Bill Seubert

I’ll be at the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC this week, writing on the events there.  I’ll be posting at Redstate, and here as well!

Watch Redstate.com for updates starting on Thursday.

Run, do not walk, to your computer (oh, right, you’re already there)… and read this article.  It is brilliant.  It captures the essence of leftist attitudes perfectly.   The author, Gerard Alexander (associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia) describes “four major narratives” that leftists (no, I won’t use “liberal”, just as I steadfastly refuse to use “progressives” – both terms are simply euphemisms for “leftist” … but, I digress) use in their arguments:

1. “The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”
   

   a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics.

2. Conservatives are either manipulated or stupid:
   

   And speaking to a roomful of Democratic donors in 2008, then-presidential candidate Obama offered a similar (and infamous) analysis when he suggested that residents of Rust Belt towns “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” about job losses. When his comments became public, Obama backed away from their tenor but insisted that “I said something that everybody knows is true.”

3. Conservatives are RACISTS!
   

   It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

4. Conservatives are emotion-driven, liberals are logic- and evidence-driven.
   

   Former vice president Al Gore made this case in his 2007 book, “The Assault on Reason,” in which he expressed fear that American politics was under siege from a coalition of religious fundamentalists, foreign policy extremists and industry groups opposed to “any reasoning process that threatens their economic goals.” This right-wing politics involves a gradual “abandonment of concern for reason or evidence” and relies on propaganda to maintain public support, he wrote.

Alexander captures perfectly how Barack Obama exemplifies liberal condescension:

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant — they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

“There may be other ideas that you guys have,” Obama said. “I am happy to look at them, and I’m happy to embrace them. . . . But the question I think we’re going to have to ask ourselves is, as we move forward, are we going to be examining each of these issues based on what’s good for the country, what the evidence tells us, or are we going to be trying to position ourselves so that come November, we’re able to say, ‘The other party, it’s their fault’?”

This article illustrates why the GOP has no business responding to Obama’s overtures to meet with him and the Dems to discuss healthcare socialization. Republican/conservative ideas will be disregarded and condescended, just as every other idea and thought from Republicans have been since his coronation.

READ the article.  Now.

From the Urban Dictionary:

pwned – A corruption of the word “Owned.” This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled “owned.” When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so “has been owned.”

Instead, it said, so-and-so “has been pwned.”

This week, Missouri’s Senator Kit Bond massively pwned Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Last week, Gibbs revealed in a press conference that the FBI had been receiving more cooperation from The Christmas Pantybomber (Umar Farouq) Abdulmutallab.  Senator Bond is the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and received this information from FBI leadership.  According to Bond, the FBI instructed the committee to not disclose Abulmutallab’s cooperation.  But Gibbs did just that.

Yesterday, Bond discussed his exchange with Gibbs on St. Louis radio station KMOX.

Bond, on the Mark Reardon Show on KMOX, called Gibbs a “clown” and said it’s the White House that should apologize because the F.B.I. told everyone to keep the information quiet.

“They said it is absolutely critical that this information not come out because it will hamper our ability to follow up on all the leads the underpants man (Umar Abdulmutallab) gave us on the terror activity being planned in Yemen.” said Bond.

When asked where Bond thought the information originated he told KMOX it had to have come from the White House.

Bond has sent a letter to the President outlining his concerns.  He has not received a reply from the president.

Press Secretary Gibbs has proposed a debate with Senator Bond.  Bond told KMOX “I don’t debate Press Secretaries.”

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Following now-Senator Scott Brown’s supermajority-busting win of TedKennedy’sSeat™ in Massachusetts, the Democrat rats are quickly leaping from the Obama sinking ship. The latest “run away” moment comes on the heels of the Obama FY2011 budget proposal. Unsurprisingly, the POTUS continues his trillion dollar deficit extravaganza, even after his laughable attempt to feign fiscal responsibility by recommending a so-called “spending freeze.” as part of his proposal.  This week, it was revealed that one of the rats abandoning the Good Ship Barry is none other than Missouri’s Democrat Secretary of State and presumptive Dem candidate for Kit Bond’s U.S. Senate seat, Robin Carnahan.

It’s been fun to watch the leftist bloggers lament about how their man-god has betrayed them.  Earlier this week, Robin Carnahan expressed her “disappointment” in Obama’s “lack of fiscal discipline”, and the Huffington Post was right there to document it.  HuffPo quotes Robin:

“From where I stand here in Missouri, I’m disappointed in the President’s budget recommendation. Budgets are about setting priorities and it’s time Washington started making fiscal discipline and tackling the long-term budget deficit higher priorities.

As you might expect, the HuffPo blogger was none too pleased with her newfound opposition to their Fearless Leader

But for an Obama White House that is touting the deficit reducing measures it has thrown into the budget (from spending caps, to prospective cuts in defense programs, to “restoring some balance to the tax code”) comments like Carnahan’s don’t help.

Now you might think that we fiscal conservatives might welcome statements of this kind.  If it came from someone we could trust, that might be the case.  But those of us in Missouri are accustomed to politicians who try to talk a good game, yet plant themselves firmly in Barack Obama’s lap.  Senator Claire McCaskill is a pro at trying to sound tough but she always returns to her leftist voting ways.  Claire makes statements that pretend to be “independent” or “moderate”, yet always manages to vote with the Left, displayed by her none-too-stellar 14% lifetime rating from the ACU.  And Robin Carnahan seems to be following suit – trying to sound moderate…but who believes it?  Surely not those who witnessed her speaking under the Obama Logo

Ms. Carnahan’s rebellion begs the question:  ”what exactly do you oppose from President Obama’s budget?”  She is very nondescript in her opposition. Can she identify specific areas of the budget where she’d like Obama to cut back? What does she find objectionable?  She has yet to oppose any of Obama’s initiatives, such as the failed “stimulus” spending or the near-deceased ObamaCare initiative.  And Robin, have you talked to your bro, Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan, about this?  I fully expect Robin would be as “low maintenance” as Russ, and certainly she’ll be persuaded to change her tune once Rahm, Robert and the gang hear how she’s wandered off the ranch.

I don’t think that HuffPo’s Stein has much to worry about with respect to Robin Carnahan.  Despite her tough talk, she’ll be back in the fold eventually.  She’s terrified to tell Missourians what she believes because she knows they won’t like it.  That’s why she chooses not to talk about health care or terrorism or any of the policy positions that sunk Martha Coakley in Massachusetts.  She knows that Roy Blunt is far closer to Missourians’ attitudes about fiscal responsibility, with his support for bills such as 2005’s Deficit Reduction Act and his opposition to bloated budgets even during the Bush administration.

But most importantly, we must keep in mind this worth-a-1000-words picture:

It’s a reminder:  the $1.85T deficit is OBAMA’S DEFICIT and Robin Carnahan will support every major Obama program that is generating these massive deficits that are going to bankrupt the United States and burden your children, your grandchildren and their grandchildren for decades to come.