Meet Mike Murphy. He’s a political consultant. He was a campaign strategist and pollster for Mitt Romney and John McCain. He hated the pick of Sarah Palin as vice president.
He’s now a talking head on MSNBC. He likes to write columns proclaiming doom and gloom and the end of the Republican Party unless it runs more people like John McCain. Funny how that worked out this last time, right?
He’s also an idiot.
In his latest column, Murphy singles out Indiana to prove his hypothesis of the need for more candidates like John McCain:
(Read more after the leap)
Well, John McCain is still a son of a b****. But with the election and his status as Republican presidential nominee six weeks in the past, he’s no longer our son of a b****.
Cold, right?
Well, as Allahpundit notes at Hot Air, six weeks makes a lot of difference in John McCain’s opinion of Sarah Palin, too:
Think how easy it would have been to throw her a bone without committing to anything, e.g., “It’s too early to be making endorsements when we don’t know who’s running or what the issues will be, but naturally she’s my preference going into it.” It would have made for an awkward soundbite three years from now if he ended up endorsing someone else, but endorsing someone else will be sufficiently awkward on its own terms that that soundbite would hardly make it worse.
Consider this another brick in the reconstruction of his centrist brand. (More on that in the next post.) Exit question: What exactly does he mean when he answers Steph’s point about endorsing her for VP just six weeks ago by saying, “Well sure, but now we’re in a whole election cycle”? What’s changed in six weeks, besides her usefulness to him?
Now, I won’t sit here and endorse Sarah Palin for 2012 or 2016 or even 2020 (they’re all a long ways off, and who knows what will happen in the meantime). But then, I didn’t put her on my presidential ticket as my running mate, and I didn’t spend three months flying around the country telling everybody how great and qualified she was to be my running mate.
John McCain has many redeeming qualities. Loyalty to his party, or to his erstwhile political allies, has never been one of them, particularly when they are no longer useful to him.
I’m glad to return the favor.
The first of no doubt many long knives that will be plunged into the backs of conservatives and Republicans that set aside their objections to work hard to support McCain’s botched and bungled candidacy.
Q: With more Democrats in the Senate and the House and a Democrat in the White House, how do you see congressional efforts playing out on such issues as health care and immigration?
A: On immigration, there’s been an agreement between (President-elect Barack) Obama and (Arizona Republican Sen. John) McCain to move forward on that. … We’ll do that. We have to get this economy stuff figured out first, so I think we’ll have a shot at doing something on health care in the next Congress for sure.
Q: Will there be as much of a fight on immigration as last time?
A: We’ve got McCain and we’ve got a few others. I don’t expect much of a fight at all. Now health care is going to be difficult. That’s a very complicated issue. We debated at great length immigration. People understand the issues very well. We have not debated health care, so that’s going to take a lot more time to do.
It’s not losing that’s so bad, you see. It’s the loser you supported turning into a Quisling to advance the very things he was opposing when you were supporting him (which, granted, he was trying to advance earlier on until his campaign collapsed and he thought better of it).
I am reminded of the fable of the scorpion and the frog.
The scorpion sought to cross the river. So he asked the frog to carry him across.
The frog said, “No, because you’ll sting me and I’ll drown.”
“No, I won’t,” said the scorpion, “because then we’d both drown.”
So the frog thought of it for a time and, since the reasoning of the scorpion made sense, at last agreed.
The scorpion climbed on the back of the frog, and the frog started to swim across the river.
Halfway across, the scorpion stung the frog.
As the frog started to drown from the poisonous sting, he looked at the scorpion and said, “Why’d you do that? Now we’ll both drown!”
“I can’t help it,” the scorpion replied. “It’s my nature.”
John McCain can’t help it either, it seems; it’s his nature.
Got this message from the Indiana for McCain facebook group this afternoon:
Tom Sullivan sent a message to the members of Indiana for McCain.
Subject: This is only the beginning…
First of all, thank you for choosing to stand with us and fight for conservative principles. Republicans across the country suffered embarrassing defeats on November 4th, but as Harvey Dent once said, “The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.”
It’s true that we will have to wait until 2012 for Mitt Romney to Bring America Back. However, Tuesday was a wake-up call to all parts of the conservative movement. We will see a grassroots explosion from conservatives that hasn’t been witnessed by the United States since 1980. Democrats now control all branches of government, the majority of governorships, and will probably be able to appoint at least one judge to the Supreme Court. This will not go over well, and we must be ready to fight back starting in 2010 with the vitally important midterm elections and then ultimately in 2012 when we take back our country from the miserable state it may be in from the devastating effect of unchecked liberal policies.
What specifically can we do?
(Read more after the leap)
*UPDATE* – Here is the direct link to the Zogby Ziegler media poll that goes along with the video below.
Think that’s crazy? Check out some of the alarming stats they found in the Zogby poll they commissioned after the leap.
In case you missed, here is the Sarah Palin interview on Fox News with Greta Van Susteren. After you get through the first five minutes talking about her “clothes” and other dumb controversies, it finally gets good. Though one note to Governor Palin. Not all bloggers live in the mom’s basement and blog in their pajamas.
For instance, I own my own house, but have no basement. 
Part One:
(Watch the rest after the leap)
Looking at this breakdown, Indiana would appear to be a strong and vibrant red state. But what went against us in this last election was just how poorly John McCain did in the blue counties. Of Indiana’s 92 counties, McCain won 77 and still lost 49.9% to 49%. Just think, there is enough GOP voting population in those 77 counties to come close to matching the DEM voting population of the 15 counties that Obama won.
Now take into consideration how many in those red counties who voted Republican in 2004, voted for Obama this year or voted third party out of distaste for either John McCain or Barack Obama (we’re looking at the Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin voters – Note to 3rd party voters, I’m not pinning McCain’s loss of Indiana on you).
By contrast, consider the breakdown for Governor Daniels.
(Read more after the leap)
(Post updated to reflect Democrat Scott Reske’s victory in HD 37 after barely holding off Republican challenger Kelly Gaskill)
Here is a note to my fellow conservatives and Republicans.
I did not have the highest of expectation for last night. I had hope that John McCain might some how pull off a miracle (because really that’s what he needed to win), but it wasn’t a lot of hope. And like many of you who may have stayed up fairly late (after the webcast which ended at midnight, I went out and picked up yard signs to get some much needed alone time) I’m still recovering from yesterday’s action. But I came to this conclusion.
It’s time to face the facts. Barack Obama will be our 44th president. And a historic congratulations should be sent his way. But we should take solace in the fact that Democrats did not net major gains in the House or get their filibuster proof Senate, though they could still up with (a worst case scenario) 59 seats.
But there were some positives for us as well last night. Governor Daniels smoked Jill Long Thompson (no surprise there) and Greg Zoeller and Tony Bennett won their statewide races. The Indiana House will end up with only one seat gained by the Democrats after much hand wringing they could end up with as many as a three to four seat gain. On the congressional level. Everybody stayed the same. Many thought Congressman Souder could be a loss in the Republican column, but he showed his tenacity and didn’t just win by a small margin, he kicked his young upstart opponent to the curb.
But now onto my message.
Fellow Republicans, this is no time to give up. This is also no time to resort to childish pettiness, bemoaning and name calling that the left resorts to when they lose. This is a time to step up! We do have a lot of ground to make up nationally, and while our state still leans red, it certainly is becoming a closely and evenly divided state.
We need to re-energize our base and return to what made our party great! I encourage our state and national Republicans to return to the principles and virtues of the Contract with America. We need to raise the level of discourse on the issues that matter most to Americans at this time; the economy and energy independence. And while I believe social values cannot be ignored (though we must never give up on the issue of Abortion), we must understand, as a Party, that in these tough economic times, voters are thinking mostly with their wallets. We must return to a message of fiscal restraint. We must hammer the message of an “all of the above’ approach to energy independence. We must hold our new President’s feet to the fire when it comes to the issues of coal and nuclear power. Nothing can be off the table if we want to break free from the shackles of foreign oil. President-Elect Obama seeks energy independence, but he must seek all avenues, closing off nothing.
We lost the American’s public’s faith in us when we lost our way as a party. We have only ourselves to blame for the situation we are in. Now is the time to make up for our past mistakes. Now is the time to take action and to be the party of solutions and ideas. We gave that away, but it’s time to take it back!
(But should you need it, here is Red State’s Obama Administration Survial Guide)
I was going to type up a lengthy closing argument for as to why I am voting for John McCain. I may still do so. But it would be hard to encapsulate those reasons better than Jay Nordlinger has done with this short post over at The Corner:
There are a lot of people who didn’t like Edmund Morris’s biography of Reagan, which was authorized — they said it was a failure, or at least a missed opportunity. I don’t know. I didn’t read it. But I do know this: Morris had one insight into Reagan, and it was perfectly observed.
Reagan spent his entire life standing up to the bully. From boyhood on, he interposed himself between the bully and the innocent. He stood up to the bullies in his schools. He stood up to the Communists in Hollywood, and to the coercive unions. He stood up to the student radicals and their abettors. He stood up to the Soviets.
He simply stood up.
In the world today are a lot of bullies to stand up to: al-Qaeda, the mullahs, the North Koreans, the Chinese Communists, the Castro brothers, Chávez. John McCain will almost certainly do it. Barack Obama will almost certainly not.
That’s one reason — probably the biggest reason — I’m voting for McCain on Tuesday.
(Read my take and further comments after the leap)
When: Monday Afternoon, Gates/Doors Open at 2:00 PM, Program Begins at 3:00 PM.
Where: IND Airport, International Arrivals, 7001 Pierson Dr
The McCain Campaign requests you wear RED
Tickets Available locally from Hamilton County, Hendricks County, Johnson County and Indiana State GOP offices. **NOTE: Marion County is NOT listed so I assume they are not handling tickets for this and are referring calls on this to State GOP HQ
This is one of the better McCain Ads that I have seen.
By the way, I also like the Joe the Plumber series of Ads.
