The Great Trumpf Take Down Falls Flat On Its Face

Louisiana's Duck Dynasty Klan is split on who to support for president. None are following North Carolina Republican Richard Burr's example and pledging fealty to Bernie Sanders, but Phil Robertson, patriarch of the reality TV show went for Cruz while Phil's son, Willie, a former Bobby Jindal backer, is now pumping for fellow TV reality star, Herr Trumpf. "Mr. Trump is a real leader. He represents success and strength, two attributes our country needs. Like me, he is a successful businessman and family man and I endorse his candidacy for President of the United States," said Willie. Willie Nelson, of course, supports Bernie Sanders.

Greg Sargent detects some cynicism among the GOP elites: they're "telling themselves that Trump doesn't mean any of it."

One Republican-aligned business figure says GOP elites prefer Trump to Cruz because Trump “has no obvious core values.” One Republican donor says: “in the middle of the campaign a lot of people say things that they think are going to help them get elected.” Another donor says that while he finds Trump’s demagoguery to be wretched, that’s overshadowed by the fact that Trump is the only contender with the “entrepreneurial spirit” to solve our country’s “big problems.” Bob Dole says that Trump is preferable to Cruz because in reality, Trump is “kind of a deal-maker.” Translation: Trump won’t actually go through with all that crazy stuff he’s talking about.

As I noted the other day, the emerging argument is that Trump’s various pronouncements (even if these establishment types personally loathe Trump’s expressed values) merely reflect an entrepreneurial and adventurous spirit-- they are the inevitable byproduct of thinking big, of a refusal to be constrained by convention. Come to think of it, that’s a good thing, isn’t it!

Yes, they think-- like the German industrialists thought in the early 1930s in regard to their version of Trumpf-- that they'll be able to handle President Trumpf. So just as the Republican Big Money Establishment convinces itself that Trumpf is just fine and is practically one of the boys, as long as he can stop Cruz who they-- and everyone in DC--now hate more... a last ditch effort to stop Trumpf breaks out from the Republican Not-Big-Money Establishment.

The GOP civil war always looks strange but now it looks like the Hate Talk Radio hosts have all turned on Herr Trumpf and are urging their listeners to get on the Cruz train. Limbaugh, Beck, Deece and Levin currently treat Trumpf like the enemy and Levin seems to be implying Trumpf has a private investigator on his tail and is trying to silence him or blackmail him or some kind of crazy right-wing nonsense.

And, as you know, while the Hate-Talkers rally for Cruz, the rightist intellectual base all got together and wrote up little snippets for National Review about why Herr Trumpf is the conservatives' anti-Christ. Now, Erick Erickson, one of the organizers of the anti-Trumpf effort says he would still vote for Trumpf over Hillary (although he hasn't said if he will join Richard Burr and Willie Nelson in voting for Bernie Sanders). Erickson is basing his anti-Trumpism on the Bible: "I take my conservatism seriously, and I also take Saint Paul seriously. In setting out the qualifications for overseers, or bishops, Saint Paul admonished Timothy, 'If anyone aspires to the office of overseer . . . he must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil' (1 Timothy 3:1,6)... Like the angels in heaven who rejoice for every new believer, we should rejoice for Donald Trump’s conversion to conservatism. But we should not put a new conservative in charge of conservatism or the country, so that he does not become puffed up with conceit and fall into condemnation. Republicans have wandered in the wilderness already by letting leaders define conservatism in their own image. Donald Trump needs more time and more testing of his new conservative convictions."

Public intellectual Glenn Beck kicked off the National Review anti-Trump onslaught. "Sure," he wrote, "Trump’s potential primary victory would provide Hillary Clinton with the easiest imaginable path to the White House. But it’s far worse than that. If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, there will once again be no opposition to an ever-expanding government. This is a crisis for conservatism." His case:

While conservatives fought against the stimulus, Donald Trump said it was “what we need,” praising Obama’s schemes of “building infrastructure, building great projects, putting people to work in that sense.”

While conservatives fought against the auto bailouts, Donald Trump claimed “the government should stand behind [the auto companies] 100 percent” because “they make wonderful products.”

While conservatives fought against the bank bailouts, Donald Trump called them “something that has to get done.” Let his reasoning sink in for a second: “[The government] can take over companies, and, frankly, take big chunks of companies.”

When conservatives desperately needed allies in the fight against big government, Donald Trump didn’t stand on the sidelines. He consistently advocated that your money be spent, that your government grow, and that your Constitution be ignored.

Cato's David Boaz's case is that Trumpf is not just crazy but that he lets everyone see that he's crazy-- bad enough, but... "From a libertarian point of view-- and I think serious conservatives and liberals would share this view-- Trump’s greatest offenses against American tradition and our founding principles are his nativism and his promise of one-man rule." So... exactly what the right-wing masses want.

Cruz organizer Brent Bozell III uses the Richard Viguerie test: does he walk like us? Trumpf, he says, doesn't. "Trump might be the greatest charlatan of them all."

Mona Charen finds Trumpf too much the boor, a creep and a louse to be president and has the backup:

• "My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body"
• "If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her."
• he tried to bully an elderly woman, Vera Coking, out of her house in Atlantic City because it stood on a spot he wanted to use as a garage.

And he's not a conservative, just an ego-maniac "simply playing one in the primaries."

Who, except a pitifully insecure person, needs constantly to insult and belittle others including, or perhaps especially, women? Where is the center of gravity in a man who in May denounces those who “needlessly provoke” Muslims and in December proposes that we (“temporarily”) close our borders to all non-resident Muslims? If you don’t like a Trump position, you need only wait a few months, or sometimes days. In September, he advised that we “let Russia fight ISIS.” In November, after the Paris massacre, he discovered that “we’re going to have to knock them out and knock them out hard.” A pinball is more predictable.

Is Trump a liberal? Who knows? He played one for decades-- donating to liberal causes and politicians (including Al Sharpton) and inviting Hillary Clinton to his (third) wedding. Maybe it was all a game, but voters who care about conservative ideas and principles must ask whether his recent impersonation of a conservative is just another role he’s playing. When a con man swindles you, you can sue—as many embittered former Trump associates who thought themselves ill used have done. When you elect a con man, there’s no recourse.

Ben Domenech of The Federalist asserts that "the case for constitutional limited government is the case against Donald Trump," not a bad argument, although none of the Trumpf backers would care about it. "Trump assures voters that he will use authoritarian power for good, to help those who feel-- with good reason-- ignored by both parties. But the American experiment in self-government was the work of a generation that risked all to defeat a tyrannical monarch and establish a government of laws, not men. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is precisely what the Constitution offers, and what is most threatened by 'great men' impatient to impose their will on the nation."

Mark Helprin also makes the Mussolini/caudillo argument and likens him to "a tapeworm [that has] invaded the schismatically weakened body of the Republican party" and that "he is astoundingly ignorant of everything that to govern a powerful, complex, influential, and exceptional nation such as ours he would have to know."

He doesn’t know the Constitution, history, law, political philosophy, nuclear strategy, diplomacy, defense, economics beyond real estate, or even, despite his low-level-mafioso comportment, how ordinary people live. But trumping all this is a greater flaw presented as his chief strength. Governing a great nation in parlous times is far more than making “deals.” Compared with the weight of the office he seeks, his deals are microscopic in scale, and as he faced far deeper complexities he would lead the country into continual Russian roulette. If despite his poor judgment he could engage talented advisers, as they presented him with contending and fateful options the buck would stop with a man who simply grasps anything that floats by.

Should I keep going? How about William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, which probably has even fewer readers than National Reviews? He's posing questions to conservatives: "Hasn’t Donald Trump been a votary merely of wealth rather than of freedom? Hasn’t he been animated by the art of the deal rather than by the art of self-government? ... Hasn’t Donald Trump always been a man inclined to go along-- indeed, impatient to get along-- with history? ... Isn’t Donald Trump the very epitome of vulgarity? In sum: Isn’t Trumpism a two-bit Caesarism of a kind that American conservatives have always disdained? Isn’t the task of conservatives today to stand athwart Trumpism, yelling Stop?"

Dana Loesch writes that she knows Herr Trumpf. "He’s been a frequent guest on my radio and television programs, and I introduced him at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015. He has always been amiable and complimentary. I genuinely like him. But not as my presidential pick." She doesn't believe his conversion (to conservatism) story. Does anyone?

David McIntosh, head of Club for Growth, which ran some ineffective ads against Trumpf to try to stop him a few months ago, says Trump isn't a conservative and that he's "no better than what we already have. He’ll say anything to get a vote but give us more of the same if he gets into office." Trumpf's platform, he says are "the ramblings of a liberal wannabe strongman who will use and abuse the power of the federal government to impose his ideas on the country."

If you've been listening to Michael Medved's Hate Talk Radio show you already know he loathes everything about Trumpf and sees him as an embarrassment to the party: "Worst of all, Trump’s brawling, blustery, mean-spirited public persona serves to associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have for decades attached to their opponents on the right. According to conventional caricature, conservatives are selfish, greedy, materialistic, bullying, misogynistic, angry, and intolerant. They are, we’re told, privileged and pampered elitists who revel in the advantages of inherited wealth while displaying only cruel contempt for the less fortunate and the less powerful. The Left tried to smear Ronald Reagan in such terms but failed miserably because he displayed none of the stereotypical traits. In contrast, Trump is the living, breathing, bellowing personification of all the nasty characteristics Democrats routinely ascribe to Republicans... If Trump becomes the nominee, the GOP is sure to lose the 2016 election. But the problem is much larger: Will the Republican party and the conservative movement survive?"

Edwin Meese, Reagan's Attorney General, compares Trumpf to Reagan and finds him negative, divisive and destructive. Another GOP Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, insists that a "Trump presidency would imperil our national security." (I bet he'd vote for him in the general anyway.)

Katie Pavlich from Townhall seems most worked up that "Trump has made a living out of preying on and bullying society’s most vulnerable, with the help of government. He isn’t an outsider, but rather an unelected politician of the worst kind. He admits that he’s bought off elected officials in order get his way and to openly abuse the system."

Can't leave out John Podhoretz, right? He makes an interesting and plausible case that Herr "is the apotheosis of a tendency that began to manifest itself in American culture in the 1980s, most notably in the persons of the comic Andrew Dice Clay and the shock jock Howard Stern: the American id. Guys like the Dice Man and Stern had been told and taught and trained by respectable middlebrow culture to believe that their tastes and desires were piggish and thuggish and gross, and they said: So be it! Clay filled stadiums across the country with young men who chanted dirty nursery rhymes along with him. Stern invited young actresses onto his show to discuss their breasts. The screams of outrage that greeted them were part of the act... The cultural signposts Trump brandished in the years preceding his presidential bid are all manifestations of the American id-- his steak business, his casino business, his green-marble-and-chrome architecture, his love life minutely detailed in the columns of Cindy Adams, his involvement with Vince McMahon’s wrestling empire, and his reality-TV persona as the immensely rich guy who treats people like garbage but has no fancy airs. This id found its truest voice in his repellent assertion that the first black president needed to prove to Trump’s satisfaction that he was actually an American. In any integrated personality, the id is supposed to be balanced by an ego and a superego—by a sense of self that gravitates toward behaving in a mature and responsible way when it comes to serious matters, and, failing that, has a sense of shame about transgressing norms and common decencies. Trump is an unbalanced force. He is the politicized American id. Should his election results match his polls, he would be, unquestionably, the worst thing to happen to the American common culture in my lifetime."

There's more, of course-- read it all here-- but how can anyone top the Trumpf/Andrew Dice Clay comparison? By the way, you can contribute to the antidote to all this Trumpism here.

Miss McConnell In Trouble Back Home

This week, Kentucky grassroots SuperPAC, Progress Kentucky launched a recruitment drive to draft challengers for Miss McConnell. "McConnell, the most unpopular Senator in the country," said Progress Kentucky Executive Director Shawn Reilly, "must be challenged by someone that can bring about a brighter future for our state and someone who prioritizes good government and the needs of our state of their own ambitions. It’s unacceptable that someone as unpopular as McConnell would be unopposed for a sixth term.” Polls show that McConnell is probably vulnerable on two levels-- from a Tea Party type Republican in the primary and in November from a mainstream Democrat. Progress Kentucky worries that "only a handful of candidates have so far expressed interest in running against a five-term incumbent with $7 million in his campaign war chest and a history of nasty, scorched-earth campaigning.

Progress Kentucky today is launching a campaign designed to provide potential challengers with an early indication of how much support they might have among Kentuckians. The organization has launched over twenty petitions to “draft” possible challengers ranging from liberals like Ashley Judd to Tea Party conservatives like Phil Moffett, and all points in between.

Each petition asks signers to endorse the statement “We strongly urge ________________ to challenge Mitch McConnell for Kentucky's US Senate seat in 2014.”

Progress Kentucky will launch new petitions to gauge support as candidates float trial balloons or as intriguing potential candidates surface in the media. The initial batch of draft petitions include:

• Ashley Judd, the popular actress and University of Kentucky basketball fan who would run as a Democrat
• John Yarmuth, Democratic representative of the 3rd Congressional district in Louisville
• Phil Moffett, businessman and self-proclaimed Tea Party candidate who ran for Governor in 2011
• Thomas Massie, the Tea Party representative of Kentucky's 4th Congressional district in northern Kentucky.
• Larry Hausman, one of the founders of the Louisville Tea Party and a Congressional candidate in 2010.
• Dea Riley, an Independent who ran for Lieutenant Governor with the late Gatewood Galbraith in 2011.

And while Progress Kentucky is a mainstream group, there are also fringe organizations taking aim at Miss McConnell as well, including Brent Bozell's neo-fascist ForAmerica. He's already launched an anti-Miss McConnell ad, "Whose Side Are You On?" They spent around $10,000 and the ad (above) will run on Facebook, the Daily Caller and Drudge. It asks rightists to sign a petition letting Republican lawmakers know they will be held accountable if they vote for legislation to further increase taxes.

“As negotiations over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ were intensifying, conservatives called on McConnell and congressional Republicans to hold the line on tax rates and demand cuts to spending, as they had promised,” the petition states. “But when the deadline was looming, McConnell called Vice President Joe Biden and signed off on a deal with the White House that included tax increases and virtually no spending cuts.”

Bozell himself is a deranged extremist, energized by hatred and greed who insists that the GOP drive the economy over the cliff. He thrives on the idea of pain for ordinary American families. “When Republicans agree to do what they did agree to do," hissed Bozell, "then they are just as much tax-and-spend Democrats as Democrats are. Do I have any confidence that Republicans will stand by [McConnell’s] statements a couple of days ago that the talk about tax increases are over? None. It is a fluid situation. There are some serious battles coming up. I’m not writing off anything. If Republicans find their mojo and rediscovered their soul and try to do the right thing, we’ll support them, but they just can’t count on us anymore.”

Wingnuts like Bozell blame McConnell for working out a compromise with Biden and are trying to pressure him as a mortally-wounded Boehner slips into the background and Miss becomes the key negotiator for the next part of the so-called "Fiscal Cliff" charade.

No One Wants A Bad Deal-- Including The Satanic Forces

Satan is not without allies-- Brent & Sean

Progressive activists have adopted a new mantra: "no deal is better than a bad deal" and are working to head off corporate Democrats in Congress who are willing to balance the budget on the backs of working families. This week, for example, Howard Dean sent a fundraising letter to DFA members asking for support in that group's work keeping congressional support for an Obama-Boehner Grand Sellout to a minimum.

Republicans lost big in the election, but John Boehner is trying to force his right-wing agenda on the American people anyway. Republicans in Congress are taking advantage of the fiscal showdown and trying to jam through massive cuts to Medicare that would be devastating to America's seniors.

We need to stop them. DFA members in all 50 states need to stand up right now and tell their Senators to take Medicare off the table before Republicans force a bad deal on the American people. But we need to raise at least $50,000 by the end of the day to make that campaign successful.

Simply put, the Republican plan to cut Medicare by raising the eligibility age is a foolish idea. Here's why:

• Raising the retirement age doesn't save the federal government all that much money
• Private insurers can charge seniors up to three times as much money as younger, healthier patients-- meaning many of our seniors can't afford private coverage in the years leading up to Medicare eligibility
• Medicare is our country's only universal healthcare program and it has the lowest administration costs of any healthcare plan in the country

No deal is better than a bad deal for America's seniors. Democrats need to stand strong against right-wing attacks on Medicare.

But progressives aren't the only ones mustering their forces to hold Congress accountable. Most people see Brent Bozell as... well, a bozo. But in the conservative movement he cuts a respectable figure-- and he's threatening Establishment Republicans that he'll fuck up their fundraising if they raise taxes on the millionaires and billionaires who help finance his ForAmerica, Inc scam operation. Last week he sent threatening letters to Boehner, Cantor, Cornyn and Miss McConnell and one to RNC Chair Reince Priebus vowing focus all his energy on persuading conservatives to cut the RNC off financially if Boehner and McConnell agree to raise taxes on the richest 2% of Americans.

“Reince, it pains me to say this, but if the Republican Party breaks its word to the American people and goes along with President Obama with tax increases, it will have betrayed conservatives for the final time,” Bozell wrote.

“I will make it my mission to ensure that every conservative donor to the Republican Party that I have worked with for the last three decades-- and there are many and they have given tens of millions to Republican causes-- gives not one penny more to the Republican Party or any member of Congress that votes for tax increases,” he warned.

...Bozell is not the only conservative to warn that signing onto a deal hiking taxes would prompt a strong backlash.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Tea Party caucus, warned that conservatives could back challengers to sitting lawmakers who vote for tax increases.

“If there is a bad deal, I just think you’re going to see conservatives around the country coalesce around better candidates, better-trained candidates, and to recognize the Republican Party needs to reflect more conservative principles,” he said.

DeMint said a lot of conservative donors have already stopped giving to the official Republican Party committees and sent their dollars instead to outside groups. He said that trend is a major reason why the Senate Conservatives Fund, which he founded, has raised millions of dollars.

On Tuesday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, urged colleagues to extend the Bush-era tax rates only for families earning below $250,000 to avoid a tax increase on middle-class families at year’s end. He said Republicans could resume the fight against higher taxes on wealthier families next year.

DeMint, however, said decoupling tax rates for families earning above $250,000 per year and those below that threshold would be a mistake.

“I don’t think any decoupling of the rates is a concession we should make. I think that’s capitulation. It doesn’t help the country. For the Republicans to agree to that is bad policy and I think it’s bad politics,” he said.

In his letter to Priebus, Bozell warned of dire political consequences if GOP leaders fail to stand their ground against Democrats.

  “If the GOP again abandons its pledge of fiscal responsibility, including the promise not to raise taxes on ANYONE, again conservatives will walk,” he wrote.

“Pure and simple, in the ongoing debate over the so-called ‘fiscal cliff,’ the Republican Party is giving new definition to the word ‘surrender.’ The GOP is signaling a desire to abandon its solemn commitment to advance fiscal restraint,” he added.

Brian Darling, senior fellow for government studies at the Heritage Foundation, predicted a conservative backlash against any deal leaders strike to raise taxes.

“You’re going to have a lot of pressure in the Republican caucus against any measure that hikes taxes, that closes loopholes to gain more revenue,” he said. “Some would be outraged if a deal was cut where Republicans affirmatively voted to raise taxes. I think the Tea Party would be outraged.”

Bozell is another right-wing extremist screaming for a purer right-wing party than the GOP. "It is time for conservatives to start looking for a new home. There's precious little left for us here."

Should Americans assume that Boehner and House Republican leaders have been misleading the country for more than two years? Bozell wondered:

"It would be impossible to count the times and ways Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy and so many others have told America that tax hikes would kill jobs and cripple the economy. Lo and behold, that's just what they've proposed, $800 billion of them," Bozell said. "They aren't taxes, no siree. They are 'revenue,' and 'loopholes' that are closed (which also begs the question: if loopholes, why were they open?)."

Why shouldn't Obama demand $1.6 trillion in tax hikes on wealthy Americans, Bozell asked: "The Republican Party has now surrendered its principles, and is in full retreat, the Democrats taste blood, and they're going for it all. I would too."

Bozell said it's no coincidence that just before releasing his proposal, Boehner orchestrated a purge of conservatives from key positions of power in the Republican Conference.

My own two cents: despite Boehner's and Cantor's frantic attempts to rally their caucus, there are enough Republican congressmen too scared to buck the millionaires and billionaires and their political henchmen like DeMint and Bozell. So Boehner is going to need lots of Democratic votes to get the Grand Bargain through the House. The Progressive Caucus looks pretty well united right now in not giving in, not even if Obama stands on his head or threatens them or tries to bribe them. The Blue Dogs, of course, will overwhelmingly stick with the GOP. But the GOP has decimated their ranks over the last 4 years and the Blue Dogs are all bark now and no bite, so Boehner needs the conservative, business-oriented New Dems. Will the New Dems throw granny under the bus? My guess it that almost all of them will. Here's a list of New Dems (although not an updated one with all the new Members). Are any of them your congressmember? These are the ones who will make the difference in throwing seniors to the dogs:

• Terri Sewell (AL-07)
• Lois Capps (CA-23)
• Adam Schiff (CA-29)
• Karen Bass (CA-33)
• Laura Richardson (CA-37)
• Loretta Sanchez (CA-47)
• Susan Davis (CA-53)
• Jared Polis (CO-2)
• Ed Perlmutter (CO-7)
• Joe Courtney (CT-2)
• Jim Himes (CT-04)
• Chris Murphy (CT-5)
• John Carney, Jr. (DE-At Large)
• John Barrow (GA-12)
• David Scott (GA-13)
• Colleen Hanabusa (HI-01)
• André Carson (IN-7)
• Cedric Richmond (LA-2)
• Gary Peters (MI-9)
• Russ Carnahan (MO-3)
• Shelley Berkley (NV-1)
• Rush Holt (NJ-12)
• Martin Heinrich (NM-1)
• Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4)
• Gregory Meeks (NY-6)
• Joseph Crowley (NY-7), ex-Chair
• Eliot Engel (NY-17)
• Bill Owens (NY-23)
• Kathy Hochul (NY-26)
• Brian Higgins (NY-27)
• Mike McIntyre (NC-7)
• Kurt Schrader (OR-5)
• Jason Altmire (PA-4)
• Allyson Schwartz (PA-13), Vice-Chair
• Pedro Pierluisi (PR-At Large)
• Jim Cooper (TN-05)
• Charlie Gonzalez (TX-20)
• Jim Moran (VA-8)
• Gerry Connolly (VA-11)
• Rick Larsen (WA-2)
• Adam Smith (WA-9), Vice-Chair
• Ron Kind (WI-3), Chairman

Meanwhile, the Republican Party has devolved into one gigantic scam, which makes its officials even more difficult to deal with than if they were just ideologues.

UPDATE: GOP Crackpot Brigade Sends House Republicans A Threatening Letter

140 far right extremists, many very severely mentally unbalanced, like Erick Erickson, David Bossie, Foster Friess, Al Cardenas, Keith Mason (the Personhood psychopath) and Clarence Thomas' fascist wife Virginia, sent a threatening note to every Republican in the House and Senate warning them not to deal with Democrats... or else.

“If such deals are made, conservative organizations and conservative and liberty-loving voters would see that the current leadership is not an acceptable alternative to the left,” the letter says. “Let us also remind you that a great many potent conservative organizations and millions of conservative and liberty-loving voters do not believe in the divine right of incumbents to be re-nominated. Conservatives know how to recruit and support candidates.”

“Suppose just enough Republicans cross the aisle to provide Democrats a majority in vitally important legislative battles now upon us,” it continues. “They will find themselves, come election time, the targets of both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, which isn't likely to be healthy for their political careers. Suppose, on the other hand, that the congressional Republican leadership negotiates a "deal," a "compromise," with Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. The historic record of such deals shows that the Democrats usually clean the Republicans' clocks.

WHAT DEAL WILL THE FAR RIGHT MAKE WITH McCAIN TO SOLIDIFY THEIR SUPPORT?

Right-wing extremist Brent Bozell has a very public challenge for McBush

As Chairman of the Student Activities Board at my college, I got to book concerts and also a speakers series. One of the most memorable speakers I ever hired was Julian Bond, the young founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a freshly elected member of the Georgia House of Representatives (which refused to seat him because of his opposition to the War in Vietnam). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Georgia House had to seat him and they did. That's when I hired him to speak at Stony Brook. My faculty advisor, Ms. Couey, said I'd have to balance the program. I asked her if she expected me to engage the Grand Dragon of the KKK and she just said she knew I would find someone appropriate. I hired Strom Thurmond. There's a wonderful story here, but that isn't what I plan on writing about tonight.

More recently-- though not too recently-- I was asked to put together a panel for the CMJ Convention on Freedom of the Press. When the proprietors saw my list of panelists they sounded just like Ms. Couey. They said my 6 left-wing media critics could be balanced in one fell swoop and gave me the phone number for Brent Bozell III. He had founded a right-wing media watchdog group, the Media Research Center, which would howl whenever they perceived that conservative points of view weren't getting enough exposure. He was a foolish and uninteresting panelist and the audience and other panelists quickly tired of his one-track mind and ignored him. I haven't seen him since.

And then today, there he was with an Op-Ed in the NY Times complaining that McCain isn't conservative enough for the extremists Bozell runs with. He says they won't vote for McCain. Bozell implies that right wing media pundits-- and who knows them better than he does?-- like Fred Barnes and Mark Helprin are all wet when they insist that "McCain needn't worry that conservatives are uncomfortable with his candidacy, because 'while they love to grumble and grouse, conservatives tend to be loyal Republicans who wind up voting for their party's candidate.'" Bozell says he knows the movement better than they do and that they're wrong; the "conservatives have nowhere else to go" meme of the Republican Insider Establishment is the worst thing McCain's strategists could count on.

And I earnestly hope that McCain isn't listening to the advice he's getting from these folks. Their thinking betrays a fundamental misreading of the conservative pulse in America today.

Conservative leaders, particularly those in talk radio, cannot and will not be silent. They will not betray their principles and their audiences. Tens of millions of activists turn to them for guidance. These activists could be, and need to be, McCain's ground troops, but unless and until conservatives believe him-- and believe in him-- they will not work for his election. McCain may have the Beltway crowd in his corner, but grass-roots conservatives aren't sold.

Yet through his surrogates, McCain is attacking these leaders. This is beyond folly. It is political suicide.

For 20 years, the moderate establishment of the Republican Party has told conservatives to sit down, shut up and do as we're told. History shows that sometimes we bite the bullet. But not always. I absolutely guarantee that this year we cannot be taken for granted. This is a movement fed up with betrayals, and they've come one after the other.

The problem with taking Bozell too seriously is that in his tiny dark corner of the universe, Bush and McCain are liberals. "We watched with growing fury as he [Bush] and the GOP leadership [Frist? DeLay? Lott?] promoted one liberal initiative after another."

But he's correct that the Hatred and Bigotry wingnuts are at odds with the Greed and Selfishness fanatics. If the split deeps the Republican coalition collapses. The Hatred and Bigotry types are irreconcilable over the Greed guys getting Bush and McCain to push for cheap labor (their vision of immigration reform) over xenophobia and racism, staples of the "social conservatives."

What was once a powerful alliance between the Republican Party and grass-roots conservatives had become a political bridge to nowhere. With the GOP facing the loss of Congress in 2006, we shrugged in indifference. The movement that had "nowhere else to go" had gone.

And it has not returned

The question, of course, is, will it? Bozell ignores the fact that McCain has a nearly lock-step right-wing voting record. On crucial substantive issues only 19 of the 100 Senators are rated more reactionary than McCain. His voting record is more right-wing than conservative heroes like Sam Brownback R-KS), John Thune (R-SD), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and over half the Republicans in the Senate. If they the wingnut extremists who Bozell professes to speak for aren't going to support McCain, what about Republican senators far less conservative than him who are running for re-election? Will they boycott John Sununu (R-NH), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Gordon Smith (R-OR), and Susan Collins (R-ME)? These half dozen have been dependable Bush rubber stamps, voting against the interests of their constituents-- not as much as McCain or nots like Inhofe and Cornyn but plenty-- in order to play ball with the Bush Regime. Will right-wing extremists abandon them? I don't think so.

This is what Bozell demands of McBush if he wants to secure the votes of the loons he claims to represent:

McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam. He needs to call on the United States to rebuild its military infrastructure, so devastated by the Clinton administration. [Huh?? Most military men will tell you the infrastructure Bush inherited was the best in the history of man and that Bush wrecked it; but what's a good Republican argument without blaming everything on Bill Clinton?] He should secure our borders by a date certain. In every great struggle, the citizenry-- everyone, not just the country's military-- has been challenged to participate. McCain could make this the clarion call for volunteerism, for national service. [Slinking towards the inevitable McCain Draft? Give him time. Straight talk about that would sink his chances from 25% to 5%.]

If McCain believes in freedom, he should promise to take the yoke off the American taxpayer. He has embraced making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Good. Now he should pledge to end the estate tax and lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. In fact, he should call for an overhaul of the tax system. The flat tax or the fair tax-- either is preferable to the monstrosity that is the Internal Revenue Service. [One for Bozell's corporate contributors. Keep the donations coming, boys.]

The federal government is out of control. Conservatives don't want to hear talk about "reining in the growth of government." Those are empty words. McCain needs to call for the elimination of entire sectors of the federal leviathan. He should pledge to turn back to the states that which is their responsibility and which comes under their authority. We want to see how he will deregulate the private sector and how he will once again unleash the economic might of the United States. He should champion private retirement accounts and health savings accounts.

McCain should place the left on notice-- now-- that if elected, he will not tolerate congressional obstructionism of his nominations to the federal judiciary. [Firing squads?]

Our culture is decaying from within, and most Republicans have been shamefully AWOL on this issue. McCain could begin a national conversation about parents, not the state, taking responsibility for their children and their communities. [Hey, that's what Obama does; maybe McCain could start a national dialogue with grandparents.] He should call on the entertainment industry to stop polluting America's youth with its videos and its music and on the Internet. [I thought that was Hillary's issue; maybe McCain could ask her if he could co-sponsor her legislation.] We wait to hear him call for the United States to honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and to return God to the public square.

Yeah, let's get some straight talk here, McBush. Are you going to kick the conservative base under the bus again and again? Let's hear you scream from every roof top your agreement with all these demands. That would guarantee a dozen Senate seats and 4 or 5 dozen House seats flipping from red to blue. And they say if you don't nominate Romney, a man you personally loathe, to be your vice president, they'll hate you too.