I can’t help myself:
Will Republicans listen to Estrich (and Rush, and National Review etc?)
Maybe they will. Romney can still win Iowa. I should confess that despite my actual support for the integrity of John McCain and (if I had to pick) the corrective medicine of Ron Paul, a small unsavory part of me wants Huckabee to pull it off tonight. Why? To stick it to the GOP elite who cynically use people of faith for their own partisan purposes. And to damage the hideously phony and hollow Romney.
Why the hate? A Kossack reader writes:
My take is that Kos and folks like him in the netroots, including myself, are what the militant feminists were for the women’s movement. We’re sick and tired of Republicans in general, this administration in particular, and what passes for liberalism in this country that we’ve got nothing but contempt for the ‘battered-wife’, mainstream Vichy Democrats the beltway press, in our view, glorifies. Because Obama has seemingly criticized the partisanship we crave we thus see him as attempting to align himself as a battered-wife, Vichycrat against those who have done the most to organize resistance to this evil, evil administration sitting in Washington. This makes us angry because we see it as both disrespectful and counterproductive.
But, I support Obama despite this because I understand political reality and I love what he represents – a transition away from white baby-boomers bickering over the cultural changes of the 60s and 70s towards a politics that is truly representative of the multi-cultural, polyglot, open society that America is today.
So, while I wish Obama would stand up and rip out Dick Cheney’s heart in front the soulless one’s family and proceed to eat it raw on live television, I’ll just mutter under my breath, hope for the best, and love him for who he is. He’s got my vote even if isn’t going to douse the Bush’s with gasoline and light them on fire. That’s the netroots job anyway.
Endless Simmer blog – which specializes in grub – analyzes the candidates and loves Giuliani:
Not just a bacon guy, but an extra crispy bacon guy.
A new study:
People do great wrong, not because they are unaware of what they are doing but because they consider it to be right. This is possible because they actively identify with groups whose ideology justifies and condones the oppression and destruction of others.
The hardest thing to understand about the Jihadists is that they really believe they are doing good. Even as they murder innocents. That’s what God’s sanction will do for you.
The Swedes have found a way to conserve energy in a major train station: instead of venting human heat, recycle it.
"I no longer see the Left as a set of political opponents. I understand them now to be what they are: An uncompromising, barely human mass of malignancy, that exists only to be crushed electorally and culturally once and for all. Or, as a wiser man than I put it, The Evil Party," – Red State’s Thomas, who is retiring from blogging.
Hilzoy’s farewell note here.
Don Surber tells Rudy it’s a bad idea. The trouble is that Afghanistan is immense and the enemy is based in the remotest parts.
He’s the cranky, aloof granddad with the youngest crew of enthusiasts out there (apart from Obama). Eve Fairbanks cannot help swooning:
In the hands of the volunteers, I’m becoming a Ron Paul convert, and I have to get out. On the way to my car, I take a peek into one of the cabins. There are 17 bunks crammed on the lower floor, boys’ stuff scattered everywhere …
An Iraq amnesty policy that might give Romney a few ideas:
The Iraq government is considering the release of some 5,000 prisoners but a spokesperson said it would not include terrorists or homosexuals.
Hat tip: Dan.
Incumbents aside, exactly one victorious Iowa candidate – George W. Bush in 2000 – has ever gone on to win the presidency in the same year. Even though Carter got an historic boost in Iowa, on the way to his November election, he actually finished second in Iowa – behind "Uncommitted."
