Erick Erickson's Blog, page 119

When Will Newt Say When?

One of the saddest spectacles of the 2012 season is seeing Newt Gingrich, who for so long was the ideas guy of the right, run out of steam.

American Solutions, his once much heralded organization, is now shut down. Newt left the organization to run for President and it could not keep the lights on without Gingrich there.

But Gingrich seems to be having trouble keeping the lights on in his campaign.

This weekend saw a straw poll at the annual Georgia Republicans' fish fry in Perry, Georgia. The event, started by former Governor Sonny Perdue as a campaign fundraiser for himself and the party when he got elected back in 2002, is a huge affair for the state party. Folks come from every corner of Georgia to eat fish and politick.

There are two Georgia sons in the 2012 race: Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. Cain is a businessman and former talk show host in metro Atlanta. Gingrich was and, for many is, "the Speaker." He taught at my wife's alma mater; his first wife was my wife's high school math teacher. He then went on to represent the Atlanta suburbs in Congress for quite a while, eventually becoming Speaker.

This weekend, as they might say in Georgia, the dogs didn't hunt for Newt Gingrich.Herman Cain came in first place in the straw poll, followed by Ron Paul. No, Gingrich did not come in third. Rick Perry came in third. Gingrich, who was the only candidate to attend the fish fry and speak to the crowd — Newt gave a great speech, but speaking has never been his problem — came in fourth. Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann followed him.

Rumors continue to swirl that his campaign is hurting for money. He has failed to gain measurable traction thus far and even in Georgia polls show he would not really be competitive (and I'm not talking straw polls).

For many of us who got our start in politics around the Republican Revolution of 1994, it is kind of sad to see Newt Gingrich neither victorious nor really beaten nor vanquished — then it would at least have been a momentous fight. That would have had some catharsis to it.

He's just out of gas. He fizzled without so much as a flash in the pan. How does that happen to a guy who once was the most powerful Republican in America?

Morning Briefing for August 29, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For August 29, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. When Will Newt Say When?

2. Exacerbating the 'Perception Problem': Center for American Progress Chronicles the American Right's Decade of Baseless Aggression Against Islam

3. PolitiFact Proves Yet Again It Is a Left Wing Attack Machine With Nonpartisan Veneer

4. Jon Huntsman's Legitimacy: A Near Sexual Fantasy for Some on the Left

5. The Texas record.

———————————————————————-

1. When Will Newt Say When?

One of the saddest spectacles of the 2012 season is seeing Newt Gingrich, who for so long was the ideas guy of the right, run out of steam.

American Solutions, his once much heralded organization, is now shut down. Newt left the organization to run for President and it could not keep the lights on without Gingrich there.

But Gingrich seems to be having trouble keeping the lights on in his campaign.

This weekend saw a straw poll at the annual Georgia Republicans' fish fry in Perry, Georgia. The event, started by former Governor Sonny Perdue as a campaign fundraiser for himself and the party when he got elected back in 2002, is a huge affair for the state party. Folks come from every corner of Georgia to eat fish and politick.

There are two Georgia sons in the 2012 race: Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. Cain is a businessman and former talk show host in metro Atlanta. Gingrich was and, for many is, "the Speaker." He taught at my wife's alma mater; his first wife was my wife's high school math teacher. He then went on to represent the Atlanta suburbs in Congress for quite a while, eventually becoming Speaker.

This weekend, as they might say in Georgia, the dogs didn't hunt for Newt Gingrich.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Exacerbating the 'Perception Problem': Center for American Progress Chronicles the American Right's Decade of Baseless Aggression Against Islam

The far-left Center for American Progress (CAP) today released a report on the "Islamophobia network" it claims is responsible for the "genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda" in America, which coincidentally began, the report claims, ten years ago ("[S]even foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America," writes Faiz Shakir at the CAP's ThinkProgress blog).

It's both typically ironic and sadly predictable that CAP lays blame for the instigation of the last decade of skepticism about Islam and its adherents' aims in the west and around the world at the feet of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy while almost entirely ignoring another, far more responsible and relevant event that took place ten years ago: the hijacking of four airliners by radical Islamist terrorists and the murdering of 1,629 Americans in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. September 11, 2001 is mentioned only twice in the 130 page CAP report, and both times it is entirely in passing (pp. 42 and 75, with both mentions using 9/11 only as a reference point for supposedly extremist commentary by members of the "Islamophobia network" CAP seeks to unmask). Additionally, blame is laid at the feet of this "Islamophobia network" for the actions of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who murdered nearly seventy people in a bombing and shooting spree in July, while also blaming the "network" for the speculation that abounded while Breivik's attacks were ongoing that the perpetrator(s) might be Islamist extremists (bear in mind that credit for the attacks was claimed on a jihadi message board while they were ongoing).

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. PolitiFact Proves Yet Again It Is a Left Wing Attack Machine With Nonpartisan Veneer

As a general rule of thumb I heard somewhere, fact checkers don't check facts.

Fact checkers exist to put an objective, nonpartisan veneer on whatever some reporter wants to say. And when fact checkers take it upon themselves to be arbiters of truth, they use their own biases. One of the worst is Politifact, which the media now hides behind routinely to give cover to a left-of-center spin on truth.

There is an egregious example today over the number of doctors in Texas and whether tort reform mattered.

According to Politifact, tort reform did not impact the number of doctors in Texas.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Jon Huntsman's Legitimacy: A Near Sexual Fantasy for Some on the Left

At what point does Jon Huntsman's campaign begin to look like a sexual fantasy for the some lefties in the media and the left in general and not like a Presidential campaign? At this point I think. His only useful purpose has become being the pin up Governor that the left can fixate on, breath lustily at, and whisper "if only the Republicans were like him."

With a hat tip to Ben Domenech's awesome Transom, I found this post at the Corner by Katrina Trinko.

The Politico and NBC are doing the next GOP Debate. Why the GOP would want to do a debate with the Politico and NBC — both of which have a well documented history of being mouthpieces for Obama (First question: What's it like to be a Christofascist terrorist, Ms. Bachmann?) — is beyond me.

In any event, they set the criteria to get into the debate as "4 percent in one of eight national prominent polls of Republicans taken since November 2010."

Why not a more round number like 5%?

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. The Texas record.

Texas has been the home of the last two Republican presidents. With Governor Rick Perry now in the fray, we're fixin' to find out if Texas can make it three in a row.

When examining what makes Texas the benchmark conservative state, the best place to start is the size of its government. Back in 1987, total state and local expenditures in Texas were about 18 percent of private gross domestic product (GDP), versus a national average of just over 19 percent. In 2008, Texas was still at about 18 percent, while the national average had risen to over 22 percent. Spending in California, our biggest competitor, grew during that period from about 19 percent to more than 25 percent of private GDP.

Stats about where Texas ranks in taxes and spending tell the same story. The Tax Foundation says that Texas ranks 45th in state and local tax burden. StateHealthFacts.org ranks Texas 47th in total state spending. And the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau has Texas 42nd in education spending.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Mail Bag: Erick Has Brought Out the Crazy Edition

We get a lot of disgusting stuff here at RedState, but this one just might take the cake.

From: Janet Klien "klienismammahuss8@gmail.com"

Subject: TELL REDSTAE.COM WE ARE TIRED OF THEM PROMTOTING THE SP*C LOVING RICK PERRY

Date: August 26, 2011 7:22:23 PM EDT

To: contact@redstate.com

ITS BAD ENOUGH WE HAVE A MONKEY IN THE WHITE HOUSE, NOW YOUR GROUP WANTS THE MACHETE MOVIE ANTI WHITE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDTAE RICK PERRY. PERRY IS IN CO-OOTS WITH MEXICO CONSIDERING THE MEXICAN ARMY KEEPS COMING OVER ARE AMERICAN BORDER. I AM A CONSERVATIVE WHO IS TIRED OF THAT CHIMP OBAMA, BUT IF PERRY GETS THE NOMINATION AND NOT ROMNEY OR BACHMANN, I AM GIVING DONATIONS AND VOTING FOR BANANA EATING OBAMA. WHY?, PERRY LIKES SP*CS YOU DUMB**S REDSTATE.COM ERIK ERIKSON IS ANOTHER SP*C LOVING COMSERVATIVE AND YOU HAVE LOST A CONTRIBUTER TO YOUR SITE. F**K YOU YOU SP*C LOVING REDSTATE.COM. WE ARE KICKING COLLINS AND SNOWE OUT OF MAINE ANDWANT CONSERVATIVES THAT ARE PRO LIFE AND PRO WHITE.

A**HOLES.

As an aside, our old friend Elaine Lucas has decided to go after my wife and kids now. She refers to them as "Hitler like."

Holy crap have I brought out the crazy this week.

PolitiFact Proves Yet Again It Is a Left Wing Attack Machine With Nonpartisan Veneer

"Politifact's fact is nothing more than their left-wing hypothesis disconnected from and ignoring every data point that doesn't help them make their case."

As a general rule of thumb I heard somewhere, fact checkers don't check facts.

Fact checkers exist to put an objective, nonpartisan veneer on whatever some reporter wants to say. And when fact checkers take it upon themselves to be arbiters of truth, they use their own biases. One of the worst is Politifact, which the media now hides behind routinely to give cover to a left-of-center spin on truth.

There is an egregious example today over the number of doctors in Texas and whether tort reform mattered.

According to Politifact, tort reform did not impact the number of doctors in Texas.

There is no question that tort reform drove down medical malpractice insurance premiums and reduced the number of malpractice suits. And there is no question that most health care providers like the change and say it's a factor that leads them to practice in the state. But the wholesale transformation that Perry describes is not backed up by the numbers.

Perry said Texas has 21,000 more doctors thanks to tort reform. That's flat out wrong. Texas has only about 13,000 more doctors in the state and the historic trends suggest that population growth was the driving factor. We rate his statement False.

Politifact chose to rely on many sources that could be considered left-leaning, some with real axes to grind with Rick Perry over budget cuts.

Politifact also ignored that, well, doctors retire and also the number of out of state medical licenses are down, while Texas originated medical licenses are up.

Oh, and there is one left leaning source the Politifact chose to ignore entirely — the New York Times.Contrary to Politifact, back in 2007, the New York Times titled an article, "More Doctors in Texas After Malpractice Caps". It went on to report

In Texas, it can be a long wait for a doctor: up to six months.

That is not for an appointment. That is the time it can take the Texas Medical Board to process applications to practice.

Four years after Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment limiting awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, doctors are responding as supporters predicted, arriving from all parts of the country to swell the ranks of specialists at Texas hospitals and bring professional health care to some long-underserved rural areas.

The influx, raising the state's abysmally low ranking in physicians per capita, has flooded the medical board's offices in Austin with applications for licenses, close to 2,500 at last count.

How convenient Politifact chose to ignore an article written in a year when Rick Perry was not running for office and opponents had no axe to grind to hurt his political electability.

It's not just the New York Times Politifact chose to ignore. How about the Houston Chronicle.

Dozens of Texas ER doctors swarmed Capitol Hill this week to tell lawmakers that the Lone Star State has just the prescription for what ails a health-care industry burdened by runaway costs: limiting big-bucks lawsuits against physicians.

That's what Texas did in 2003, when the Legislature placed a cap on the so-called "noneconomic" damages that can be awarded in medical liability cases. The reform's supporters say it protects doctors from "frivolous" lawsuits that ultimately drive up insurance premiums – and also makes the state an enormously popular destination for doctors, a key selling point as experts warn the nation may need 150,000 more physicians to treat the newly insured once the federal health-care law takes effect.

Or what about the Wall Street Journal where Joe Nixon the Texas Public Policy Foundation noted, "Over the past three years, some 7,000 M.D.s have flooded into Texas, many from Tennessee."

Or what about the Texas Academy of Family Physicians. Though Politifact did have a chat with the head of the group, and the head of the group did attribute growth to population, Politifact chose to ignore that TAFP also attributes the growth in doctors to tort reform.

Along with an influx of carriers is a dramatic increase in the number of physician license requests, including a "record number" from out-of-state doctors. The Texas Medical Board received 4,026 new physician license applications in fiscal 2006, which ran from Sept. 1, 2005 to Aug. 31, 2006. In 2001, the Board received only 2,446 applications. The numbers for half of 2007 have already nearly surpassed those for all of 2001—reaching 2,423 as of March with more than 2,700 licenses pending.

Out of the new licenses granted in 2006, 42 percent went to out-of-state physicians, 31 percent went to Texas physicians and 27 percent went to international physicians, according to statistics from TMA's Medical Education Division.

Oh, and then of course there is the Texas Medical Association's own graph, which paints the detail in striking terms:

But, you know, it's all population growth according to Politifact. If we are to believe them, then they ought to go through other states that saw population growth like Texas and did not enact and do not have Texas style tort reform.

I'm not actually sure such a place exists. Until it does, Politifact's fact is nothing more than their left-wing hypothesis disconnected from and ignoring every data point that doesn't help them make their case.

The Palin Factor

September 3rd is fast approaching and a lot of people are suddenly buzzing that she will declare her candidacy for the Presidency at that time. Karl Rove is convinced. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal thinks she will not run.

I am in the "will believe it when I see it" camp and still don't think she will run. One factor that keeps me there is her Fox News contract. For multiple weeks prior to Mike Huckabee declaring he would not run, leaks starting coming out of Fox News that the pressure was on for him to make up his mind.

We are not hearing the same about Palin and that suggests to me she will not run.

But if I'm wrong and she does run, what of it? What will her impact be.

For a variety of reasons, I think Mitt Romney will be doing the Snoopy dance, which I think is why Karl Rove is so giddy that she is getting in (I'm definitely not the first to think this). Palin will shake up the race, but there are signs if she gets in she is going to have to lay out a careful strategy and not just rely on the force of her own personality and message.

First off is polling out of Iowa that Neil Stevens highlighted suggesting Iowa Republicans prefer that she not get in.

I think some of this is genuine, but I also think some of this is people who just gave up on her getting in.

More troubling for Palin is the Gallup polling that shows she has roughly 95% name recognition and only 12% support for the Presidency.

If Palin gets in, that number will change dramatically. We can kind of see this with Rick Perry. He polled rather low until he announced and then his support level increased. People don't think Palin will run right now and if she got in, suddenly she would be much more popular.

But could she win? That is the million dollar question. Most polling suggests she cannot win the general election. Most polling also suggested Ronald Reagan could not win the general election in 1980. A fundamental difference was that Palin has 95% name recognition right now and Reagan was far from that recognition in 1980, even though he'd run in the 1976 primary against Ford.

If Palin gets in, she is going to have to work very, very hard to rehabilitate her image among not just independent voters, but also — and I think this is key — conservative Republican voters who long ago gave up on the dream of a Palin 2012 candidacy and moved on. Many of those voters have signed on to other campaigns.

While Palin fans may assure themselves that those former Palin supporters would come home quickly, I don't yet see any evidence for that and think, at least initially, Palin would drag down everyone except MItt Romney.

Don't county Sarah Palin out. She keeps surprising everyone. But don't count her the winner either.

Heck, right now, we're all going to have wait and see whether or not she even runs come September 3rd. I'll believe it when I see it.

The Transom

I get asked a lot how I do show prep for my radio show and to get ready for TV appearances. Honestly, i spend a lot of time on twitter and the RedState Morning Briefing is really indispensable.

But I've got a new tool in the show prep arsenal — The Transom by Ben Domenech. It really is a well done daily email of things interesting and fascinating on the web. Ben puts a lot of solid effort into it and it has already proven itself useful. Curiously enough, back when I was starting the Morning Briefing, Ben suggested I use the name "Transom," but it was too much of a fifty cent word for what I had in mind. The Transom itself is well worth more than fifty cents in style and content, but it is free.

If you want to get a copy of it, go sign up here. So that you get a good sense of what you are in for, I've put today's Transom below the fold. Oh, and because Ben did it, you can bet it looks "purty".

August 22, 2011: Libya, Jackson Hole, Big Country, Strange New Respect, On Vodka, HP's Shift, Walker Percy, L'Affaire Farewell   

 

SO LONG QADDAFI: 

 

Six months of conflict comes to a hinge point in Tripoli. Tripoli Post: http://goo.gl/fBnwi NYT: http://goo.gl/BVRKU LAT: http://goo.gl/0OhUi Pic gallery at FP: http://goo.gl/J1O88

 

George Grant: http://goo.gl/WhDGe "Last week the Times of London quoted an anonymous Benghazi-based diplomat warning that "catastrophic success" is "the phrase now being generally used in NATO. . . . And even if it's not catastrophic it will be chaotic success because the opposition is not ready to govern and there will be a vacuum if Gadhafi goes." This dismal prognosis is premature. A post-Gadhafi Libya can certainly succeed, and there is every reason to believe that what comes after Gadhafi will be a marked improvement over what existed during his 42 years in power. If the rebels abide by their plan to work with former regime figures and incorporate non-criminal elements of the existing security architecture into any post-Gadhafi settlement, a power vacuum is not inevitable."

 

Elliott Abrams: http://goo.gl/LRKLS "How quickly the ground has shifted in the Middle East. The apparent fall of Tripoli suggests that the Gaddafi regime will not last long, and this must send shivers down the spine of the cousins who run the Assad mafia in Damascus… Then attention will have to turn to the next act: the one in which we see, in Tunisia and Egypt, in Libya and Syria, if decent, stable, democratic governments can be built. It now looks as if the Arab Spring was the lead-in to a hot summer for the remaining tyrants. The issue we all face for the winter is what the United States can do to help avoid chaos or repression in those countries as they seek to build new political systems."

 

RELATED: That debate about War Powers isn't going away, even if Qaddafi does. http://goo.gl/jaZrv Get ready for the oil price slip. http://goo.gl/y4SaM MEANWHILE: Obama monitors the news, receives briefings, golfs. http://goo.gl/ndJq3 John Tamny: for your own sake, stay on vacation. http://goo.gl/LS2gh Brookings' Shadi Hamid on Twitter says this does not vindicate "lead from behind" strategy, but that's what everyone's going to write this week: "Two things happened: 1) Libya rebels won. 2) Obama opted for strategy of "leading from behind." This does not mean 2 caused 1." Big question: what comes next?

 

JACKSON HOLE WEEK:

 

Bernanke preps for Jackson Hole on Friday. http://goo.gl/sE38Y "The new, emerging narrative is that stiffer headwinds could restrain the U.S. recovery for longer than hoped—perhaps not enough to send it back into recession, but enough to keep growth painfully slow. Fiscal policy, for example, could be a drag on growth for years. Housing isn't coming back quickly. Households are still trying to rid themselves of debt, and their wealth has eroded. Old relationships that have tended to drive recoveries might not have as much force as they used to. Household confidence, for example, has tended to rebound after unemployment peaked. This time, that's not happening. Unemployment peaked in October 2009 at 10.1%. Confidence keeps sinking. The University of Michigan's index fell in early August to its lowest level since 1980."

 

RELATED: As investors get bit, states feel the pinch of lost revenue. http://goo.gl/zYCFo  Layoffs sweep Wall Street. http://goo.gl/PRaQw Goldman's Jim O'Neill: is this 2008 all over again? http://goo.gl/N4oio

 

BIG COUNTRY ARRIVISTE: 

 

Andrew Ferguson on Rick Perry's announcement. http://goo.gl/nUMuL "In any case, the specific content of Perry's prayer at The Response wasn't the crucial point, politically. The mere fact of it, and of him, must seem to America's liberals as an explicit and deliberate provocation — their worst nightmare come horribly to life. He's a governor of Texas. He has a funny accent. He got lousy grades in school. He not only owns guns, he shoots them. He'll soon be wearing cowboy boots again. He shows no sign of having read Reinhold Niebuhr. And he might win."

 

Erick Erickson: From the archives, some hilarious pieces from 1980 on why Carter would love to run against that radical Reagan. Bonus Eleanor Clift cameo. http://goo.gl/XzAIv

 

Arne Duncan has long received the plaudits of some of my more naïve friends, who find him perfectly charming at Aspen retreats, ignoring the lockstep partisan tool he's been within Obama's administration. This weekend, with his bizarre assault on Texas' education policies, the mask finally slipped. Time pronounced the criticism "baffling." http://goo.gl/FDIFs Even Politifact, one of the most biased fact-checkers out there, finds his slight of Texas schools to be completely false. http://goo.gl/jYWE7 Duncan will almost certainly not apologize for his blatant lies about Texas' educational outcomes, but who really cares – this just means he's like any other cabinet secretary: he does the bidding of the folks in the White House, his reputation be damned.

 

I neglected to share my column at The Hill on Perry's health care perspective: http://goo.gl/KyYTC "Yet Perry's personal experience with a recent back surgery also illustrates his perspective on health policy. His surgery involved the use of an adult stem cell therapy that is currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only for bone marrow transplants. If Obama's FDA has its way, doctors and others will be punished if they promote or advertise in any way the kind of therapy Perry received. Perry's successful surgery shows the value of choice, the kind of choice the Obama administration opposes at every pass." I was anticipating exactly this kind of criticism: http://goo.gl/b8bPSA comparison of Texas and Massachusetts is in the pipeline for this week.

 

RELATED: More from Jeff Jacoby on making Washington inconsequential. http://goo.gl/9Lqlb Mark Steyn: start by living like Coolidge. http://goo.gl/mLnna Tim Carney: The race-based attacks against Perry are White House-driven. http://goo.gl/UjdK0

 

STRANGE NEW RESPECT, TOMASKY EDITION: 

 

Michael Tomasky writes on Rick Perry, "King of the Know-Nothings." http://goo.gl/cNeQZ Excerpt: "Bush—and it leaves me speechless that he's starting to look reasonable by comparison with the current crop of GOP presidential hopefuls—was hardly apologetic about his political views. But he and Karl Rove did have the sense to know when they were throwing gasoline on the domestic fire, and they did it in smallish doses. You might be able to Google up the odd careless quote from Bush about something like global warming, but in general, and especially on the occasions when he knew his words were being very closely watched, he steered well clear of extremism."

 

Michael Tomasky writes on George W. Bush, from the farflung archives of 10 months ago: http://goo.gl/Q8ccC "Haunted by a ruined economy and unfinished wars, President Bush will need more than a memoir to rescue his reputation." All that he needed, it turned out, was Rick Perry!

 

I encourage enterprising Googlers to find something similar from Ana Marie Cox, who I confess I did not realize was still alive. http://goo.gl/PSQ43

 

One additional note: I can't stand people who do the face flip thing for their headshots, as if they're perfectly symmetrical. The only person allowed to do that is Denzel. That's it. That's the list.

 

VODKA NATION:

 

Per Jon Last's recommendation, Vic Matus has a piece on America's love affair with vodka: http://goo.gl/HG1F4"As might be expected, America's obsession with vodka has led to a certain pushback within the drinking community. The return of classic cocktails and the rise of craft bartending has meant a rejection of vodka and rediscovery of whiskey, gin, tequila, even absinthe. At the speakeasy lounge PX in Alexandria, Virginia, patrons are encouraged to try exotic concoctions such as Smoker's Delight (tobacco-infused tea, honey, bourbon, lemon juice, water) and other libations involving house-made bitters. Tucked inside The Passenger bar in Washington is another, more exclusive, watering hole called the Columbia Room, considered by GQ to be one of the best cocktail bars in the country. It is run by "master mixologist" Derek Brown who, also according to GQ, makes one of the best martinis in America. A few months ago, on a Saturday afternoon, I sat with Derek in the Columbia Room and asked his thoughts on vodka. "To us," he replied, "the important thing is that we make a great drink. And vodka is capable of that. But it is the chicken breast of cocktails. It is the most boring, least thoughtful, sort of one that you can mix with. For a craft bartender—someone who believes in humanity—this stuff is just a joke and will fade away." Derek is respectful of customers who order vodka drinks—his bar carries only one brand, which he refused to reveal—but will find ways to steer them toward alternatives such as gin which, he says, "is just flavored vodka. It just happens to be a very good flavor of vodka."

 

Couple of minor problems with Matus's otherwise excellent piece. Most notably, I have to take issue with his elevation of craft vodkas, which are typically terrible in my experience (and I've had a lot). I don't know what it is about this elevation of "craft", but it is simply not an indication of quality in all things. What's more, the piece implies that vodka is the one liquor where packaging overwhelms buyers to suggest quality where none exists. On the contrary, this is true of nearly all modern liquors. Additionally, I find the idea that vodka is "tasteless" – that potato based and grain/rye based vodkas are interchangeable – to be simply absurd. (Anyone whose palate can't tell the difference between potato and rye has no business judging anything related to liquor or foodstuffs.) What's really going on here, which Matus nods toward but does little to confirm, is the gender-driven shift away from bourbon and scotch. As more women began drinking hard liquor, so the appeal of an odorless versatile five tool player increased as a member of the bar. Would Olivia Palermo drink an Old Fashioned? Would Tinsley Mortimer be caught dead with a Sazerac? Of course not! So in this, as in so many things, the fairer sex's sway has held. Thus: vodkas, and fruity flavors, galore.

 

Now, from my perspective, nearly anything vodka-based makes for a skeletal cocktail, something designed to be purely functional, not savored. But it still has its place, particularly in summer, and there is no shame in it: the Moscow Mule was the most popular cocktail in Hollywood in 1942, and that was a dang good year for Hollywood. http://goo.gl/p438Kingsley Amis, a famed drinker if there was one, swears by his cucumber-based Lucky Jims (as if to confirm the above politically incorrect gender bias, Amis explicitly describes his concoction as a way to get the shy young ladies to shed their inhibitions). http://goo.gl/8VHbpWhatever you do, just don't drink it the way the Russians do. http://goo.gl/DmfXW

 

Finally, a sin of omission: one of the great transitional moments in American history is arguably the following memo from the late 1960's, at the ad agency J. Walter Thompson, which read as follows:

 

"To all employees: If you must drink during lunch, please drink whiskey. It is much better for our clients to know that you are drunk rather than think you are stupid."

 

Please apply this rule in your own life, ladies and gents.

 

RELATED: Vodka taste tests at NYT. http://goo.gl/WPE0O And Slate. http://goo.gl/ad9MF

 

ITEMS OF INTEREST:

 

Walter Russell Mead: Poor, poorly educated atheists are overrunning the U.S. http://goo.gl/353v7

 

George Will: Chris Christie, American Caesar. http://goo.gl/i35QC RELATED: A "de facto pact"? http://goo.gl/27AXR Really now. My friends in Christie's camp are loudly denying this, and I hear two of the people who would be top tier in any Ryan campaign are about to move to other campaigns. There are some fundamental family issues as well. Threat level: skeptical.

 

The White House faces a dilemma: do we want our health care law ruled unconstitutional before the election, or after? http://goo.gl/AsArbWell, after, obviously. RELATED: Obama's HHS is caught campaigning for Democrats. http://goo.gl/Nw7N9With taxpayer dollars, no less. ALSO RELATED: Alana Goodman: Did you realize Verizon's strike is because of disagreements over Obamacare? Because it is. http://goo.gl/BqSRH

 

John Hinderaker: Darrell Issa sticks it to the New York Times. http://goo.gl/hrFWlIssa details thirteen separate errors in the front page story – to date, the Times has corrected exactly one. http://goo.gl/oQRLL

 

Larry Ross writes on how Christian Dominionism is a myth. Did the Daily Beast run this because they got so many factual complaints about Michelle Goldberg's piece? http://goo.gl/2t0Qh

 

Joel Klein reviews Steven Brill and Terry Moe on the clash over union influence and education reform, between naïfs and realists. http://goo.gl/jbKCB

 

Why won't the WaPo identify Perry's protestors as professional activists? http://goo.gl/76JEF Well, that's quite irrelevant, you see.

 

"Huntsman is as handsome as Ms. Al-Assad is beautiful." http://goo.gl/Is7zG RELATED: DNC's new television surrogate: Jon Huntsman! http://goo.gl/zrQRe

 

Death rattle: Verizon strike ends with nothing gained by union. http://goo.gl/6O4ls

 

The Swiss Franc's strength has created problems down the line. http://goo.gl/LoRcu

 

CRS Report finds that ten years after 9/11, vast majority of intelligence sharing problems remain. http://goo.gl/DcUf8

 

Panetta issues gag order on Super Committee and Defense cuts. http://goo.gl/CB17r

 

Gorbachev's naivete. http://goo.gl/NvNZv

 

On reforming the patent system. http://goo.gl/gwsOU

 

John Graham: How Medicare cutbacks will translate to the prescription drug market. http://goo.gl/NoIZ7

 

NYT: "My husband is now my wife." http://goo.gl/aC3OY

 

Manbearpig. http://goo.gl/c6sn9

 

Iran jails hikers for eight years. http://goo.gl/F4EX8More from Elliott Abrams. http://goo.gl/86Mi1 We shall write them a stern letter from Martha's Vineyard. But first, the 78th round. http://goo.gl/3AxfE

 

Michael Totten: The Id of Mesopotamia, reviewed. http://goo.gl/uPfk7

 

Harper Lee: There's no such thing as a free lunch. http://goo.gl/asXTQ

 

Film restoration: Saving the Hitchcock nine. http://goo.gl/yfPkF

 

Maud Newton:blame internet syntax on David Foster Wallace. http://goo.gl/vREwg

 

Ah, capitalism. http://goo.gl/wzjEs

 

Washington, DC attracts men with high levels of estrogen. This explains both the growing hipster menace and the growing hordes of desperate single women. http://goo.gl/CnJzO

 

Roundtable: What took the NCAA so long to clean up their act? http://goo.gl/ttxlW

 

Colts owner Jim Irsay tweets that he's in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which just happens to be Brett Favre's abode. http://goo.gl/v8eWf Worldwide Leader's attention sparked, take time to appreciate just how insane Irsay's Twitter feed is. This guy owns an NFL team. Really. http://goo.gl/SkKdQ

 

PODCAST:

 

Cianfrocca on HP's decision to move away from the PC market. http://goo.gl/BiYCh

 

QUOTE:

 

"Now, I am perfectly willing to believe Flannery O'Connor when she said, and she wasn't kidding, that the modern world is a territory largely occupied by the devil. No one doubts the malevolence abroad in the world. But the world is also deranged. What interests me is not the malevolence of man — so what else is new? — but his looniness. The looniness, that is to say, of the "normal" denizen of the Western world who, I think it fair to say, doesn't know who he is, what he believes, or what he is doing." – Walker Percy

 

RECOMMENDED: 

 

Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the Twentieth Century, by Sergey Kostin and Eric Reynaud, AmazonCrossing. $9.49 for Paperback, $4.99 for Kindle.

 

Find this and more recommendations at The Transom's Amazon Store: http://goo.gl/zLI8c

 

This collection of news and notes from around the web is edited by Benjamin Domenech, research fellow at The Heartland Institute, co-host of the daily Coffee & Markets podcast, and editor in chief of The City, a journal on faith, politics, and culture published by Houston Baptist University. The views and opinions expressed within are his alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of his employers. If you like The Transom, by all means share it with friends, who can subscribe at: http://bendomenech.com/transom

 

Happy Birthday Raz Shafer

Yeah, I'm abusing the front page to wish birthday greetings to a good friend down in Texas and one of the rockstars of the American Majority Team. I assume he is finally old enough to buy beer legally.

It's also Congressman Thad McCotter's birthday and happy birthday to him too.

Consider this an open thread.

The Goldwater Talking Point

"The greatest lesson to take away now is that the media is going to again fixate on Goldwater from 1964 and Kerry from 2004, and they will probably mostly ignore the most historically relevant election points"

The media typically begins any Presidential campaign with comparisons to Harry Truman. The Reagan re-election in 1984 had the comparison. The Bush re-election in 1992 had the comparison. The Clinton re-election in 1996 had the comparison. Humorously, the off year election of 2002 used the Truman comparison too, as did 2004.

The media does this not only because a lot of them are lazy and not only because a lot of them talk with each other at beltway soirees where they infect each other with their various often contrived narratives and talking points, but also because they really do want to help put the election in some historic context.

Whenever a President is embattled, the media falls back to Truman.

But there is something else the media does — and typically does because of a leftward bias, a reliance on both establishment Republicans in Washington as their chief GOP sources and their Democratic friends as Democratic sources— they compare the Republican Primary to 1964.

Every conservative candidate must withstand the "Is he Barry Goldwater" question. Never mind that Barry Goldwater has been tried repeatedly by the Democrats and the only person it ever worked against was Barry Goldwater.

The Democrats have made clear, and the media is seizing on, President Obama's campaign statements that if Rick Perry is the nominee, they'll go with Goldwater 1964 and if Mitt Romney is the nominee, they'll go with John Kerry 2004 as the flip flopping opportunist. Neither of these will work this year and all you have to do is follow along as I step in the way back machine and take you back to the news as it existed on the campaign trail of 1979 and 1980.

"Is defeat probable for GOP if Reagan wins nomination?" blared the headline of the Christian Science Monitor on March 5, 1980. That was just the start of it."Can conservative Ronald Reagan possibly attract enough independent and Democratic votes to win in November?" wrote Richard J. Cattani in that Christian Science Monitor article. He continued,

"Reagan is the opponent of choice for Carter," says I. A. Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll, a point on which most analysts agree. "But Reagan can reach across and cause mischief in the Democratic constituency," Mr. Lewis says. "Reagan appeals to blue collar, working-class voters. He can win Democratic votes."

"Carter could beat Reagan more easily than he could Bush or Baker," Mr. Lewis says. "A moderate Republican would appeal to moderate Democrats, while upper-income Republicans might defect from Reagan to the Demcorats. Ford is of course, the strogest in the polls against Carter. But if he became a candidate, he could sink the same way Kennedy did after he declared."

Elections analyst Richard Scammon, who thinks a candidate must command the political center to win the presidency, gives neither Reagan nor Ford much chance.

The Christian Science Monitor led the field for the month of March with a number of overwrought "analyses" on just how vulnerable Ronald Reagan was as a far right extremist.

Five days after Cattani's article, Newsweek's Dennis A. Williams penned "The GOP's Hamlet". Parroting talking points that the McCain campaign could have given in 2008 or the Huntsman camp this year, Williams wrote

The talk of another Ford candidacy — only three months after he formally removed himself from a string of primaries — betrayed an air of alarm on the part of many middle-road Republicans. Faced with Bush's unexpected slide in New Hampshire and Howard Baker's chronically weak campaign, GOP centrists — Ford among them — saw in Reagan's resurgence the potential for another Goldwater debacle. Ford, by contrast, was an ideologically safe, fondly remembered party loyalist who very nearly beat Jimmy Carter in 1976. Gallup polls last month showed Ford leading Reagan — and trailing Carter by a narrower margin than any other GOP contender in general-election trial heats. "Jerry Ford," argues one former aide, "is the only politician around who neutralizes Carter's positives" — solid character and Presidential stature — "and accentuates his negatives" — primarily an inflation rate 10 points higher than when Ford left office. Thus, even though the odds are long, the hour late and the scenario strewn with ifs, Ford remains the panic-button choice of many in his party and the Republican most feared by Carter strategists.

And there it was — the Goldwater Talking Point. Only useful against Barry Goldwater, it became the media template for the "far-right" candidate who could not win over the American public because of his "far-right" extremism. The moderate candidate was "most feared" by the Democrat. Surely the GOP would not be suicidal enough to go with Reagan.

Building off the Goldwater Talking Point, George Esper of the Associated Press wrote up a press conference from moderate, soon to be third party candidate, John Anderson on March 21, 1980.

"I cannot believe that the Republican Party will condemn itself to the kind of lopsided electoral contest that took place in 1964," Anderson told a regional meeting of business people in Stamford.

It was one of his strongest statements against Reagan. He referred to the 1964 presidential election when the Republican candidate — Sen. Barry Goldwater, like Reagan, a conservative — was swamped in a landslide victory by Lyndon B. Johnson. "I am afraid that the nomination of Mr. Reagan will only ensure the re-election of Mr. Carter and further ensure the continuing economic disaster that we have suffered now for three years," the Illinois congressman said.

"I cannot believe that with the mounting problems America faces," he said, "the voters in November will have a choice only between the economic policies of Ronald Reagan and those of Jimmy Carter."

Get ready to call Jon Huntsman "John Anderson" if a guy like Rick Perry gets the nomination.

On the same day, the Canadian Globe and Mail's Lawrenece Martin called Reagan "Ronald 'send-in-the-Marines' Reagan . . . whose appeal to [independents], at best, is limited."

All of these articles were in March of 1980, around the time Reagan clearly was locking up the nomination. Back in 1979, they were just as predictable.

As early as January 29, 1979, in an article by Peter Goldman and Eleanor Clift in Newsweek entitled "The Politics of Austerity," we learned this interesting nugget:

[I]t remains a measure of the stresses between Carter and the Democratic left that his people anticipate more trouble with his renomination than his re-election. Their winter-book bet for the Republican nomination is Ronald Reagan, and they consider him beatable, so long as Carter monopolizes the center – "just 80 per cent of the people," says Jordan – and isolates Reagan on the outer right.

The left and media began immediately building up the concerns about Reagan being too far right.

On June 23, 1979, Barry Sussman in the Washington Post wrote, "Reagan has not picked up substantial support from party activists who represent either strong moderate or small liberal elements of the party, the poll indicates. Many appear to be concerned about some of Reagan's followers – "arch-conservative kooks," one poll respondent called them."

Then, in an echo of the Perry criticisms from conservatives in Texas and elsewhere, Newsweek kicked off on October 1, 1979, with "The Leading Man" by Tom Mathews. In the article, Mathews suggests one of Reagan's problems is surprisingly that he is too moderate for some, but is still too far right for most.

And before staking out his position on SALT last week — for genuine arms control, against any one-way street favoring the Soviet Union — he consulted Albert Wohlstetter, an academic expert on national-defense and security issues who has Democratic ties. "He wants to get the best advice he can whether these people support him or not," says issues adviser Martin Anderson.

All this has led to some grumbling among righter-than-thou Republicans that Reagan may be sacrificing his ideological purity to his White House ambitions, a charge he angrily denies. His strategists quivered rather ambiguously last week when The New York Times reported that his latest position on SALT II was "moderately worded." "If The New York times says he's softening his image we can't control that," said Lake. "It might even help in the East, but over-all it could hurt." And the truth seemed to be that Reagan intended to shift as little as possible. "Anyone who wants to moderate him is going to have a tough time," said former aide Lyn Nofziger, who dropped from the Reagan campaign after losing a squabble over campaign assignments and policy issues. "They have taken a little of the hardness out of the hard line — but that's a long way from moving him to the left."

As an aside, the same Newsweek article notes that Reagan was in favor of a Chrysler bankruptcy instead of a bailout — a position many Republican donors were uncomfortable with.

On November 16, 1979, Walter R. Mears wrote an AP News Analysis for the Associated Press in which he wrote, "Last time, one of Reagan's problems was to dispel the suggestion that he was too far right, too extreme a conservative, for the nomination or the presidency. When that came up, as it often did, Reagan would recite his record as a candidate and as governor of California. When Ford called him too far right, Reagan replied that the president twice had tried to recruit him for Cabinet positions."

The Economist followed a few days later on November 24, 1979, explicitly drawing the Goldwater-Reagan connection.

Ever since 1964, when he made a rousing speech at the Republican convention that nominated Senator Barry Goldwater for president, Mr Reagan has been the darling of the Republican right. . . .

If Mr Reagan does not lose the Republican nomination, present opinion polls suggest that he will lose to either Senator Kennedy or President Carter next November. The latest Gallup poll shows Mr Reagan trailing the senator by 16 percentage points, and Mr Carter by six. The Republican party's minority status among registered voters also puts Mr Reagan at a disadvantage.

But the Economist also did what frequently happens with the "far-right" candidate — they given a wink-wink to the supposedly "far-right" voters suggesting they should back away from their extremist candidate because he really isn't that extreme. "Even though he practised conventional, middle-of-the-road politics as governor of California from 1967 to 1975, his political language had a hard right edge," the Economist's reporter wrote. So he's far-right, but even the far-right shouldn't trust him because his record is really that of a moderate — or something like that. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney could sympathize.

The "far-right" theme continued all the way to the 1980 convention and the election.

On July 12, 1980, Haynes Johnson, writing in the Washington Post, began his profile of the Republican Convention this way:

Gone are the conflicts between progressive and conservative wings, between East and Midwest, of the past.

Absent are the personal clashes — Taft and Eisenhower, Goldwater and Rockefeller — that marked other conventions. TheGrand Old Party that has emerged out of those disputes is smaller and ideologically purer than ever — and it stands enthusiastically behind its conservative choice, Ronald Reagan.

And yet the nagging doubts intrude. They love Reagan, all right, but they can't quite shake their worries about him. If the delegates could speak directly to their candidatein one voice now, the message would be clear — "Don't blowit!"

They don't want Reagan to renounce his conservative principles, but they are concerned he will be perceived by voters as too right.

"Temper your ideology with pragmatism– up to a point," is the way one delegate offers advice tothe certain GOP standard-bearer. "Don't depend totally on the right-wing groups. Be sensibly conservative."

Mirroring some of the journalistic excesses of coverage today, Johnson continued, "And in a day when political party differences have blurred or become nonexistent in the eyes of manyAmericans, and in face of the continuing rise of independent voters, these Republicans cling to their convictions."

And then Johnson delved into responses given to the Post, which are eerily similar to those of today.

"Do not compromise in order to get votes," says a California delegate another very conservative one.

"Continue to shoot from the hip," remarks a West Virginian, who has stood behind Reagan in the past as well as now.

But such views do not dominate the responses given The Post. What comes over is a desire — and an appeal — that Reagan be cautious in his actions, tempered in his words, and conciliatory in his approach.Uniting the party, moderating the views of the more extrememembers of the GOP, paying heed to wider range of national opinion, expanding the circle of his advisers to include a better ideological mix — these are the major concerns expressed.

The pattern is quite striking. The rhetoric and reporting mirror the fight the GOP is having today. LIke in 1980, however, and the same with 2004, the media is missing key details in their abridged world view of elections.

In 1964 and 2004, the United States was engaged in a political campaign in the middle of heightened national security tensions. In 1964, the Cold War had escalated, President Kennedy had been assassinated, and Lyndon Johnson was trying to scale back the nuclear arms race. Using a series of ads, including the famous daisy ad and the even more direct ice cream ad, Johnson portrayed Goldwater as someone who would ignite a nuclear holocaust.

In 2004, the issue was surrender in the war on terror. John Kerry portrayed himself as strong on defense, but his record suggested otherwise. Using a now famous advertisement with a pack of wolves, the Bush campaign destroyed Kerry's reputation as someone who could be trusted to keep us safe.

In 1980, while the media rushed to the Goldwater talking point and considered Reagan too "far-right" to beat Jimmy Carter, the nation found itself in an economic mess. It was very hard to characterize Reagan as too far right for a country craving new policies to get it out of its economic mess. Voters wanted a change from Jimmy Carter.

Carter's campaign eventually had to drop the "he's too radical" approach and instead do what the left is now doing to Rick Perry — claiming Reagan actually did nothing to help people in California when he was Governor. They tried to destroy the idea of California as a paradise, which in 1980 was a place millions were flocking to in search of work, just as people are now going to Texas.

It did not work. Neither the Goldwater narrative nor the "he sucked as Governor" narrative worked for Carter because, quite simply, the public had given up on him.

The greatest lesson to take away now is that the media is going to again fixate on Goldwater from 1964 and Kerry from 2004, and they will probably mostly ignore the most historically relevant election points — Carter in 1980 and George H. W. Bush in 1992.

History doesn't repeat itself. The media does.

Morning Briefing for August 22, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For August 22, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Goldwater Talking Point

2. Obama to farmer: 'Call the USDA.'

3. If Global Warming Doesn't Kill Us, ET Will

4. Where We've Been Is Where I Want To Be

5. On the Nature of the Perry Attacks

6. Verizon Strikers Head Back to Work Without New Agreement

7. Union Ain't Wanted: The UAW's Bad Week…

———————————————————————-

1. The Goldwater Talking Point

The media typically begins any Presidential campaign with comparisons to Harry Truman. The Reagan re-election in 1984 had the comparison. The Bush re-election in 1992 had the comparison. The Clinton re-election in 1996 had the comparison. Humorously, the off year election of 2002 used the Truman comparison too, as did 2004.

The media does this not only because a lot of them are lazy and not only because a lot of them talk with each other at beltway soirees where they infect each other with their various often contrived narratives and talking points, but also because they really do want to help put the election in some historic context.

Whenever a President is embattled, the media falls back to Truman.

But there is something else the media does — and typically does because of a leftward bias, a reliance on both establishment Republicans in Washington as their chief GOP sources and their Democratic friends as Democratic sources— they compare the Republican Primary to 1964.

Every conservative candidate must withstand the "Is he Barry Goldwater" question. Never mind that Barry Goldwater has been tried repeatedly by the Democrats and the only person it ever worked against was Barry Goldwater.

The Democrats have made clear, and the media is seizing on, President Obama's campaign statements that if Rick Perry is the nominee, they'll go with Goldwater 1964 and if Mitt Romney is the nominee, they'll go with John Kerry 2004 as the flip flopping opportunist. Neither of these will work this year and all you have to do is follow along as I step in the way back machine and take you back to the news as it existed on the campaign trail of 1979 and 1980.

"Is defeat probable for GOP if Reagan wins nomination?" blared the headline of the Christian Science Monitor on March 5, 1980. That was just the start of it.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Obama to farmer: 'Call the USDA.'

So, Wednesday – while campaigning in Illinois, although I understand that we're supposed to pretend that Obama isn't actually campaigning, for some bizarre reason – the President of the United States faced with a technical question (the effects of new EPA's soil and dust regulations on Illinois farmers) by a technical expert (an Illinois farmer). Despite the fact that the technical question is in fact supposedly within Barack Obama's level of expertise, the President decided instead to make slight fun of the probably-not-voting-for-him-anyway technical expert by chiding him about believing rumors and suggesting that the technical expert call the Department of Agriculture.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. If Global Warming Doesn't Kill Us, ET Will

Jon Huntsman tweeted yesterday:

"To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

Um. These scientists you trust, some of them at least, are accused of data manipulation and standing the peer-review process on its head. Call me crazy, but I don't trust them.

In related news, The Guardian brings us:

"Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists"

The referenced scientists are a meteorologist and a geographer from Penn State and another researcher from NASA's Planetary Science Division.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Where We've Been Is Where I Want To Be

"Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation–a situation which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description."

In light of recent events and long standing policies, I could forgive someone for thinking the above comment came from the lips of some perspective 2012 Tea Party Candidate. Of course this isn't one of the many 2012 hopefuls, this is Sir Edmund Burke in his Speech on Conciliation with America. This speech was given in 1775 in the House of Commons, prior to our Declaration of Independence.

Having witnessed the many changes in sentiment and conduct of Parliament, the ever changing ground put beneath America's feet, and the continued failure to produce results, it is no wonder that Burke concluded that 'under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation.'

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. On the Nature of the Perry Attacks

Rick Perry once tried to get out of a speeding ticket.

Rick Perry once owned stock in a chain of video stores competing against Blockbuster, some of which also rented adult movies.

Rick Perry once was a Democrat.

The attacks have come fast and furious against him. But most of the attacks take on a peculiar and very telling strain.

A reporter on television or in print will utter a sentence like this, "Privately many Republican consultants suggest Rick Perry may be too Texas or shoot from the hip too much and might turn off necessary independent voters and women."

It sounds so serious. As Alex Castellanos said on CNN the other night on John King USA, some fear Rick Perry might have "Mad Cowboy Disease."

Let me sum this all up for you into what Rick Perry's biggest problem is.

Whether you are talking about Alex (Team Carole Strayhorn 2006) or Karl Rove (Team Kay Bailey Hutchison 2010) or a host of other national Republican consultants, Rick Perry and his Texas team have beaten a significant portion of them.

But they did not just beat them. In many cases, Team Perry then shut the consultants who opposed him out of future business with him.

So there are scores and scores of Republican consultants who have scores to settle with Rick Perry and his team. And for guys like Karl Rove, if Perry were to win the White House, Karl and a few others would see themselves shut out of White House business for at least four years.

Rick Perry may be the only guy in America to have beaten both Karl Rove and also Obama's own consultant, David Axelrod.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Verizon Strikers Head Back to Work Without New Agreement

After two weeks of striking, it appears that the red shirts at the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are heading back to work without a contract in hand. . . .

This back to work agreement comes just before the CWA would begin paying up to $300 per week in strike benefits to its striking members, saving the union up to $10 million per week out of its union treasury.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

7. Union Ain't Wanted: The UAW's Bad Week…

Over a year ago, the president of the United Auto Workers, Bob King, announced a campaign to 'shame' foreign automakers with plants here in the U.S. into allowing his union to unionize them–the details of which would be released at a later point in time.

Earlier this year, when King finally released his new manifesto on what he expected the automakers to agree to, it was met with well-deserved derision.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

On the Nature of the Perry Attacks

Rick Perry once tried to get out of a speeding ticket.

Rick Perry once owned stock in a chain of video stores competing against Blockbuster, some of which also rented adult movies.

Rick Perry once was a Democrat.

The attacks have come fast and furious against him. But most of the attacks take on a peculiar and very telling strain.

A reporter on television or in print will utter a sentence like this, "Privately many Republican consultants suggest Rick Perry may be too Texas or shoot from the hip too much and might turn off necessary independent voters and women."

It sounds so serious. As Alex Castellanos said on CNN the other night on John King USA, some fear Rick Perry might have "Mad Cowboy Disease."

Let me sum this all up for you into what Rick Perry's biggest problem is.

Whether you are talking about Alex (Team Carole Strayhorn 2006) or Karl Rove (Team Kay Bailey Hutchison 2010) or a host of other national Republican consultants, Rick Perry and his Texas team have beaten a significant portion of them.

But they did not just beat them. In many cases, Team Perry then shut the consultants who opposed him out of future business with him.

So there are scores and scores of Republican consultants who have scores to settle with Rick Perry and his team. And for guys like Karl Rove, if Perry were to win the White House, Karl and a few others would see themselves shut out of White House business for at least four years.

Rick Perry may be the only guy in America to have beaten both Karl Rove and also Obama's own consultant, David Axelrod.

So there's a lot of score settling in a lot of the attacks. Next time you hear some Republican consultant say Rick Perry can't win because he is too much of a cowboy, understand that it is probably a national Republican consultant fearful they will be shut out of work if Perry wins and, more importantly, understand that the same dynamics were in place in 1980 with Reagan's "boys from California" team of consultants and the national consultants back them said the same about Reagan — he's too much of a cowboy conservative who will alienate key voting blocks.

That's not to say Perry is Reagan. It is to say the GOP national consultants have been pulling the same stuff since 1980.