TPaw’s dunzo, Perry’s in and z’Nightstick cometh

An old friend of mine who happens to be one of the only liberals who made it through several Facekook purgest recently posted a status update asking her GOPer friends what they thought about John Huntsman. Although I do my best to eschew politics on z’kook, I couldn’t let that one pass, so along with all her decidedly non-GOP/Conservative friends who couldn’t resist chiming in, I noted that Huntsman and Newt are despised by the base, and the only two running who I would not vote for.

So there’s that.

Fred-6 pens nifty editorial for USA Today

I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, and whenever I stay in such a place it gives me (for free) the opportunity to do something I otherwise never pay for: read a newspaper. USA Today, by circulation, is the largest newspaper in America and is as standard issue at a hotel as CNN is at an airport, sort of the news version of sound/fury/signifying nothing.

Obumble And The Press: Clueless Together | Wizbang

Um, what he said:

It’s quite clear:  Your policies have simply failed.  Worse yet, they were impotent from the start.

It is time for Americans to face the possibility that Barack Obama does not know what he is doing.  He is unqualified for the position.  He has not the intelligence, the experience, or the fertile imagination to successfully perform the demands required to be the President.

He is in way over his head.  And the country is suffering due to his inadequacies.

via Obumble And The Press: Clueless Together | Wizbang.

Oh my: Angry Obama storms out of debt-ceiling negotiations « Hot Air

A lot of the commentariat bash Allahpundit, but this is beyond-priceless, one of the better paragraphs posted at HotAir in its history. Aside from enjoying the commentary, the bolded part had my laffing:

The Democratic spin on what happened is that Cantor “rudely” interrupted The One mid-finger-wag and he got huffy and walked out. As for what he means by “going to the American people,” I don’t want to get my hopes up but we might be in store for another 45-minute lecture tomorrow morning about corporate jets. As an ironic gloss on this drama, read Chuck Todd’s take on how, in principle, Obama and Boehner aren’t all that far apart. If O publicly committed to a truly significant concession, like means-testing for Medicare or raising the eligibility age for Social Security, then maybe the GOP could be persuaded to take another look at letting the Bush tax cuts lapse for the wealthy. But since he won’t, they can’t. Said Boehner to a gaggle of reporters this afternoon, “Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o.”

via Oh my: Angry Obama storms out of debt-ceiling negotiations « Hot Air.

Pawlenty: Let’s face it, Bachmann hasn’t accomplished much while in Congress « Hot Air

It’s a fair cop. Her four and a half years in Congress are notably thin on bills passed and committees chaired and thicker than expected on earmarks. There are ways to spin that — “I went to Washington to stop runaway government, not enable it,” etc — but if/when Palin and Perry get into the race, this’ll be their chief line of attack on her too. They’ve governed states. What has Bachmann done except cast marginal dissenting votes and wave the Gadsden flag?

via Pawlenty: Let’s face it, Bachmann hasn’t accomplished much while in Congress « Hot Air.

“A fair cop” is an understatement.

I like Bachmann (I do, I do) but there’s going to be a whole lot more where this came from. Bachmann has several issues that haven’t even surfaced yet regarding certain, er, conflicts of interest, and she has zero Congressional record to run on. Obviously, in the era of Fred-6, substance is just another 10-letter word, but Fred-6 is a Donkey, and Bachmann will get no such pass, not from the GOP and certainly not from the Fred-6 Industrial Complex that has far too much vested in the illusion of enduring mythology and electoral success.

Bachmann’s first major screw up (at least for me) came with the retention of Ed Rollins after he went after Gov. Palin before she’s even declared and before, well, even being provoked. Bachmann, should Palin not run or bow out before the Minnesotan, will need every ounce of support she can muster from the Good Ship Palinista, as will any other GOP nominee – bashing her right out the gates wasn’t a good start.

Bachmann’s lack of a Congressional record is going to hurt her, and she needs to figure out how to counterpunch … sooner rather than later I’d say.

Re: This or That – By Mark Steyn – The Corner – National Review Online

The remainder fall into cutesie-pie stuff that John King lacks the personality to pull off, and the last embodied in its perfect post-modern stupidity the awfulness of these “debates”: “What have you learned during the past two hours?”

Hmm. What I learned is that John King makes Tim Pawlenty look like Lady Gaga. Other than that, I also got the distimct impression that this season’s debates seem unlikely to be effective forums even for acknowledging the profound and existential crises facing the nation, never mind addressing them

via Re: This or That – By Mark Steyn – The Corner – National Review Online.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Michele Bachmann Doesn’t Seem To Understand How Ed Rollins Is Hurting Her

Trudat:

But Bachmann has not dealt with the Ed Rollins situation.

As long as Rollins is an adviser to Bachmann’s campaign, that is a huge problem.  If Bachmann doesn’t realize it, then she doesn’t have her ear to the ground, or her eyes on the comment sections of conservative blogs.

Bachmann needs to wake up to and deal with the reality of the damage Ed Rollins is doing to her campaign.  Pretty soon it will be too late to cure.

via Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Michele Bachmann Doesn’t Seem To Understand How Ed Rollins Is Hurting Her.

Mutiny on the Squarepants – By David Kahane – The Corner – National Review Online

I love it when bad things happen to bad politicians’ campaigns:

What could possibly account for this Mutiny on the Squarepants? Maybe it was the skipper’s brave stance against the “right-wing social engineering” of Paul Ryan’s Rethuglican Medicare plan. That got him a predictable volley of grapeshot and cannonballs from your wingnut fleet, which obviously was outraged by the former Speaker’s telling truth to power, in this case a young congressman from Wisconsin, as he tried to curry favor with David Gregory.

via Mutiny on the Squarepants – By David Kahane – The Corner – National Review Online.

Horserace thingamajig: TCS still solid

The GOP field is self-destructing, and hooooowwww…

Here’s my current TCS rankings:

1. Sarah Palin (100) – All the right moves – the bus trip is outstanding, the Paul Revere hilarity smoked out more jackwagons than even I could have imagined, and silly little people are nipping at her heels.
2. Tim Pawlenty (85) – Pawlenty will never be Palin and never score 100 on the TCS, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m big on Pawlenty, and Eric’s even bigger – he sent me a long piece RE T-Paw’s policy proposals, and they’re hella-good – unfortunately, z’Eric didn’t include z’link, so he’ll have to supply it in z’comments.\
3. Herman Cain (75) – Cain’s foundering, flubbing and blundering. It’s early and his mistakes are correctable, but they’re turning into an eerie series. HotAir was blowing up the latest one today re 2nd Amendment – not good. The HA poster was Jazz Shaw, my least-likely-to-agree with as a rule, and Shaw gives Cain the benefit of the doubt, but he can’t keep fucking up like this.
4. Michelle Bachmann (70) – Bachmann’s plummeting with me. If Ed Rollins is still employed by her by the next time I do a horserace rundown, she’ll be below 50 and have lost all support from me. To catch you up if you don’t follow this shit like Taylor Swift’s Twitter account, Bachmann hired Huck’s old hit-man (and yes, Reagan’s campaign manager from 1984) and he immediately started bashing Sarah Palin, calling her unserious etc. Fuck him, and Bachmann better get her head on straight in a big damn hurry. I’m not orthodox when it comes to other criticizing Palin, but Bachmann’s in no position to be going after z’Cuda in this manner – I love the idea of punching up, but just as Chuck Berry learned the very hard way as Jerry Lee Lewis walked off-stage with his piano on fire and the audience having a collective orgasm, no one follows the killah. In this case, Bachmann ain’t the killah.
5. Mitt Romney (70) – Give the boring white guy that no one’s excited about credit – he’s not screwing up too much, and he’s not bashing Palin. This is called time-biding, which is impressive enough for me to actually remember putting him in here this time.
6. Rick Santorum (50) – I listened to him on the last hour of Rush today, and he was ok. I felt bad for him because Rush spent the entire show talking about Palin (something he never does), so Santorum was pretty much an afterthought. Santorum, fwiw, cannot win against Fred-6.
7. Newt – (0) – Nope, not even 1 point.
8. Ron Paul – (0) – Nope.
9. John Huntsman – (0) – Nope.
10. Rick Perry, Chris Christie and other guys who may or may not run depending on how bored they are – no comment on them for now.

How do I see this playing out? Speaking as an observer more than a Palinista, I say it’s her nomination to win or lose. If she opts out, all in for T-Paw at this point. The man is doing and saying the correct (and difficult) things, which I respect. I like Cain, but I see nightmares coming based on his early, post-debate appearances. Here are my odds, based solely on my hunches:

• Romney – Even
• Cuda – 5:4
• T-Paw – 3:2
• Bachmann – 10:1

They’re the only ones worth oddsing for now. If Palin throws in, that will change in a big damn hurry, making it a three-person race, with possibly a gentlman’s agreement between Palin and T-Paw to take down Mitt, putting T-Paw under Palin on the ticket. I’m bad at that kind of forecasting, though – would prefer Palin/Liz Cheney, honestly.

==

TCS – The ‘Cuda Scale, fwiw.

Common Ground: Like z’King, Fred-6 likes chilidogs

Via Instapundit, this follows a longer commentary about the difference between what the British and American press report about z’POTUS. FWIW, it’s his wife who’s waging the war on food. Let the man eat his chilidog.

Mmm … chilidogs.