Herman Cain wins Florida straw poll

Holy crap!

Businessman Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll Saturday, beating Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP presidential frontrunner who just two days earlier delivered a debate performance that was widely panned.

Cain finished with 37 percent of the vote, while Perry trailed with 15 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney followed with 14 percent while former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum drew 11 percent. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul finished with 10.5 percent, while former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman finished with 2 percent.

Congratulations to Herman Cain, and to Jon Huntsman who came in with 2%–which is 1 point higher than Michelle Bachmann, whose campaign is all but finished at this point.

All joking aside, it ‘s an impressive result for Cain, but we can’t make much of it until further polling data confirms Cain’s actual standing among the candidates.  I’m curious to see how the next few weeks pan out, but it seems as if Republican voters are sick and tired of the Romney vs. Perry bitch-fest.  Romney is a non-starter for so many grassroots conservatives, and Perry’s star seems to flame out the more they learn about him.   Nobody really knows at this point.  

My guess is that voters are still not impressed with the current batch of contenders.  No candidate is ever without flaws, but I’m getting the feeling that voters seem to think that these individual flaws are not mitigated by big enough plusses. 

Nevertheless, a big congratulations is in order for Herman Cain–excellent work in making this silly season especially more entertaining. 

Meanwhile, you know who this really helps?  Stacy McCain.  He hasn’t been on the Cain bandwagon—he’s been the coach driver.

Maxine Waters: The Tea Party can go to hell

Bitter old bag:

On Saturday in Inglewood, Calif., Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters had some harsh words for the tea party.

“I’m not afraid of anybody,” the California congresswoman told constituents in footage that appeared on ABC affiliate KABC in Los Angeles, not backing down from comments made about President Obama earlier in the week. “This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned — the tea party can go straight to hell.”

That proclamation was met with cheers from the audience, including attendees sporting purple SEIU T-shirts.

Tone down the rhetoric, indeed. 

The Democrats thrive on hate and anger, and this story is just another example of that.  And make no mistake, if it was up to progressives, Maxine Waters would be President and not Barack Obama.   She’s right up their alley.

[Hat Tip: Memeorandum]

Yes, liberalism is racial politics.

Results be damned, it’s all about electing more and more liberals to positions of power, to keep blacks more and more suppressed:

[T]he bad policies that have always failed are the big government liberalism that has defined modern black politics.

With further thought, blacks might realize […] that growing government and electing black politicians would make blacks better off — that explains why blacks have remained disproportionately “hurtin”.

Take the Congressional Black Caucus itself. The average poverty rate in Black Caucus districts is almost 50 percent higher than the national average. Yet, these black politicians have 100 percent re-election rates.

Maybe blacks will realize that they should blame Obama. Not because he is black, but because he is a liberal.

Or maybe it’s because of those racist, terrorist Tea Partiers.  Read the whole piece.

UPDATE.   Stacy McCain as usual, drives the point home:

Appealing to the credulous resentments of ignorant mobs has long been a political speciality of the Democratic Party, which habitually excites the fears and hatreds of its constituencies, even as it exploits their foolish hopes […] 

Democrats execise power through such cynical manipulation of their supporters’ dreams and nightmares. The Democrats grow rich while the people who elect them grow poor and yet always — always — the blame for their failures is externalized onto […] the Republicans.

[T]he fools who vote for Democrats certainly deserve no better than what they’ve gotten from Obama: Absolutely nothing.

 

Looking for someone to lead the way for conservatism

Signing a bill that mandates all 13-year-old girls receive a vaccination, produced by a company who has a lobbying relationship with someone in your administration, doesn’t really sound like something a conservative would do, does it?

But that’s just me.

More from Malkin here.

Santelli smacks Ezra Klein around

Swiped this from Ace’s Headlines sidebar.  Watch as Rick Santelli smacks around the smug Ezra Klein:

It’s fascinating to watch.  I love how Klein’s assertions are based on a book that “people say” was the best written on the financial crisis. 

Here you have the intellectual Klein, learning about the world from university lecture halls and think tanks, while Santelli earns a living in the real world and dares speak truth to power on CNBC.  What do you think would happen?  Reality beats ivy-league utopianism every time.

It reminded me of this:

Tax cuts do not . . . create jobs . . . When we do not ask the super rich and the corporations who make billions of dollars of profits off of the American economy [for more taxes], we will not have the funds to keep that engine running . . . to make sure that we can meet our nation’s obligations to our seniors, our children and our poor.”

That was Congresswoman Barbara Lee, of the uber-liberal, progressive caucus in the House of Representatives.  Both Lee and Klein share the same mindset–that the free exchange of capital and resources should be left to the discretion of the government, that is to say, not as free.  That’s a scary prospect, as we are seeing the real-time results of those policies throughout Europe.  Their ideology is a failed ideology of government control and power in the name of social “justice”, with dismal outcomes. 

It’s telling that networks still listen to people like Klein, and people elect politicians like Lee.

What a mess

Less than two hours ago, I returned from a truly relaxing five-day trip to Harwich Port in Cape Cod.   Trying to actually enjoy a relaxing time, I tried as hard as I could to stay away from Mets baseball, the status of the NFL lockout, and more importantly, the debt ceiling negotiations on Capitol Hill.

As I was driving back earlier today, I realized that the Mets just swept a four-game series with the Reds, the lockout is officially over and…well, yeah.

The debt ceiling deadline has been staring Washington in the face since last year.  Neither President Obama nor the Democrats in Congress bothered to address the issue, even when they had their majorities in both chambers.  So of course, the big news today is that Speaker Boehner and the Republican leaders, not to mentioned the so-called Republican “conservatives” in the pundit class, are willing to shoot the Tea Party conservatives in the back of the head, figuratively speaking of course, in the name of waiting for 2012.  Or something.

Heckuva job guys. 

An update of today’s events here.

Really, Tea Party? Donald Trump?

The latest WSJ/NBC poll of potential GOP candidates is drawing a lot of attention today, as well it should.  But only for all the wrong reasons:

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump tied for second place with Mike Huckabee, both at 17 percent, and leading the GOP pack among Tea Party supporters.

[…]

Trump takes 20 percent of the Tea Party vote, followed by Romney with 17 percent, and Huckabee with 14 percent, the poll found.

Here’s the deal on Donald Trump.  Trump is a crass opportunist, he does anything to get as much attention as possible, spending his time on dumb reality shows among other things.   Pretending to run for president of the United States is just another one of those things.  I seriously doubt he would go through with running for the office, and even if he did, I don’t believe he has any intention of winning the nomination, let alone the White House.  He just wants to try because…well, because he’s Donald Trump.  And that will screw everyone over because the GOP would lose the election, and Obama will win another four years in trying to destroy the country.

I’m not going to pretend to understand how he could possibly get 20% favorability among tea partiers in this or any other poll.  But I am scratching my head.  The tea partiers who support him really need to do some soul-searching.  Donald Trump?  Really?!

Get a grip people.

Will the House Republicans blink on spending cuts?

It’s looking more and more likely.  But it’s still early, and the choice for the GOP is clear:

Congressional Democrats are holding out against substantive spending cuts, confident that they and the liberal mainstream media have so spooked Republicans with fear of “another government shutdown” that the GOP eventually will cave and settle either for minimal cuts or promises of a political fig leaf like a vote on a balanced budget amendment. […]

Congressional Republicans have a choice to make. On the one hand, they can do what many of their leaders expect, which is to continue business as usual on Capitol Hill by agreeing to such a sham. That course will keep the country stumbling toward the fiscal disaster, economic ruin and national humiliation that inevitably result from such political irresponsibility.

But then I read stories about GOP leaders looking to cut deals with Blue Dog Democrats on bogus spending “cuts”, and I feel like pulling my hair out.

Elections have consequences for members of both parties.  If the message of the 2010 midterms wasn’t made clear to establishment Republicans (as well as Democrats), if the Tea Party didn’t give them a political smack upside the head, then I’m not sure what would.

The word for this is “astroturfing”

Democratic party operatives are planning protests, with the hopes of copying the energy and exuberance of the Tea Party movement that gained momentum during the summer of 2009, and the Obamacare town-hall debates:

Working with labor unions and liberal groups, they are using the Presidents Day congressional recess to organize a public backlash against billions of dollars in cuts to federal programs.

One labor organizer said that members have been urged to attend congressional town hall meetings to ask Republican lawmakers “pointed questions” about the cuts they supported last week.

“We are targeting various House Republicans in town hall meetings during the recess to let them know these budget cuts are beyond the pale,” said the labor source, who added that it has been difficult to mobilize supporters to public question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers because “they’ve been pretty circumspect in giving out information about the meetings.”

Justin Ruben, the executive director of MoveOn.org, a progressive advocacy group, has also encouraged members to grill lawmakers at town hall meetings.

“Whenever we hear about a town hall meeting we encourage them to go and ask pointed questions about what is happening,” he said.

This is interesting.  Is the general public really supposed to know that radical front groups financed by wealthy, foreign individuals are behind these protests?  I thought that was a myth of the right-wing propaganda machine?

And I was under the assumption that political operations funded from “outside” sources was a detriment to the public discourse on the issues.

Once again, a story the political commentariat should be pointing out on their cable news shows, but won’t.

[Hat Tip: Memeorandum]

UPDATE. A warning, via Weasel Zippers:

Things are about to get ugly in America my friends. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what will happen when the leftists try to storm town halls packed with tea partiers.

Marching to the wrong tune

This piece by Joe Klein is garnering plenty of attention in the blogosphere, primarily because it ticks off all of the right people. 

The bottom line:

Revolutions everywhere–in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they’re protesting against it.

I mean, Isn’t it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting “Freedom, Democracy, Union” while trying to prevent a vote? Isn’t it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn’t it interesting that some of those who–rightly–protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in  the Wisconsin Senate?

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can’t be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters.

Robert S. McCain:

…[T]he anti-Obama, anti-Democrat tide is still running high. This tide is still quite strong enough to overwhelm the government-employees unions in Wisconsin and by 2012 may yet be strong enough to wash Obama himself out of office.

[…]

Organized labor is leading liberalism on a lemming stampede toward a cliff, and it’s probably too late for Klein or anyone else to stop them.

If you read any of the liberal blogs or watch cable news, you would think that there is a mass populist revolt going on in the Midwest.  This is not the case.  Public employee unions are protesting and, as numerous as they are, do not represent the majority of Wisconsin’s citizens. 

This is not an “uprising”, it’s not a “revolt”.  It won’t be considered a revolt until you see everyday Americans, for lack of food, for lack of representation, for whatever, take to the streets and demand that their voices be heard.  But then again, we’ve already seen true uprisings recently, and those only come around once a generation.

These lawbreaking teachers and union thugs are protesting because their way of life–the fleecing of taxpayers, the bankrupting of state governments, the hubris, the sense of privilege, all of it–is hopefully about to come tumbling down. 

The fact that Richard Trumka rolled into Wisconsin today, that President Obama is directing OFA to astroturf the protests, that the SEIU is busing in thousands of malcontents, speaks volumes about how serious they consider the threat.  As well they should.

UPDATE.    Part of today’s reach-around at Stacy McCain’s place.  Thanks!