All We Have to Smear is Smear Itself

So now "Martin Eisenstadt", a "senior policy advisor" to McCain who "leaked" the story that Sarah Palin could not identify whether Africa was a continent or a country, has now come forward to claim his laurels.

The trouble is that Martin Eisenstadt doesn't exist.

The AP reports that MSNBC anchor David Shuster announced Eisenstadt as the source of the Palin smear on Monday before issuing a retraction "within minutes."

Aside: if MSNBC can identify, "within minutes," presumably via a simple Google search, that Eisenstadt is a fraud, why not do the search before reporting this as news? Because really, does anyone watch MSNBC long enough to hear both story and retraction when separated by "minutes"?

My favorite line from the AP story? Apparently, members of the MSNBC newsroom "presumed the information [was] solid because it was passed along in an e-mail from a colleague."

By that token, I am pleased to offer you the following BREAKING NEWS:

• The FCC has decided to ban all religious broadcasting.
• Barrack Obama was sworn into office with his hand on the Koran.
• And finally, forward this email to twenty people and Bill Gates will send you a personal check for $200.

MSNBC, the liberal hag mag Mother Jones and CBS News have all fallen victim to the fraudulent Eisenstadt identity at one time or another. This level of journalistic gullibility is not, in fact, "news" at all to anyone even remotely exposed to the MSM.

The real news is the MSM's willingness to act on the faintest rumor that casts Sarah Palin in a poor light, no matter the source, no matter the factuality — or lack thereof. This arch complicity demonstrates two very important facts:

1. Sarah Palin is still a viable and very real threat to the soul of liberalism; and, as such
2. She is and will continue to be targeted for destruction by the liberal smear machine.

And although I am not one who thinks we ought to be choosing our 2012 presidential candidate right now, I do believe that watching the MSM will be a likely indicator of who is to become the best conservative candidate. Who does the liberal establishment consider their greatest threat — and attacks accordingly? That's my guy! (Or gal perhaps.)

In the meantime, for the media types whose list of oxymorons never fails to include "military intelligence," I have a new oxymoron to add to their list:

"Journalistic integrity."

The World Is Watching

Perhaps I'm not the only one to have observed over the last four years all the bumper stickers, signs, t-shirts emblazoned with an image like this one:
As with the "Jesus was a community organizer/Pilate was a governor" mantra, 1/20/09 indicated a level of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) that never quite made sense. What's the point in sulking and wishing your life away just because the person sitting in the Oval Office isn't the one for whom you voted?

I don't expect BDS to magically subside on 1/20/09. My sense is people who so viscerally despise President Bush will sustain their vehemence against him even after he settles back in Crawford, Texas.

Similarly, I don't expect to see a corollary of BDS morphed into "Barack Derangement Syndrome" within conservative ranks. Again, what's the point? Barack Obama will be our President. That's the way elections work in our country.

I appreciated Steven Den Beste's cogent summation "Not the End of the World" on what the next four years could look like. The column isn't right-wing sour grapes or whining ... just one guy's musings about the "Change" our country may actually experience under Democrat control.

One sobering aspect of Den Beste's prognostications is his expectation "Iran will get nuclear weapons." Serious diplomats acknowledge the heightened possibility (see here, here, and here) Israel may launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear capabilities within the next two months. Who can blame them? Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad has made no secret of his animosity towards the nation of Israel. Once Iran attains nuclear status, will anyone warrant Israel's survival?

Another Den Beste prediction shouldn't surprise us either, given Joe Biden's 10/19/08 pronouncement on the campaign trail in Seattle. Without apology, our Vice President-elect said: "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking."

I imagine there are several who campaigned for the presidential nomination who are now breathing easier in the knowledge the awesome responsibilities of that job are not resting at this perilous time in history on their shoulders. Being president is surely a weighty and often thankless task. The world will be watching. How soon should we expect to see the emergence of 1/20/12 bumper stickers?

An End and The Beginning

As the media hammer the last nail into John McCain's coffin, the pounding heard round the world is, instead, a drumbeat of outrage aimed toward Washington.

Not at Barrack Obama, the first President of the United States to "self-identify" as black. Indeed, while most conservatives — at least those not in the backyard burying the family silver by candlelight — reserve plenty of ire for the man who promises his Cabinet will "look like the proletariat," the most incendiary language is targeted squarely at the political machine responsible for delivering to The Messiah the highest office in the land.

The GOP.

Truly, if the party insiders, the Republican intelligentsia, the Washington elites, and the pseudo-conservative media can't chart the missteps that handed the Presidency to a socialist autocrat, I will personally fund a multibillion dollar bailout plan to rescue them from their hopeless stupidity.

Of the many thoughts gestating in my mind tonight, one seems to take precedent. Four years — though, with luck, only two — of radical socialism lie in front of us. Frightening as that may be, conservatives have an opportunity to remold our destiny. Like Edmond Dantes, we can turn this period of unjust imprisonment to our benefit: to study, to learn, to reinvent ourselves. And, lest we forget, to engineer our escape.

The GOP may yet be finished. After the travesty of this latest campaign, I will be the last to sorrow if that, indeed, is the cost of reinvention. I have not left the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.

There are many things to admire about John McCain but the immutable fact remains that his standing in the Republican Party is based on a mythic and carefully-cultivated personality cult. "The Maverick John McCain." Without his reputation for across-the-aisle compromise, John McCain would be seen for what he really is: a crabby war hero with a chronic case of ideological schizophrenia.

Unluckily for the GOP — and the Maverick himself — the Democrat Party countered the McCain personality cult with a personality cult of its own: one formed around a younger, hipper, unknown who happened to have a couple of well-sanitized autobiographies and a unique demographic advantage. Not to mention an adoring and complicit media.

If there is one lesson from McCain '08 that should be tattooed on the forehead of every conservative who crosses the Beltway, it should be this:

The only reason to reach across the aisle is to stab your opponent in the heart.

Figuratively speaking.

In fact, the greatest accomplishment the GOP leadership can glean from this campaign is that they have finally, finally made certain that John McCain will never again threaten to switch his party affiliation. I'm so relieved! Aren't you?

We can, perhaps, look on the Ascension of The One as our Hurricane Katrina. Like the City of New Orleans, we had plenty of time, knowledge and resources to prevent the catastrophe — or at least to minimize the damage. Instead, we let "trusted" leaders assure us that all would be well, that neglected infrastructure could weather the storm, that an iconic monolith was all the shelter we would need. And when the storm surge overwhelmed our borders, the shanty-towns of moderate-pandering and but-it's-his-turn populism were swept off the landscape in an instant.

As we begin to survey the damage, I am comforted that the bedrock of conservative principles remains. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: is there a surer footing on which to construct the future of our great nation? The rebirth of the Shining City on a Hill will be longer in coming now, and there are many storms yet to weather. Even so, I still believe that "for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."

So it begins.