While it is definitely the season for Republicans to put their candidates through the thresher of primary politics, I think Dan McLaughlin did a great thing by highlighting “Good Newt” in a speech that Gingrich gave to the NRA earlier this year. (Followed by Good Newt Strikes Again) It’s important that while we vet our candidates most notably by focusing on their flaws, we remember that this field of candidates includes some damn fine folks, and some really skilled politicians. I think we need more posts and discussion about their strengths, certainly relative to President Obama.

So this is not about Rick Santorum’s weaknesses or baggage. You can find those if you’re inclined and you won’t have to leave RedState to do so.

No, this is about what I think is Rick Santorum at his best: a full room, handheld mic, and no teleprompter. It’s Santorum at the Rockingham County Nursing Home in Brentwood, NH last night. The video is at C-SPAN.org and it’s about two hours long. You don’t need to watch or listen to the whole thing, but it’s a great example of a hard-working guy working a room while demonstrating not only a mastery of policy and its implications, but also a philosophical defense of conservatism. And throw in an angry questioner or three.

Highlights include:

• 40:00 A great discussion of the history of the Social Security Trust Fund surplus and its connection to the ever-expanding federal government. Not for nothing, the Daily Caller tried to pull out this snippet and declare “sacrilege!” Not sure if the author watched the whole video or just got an email from some other campaign.
• 47:00ish Santorum telling a packed house at a nursing home that we need to raise the retirement age, and why.
• 1:21:45 Responding to the fact that one of Santorum’s nephews is not exactly on message. RedStaters will appreciate this quite a bit.
• 1:49:26 on another candidate’s “electability.”

Rick Santorum has his weaknesses, but he’s not without some considerable talent as well.

The script writes itself.

“I don’t care. Obama is awesome.”

Don’t even bother arguing with the Left on this one.

Well, we’ve seen enough articles over the past week that we can’t stop reading about AOL’s remarkable acquisition of The Huffington Post – at a pretty significant $315m price tag.

First, I have to say that the capitalist in me needs to genuinely congratulate Ms. Huffington. To turn her website into the pageview and influence juggernaut it’s become shows real internet acumen. Through a savvy combination of headline-seeking, and SEO, she leveraged thousands of unpaid volunteers – many of them desperate grateful for any bit of exposure they could get for key underreported news stories like: how vaccines cause autism and updates on Katy Perry (PHOTOS!). Well done.

I’ll admit – I never thought it had a real chance of success. When it launched, I remember asking myself, “who actually gives a crap about what Julia Louis-Dreyfuss thinks about legislative politics?!” How wrong I was, apparently.

But now that the dust has mostly settled from the big sale, something interesting has emerged – some pretty widespread liberal discontent at Ms. Huffington’s payday. My favorite, of course, is the complaint of those like the Freelancers’ Guild:

We call on Ms. Huffington to live up to the ideals she so earnestly professes and share some of her profits with the people responsible for the Huffington Post’s 117 million unique visitors each month.

Hear, hear!

You know, it brings to mind a funny story given all of the hyperbolic bile that’s been flung at this site and its leadership – especially by members of that wronged class of HuffPo sweatshop bloggers…

When RedState was sold back in late 2006 (alas, for far, far, far, far less than $315m), the founders of RedState took more than ten percent of the GROSS purchase price to distribute to the contributors and editors whose efforts had been (and remain) so key to the site’s success. Not only that, Eagle also made clear their interest in not just keeping our superstar Mr. Erickson engaged – but key volunteers as well.

I’m sure those enjoying the windfall at HuffPo have plans at least as generous as those of us right wing crazies here at RedState.

Most Honorable Chairman of the Republican Party,

First, a most happy birthday to you, sir. And what could be better than celebrating your 52nd in Columbus, Ohio. Of course, the best we can say about that is that thank God you’re actually in a state that matters this year. For today, anyway.

But seriously, it was such a joy to read in Politico about the great two-page spread you received in Ebony magazine. What a wonderful birthday gift that must have been!

On Obama: “I have an enormous amount of respect for the president. Certainly, I admire his achievement. My personal feeling for him is one of pride. At the same time, I disagree with him vehemently on his policies. … I have [Black] Democrats who come up to me and say, ‘I don’t agree with a thing you said, but I’m proud that you are chairman of the RNC.’”

Whew. I for one am so relieved that you’re making such personal inroads among black Democrats who have no intention of supporting the Republican Party. Finally, a suitable answer to the common question: “Why does Michael Steele suck so much at fundraising?”

Seriously, would you please just STFU and get back to the business of the Republican Party? Not the part where you personally enrich yourself at the expense of getting Republicans elected. And not the part where you purge or meddle with really smart professional staff. But the part of making the case for the Party and getting our candidates the resources they need to win.

You should thank your lucky stars every day for Haley Barbour, Ed Gillespie, and Karl Rove. I hope you send them each 1/3 the (quite generous) salary you earn every month. Without them, you are irrelevant.

Again, Happy Birthday.

Sigh.

Switzerland has ruled the famed film director will not be extradited to the United States, from where he fled in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

How depressing to see this scumbag free, celebrated even.

On the other hand, a free Polaski is a great and useful object that can prove quite helpful in identifying the vile apologists that ought have no place in civilized society. Call it the perfect cultural canary.

There are quite a few great opportunities for committed Tea Party activists to study and develop the skills needed to win elections. Erick’s been talking about and supporting American Majority; and Ned Ryun has a great diary here at RedState.

Let me commend to you another great partnership: the Leadership Institute and Tea Party Patriots. LI has launched TeaPartyTraining.org. Morton Blackwell has taken decades of solid, proven techniques and made them easily accessible to so many new activists. In short: this kicks quite a lot of ass and can make a difference on the ground – immediately.

You should read Morton’s RedState post that introduces not just the training program, but also offers his perspective as a Conservative and Republican grassroots leader on the current state of political affairs. In short: he kicks quite a lot of ass, too.

(Have I mentioned that I’ve allowed far too much time to pass without becoming a regular LI donor. Time to fix that.)

I know you’re working hard to modernize the Republican party and all the while keeping your boot thumb on the pulse of the conservative movement..but we haven’t been RedState.org in years.

We’ll be over here with the icky Palin people, trying to actually get folks elected. I’m sure when we do, they’ll need a fancy speechwriter or two to polish them up and make them presentable, so there’s hope yet.

kthxsbye.

Oh, how I’ve missed the mailbag.

From: kestrel9000 <kestrel9000@gmail.com>
Date: July 29, 2009 1:34:57 PM EDT
To: contact@redstate.com
Subject: erick

There is still time to stop the Democrats” from providing medical care to the least among us?

F**k you, you evil co*ks****r.

How do you sleep?
If I saw your face I would put a fist in it. Where is Krempasky?
You’re a bastard. A hateful, evil, piece of sh*t, and I hope you get cancer and die.

Two posts in one day…the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway, sorry to be late to this particular discussion – but it looks like Google (specifically Blogger) had drawn a ton of flak this week over placing a blog behind Blogger’s “interstitial” content warning and accusations of political bias have followed quickly behind. Without rounding up all the links (Moe did that quite well here), I would like to weigh in on this: Rick Klau, the Product Manager for Blogger at Google has posted a response.

A couple things: first, I think that if the company Google can be attributed to hold political views, they probably (ok, pretty much certainly) aren’t mine. I think as a rule, conservatives have a lot to disagree with the way that Google sees the policy world. They do quite a bit to earn distrust on the right (come on, would it freaking KILL them to toss out a Memorial Day logo instead of Tetris’ birthday fercrissakes?)

Second – I’ve known Rick for years. While he was at Feedburner he was a great friend to RedState in its early years trying to scrap together a few nickels to keep the lights on and the beer flowing. Yes, he’s a Democrat – and he’s also an honest broker and I take him at his word.

And no,  I wouldn’t believe for ONE SINGLE SECOND that he’d let political concerns affect the way Blogger is run. No way, no how. Everything else is just faked moon landings and forged birth certificates.

P.S. [insert likely unnecessary disclaimer about my employer having many clients in the technology arena]

Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly my kind of Republican. He’s squishy on a lot of issues I care about. He seems a little too concerned with the opinion of some in the media. All that said, how can you characterize the news today that California political leaders have reached a budget deal as anything but a crushing win for the Gov? No new taxes, deep budget cuts, some reform to the state’s welfare system AND access and fees for offshore oil drilling?! [insert Conan joke about lamentations]

SRSLY? Holy crap.

Don’t get me wrong – the deal’s not perfect by any means. And folks with many more accounting degrees than I will find reasons to object to some of the shifts of both revenues and costs. And don’t forget – the very existence of the budget standoff that Arnold just won is a direct result of the failure of several of his key ballot initiatives.

But as I was driving to work this morning, listening to NPR lament the deal as one of the sharpest contractions in government anywhere in the country in recent memory, I couldn’t help but smile. When the chips were down, Arnold held firm. Well done, sir.

If this means (to steal the phrase) that Arnold’s back on the juice – can we pass it around at the next RGA meeting?

P.S. And meanwhile, across town – while Arnold was winning almost every concession he asked for..the SEIU is authorizing a strike. Good luck with that.

Culture11, we hardly knew ye. And what a true tragedy for us, that we failed to recognize such brilliance, a guiding star, a beacon to lead us back to the path of…of…well, that was the problem, wasn’t it? That the people busy trying to win elections just weren’t cool enough. Not enlightened enough? Or just too stuck on Sarah?

“One of my proudest moments,” Kuo told me, “was when someone at RedState”—the conservative blog that attempted to mount an online purge of the movement’s reformists in the last weeks of the campaign—”said, ‘We aren’t even going to post a link to Culture11.’ “

SRSLY? *THAT* was one of your proudest moments? Not when you “left the administration unhappily and went on to write Tempting Faith, the most personal of the dissenting White House memoirs of the Bush years”? Or was it when the money ran out and you surveyed all you had built for a mere $X million? Give me a freaking break. Here’s your gold star-embroidered hemp sweater for standing up to The Man.

Please. First, to get this out of the way: there was no official RedState policy of not linking to Culture11. Culture11 had quite a few defenders inside RedState and readers in our community – and to be more precise, several of the folks involved with Culture11 had quite a few fans. Many of us didn’t just defend the site, but rooted for its success. Some of us even got used as professional references when all those writers ended up on the street.

But at the same time, there were more than few folks at RedState that looked at the sneering attitudes like Kuo’s and frankly didn’t shed a tear when that bunch failed to cajole even an angel investor (and I use the term loosely in the absence of a identifiable business model) to continue throwing good money after bad. We weren’t sad that a bunch of folks who burned through a load of righty cash and ended up at the end with nothing but fawning praise from the left got a little lesson in how markets work.

And see, that was the problem all along. It’s not just that Culture11 didn’t know what they were really setting out to do. It’s that they weren’t very good at it.

With so many people and discussions focused on what Republicans can do to prepare for 2010, many forget that political ground zero this year will be the Commonwealth of Virginia where the governor is elected in odd years, and incumbents can’t run – so it’s always a near-free for all. Rasmussen has it pretty wide open, which isn’t surprising.

Now, enter the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This LA Times blogger posits that Virginia’s lack of campaign finance limits is bad news for Republicans since Terry has raised almost a billion (with a B) dollars for Democrats – a sum that even the President-elect can respect. And his ability to raise cash has already had a very direct impact on the race. One of his opponents, State Delegate Brian Moran actually resigned his seat prior to the start of the legislative session primarily because he would be prohibited from raising campaign cash during that term.

So yes, there’s going to be no shortage of dollars for Dems in the Commonwealth this year. But I highly doubt that’s the biggest problem. While the GOP has lost a slew of statewide offices over the last six years, the Virginia party has…well, it seems like they’ve gotten pretty good at throwing pointy objects at each other.

The only bright spot? We’ve got a great candidate in VA Attorney General Bob McDonnell. Solid conservative who’s been successful in both office and the ballot box. Can he raise the money to compete in the absence of a well-oiled GOP machine? You can help with that. (This is my first donation of 2009, but it won’t be my last.)

What a country. 

10 years ago TODAY, Congressman Ray LaHood from Illinois gaveled an extraordinary vote. From the Speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives, he presided over the impeachment of President. William Jefferson Clinton.

Today, President-elect Obama is preparing to formally announce his pick for Secretary of Transportation: none other than Congressman Ray LaHood from Illinois.

I’m sure this must warm the hearts of all those Hillary Clinton supporters, watching their hero share*that* cabinet table.

Seriously. $369/year? Is that all Joe Biden can contribute? If so, must have taken some Delaware-sized stones to sit and smirk in the audience at the Columbia Presidential Forum on Service last night while John McCain talked about his love for the sacrifices our military makes.

One of the RedState contributors came up with a great out-of-nowhere pick for Senator McCain to add to the ticket: Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Yes, please. Only problem – what sort of slogan could they run on together? Here’s a couple that got tossed around over email:

McCain-Coburn 2008
Dark Horse? No, The one You Road In On.

McCain-Coburn 2008
100% Ted Stevens-free

McCain-Coburn 2008
We Could Give A Crap

McCain-Coburn 2008
“They like me, they really like me.”
“John, why do you care?”

McCain-Coburn 2008
Honor. Duty. Ornery.

McCain-Coburn 2008
Slightly More Pleasant To Work With Than A Colonoscopy.
Slightly.

Suggestions?

Looks like Radley has finally gotten his white whale. For those who’ve followed TheAgitator for the last two years or so, you’ll join in offering no small measure of congratulations, too. Pretty damn corrupt/incompetent Mississippi “medical examiner” Dr. Steven Hayne has made his last taxpayer-funded Y-incision.

Man. This guy is teh awesome. I’d offer to nominate him for some sort of leadership award…if I thought for a minute he’d give a crap.

Seriously, the folks at TPM Muckracker are like a dog with a bone with this BMW story. But with every post they prove their ignorance of direct mail, or their willingness to just ignore the facts, or worse – a penchant for dishonesty. In the latest, Tilghman is outraged (outraged!) that a Republican who raised about $670k this quarter:

At the same time, he spent $442,990, almost all of it on expenses related to the direct mail effort and paid to BMW Direct and its affiliates (some of which share the same downtown Washington office).

“Almost all”, eh? So I presume that BWM is a printing company? Even better, it appears that BMW has really mastered this business by figuring out how to print their own postage or convince the Post Office to carry all those letters out of charity.

Seriously, shrieking about the high cost of prospecting using direct mail without mentioning the actual PROSPECTS you get is such an obvious omission, I’d lean towards calling it a lie.