THE PLANK OCTOBER 27, 2008
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Just to add to Crowley's list, I'd point to this 7:35 a.m. post from K-Lo over at The Corner:
What if everyone who reads NRO today has a conversation with a potential Obama voter today about Andy McCarthy's piece on the Los Angeles Times sitting on an alarming Obama video? What if everyone who reads NRO
today has a conversation with a second person who is considering voting
for Obama today about the redistribution tape (which Bill Whittle
writes about here)? What if everyone who reads NRO today e-mailed Mark Levin's Saturday-night Corner post to one person who is considering voting for Obama today? Would people start to wake up?How about we give it a try? I'm game if you are.
I think this might be the conservative equivalent of the bake sales liberals used to have to benefit the nuclear freeze movement.
P.S. The Levin piece K-Lo recommends is a tour de force of conservative paranoia. I recommend it as well, if you want a preview of the lunacy that awaits us from certain precincts if Obama does prevail.
--Jason Zengerle
17 comments
That Levin piece rules. I never knew that asking someone what they read to catch up on the news was a liberal technique of character assassination, or that the middle class was actually the lower class. He doesn't quite reach the point of asserting 1+1=3 but there's still 10 days left
- Simon Greenwood
October 27, 2008 at 11:42am
Nothing in Lopez's post -- of course -- about whether or why McCain is a candidate worth voting for.
Telling, no?
- agentzero
October 27, 2008 at 11:58am
" Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created."- Mark Levin
Hilarious stuff. Levin's gobbledygook is funny as hell.
- Bukharin
October 27, 2008 at 12:10pm
Wow. According to Levin, a bump from a 33 percent marginal tax rate to a 36 percent tax rate defines the "limit" of the American dream. That extra thirty bucks per thousand earned on net income above $250,000 just doesn't look all that much like the final victory of Leninism to me, and I know I'll still be trying to earn more next year than I earned this year, but hey. Maybe Levin is the rare man who earns $251,000 per year but only has $29 in disposable income, so the Obama tax plan really would ruin him.
- rhubarbs
October 27, 2008 at 12:15pm
The Levin piece is the best sign yet that it's over. More elitism from the right. When the only argument your side has left is that the other guy's supporters--a majority of the American people--are gullible and/or stupid, you're super-screwed. As a Democrat, believe me, I know.
- glacialspeed
October 27, 2008 at 12:18pm
I like NRO. The foreign policy articles especially have been a welcome home for a hawkish liberal like me, and the other articles, while often taking stands counter to my own, are well-written and fun to read. The Corner is no exception. . . except for Lopez, who writes the most predictably awful updates over and over. The Romney Swoon pieces alone are worth the (free) price of admission.
- phargle
October 27, 2008 at 12:23pm
I'm trying my best to avoid posts like this, which unfortunately tend to foster a sense of complacency.
Aw, what the hell. What this illustrates is that the great conservative upheaval, that started with Goldwater and reached its peak with Reagan, will devolve after the election back to the kind of raving fringe Bircher paranoia that defined the movement before '64.
Ironic, isn't it? Two Arizona senators, 44 years apart, like a set of bookends.
- WayneJM
October 27, 2008 at 12:27pm
glacial - The title of Levin's next book practically writes itself:
"What's the Matter with [insert state of your choice here]?"
- WayneJM
October 27, 2008 at 12:29pm
It would appear that, instead of the "N****R!" campaign which has been the anticipated fare for the final days of the election, we're getting a "(MARXIST | SOCIALIST | COMMUNIST)!!!!" campaign.
My better judgement says it is not worth the effort to point out the flaws and rebut these authors, but I would like to simply state that its this kind of absurdity which has harmed America for so many years; willfull ignorance, if not outright lies, on top of petty, personal ideology combined to form a narrative which only contains passing references to any facet of existential reality.
One telling indicator is the editorial nature of the pieces themselves identified by a lack of reference to objective or external sources. They complain about issues like lack of reporting by traditional news sources on these important issues and yet Fox News was happy to break the Wright story and provide around-the-clock coverage and updates for over a week, and the Chicago Sun-Times and others have happily investigated links and relationships with Rezko and Ayers.
I am amused, as well as signficantly disappointed, with the continued attempts to re-narrate the concept of "Guilt by Association" in order to give it the legitimacy it requires to impugn one with the misdeeds of another. The conservative commentariat continues to try to explain how, because Obama tolerates the continued existence of people at ideological logger-heads with the Ideologues and Demagogues of the Conservative Movement, that somehow Obama is in cahoots with these individuals in support of their agendas.
One can only hope that this is the Death Nell of the Conservative Movement. And yet, somehow I doubt that these ideologues and demagogues will willfully release their hold on a political philosophy which gives them free reign to remake reality as they see fit, to write their own narrative. I imagine such a freedom to be alluring and empowering, but ultimately corruptive and destructive. And somehow, I imagine there will never be a shortage of people ready and willing to sell their soul to an ideology for a chance at the power and influence they might achieve.
- GSpinks
October 27, 2008 at 12:56pm
Go K-Lo!
There's nothing that's happened in the last 8 years that can't be overcome in 8 days! It's a lot easier to start a quick chain email campaign than it is to govern well.
I love The Corner. Their limited abilities and imagination are on display everyday.
- keef94
October 27, 2008 at 1:26pm
GSP, I agree, but sometimes the English teacher in me gets out, so I just wanted to be a jerk and point out that the correct spelling is "Death Knell." Death Nell sounds kinda scary too, however, rather like Typhoid Mary.
- ironyroad
October 27, 2008 at 1:31pm
What would happen if everyone planning on voting for Obama called an undecided voter in Florida ...my.barackobama.com/.../makecalls
- arsonplus
October 27, 2008 at 1:35pm
This is psychotic. A fair number of other pieces in the "normal" right wing press have also been psychotic. We're not talking about just disagreeing with someone; we're talking about creating a monster out of whole cloth and then going after it with fire and pitchforks. Sure, I recognize this as a fairly standard debating trick, but they are creating a dangerously scary monster and by all indications they believe in it.
I'm not their therapist, and anyway I'd normally treat this level of isolation from reality with drugs. Can someone, ANYONE, explain to me where this is coming from? I thought the "Bill Clinton is a murder and a drug runner" was bad, but that wasn't spread this widely and didn't have the rabid tinge to it that this has. Anyone?
- AlanK
October 27, 2008 at 2:19pm
"Death Knell."
"jerk" away, icarusr. Thanks for the correction :)
- GSpinks
October 27, 2008 at 2:30pm
Icarus, you failed to spot the typo in Spinks's post. It's "free rein," not "free reign."
"Death Nell of the Conservative Movement," far from being a typo, is currently running on a law-and-order platform for county judge in Lubbock, Texas.
- agentzero
October 27, 2008 at 3:15pm
the pyramid scheme of McCain, if everyone convinces 10 other people then McCain will win with 99.999999% (presumably Obama and Biden will vote Democratic)
- blackton
October 27, 2008 at 3:19pm
"Death Nell," on the other hand, sounds like an all-girl heavy metal band, which would probably prove nearly as scary to the psycho bat-crazy righties who scoop up this Levin/Lopez drool...
- cspencef
October 27, 2008 at 3:22pm