Say Anything Blog

Did I call this one or what?

Poll: Divisive Dem Contest Could Boost McCain

(CNSNews.com) - The lengthy Democratic primary contest bodes well for Republican chances of holding the White House, a new poll suggests.

As Democratic Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York slug it out for the nomination, many of their supporters—at least in Pennsylvania, site of the next major primary—aren’t committed to the party’s ticket in November, according to a Franklin & Marshall College Poll.

Among Obama supporters, 20 percent said they would vote for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, if Clinton beats their candidate for the nomination. Among Clinton supporters, 19 percent said they would support McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

The significant number of potential defectors underscores how divisive the Democratic primary has been.

Democrats won Pennsylvania in the 2000 and 2004 presidential races, but it was a competitive state in both election cycles. McCain, meanwhile, has touted his appeal to swing voters.

“Pennsylvania is a must-win state for a Democratic presidential nominee,” Nathan Gonzalez, political editor of the Rothenberg Political Report, told Cybercast News Service. “If there is a significant weakness for a Democrat in Pennsylvania, it could indicate a weakness in Ohio or other key states.”

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Michelle Malkin makes a point that the MSM have been unsurprisingly mum on: the increasingly strident and violent attacks on military recruiters by the Hateful Left.

Their aggressiveness is no doubt encouraged by the governments’ ineffectual (non)responses to the escalating violence.

Ideas have consequences. Inaction has consequences. For the past several years, I’ve chronicled the left’s escalating war on military recruiters—and the apathetic, weak-kneed response to it. The anti-recruiter thugs on college campuses and in liberal enclaves have thrived thanks to a combination of public indifference, law enforcement fecklessness and left-wing ideological apologism.

It has now been a week since the Times Square military recruitment center bombing. The investigation continues—and so does the left’s denial of the ongoing campaign against military recruiters. At a national conference of anarchists in Washington, D.C., last weekend, a “solidarity sticker” glorifying the biker bomber made the rounds. On the Internet, “peace” activists threatened the Gathering of Eagles, a national military support group that organized a rally at Times Square last weekend. From Pittsburgh to Berkeley, anti-war extremists have smeared recruiters as “death pimps” and “child predators.” The militant Code Pink group continues to organize in-your-face protests to drive recruiters from major metropolitan areas.

The Times Square bombing was not an isolated incident, but an all-too-predictable symptom of reckless tolerance for dangerous “peace” peddlers skating on the edge of sedition. Lone nuts? Here is a brief history of the anti-military recruitment movement’s mounting acts of vandalism and violence. I’ll list, you decide:

She goes on to count off a surprisingly long list of attacks matched with total non-responses by those who are supposed to be enforcing the law and keeping the peace.  Thus the troops who risk life and limb for us overseas are left undefended at home against what can best be described as the Domestic Enemy.

Perhaps some of you, familiar with history can cite other examples in times gone by when the so-called authorities stood by as crowds raged, doing nothing, but invariably in a one-sided way.

The example that comes to my mind was in Germany, early November 1938, commonly known as Kristallnacht (PDF LINK) which is German for ‘Crystal Night’ and said to refer to the broken glass that littered the streets in the wake of a carefully orchestrated campaign of violence against Jewish buildings and Jews themselves between November 9th and 10th.

Police stood by idlely and watched as the crowds destroyed shops and synagogues and beat hapless Jews or Jewesses they found in the street.

Thus the question remains for us today: WHY do police stand by and do nothing to stop this violence?  Why are the Leftists not be prosecuted?

Think the popular culture might have anything to do with this?

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What could have resulted in a multi-national conflaguration in South America ended in a whimper when the heads of the nations of Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador shook hands, de-escalating the crisis.

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So whatever is left of American Christianity is in the process of being led astray. This from Jo Farah:

There’s a movement afoot to seduce evangelical Christians into anti-biblical, socialist, tyrannical politics – the kind currently energizing Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

I know this because I just read a new book by the self-proclaimed “godfather” of the movement – Tony Campolo. Yeah, you remember him as Bill Clinton’s spiritual guru.

The book is a manifesto of sorts called “Red Letter Christians.” Red Letter Christians are those, we learn in Campolo’s book, who heed the words spoken by Jesus and recorded in the New Testament – sometimes in red letters.

I’ll summarize the book for you: Christians have been paying enough attention to issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, homosexual indoctrination in schools, etc. But, says Campolo, they need to start paying attention to what the Bible teaches to do about poverty, the environment, global warming and social injustice. And, in response, we have to empower government through political activism to shoulder our biblical responsibilities.

It’s a stunning treatise – breathtaking in either its naiveté or self-indulgent and willful corruption of clear biblical principles.

The thorn-in-Americas-side Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez may soon be the mouse that pissed the cat off once too often. Chavez has mobilized his military and put them on the border with Columbia.

President Hugo Chávez yesterday placed Venezuela on a war footing, sending thousands of troops and tanks to the border with Colombia after its neighbour killed a top rebel leader inside Ecuadorean territory.

“Mr. Defense Minister, move me 10 battalions to the border with Colombia immediately - tank battalions,” Mr Chávez boomed on his weekly television programme, Aló Presidente. He also placed the Venezuelan Air Force on standby for action.

This is no small threat, having devoted a fair amount of the petro-bucks he has been exacting from the USA and other oil purchasers to obtain top-of-the-line military equipment like German Leopard II tanks and former Soviet Su-30 advanced jet fighters.

Chavez, like any Statist, gravitates to the ready-built dystopian system of Marxism because it facilitates his greed for total power and gives it an imprimatur of dignity (if such a thing can be said of Marxism) that he would not otherwise have.

Washington doesn’t like Chávez for other reasons. First he has had the temerity to invite Fidel Castro to Caracas. He also visited Libya, Iran and Iraq, all members, with Venezuela, of OPEC, through which he arranged for a substantial increase in the price of oil (the Americans were especially indignant over his visit to Saddam Hussein).

The US administration has recently expressed worry about Chávez’s democratic credentials. He became president in 1998 after he won 58 per cent of the popular vote. In 2000, under a new constitution, he won a higher percentage vote and his party won more than 80 per cent of the seats in a new congress and nobody has questioned the validity of those elections. While protesting its respect for democracy in Venezuela, there are suspicions that the US may have inspired three generals in the Venezuelan army to call for the resignation of Chávez.

VENEZUELA is probably the richest country in South America because of its oil - it is by far the most important source of oil for the US economy, yet it has managed to squander the riches it has brought in the last 40 years.

Chavez has spent a good deal of his tenure taunting the USA and doing what he can, short of war, to generally piss us off. But he has always stayed on just this side of the Line of Death.

That time may soon be over.

If Chavez attacks Columbia he may be giving the United States and her South American allies the excuse they have long been praying for. Much of South America are signatories of the RIO TREATY

(Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), signed Sept. 2, 1947, and originally ratified by all 21 American republics. Under the treaty, an armed attack or threat of aggression against a signatory nation, whether by a member nation or by some other power, will be considered an attack against all (see Pan-Americanism). The treaty provides that no member can use force without the unanimous consent of the other signatories, but that other measures against aggressors may be approved by a two-thirds majority. It differs from previous inter-American treaties in that it is a regional treaty within a larger international organization; it recognizes the higher authority of the Security Council of the United Nations.

It would be very interesting to see if Bush can or will use force to finally take Chavez out. After all, not so long ago, Bushs’ Dad took out a very similar character in Operation Just Cause.

Maybe they’ll call this one OPERATION JUST CAUSE - PART DEUX

While the denizens of Earth scurry about the face of the planet, concentrating on upcoming elections and wars and rumors of wars, here is something that might be an interesting distraction—the theory that oil didn’t come from dinosaurs after all.

Discovery backs theory oil not ‘fossil fuel’
New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply

A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a “fossil fuel” derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.
...

The Fischer-Tropsch equations were first developed by Nazi scientists who created methodologies for producing synthetic oil from coal.

and

Saturn moon (Titan) has more hydrocarbons

Saturn’s moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to a team of Johns Hopkins University scientists, adding to evidence that oil is not biological in origin.
....

“Several hundred lakes or seas have been discovered, of which dozens are estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than the entire known oil and gas reserves on Earth,” wrote lead scientist Ralph Lorenz of the university’s Applied Physics Laboratory in the Jan. 29 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.

Of course the late Immanuel Velikovsky, surmised that many thousands of years ago, oil was deposited onto Earth by a near collision with Venus, which at the time had an erratic orbit and came dangerously close to the Earth before stabilizing into its current position.  But that’s conjecture for another day.

Still, if the Earth has an endless supply of oil, or better yet, if we, like the WWII Nazi scientists, come up with a way of replicating the genesis of oil (Ersatzoel), or Synthetic Oil, that would really knock the bottom out of the price of oil, now wouldn’t it? 

Over night, it would rob the entire Middle East of much of their leverage over the rest of the world.

Oil would no longer be such a rare and finite product.

Our national interests would no longer be tied to maintaining free access to oil fields in troubled lands like Nigeria, Venezuela and the Middle East, or sea battles need to be fought against U-boats in Wolf Packs hunting oil tankers.

Imagine the possibilities if this were true?

(Berkeley Hippy logic on display - image ripped off from LGF website)

Tell me I’m not the first to be posting on this topic.  It’s so readily apparent, it’s essentially a no-brainer (no pun intended)

Liberals, as they are so affectionately known, are really just mad.  Barking- at-the-moon insane.  At least according to Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr.

A doctor who is certified both in general and forensic psychiatry and has diagnosed and treated mental disorders for more than 40 years now has revealed, in his new book, ”The Liberal Mind,” the real reason for liberalism, and it is this week’s top pick at Shop.WND.com.

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter Jr. says the reason modern liberals think and act as they do is psychopathology.

Rossiter’s analysis discusses modern liberalism’s assaults on the freedom of adults to make good lives for themselves by cooperating with others, the ability of families to raise children to be self-reliant and mutual and the morals, rights and laws that protect our freedoms.

Modern liberalism’s irrationality can only be understood as the product of psychopathology, he concludes. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche.

The book reveals the “madness” of the modern liberal for what it is: a massive transference neurosis acted out in the world’s political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty.

Those haunting questions that have troubled so many: Are liberals out of their minds? and Why do modern liberals think and act as they do? now can be answered, Rossiter notes.

This book is the first systematic analysis of the political madness that now threatens to destroy the West’s greatest achievement: the American dream of civilized liberty, the description notes.

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WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE

WHO CONTROLS THE PRESENT CONTROLS THE PAST

Statists very rarely come right out and admit that they are Statists, or any kid of ‘ist’ for that matter.  They will identify themselves and/or their agendas under some pink fuzzy bunny camouflage term, often diametrically opposed to what the true intended effect of what their program really entails.

Net Neutrality is to the internet what Hush Rush legislation is to Talk Radio.

It is helpful to recall how incensed the then First Lady Hillary was when the Lewinsky scandal broke.  It broke on the internet on the DrudgeReport’s website, and not in Newsweek, which is alleged to have spiked (refused to publish) the story.

We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with (the Internet), because there are all these competing values ... Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?

No doubt Gore and Kerry will sit on neighboring barstools, drinking umbrellaed girly drinks commiserating over how FreeRepublic or Swiftboat Veterans did them in. 

Obviously, the internet needs to be controlled.

Luckily for them, aside from Talk Radio, it is about the last bastion of Free Speech.  Consider that the vast unwashed masses get their programming (and I do mean programming) from television, and a vast proportion of television is owned by a handful of multinational corporations, it cannot be said that television news is free or neutral.

Links

What’s Wrong With This Picture? (2001)

Who Controls the Media? (NOW)

The Big Ten (Flash)

If one were to live 5,000 years, most likely the person observing humankind for that long would find that the most defining feature of history is that of repetition.

No doubt Bush forgot the triggering event for WWI, which were the threats made by Austro-Hungary to the small country of Serbia.  While Serbia is small, so is a fuse vis-a-vis the rest of the bomb.  And that bomb was (and still is) Russia.

History has shown us that Southeastern Europe was ground zero for the battles and wars that have repeatedly been fought between the West and Islam.  Kosovo holds a special place of honor to the Serb people, as it constitutes holy ground, as the scene of a momentous battle against the marauding Saracen.

Think on the significance that those seeking independence are in fact originally from neighboring Albania, if even from one or more generations removed.  Not content to coexist with the largely Orthodox Christian Serbs, the Kosovar Muslims, the ethnic Albanians, with support training and equipment from Iran and other parts of the Fundamentalist Islamic world,—via the KLA / UCK—waged a war of rape, slaughter and terror against the Serbs (and you thought our problem with Mexicans was bad)

Granted, there were reprisals by the Serbs.  Those reprisals were hyped and often vastly inflated by the Clinton-era MSM, while similtaneously giving the terror wrought by the Muslims a vigorous whitewash.

I noted previously that I thought Bush’s immediate recognition of Kosovar independence from Serbia a great mistake: Kosovo Recognition —Bush’s latest Big Mistake

Recent reports may prove that Kosovor independence may not stand as a fait accompli—indeed, it may be the triggering event to greater violence unless properly handled.

Putin warns West over Kosovo dispute

Earlier in the day, Russia’s envoy to NATO warned the alliance against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use “brute military force” to maintain respect on the world scene.

and

In a statement issued in Brussels the EU foreign ministers say that Kosovo’s history of “conflict, ethnic cleansing and humanitarian catastrophe” in the 1990s by Serbia exempts it from the rule that international borders can only be changed with the agreement of all parties. The EU countries that recognize Kosovo’s independence admit that they are doing so in violation of the rule of “territorial integrity” of nations under international law. They want to ‘punish’ Serbia for its misbehaviour in the 1990s, but fail to see that they are ‘punishing’ the whole of Europe by saddling it with a state run by criminal gangs.

Russia refuses to accept Kosovo’s independence. So does China. Moscow has called on the United Nations to annul Pristina’s decision. It will be interesting to see which countries will back Russia in the UN. Moscow’s allies in the Organization of Islamic States definitely will not. They applaud the establishment of a new Muslim state in Europe. Will Russia now become the leader of the Europeans who resist the Islamization of their continent? Or will the crisis in the Balkan trigger a new world war, just as the Great War was triggered in the Balkans in 1914?

Indeed, what will Russia do if the 16,000 NATO “peace keeping” troops in Kosovo attack the Serbian army when it attempts to recover its breakaway province? If Russia intervenes, then 2008 might become the year that war broke out between Russia and NATO. America, the EU, Europe’s immigrant “youths” and Osama bin Laden would find themselves on one side, and Russia, with China and the Europeans who resist Islamization on the other.

Not too sure how much discussion Bush has had with Congress in choosing to recognize Kosovo as an independent entity, I am of the deep conviction that this latest decision is wrong.

Having just returned from Serbia not long ago, I think it would seem that the US, specifically the Clinton administration, entered the Balkans conflict on the wrong side. 

Most Americans have been given a shadowy view of the parties involved with that conflict.  I am being polite, of course.  More to the point, the ethnic Albanians are by and large Muslim.  Albania has its own country, but a sizable group immigrated, super-populated and then violently drove the Serb population from the region with the assistance of the likes of Iran and Osama bin Laden.

An Unholy “Marriage of Convenience”

In addition to the dispatch of Western special forces, Mujehadeen mercenaries and other Islamic fundamentalist groups (financed inter alia by Iran and Saudi financier Osmane Bin Laden) have been collaborating with the KLA in the ground war.

“[B]y early December 1997, Iranian intelligence had already delivered the first shipments of hand grenades, machine-guns, assault rifles, night vision equipment, and communications gear… Moreover, the Iranians began sending promising Albanian and UCK [KLA] commanders for advanced military training in al-Quds [special] forces and IRGC camps in Iran...58.

Bin Laden’s Al Qa’ida allegedly responsible for last year’s African embassy bombings “was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, ... Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 ... Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists”.59

Anyone familiar with the region recalls the historic Russian-Serbian ties in the area and that the causis belli that sparked WWI was the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, provoking Czar Alexander mobilizing the Russian Steamroller (as its massive army was then known), which in turn provoked Kaiser Wilhelm to activate

This next article refers to a report by then Republican Larry Craig.  While I disagree with Craig’s bathroom shenanigans, I would hope that the work he did with his pants on remains viable.

The Times’ comparison of treatment of the KLA with that of the African National Congress (ANC)—a group with its own history of terror attacks on political opponents, including members of the ethnic group it claims to represent—is a telling one. In fact, it points to the seemingly consistent Clinton policy of cultivating relationships with groups known for terrorist violence—not only the ANC, but the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA)—in what may be a strategy of attempting to wean away a group from its penchant for violence by adopting its cause as an element of U.S. policy.

By the time the NATO airstrikes began, the Clinton Administration’s partnership with the KLA was unambiguous:

“With ethnic Albanian Kosovars poised to sign a peace accord later Thursday, the United States is moving quickly to help transform the Kosovo Liberation Army from a rag-tag band of guerrilla fighters into a political force. . . . Washington clearly sees it as a main hope for the troubled province’s future. ‘We want to develop a good relationship with them as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,’ deputy State Department spokesman James Foley said. ‘We want to develop closer and better ties with this organization.’

-- March 31, 1999
The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties?
From ‘Terrorists’ to ‘Partners’

Setting the Way-back machine it was the Serbs who were at the forefront in fighting the Turks from entering Europe proper.  They suffered numerous defeats and occupations by the Turks, ultimately winning victories and their independence from them, but it seems an unholy alliance of the Clinton Administration with Islamic terrorists have rolled back those victories in the historic battlefield province of Kosovo.

Why the Bush administration has continued with the US troop involvement in that region and certainly forcing separation of a Christian province to benefit Islams’ further encroachment into Europe defies logic.

Like so many times in the past, the Serbs fight against Islam seems to be alone and against the efforts of the rest of the Christian world.

How the Russians will react to these developments remains to be seen.

SOME ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Serbia owed justice in Kosovo

Kosovo split illegal: Putin

Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority insists on independence

The rapid population growth of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, and the simultaneous fall of the Serbian and Montenegrin population in the province, was accompanied by a proportional level of indoctrination concerning ideology, culture and economy. The ethnic Albanians were being linked to all that came from Albania in a blatant and undeniable way. Furthermore, nobody — political leaders, intelligentsia and even simple ethnic Albanians — made any effort to hide it. Even textbooks were obtained from Tirana, and on the first page of the book of ABC’s for first-graders there was a picture of the Albanian leader Enver Hodxa with the motto “Our motherland is Albania”. This is what Enver Hodxa used to launch a fierce attack against Yugoslavia in his speech at the Albanian Worker’s Party congress in 1981 — the fact that the Albanians are living “divided” in three former Yugoslav federal entities: Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. Hodxa openly asked a change of the status of Kosovo and Metohija and anticipated the existence of a plan for creating a new geopolitical situation in this part of the Balkans.

The plan essentially had three phases: in the first one Kosovo and Metohija were to be given the status of republic within the framework of the Yugoslav federation; the second phase was to be used to integrate all territories inhabited by ethnic Albanians in Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia in a compact and ethnically defined federal unit within Yugoslavia; it was to leave the Yugoslav federation either with a referendum on independence or with the use of violence, armed rebellion and secession; the third phase was to cover the unification of the secessionist republic and Albania, the mother-country. Obviously, in order to secure the approval of the international community, the broad and coordinated efforts were to be used to influence the international public opinion and political factors and secure their consent and legitimacy for the “democratic decisions and resolutions of the Albanian majority in occupied territories”. In view of this plan mass demonstrations were set up by ethnic Albanian secessionists and — in spite of the efficient government measures to suppress political and nationalistic passions — they had a strong echo among the Albanians in Albania and those living abroad.

Shuster on her way to join the ranks of Imus, Doug Tracht (The Greaseman) and Jimmy da Greek, but now those rascally rappers are yanking our psychologically-conditioned chains to confront the N-Bomb, front and center in an entertainment venue.

Frankly, I think it’s a desperate cry for money attention.

Mona Charen writes about the personal qualities of John McCain which have infuriated those who have come to know him. 

My disagreement with him runs deeper.  As suitability as a candidate and even more to the point, as to the simple truth that he is no Conservative at all, but a screaming Leftist. 

For someone entrusted to handle the next 7 Days in May or similar missile crisis with Red China, North Korea, Iran, Chavez or a revived Soviet Union, personal judgment, restraint and character are vital.  How he comports himself with other heads of state will determine whether missiles fly or not.

I posted a squib on National Review Online about a robo call I received from John McCain (Virginia’s primary is Tuesday). The call stressed that he would, if elected, be a down-the-line limited-government conservative who would never raise taxes, would defend life, would enforce immigration laws, and would win the war on terror. The candidate is trying, I said, to meet conservatives “more than halfway.”

The response of readers was, shall we say, emphatic. One lady wrote that she would never vote for him as “he is the most disloyal, ill-tempered man and he brings out the worse [sic] in all of us.” Several readers made the point that after decades of suffering abuse at McCain’s hands, conservatives are not going to fall into line for him now no matter what blandishments he offers.

I know how they feel. The problem with John McCain is not just that he strays. George Bush has strayed from conservatism too. So has Fred Thompson, and certainly, Mitt Romney has as well. But Senator McCain has a knack for saying things in just the tones and accents that liberals prefer.

In 2000, he condemned the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” In 2004, when Sen. John Kerry was getting his comeuppance from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, vets whom he had known during the war and who couldn’t remain silent as the Democratic nominee distorted his war record, John McCain weighed in by calling them “dishonorable and dishonest.” When the Bush Administration was being vilified as a nest of Torquemadas for using waterboarding on three occasions, McCain came forward to condemn waterboarding as torture.

Senator McCain was a Vietnam hero. Conservatives, in particular, revere him for this. Indeed, his return from the political grave can probably be traced to the moment (October 22) when he joshingly referred to having missed the Woodstock music festival in 1969 because “I was tied up at the time.” In that instant he came to personify (for many) the conservative side of the great 1960s chasm that (Obama’s irenic rhetoric notwithstanding) continues to divide our society. Not only was he not smoking pot and lolling in the mud with his girlfriend, you could almost hear Republicans telling themselves that he was standing up to torture at the hands of America’s enemies.

And yet, a better man would not stoop to suggesting that military service is the only way to show love of country and sneer that — unlike Mitt Romney — he served for “patriotism not profit.” Profit is a four letter word in the McCain vocabulary, whether applied to “Big Pharma” or other businesses.

McCain reaches too hard and too transparently to turn everything into a contest about military service. When Romney observed that Bob Dole wouldn’t necessarily be the one he’d want an endorsement from, McCain pronounced himself “very sad and disappointed to see that kind of comment about a person who was an American war hero” and demanded that Romney apologize.

There is a strutting self-righteousness about McCain that goes hand-in-hand with a nitroglycerin temper. He flatters himself that his colleagues in the Senate dislike him because he stands up for principle, while they sell their souls for pork. Not exactly. He is disliked because on many, many occasions he has been disrespectful, belligerent, and vulgar to those who differ with him.

Bradley Smith, former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission and the leading legal scholar on campaign-finance issues, experienced the McCain treatment firsthand. Because Smith opposed limits on political speech, he was denounced as “corrupt” by the senator (as was Commissioner Ellen Weintraub). Smith, who lives modestly, jokes that his wife has complained about the absence of jewels and furs. Though he served on the commission for five years and made several attempts to meet with McCain to discuss the issues, Smith was rebuffed.

The two did accidentally meet outside a hearing room in 2004 when they were both scheduled to testify before the Senate rules committee. At first, McCain grasped Smith’s outstretched hand (Smith was in a wheelchair recovering from surgery), but when he recognized his campaign finance opponent he snatched his hand back, snarling “I’m not going to shake your hand. You’re a bully. You have no regard for the Constitution. You’re corrupt.”

Smith, a soft-spoken scholar, ardent patriot, and lifelong conservative Republican, cannot pull the lever for McCain. He is far from alone, and that is the Republican Party’s heartbreak in 2008.

Now that Rudi, Fred and Mitt have struck their tents and headed home, the field is left to RINO Huck and RINO McCain.  A sputtering Ron Pauls’ campaign trails far behind on one engine.  The opposition, if it can be called that, is just more of the same on roids—HillaBama. 

This is the classic case of Heads I Win—Tails You Lose stacked against those who care for Conservative public policy, an Originalist Supreme Court and particularly for a secured frontier with Mexico and no Amnesty for Illegal Aliens.

McCain, for his part, is playing the softshoe on matters of immigration since he needs to woo an incensed and alienated Republican core constituency.

Hint: don’t expect too much wooing.

As I watched McCain and Gov. Romney go at it during the debate at the Reagan Library, I was struck by the huge gap that separates McCain — whose contempt for his fellow humans is patently obvious — and my dad, Ronald Reagan, who had nothing but the deepest affection and respect for the American people.

The feeling is mutual between McCain and me. I don’t like the way he treats people. You get the impression that he thinks everybody is beneath him. He seems to be saying, “I was a war hero, and you had damn well better treat me as your superior.”

He has contempt for conservatives who he thinks can be duped into thinking he’s one of them, despite such blatantly anti-conservative actions as his support for amnesty for illegal immigrants, his opposition to the Bush tax cuts which got the economy rolling again, and his campaign finance bill which skewed the political process and attacked free speech.

I am appalled by his contempt for the intelligence of his listeners when he flat-out lies and expects them to believe what he says even when the truth is staring them in the face.

One of the parties most jubilant over this recent turn of events is Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

“Eying the results so far in the U.S. presidential primary race, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said he is hopeful that the next administration in Washington will usher in reforms that would legalize the status of Mexican immigrants.

“It seems to me that the most radical and anti-immigrant candidates have been left behind and have been put in their place by their own electorate,” Calderon told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, the day after the Super Tuesday primaries.

“My hope is that whoever the next president is, and whoever is in the new Congress, will have a broader and more comprehensive view” of the immigration problem.

Calderon said he took heart from the Super Tuesday results, but did not mention specific candidates, the Times reported.

Calderon is about to embark on a 5-day U.S. trip that will end in California, where he is scheduled to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and migrant groups.

Calderon said one goal of his U.S. trip would be to generate support for immigration reform that would permit millions of Mexican to work in the U.S.

He also told the Times that Americans would “sooner or later” come to understand that the health of the American economy is linked to integration with Mexico and “greater freedom in labor markets.” “

There are those who are hopeful, for some inexplicable reason that the septagenerian will suddenly toe the Conservative line and stay that course during any administration he is elected to.

They remain willingly and blissfully ignorant of that fact that, if elected, there will be no leverage on McCain to moderate his style of sticking it to the Right, since his nomination and ensuing election will have been propelled in large part by crossover Democrats, Independents and other Liberals, most of whom applaud or do not care overmuch that a McCain administration will usher in Amnesty for Illegals, Gun Control, Global Warming regulations and surcharges and a raft of other Leftist-inspired Diktats.

Liberals of all flavors cheer McCain on, as they see him as a Republican they can get behind (e.g. a Liberal himself ) .

But McCain has already signaled what he is going to do with Amnesty for Illegal Aliens by taking on the rabidly pro-Mexican Juan Hernandez as Hispanic outreach advisor.

McCain will offer, at best, lip service to Americans in general and Conservative Americans in particular not to fall back into his old ways.  Indeed, he has just offered up a contemptuous ‘calm down’ to the speakers of Talk Radio.

What sort of incentives are there for Conservatives to rally behind McCain?  The most oft-cited reason is that he will be less bad than either Clinton or Obama.

A weak argument at best, considering the following:

Anger now has now become a familiar conservative motif, as well. McCain has provoked a profound animus from conservatives ranging from Rush Limbaugh and Thomas Sowell on down to the posters at numerous conservative blogs, emailers to this site, and callers to talk radio. McCain’s Legislative sins prominently include McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, and McCain-Kennedy. All three feel to principled conservatives like monstrous betrayals—liberalism that can only make things worse.

Then there is the obvious relish with which McCain sometimes sticks it to the disaffected voters to his right, as with his comment on a conference call to bloggers likening ANWR and the Grand Canyon as places we shouldn’t drill for oil. The conservative base of the GOP has been dissed by the Senator on multiple occasions like this, in ways big and small.

One thing is certain, McCain is a Liberal, in the current understanding of the word.  To vote for home is to guarantee a wide-open southern border, amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, gun control, zero tax reform, greater intrusion on civil liberties and Souter-like Supreme Court judges. 

It’s one thing for the Democrats to fight for these things.  That is, after all, what Democrats to.

It’s another thing to do it to ourselves.

Ann Coulter at CPAC on McCain