points out the silver lining in the South Carolina results:

Those who worry about the emerging (let alone imminent) threat of a right-wing "theocracy" arising from the Republican Party are smoking funny stuff. There is NO constituency for a wedding of Church and State in America, not even in the Bible Belt. To the contrary, ALL the Republican candidates, save one, have been competing for GOP voters with speeches and position papers filled with the rhetoric of limited government, pro-free-markets, tax-and-spending cuts, and fewer regulations on our individual lives.

The exception, Mike Huckabee, was the only Republican trying to peddle an interventionist program of economic populism and religious involvement in law and politics—and now his campaign has been stopped dead in its tracks . . . by evangelical Christian conservatives.

Something to remember. I think they call it "the saving grace." Now read the whole thing.

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sez, over at Protein Wisdom:

I will not, will not, vote for John McCain.

I will not, will not, vote for Mike Huckabee.

I will not, will not, vote for Ron Paul — unless he runs for Fuhrer. In which case, he’s got my full support.

I might hold my nose and vote for Mitt Romney, but to be perfectly honest, I have no confidence in him, and my vote would be moot, anyway: thereÂ’s no way he wins a national election. Because letÂ’s face it: the average US voter is simply not ready to give the White House to a guy named after a first basemanÂ’s glove.

Which means that if Fred Thompson drops out of the race (aside: I have no idea what Republican primary voters are thinking — other than that they are no longer interested in conservatism, and have become every bit as statist as their progressive counterparts), I’m resigning myself to a Democratic presidency in 2008 — and to the years of pain that will follow should the Dems maintain control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Who knows? Maybe they even get the courts, too.

In other words, Hello “progressivism”! Which, as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn can tell you, is simply another word for tyranny of bureaucracy under the auspices of an anti-individualistic, centralized coalition government — and is about as “American” (in the strictest, foundational sense) as caviar or goulash or the Yugo. Decline and fall.

So, what to do? Well, my first thought is to buy some remote land in Idaho and try to hole up for the next decade or so, learning to sustain myself with nothing but a bowie knife and some animal pelts. And maybe Dish Network and a HD DVR receiver.

Well, that won't sound too bad if Awesome Thompson drops out and Rudy doesn't win his Forida gamble (a possibility Jeff doesn't address).

The difference is, I may be able to vote for McCain, through sheer force of will, by reminding myself that "I'm voting on national defense, I'm voting on national defense, I'm voting on national defense; om om om; hail, Mary, full of grace."

And I could definitely vote for Rudy with the same attitude, too—adding "at least he cross-dresses and didn't sponsor McCain-Feingold" to my mantra.

Because at the end of the day, the War Against Islamo-Fascism trumps everything.

But it will be a sad moment, no?

"Shine, perishing Republic."

Boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.

There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—
God, when he walked on earth.

Yeah, yeah: Jeffers' theology is shaky. But the dude had a way with words, and sometimes I'm a sucker for that.

He died, by the way, the same year I was born.

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. . . I commend my spirit.

I got nothin', Folks. Seriously.

I'm just hoping Fred sticks it out till Super-Duper Tuesday.

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1 CNN EXIT POLLS: South Carolina Best Chance of Winning in November Thompson 88% (Top in poll). /ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/#SCREP This explains why voters went for McCain(66% chance of winning).

Posted by: Darrell at January 20, 2008 07:57 AM (FrR7O)

2 First type the obvious address for the Cable News Network before pasting the rest. Fluffy allows a million spams but never a legitimate link.

Posted by: Darrell at January 20, 2008 07:59 AM (FrR7O)

3 I'm hoping that Fred stays in through the convention, but I must admit I don't hold-out much hope. He's the last true conservative in the race (with Dunc Hunter bailing last night) and will at least ensure that there is a strong conservative voice at the remaining debates. Sigh!

Posted by: deMontjoie at January 20, 2008 04:30 PM (D4bPm)

4 I got nothin' either. But there's little yellow feathers around the edges of my mouth...

Posted by: Desert Cat at January 20, 2008 09:49 PM (DIr0W)

5 Oh, dear, DC. You still haven't gotten over you-know-whom? Shall I send some chicken soup along . . . ? They say it's good for what ails you.

Posted by: Attila Girl at January 21, 2008 04:44 AM (vuv+H)

6 "Gotten over" she says. Hee hee hee! Brownback is gone. Hunter is gone. Thompson is foundering. Woe! There is "nobody" left to represent us conservatives. Oh there is much mirth ahead. I'm looking forward to the days soon to come when my erstwhile compatriots in the right blogosphere hang their heads in woe while holding hands to gather their strength to support the candidacy of... McCain-Huckabee 2008! (cue shrieking sounds)

Posted by: Desert Cat at January 21, 2008 10:51 AM (DIr0W)

7 Fine. I'll be in my backyard, preparing to eat my gun . . . You-know-who is an anti-Semite, DC! Wake up and smell the coffee!

Posted by: Attila Girl at January 22, 2008 01:12 AM (vuv+H)

8 Oh please... I've seen nothing other than a concerted effort to smear him with evidence that is dubious at best.

Posted by: Desert Cat at January 22, 2008 09:28 PM (DIr0W)

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gives me a reason to set my alarm.

South Carolina: don't let me down.

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Wake me up when Fred shakes up South Carolina. Remember: I want to see Huckabee bloodied up a bit, and Fred waving a bunch of evangelical votes over his head, doing a little victory dance, still in the race.

Otherwise, don't wake me up at all.

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And it's so bracing.

Dan Collins over at Protein Wisdom chronicles the current round of dirty tricks, and observes:

Those whoÂ’ve never understood Clinton hatred, but who back Obama, are about to learn a thing or two.

Yup. Actually, I don't hate the Clintons, but Bill is a pretty slimy guy; I respect his genius as a politician, but not who he is as an individual. Back when he was President, one of my liberal friends was fond of remarking "come on. Wouldn't you like to party with Clinton?"

"No," I was able to reply, quite honestly. "Because as some point he would try to stick his dick in my mouth; knowing that makes it hard to relax around someone."

UPDATE: What is it about Arkansas, anyway? More dirty tricks from the Huckster.

I wish that state would secede from the Union. Out, damned spot!

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Actually, I'm with Moe on this one.

Also, I'd like to point out that my sister is half-Syrian, and has a scary-sounding Middle Eastern middle name. So by all means, go ahead and make that an issue. I'll just be here, um, field-stripping my Glock and humming.

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of one penis clashing?

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And . . . it's early in the day.

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No patriotism, up there in the Midwest.

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Postrel soundsdisappointed; Ace sounds . . . almost tense.

Captain Ed wonders where all the PaulBots went, but notes that they are back. Only . . . they're apparently more sluggish now.

Via Insty.

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Aw, come on. The man was busy: he had a medical practice to attend to, for crying out loud.

These passages bring back great memories. My husband and I spent some time on the outer extreme of anti-PC dialogue back in the 90s. We started with gun activists and other mainstream libertarians, and ended up hanging out with survivalists and State Citizen types. We found some of our dearest values, such as a belief in a small government and a desire for self-sufficiency, brought us into contact with people we could only describe to each other as "characters."

I'm not sure when, exactly, it was that we began to see all this as rich material for our respective writing. I only know that we immersed ourselves in it and found a lot to laugh at in some of the "black helicoptor" thinking—all the while agreeing that skepticism about media and government is an important virtue, as long as one takes one's meds.

We didn't personally know any racists or anti-Semites, but we were aware that they were out there, and their literature was even easier to find at State Citizen events than it was at gun fairs. One of our comrades-in-survivalism was black. I remember asking him how he felt about the fact that there were racists involved in the militia movement.

He shrugged, and pointed out that he and his wife were some of the best shots he knew. That seemed fair enough. I suppose they were betting against a race war within the survivalist fringe.

But, oh—if you ever get a chance to see a Linda Thompson video, do it. There's some great stuff there.

UPDATE: Turns out there a lot of this political identity theft going around.

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shares his New Hampshire predictions, and has a mini-roundup of other 'sphere luminaries doing same.

I've been trying to avoid a lot of the negativity out there, but it's hard to counteract the mindset that "even if we win, we'll probably still lose."

Of course, I am still PMSing, so you might take that with a grain of salt—and keep your distance.

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endorses McCain!

Oh, wait: that's not what he's saying, is it?

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seems to be cooking right along. At more than $100,000 a day, they aren't doing too badly.

Oh, I know what you're thinking: "A hundred grand is nothing in the scheme of a national campaign."

But $100K here, $100K there: sooner or later (as they say), it all adds up to real money. Particularly when it's coming in at the rate of every 24 hours.

Unfortunately, I have to wait until my next client pays up to send anything more in; the billing cycle is one of the worst things about freelancing, and I don't want to have to dig through my desk for change to gas up the car later on this month.

But it's nice to know that things are healthy over at Fred HQ. I know his numbers appear low in New Hampshire, but everyone's are low at this point. The numbers are deceptive because the field is still so wide-open. Nothing has gelled yet. I wouldn't presume anything until one or two people get knocked out of the GOP side of the race.

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Obama, that is:

Joyner talks about Obama's crossover appeal to the GOP, and discusses the fact that a lot of conservatives have said they'll vote for Obama over Huckabee. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm waiting to be convinced. Of course, Joyner doesn't think either Huck or Obama will get their respective parties' nominations, though it would be interesting to watch from a "sociological" point of view if they did. (Obama, sure. Huck?—I'll be at my local Hemlock Bar.)

It’s also noteworthy that none of the Republican candidates last night did a particularly good job last night answering the question why, if Obama were to get the Democratic nomination, voters should pick them over him. Simply shouting “Liberal!” isn’t going to work after seven years during which elected Republicans demonstrated a combination of incompetence, disregard for civil liberties and the Constitution, and lost any claim to fiscal responsibility.

Well, yes. There's that. I'd call it the elephant in the room, but it's really a sort vacuum-like Black Hole where an elephant ought to have been.

And the Anchoress muses on how difficult it is to consider the potential candidacies of Mrs. Clinton and Obama without wrestling with the ghosts of biogotries past in this country:

Back in 2004, I felt like the press was blocking my view of John Kerry, asking me to hire someone without really letting me interview him or take his full measure. I’m wondering if the press will allow us to really see either one of these candidates fully, or if all this hype is just prep for an eventual Hillary/Obama ticket that no person would dream of voting against for fear of being called a sexist or a racist. If politics is reduced to nothing but labels and name-calling, then such a ticket would be perfect, right? It’s the “noble-person’s choice!”

I do hope we're past that. But I'm not positive that we're all the way there.

The candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going to force—and hopefully help—the country to finally confront bigotries old and new. If the nation can start to really dialogue about racism and sexism honestly and openly, unconstrained by political correctness or by the knee-jerk fingerpointing and labeling that has managed to muddy up and obfuscate any real discussion on those issues for a few decades, that will be a very good thing, for all of us.

I wonder if we’re ready. I ask that knowing full well that I will probably be called every sort of variation of “racist” for daring to even suggest that racism or white guilt or bigotry plays any part in the current media circus. And, of course, for suggesting that Barack Obama’s thin resume demands that we learn more.

Okay, call me anything you like. But when youÂ’re done calling me names, how about we start really talking?

I'm ambivalent, of course. Sometimes I think we need to talk more about these things, and sometimes I think we need to just STFU.

Nonetheless, read the whole thing, which has a lot of thoughtful facets to it that I can't summarize here. As a bonus, it includes TA's commentary on the Dick Meyers remark that Barack Obama is a sort of "Rorschach test," which I thought was interesting at the time.

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It's Romney, with eight delegates. Thompson got one, and Duncan Hunter got one . . . just to be make things a bit interesting. Details here.

So . . . on to New Hampshire, if you like. Or go directly to South Carolina. Do not pass "Go." Do not collect $200.

I'm still interested in what might happen in New Hampshire. But South Carolina will be very, very important. I hear that in a single day, Fred's campaign raised $150,000—more than a quarter of what it needs for its South Carolina media buy. So it seems like they're on the way.

I kind of hope that the Huckaschmucks have stopped smoking whatever it is that they're on before South Carolina: I'd like to see whom people will be supporting in the clear, cold light of day.

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Gives us the blow-by-blow:

7:42 PM: As if things couldn't get any worse, now the Democrats are coming upstairs to use the hall toilet because of the problem in the basement. The environmentalist only use one square of paper, and the others steal entire rolls. None of them wash their hands. I'm headed out on the deck to smoke another doob with the Thompson people, who seem to be the only sane ones here.

7:58 PM: Jeeeeshh. About 5 minutes ago a big black Lincoln stretch pulled up on the lawn and out pops Hillary, along with 15 or 20 of her closest flunkies and footmen. They barge right into the house, without ringing the bell, without so much as a "hey Dave," and head straight down to the basement. Apparently with the plugged up toilet and all the vote was not going real good for her, so she was here for a little last-minute canvasing. Some of the people in her entourage started instructing the caucus people in the basement to vote for her, but they pretty much ignore them. Then Hillary starts screaming at her main flunky, "goddamn it, I told you to make them vote for me!" Normally I'd probably feel bad for the guy, but I'm pretty drunk right now so I kinda laughed. But I laughed harder when Tammy pushed by the security people and grabbed Hillary by the hair and booted her ass out the front door into the driveway snowbank. I probably won't laugh as hard when Tammy does that to me later tonight.

* The guy who opens his comments up once or twice a year, without telling me in advance,and then closes them before I can make it over to his site. This is typical Patriarchal behavior.

Another nice sequence from crush/nemesis/oppressor Dave:

8:31 PM: Shit, talk about a buzzkill. Down in the living room Huckabee has won the GOP caucus and his salvation freakshow is pouring all my beer down the sink (even the good stuff like MGD), shouting"Praise Jesus!" I yell at them to stop, but they crank some godawful Creed song on the stereo and tell me they're going to perform an exorcism on me. The Democrats are screaming in the basement, apparently because they can't decide on a candidate and how to divy up the shit they stole from my garage and liquor cabinet. I'm too high to figure out what to do.

9:11 PM: All my friends know about Tammy's mean streak, and some of them wonder how I can risk staying around her. Well, sometimes that mean streak comes in handy. Like tonight when she grabbed her .410 and shot it off into the living room ceiling. "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," she yelled. "I will thank you to now get the hell off my property."

There was a lot of mumbles and grumbles, but they did all shuffle towards the door. Some Guiliani guy mumbled something about "sensible gun regulations," but Tammy cracked him on the back of the head with the stock of the .410. I laughed pretty hard at that, but then she turned and glared at me. "What are you laughing at, Party Boy? You get the hell out like the rest of them."

Long story short, I'm at Super 8 for the night and my laptop battery's almost dead. So no matter what the pundits and newspapers tell you, the real winner in Iowa tonight just locked me out of the house.

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Among the actual GOP/semi-GOP candidates, Romney came in first, followed by Thompson, and then McCain. I can totally live with that.

So once people see that the evangelical doesn't have any clothes, the situation should fall right into place.

I do want to be clear, though: any ticket that includes the Huckster on any portion of the ballot will not get my vote, and will probably get voted against. So no sneaking Huckabee in as a VP possibility, okay? A heartbeat away from the White House is too freakin' close.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:27 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Like I said: 49 more where that came from.

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