Hey Democrats, Your Party Is Ready To Cut Up Your Hot Dogs For You

The editorial page of the venerated New Hampshire Union Leader proclaimed it’s all over but the shouting.

Noting that Democratic voters should feel used, the editorialist explained that the DNC has strictly limited the number of officially sanctioned primary debates to six and written the participation rules so tightly as to all but guarantee there will be no alternatives such as the Leader’s Voters First Forum for GOP presidential candidates this past summer.

When DNC Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke at the state Democratic Convention in Manchester on Saturday, she was heckled so loudly her speech was drowned out. The hecklers shouted her down with demands of more debates. Their anger and frustration are understandable.

The Democratic primary voters are being muffled—on purpose—by a party elite that is hell-bent on ensuring there is no disruption to Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination.

From the debate schedule to the early endorsements from figures such as US Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Maggie Hassan, the fix is in for Clinton.  [Emphasis mine]  Democratic voters might ask themselves why the establishment feels the need to go to such lengths to protect its candidate from the voters’ judgment.

Even the hacks on MSNBC’s Morning Joe noticed Face the Nation anchor John Dickerson’s interview with The Ice Cube In Heels was scripted and controlled by her campaign claiming Dickerson was not allowed to ask follow-up questions about her burgeoning email scandal.

Joe Scarborough said, “…if there were no preconditions to the Clinton interview, the question then becomes how he could have failed to ask so many obvious follow-up questions. It's not clear which reality is more damning.' 

Photoshop™ Of The Day: Horses And Bayonets

Marines still use bayonets.

Horses were used by the military during the Iraq invasion.  The Chicago Messiah doesn’t know the difference between a ship and a boat and someone needs to hit him over the head with a clue bat:  Submarines are boats not ships.

That’s some commander-in-chief we got.

Candy Crowley: Never Let A Waist Go To Crisis

Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi, will the third debate turn on Benghazi?

The Good Father Will Prevail Over The Abandoned Son

Roger Simon (the good one) has an interesting post up today.  Simon posits a theory that I believe has great merit in explaining the dismal debate performance of the president on Wednesday.

He dismisses all the kooky excuses and gets to the heart of what I agree must have been at play on that stage in Denver.

What we have before us in these debates is an almost archetypal confrontation—between a man who was and is an exceptionally good father and a man who was deserted by his. 

Good fathering is the story of Mitt Romney’s life. He has five sons who are, by all accounts, devoted to him and vice versa. These boys grew up with a father who, although wealthy and successful, worked like a demon, doted on them, and apparently devoted an extraordinary amount of time to charitable work, in which he also involved them. Indeed, I’ve never heard of a politician who did anything quite like it. 

Almost the polar opposite, Barack Obama’s father abandoned him twice and then ended up an irresponsible drunken victim of multiple car crashes. This sad behavior precipitated a search by Obama that brought him in contact with several father surrogates, notably Frank Marshall Davis and Jeremiah Wright, that it would be hard to brand as anywhere near satisfactory. (Davis was a pornographer and about Wright the less said the better.) No Mitt Romneys there. 

If you think this is lost on Barack Obama when he stands opposite Romney, then you think the president is stupid, which he is obviously not. But it’s worse for him yet, because he is standing opposite a father who has worked harder, has more experience, and is more knowledgeable and charitable than he and he, on some level at least, must know it. 

Not only that, most of what Mitt Romney has done, including graduating simultaneously from Harvard Law and Harvard Business, is an open book, while almost everything about Obama remains purposefully hidden. (He knows this too, obviously.) Obama lives in fear of exposure—and thus in fear of Romney who, although rich, is much more the self-made man of the two, the ultimate father figure.The face-to-face clash of these two men is almost out of Greek drama. Obama must rage against or embrace the man who represents what he most dearly needed and never had. If this really were Aeschylus or Sophocles, Obama would be caught between those conflicting goals and end up plucking his own eyes out. 

But of course it is not. It is something much more quotidian—an American presidential election. And much as we, the Greek chorus, might have pity for Obama, it is ourselves we must pity and therefore reject him. 

And that time for rejecting is coming soon. We will soon witness Act II of this play as a debate in a style embarrassingly called a “town hall” (imagine saying that with a straight face in a country of three hundred plus million). Silly as that construct may be and easily prone to manipulation, remember that it will be the same two players, the same archetypes, participating. This time Obama may mask his fear in rage, he may sneer and snarl a lot. But Romney is the same man, the same good father. Trust him. He will prevail.

One commenter added some depth to Simon’s theory pointing out that 58 million Americans voted for this president thinking he was a father figure.

That is a tragedy.

Steamrolled

Newt: The Palmetto Pugilist Scores A Knockout

I have kept my powder dry on the subject of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, until now.

Coming under fire recently for his attacks on Mitt Romney, Gingrich seemed, at least to me, that he was committing political suicide by first pledging to run a positive campaign and then pivoting when he became livid over the $3.5 million in attack ads run against him in Iowa by Romney’s SuperPAC.

Pundits have expressed their disdain for Gingrich’s retaliatory attacks on Romney’s history at Bain Capital.  The Left has been drooling over the fodder Newt handed them.  The Right contends it was tantamount to opposition research that benefits the current occupant of the White House.

It’s not hard to see either side’s point.  How it all affects the primaries and ultimately the general election is a discussion left for another day.

Monday’s GOP Republican Debate, held at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, was fiery and perhaps the best debate to date.

With the colossal failure Jon Huntsman out of the race, the remaining candidates had 90 seconds to respond to questions posed by the debate moderators.  This benefited the knowledgeable Newt Gingrich mightily.

At one point in the debate, moderator Juan Williams asked if he intended to “belittle the poor and racial minorities” with his words.

“Well first of all, Juan,” said Gingrich, “the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” The Convention Center erupted in cheers.

“Now I know among the politically correct you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable. Second, you’re the one who earlier raised a key point: The area that ought to be I-73 was called by Barack Obama a corridor of shame because of unemployment. Has it improved in three years?  No. They haven’t built a road, they haven’t helped the people, they haven’t done anything.”

“So here’s my point. I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their Creator with the right to pursue happiness. And if that makes liberals unhappy, I am going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn some day to own the job.”

That response prompted the crowd to erupt again and even earned Gingrich a standing ovation, something Frank Luntz noted had never happened in the 16 years he’s covered presidential debates.  Luntz suggested that Gingrich’s performance will generate movement for the candidate in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

 

I know what you’re thinking right now.  Am I supporting Newt?  I’m not sure yet.  One thing is absolutely certain however—the man will eviscerate the errand boy sent by grocery clerks in a debate.

In November of last year while envisioning a Lincoln-Douglas style debate with the aforementioned errand boy, Gingrich asked, “How does a Columbia/Harvard graduate, who was the editor of the law review, supposedly the best orator in the Democratic Party, how does he look himself in the mirror and say he's afraid to debate a West Georgia College professor?"

Gingrich added, "The White House will be my scheduler. I will appear four hours after Obama everywhere he goes for the duration of the campaign, and I will answer each of his speeches."