I’ve designed a logo here and there (for friends and family) and one thing I’ve always kept in mind in that line is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. In other words, “less is more” – the less complicated, the easier it is to remember, the better for the brand and for the customer.

But sometimes less is just less. Take the Democrats’ (please!) “exciting” new logo for example;

A D in Circle. I admit, Tim Kaine should get top marks for a thematically appropriate logo since it looks like a grade, though I’d think a ‘D’ might be too generous given their performance.

But seriously, this is one of the few times I’ve looked at a design of something and immediately thought; I could do better. In fact, I believe I actually did – last year – and it took me about an hour of free time goofing off with Fireworks in the office for the Committeeman Project.

Good or bad, at least it doesn’t rip off a pizza place – a pizza place belonging to a Republican no less.

Endpoint; if the DNC paid any amount of money for their D in a circle, they just got ripped off.

That said, why not have some fun with this? If you have any logo designs for the GOP at any level (for your state, county, national) or even something even more appropriate than a D grade logo for the Democrats, feel free to let us see it in the comments.

[haystack edit-go HERE to help her where she needs it most...]

I didn’t have many (or any) good things to say about Christine O’Donnell … but that ends now. The woman, whatever her faults, has to be given credit for having something that has been sorely lacking in the GOP’s Senate Caucus; Guts – with a big scarlet capital G. So finally, I do have something good to say about the lady – she took on an entrenched incumbent with a 10-to-1 monetary, a hostile media, not to mention a weak and comfortable on its knees DE GOP and walloped them all.

Which leads me to think that she just might have it in her to do it. Which means we owe her our support. Fighters are what we’ve been demanding for decades – we’ve just been given (another) one. So let’s get to work.

And oh … yeah. Congratulations Christine O’Donnell. And very, very well done. That was absolutely amazing.

You know what would really shake things up for the Angle campaign? A little push-back against the Press that ends up with a solid hit on Harry Reid. In fact, if she could make this SOP with every little hit piece that comes along, I’d bet she’d see a leap in her numbers.

For example, NR’s Jay Nordlinger’s eye recently fell on this gem of an article from the Associated Press that begins;

Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s conservative views on illegal immigration and her limited outreach to Hispanics have done little to endear her to Nevada’s largest minority group.

Note here that by “conservative views”, AP writers usually mean having the strange belief that illegal immigration is well … illegal.

Anyway, the whole thing went downhill from there. Given prominent place as a voice for the majority of Nevada Hispanics is one Esperanza Montelongo – a Las Vega Spanish-language political radio show host and Reid supporter, who has this to say;

For me, she [Sharron Angle] is scary … She is anti-anything Latino.

Well, if I were the Angle campaign, I’d have some fun with this and release an ad to take full advantage …

• SHARRON ANGLE [at home at the kitchen table, looking at someone off camera]: Get this, last week, Harry Reid’s friends at the Associated Press published an article saying I’m, [makes 'quote' sign] quote, “anti-anything Latino.”
  {Sharp braking sound}
   
• SHARRON ANGLE’S SON [revealing it is him she is talking to at the kitchen table]: That’s news to me.
  {CAPTION: Sharron’s son *John}
   
• SHARRON ANGLE’S LATINA DAUGHTER-IN-LAW: That’s news to me too.
  {CAPTION: *John’s wife *Jane}
   
• SHARRON ANGLE [looking at the camera]: There’s a reason why Harry Reid isn’t running on ~ his eighteen year record in the Senate, and his four year record as the Senate Majority Leader. [pause] Because it’s not a good record. In fact … it’s actually shameful.
  {[~ from this point] Screen showing graphics of charts/graphs showing deficit, national debt, unemployment, etc. over time from before and after Reid becoming Majority Leader}
   
• SHARRON ANGLE [looking at the camera]: Which is why Harry Reid and his special interest and media buddies keep trying so desperately to change the subject – [smile and shrug] even if they have to make stuff up about me. I’m Sharron Angle, and this is what I stand for … ~
  {[~ from this point] Screen listing Sharron Angle’s position on taxes, Second Amendment, Obamacare, illegal immigration, spending, Stimulus, National Security, etc.}
   
• SHARRON ANGLE[smile] and I approve this message.
  {CAPTION: Sharron Angle for Senate.}

*Note: Don’t actually know their real names and I can’t find them anywhere.

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By and large, I heartily despise GOP “moderates.” Most especially “moderate” Republicans that allow themselves to be used as a foil against other Republicans so the media can cast the party as being full of “extremists” with them being the only ones who are “reasonable” in the caucus. My posting history for the past five years on RS is proof of that.

So what about the primary election going on tomorrow in Delaware? Simply, this; I’m imagining some morning in late November or early December 2010, where the night before, the US Senate, with newly sworn-in Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) – together with outgoing Senators Lincoln, Specter, Bennet, Reid, Dorgan, etc voting in favor – just passed Card Check, sending it to the President’s desk for his signature.

Be honest with yourselves; would the defeat of Mike Castle taste quite so sweet then?

Which is why I – personally – am supporting Mike Castle in the DE US Senate Primary tomorrow, and I urge everyone to hold their noses and do the same. The Democrats are indeed planning a vengeful lame duck session. The winner of the DE Senate race would be seated immediately and make no mistake – we need an R in that seat.

Furthermore, the candidate matters – this is no Rubio vs Crist, Buck vs Norton, Angle vs Lowden, Miller vs Murkowski or even Hughes vs Kirk, Quite apart from their conservatism, Rubio, Buck, Angle, Miller and Hughes were intrinsically personally viable candidates – O’Donnell is, frankly, not.

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The Democrats and their media friends in the state of New Jersey finally have something to celebrate.

The Christie Administration finally made a misstep – and a somewhat big one considering the price tag – $400 million of Federal education money. The background is that the state applied for Race To The Top funds and only lost out to Ohio thanks to the failure to include education budget numbers for 2008 and 2009 as requested. The DoEd’s reviewers docked New Jersey 5 points, which enabled Ohio to come out with a 3 point lead.

Worse, when the results came out, Christie was apparently told by Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, who led the state’s delegation to DC for the presentation and interview part of the application process, that the DoEd officials refused to allow them include the 2008 and 2009 numbers because the June 1 deadline had passed. Christie, righteously outraged, after having Schundler “walk him through the details of the mistake”, had some choice words to say about that during the Press Conference following the news that NJ had lost out on the $400 million to OH.

“When we went in for the personal interview, two weeks before the decision was made, they raised the issue with us.” Christie said. “Commissioner Schundler gave them, in the interview, the numbers for ’08 and ’09 because the mistake was raised. But they still didn’t give us the credit for the points.”

The problem? Schundler did not provide the information as he said he did. He actually never did have the information.

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A judge-proof marriage amendment (I think).

Whereas marriage in the state of [state] is recognized as providing the best and most stable environment for the procreation and upbringing of children, only marriage between a man and a woman, who do not share the same parent or parents, and none of whose parents share the same parent or parents, and neither of whom is a parent or sibling of a parent, or otherwise a direct descendant of the other, is valid or recognized in [state].

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Over at Josh Marshall’s far Left Talking Points Memo blog, they’re all giddy over the latest bright idea to issue forth from the progressive mind; call Tea Partiers racists!

Well, no … they already do that – they know Tea Partiers are racists and that the many people of other races who attend Tea Party rallies and speak on stage either are the product of Pixar magic, are white people in black face (racists!) or traitors to their race.

The only problem is that simply calling people racists and relying on fellow progressive allies in the Press to carry it from there like in the good old days no longer is quite as effective as it used to be. Now, the American people (being racists) ask for proof – solid proof.

Unfortunately, despite being ignorant unsophisticated inbred knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, Tea Partiers have cleverly been hiding their racism – proving how incredibly racist they are. As any progressive knows, only the most intensely bigoted of racists can hide their racism so deeply that even progressives, experts in all things racist, cannot manage to find it.

So poor progressives have been reduced to going to Tea Party rallies wearing those so unfashionable swastikas, unsophisticatedly waving confederate flags and carrying heavy racist signs so people could see how racist Tea Partiers are. But the Tea Partiers are so racist, they kick these brave progressives out, often exposing them as progressive plants – which is racist.

In fact, Tea Partiers so racist and their racism is hidden so well that progressives are left having to manufacture incidents of racism, even vandalize the offices of other progressives, to warn racist America of the violent racists in their midst. But so far, it doesn’t seem to have worked.

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Hello.

My name is William Corman Phillips. I am a 32 year old white male. I have degrees in Biochemistry and Pharmocology and I am currently a medical researcher in a prestigious pharmaceutical company. I pay my taxes, donate significant amounts of money and time to charity and I am an assistant coach with the local minor league baseball team in my neighborhood. I served in the United States Air Force for five years until I left active duty at age 29 and I still serve in the Air Reserves.

I was raised by two wonderful parents who never got divorced, I got good grades in school, I was a member of the basketball team, I was popular among my peers, and I had a very happy childhood.

I have never taken any drugs or ever smoked a cigarette. I worship at church and I have voted for people of both parties.

I am a good man and a patriotic American.

But I am not allowed to marry whom I want. This is someone with whom I grew up, whom I have known all my life and with whom I have had a committed and devoted loving relationship for the past four years since we realized that we had fallen in love. We understand each other, complement each other and know each other as much as any married couple. And I have never been as happy in a relationship as in the one I am in with this person. We connect on every possible level, from the sexual to the intellectual and we want to be married and accepted as any other married couple by the society and the government.

My partner is also white, 28 years old, well educated, and gainfully employed as a caterer and nutritionist.

We have already been married in a church that would bless our union. But we also want to be recognized and treated as a married couple by the state.

We want to be able to file our tax returns together, to inherit from each other in the event one of us passes away, to visit each other in hospital, to be able to refuse being forced to testify against each other in court and all the other benefits and privileges extended to married couples by the state.

This is a basic Constitutional Right. The right to tie your life forever with whomever it is you want. And yet I and my partner are denied this basic Right. In this day and age, so many years after Loving v. Virginia should have settled the issue, two people who love each other are still being denied their right to marry for nothing other than outdated bigotry and reasons that are arbitrary and have no logical bearing on the institution of marriage.

This must stop. Judge Vaughan Walker’s enlightened Perry v Schwarzenegger decision recognizes that marriage is a right that belongs to everybody and that all should be welcome to this privileged and sacred institution and my partner and I are grateful for his courage.

My partner’s name is Gretchen Alison Phillips. She is also my younger sister. Which could explain why we understand each other so well

We shall now be heading to California where we shall apply for a marriage license and have the beachside wedding we’ve always wanted. If we are still denied this basic constitutional Right, we are going to take our case to the courts, and hopefully we shall soon find ourselves before the Honorable Vaughan Walker. We are prepared to take this all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.

Such bigotry cannot continue. It is wrong.

Wish us luck.

Sincerely,
Will C. Phillips

To all supporters of Judge Vaughan Walker’s decision in Perry v Schwarzenegger – should Will and Gretchen be denied a marriage license? If not, why not?

I give you (once again) The Honorable Governor Christopher James Christie of New Jersey.

More here …

One of the more pernicious developments of the past two decades has been the widespread acceptance of the Beltway proposition that there was something fundamentally wrong with disagreement in politics. That a failure to achieve a consensus or “Bipartisanship” on any given issue is a sign of a failure by the parties involved to put “country above party.”

The American people want “moderation”, “centrism” and “compromise” – the Beltway punditocracy solemnly intoned. The American people are “sick of the partisanship”, they want “pragmatism”, they want “Bipartisanship”. The American people are crying out, desperate for “moderate” “centrist” politicians who are not “controversial” or “confrontational” – who “reach across the aisle” to find the “middle ground” and build “consensus” to “get things done.”

As a sidenote; it is not entirely a coincidence that the heavily liberal Beltway circuit really began to push this new conventional wisdom somewhere around late 1994 and early 1995 – right after the Gingrich led GOP made history by winning both Houses for the first time in 40 years.

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Maybe I missed it but in all the analyses of PA-12 that appeared on RedState afterwards, I don’t think I saw anyone mention the fact that PA-12′s Independents constituted only a tiny 4% of the electorate last week. I think that, more than anything else explains the Critz victory and its magnitude. Jay Cost highlights this rather emphatically …

This is a hugely important point to bear in mind. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of the party turnout in last night’s election indicates that a whopping 62% of the voters were Democratic, just 34% Republican, and a measly 4% were Independent or had a third party affiliation.

PA runs a closed primary system so it is certainly possible that many Independents – by far the most politically disengaged segment of the voting population – were unaware that there was a special election on in addition to the primary elections that they know that they don’t get to participate in.

If I remember correctly, Independents were polling heavily in favor of Tim Burns in the last week. So Burns had almost all Republicans, a small but measurable share of Democrats and a solid majority of Independents.

And he still lost, because with a 2:1 D-R partisan registration disadvantage, he needed to turn out all of his voters to compete. If Independents constituted only 4% of the electorate last Tuesday, then he obviously failed to do so and he needs to add a superlative GOTV operation  ready to turn out Independents into his November gameplan.

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One of the more annoying features of American politics is the fact that the Left is hardly ever made to put their money where their mouths are, to put up or shut the **** up. So they feel free to adopt moral poses that they never have to back up with meaningful action because they almost never get confronted on it.

Take SB 1070, the Arizona anti-illegal immigration (not anti-immigrant) law. All over the country, Democrats have been condemning the state of Arizona and its fed-up legislature in the harshest and most vociferous tones. Not satisfied with repeatedly likening the state and its citizens to Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa, they stood to cheer and applaud the leader of the very nation at the forefront of the problem as he attacked their fellow Americans forced to deal with the consequences of his nation’s government’s decades of failure in providing a better environment for his people to pursue their dreams and prosper in their own nation.

The fact that none of them, from the President on down, have apparently deigned to read even one line of the legislation in question has not stopped them or their media allies in spreading all manner of malicious falsehoods about the law and demanding that others act as if their patently bad-faith allegations are true. One would not know that immigrants have been required by Federal law to carry identification on their persons at all times in the United States – like almost every other nation on Earth, including Mexico – for more than half a century.

Nonetheless, despite unrelentingly biased and negative coverage, denunciations from the entirety of the Democrat Party (barring AZ Democrats in tough districts) upwards of 60% of the American people continue to support the bill. But that doesn’t mean that Arizona is not feeling the pinch from the torrent of name calling and slander. Many other organizations and corporations – professional sports included – are being pressured by the usual suspects to cancel any engagements, functions and events in Arizona. Cancelled conventions and retreats are taking an economic toll on the many towns and cities and their businesses that rely on tourism and visitors from out of state to stay afloat.

More risible is the fact that several Democrat Mayors across America have announced with great fanfare official boycotts against the state of Arizona, each having not read the bill and yet claiming the same incendiary falsehoods as true.

So far, Governor Jan Brewer is engaging in some much needed push-back (like I had hoped she would instead of the usual Republican tactic of duck, cower and hope it goes away), trying to inform the American people of the actual facts of the bill, the facts surrounding it and exposing the cynical bad faith of the legislation’s critics. Of course, this will not have any effect on the law’s attackers – the truth of the bill was never a concern, just the opportunity to preen for the cameras and pose on the cheap.

Which is the problem – the Democrats need to be made to back it up.

Some have had to already, however mostly more as a function of geography than anything else. The prospect of San Diego businesses losing the patronage of their many visitors from across the state border has seen a rapid tamping down of the rhetoric from city’s previously self-righteously shrieking and chest-beating liberal public officials. But it is AZ Utilities Commissioner Gary Pierce’s letter to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asking if the city’s Arizona boycott included Arizona’s electricity that was a stroke of genius and presents another way forward.

A more active, less geographically limiting solution is needed – one that would hit Boston thousands of miles away in Massachusetts just as directly San Diego and Los Angeles in the neighboring state to the west. I call it the PUSH Act (i.e. Put Up or SHut up). Arizona state legislators should announce a bill and the Governor should announce her willingness to sign it as soon as it reaches her desk, that the state of Arizona would sponsor the transportation of any persons found to be not legally in the United States in the state of Arizona to any sanctuary city or city boycotting the state of Arizona of their choice. This would include everything from providing tickets to renting busses, rail cars and/or air transportation and it would be totally justified because the costs would be far less than allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the state drawing on state resources that the state can not afford.

Furthermore, the Governor’s office should let it be known that in implementation, priority for transportation to the desired cities would be given to convicts and individuals otherwise in police custody.

In other words, Put Up or SHut up.

I kinda doubt that the Antonio Villaraigosa, Mike Bloomberg, Gavin Newsom, Michael Coleman or Tom Menino would be rolling out the red carpet as convoy after convoy of busses chock full of illegal immigrants arrive at their cities and head straight to disembark them at City Hall or, better yet, the city’s welfare office. Considering their budget woes, crime issues and the quite widely held, politically troublesome (for them) belief (even in deep Blue cities) within the electorate that the nation’s immigration laws should actually be enforced, it’s a certainty that they would not be quite so happy to bear the burden they have been screaming and denouncing the state of Arizona and its taxpayers for refusing to carry on its shoulders.

The way I see it, the Mayors can either throw their city gates wide open and take the political consequences, not to mention the hit on their budget numbers or stand athwart the city gates and look like hypocrites.

In the four months since Chris Christie was sworn in as the 55th Governor of the state of New Jersey, he’s earned himself a few nicknames and prayers for his death. “Governor Krispy Kreme” or Governor Bully by his Leftist detractors on most NJ websites where they congregate. A liberal Newark Star-Ledger columnist prefers the double-entendre of Governor Wrecking Ball. Admirers, including George Will, have appropriated the name of a local minor league team for the Governor – the Trenton Thunder.

Me? Geek that I am, I call him Governor Kratos.

Anybody who plays video games knows the thoroughly fearless mortal protagonist of the God of War series of games on the PlayStation. Kill Ares, the god of War? Sure. Kill Zeus? Okay. Kill all the gods and the Titans? [Ed. Note: that's Kratos fighting Kronos - father or Zeus] Why not?

Anyone who decides, as Christie clearly has, to take on what one of the most powerful and corrupt political machines in the country without so much as a moment of hesitation, is surely as brave as a mortal deciding to go kill a god or face a 100 foot Titan without flinching.

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Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) may not have been a conservative’s idea of an ideal Senator from a state as Deep Red as Wyoming but he was right; “An allegation unchallenged is an allegation believed.” Republicans still seem to not get this very simple idea; you cannot cede the information battlefield to the other side and expect to keep a lead, much less win.

Which brings me to the patently dishonest Leftist caterwauling about AZ’s new immigration law.

Now, screaming “Nazi!”, “Raaaaaaaaacist!!!” and other forms of hate accusations is simply standard Left-Wing behavior. And while the polls say the majority of the American public supports the law, I believe that there is enough ignorance and confusion in this particular case to let Left turn the tide their way.

I my opinion, the effective silence of the principals (Russell Pearse, Kris Kobach, Jan Brewer, etc.) in favor of this legislation while the entire Left-Wing establishment and their surrogates in the Press are busy painting the image of jackbooted Aryan police stopping innocent Hispanic Americans on their way to the park with their kids and executing them right there on the sidewalk if they don’t “show their papers” is nothing short of dangerous and can jeopardize the passage of similar legislation in other states.

My idea to counter this is simple; Governor Brewer and Senator Pearse should make a video clearly explaining what the law says, demonstrate (with actors) how it’s supposed to work and how the police are expected to enforce it, why it is necessary for Arizona from a basic fiscal and security standpoint and then point out a few facts that the media has been avoiding e.g. it’s been the law for over 50 years that legal immigrants must carry identification at all times – and furthermore it’s the law in Europe, in Canada, and yes, even in Mexico (the immigration laws of Mexico should play a starring role.)

Then send it to every major news outlet in the nation, have it played on AZ television and upload it to YouTube and the Governor’s website a day later. FOX would certainly play it on air and the other networks would be forced to follow.

It won’t shut the shrieks from the other side, but it would throw some major sand in their gears.

Game, set and match.

As in Senator Conrad Burns (MT) and Senator Ted Stevens (AK).

Both of whom lost their most recent re-election battles in solid Red states exactly because of the Pharisee attitudes on display here by far too many people. So many of us were so concerned with appearing beyond reproach that we completely abandoned the concept of innocent until proven guilty the instant they were fingered for crimes that only a handful of the people loudly denouncing them actually understood.

And of course, both these men were discovered to be innocent conveniently right after Election Day. So we got to prove that we’re so anti-corruption we abandon people the instant they’re accused of it, and the Democrats got Jon Tester and Mark Begich in the Senate rubber-stamping everything Barack Obama sends down the pike. Great trade, eh?

Now we see something similar happening with Marco Rubio; the media loudly announces an investigation insinuating something along the lines of Rubio using the party credit card to pad his bank account and go on mad daily shopping sprees and we already have people self-righteously insisting that he is “corrupt”. Of course, when the story comes out on page B23 that there was no crime committed, after Election Day of course, Senator-Elect Meek would be measuring the drapes of his new office on Capitol Hill.

Let us not be fooled again into prematurely abandoning our own for the Democrats to profit – twice would mean we’re idiots. This is just an investigation, not a conviction. And as we have seen with Ted Stevens, even a conviction is not to be trusted when Democrats’ political operatives in the DOJ are involved.

Worse is that, if anything, the so-called crime is so incredibly picayune – he used a Party credit card to buy some things and then promptly paid the money back in full every single time – that anyone on our side who can conclude that this means that Marco Rubio is a “crook” is either a fool or a tool so stewing in self-regard that he’s lost all sense of reality.

Rubio denies any wrongdoing and is being open with his finances – according to his campaign, he’s not amending any of his financial documents or forms. So I’m with Marco, not some nebulous anonymous sources in a liberal newspaper, until I see incontrovertible evidence that he broke the law.

PS: Here’s another name to remember, Tom DeLay. He wasn’t just investigated, he got indicted. When is his trial, I wonder?

My belief is that Crist is going to leave the GOP and go Independent on his way to switching to the Democrats in the next four years, perhaps to try and run again for Governor. Which means he’s going to drop out of the race for the Senate and concentrate his attention on making sure Rubio loses.

The fact is that, thanks to his SB6 veto – if not his support for the Stimulus – his career in politics as a Republican in Florida is, for all intents and purposes, over. This race is his best chance of winning any office as an Independent so if he doesn’t succeed, the only other option is for him to become a Democrat – he is not ever going to win a Republican primary.

Kendrick Meek is a non-entity in this race for the moment, but that could change if Crist throws his support behind him. The media would love it and both Meek and Crist would dominate a few newscycles – it gives them another excuse to promote the Republicans are intolerant lock-step marching dittoheads meme, and since Meek is black, of course, racist.

The fact is that Crist has basically trapped himself. He has nowhere else to go if he wants to stay in electoral politics.

If Crist decides to remain in the race as a Republican, he will lose. If he decides to launch an Independent bid, Crist’s only path to victory lies in keeping his supporters and drawing the more ignorant Independents to his side by tarring Rubio, thus his calls for the Feds to investigate the FLGOP.

The problem is that if he announces an Independent bid, he’s going to solidify his reputation as an unprincipled opportunist and lose tons of endorsements and face demands for a return of contributions. His fundraising is going to dry up.

The only people inclined to give him money would be the Teacher’s Unions and other Democratic front groups hoping to split the GOP. But the instant they do, nobody in Florida or around the country would believe that his veto of SB6 was the result of anything other than a quid pro quo arrangement.

The other option is for him to do a full Specter and cross over to the Democrats and run for the Senate. But if he does it now, not only does he risk splitting the Democrats, he will do so along racial lines and even more solidify his opportunist reputation, as well as confirm that the SB6 veto was a quid pro quo deal. Worse, he will lose the primary and go on to lose (very very badly) to Rubio if he does somehow prevail over Meek.

But if he drops out and endorses Meek, he earns himself some chits to call in when he makes the switch to the Democrats and decides to run for some other office in the near future – likely a second term in Tallahassee, this time wearing a D.

I predict he loses then as well.

Charlie Crist should be a case study of what happens when a moderate Republican takes the “moderation” too far.

Kevin Jackson just leaped to the top of my list of favorite people with this beautiful performance he delivered as he faced off against David Shuster on MSNBC. While David Frum and other PCCs (“Polite Company Conservatives”) would have smiled and nodded politely and unreservedly joined Shuster in denouncing those dastardly conservative extremists for attacking a Civil Rights icon like John Lewis, the supposedly unprecedented portraying of Obama as Hitler and Tea Partiers going on a wave of destruction on Democrat offices across the nation, Kevin Jackson challenged Shuster’s (and the Left-Wing MSM’s) presumption, absent any tangible evidence, that these amazingly convenient stories of Republican violence were true.

Even more gratifying was that Shuster was obviously unprepared for Kevin’s outright rejection of the veracity of these incidents as reported by the Democrats and was left stuttering at Jackson’s pointing out that these “attacks” is far more likely to be the work of Democratic operatives than Republicans. It seems as if every single liberal talking head, from David Gregory to David Shuster is suffering from a form of amnesia which has apparently led them to believe that Barack Obama is the very first President to ever be compared to Hitler by protesters … I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a conservative on TV remind a liberal talking head wailing about the Right’s incivility to President Obama that the Left was even less civil without the media getting the vapors for eight long years when President Bush was in White House. Shuster changed the topic rather quickly, didn’t he?

Quite frankly, it’s about time.

Official Republicandom (especially the RNC) needs to understand that this is how it needs to be until the Democrats abandon their bloody shirt Reichstag-redux tactics.

Simply put, Michael Steele needs to either get on the Sunday morning talk shows and/or call up a Press Conference and put an end to the mincing of words by saying what everyone knows; first of all, the reported yelling and screaming of racial and homophobic epithets at John Lewis and Barney Frank very obviously didn’t happen, and the bulk of these so-called attacks on Democrat offices and threatening calls are being coordinated from Washington DC – and most likely the people responsible have their day-jobs at the DNC.

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As everyone knows, liberals are far from fans of accountability, responsibility, etc. or any other concept that suggests being held to account for their words and actions. A few days ago, Thomas Frank (of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” fame) writing in his WSJ Tilting Yard column was obviously in a state of high dudgeon at the Texas State Board of Education’s stipulation that High School students be required to also look at the unintended consequences of LBJ’s Great Society reforms when studying that era.

In the aftermath of the Democrats handing 1/6th of the economy over to their buddies in the public employee unions – through which taxpayer dollars would be laundered back to their campaign coffers, Megan McArdle [HT: Ace], Obama-voter though she was, proposes to use the statistics (inflated and false though most of them are) the proponents of Government healthcare cited in favor of the legislation as measurements via which the effectiveness of the legislation would be measured.

I heard a lot about the 20-45,000 people who were dying from lack of insurance every year. I heard about how US mortality indicators lagged behind the rest of the developed world. I heard about infant mortality. I heard, over and over again, about medical bankruptcies, and how medical bills were bankrupting America. I heard about the CBO score that said this bill would be deficit neutral. Let me know if I’ve missed anything, but it seems to me that mortality, financial protection, and deficit-improvement were the three major planks upon which this bill was sold.
…
Forgive me, but to my admittedly naive ears, this sounds like what you are saying is that you think that if we cover the uninsured, we will have lower mortality rates, fewer medical bankruptcies, and a lower deficit.
…
If you don’t think that any of the effects of this bill will be large enough to measure and hopefully, large enough to justify the price tag of this bill, then I have to ask two questions:

1. Why the hell are we spending $200 billion a year, plus the mandated spending by individuals and employers on premiums, plus the new money the states will have to spend on Medicaid?
2. Why on earth did you bring up all these apparently irrelevant statistics?

And of course, this has every liberal who cited all those statistics at “The Atlantic” as alarmed as Thomas Frank at the prospect of Texas high school students actually examining the results of liberal “reforms”. All of a sudden those are not reasonable metrics, and it is now unrealistic (even “racist(!)” to demand some way of measuring, or even just use the metrics they pushed to pass this bill, whether Obamacare would result in better quality and access to healthcare for the American people.

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According to the Left-Wing McClatchy Newspaper “reporter” William Douglas in an article on Saturday; Tea Partiers repeatedly screamed the N-word at John Lewis (D-GA) as he crossed over to the Capitol on his way to vote for Obamacare.

Tea party protesters use racial epithet against Georgia’s John Lewis

By William Douglas, McClatchy Newspapers

Sat Mar 20, 7:21 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol , angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted “nigger” Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis , a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s.

Unfortunately for William Douglas, the incident was caught on video, conclusively proving otherwise.

Let’s be blunt; John Lewis is a liar. He claimed the N-word was “shouted” over and over at him and yet no camera among the many there has caught anything of the sort. In other words, there is no doubt about it; he was and is lying straight through his teeth. As so is McClatchy’s William Douglas who filed the story, no doubt knowing full-well that it was false.

This is nothing but Standard Democrat Operating Procedure; shrieking accusations of racism, knowing they would be uncritically echoed by masquerading partisan operatives in the media like William Douglas, is as integral to Democrat politics as funneling taxpayer money to public employee unions for them to kickback into their campaign war chests. There has not been a single competitive election, legislative battle or even debate on the issues in the past four decades that Democrats have parachuted charges of racism and “hate.”

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I read this Dana Milbank column over the weekend – don’t blame me, blame RCP. Basically it is a rehash of that hoary old bit of Beltway conventional wisdom, and no doubt the supposedly “Republican” Davids Gergen, Brooks and Frum would gladly repeat it for you at the cocktails celebrating the Democrats’ (temporary) victory in attempting to bring 1/6th of the nation’s economy under the control of government bureaucrats; that government programs, especially entitlements, are impossible to repeal.

To buttress his argument, Milbank’s cites the eventual resigned acceptance of social security by the GOP even after Alf Landon made its repeal a plank of his Presidential platform in 1936. The message, meant to be reassuring to Obamacare supporters – Milbank’s actual target audience – was that their voting for Obamacare would be the final say of the issue – even if the GOP were to take over Congress and the White House in 2012, they wouldn’t touch the program, much less repeal it.

But then again, there is a reason why I contend that Beltway conventional wisdom is often long on convention and short on wisdom.

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The effort by ten Conservative members of the Republican National Committee (led by Jim Bopp Jnr. of Indiana) to introduce a resolution at the RNC’s Winter Meeting this month that would have forced all Republican candidates for Federal office to sign off on at least eight (or seven) out of the ten issue positions in the resolution or face having the RNC withhold its funds from his or her campaign generated quite a bit of ink/pixels when it came out back in late November last year.

As expected, much of the media (and many obstensibly on the Right) ominously referred to the proposed scheme as a “Purity Test “, with the Left touting it as yet more evidence that the GOP has become a party with no room for anyone except the so-called “Far Right. ”

Erick came out against it; with the very reasonable argument that this would be used to allow the bland content-free so-called “moderates ” the Beltway Republican Establishment tends to favor a shortcut past the vetting process by simply signing off as supporting positions on the issues when their previous records and statements show otherwise. Afterwards, when elected, there is no guarantee that they would hold to these new positions, especially when threatened with being left off a cocktail guest list. As Erick pointed out, despite a record of votes in the NY State Legislature and declared issue positions on taxes (and other issues) that would usually describe the philosophical profile of a middle-of-the-road member of the House Progressive Caucus, DeDe Scozzafava signed the ATR’s tax pledge … after mocking Doug Hoffman for signing it.

Mark, on the other hand, came out in favor of the resolution , or something like it; with his own very reasonable argument that notwithstanding the Left and some of the DC Republican establishments’ shrieks of the list being an exclusionary and “Far Right ” “Purity Test “, all ten positions stem from mainstream conservative principles shared by majorities and near majorities of the American people, and what’s more, the scheme would also serve to show disillusioned Republicans that their party has finally begun the long-overdue return to its principles.

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