Sadly, No!

Above: Mark Levin of the NRO and WABC Radio

2008
11/10 03:11 PM
I’m going against today’s conventional wisdom and suggesting that Rick Santorum and George Allen should consider running for the Republican presidential nomination. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time politicians who’ve lost elections have run (and won) office. Indeed, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have lost elections. Obviously, Richard Nixon lost for president in 1960 and governor of California in 1962.

I still consider Santorum and Allen among the best and most appealing conservatives on the scene. I believe Santorum has national appeal, despite his loss in Pennsylvania. And although Allen’s campaign was knocked off stride, nobody will care much. After all, John McCain has overcome much worse, namely the Keating Five scandal; and Rudy Guiliani appears to have put his marital and health issues behind him.

And on the Democrat side, don’t get me started. Suffice it to say that Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John Kerry, et al, all carry baggage, and some of it pretty heavy.

 
[Non-slapdash Photoshoppery will return tomorrow, after a restful vacance.]

We love that old time bipartisanship:

But with Senator Lincoln Chafee’s announcement Thursday that he would deny Republicans on the committee the last vote needed to send Mr. Bolton’s nomination to the full Senate, some administration officials privately acknowledge that Mr. Bolton’s chances of getting Senate confirmation are “nil,” one State Department official said. “We know it’s not going to happen.”

But Mr. Bolton is keen to stay at the helm of the American team at the United Nations, administration officials say, and White House officials, including the legal adviser, Harriet Miers, have been looking into whether Mr. Bush can somehow bypass the Senate and save Mr. Bolton. Administration officials said that Vice President Dick Cheney is backing the exploration of such a move.

Mr. Bolton “could be name ‘acting permanent representative’ or ‘deputy U.N. ambassador’ or something else that doesn’t require confirmation,” one senior administration official said, acknowledging that it might not be worth angering Democrats with such a maneuver. [Emphasis added]

Why don’t we just call Bolton the Moustache of Evil and let him spend more time with his family? And then we’ll somehow give him a swift kick in the nuts.

This just in from MSNBC:

[UPDATE: IMAO ownzered us on this one. The poll is actually from December, 2005, but was making the rounds after the election as a fresh piece of data. I’m so mad, I just put my thumb in my mouth and blew, and popped my top hat clear to the ceiling.]

Above: a very interesting graph

And here’s some more from The Malkin, circa yesterday:

Ed Koch adds further warning:

Some congressional leaders will push for President Bush’s impeachment now that the Democrats have taken control of the House and possibly the Senate, former New York Mayor Ed Koch predicts.

“I expect that [Rep. John] Conyers as chairman [of the House Judiciary Committee], now with great freedom, will do anything he can to commence such impeachment or investigatory activity, and we’ll see whether Pelosi will prevent it,” Koch says.

Oh, who knows what’ll happen. But teh beat, teh beat…

Above: Ken Mehlman is out, so to speak

RNC asks Steele to replace Mehlman
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 10, 2006

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, whose party just lost both chambers of Congress, will leave his position in January, and the post as party chief has been offered to Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.

“It is true,” Mr. Mehlman told The Washington Times when asked about reports last night that he would resign. “It’s something I decided over the summer. No one told me I needed to. In fact, folks wanted me to stay.”

Mr. Mehlman said he “told the White House over the summer it was my decision” to leave the RNC post, “win, lose or draw.”

Uh-huh, assuredly, yes. That’s totally it. Right. Yeah, truly, uh-huh. Wow.

Not to say that this has anything to do with it, but the biggest closet in Washington just got a little pinchy. If Mr. Mehlman is retiring to spend more time with Scott McClellan’s family, as it were, that’s one fewer potential scandal hanging over the cynically gay-baiting Republican Party, which…

But that’s importunate. Perhaps it’s simply time for a bold nude erection.

This, on the other hand, is interesting. Watch how Karl Rove’s fabled whackadoodle mojo seems to be waning:

Other Republican Party officials said some Republican National Committee (RNC) members, including state party chairmen, have mounted a move to have Mr. Steele succeed Mr. Mehlman.

But they said that President Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove, who is Mr. Mehlman’s mentor, would rather see Mr. Steele serve in the president’s Cabinet, perhaps as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. These officials said no one has actually offered Mr. Steele either the RNC post or a Cabinet post.

We’ll see who wins this one. (Steele reverse, bitchuzz!11)

Above: Another day, another key Republican down the chute

Hastert won’t seek leadership post
Susan Milligan, Boston Globe
Thursday, November 9, 2006

(11-09) 04:00 PST Washington — House Speaker Dennis Hastert, wounded by the GOP’s loss of the House on Tuesday night, said Wednesday he will not seek to continue as his party’s leader in the next Congress.

“As a former wrestling coach, I know what it is like when your team takes second place in the state tournament. It hurts. And so it is with politics,” the Illinois Republican said in a statement.

That’s a new interpretation. Instead of bursting in a wet bang of hubris, chicken feathers, and aerosolized failure, the Republicans’ ‘permanent majority’ actually won the silver medal.

Say, remember when you used to hear this expression all the time?

[I]f the Democrats want to control who gets appointed as a judge, maybe they should try winning some elections instead being a bunch of whiny jackaninnies threatening to filibuster every damn nomination that comes down the pike.

I’m hoping to hear that they’ve also got taps on Howard Dean’s and Hillary Clinton’s phones. Lord only knows what sort of traitorous skullduggery they’ve been up to. And I like to say — elections have consequences. If the donks don’t like having their phones tapped, try winning elections — or switching parties 😉

Might I once again refer the kooks to SCOREBOARD. And while we’re on the subject, might I also remind the kooks the alternative to SCOREBOARD is totalitarianism.
Let us review SCOREBOARD:

Majority of State Legislators: Republican
Majority of State Governors: Republican
Majority of House Members: Republican
Majority of Senators: Republican
President (for two terms): Republican

Looks like a clean sweep, huh? SCOREBOARD sucks if you’re a demo, doesn’t it?
Like I said, try winning an election.
_________________
The safest place for Osama bin Laden isn’t in Afghanistan or Pakistan; it’s in the New York Times building.

It is also expected that the GOP will increase its dominance in the 2006 contests. Do you have a problem with that? If so, try winning some elections.

Ha ha. And we were second-place champions the whole time!

“The Republican leader in the 110th Congress will have the responsibility to emphasize conservative values and reform principles. I will not seek this role,” but will stay on as a rank-and-file member representing Illinois’ 14th District, the speaker said.

As Hastert steps down, Boehner is popping up:

Hastert’s announcement — not unexpected after the bruising his party took this week — immediately set off a leadership battle among House Republicans. The current House majority leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, is expected to seek the minority leader’s post in the next Congress, but Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana quickly announced Wednesday that he would challenge Boehner for the job.

…Plus with Pence in the running, the headline, ‘House Republicans Pull Boehner,’ is still blissfully possible. It would help make up for the bittersweet jubilance of ‘GOP Smokes Weed‘ — sadly lost in the shuffle, what with all the doings since Tuesday.

The impeachment drumbeat begins
By Michelle Malkin · November 09, 2006 10:08 AM

Above: Anti-immigration (and so much more!) anchor baby Michelle Malkin

I know what Nancy Pelosi’s lips say. She says she thinks impeachment is “off the table.” She says she thinks it would be a “waste of time.”

But the groundwork is being laid. Former Brooklyn Rep. Liz Holtzman is hawking a book outlining how to impeach President Bush:

In her book, Holtzman and co-writer Cynthia Cooper lay out four other issues on which they believe Bush could be impeached: lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify invading Iraq, allowing the torture of prisoners, leaking classified information and botching the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

“I thought that when we voted to impeach Richard Nixon, this would send a very strong message to future Presidents – do not put yourself above the rule of law,” said Holtzman, a Democrat. “That message was not heard by President Bush.”
[…]

Now, she is taking to the airwaves and to the road to muster up moonbat support for an impeachment drive. […]

Aieee! Of course, if you were to suspect that Michelle had quite a different view on impeachment during the Clinton years, you would win the ding-ding-hooray prize. This is from her column of October 27th, 2000:

[W]hen I walk into the voting booth on Nov. 7th, I will vote for a Democrat for the first time in my life thanks to a single issue: Yes, impeachment. My congresswoman, seven-term incumbent Republican Connie Morella of Maryland, joined President Clinton’s lackeys in 1998 and voted against all four impeachment articles. Despite the wealth of evidence before her, from Clinton’s videotaped lies to the stained blue dress, Morella rejected Article I, accusing Clinton of perjury before a grand jury; Article II, accusing Clinton of perjury in a civil lawsuit; Article III, accusing Clinton of obstruction of justice; and Article IV, accusing Clinton of abuse of presidential power. For these votes alone, Morella deserves to be booted out of office. The mainstream press praised her “maverick” votes, but they were acts of cravenness, not courage. When the majority of her party was willing to stand up and…

Although the possibility of impeachment seems distant at the moment, Michelle might be right that it’s time to start the impeachment drumbeat.

I vote for this drumbeat, although I’m totally open to suggestions:

I keep reading about how the only reason Democrats won is because of all the Republican scandals, mistakes and malfeasance – as if that’s somehow not enough.

Isn’t that like saying the only reason a football team won is because the opposing team made too many mistakes? A win is a win is a win. Sure, it’d be great if every football game was a matchup between two coaching geniuses and rosters stuffed with All-Pros, and four quarters of beautifully executed sportsmanship ended on a last-second field goal, with 106 exhausted players and two empty playbooks. But sometimes you get Seahawks-Raiders. Either way, the final score is the final score.

So who cares if Democrats won because Republicans committed a few turnovers and couldn’t tackle, or some of their players missed the game because they got arrested for beating their wife or choking their mistress? We won. I mean, it’s not like the refs blew a call.

This AP story on the investigations into Pat Tillman’s death is pretty informative. A passage somewhere in the middle caught our eye(s):

Military investigators under Gimble’s direction this year visited the rugged valley in eastern Afghanistan where Tillman was killed. It was a risky trip; the region is even more dangerous today than it was in 2004.

Hmm, freedom.

I’m going to be on hiatus for a week or so to work on my Master’s thesis. Gavin, Retardo, Travis and Seb will be here to keep y’all company, though.

But before I take off, here’s one more hilarious nugget from Hugh Hewitt:

The highest compliment that can be paid the departing Secretary is that our enemies –our real, honest-to-goodness enemies– must be jubilant that he is leaving. Rumsfeld did not hesitate to order the professionals under his command to pursue, capture, or kill these killers. As a result, the enemy, far more than most Americans, they know just how capable a foe Rumsfeld has been.

Donald Rumsfeld is a great American and will be remembered before long as a great Secretary of Defense. We can only hope that his replacement is as successful as Rumsfeld has been at routing the enemy and keeping it on the run.

I got nothin’. See you in a week.

This morning I heard Robert Reich on NPR, suggesting that Democrats should spare a public suffering from “outrage fatigue,” let Republican bygones be Republican bygones and, instead, use their “newfound clout” to focus exclusively on a host of domestic policies – most of which are already listed as part of Nancy Pelosi’s First 100 Hours agenda.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Let’s say you’ve been on a road trip for – oh, I dunno – about six years. Nearly everyone in the car agrees that you’re headed in the wrong direction, and have been for a long time. Your driver ran a whole bunch of red lights to take you into a damn war zone to look for something that wasn’t even there, and now he won’t admit that he doesn’t know where he’s going. He couldn’t be bothered to stop and help those hurricane victims you passed a while back, and he’s run up incredible debts at no-bid check-cashing places to buy stuff for his friends. He refuses to let you see any of the receipts, and is particularly secretive about what he’s doing when he stops at the gas station. Everybody’s starting to go broke, you’ve driven past a torture parlor and you just saw a sign that says “Fascism: Next right.”

So what do you do when you finally get a chance to sit up front with the driver, where he has to listen to you? Tell him to take a left and hope for the best? Hell, nah. As soon as you stop paying attention and fiddle with the radio or something, you know damn well he’s gonna take another right – and then you’re going the wrong way again.

When you’re totally lost, it’s best to just stop the car and turn around, keeping an eye out for things that look familiar. There’s no need to devise some grandiose scheme to find a better or quicker way home. (Grandiose schemes are what got you lost in the first place, remember?) Open the glove box and get out the map, which you decided to stick in there on a 5-4 vote, and you’ll find your way back soon enough. To pass the time, you should probably figure out who gave the driver all the credit cards in the first place, who told him it was okay to throw out those unpaid parking tickets and who slept through their shift as navigator. And you should give those people other responsibilities on the return trip. It might make for a long, uncomfortable ride home – but it really is the only way to avoid making those same mistakes again.

Ideally, you should let someone else drive, but the other guy with a license is even more reckless. Hell, one time he shot a dude in the face.