– Yeah, I can’t believe I’m writing about the Mair affair again, but Leon Wolf makes the same point I did last night.
I wonder how long it will take us, as a movement, to learn from the strategic mistakes of our past. A major reason why we keep nominating moderates for the Presidency is that these kinds of attacks on viable conservative alternatives leave the moderate as the only plausible alternative standing. While conservatives are dividing their support into increasingly narrow slices, the moderate voters unify early behind a single candidate and don’t go to pieces over one or two differences of opinion.
As Wolf says, it’s one thing to vet a candidate and not prematurely crown a favorite, but it’s another to disqualify candidates based on minor infractions.
Also, William Jacobson has another good take on the matter, writing that conservative pundits are embarrassing themselves.
But the campaign is not about Mair, it’s about larger issues of changing the course of the country in ways that Walker has accomplished in Wisconsin. Walker needs to do a better job vetting new hires that keep consistent with his message and his strategy.
Voters should vote on Walker, not his staff.
To summarize, we have a group of conservative bloggers and pundits upset that Walker fired a staffer, and then we have another group of conservative bloggers and pundits upset that Walker hired her in the first place. Then we have the remaining 97% or so of GOP voters who couldn’t care less either way. Maybe over the weekend both of these groups can grow up and start writing about issues people actually give a fig about and not some petty inside baseball stuff.
– Vatican says no to use of the 1998 ICEL translation. Fr. Z says exactly what I was thinking.
Out of curiosity, I wonder how many of those who want for the opportunity to use the 1998 version are supportive of those who want the opportunity to use the 1962Missale Romanum.
– Elliot Bougis tackles the debate over the Church and the death penalty, and responds to a particularly silly post as well.
– Color me surprised: looks like the Obama administration flat-out lied to a federal judge.
A federal judge sharply scolded a Justice Department attorney at a hearing on President Obama’s immigration executive actions, suggesting that the administration misled him on a key part of the program — and that he fell for it, “like an idiot.”
He’s not the first person to utter those words in response to the Obama administration, and he won’t be the last, I’m sure.
– This is an interesting story. A college student claims he was banned from a class because he told some uncomfortable truths about “rape culture.”
A student at Reed College has been banned from class for denying the existence of “rape culture” in the United States and arguing that the oft-repeated statistic that one in five women are raped at college is bogus.
Jeremiah True, 19, received an email from professor Pancho Savery on March 14 telling him he was making his classmates so uncomfortable that he was no longer welcome to participate in the “conference” sections of his Humanities 110 class, a course which focuses on the art and literature of classical Greece, according to BuzzFeed News.
While this got everybody’s rage meters turned up to seven, I wondered if there might be more to the story. Well, there is. The teacher in question was contacted by Reason, and the teacher claims that the student was barred because “of a series of disruptive behaviors.” Then when the student in question was contacted, well, this was his reply.
Before I interview with you, you must agree to make “[the n-word]” be the first word in your article.
Umm, yeah.
Now, Savery’s reply was vague enough that it could still be the case that True was kicked out for nothing more than hurting people’s feelings, and True may merely have been testing the reporter who contacted him. That being said, whenever a story seems a little fishy, do a little digging first before freaking out.
– Another interesting story. Two kids in Philadelphia were late getting to the bus stop and so missed their bus. They walked home to find that their mother already left for work, and so they were locked out. A cop saw the kids, discovered what had happened, and after checking with his supervisor, brought the kids to school.
Great community policing? You might think, but evidently not if you are those kids’ mother.
But the problem, the girls mother never knew what happened until a neighbor called her to say she saw her daughters drive away with police.
“I started crying. I broke down and i got here and I was hysterical”
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“I don’t want them not to trust the police but they need to be aware they need to let their mother know. They need to let them say call my mom before they get in to say “call my mom,” she said.
I can understand the mother’s initial fear and even anger, but I have a hard time faulting the police in any way for anything they did in this situation.
– One day the Onion will be no more because reality is rapidly becoming more absurd than satire. A gun control group opened a fake gun store to guilt-trip people who wanted to buy guns. I agree with this take:
I like this clip as a microcosm of the gun-control movement in that it’s concerned chiefly with moral self-congratulation. You think anyone coming into the shop hadn’t heard of Sandy Hook or kids accidentally shooting family members with their parents’ guns before the schmuck behind the counter told them? This is a shaming exercise, pure and simple. And just to ensure that the appropriate amount of shame was expressed, if not actually felt, the producers exposed the ruse to the customers afterward and then stuck a camera in their faces to ask them if they’d reconsidered their purchase. Go figure that people who live in a very liberal, very anti-gun city, faced with the prospect of appearing in a viral vid that shows them trying to buy the SAME TYPE OF GUN ADAM LANZA USED, BRO, chose to express contrition when confronted.
Indeed.
“[Moderates] don’t go to pieces over one or two differences of opinion.”
Moderates aren’t encouraged to do so.
“Maybe over the weekend both of these groups can grow up and start writing about issues people actually give a fig about and not some petty inside baseball stuff.”
Petty inside baseball stuff is what get the juices flowing. They’ll spend all of this year and the first half of next writing process/horse race stories. And then they’ll complain about the process/ horse race that dominated the way the campaign shook out.
Of course, “not going to pieces over one issue” sounds so productive, but then “the final solution” , the crucifixion, or the “Twin Towers” could be considered one issue…not to mention that teeny little bite of the forbidden apple.
Those who consistently vote for the lesser of two evils are merely guaranteeing they will empower evil.
In a two party system, freedom requires that one of those parties be an authentic opposition and not a pretend opposition that in reality is but a complicit co-ruler.
it is imperative to purge the faux opposition party of its embedded unprincipled deceiving leaders–though I doubt that any principled person could rise to the level of leadership with so many “compromisers” above them.
Of course, “not going to pieces over one issue” sounds so productive, but then “the final solution” , the crucifixion, or the “Twin Towers” could be considered one issue…not to mention that teeny little bite of the forbidden apple.
Yes, because hiring and firing of staff is certainly as weighty an issue as those things,
Those who consistently vote for the lesser of two evils are merely guaranteeing they will empower evil.
Not really seeing this as a “lesser of two evil things” issue so much as a “people need to find petty crap to complain about” thing.
A major reason why we keep nominating moderates for the Presidency is that these kinds of attacks on viable conservative alternatives leave the moderate as the only plausible alternative standing. While conservatives are dividing their support into increasingly narrow slices, the moderate voters unify early behind a single candidate and don’t go to pieces over one or two differences of opinion.
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After 1964, all Republican nomination donnybrooks which were at all contested consisted of between two and four competitors and a mess of others who formed committees and entered some contests but won almost no delegates and few votes. When you deduct liberals, opportunists, and Capitol Hill fixtures, the following are left
1968, 1976, 1980: Ronald Reagan.
1988: Pat Robertson
1992: Pat Buchanan
1996: Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes
2000: George W. Bush, Alan Keyes
2008: Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul
2012: Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul.
I suppose you could say that there has been a secular increase in the number of non-tedious Republican candidates. The thing is, “one or two differences of opinion” is a pretty anodyne way of describing the distinction between Ron Paul and about 97% of the Republicans in Congress and about 90% of Republican voters. Pat Buchanan does not the play the dogmatic and conceited clown that Paul does, but there actually are some important policy differences between Buchanan and close to 90% of the GOP electorate and Buchanan has little experience in public administration. Dr. Keyes background as a public official is scanty and he has a history of generating distractions, his skills as a campaigner declining with age. George W. Bush, whose signature issue in 2000 was an unfunded prescription drug benefit, was no one’s idea of a starboard militant. The only contest which might fit his model would be that in 2012, but the salient feature there was that voters dissatisfied with Gov. Romney had trouble settling on anyone and alighted on just about everyone for a brief period. The closest thing to a circular firing squad was the implosion of Gov. Perry’s campaign.
I am reminded of Malachi Martin, chief exorcist of the Vatican for several decades, who described the evil who wanted him dead, dead, dead. The Culture of Death, Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, human sacrifice of abortion and the cannibalism of embryonic stem cell stealing…and now, organ harvesting. Perhaps when the old folks start disappearing,…? but it may be too late to change the course of history. The devil never sleeps. Have you noticed the dark rings around Obama’s and Pelosi’s eyes?
My own reaction to Mair is that there are too many smarty snarky pants in the world who seem to gravitate toward attempting to mold public opinion. I wonder how hard it is for genuine good guys like walker and cruz etal to hire righteous people
I am reminded of Malachi Martin, chief exorcist of the Vatican for several decades,
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The exorcist employed by the Holy See known to a wide public would be Fr. Gabriele Amorth. Malachi Martin was a priest/writer billeted in New York (or was it Chicago?).
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He was a rather strange and shadowy figure and I doubt there are many biographical accounts of his life not laden with fictions. Various newspapers ran his obituary the week of 31 July 1999. The Social Security Administration reports that Malachi B. Martin of Manhattan was born on 23 July 1921 and died on 27 July 1999 and that his Social Security number was issued in 1965-66. Documents on file with the Southern District of New York indicate that Malachi Brendan Martin b. 23 July 1921 filed a petition for naturalization on 10 April 1972. That much is verifiable by a layman.
Irish authorities record the birth of a Malachi Brendan Martin in the Listowel district in the summer of 1921 and death notices list him as having been born in a village in County Kerry, where Listowel is located, so that part seems legitimate. He is buried in Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester County, NY next to a certain Kakia Livanos (1919-2002).