John Kerry

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word “Republican?”   

If you can’t think of anything positive, you’ve identified the primary problem facing the GOP in the 2010s. Despite the GOP’s recapturing of the House of Representatives as well as numerous governorships and state legislatures, the party’s public image has yet to fully recover from the beating it took during the Bush era. The 2010 midterm results were brought about by economic malaise and frustration with President Obama, not by the public’s re-embrace of Republican ideology.    

It’s still quite possible for President Obama to be re-elected in 2012, and it’s not hard to envision the GOP losing the House in two years as well. For all the chatter about America supposedly being a “center-right” country, the reality is that the country will not truly be “center-right” until Republicans finally challenge the stereotypes that have existed about the party for years. 

There are communities all across America filled with people who react with horror and disgust when they hear the word “Republican.” Despite Scott Brown’s historic Senate victory a year ago this month, his party’s losses in the Massachusetts midterm elections demonstrate that the Bay State is one such community. As Boston Phoenix political reporter David Bernstein noted on November 8, “To most Bay Staters (in fact, most New Englanders), ‘Republicans’ are anti-intellectual, vitriolic, reactionary, ‘Party of No,’ Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Southern ideologues. ‘FOX Republicans,’ if you will.”   

Republicans can spend all day denouncing these stereotype as false, or lambasting media, academic and entertainment entities that are viewed as perpetuating these stereotypes—but wouldn’t it make more sense to simply shatter these stereotypes?  

Republicans need to ask themselves the following questions:  

1. Would supply-side economics be held in contempt by large numbers of Americans if Republicans and conservative-leaning media entities made a point of demonstrating that supply-side economics benefited the vast majority of Americans, not just the wealthy?  

2. Would the notion of Republican anti-intellectualism have such currency if Republicans and conservative-leaning media entities did a better job of spotlighting the right’s intellectual class? The recent Fox News special The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism did a commendable job of reminding viewers of the right’s intellectual heritage, but the broadcast was the exception to the rule.  

3. Would the idea of Republicans being scornful of science even exist if Republicans and conservative-leaning media entities had more prominent figures who regarded environmental science as something other than “the new refuge of socialist thinking,” as Rush Limbaugh called it in his 1992 book The Way Things Ought to Be?   

4. Would the concept of Republicans-as-theocrats be as strong as it is in the minds of millions of Americans if Republicans and conservative-leaning media entities were more vocal in embracing a federalist approach to social issues, as Jonah Goldberg recommended in Reason Magazine last year?   

The Democratic Party can only prosper if Republicans fail to address the underlying, long-standing issues that still make so many Americans uncomfortable with the GOP: the idea that Republicans lack empathy, don’t give a damn about anyone who’s not already a billionaire, loathe gays and single mothers, secretly desire Christian Shari’a, believe mankind plays no significant role in climate change, are obsessed with spending trillions to democratize the Middle East, regard public education as a wasteland and are generally selfish, uncaring jerks.   

There’s nothing wrong with demonstrating empathy. “Compassionate conservatism” may have been an empty slogan, but if Republicans and conservative-leaning media entities don’t do a better job of showing that the GOP is not as hard-hearted as it’s often made out to be, the 2010 midterms will go down in history as a fluke.  

The last decade was an awful one for the Republican Party. Twenty years after Ronald Reagan’s ten-point victory over President Carter, George W. Bush—the man who was promoted in some conservative circles as Reagan’s true ideological heir—barely got past Vice President Al Gore in the Electoral College and lost the popular vote. Four years later, Bush beat Senator John Kerry by three points, hardly a “center-right” blowout. Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in 2006 and surrendered the White House in 2008. Were it not for pro-GOP momentum generated by the Tea Party movement, as well as the aforementioned public frustration with Obama, the party would still be a sickly elephant ready to be put down.    

Too many Republicans still think of themselves as representing the country’s natural majority. This mentality leads to laziness, shortsightedness, arrogance and a failure to recognize and fix key problems. Republicans would be much better off thinking of themselves as a minority group, one that must confront and overcome stereotypes in order to obtain success and social acceptance. Before Republicans can change minds, they must first change their own. 

(Cross-posted at Notes from D.R.)

Jim DeMint rightly sounded off, calling out Congressional Democrats for leaving Washington without addressing the Bush tax cut extensions, despite the fact that more than thirty Democrats also voted to remain and take up the issue.

Jim DeMint

It should be noted that at least some of these good folks are probably in real hot water in their districts and are desperate to be seen as fighting for the middle class, whom most of them despise.

For all their care in infiltrating and disguising their intent the Marxists simply couldn’t restrain themselves and the wave of ‘progressive’ policy, starting with the Democrat majority of 2006 and culminating with George Bush, caving in to the hysterical drumbeat of the DeMarxists with the election of Barack Obama imminent, and ‘turning aside’ from his conservative principles acquiescing to the TARP bailouts, paved the way for the firestorm of radical leftist assaults on the economy, American citizens and our way of life.

We should thank them in a way, the left, I mean. Probably nothing else would have made them show themselves for who they really are. They were so overconfident and so determined to force their agenda down our throats, that it was like they had wax earplugs and blinders on.

The left has always been arrogant. It comes from the academic intellectual cloister where communism breeds. Such self-proclaimed superiority leads to arrogance.

Example: John ‘Gunboats’ Kerry sniveling that voters, “don’t always pay attention”, and that we fall for slogans. Yeah, Kerry. You wish we didn’t pay attention. Don’t worry, John, if we run out of slogans we’ll borrow some from Democrats… you all have plenty, and they’re nice and light too. Because they’re as empty as a beer can at a home football party.

It’s really important that these people have no opportunity to rule this country any longer. You need to start talking to everyone you know. Carry the message of freedom.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Ladies and gentlemen, we call your attention to the center ring. The daring young man and his spectacular apologetics, fresh from several world tours, has unveiled his domestic groveling to a ‘sista’ who had been grossly misunderstood by officials of her own Agriculture Department and White House apparatchiks, whose zeal for glossing over reverse-racial incidents against the white majority in the country had finally jumped out and bit them. Not since Barack Obama’s pathetic groveling in front of ‘Old Mexico’s’ third-world president have we seen a performance this lame.

Hillary Clinton with Robert Gates and South Korean Ministers in Seoul.

The Barack Obama traveling freak show is putting on a strong performance of threatening North Korea with ‘sanctions’, and Hillary Clinton’s stern admonitions have scared them so badly that they’ve threatened nuclear war. Not only that, but Her Hillaryness has launched an assault force of diplomatic types on Iraq that are sure to terrify the enemy in waiting there. Of course, we’ll have to keep a brigade or so of American combat troops handy to protect their lame posteriors, but that’s what you get when ‘you speak weakness to power’… our weakness, their power. Hillary Clinton is showing herself to be exactly what she is… inept.

Meanwhile, John (Swiftboat) Kerry, who voted yes on every tax measure to come before the Senate on his watch, is cheating the State of Massachusetts out of 437,500 dollars in sales taxes and an additional 70,000 dollars in annual excise duties on the purchase of his new seven million dollar, seventy-six foot sloop, by beating it out of Massachusetts to Rhode Island, which repealed its boat sales and use tax in 1993. Maybe Mama Theresa Heinz pulled the strings on her purse closed.

This is the same John Kerry that’s petitioning the White House to grant a blanket amnesty to all Guatemalan illegals in this country… surprise. Smacks of his private negotiations with his Communist handlers during the Vietnam war, just prior to selling out his brothers in arms. John likes ‘secret’ negotiations. This is the same John Kerry that is ‘negotiating’ to tax the very life out of you, the American people.

Vice President Joe (shoe leather) Biden, the greatest tactical genius of our time (remember his clever proposal to divide Iraq into three countries?) has said “We’re done for the year”, as the rest of the country heaves a huge sigh of relief.

The country has descended into a 1.47 trillion dollar deficit for this year alone, even as the economy lurches and staggers closer to a double dip ‘recession’ and unemployment numbers soar. Barack Hussein Obama and his Demarxist clown college tout ‘green jobs‘ that only cost taxpayers $500,000 per job, while they spent twenty three million dollars on signs glorifying pothole-filling temporary jobs.

The march to November goes on. The closer it comes, the more virulent and dangerous the Marxists will become… possibly at their most dangerous, as even their own polling is starting to undeniably point to historic losses in the November elections. A lame duck DeMarxist Congress, populated by men and women of no principle or scruples, with absolutely nothing to lose between November 2 and January 1, 2011, could do incalculable harm.

Charles Krauthammer, whom I greatly admire, said in his article today that he didn’t think Democrats and Rinos on their way out would do such a thing. He feels that they are more principled than that. Geez, Charles… I don’t know. From your lips to God’s ears, and I do so hope he has the volume turned up.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

John ‘Swiftboat’ Kerry. The man who perjured himself in front of Congress to sell out his brothers in arms? That John Kerry? Anything Kerry’s involved with can’t help but be just terrific for the country, right?

Then there’s Joe Lieberman. I really admire Lieberman’s unwavering support of the war against terrorism and his steadfast support of the State of Israel. So much so that I could almost forget how far left Joe Lieberman really is… almost. Only a liberal could have put forth a bill like this.

Then we come to the final member of the triumvirate, who did not have much input with the language of the bill but who has since identified himself with it, Lindsey Graham. Now, Graham may not have had any say in this legislation, but it points out exactly why Graham should go the way of Bob Bennett.

From Left: Graham, Lieberman, Kerry.

This ‘new’ climate legislation is being called dead on arrival this year by some of the leadership on both sides. It still looks as though the intrepid trio will attempt to move it forward anyhow. The bill itself is a job and economy killer as all such legislation is. It will put considerable burdens on 2,700 manufacturing and power generators by requiring a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. The economy is still staggering under the cumulative effects of two years of severe recession. Any impediment to business and commerce will be magnified.

Additional requirements, burdens and taxes will be placed on offshore oil and gas drilling operations. It does, however, strip the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, which would be an excellent idea if it weren’t couched in this larger bill. This bill is certain to be strongly resisted by Republicans, but there are many of the left’s extreme environmental wing nuts who aren’t a bit happy with the bill’s provisions, such as billions of dollars for ‘clean coal’ and offshore drilling and exploration. There are also provisions for nuclear power. These last items are of course sops for Republican support, which is likely to be scarce.

It is an ill-conceived piece of legislation at an even more inopportune time and, fortunately for us, looks unlikely to see the light of day.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

I wish someone would tell me why this character should have a single Republican member of Congress listen to him, much less be influenced by a single word emanating from his smarmy mouth. In his latest essay in treacherous gum beating he’s let it be known that he’ll play deal maker on Guantanamo Bay.

Lindsey Graham

On Sunday, this cretin actually had the chutzpah to tell the White House that he would work to convince Republicans to ‘go along with closing Guantanamo Bay’, if the President reverses his intention of trying high-profile terrorists on continental U.S. soil.

Graham, ever anxious to ingratiate himself with the administration and bolster his RINO credentials, came in a little late on this one though, since public rage over the proposed trials has all but forced Obama to go back to Guantanamo and military tribunals… aside from the fact that in all likelihood he would be unable to garner support from the Republican membership, other than perhaps a few like-minded RINOs.

Lindsey Graham is the poster child for everything that is anathema to Conservative Republicans and most Independents as well. With an oily, slithering ‘let’s make a deal’ attitude with very little principled moral compass behind him, Graham has made a career thumbing his nose at his Conservative brethren. Time after time ingratiating himself with liberals and advancing their agenda in the face of opposition from his ‘own’ party, continually aligning himself with other liberal (moderate) elements in the Republican party and using the ‘mantle’ of Republican for political cover. So much so that he has been censured by the Conservative-loyal Republican party in his own home state, “for many of the positions he has taken that do not represent the people of South Carolina”.

Among the more spectacular buffoonery Graham has pulled was to align himself with the treasonous John (Swiftboat) Kerry, to push for the economy and back-breaking Cap and Trade legislation so sought after by the leftist Obama administration. Graham is another one who has bought into the fakery and faux secular religion of global warming / climate change.

Graham is also remembered for memberships in both the gang of ten and the gang of fourteen with that great thumb-in-the-eye RINO John McCain, thwarting the aims of their own party leadership time after time and giving victory to opponents. Does anybody remember Graham supporting TARP? I do. His pro illegal alien stance is also another in his long list of perfidy. The party can do nothing finer than to isolate this snake oil vendor, and all like him, until they can be voted out of office.

The vote on health care in the House is just around the corner. It’s time to make our displeasure with the authoritarian aims of the White House and the Democrat House felt in no uncertain terms again. It seems like this last year has been a progression from one desperate struggle to another and it isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Stand up and be heard.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

I’m running out of superlatives again. It’s getting to be a barometer of NATIONAL LUNACY, as played out by the White House and the Congressional Clown College. While Obama is taxing the exact segment of the population where job growth is created, just about guaranteeing negative job growth in the private sector, the House Madam, Nancy Pelosi, is spending millions of taxpayer dollars in travel, food and booze for herself, her family and political cronies, while the country is scrambling to find work and scrabbling to survive. The corruption in this government is astounding and DISGUSTING.

Barack Obama announced the budget for 2010 today and it’s still burning holes through the floor…THREE POINT EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS!! This dude is DELUSIONAL. Or as is beginning to become more likely and more apparent, this man is purposely and purposefully driving this country to ruin so that he and his extremist party may profit from the resulting confusion and ruin. The deficit for 2009 was fully 1.413 TRILLION dollars, the highest since World War Two. But hold on to your wallets and purses ladies and gents, I’m not finished yet. The federal budget deficit for this year, with the highly accomplished organizer at the helm, is ONE POINT FIVE FIVE SIX TRILLION FRESHLY MINTED DOLLARS. But all is not lost, take heart because our intrepid budget-cutting leader has identified TWENTY BILLION dollars he will fearlessly slash.

Barack Obama speaks about his budget for fiscal year 2011.

Meanwhile, his plans for your economic misery for 2011 encompass a modest budget of THREE POINT EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS. Since the Obama administration ‘expects’ a 2011 budget shortfall of ONE POINT SIX TRILLION DOLLARS, expect that to be a lot closer to two trillion. By the way, the President has had the White House inform Senator John Kerry that the 2011 budget ‘assumes’ income from the controversial climate policy approach (cap and trade) which would appear to be dead on arrival given the catastrophic failure of the attempted theft of 1/6 of our economy through the single payer heath care bill. It looks like we can expect them to try and SNEAK all or parts of the detestable cap and tax bill past us. But sneaking and lying are a strong part of the Kerry resume. We can take absolutely nothing for granted with this bunch… not for a moment… not for a split second.

While the Republicans are putting up their 10 point program we have to remember and remind them that this is not a Republican revolution… this is not a Tea Party revolution… it is a CONSERVATIVE Republican revolution. It’s a Conservative revolution. It’s an Independent revolution. It’s a revolution of loyal, patriotic Americans who are sick and tired of having our money stolen, our freedoms abridged and taken and our Constitution violated. WE ARE FIGHTING MAD! But we have to remember… we have this year to get it right. This year there can be no RINOs, there can be no accommodation with evil. We have to put up a strong united front. The old style Republican party insider stuff won’t play any more. It’s your party, take it back.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

While American businesses try desperately to get into the black, and the nation's government sinks deeper into the red, we have found that for many Democrats (and girlie men)  there's no way you can be too Green.

So Scott Brown raised the political temperature of chilly Massachusetts this week by coming our against John Kerry's pet cause, the Cap & Trade global warming bill.  

He called on his opponent, Democrat Martha Coakley, to join in opposition.

U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown today called on his opponent Martha Coakley to drop her support for a national cap and trade bill, which will raise energy costs on businesses and consumers and kill jobs at a time when the economy is on the brink.

Yesterday, at an event with environmental groups, Coakley reaffirmed her support for cap and trade, which President Obama admitted in a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle will cause energy prices to skyrocket. See video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSZ62xiD4M&feature=related

In classic Tip O'Neill "all politics is local" style, Brown pointed out that MA's high energy costs had already cost the state 400 high tech jobs which computer firm EMC was moving to the Carolinas.

Needless to say, Ms. Coakley is a true believer in the global warming crusade, as are her Democrat allies in MA.

I wonder if an even better argument against Cap & Trade isn't that the folks it will benefit are Wall Street commodities and deriviative barons like the wife of Senator Chris Dodd? Do we really need to give Goldman Sachs another government sponsored profit center?

Anyway, I wonder how well the whole global warming schtick is going to sell between now and the January 19 special election, considering much of the Commonwealth is going to be buried under a blizzard tomorrow afternoon.  

Nonetheless, less than 30 minutes after the NWS in Taunton announced the blizzard watch, John Kerry was sending a blast e-mail around complaining that Jim Imhofe snowed on his parade in Copenhagen by telling the folks cap & trade would never pass the Senate.

Kerry said  "Attempts to twist reality and spread distortions won't work if you won't let them"

Could the "reality-based community" please tell us how tomorrow's blizzard is some sort of twisted reality and distortion? It would sure beat running the snowblower.

I think Scott Brown did well this week, since I think many voters in MA may be tired of the snow job the greeniacs have been promoting against the average consumer. 

I have argued for a while that Repubicans need to pick up the mantle of transparency. It is useful tactically and strategically. On the tactical level, the guys in leadership always play "hide the ball with what they are doing". This gives Republicans a morally secure high-ground to attack whatever the Democrats do. Strategically, it gives us an issue that can both rally our base and makes good sense to independents and many Democrats.

On Friday, House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement on transparency. The key passage:

It’s just common sense: Americans should be allowed to read the text of major bills before Congress votes on them.  Previous Congresses, including Republican ones, failed to live up to this standard.  But never before has the failure been as blatant as it has been in the past nine months under Speaker Pelosi.   Things have to change.

There are two key parts to this. First, he grabbed the policy issue and framed it in the adult and serious way "Americans" (not "Members of Congress", which seems like only a populist argument, although some in the media have grabbed the straw man to give the Democrats aircover) should know what Congress is doing so that we can hold them accountable.

The second part is, perhaps, more important. John Boehner has now explicitly rejected the way that he ran the House, said "we have learned", and established a new line in the sand. Furthermore, one of the reforms that he advocates, in this case, a waiting period before legislation can be acted on, actually may impact many of the wasteful spending concerns that actually helped drive him out of office. 

What is so fascinating is the rejection by Senate Democrats and the silence of lefty advocacy groups other than the Sunlight Foundation. In an effort to get a public copy of the healthcare bill before a vote, John Kerry said:

"This is fundamentally a delay tactic," the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate said. "I mean, let's be honest about it. The legislative language, everybody knows, is relatively arcane, legalistic, and most people don't read the legislative language."

That's right. But people who are interested do. People who are experts or people being impacted do, or they hire people to.

And this gets to the final point. Where is the press? Huffington Post is being sent around by Demcorats, because they are giving cover to Democrats. But they aren't really press. But where is the Fourth Estate demanding that they have the information to tell the American people what the debate is about.

Crickets.

You would think that John Boehner repudiating how Republicans ran the House would be worthy of news.

Crickets.

You would think that John Kerry giving cover to the Senate acting without even having legislation (I'm not talking about reading the bill here ...) would be newsworthy.

Crickets outside of Fox and the Washington Times.

The agonizingly close relations between the GOP establishment and the loonier elements in the right wing media who have been on an increasingly mainstream basis feeding the hatred of the far right extremists who have been committing violence has been receiving increased attention. This has been discussed recently by Judith Warner, Paul Krugman, and Frank Rich. Krugman recently wrote, “Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.” Frank Rich discussed this topic at length in his latest column:

Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

Obama’s Cairo address, meanwhile, prompted over-the-top accusations reminiscent of those campaign rally cries of “Treason!” It was a prominent former Reagan defense official, Frank Gaffney, not some fringe crackpot, who accused Obama in The Washington Times of engaging “in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain.” He claimed that the president — a lifelong Christian — “may still be” a Muslim and is aligned with “the dangerous global movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood.” Gaffney linked Obama by innuendo with Islamic “charities” that “have been convicted of providing material support for terrorism.”

If this isn’t a handy rationalization for another lone nutjob to take the law into his own hands against a supposed terrorism supporter, what is? Any such nutjob can easily grab a weapon. Gun enthusiasts have been on a shopping spree since the election, with some areas of our country reporting percentage sales increases in the mid-to-high double digits, recession be damned.

Violence committed by right wing (or left wing) extremists is the more serious problem. But a similar, even if less violent, mindset can be seen in the recent outrage against David Letterman: despite agreement from Letterman that he should not have told a joke which was clearly about Bristol Palin, and despite the fact that Bristol Palin has been the target of jokes from multiple comedians largely because of the manner in which Sarah Palin has intentionally placed her children in the public spotlight for political gain, many of them continue to attack with outright lies as to what Letterman actually said.

There was no point in attacks on David Letterman once he conceded that he should not have told the joke, with many of these conservatives proceeding to over play their hand and ultimately discrediting themselves. The controversy is about the desire of the authoritarian base of the Republican Party, which has hijacked the right, to prevent any criticism of their extremist agenda and has little to do with any real concern about sexist jokes. They tend to wage their war with little regard for fact, with such distortions being common place. This has included a similar distortion of a joke told by John Kerry in 2006, the fabrications of the Swift Boat Liars, all the lies about Obama which were spread during the presidential campaign, and the recent lies about Sotomayor such as that sixty percent of her decisions have been overturned (& not surprisingly though, even a Next Right editor repeated it.) While less extreme and violent than those who have been committing violence, the conservative movement has increasingly become dominated by those who show hostility towards reason, freedom of expression, and the contemporary culture.

Barack Obama won the Kids Pick the President election by Nickelodeon:

In this election year's Kids Pick the President "Kids' Vote", Senator Obama received 51% of the vote (1,167,087), and Senator McCain received 49% (1,129,945).

That Obama only beat McCain in a poll of Nickelodeon Kids by a mere 2% is telling. John Kerry won the Kids Pick the President vote in 2004 by a 14 point margin. True, the turnout in '04 was far less (about 20% of this year's) but Obama's 2-point margin about young people indicates a soft bottom with the Obama campaign.

Nick has been increasingly far left over the years. While in 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, Nick kids successfully picked the winner, 2004 was a jump the shark moment for the kids poll.

Given Obama's charisma, the pro-Obama environment of the media, Nick's PC bias, and the impressionability of young minds, Obama ought to have won this 60-40% at least. 

If kids are voting 51-49% for Obama, I wouldn't rest easy if I were in Camp Obama.