time" funding debates. The eternal reality is that all services could use more money - the Air Force is currently attempting to slash 40,000 active duty members from it's pay rolls to enable funding of new systems - even as retired Army generals insist that their service is being short changed in favor of another.

Although getting Rumsfeld out of the picture was only step one, media coverage of the demands of those particular retired generals will probably vanish now that half their goals have been achieved - the remaining steps of the plan are an embarrassment to those who previously offered a large platform and amplification system for their call to arms.

None of these things by themselves did the trick, but the constant hammering eventually created a general impression in the minds of the public not disposed to properly informing themselves.

This is actually a fairly routine strategy for the left--even now I get comments anytime I post anything on gay marriage to persistently equate opposition to gay marriage with bigotry. They just keep hammering the lie as long as it takes until people believe it.

From John Hawkins:

Republicans have really missed an opportunity to hammer the Democrats because of Charlie Rangel's draft idea. Rangel isn't some crackpot, he's a democratic leader who is going to be the head of the Ways and Means Committee and he's putting forward a wildly unpopular, irresponsible idea that's primarily designed to make the military less effective. Why isn't George Bush publicly hammering him? Why aren't we seeing Republican press conferences calling a Democratic draft irresponsible, knocking Rangel around, and pledging to fight a draft if it comes up for a vote? When the Democrats do something that dumb, the GOP should make them pay for it.

There is certainly a temptation to replicate the Crat's tactics, but in accepting that proposition there is the implicit belief that those tactics worked.

Did they?

I've been gratified to see the preponderance of Republicans and conservatives eschew the left's reflexive conspiracy mongering and deflection of blame for their failures. Most acknowledge that the Congressional Republicans screwed-up big-time. Ultimately, that was what led to electoral defeat, not Nancy Pelosi's stupid press conferences.

There in lies the key to future success--making sure that Republicans act like Republicans, not only on spending bills, but by acting like mature adults rather than aggrieved children. Lots of people were critical of Charlie Rangel's views and proposals, including not a few on the left. It was a black eye for the Democrats and it was widely perceived as such--mission accomplished. That the issue didn't grab a few more news cycles is irrelevant--Democrats are the gift that keeps on giving.

If the public sees Republicans as indistinguishable from Democrats, particularly in tone and style, then we've thrown away a huge advantage.

Normally, Thanksgiving puts people in a good mood. You might even expect the holiday to mellow, temporarily at least, even the members of the angry left.

You'd be wrong.

I give thanks O Lord for Dick Cheney's Heart, that brave organ which has done its darn-tootin' best on four separate occasions to do what we can only dream about.

O Lord, give Dick Cheney's Heart, Our Sacred Secret Weapon, the strength to try one more time! For greater love hath no heart than that it lay down its life to rid the planet of its Number One Human Tumor.

Pretty black-hearted stuff, but then as Daimnation points out, the author comes by it honestly.

The molestations, according to Jessica, happened three times, once when she was 6, two more times before she turned 10. When she was in her twenties, trying futilely to get him to apologize, or at least to admit what happened, her father told her, "You are sitting around picking at old scars, bringing up history, so you can make excuses for yourself. If you have problems, they are yours, not mine. Stop being so self-involved. Much worse things have happened to children. . . . Think about the Holocaust . . . Babies being gassed to death. And in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge bayoneting six-year-olds in the rice paddies." By those standards, of course, Hendra was a five-star dad.

The great bulk of "How to Cook Your Daughter" is a memoir of what it was like growing up during the height of the sexual revolution under the aegis of a sanctimonious bully who thought it was his sacred duty less to "save the world through laughter" than to illuminate the world's evils with biting, bitter, acrimonious satire. Thus, when Tony Hendra dresses up the very young Jessica and some of her friends as hookers and poses them in National Lampoon for a "back to school" edition, he's not exploiting the children but delivering a timely lecture on American consumerism. When he sets up a "slow walk" contest for his barefoot daughters on steaming hot asphalt, promising $50 to whomever can stay on the asphalt longest, then signing the check "Mickey Mouse" and admonishing them, "Never do anything just for money," he's not torturing little girls and cheating them to boot, but treating them to a salutary lesson on the evils of materialism.

Alone on Thanksgiving, estranged from his children, his ex-wives and probably his parents for good measure, the bile filled his throat and spilled over on his keyboard. Another sad cameo of an angry lefty.

It might be tempting, particularly for fair-minded conservatives, to dismiss it as an aberration--surely the entirety of the liberal-left can't be this pathetically mean-spirited?

Read the comments. The more level-headed ones are only worried about the political fall-out.

I've compared the liberal-left to spoiled children on more than one occasion. I've seen little to disabuse me of that view. Remember Jane Hamsher of the photoshopped black-faced Joe Lieberman? Hamsher is the proprietor of Fire Dog Lake, a notoriously partisan and nasty left-wing blog, and previously a film-maker most noted for working of such anti-social fare as "Natural Born Killers" and "Killer Instinct".

So how does Jane celebrate electoral victory?

Those "centrists," the people who can be convinced to swing Democratic in one election and Republican in the next, who don't make up their minds until the night before an election or just run in the voting booth and pull all the top levers are probably not engaged in the political dialog to the point that they will want to "interact" with those who bring them their news. They might be stupid, apathetic or working three McJobs just to make ends meet but they're probably not going want to spend their leisure time shootin' the shit with VandeHei. People who are engaged political junkies tend to have strong opinions and they want to interact online with others who are like minded. If there were a great gaping demand for a moderate site, Joe Gandelman would be a rich man.

Remarkably, the insult is chillingly casual, a mere off-hand remark in a post about the commercial viability of poltiical commentary aimed at the center.

My conservatism came originally from living in a socialist culture and understanding the inherent economic and social dysfunction that comes from the ideology, but the left's 6 year paraoxysm of hate has made me realize that beyond what I original thought was naivete and ignorance, is a meanness, a culture of hate, arrogance and entitlement. They are simply nasty, evil and deeply unhappy people.

Dr. Helen compares Hendra's statement to Michael Richard's use of the 'N' word.

A reference list for articles debunking the value-voter myth still promulgated by the liberal-left and media.

The Gay Marriage Myth. Paul Freedman, Slate, 11.5.2004

Same Sex Ballot Initiatives and Conservative Mobilization in the 2004 Election. Simon Jackman, Stanford University

Same Sex Marriage, Civil Unions and the 2004 Presidential Election Dr Kenneth Sherrill, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Policy Institute

Background: Marriage, exit polls and the 2004 election Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination 11.9.2004

Wedge Issues on the Ballot: Can State Initiatives on Gay Marriage, Minimum Wage Affect Candidate Races? by Paul Taylor Pew Research Center July 26, 2006

I don't know if I've ever agreed with Howard Dean before:

Republican Vern Buchanan might be the official winner in a messy Sarasota-area congressional race, but Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says the Democratic-controlled Congress should not seat Buchanan without another election.

"Absolutely not," Dean said in a taped Political Connections interview scheduled to air Sunday on Bay News 9. "You cannot seat someone if you don't have an election that's valid.

"This election is not valid. There are 18,000 people who may have voted, and we don't know what happened to their votes," Dean said. "You can bet that if the Republicans were 500 votes short they'd be calling for a new election, and they'd be right."

There is the temptation to toss this off as more Democrat whining, but fully 13% of the vote simply "disappeared" after a voting machine problem in Sarasota county resulted in 18,000 recorded ballots showing not votes for either candidate.

This isn't a matter of a close vote and some bickering over hanging chads--13% of the vote is well out of the "margin of error". I don't know what the law says about it and I don't care--if we're going to have elected representatives, they should in fact be elected.

There really should be a revote--not a new election, just a revote.

The Democrats are treading a fine line here. On the one hand, they have been mouthing platitudes about fair-voting practices for several elections now, even as they engage in their standard perfidies of mucking about with voter rolls and getting out the post-mortality vote. They are obliged to do justice here.

On the other hand, refusing Buchanan a seat doesn't look like justice, it looks petty and avaricious.

Frankly, this is an opportunity for the Republicans to take the high ground by initiating the call for a revote.

William Beutler at Blog P.I. examines the relative performance of ActBlue, a left-wing on-line fundraising site, and ABC PAC or Rightroots, the Republican equivalent.

My main point the first time around was that ActBlue was a Web 2.0 kind of site, like a Facebook for progressive fundraising. You could sign up for your very own account, compile your own slate of candidates, keep track of your progress and follow the rankings. Not only that, but there was plenty of reading material about how ActBlue works. ABC, on the other hand, appeared to be ony a few pages deep, everything was locked down, nothing was customizable, and the only interactive feature would perhaps be watching the figures change.

I think one has to concede his point on the site design of Rightroots, but I seriously doubt that is why is performance lagged Actblue. Its common in marketing circles to complain about the advertising campaign, but in almost every case there are more fundamental deficiencies that a brochure or ad simply can't overcome.

Netroots is misnamed in the sense that it is the flower and not the root of the left-wing campaign finance machine. It was built on an already existing framework of left-wing on-line communities committed to returning not just a candidate, but an entire party to power. In effect, Netroots was simply the logical outlet for a vast community already motivated to help, but lacking an efficient means of doing so.

The on-line left is an independent movement the way on-line conservatives are not. Before MyDD and Daily Kos, etc..., where could the committed lefty go to get a daily dose of ideological purity? By the 1950s, commentators like Lionel Trilling declared the debate to be over.

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only... in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

In essence, it wasn't until a new conservative represented by William F. Buckley emerged that this changed, but the effect on the left was the dismantling of their massadras and the corporatization of the Democrat party. Ideology became specialized--reflected in unionism, feminism and environmentalism. Not until the new millennium did a pure forum for leftist sensibilities emerge in a large national on-line community.

There is a temptation to compare Markos with Rush Limbaugh, but a better analogy would be the televangelists. Pat Robertson doesn't so much proselytize as confirm his viewers in their faith--interpreting current events in the context of biblical prophecy. The evangelists on the left do much the same thing, and with similar religious overtones--Bush is the devil.

Not surprisingly, both Pat Robertson and the lefty-uber-bloggers raise lots of money and grant audience to petitioning politicians.

The religious parallels for the modern left are striking, but will have to be discussed at another time.

Conservatives on the other hand tend to be organized locally rather than virtually, through churches, veterans organizations and other means. There is an on-line community, but its not the only game in town.

The result is that Republican fund-raising isn't a mirror image of the left. While Rightroots did not achieve parity with netroots, it didn't really matter. Republican fund-raising efforts still out-paced Democrats by a considerable margin.

Rightroots was and is a good thing, but its never going to achieve the same importance to the Republican fund-raising efforts as Netroots did for the simple reason that its not operating in the same context. Changes in the website functionality maybe welcome, but I don't think they'll make much of a difference.

Its useful to note that Mitt Romney raised north of 6 million dollars in a single day using the telephone. In the end, its more important for the Republican party to have many avenues for fund-raising, even if they are as boring as direct-mail and telephone calls.