I mean really, enough is enough.  Every single inconvenient fact about anyone’s favorite GOP candidate is chalked up to the the evil MSM.  If I had a nickel for every time someone on this forum tried to shut down a line of argument b claiming it was an MSM plot, I would be rich by now.  Do you not realize what a bunch of crybabies and wimps you sound like when you make that argument?

First, most of the media are a bunch of equal opportunity A-holes.  They are sharks circling in the water, and when they smell blood they go for it, and they don’t care whether the blood comes from a Democrat or Republican.

Second, there are plenty of right-leaning media outlets to counterbalance the left-leaning ones.  Does anyone REALLY believe that Fox is “fair and balanced”?  Of course not.  Fox is ridiculously biased in our favor.  That’s why we like watching it.  And last I checked, Fox was crushing MSNBC in viewership.  And let’s not even get started on talk radio.

Third, who gets their political insight from the nightly news anymore?  I sure don’t.  I get most of my reporting and commentary from the internet, like I suspect most of you do too.  Well the internet belongs to nobody, Democrat or Republican.  Whatever you want to learn about, you can find on the internet.  Whatever you believe, you can publish on the internet.  It’s the wild west, total anarchy, and anarchy favors nobody … and everybody.

Fourth, successful Republican politicians learn to use the media to their advantage instead of complaining about it.  Like Ronald Reagan.  He was a master at using the media.  Ever hear Reagan whine about the media?  Here is a pretty extensive list of Reagan quotes.  None of them are about the media.  Complaining about the media in politics is like complaining that water is wet.  Stop complaining and start swimming.

Fifth, when our answer to every negative fact or bit of bad news is to blame biased MSM, we sound like a bunch of tin foil hat wearing paranoid kooks.  Sometimes, bad news is just bad news, not evidence of a conspiracy.  The funny thing is, all the lefty tin foil hats are equally convinced of media bias against them, since the news outlets are all corporate owned.  Their whining about “corporate news” sounds just as bad as ours.

Sixth, as long as we lean on that rhetorical crutch, we prevent ourselves from formulating actual cogent, persuasive arguments for our case.  Citing the MSM persuades nobody who is not already persuaded, and takes up brain cells, bandwidth, and copy space that could be used on persuasive analysis.

Finally, only losers complain about the referees.  Have you ever noticed that in nearly every single NFL game ever played, fans of the losing team complain that the officiating was bad?  Well, that’s what we sound like.  Winners find a way to win.  So stop snivelling, stop using Media Bias as your answer to every single issue on this forum, and get out there and make your case with facts and analysis.

Let me get this straight.  We, the party of traditional family values, are seriously considering nominating for President a man who did the following:

1. Cheated on his first wife and and divorced her while she had cancer.
2. Cheated on his second wife for 5 years and divorced her while she had multiple sclerosis.
3. Lied about his affair while he led the effort to impeach President Clinton for lying about an affair.
4. Did all of the above while building a career as a public figure as a champion of families, traditional values, and moral standards.

OK.  Got it.

Before you go down this path, please consider the likely consequences of this outcome:

First, we are going to lose the election in a landslide.   The American people will excuse many things, but they will not excuse a hypocrite.  Newt is pretty much the world heavyweight champion of hypocrites.  If we pick him, it will make the entire Republican party look like hypocrites too.  Twelve years after trying to impeach a President for cheating on his spouse while in office and lying about it, we will have chosen to nominate for President a man who …  cheated on his spouse while in office and lied about it.  Shhhh, maybe nobody will notice the coincidence.

Second, we will forfeit the ability to defend family values and moral standards for at least a generation.  For example, do you oppose gay marriage?  Well, you can forget that.  Can you imagine the next time that comes up and we try to argue that it “undermines the institution of marriage”?  We will get laughed at.

Third, it’s going to destroy our general credibility, and expose us as a group willing to say and do anything to win.   We will demonstrate with our actions that we are willing to overlook a staggering character flaw as long as he says things we like about government and the economy and is strident in his criticism of those we dislike.  We will demonstrate that consistency of principles means nothing to us.

Character is doing the right thing even when it conflicts with your own interests and desires.  Re-read the four bullets at the top of this post.  Can you really claim that Newt is a man of good character?  That he is trustworthy?  That he is a man of integrity?  That he puts the welfare of others above himself?  So are those things not important to you, or is pandering to your ideology just more important?

Some of the arguments made to excuse his behavior are absurd:

• “Oh, but he has repented, and has been forgiven!”  Please.  The prisons are full of repentant criminals.  People who get caught tend to do that.  It’s the only way they can still get what they want.
• “Nobody is perfect.  You are not perfect.”  Nobody is not running for President.  Neither am I.  Newt is.
• “His personal life is nobody’s business.”  Only if you think that character does not count, and that we were all full of crap in 1998.
• “Marianne is just a bitter ex-wife.”  Completely irrelevant to Newt’s behavior in 1998.
• “The media is out to get him.”  Ditto.

I know some of you like Newt because he is a pugnacious fellow who is going to take it to Obama in the debates.  Well, combative candidates do not win the Presidency.  Optimistic leaders win the Presidency.  That is why candidates typically pick a running mate who can act as an attack dog.  The attacking has to be done, but not by the guy at the top of the ticket.  Give Newt a talk show on Fox if you like the way he skewers people.

One last thought.  You love Newt because he says the right things.  Twelve years ago he was saying the right things about family values and morality.  Turns out he did not mean it.  At all.

So how do you know for sure that he means what he says now?

Political commentary on the video of Marines urinating on Taliban corpses has been somewhat muted, thankfully.  Those who have waded in mostly done so along predictable partisan lines.  Some Conservative commentators have taken the position that “war is hell” and our troops should always get our unconditional support, especially when it provides an opportunity t0 score points against the Obama Administration.  This viewpoint is misguided.  This is not a political issue, it is a military discipline issue, and it should be left to the Marine Corps to handle the way they always handle discipline issues.

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A lot of people talk about being Conservatives on this site.  Most posters speak strongly of applying conservative principles to government.  However, there appears to be a varying understanding of what those principles are.  In particular, many people mistake positions for principles,  and some seem to define Conservatism as “all the positions I agree with.”  Certainly there is limited discussion of the underlying  philosophy of conservatism, and how it differentiates us from other political philosophies and groups.

So I thought it would be useful to start an discussion on Conservatism.  What do you consider the philosophy underlying Conservatism?  What are the core principles that derive from that philosophy?  How do you apply those principles to arrive at specific policy approaches and political positions?  How does Conservatism differ from other political philosophies?

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Many pundits have been pounding the theme that Obama must fire General Stan McChrystal to avoid looking weak.  They are dead wrong.  The firing of McChrystal shows much greater weakness than keeping him would.  It was an unjust action, and there is nothing weaker as a leader than taking unjust action to avoid being seen as weak.

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John McCain and Joe Lieberman are teaming up to stiffen our spines again.  In their latest Washington Post editorial, they preemptively warn against flagging public resolve to finish what we started in Afghanistan.  It’s worth a read.

I’d like to know who their national security advisor is, because he has excellent insight.  He hit the crucial lesson of Iraq right on the head with this passage:

A narrow, short-term focus on counterterrorism, by contrast, would repeat the mistakes made for years in Iraq before the troop surge, with the same catastrophic consequences. Before 2007 in Iraq, U.S. Special Forces had complete freedom of action to strike at terrorist leaders, backed by more than 120,000 conventional American forces and overwhelming air power. Although we succeeded in killing countless terrorists — including the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the insurgency continued to grow in strength and violence. It was not until we changed course and applied a new approach — a counterinsurgency strategy focused on providing basic security for the people and improving their lives — that the cycle of violence was at last broken.

I was a part of that Special Forces effort in Iraq.

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President Obama has recently announced his intention to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.  As a statement of principle, this is unremarkable.  President Bush repeatedly stated the same policy goal.  However, Obama has set a deadline of one year, which would appear to end the process of kicking the can down the road.  Given their ideological commitment to that goal, it is overwhelmingly probable that the one year deadline will be substantially met.

So now the national conversation must shift from whether to close Guantanamo to how to close it.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, even if you are a national security conservative.  Closing Guantanamo does not require conceding that it was a bad idea or an evil act.  Back in the early days of the war, we had dangerous terrorist prisoners and we needed a quick solution to deal with them.  Guantanamo was probably the best hasty solution that could be devised at the time.  However, when you implement a hasty solution you must go back and put in place a more deliberate solution when time permits.  For Guantanamo, that time has come.

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One thing I don’t understand: why isn’t the McCain campaign blanketing the airwaves with a final feel-good ad reminding voters of McCain’s POW story?

Let’s face it: him turing down early release is by far the most compelling part of the man’s biography. No matter how much you disagree with or even despise him, the thought of that selfless act of character and courage brings goosebumps to any patriotic American, which in my experience is nearly all of us.

I understand why he couldn’t make it the centerpiece of his campaign, why he had to focus on his Senate career and his policy proposals. He couldn’t run solely on that act. Even in the GOP primary he got called out for trying to do that.

But it is no accident that McCain/Palin poll ratings peaked in the 2 weeks after the GOP Convention, when 50 million people saw his bio on film. And now, with only a few hours left, what does he have to lose?

IMHO any remaining “undecided” voters aren’t going to be sitting there with a clipboard, tallying policy prescriptions to determine who to vote for. For most of them, I believe it will be a gut call based on emotion when they get in the booth.

If there is one thought the campaign should want to stick in their minds, in that booth, it should be of McCain the hero. And so that is the last thing they should be reminded of as they watch TV tonight or drive to work in the morning.

For weeks I’ve been noticing something odd: there are literally hundreds of McCain signs and bumper stickers in area near Tampa FL, and hardly an Obama sign or sticker to be found. Recently I’ve been making a game of “count the signs” when I go out on errands. I usually count 10 to 20 McCain signs per trip; rarely do I get 1 or 2 Obama signs.

Of course I live in a strongly conservative suburb, so none of this is surprising. However, it did make me wonder: if the polls show McCain so far behind, shouldn’t there be some leakage of Obama support into McCain strongholds in a battleground state like Florida?

So today I had a business trip into deep Obama territory: downtown Tampa and St Pete. I figured I would see an equally lopsided display of support for Obama.

Imagine my surprise to see that this was not so. There were more Obama signs there than here, but I still had to look pretty hard for them. And I still spotted more McCain stickers and signs.

Does this mean anything? Probably not. It’s certainly grossly unscientific. But it just makes me wonder if the polls really are overstating the state of this race.

So I’m curious: does anyone else in a battleground state take note of this kind of thing? What is the sign-to-sign ratio in Ohio? PA?

The last 2 weeks have been an education for those of us who did not believe in press bias. The speed and ferocity with which the national media have pounced on every misstep and inconsistency by the McCain/Palin campaign has been shocking. A man with a lifelong reputation for honesty and integrity has been portrayed a liar based on press indignation with two minor web ads. McCain has been rebranded by the media with stunning ease.

Now we are seeing the results of that rebranding, with a sudden swing back towards Obama in the national polls. The abrupt nature of the polling shift from Sept 16-18 indicates that it is not an inevitable deflation of the RNC convention bounce, but a direct reflection of negative McCain coverage over the last 10 days, culminating in the collective pronouncement of the punditry last weekend that McCain was campaigning dishonestly.

To win, the McCain campaign will have to adapt swiftly to this suddenly even-more-hostile media environment. So what are the after-action lessons from this latest swing?

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This topic feels vaguely dirty, but I can’t really figure out why it would be out of bounds, so I’ll toss it out there:

http://www.helpobamasbrother.org/

Gotta admit, as humor goes, this one cuts deep.

If I’m stepping across the line by posting this, someone let me know.

In an http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/01/obama-defends-natural-disaster-experience/ with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Obama was asked if his experience in the Senate compares with Palin’s experience. His answer:

My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.

Note he totally ignores Gov. Palin’s experience as Governor of the State of Alaska, describing her experience only as Mayor of a small town. Clearly dishonest. Not lying, because he’s careful not to get caught doing that, but obviously said with an intent to mislead and deceive.

So let’s take a look at the real tale of the tape:

Employees of the State of Alaska: 25,000
Employess of the Obama Campaign: 2500

Budget of the State of Alaska: $5.5 Billion
Budget of the Obama Campaign: $500 Million

So by Obama’s own measures of executive experience, Palin has 10 times the experience that he has.

In an http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/01/obama-defends-natural-disaster-experience/ with Anderson Cooper on CNN, Obama was asked if his experience in the Senate compares with Palin’s experience. His answer:

My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month.

Note he totally ignores Gov. Palin’s experience as Governor of the State of Alaska, describing her experience only as Mayor of a small town. Clearly dishonest. Not lying, because he’s careful not to get caught doing that, but obviously said with an intent to mislead and deceive.

So let’s take a look at the real tale of the tape:

Employees of the State of Alaska: 25,000
Employess of the Obama Campaign: 2500

Budget of the State of Alaska: $5.5 Billion
Budget of the Obama Campaign: $500 Million

So by Obama’s own measures of executive experience, Palin has 10 times the experience that he has.