The conservative blogosphere is deeply pissed, and the purges have already begun.
Redstate kicks off “Operation Leper,” an early engagement in the great Conservative Civil War, which they vow to wage for at least the next four years:
RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper.
We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. …
We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.
It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.
The first three names have been lined through already.
Let the bile flow down like water.
Filed under: Bitter, Blogging, Election 2008, Excuses, John McCain, McCain-Palin, News, Politics, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Whiners, Wordpress Political Blogs
As a true conservative I have little use for lists and labels usually. I’d be willing to put Red State on a list and cross them out.
How long has DKos been lobbying to get Joe Lieberman thrown out of the Democratic caucus?
Well, today Harry Reid actually threatened to strip his chairmanship, so DKos is the least of that movement.
Ace of Spades borrowed a line from McCain when he wrote about this yesterday.
“You will know their names. We’ll make them famous!”
And we will.
There is no room in the party for these chicken-shit “anonomous” people driving wedges into the party. All they are doing is making excuses for their own failures.
We don’t need ‘em. We don’t want ‘em. It’s house-cleaning time.
Red, does it concern you that Sarah Palin may not have understood that Africa is a continent? Or that she didn’t know which three countries NAFTA covered?
Which do you think is the more important goal? Maintaining Republican party discipline, or finding out whether nominated a shockingly ignorant person as his VP running mate or not?
I would have to believe those claims in order to be concerned about them.
I don’t.
I believe this is nothing but a collection of people who have lead a losing effort, and are now looking for someone to blame for the fact that they weren’t able to do what they were hired to do.
Sarah Palin did everything asked of her, and ate crap in front of the entire country every single day for it. The way this woman has been treated during, and now after this campaign is what concerns me.
Do you think Sarah Palin acquitted herself well in the Katie Couric interview, Red?
How about with Charlie Gibson?
Why do you suppose the Republican Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States never went on any of the Sunday morning extended interview shows? Or on 60 Minutes?
How was she treated unfairly?
I didn’t see those interviews, I only read portions of transcripts and the aftermath. So I cannot comment on that. But I do understand that questions and/or answers were editted and/or taken out of context.
So since I can only go by what I read, I can assume that she didn’t go on those other shows for the same reasons that Obama didn’t debate Hillary after the ABC debate. Because they didn’t like the treatment they were getting. But that would only be an assumption.
How was she treated unfairly?
She was accused of having an affair.
She was accused of mishandling her pregnancy.
She was accused of not being the mother of her child.
She was acused of abusing her executive powers as governor.
She was accused of inciting racism and violence.
We know more about her past after 2 months than we know about Barack Obama’s after 2 years.
There’s more. Do I need to go on?
I assumed you were talking about her treatment by the Obama campaign and the MSM — my mistake. She was treated badly by some bloggers, true.
Well, she was — by a bipartisan commission of the Alaska legislature. And she was found to have done so by the investigation they requested. It was an investigation she said she “welcomed” (before she decided to stonewall it).
So I don’t think that is an example of her being treated unfairly.
Again, if we’re talking about her treatment by the MSM, as opposed to some parts of the blogosphere, I think there were some legitimate stories about some pretty ugly behavior at some of her events, sometimes in direct response to things she said from the stage.
I don’t think those stories were unfair. I think they were largely factual, at least from what I saw.
No, we don’t. Not even close, Red. For instance, do we know why she attended five colleges in six years? Do we know whether she agrees with the pastor she has heard speak in her church on the responsibility of Jews themselves for the Holocaust? Do we know what she thinks of the Alaska Independence Party? Do we know what she thinks about immigration? Do we know what she thinks about the decision to invade Iraq? Do we even know what she thought about the “Bridge to Nowhere?”
There’s a lot we don’t know about Sarah Palin.
Barack Obama has been through two years of a nationwide campaign. He’s been through primary elections in every state in the union, followed by an intense national campaign that lasted for months. He’s debated his opponents probably 25 times. He’s probably been interviewed a thousand times. He’s been on every Sunday morning interview show and 60 Minutes, several times. He’s written two books. He’s been a public official for 12 years, including four years as a U.S. Senator.
Very few people outside of Alaska had even heard of Sarah Palin ten weeks ago. To suggest that we know more about her than we do about Barack Obama is just incorrect.
“No, we don’t. Not even close, Red. For instance, do we know why she attended five colleges in six years? ”
Nope. Nor do we know how Obama got into the colleges he got into. Was it on his own merits or affirmative action? His grades might tell the story. Know where we can see them? Perhaps his thesis paper could shed some light. Got a link for that? Or any papers he wrote while in college? It seems there are none for public consumption.
They must have really sucked. The grades and the papers.
“Do we know whether she agrees with those pastors she has heard speak in her church on the responsibility of Jews themselves for the Holocaust?”
Nope. Do we know why Barack Obama attended a church with a racist pastor an average of every other week for 20 years? (Over 500 times) Because I don’t buy that “I never heard those types of statements” BS.
“Do we know what she thinks of the Alaska Independence Party?”
Nope. Do we know what Obama thinks of Marxism? Someone asked and Biden threw a tizzy, and then blacklisted the interviewer and station.
“Do we know what she thinks about immigration?”
She said she was for a pathway to citizenship. Just like Obama and McCain.
“Do we know what she thinks about the decision to invade Iraq?”
Who cares what she thinks about that? Or what Obama thinks of it, for that matter? The fact is that we did it. And there was nothing either of them could do about that. Why we went is irrelevant now. We can’t change the past. What’s important is how it gets handled from here on. And we know quite well what both think of that.
“Do we even know what she thought about the “Bridge to Nowhere?””
I believe that was a “she was before it before she was against it.” Or “she refined her position after getting more facts.” I like the 2nd one best. It worked for Obama on several occasions.
Barack Obama has been campaigning for 2 years and done countless interviews is correct. He has also sheltered himself and his campaign behind an extremely favorable media that allowed him to control the message, as well as gave him a vehicle to give it. He was not forced to play defense with the media for many months. He was allowed to focus exclusively on his political opponent. In the last several months he had not been faced any national scrutiny, and avoided almost every percieved threat. He threatened lawsuits to squelch criticism.
Yes he has had 25 debates. And said the same thing in every one of them. So much so, that he even used that as an excuse to stop doing them for a while, remember?
Sure, we never heard of Sarah Palin before a few weeks ago. But I will bet in those few weeks, if she had a close relative here illegally we’d have known about it. We knew all about her husband’s DUI from 20 years ago.
My suggestion might be a bit exaggerated. But then again, Sarah Palin isn’t our next president. Barack Obama is. So I think that makes my questions about him just a little bit more important than yours are about her.
I suspect it was both. What makes you think that they are mutually exclusive, Red?
Are you kidding me, Red? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get into Columbia University? Or Harvard Law? Harvard is the most prestigious and most selective law school in the country (and perhaps the world). If your grades really suck you don’t get in, Red. And if your papers really suck you don’t stay in. There are plenty more applicants, of all colors and backgrounds. He didn’t just stay in — he made the Harvard Law Review, the best law journal in the country, and then he was elected its President. That’s impossible to do if you are not impressive as hell. A well-established constitutional scholar wrote to a colleague to tell him how impressed he was by the Harvard Law student, this guy Obama, who edited the article he had published in the Law Review. A conservative leader of today, Bradley Berenson, who was in Obama’s class, has written about how he was impressed with him at the time.
Have you read his first book, Dreams from My Father, Red? A publisher approached him about writing the book when he was still in law school, and he began organizing his thoughts and writing his first outline before he graduated. He then wrote the book within the year after he graduated and it was published in 1995.
If you have any doubts about the quality of his thinking or his writing, I suggest you take a look at it.
Have you heard the man speak, Red?
Did you listen to or read his speech on race and politics in America, written and delivered in the crucible of the (first) national media firestorm over Rev. Wright?
Here’s what our colleague, Joe Tobacco (not one given to Obamania) had to say about that speech, Red:
Red, I don’t see how you can have observed this campaign and watched Barack Obama for months and not have honestly concluded that the guy has a pretty good head on his shoulders even if you disagree with everything he says.
Oh, come on, Red. Could there possibly have been any more coverage of this issue?
He wrote and delivered an entire speech devoted to his thoughts on the subject, which was covered live by the cable television shows and featured at the top of every network newscast that night. My god, this issue has gotten the sort of attention usually given only by proctologists to a difficult colonoscopy, Red.
By contrast, Sarah Palin has not been asked a single question about it. Zero.
The difference between the level of attention the two have received is tremendous. We don’t know more about her than about him. We just don’t.
I do. To the extent that she wishes to run for President or for the U.S. House or Senate, I want to know whether she thinks that the Iraq War — a war that continues to cost us dearly in blood and treasure — was a good idea or a bad idea. Because there will be other choices for our national leaders to make. And there is no better measure of what choices a person will make than what similar choices she has or would have made in the recent past.
Funny, Palin gets better treatment on the front page of ultra-partisan Daily Kos today than she gets around here.
It’s strange, isn’t it, how liberals are still trashing Palin after her ticket lost? Or perhaps it’s not that strange. After all, the more they can influence continuing media bashing of Palin, the more they damage her for a potential 2012 run. And if they are already worried about 2012…
Yeah, we have a pretty good idea. There is no evidence whatsoever that he advocates “Marxism.” You know Barack Obama is not a “Marxist,” Red. He supports the democratic capitalist society of America in the early 21st century. The idea that his advocacy of tax cuts equates to “Marxism” is laughable. It’s an idea whose ignorance is mind-boggling. By that standard, Ronald Reagan was the equivalent of Vladimir Lenin, and almost every single American national politician is a raging Marxist — John McCain and Sarah Palin most definitely included. The progressive income tax was instituted by Theodore Roosevelt and has been maintained by every American President since then. Joe Biden’s response to that question was absolutely appropriate — he asked if it was a joke. It’s not a serious question. It’s one a child might have thought up.
Can you imagine if Katie Couric had furrowed her brow and asked Sarah Palin: “Governor, are you a fascist?”
She’d have been rightly ridiculed for it.
Not really.
No stranger than the fact that John McCain’s conservative Republican aides are still trashing her.
And that conservative bloggers are still hunting down and eliminating (in a political sense) any Republicans who dare voice dissatisfaction with her abysmal campaign performance — the subject of the post.
No stranger than Sarah Palin telling a French-Canadian radio comedy jock ludicrously pretending to be French President Nicholas Sarkozy that she might be POTUS “in eight years,” Joe.
Sarah Palin’s loss on Tuesday hasn’t made her irrelevant. Yet. We’ll still have her to kick around for quite a while.
Well, if kicking her around is what steams your broccoli, twc, be my guest. That sort of behavior just strikes me as netroots-ish, and I’m bound to disapprove.
While she’s running, sure. After the fact, not so much.
“I suspect it was both. What makes you think that they are mutually exclusive, Red?”
Because Affirmative Action has nothing to do with a person’s merits. It is only about filling minority quotas.
“He didn’t just stay in — he made the Harvard Law Review, the best law journal in the country,”
Did he publish any scholarly articles in that law journal? It’s my understanding he did not. If I’m mistaken then I’ll claim my error. But proof will be required.
Anyone can write memoirs. Big deal.
And no, I have not read them. I have way too much required reading to spend my free time reading the self-grandizing pages of a then state senator who hadn’t done a damn thing up to that point.
“He wrote and delivered an entire speech devoted to his thoughts on the subject, ”
A speech filled with excuses for Wright’s bigotry. Big deal. Sorry, but I didn’t get chills up my leg. I was insulted at being compared to his racist white grandmother.
As I said. Obama is the next President of the United States of America. Sarah Palin is going back to lead the state of Alaska.
I don’t live in Alaska, do you?
So Sarah Palin is now irrellevant to me. As she should be to you.
Anything else is just distractions from the real issues facing our country that your candidate has now been chosen to address.
And for the record, my feelings towards the back-stabbing cowards who are talking shit about Palin don’t have as much to do with Palin as they have to do with the integrity of those people.
They will want to lead campaigns for other Republicans in the future. And we are going to make them feel unwelcomed. That is what this is about.
Just one, and it was pretty technical.
Again. I am proved wrong by evidence of 1 thing.
I accept my error. Barack Obama has proved to me that he was a great student and lawyer because he published a single article in the law review he headed.
Actually, affirmative action “quotas” in college admissions have not been in use since the Supreme Court’s decision in Univ. of California v. Bakke, 30 years ago.
The question was why you think affirmative action and achieving admission on the applicant’s merits are mutually exclusive. Getting into a selective institution takes more than just academic qualification on the merits. That’s just a minimum. There are more qualified applicants than there are spots, and at a highly selective schools like Columbia University or Harvard Law there are many, many more qualified applicants than spots — like 25 to 1 or more. The admissions office chooses who gets in from among many qualified applicants. There are many factors that can play a role. The quality of the essay, family relationships (i.e., the child of a grad, or the child of an accomplished and celebrated parent), some aspect of the applicant’s background (a particular talent or experience, having grown up as the child of missionary parents in China or the child of a coal-miner, being a world-class trumpet player or an Olympic medal-winning athlete), etc., etc. Probably the single biggest factor is just sheer luck — being the one chosen from among the pool of qualified applicants, like winning the lottery.
Affirmative action can play a role. Being a minority applicant can confer the slight advantage that enables that qualified applicant to be selected from among many other qualified applicants. In that sense, both the applicant’s merits AND affirmative action status is “how that applicant got in” — it’s not an either/or.
No, Red. You asked a question: “Did he publish any scholarly articles in that law journal?” I just provided an answer: yes, he did.
Look, you questioned Barack Obama’s academic abilities because you haven’t seen his college grades or papers. You therefore assumed, based on that, that:
That’s a ridiculous and fallacious assumption. There is lots of evidence that he was an excellent student.
I haven’t seen any of your grades or papers. I don’t assume from that that your grades and papers must really suck. I look at the evidence I do have: the quality of thought and writing I have seen from you here. I can tell from it that you are a pretty articulate, informed, thoughtful and bright guy, and I assume that your grades and papers are probably pretty good. I don’t know that, but it seems a reasonable assumption.
Barack Obama went to a good middle and high school in Hawaii — Punahou School — with the help of his mother, grandparents and scholarships. He then went to a good college –Occidental College, and then got into Columbia University, a highly selective school that is one of the best in the country. From there, he got into Harvard Law School – the most selective and probably the best law school in the country. While there he got onto the Law Review — a very selective process. He was then chosen as the President of the Harvard Law Review — an extremely prestigious honor and one for which the top students at the nation’s top law school compete like their careers depend on it. He impressed people in that position. He then was asked to write a book. He did, and it’s a very good book. He’s gone on to have an extremely successful career in law and politics. He’s taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago School of Law — probably one of the top twenty or so law schools in the nation. He’s written another book. He’s written scores of speeches and addresses. He’s debated against opponents of the quality of Alan Keyes, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, and John McCain. You’ve heard the man speak. Does he sound like a dolt to you? Does he sound like he is not too bright? Does he sound like the kind of guy who was not a very good student?
Come on, Red. I understand that you don’t like Barack Obama’s politics. But to suggest that he probably wasn’t a very good student because of that difference of political philosophy — on the grounds that you haven’t seen his school grades or papers — is an assumption built on sand.
From your own link
“The decision of the Court was announced by Justice Lewis Powell on June 23, 1978. The court ruled 5-4 that race could be only one of numerous factors used by discriminatory boards, such as those of college admissions. Powell found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and were thus unconstitutional because they discriminated against non-minority applicants. Powell, however, stated that universities could use race as a plus factor. He cited the Harvard College Admissions Program which had been filed as an amicus curiae as an example of a constitutionally valid affirmative action program which took into account all of an applicant’s qualities including race in a “holistic review”.”
Which universities did Obama attend?
“I haven’t seen any of your grades or papers.”
I’m not the next President of the United States.
I will post some of my papers tonight. I’ll post my grades too, if you want. My GPA is around 3.65.
I’m not ashamed of them like Obama is of his.
“Come on, Red. I understand that you don’t like Barack Obama’s politics. But to suggest that he probably wasn’t a very good student because of that difference of political philosophy ”
No. I say it because he has given no proof to the contrary.
If he has nothing to hide, then why is it being hidden?
Yes, Red, the Court in Bakke struck down the use of racial “quotas” but permitted the continued use of race as one factor among many that could be used in making college admissions decisions.
That’s why I assumed that Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, probably used an admissions process that included the use of race in their admissions decisions, as an affirmative action program.
That’s why I said that I suspected that Barack Obama got into those schools as on the basis of both his own merits and affirmative action.
You’re free to “assume” why someone “probably” did something, and so am I.
And yet you make assumptions about his academic accomplishments based on the absence of evidence (his grades and papers), while ignoring the evidence that is readily available — such as the book he started when he was in law school and completed the year after he finished law school.
Red, I know you are maxed out with reading and requirements. But here’s a thought to consider: take five minutes some day when you need a study break. Go to the library shelves (or desk) and get Dreams from My Father. Pull it down and read one or two paragraphs at random.
Then see if it gives you some sense of whether Obama can write and think poorly or well. That is a pretty good measure of whether he was a good or a poor student.
Where can I find Sarah Palin’s college grades or her college papers?
So I can compare the quality of her writing and thought.
[...] Posted on November 7, 2008 by twc01 There has been some mention (here, and in the comments here) of President-elect Obama’s academic performance and qualifications. I know, it might seem a [...]
LOL @ Erick Erickson. That dude’s always good for some comic relief.
@ Joe:
As you probably know (but others might not), the phrase was a joking reference to Richard Nixon who famously said to assembled reporters on the morning after losing the 1962 election for California Governor — having also lost the 1960 presidential election (in an early employment of what has become the ever-ready, never-fails conservative Republican blame-the-media standby reflex): “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
Alas, that turned out to be so not true. Six years later, Dick Nixon was the President-elect.
Joe, discussing Sarah Palin at this point may seem “netroots-ish” to you, but here’s how at least one major paper describes it today:
Days after the election, Palin’s future is the subject of enormous speculation among Republicans – conservatives are pushing her to be among the party’s next generation of leaders even as the old guard appears to be distancing itself.
The enmity toward Palin within some factions of the GOP remains abundantly clear. Even before the election was called on Tuesday night, damaging leaks began to spring from the embattled McCain campaign, some of whose top advisers were quoted in major newspapers suggesting Palin was a “whack job” and a “diva.”
Those advisers said she repeatedly went “rogue,” refusing to tell the campaign when she was talking up issues – such as Weather Underground member William Ayers’ supposed ties to Obama – or chatting on the telephone with a Canadian radio-show prankster who claimed to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
On election night, the New York Times reported, Palin showed up at McCain’s election-night gathering in Phoenix ready to read a concession speech. It goes against campaign protocol for a vice presidential candidate to speak on election night, and the move was vetoed by McCain strategist Steve Schmidt.
Even Carl Cameron of conservative Fox News reported this week that Palin showed “real problems with basic civics” during her debate prep.
“She didn’t know the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement,” NAFTA, a key agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada, he said GOP insiders told him. She also “didn’t understand that Africa was a continent and not a country,” and asked for explanation about the difference between South Africa and Africa, he reported.
…
And the lingering matter of her wardrobe spending continues – a Republican Party attorney has been assigned to look into Palin’s designer clothing purchases and, reportedly, to retrieve the expensive items.
Newsweek said that Palin “used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards,” something that the McCain campaign didn’t find out until aides asked for reimbursement.
“One aide estimated that she spent ‘tens of thousands’ more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost,” the magazine said.
“An angry aide … said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books,” according to the magazine.
Sounds to me like her performance during this campaign is a major topic of discussion in Republican and conservative circles.
Joe, discussing Sarah Palin at this point may seem “netroots-ish” to you, but here’s how at least one major paper describes it today:
Sounds to me like her performance during this campaign is a major topic of discussion in Republican and conservative circles.
Updated (Sat., 11/8, 1:06 p.m.) to add emphasis in the quoted portion.
@ Joe:
Long time. I’ve been reading posts here about vicious liberal infighting since I first checked this site.
“GOP insiders.”
These are the chicken-shits we are going to crucify. They don’t have the stones to step up and talk. They do so anonomously, so that they can get jobs on somebody else’s campaign.
This is nothing but people who have lost looking for a scapegoat to protect thier own careers.