Are any of you surprised by this? Seriously.

I knew the moment I found out he was having dinner with Obama that this would happen. A batted eye lash, a smile, and a shared meal gets you pretty damn far with Bill Kristol. Never mind that despite posing as a conservative for years, Kristol has been anything but a real conservative.

If Reagan’s policies had failed, or if he hadn’t been politically successful, the conservative ascendancy would have been nipped in the bud. So with President Obama today. Liberalism’s fate rests to an astonishing degree on his shoulders. If he governs successfully, we’re in a new political era. If not, the country will be open to new conservative alternatives.

We don’t really know how Barack Obama will govern. What we have so far, mainly, is an Inaugural Address, and it suggests that he may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on. Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative.

So that’s it — if Obama succeeds, conservatism is dead and if he fails conservatism thrives. Never was such brilliance expressed in the New York Times. But wait, it gets better. Obama’s speech was conservative, though conservatism is dead.

That makes such sense!

The fact is we know Obama’s economic policies are going to hurt. They will not help. His stimulus plan contains more money for grass seeds for the National Mall than for helping small businesses.

Liberalism never works. But batting eye lashes at Bill Kristol will apparently get him naked quick.

About the only commendable thing worth noting in Kristol’s column is the last line:

“This is William Kristol’s last column.”

I guess he’s off to work for Barack Obama now.

I have previous posited that Mitch McConnell, hero to so many on the right, has infected the GOP with a nasty cancer of defeatism.

If you listen to someone like Lincoln Chafee, it’s all part of the plan to hold the caucus together.

“He’s a good mathematician and he’s going to be counting votes – especially if Obama will be wading in,” Chafee said. “And if the Obama people are smart they won’t depend on a razor-thin margin to prevent filibusters.”

I actually understand that. McConnell will not be effective if he can’t hold his caucus together. I think he is a good mathematician.

But behind the scenes, I think there remain problems.

Barack Obama on Friday told the Republicans they need to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. First, Obama is probably still pissed about Operation Chaos dragging out the Democratic primary. Second, Barack Obama has listened to Rush Limbaugh more than the Republican Party. Had the GOP listened to Rush Limbaugh, the GOP would not be in its present predicament.

As Rush rightly points out, moderates stand for nothing and the voters want to support someone who stands for something. As I’ve previously stated, the GOP and the Democrats both win elections by starting with their base voters and then adding to the base. Lately, the GOP has been intent on starting from outside the base and working its way in.

Mitch McConnell is indicative of this problem and seems intent on spreading his party killing cancer. He needs to turn back from the path down which he intends to lead the Republican Party.

Roll Call notes McConnell intends to outline a “post-partisan” path. Everything you wanted to know about where McConnell is headed can be found in this part of the article:

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So there’s this video of Rush Limbaugh that’s surfaced. In it, Rush talks about keeping people tuned in and engaged to his radio program.

Naturally, many on the left are portraying this as the caption at Fark does — “Early interview with Rush Limbaugh shows him bragging how he manipulates his listener’s emotions for profit. Right-wingers insist they are not being duped.”

There’s just one problem. If you actually take the time to listen to what Rush is saying, he’s talking about people who hate him continuing to listen to him. That’s the whole point.

Rush says, “The key is knowing that nobody can get everybody to like them. Keeping in mind that the law of averages indicates that half of the people who listen to you are not going to like you. You’ve still got to find a way to make those who don’t like you keep listening to your program.”

In other words, it’s not about right-wingers getting duped, it’s about roping in stupid liberals, many of whom contribute to Rush having a 20 million person listening audience.

I cannot believe someone is so stupid he could listen to that entire clip and somehow think Rush was talking about the right. We like him because he’s right.

According to the New Majority, a left wing website designed to cast itself as the new conservative voice, Sarah Palin’s wardrobe is stashed at the RNC in the basement in trash bags and was not given to charity.

The story cites “sources,” but does not mention that the author is probably the source, considering she worked at the RNC.

More so, the story is flat out not true according to multiple people at the RNC.

David Frum followed up the original post with his own in which he wrote

Gov. Palin remains a controversial figure in the Republican party. But the moral of this particular story is not a moral that bears on her. The moral bears on the RNC, an organization whose leaders think that evasion is a solution. It’s time for new leadership at the RNC and at all the highest levels of our party organization.

Of course, that came two paragraphs after writing, “As soon as Gov. Palin returned to the national scene, so too would all the unanswered questions left over from the last campaign.” So is this about her or not?

There are two full stories about Sarah Palin and her wardrobe. Coincidentally, the stories come out the day after Sarah Palin delivers a very well received State of the State speech in Alaska. And some how this is not about continuing a smear on Sarah Palin — someone David Frum actively opposed as an icky conservative during the campaign.

Yeah, right.

But here is the larger point: why the hell is this relevant to anything three months after the campaign? Seriously.

First, the story is not even true.

Second, the person involved is not even a candidate, but remains apparently enough of a threat to leftist members of the GOP that she must continually be kicked.

Third, if you want to say leadership needs to be changed within the RNC, that’s a valid point, but why use a wholly inaccurate story to do so?

There are bigger issues out there that make the same point. The left within the Republican Party has launched a full scale assault against the conservative base. To be sure, the base is conservative. For those of you wanting to replace the party leadership, you should take note that the leftists are even more adamant about it than you and you should consider who exactly they want.

The White House is treating the press like the press corp is Obama’s pet. They whored themselves to get Obama elected, so they can hardly be surprised by it. Nonetheless, they are upset Obama’s pay to play marketing operation continues.

Veteran CBS newsman Bill Plante was one of the most vocal critics, questioning the White House’s handling of Wednesday night’s second swearing in – which was covered by just a four-reporter print pool that didn’t include a news photographer or TV correspondent.

He also asked new press secretary Robert Gibbs why ABC, which paid millions to host the DC Neighborhood Ball, was granted the only inauguration day interview with President Obama – a move he equated to “pay to play.”

“We have a tradition here of covering the president,” said Plante, who is covering his fourth administration.

What’s fun about this is that not all the press has gotten the memo. As Fox News notes, not everyone in the press is upset. Some still want to sexually gratify themselves in front of The One:

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter’s shoulder and staring him in the eye.

“All right, come on” he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. “We will be having a press conference, at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys — that’s all I was trying to do,” Politico.com reported.

The situation came to a close when a cameraman in the room interrupted, declaring: “I’d like to say it one more time: ‘Mr. President.’”

The New York Times must still be mad that it didn’t get an interview with The One. It’s going after him today for his hypocrisy on lobbyists.

Obama made a big show of banning lobbyists from working on issues in office that they dealt with out of office. Except he didn’t.

The new president’s actions provided a burst of executive sunshine that Washington badly needs. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama already wants to make an exception for William Lynn, a former lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, to become deputy secretary of defense. Mr. Lynn, a respected Pentagon official in the Clinton administration, has the right résumé — except that he was a lobbyist until last year. This clearly violates the mint-new standard, especially since the Pentagon job is so wide-ranging that recusal on specific issues is impossible.

As the Los Angeles Times notes

If confirmed for his position, Lynn probably would have a large say in the future of the missile defense system. If the Obama administration decided to scale that program back dramatically, for instance, it would affect Raytheon. … The White House has also issued a waiver for William V. Corr, a former lobbyist for the anti-smoking group Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, who has been nominated for a top position at the Department of Health and Human Services.

If liberals could be hypocrites, Obama would be one. But as we know, you can only be a hypocrite if you stand for something.

I have previously said Barack Obama changing the Bush administration policies on terror would get many of us killed.

They will. Barack Obama, with his orders to shut down Gitmo and bar enhanced interrogation techniques, is already headed toward Lady MacBeth syndrome (or should that be Pontius Pilate Syndrome). Within the next several years he is going to be repeated having to wash American blood off his hands because of his actions.

More proof comes from the New York Times today.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

“They’re one and the same guy,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence analysis. “He returned to Saudi Arabia in 2007, but his movements to Yemen remain unclear.”

The previous administration did not lightly make the decision to house terrorists at Gitmo. This administration would rather pander to the left than keep us safe.

With the left taking over, there are a lot of bills that will be introduced, and unfortunately passed, that threaten our way of life. However, perhaps the most damming is the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act (known as Card Check).
 
This bill will take away numerous rights and protections currently afforded to workers employed at companies where unions are actively seeking to organize. The bill would remove workers’ rights to a federally supervised private ballot election. Instead, workers would be asked to sign cards in front of organizers and colleagues, potentially subjecting them to harassment or intimidation. Once a majority of employees have signed cards, the union is immediately recognized. State “right-to-work” laws essentially become irrelevant.
 
With Big Labor giving over 600 million this past election cycle, they are going to want something in return – and that something is to take away the Democratic right to private secret ballot.
 

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As Operation Leper progressed after the election, it became very clear that the chief culprit in the smears against Sarah Palin was Nicolle Wallace, Palin’s press person appointed by the McCain camp.

A dozen eye witnesses to her antics on the campaign trail contacted RedState. Most of them were confirmed. We don’t know why she behaved as she did other than to save her own skin at the expense of a decent women maligned by the press and handled incompetently by the McCain campaign. We do know she behaved badly.

Today, she admits to having a tingle run up her leg over Barack Obama. The whole thing is nauseating. I suggest you not read it lest you vomit on your keyboard.

Just to give you a taste:

Obama deserves our thanks for letting Republicans root for him, as well. He has created a space within his wide net of support for those of us who fought for John McCain’s candidacy by honoring the McCains at a dinner the night before his inauguration and by listening to McCain’s ideas on national security, climate change, and government reform.

The Obamas have also returned the civility and warmth directed at them by president and Mrs. Bush in a way that sets this transition apart from others in recent history. This generosity of spirit has had a ripple effect throughout Republican circles. Two former senior aides to President George W. Bush said to me over the weekend, “I expect him [President Obama] to be there for eight years.”

A former senior official of Bush’s re-election campaign predicted that he would contribute to Obama’s re-election effort. When I heard that, I said, “He hasn’t even been sworn in yet.” It didn’t matter. One former White House colleague who I ran into in a greenroom this weekend said, “I’m pleased with everything Obama’s done—it’s the press that’s driving me crazy.”

We must recommit ourselves to this: any Presidential candidate that hires this woman in four years will be rejected by the rest of us.

That is the implication from his testimony today.

Mr. Geithner faced some uncomfortable questions over why he failed to pay more than $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes over several years while working at the International Monetary Fund.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) called it “incomprehensible” that Mr. Geithner didn’t realize he needed to pay employment taxes. He also questioned why Mr. Geithner took so long to correct the problem for tax years 2001 and 2002. The payroll-tax errors were discovered during a 2006 Internal Revenue Service audit of Mr. Geithner’s taxes, and he paid what he owed for 2003 and 2004. But Mr. Geithner didn’t pay the Social Security and Medicare tax he owed for 2001 and 2002 until after Mr. Obama indicated in the fall that he planned to nominate him as Treasury secretary.

“I regret having not done that sooner,” Mr. Geithner said. “If I thought about it more, maybe I would have come to it sooner. I did not believe when I settled that audit that I had an obligation to go back. I had not thought about it in the intervening years.”

Let’s review:

Geithner signed a form acknowledging his responsibility to pay his taxes. He accepted money from the International Monetary Fund to offset payment of his taxes. He did not pay his taxes.

Upon getting an audit by the IRS, he paid back taxes for 2003 and 2004, but still did not pay his 2001 and 2002 taxes.

He first said he did not realize he had the obligation.

Today he said Turbo Tax screwed him up. BTW, Intuit, which makes Turbo Tax, saw its stock drop as a result.

Tim Geithner was either lying then or lying now. The odds are, in blaming Turbo Tax today before the Senate in sworn testimony, Tim Geithner committed perjury.

This is coming off the Foxwire.

Congressman Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District said he’d be happy to have Guantanamo Bay terrorist prisoners in his district. He apparently gets to speak for all the people in his district on this. I’m sure they are thrilled.

Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., says he’d be willing to house prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in his Congressional district if President Obama makes good on a plan to close the U.S. prison there.

Mr. Obama pledged to shutter the camp during his presidential campaign. In one of his first acts in office, the president circulated a draft Wednesday that would shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year.

Murtha only has a minimum security prison in his district. But says he’d have no reservations about holding detainees there in a maximum security prison.

“Sure, I’d take ‘em,” said Murtha. They’re no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo.”

Murtha added that he there was “no reason not to put ‘em in prisons in the United States and handle them the way they would handle any other prisoners.”

Murtha represents the area of Pennsylvania where United 93 crashed on 9/11. I’m sure the people of his district are ready to greet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with open arms and casseroles.

There are no stories today about O’s being pried off keyboards in the White House.

When Bush entered the White House, the W’s were gone.

There’s an unsubstantiated rumor that the Bushies shut down the comment line at the White House, but I’ve gotten no confirmation and, if true, that doesn’t strike me as anything malicious like yanking letters off keyboards.

But, like pointing out we have not been attacked in eight years, the media will not point out that an outgoing administration behaved properly.

Let’s review: As prices on a product go up, demand for a product decreases. As prices for a product go down, demand for a product increases. It’s basic economics.

Florida is just the latest place where that’s happening. To close a gap in the state budget, the legislature is considering raising the cigarette tax. Being no fan of smoking, I’ve got zero problem with that. The problem, though, is that they want to raise the tax to balance the budget.

Governor Crist, who had been totally against the idea, is changing his tune. Though purported dead as of this writing, the proposal lingers in the hallways of the legislature like the stench a smoker typically leaves behind in an elevator.

Efforts to increase the tax by a dollar are gaining support as the budget continues to fall. Even Governor Charlie Crist is changing his tune from a definite No to “not as yet.”

Of course, the data suggests what economics tells us. If they raise the price, less people will smoke.

While the tax may not be popular among smokers, studies show that for every 10 percent increase in the price of a pack teen smoking drops seven percent and four percent fewer adults pick up the habit.

Note the spin: less people will smoke if they raise the tax. Precisely. Which is good. Except it is not good when trying to balance a budget because it will come up short.

Florida is in a bind with its budget. But resorting to bad economics to patch the budget hole is just going to cause new holes later. In tough economic times, it’s an even dumber idea to tax products as a means of revenue generation. People already inclined to slow purchases will do it even more.

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Charlie Cook has an article up in which he decides conservatives are self-destructive.

A fellow who oversees lobbying in all 50 states for a major corporation recently told me about a certain Republican U.S. senator up for re-election in 2010, someone generally regarded as fairly conservative who might face a serious challenge from a very conservative fellow Republican. The incumbent has not been tainted by scandal, has never embarrassed himself by making a major mistake, is highly regarded in Washington, and is considered a very effective senator.

I was dumbfounded. Although it isn’t hard to see why a moderate Republican such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter could face a conservative primary challenge, it is difficult to understand why a conservative Republican would be challenged from the right. This is a party in danger of cannibalizing itself. . . .

And it means that GOP primaries, particularly in open-seat races, will be even more likely than in the past to nominate ideologues. The party’s contraction and rightward movement have become self-perpetuating, and will continue to be until something breaks the cycle.

This, I think, is wrongheaded and is part of the inside the beltway thinking resonating with too many Republican Senators who will keep the GOP in the minority by following Charlie Cook’s conventional wisdom.

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In the living room (that’s me to the right of Charles Krauthammer):

The new White House website is up. It’s actually not bad.

Of course, the new administration just couldn’t do it gracefully. They had to get in a few digs, like this one:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

I guess it’s fitting their party symbol is the jackass.

George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney leave Washington today. For eight years they have ably served the nation, keeping us safe.

The media, wrapped up in the deification of Barack H. Obama, has given little time to reflect on the administration of George W. Bush. We get the bumper sticker cliches. But serious reflection has been missing.

President Bush did not set out to be a wartime President. We all forget sometimes that Bush was a pre-9/11 President. He came in to no honeymoon because of the 2000 election. He started off trying to bring both sides together, but quickly realized the Democrats were in no mood to come together. The few compromises he had, like No Child Left Behind, were met skeptically by conservatives and viscerally by Democrats.

9/11 was a turning point. An administration that intended to aggressively focus on domestic policy turned to war and foreign affairs. And in doing so, Bush had to rebuild the entire spectrum of America’s defenses. He inherited a military that was sharp at the point but sorely lacking in depth, a deliberately balkanized and dysfunctional intelligence structure, a hidebound diplomatic corps, smug but flabby and functionally useless alliances, appallingly lax airport security, a web of unreasonable legal restrictions on counterterrorism, and sworn enemies left to fester and scheme unmolested. The President did not get it all right; he and his inner circle made scores of decisions, often under intense time pressure and with less than perfect information. Decisions made on the basis of national security secrets had to be defended, incompletely, against reckless public attacks. Bush surrounded himself with many great people, but he also hired some good people in jobs out of their area or above their pay grade, some who just weren’t on the team, some disastrous holdovers and some utter hacks. As the first term turned to the second, President Bush relied less on movement conservatives (with a few notable exceptions like the late Tony Snow) and more on a mixture of old personal friends and technocratic careerists. The Administration ended poorly. But to the very end, it got the one big thing right.

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Every morning at 5:00 a.m. EST, RedState sends out its Morning Briefing. It’s a new feature to the site. The email goes out to Hill staffers, reporters, and talk radio shows across the country.

We try to cover topics that the MSM either is not covering or we add information to topics the MSM would otherwise ignore. With the media in the tank for Obama, we want to make sure the real story gets out on topics the media would otherwise conveniently ignore or downplay.

It’s a great way to do news prep for the day.

If you want to subscribe to the Morning Briefing, go here and click the “Morning Briefing” box.

The Vice Chairman of the RNC, or the Co-Chairman, however you look at it, it the GOP’s gender quota position. It’s always a woman in that spot.

One of those women running is Renee Amoore. I understand, as an African-American, her enthusiasm for Barack Obama, but still . . . it’s kind of disconcerting when the would be number two says stuff like this:

Even though I’m Republican, I’m African-American first,” said Amoore, who worked and voted for Sen. John McCain. “Just because I don’t believe in some of his policies, it doesn’t mean I don’t want him to be successful. He has made people feel really good and that’s important. Dr. King talked about that dream.”

An outstanding motivational speaker never at a loss for words, Amoore was challenged to describe what she’ll be feeling in D.C.

“We’ll probably be in tears,” she said. “There are no words for it. But it’ll be an awesome experience.”

And then there’s this:

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