NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the GOP's new attitudes toward John Boehner and Jim DeMint. Boehner, formerly their enforcer, is now a horrible RINO tyrant, and DeMint, (soon to be) formerly a U.S. Senator, is now more powerful and relevant than ever as a think tank hack. It's all part of the New Way.

A fun sidelight is the brethren's excitement that Nikki Haley might name black conservative Tim Scott to replace DeMint. Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag makes the case:

Unlike President Obama, Scott has an inspiring life story that happens to be true. Unlike Obama he was not a “red diaper baby” surrounded by Marxists from his first breath. Scott was actually born poor and unlike the president embraced the American Dream, running a business and achieving upward mobility before entering politics.

In the quest for power, racism can be tabled but slander and bullshit never sleep. At least Vadum doesn't mind he's black; check out the commenters at American Renaissance -- they get really mad at Republicans when they're not supplying them with white candidates.

UPDATE. My favorite part of the whole thing is the Reasonoids telling us what a libertarian DeMint secretly is, but they have been outdone by Timothy P. Carney at the Washington Examiner, who headlines, I swear to God, "Jim DeMint was the libertarian hero of the Senate."

For libertarians, Christian conservative pro-lifer Jim DeMint was the best thing to come through the Senate in decades. DeMint, quitting early to run the conservative Heritage Foundation, embodied an underappreciated fact of life in Washington: The politicians who most consistently defend economic liberty are the cultural conservatives.

Other prime quotes: "the big-government side in today's abortion battles is the 'pro-choicers'"; "DeMint opposes gay marriage, but again, the U.S. Senate hasn't had much to say on the issue"; and "Traditional morality and limited government aren't enemies. They're friends." Your chucklehead buddy who thinks he's kind of a libertarian because he wants to free the weed and misses the Drew Carey Show is going to be disappointed to hear that it was really all about tax breaks for the wealthy.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. At Zero Hedge we hear from Brandon Martin, who believes the Republicans and the Democrats are colluding to make America socialist; that there is a secret "Liberty Movement" majority afoot which would have swept the polls in 2012 if only Ron Paul had run (then why didn't he, one wonders), but because he didn't they contented themselves instead with ousting RINOs like Allen West; etc. Key passage:

Second, if you subscribe to the well documented idea that elections, at least at the federal level, are entirely staged (which I do)...

At PJ Media one Vik Rubenfeld weighs the traditional reasons conservatives give for Obama's victory (including "dependency on big government handouts on the part of some pro-Obama voters" and "mainstream media bias") and, while he finds much merit in these, cottons to this one:

For decades, adults have been told, and more importantly our children are now taught, that America owes penance due to a past history of racism. It is inevitable that this would play a key part in the reelection of the nation’s first black president.

Rubenfeld concludes that "some percentage of pro-Obama voters decided that putting racism in America’s past would be a deciding factor in their vote," referring perhaps to the voter survey that took place in his mind when he saw a white girl reading a Toni Morrison book.

Over at the Wall Street Journal we get the high-class version of this from James Taranto, who tells us once again about "the increasingly open hostility toward whites from mainstream left-liberals." (Does that mean that if race riots come back, I get to loot? Sweet.)

At Glenn Beck's The Blaze, we get a Kulturkampf kvetch from one Richard Mgrdechian, who tells us "HOW SHORT-SIGHTED LEADERSHIP HAS SABOTAGED CONSERVATIVE POP CULTURE," whatever that is. In 2012 "Republicans once again missed the boat on popular culture," he says. His solution (besides the customary hundreds of words about the need to "leverage the power of popular culture"):

The way I do this is through music. You might have heard of the band I manage – it’s called Madison Rising. We’re somewhat of an anomaly in the music industry, being a pro-American rock band and all.

That's just one example. There's also... well, that's the only example he gives, actually. Did he mention he manages a band called Madison Rising?

Meanwhile Joel Kotkin asks, What's the Matter with Connecticut? Don't you blue states realize it was in your economic best interest to vote for Mitt Romney and the Republicans, who were "the ones most likely to fall on their swords to maintain lower rates for the the mass affluent class in the bluest states and metros"? Yet you voted for Obama! You guys'll be sorry! (Kotkin has been lecturing on the imminent death of the blue states for years; he's basically the guy who expects you to fail and, when you succeed, concludes that you must secretly be miserable about it.)

The bad news is these lunatics live among us. The good news is that Republicans ain't getting their thumbs out of their asses anytime soon.

STILL ON MOOCHER PATROL. Remember when Virginia wanted to test its welfare recipients for drugs, then found out it would be an outrageous money-loser for the state and backed off? Well, another election has come and gone and Republican members are reviving the idea, because they've found a way to lose less money on it:

"We got hung up last year on the cost, and it seems that we determined the costs aren't as great as we were told last year," said Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, the bill's sponsor. "There are new methods of screening and testing used other places, and some are practical and could be applied here"...

The [original] legislation failed... after the state estimated it would cost $1.5 million to administer the tests, compared with the estimated $229,000 that would be saved by stripping benefits from those who test positive...

Republicans believe a statewide testing system is necessary to prevent taxpayer money from going to drug users.

"You're going to have some abuse no matter what you do, but you can curtail it to where it's minimal," said Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell.

You don't learn till way far into the Washington Examiner story that "before Florida's [similar] law was suspended by the courts, officials found that only 2 percent of welfare recipients tested positive for drugs." Heritage Foundation wonks have been pushing the alternate line that drug testing keeps people out of the welfare system, which they describe as a savings, however speculative.

But saving money is the least of it; what they really want to do is grind their heels a little harder in the faces of the indigent. Their main argument is that welfare is not part of our common obligations to one another, but the property of Them That Gots, to be grudgingly dispensed with ever-more-onerous conditions to those creatures whose subhumanity is proven by their bad luck.

Whether they're commanding the poor to pee in a cup or demanding that the childless procreate to fulfill the will of Heaven, always remember that these people are not animated by a desire to realize a common good, but by the need to assert their superiority against all evidence.

GOIN' UP THE COUNTRY. I am indebted to Travis Gettys for pointing this out to me, and wondering how I missed it: a wingnut separatist housing project!

Patriots understand that an epic storm is coming to America.

Economic collapse is imminent. Disruptions of Just-in-Time supply lines will lead America into chaos. Violence along racial, ethnic, religious and economic class lines will bring forth famine, disease and a fundamental reset of life in America. 

A group of Patriots have decided to build a community off the most likely lines of peril, a bastion of Jefferson's Rightful Liberty where we may remain safe, warm, healthy and comfortable while American society suffers the inevitable destruction that must accompany the decades of degenerating morality of our Countrymen... 

The Citadel will have between 3,500 and 5,000 households within the walls, with a single gate permitting access. The Citadel is not to be a closed society, instead a refuge for genuine Patriots who wish to live without neighbors who are Liberals and Establishment political ideologues, open for tourists who will be welcomed into our town to visit our planned Firearms Museum, shop in our Town Center, stay in a B&B or hotel while vacationing and exploring the wonderful skiing, hunting and fishing opportunities in the area, and many other attractions we will offer.

 Takers (excuse me, makers) will have their choice of "a house, townhome or condo," located in the "mountains of Idaho." If you get involved now, you can help them design their coat of arms.

Cost? Aside from the blood of patriots, not mentioned. Nor have they claimed to own the land on which to build the project yet. The Citadel is being launched in part by proceeds from assault weapon sales, and by membership fees ("Your credit card will be billed monthly by PayPal"), but we're sure if you're interested they'll tell you how much gold bullion a place in the promised land will cost.

Also, how hardcore is this: The scheme wasn't inspired by the recent election. The site has a blog which suggests that they've been at it since September at least. Among the authors' musings:

The post below discusses the very real liklihood of refugee children who will come to our gates. Of course we will give as many sanctuary as possible. What of their adults? Perhaps Liberals who did not prepare and only in the Hell of civil war truly understand that their values are stupid? Do we accept their children and tell the parents to walk back toward Hell? I have no intention of sharing my bread with a stupid Liberal who is dying because of his/her stupidity. But his kid may be a different story...

'specially if she's good breeding stock for future patriot families. Now, what will social life be like at the Citadel?

We'll have some great pubs with local brews, walking and bicycle paths, a firing range you don't have to drive a half hour or more to get to. Maybe a hill with a rope tow for sliding down on inner tubes in the winter time. Militia training will also have a unifying social aspect to it.

Sounds kinda like a cross between Schlitterbahn and a jihad training camp.

Also, the proprietors will be outfitting only the exterior of the development, "so that each Citadel resident can control each and every detail of their home," raising the fascinating possibility of a Bauhaus survivalist compound. And while they "are NOT attempting to replace existing government or existing laws," their version of co-op board rules, The Patriot Agreement, is rather grand, described as a "plan to survive" that will "improve our chances of survival and minimize our need to involve 'outside authority' in our affairs." And their lobby security is a militia.

There's plenty more: One of the Citadel's founding fathers appears to be someone called Kerodin,  who is involved in a beef with a guy at Sipsey Street Irregulars, another lunatic group, and others. Internecine quarrels seem to be an indispensable part of such enterprises, and so far even survivalist board posters can't be counted on to support the project. In short, it's kind of like Bill Whittle's Wingnut Sky World, but with a much higher chance of a hostage situation. Clusterfuck fans and federal law enforcement agents, this is one to watch!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the news that the U.S. birth rate is way down and how rightbloggers have reacted to it. Short version: This is Obama's fault, and Republicans will cure it with morality lectures.

HERE COMES A REGULAR. Having been interested in conservatives who appear to have been driven mad by the election, I haven't spent enough time on conservatives who were quite mad beforehand. So I went and looked at The Anchoress. Here's what she thinks happened November 6:

Faced with a challenger whose most daring political strategy was to cultivate vagueness in his relentless pursuit of all things beige, and an incumbent gleefully willing to launch a daily barrage of splattering, oozing color bombs heedless of what or whom they hit–or whether their tints were environmentally toxic or even true–the voters chose “sound and fury” over “nothing.”

I think by "color bombs" she means Obama attacked beige Romney with his toxic coloredness. Actually I don't know what the fuck she's saying. Nor did I have much luck with this:

For many, and for me, the election signaled the crossing of a Rubicon of sorts: twin-towering notions of Exceptionalism and Indispensability toppled for less conspicuous walk-ups of Isolationism and Nanny Statism; the running out of a clock, all illusions lain aside.

My best guess is: Once America was butch and ruled, but now it's self-involved and doesn't want to engage the world at all, sort of like Ferdinand the Bull. Also, twin-toweredly, 9/11 Changed Everything, slightly used and yours for 90% off. (She said something similar shortly after the election, too -- that "for young adults and the generations coming up the backbone of conservative theory—rugged individualism, privacy, minimal government—is a complete non-sequitur"; now we were no longer right with Reagan, and so must reap the whirlwind.)

We begin, I think, by giving simple thanks to God for the election—without conditions or sly assumptions that we know anything or are somehow colluding with Providence. 

Here I was on firmer ground. From experience I knew that whenever our Mean Fake Nun puts on the wimple of piety, as surely as Gomorrah follows Sodom there will follow some viciousness. Sure enough, in the very next line --

That sounds counterintuitive, I know, but whenever I think a circumstance precludes gratitude, I remember the story of two sisters offering prayerful thanks for the fleas that infested their barracks in a Nazi concentration camp...

One of the benefits of well-drawn villains is that they spur us to examine ourselves for their flaws; when I am mindful enough, and I catch myself being passive-aggressive, I take the example of The Anchoress to warn me off it. Next I'll try taping a picture of Jonah Goldberg to my fridge.

A PLEASANT SURPRISE. Here's a further development on the "Alinsky! I'll show you Alinsky" theme, taken up by conservatives who realize they have an image problem and will accept any crazy explanation for it except their own actions. It's from J.R. Dunn at American Thinker. He thinks conservatives don't know how to do "the dark arts of image manipulation" (Bob Haldeman chuckles in Hell) and don't fight back when mocked by liberals. Also, traitors like Peggy Noonan and David Brooks sell them out, etc. That's all SOP, but this bit is, so far as I have noticed, an innovation:

...the third major class of response, that of embracing the stereotype, of taking it on as a kind of costume, and even pushing it farther than the left themselves. I knew a noted spokesman for one of the major conservative media organizations who used to appear at public lectures with two heavy-set young men standing at either side of the lectern wearing camo fatigues and sunglasses, thus turning himself from conservative spokesman into Benito Mussolini. This same kind of behavior can be found at all levels of the movement from comment threads all the way to the top. Rush indulges in it all too often. Ann Coulter has made a career of it. While definitely a crowd-pleaser, it is, in the end, self-defeating. These stereotypes were constructed by the left for a reason -- to manipulate the public at large, ignorant of political subtleties and unfamiliar with doctrine, into certain visceral reactions to conservatives and their ideas. They were created to destroy conservatives. Why play along with them?

Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are playing into liberals' hands by feeding conservatives red meat on a daily basis and making millions of dollars off it. I like to imagine Coulter and Limbaugh reading this, becoming guilt-wracked, and returning to the sober, Cambridge Union Society mode of discourse they used to do, back when it was all about the music.

Mainly I want to know who the Mussolini guy was. I'm guessing Michael Fumento.

Oh, give Dunn credit for offering the brethren practical Alinksy-fu lessons:

Calling Sandra Fluke a "slut" merely generated sympathy for her. Turning her into a clown uncertain what to do with a condom if one was handed to her would have shut the whole campaign down in short order. (How about the Facebook "Sandra Fluke Condom Support Group"?)

The next four years are going to be awesome.

ANOTHER DAY IN BIZARRO WORLD. At the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto tells us several ways in which black people are oppressing white people. For example, the Obama campaign sent a survey to the President's constituents, asking "Which constituency groups do you identify yourself with? Check all that apply" -- and there was no box for Whites! "The danger for the country," says Taranto, "is that a racially polarized electorate will produce a hostile, balkanized culture." About three hundred years too late to worry about that, buddy.

Taranto also pulls the you-were-bigots-first argument:

For a century after the Civil War, Southern white supremacists were an important part of the Democratic Party coalition. They were defeated and discredited in the 1960s, and the Democrats, still the party of identity politics, switched their focus to various nonwhite minorities.

Since history is like a game of musical chairs, this wiley Democrat shape-shifting left Republicans no choice but to play the role of Racist Assholes from the 60s onward. And people keep blaming Republicans for it! The white man is truly the white man of liberal fascism.

You know who else isn't to blame? Rightwing Assholes. Andrew Klavan explains that when Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh say "retard" and "slut," it's only because they're righteously indignant over liberal lies. Even this, they might have borne with good grace and perhaps an occasional "faggot" or "feminazi," but the damn liberals provoke them still further with their decorum: "They don’t use words like retard and slut. They don’t raise their voices. You could invite them to dinner without embarrassing yourself." Now what self-respecting sociopathic teenager wouldn't go ballistic over that? And once again, conservatives get blamed for something that isn't their fault.

Meanwhile intellectual titans Glenn Reynolds, Nick Gillespie, and Ross Douthat all say America is like The Hunger Games because there are rich people in Washington, while in giant forced labor camps like Salt Lake City and Dallas everyone lives off hardtack and dreams of a day when the white man's vote is worth something again. Extra credit to Ole Perfesser Reynolds for making this half-hearted attempt to shore up his crap metaphor:

Even in upscale parts of L.A. or New York, you see boarded up storefronts and other signs that the economy isn't what it used to be.

Yeah, someone told me they saw Michael Bloomberg the other day fighting a bum over a dead pigeon.

So, to recap: Liberals destroyed America, then bamboozled citizens into thinking the conservatives did it, leaving conservatives no choice but to act like jerks and write very poorly. Or, as I like to think of it, another day in paradise.

UPDATE. As a bonus, your moment of Goldstein, celebrating a spike in gun sales:

...at a certain point, when you can survive the loss of heat or the shutdown of an electrical grid for two weeks — when you can provide for your family and keep them safe and protected while all those who rely on government run about confused, carping, demanding, frustrated... all attempts to ironize away the concept of self-reliance and rugged individualism in favor of the glories of an overarching and protective federal government, a campaign the left has for years carried forth in the academy, in government, and through popular culture, dissipate like the insubstantial rhetorical mists they’ve always been. 

And once that fog lifts, people may once again choose liberty over tyranny.

I expect some day Jeffy will give us that post-structural version of The Turner Diaries we've been hoping for.  Or maybe his greatest achievement will be the day he sees some tweakers in a hostage situation on the TV news, yells "THIS IS IT!" like Gary Oldman in JFK, and runs stripped to the waist out his front door into a police ambush.

UPDATE 2. Comments are as usual magnificent (come on Foster, you ain't even looking). "Yeah," says Jimcima, "it really sucked when the 99 cent store that used to be between Bulgari and Tiffany down on Rodeo went out of business." zuzu and others wonder when liberals stopped being potty-mouths. (Never, says I! Even now I am working on a cognate of "slut" and "retard," a sort of ultimate weapon of Alinskyite ridicule; "sluttard," my prototype, is too cumbersome for my flow, but maybe I can train the masses to accept it, like they accepted "Thee" for "The.")

Goldstein, as usual, is a great source of inspiration. Fats Durston reacts to "attempts to ironize away the concept of self-reliance and rugged individualism":

God, if I see another movie with Bruce Willis as a caring federal bureaucrat whose agency defeats the villains with targeted food stamp distribution, I swear I am going to make my own indie film where, for once, the climactic scene will be a mano-y-mano fistfight.

Really, I should just front-page the comments and hide the posts.

DA, DA. WE LAUGH! At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson:

Two of the most interesting stars in the world of conservative broadcasting have newly published books timed for the for the Christmas season.  Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld...

Yeah, I know, fellas, but wait:

...Michael Savage and Greg Gutfeld are both masters of ridicule, a tool extensively deployed by the left but too little by the right, especially its more respectable regions. The left, after all, was instructed by Saul Alinsky in Rule Number 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."

Once again we're on the Bizarro Alinsky planet, where conservatives tell us that liberals only make fun of conservatives because Alinsky told them to -- which stands to reason, since why else would anyone tease demigods like Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro? Why, it would be like teasing Margaret Dumont! -- and pledge to fight back against this traitorous mockery by cooking up some Alinsky #5 of their own.

But it's an uphill battle, friends. Lifson quotes some Gutfield humor, and in the ensuing uncomfortable silence tells us that "the mix of irony and insight is what makes Gutfeld dangerous to the left. His juxtapositions of liberals' rhetoric with their behavior make them appear ridiculous." If that doesn't have you busting a gut, consider this: "The liberal media, however, is not anxious to increase [Gutfield's] visibility beyond Fox, because he is capable of reaching impressionable young minds that might be questioning the indoctrination they have received in the nation's educational system. " Now it's funny, right?

I'll spare you the Michael Savage encomium, though I must mention that Lifson considers him "the greatest storyteller in modern broadcasting" but quotes none of his allegedly brilliant work -- though he does tell us that Savage tried to get a PhD from Berkeley, "only to discover that because he was not a woman or a favored minority, an academic career would be denied to him," which should be proof enough of his brilliance.

The creepy thing -- well, the creepiest; there are several levels of ick here -- is that Lifson seems to want to tell us what he likes about a couple of artists, but the only attributes he can convincingly describe are their politics and their grievances. I don't know what possibility is more chilling: That he might think that's what art is about, or that he might think that's what everything is about.

BRINGING A KNIFE TO A CULTURE WAR. Conservatives of the what-went-wrong school are still working the culture angle. While some are predicting they'll win hearts and minds with Steve Crowder, others are still more confident; Sonny Bunch at the Wall Street Journal points to conservative gains in the crucial field of pop culture studies, offering Paul A. Cantor's schoolly The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture in evidence.

Once upon a time, the book tells Bunch, statist TV producers gave us propaganda like "Have Gun Will Travel," in which Richard Boone "sets himself up as superior to the community he is helping, imposing his own solution on it and often expressing open contempt for the people who run it." (Sounds a little like John Wayne talking about High Noon.) Now look how Lockean "Deadwood" is, how "Martin Scorsese's 'The Aviator' provides as clean a rejection of crony capitalism as exists in entertainment." Plus, did you ever hear of Edgar G. Ulmer? No? Then this book is for you!

Bunch's conclusion:

...the author's castigation of "elites who want to keep the American people in line" and who thus "fear the explosive energy of popular culture" underscores how much has changed since Mr. Cantor first mounted his defense of pop culture in "Gilligan Unbound." We live in a world in which "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is routinely taught in colleges and critical groupthink holds that "television shows are the new novels." The elites, if they haven't quite lost, are certainly on the ropes.

It's finally happened: The right's Bizarro Alinsky fetish had led it on a parallel long march through the institutions. Only instead of taking over the history and literature departments, they want to teach bored graduate students how  to "read" crap sitcoms and prestige cable shows. That'll show those elites with their long, boring books!

Either that or it's just a recruitment device: Hey kids, are the usual wingnut welfare sinecures too demanding for you? Enlist in the Pop Culture Corps! Beats workin'.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the miserable rightblogger Thanksgiving. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of guys.

Among the outtakes: National Review's sour holiday symposium, named, believe it or not, "Gratitude, Even in November 2012." Among the authors' reflections: "This year’s unsettling election results disturb the souls of most with whom I keep company"; "'Happy Thanksgiving — not that it is very happy,' I grumbled earlier today on my morning coffee run to the only other person I know to be a registered Republican in my Northwest Washington neighborhood," and other such bitchery. Special credit to Michael Novak, who writes, "experience shows that Providence, in failing to grant our prayers, normally has wiser things in mind. In a way, our present loss may be a reprieve for the Party of Liberty, such that it does not have to inherit the damage that is surely coming down on this nation during the next four years... Sometimes nations need chastisement before they get the point." It's always clarifying when one of these assholes prays for God to smite America so that they'll do what he wants.

KISS OF DEATH. David Brooks tells us about the "young writers and bloggers" whom he believes will rescue conservatism from its doldrums. I feel it my duty to fill uninitiated readers in on those Brooks pets of whom I have some experience.

Paleoconservatives. The American Conservative has become one of the more dynamic spots on the political Web. Writers like Rod Dreher and Daniel Larison tend to be suspicious of bigness: big corporations, big government, a big military, concentrated power and concentrated wealth.

Rod Dreher has told his readers that the Catholic Church child-raping scandals are really the fault of liberals ("One wonders if the leadership of the national Catholic churches... assimilated any of this so-called progressivism in the way they thought about sexuality"); that he keeps a gun in his house because he's afraid of gay people; that he thinks a bride who shows a tattoo on her wedding day is a slut; that "I probably have, re: fundamental morals, more in common with the first 500 people I'd meet in Cairo, Damascus or Tehran than the first 500 people I'd meet in Park City, UT, during festival time," etc.

Also, Dreher defines his visits to the gym as "living out a conservative principle of taking personal responsibility and making hard but necessary changes to live within my means." Here's Dreher on integration: "People -- black, white, brown, rich, middle-class, poor, Christian, secular, etc. -- naturally want to be around people like themselves." And Lord, how he hates gay people.

I've been covering this guy for years, and if there's a more miserable, small-minded God-botherer out there I hope I never come across him. This is Brooks' leadoff hitter.

Daniel Larison's all right. I assume Brooks included him as a red herring.

Lower-Middle Reformists. Reihan Salam, a writer for National Review, E21 and others, recently pointed out that there are two stories about where the Republican Party should go next. There is the upper-middle reform story: Republicans should soften their tone on the social issues to win over suburban voters along the coasts.

This sounds more reasonable than the Salam I've read, who believes that to reform American culture the Right Sort must "outbreed the people you hate most"; compares the fining of BP for environmental crime to the slaughter of Native Americans; argues that flexible work arrangements for women in the workplace are the real tyranny, and woman-stay-home-take-care-of-baby the real freedom, etc. Plus he writes shit like this:

This leads me to my central fixation, which is the notion that most of our political and social conflicts are best understood as gang wars between people with different kinds of capital — people with cultural capital waging war on people with economic capital, or people with erotic capital deploying it to gain access to economic or cultural or social capital, and so forth.

This guy deserves not a plug in the Times, but a wedgie.

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has argued for family-friendly tax credits and other measures that reinforce middle-class dignity.

When it was pointed out to him that Red State family dysfunction was worse than Blue State family dysfunction, Ponnuru blamed it on black people. He is also the author of a book called The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. 

Soft Libertarians. Some of the most influential bloggers on the right, like Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok and Megan McArdle...

Aaaaagggh! I give up. This reminds me of that bit from Annie Hall: "They give awards for that kind of music? I thought just earplugs."

UPDATE. I guess I should point to some McArdle Greatest Hits for the out-of-town crowd. OK, here's McArdle on why helping is futile ("It's all too common for well-meaning middle-class people to think that if the poor just had the same stuff we do, they wouldn't be poor any more"); on who the real victim is between the riches and the poors ("I doubt Occupy Wall Street will be assuaged by learning that the top 0.1% now only receive 8% of the income earned in the US, even if that number is the lowest it's been since 2003"); on how the exportation of manufacturing jobs to Chinese slave labor camps and resulting loss of jobs in the U.S. is a great trade because we get cheap crap ("I say to people, 'Why are you upset that the Chinese want to give us excessively cheap goods?' This is like a free gift from them to us. And we should be like, thank you, happy birthday!"); why giving health care to geezers is a big rip-off ("Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health"), etc.

UPDATE II. Commenter mortimer makes a point about Brooks' full list: "Heather Mac Donald is 56, Tyler Cowen is 50, Dreher is 45, and most of the rest of Brooks' "young writers and bloggers" are in their mid- to late 40's. Even little Janie Galt is about to turn 40. .. If these boys and their ideas get any longer in the tooth they'll have to be put down."

Yeah. Despite Brooks' guff about how "these diverse writers did not grow up in the age of Reagan and are not trying to recapture it," they all clearly proceed from Reaganite premises: The market is the ultimate good, the poor are poor due to cultural rather than economic factors, and you better be nice to the fundamentalists because they're loaded.

But what really young jacks could Brooks have included? There's always the Kids from McArdle, Jane Galt's replacement crew during her frequent vacations, including Courtney Knapp, author of "Let's Abolish Tipping" (though to be fair she just wants to social-engineer the restaurant world, not stiff waiters for thought crimes like the Go Galt crowd), Tim B. Lee, who thinks toll roads are slavery, Katherine Mangu-Ward, who applauds the "university" Wal-Mart created for its employees (she went to Yale) and wonders why we consider jobs in America better than jobs in China, et alia.  Brooks wouldn't have to worry about them growing out of it -- as long as wingnut welfare exists, they'll have no motivation to do so.

THE DEAD-ENDERS. Last weekend, as dutifully reported by Eliana Johnson of National Review, Congressnut Allen West was all defiance, telling his boob-base the Dummycrats were stealing his election:

I spent the weekend in West Palm Beach at David Horowitz’s “Restoration Weekend,” where West was a featured speaker. He told the crowd on Saturday that he considers his fight historic. “What is happening here in St. Lucie County has never really happened before,” he said, in that a conservative is standing up against fraudulent election practices.

Congressman West insisted he’s in this to win it, assuring the audience, “We will not allow an Al Franken-Norm Coleman to happen here.” In that 2008 Senate race, Norm Coleman conceded after 238 days of recounts and court challenges.

He actually hoped those big-ticket Restoration Weekend dopes would go for a battle cry of Avenge Norm Coleman! But no big checks were forthcoming, apparently, and West has shut his circus down.

So, time to play the gracious loser and move on, right? Here's how West chose to play it:

“While there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results and the actions of the St. Lucie County and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections rightly raise questions in my mind and for many voters, after much analysis and (Sunday’s) recount in St. Lucie County, our legal team does not believe there are enough over-counted, under-counted or fraudulent votes to change the outcome of the election,” West’s statement said...

“While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change,” West said.

Translation: The Democrats cheated their way to a legitimate victory.

Go read it: The whole thing reeks. That West says of his opponent, Patrick Murphy, "I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own,” shows only that he can be subtler about being an asshole than the rest of his statement indicates.

As recently as the 2000 Presidential election, we could expect candidates to concede even a challenged election result with some grace and an invitation to bind up the nation's (or the district's) wounds. Hell, even Norm Coleman did better than West. I even think Carl Paladino did better.

So why did West go out like a bum? Because in his world, the Tea Party world in which the President is illegitimate and his supporters are all spongers and traitors, going out like a bum is a badge of honor. What percentage  is there for them in taking defeat, as the old saying had it, like a man? Then you're playing their game -- which makes you a RINO, a collaborator, one who cooperates in a system proven to be corrupt by the fact that it doesn't always yield the returns that you want. So turn over the tables, smash the bar -- no game you don't win is legit.

And they're only going to get worse.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the new Chick-fil-A, Papa John's. Rightbloggers' worship of asshole CEOs who brag about screwing their employees because Obama Sux is one of their most mystifying traits. It's like they don't want to attract normal people. Maybe normal people make them nervous.

Among the outtakes: PaleoWriter not only rah-rahed Papa John's, but took pictures of sold-out Hostess displays and declared the company's closing was the result of union greed (which you good people know is bullshit). PW's headline was "Hostess Shrugged," which suggests an even more ridiculous version of Atlas Shrugged in which crap snackmakers and venture capitalists say, alright moochers, you don't appreciate us so we're going to allow our brands to be bought by another company and reissued -- then you'll be sorry!

CONSERVATIVE OUTREACH CONTINUES. The "Ladyparts! Huh! We'll show you ladyparts" campaign for women's votes spreads to the Daily Caller:

“In his first press conference since the election, President Barack Obama challenged Republicans who are calling for Watergate-style hearings on the terrorist attack in Benghazi to ‘go after me.’ Obama defended U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose remarks on Sunday morning news shows five days after the Sept. 11 attack have been widely criticized by Republicans..."

But did you catch the sexism? Can you imagine the president infantilizing a male cabinet secretary that way? He basically suggested Rice couldn’t fight her own battles. She needed a man to step in and fend off her critics. Mr. President, you just set back women a 100 years.

My eyes stopped working good after that, so
I may have fantasized the later section where the Caller accuses Obama of holding a door open for Hillary Clinton.

UPDATE. Holy shit this is apparently a Thing: Fox News feminazi Kirsten Powers rages over Obama's "chauvinistic" defense of Rice, possibly burns bra. She also denounces the lapdog press over Benghazi, says "the White House press corps should have flown into a frenzy." Solution: Bring back Jeff Gannon!

WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A CULTURE WAR, EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE A REVOLVER. More of that culture-war guff I mentioned in my post-election column is cropping up among the tighty righties. Michael Auslin at National Review goes full Goebbels:

Without getting too bogged down in esoterica, it seems uncontroversial to say that, at the end of the day, politics is culture (and of course, political systems reflect the cultures from which they grow). If that’s the case, then we will be in ever greater danger at the national level unless we start winning on the cultural battlefield.

This is where they get the ugly term "culture war" in the first place -- they think of art as propaganda by definition, existing for no other reason but to advance an ideological agenda, and so see all artistic efforts as part of a war effort. And you're either with them or against them.

The further Auslin gets in his diatribe, the more obvious this becomes: He adopts a wounded, we-are-too-childish-foolish-for-this-world tone, and his self-pity pushes him into a fantasy of vengeance:

There’s also a huge temptation to play dirty, the way Ted Kennedy and his ilk did against Robert Bork; I’m not so sure that’s wrong. They play dirty against us in academia, and mock us on television. We hold ourselves to higher standards, but that’s not much help in an increasingly liberal, dependent society. Maybe we shouldn’t flinch from playing dirty (or dirtier). It certainly hasn’t delegitimized liberals among their supporters. But we have to attack their ideals, their dangerous utopianism, and not the individuals. We shouldn’t pull any punches in highlighting their hypocrisy or their radicalism, the way that McCain pulled every punch in 2008.

They "mock us on television." All bets are off! And this time we won't pull any punches -- release the Crowder!

Someone send this poor guy a Bob Ross paint kit and some valium.

NEW LEADERSHIP FOR A NEW CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. Jeff Goldstein:

...so long as this site stays live, I’ll be talking about reclaiming our constitutional birthrights. About fighting tyranny, whether it comes in the jackboots of a leftist administrative state or little fuzzy bunny slippers looking out for my kids’ dietary needs... 

This country is, in my honest opinion — and said without an ounce of intended drama — done. Gone. But that doesn’t mean I have to stop fighting. 

I take solace in the fact that many of us are left who won’t let the conclusion of this coup come easily.

Though he thinks the country no longer exists, Goldstein approves the movement to secede from the former United States via online petitions -- "few believe anything will come of it, though I signed all that I could find" -- and claims counter-petitioners who called the neo-Confederates "mentally deficient" and advocated "more education in our state to eradicate their disease" were not just making  harmless jokes at the expense of same, but "wish to control us, take our liberties, and force us into a kind of 'progressive,' happy-faced indentured servitude... [they] offer as a solution to the disease of American exceptionalism more leftwing propaganda driven through a union-controlled, heavily leftwing education system."

William Teach of Right Wing News also thinks making fun of him and his buddies is fascist: "Progressives (read 'fascists') hate when people other than themselves are accorded First Amendment Rights."

"Given the great divide in the country, I would love to leave the liberals to their leeching ways without a host," fantasizes Freedom Eden. And don't think she hasn't thought it through: "I'd like Wisconsin to secede, but how could we leave Milwaukee and Madison behind? Milwaukee would be easy enough to drop because it's located on the state's eastern border. Madison would be more messy. Maybe we could get the Madison libs to move to Milwaukee..." See, they've learned a few things since Fort Sumter. No more waiting for war to carve out new states -- just quarantine the moochers of the major cities, and you'll have sustainable mini-Valhallas -- just like East Germany and West Berlin!

In case you were wondering what comes after Karl Rove, here ya go. See you in 2016!

AND I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO WRITE A PUNCHLINE. I Own The World found out that in some Philadelphia precincts with a nearly all-black electorate, no one voted for Mitt Romney. Havoc! he cries, and lets slip the dogs of derr: "Obama is not a legally elected president," and --

Is no one going to do anything? 

Where are our elected officials? Must we storm Capitol Hill and wake up our representatives? Are they going to force us to turn to mob rule? I’m ready.

He invents a stupid "Obama Resistance" logo and polls the delegation: "Anyone else have any ideas?" Some comedian in the comments steps up:

Um… I guess I could dress up as a giant vagina?

Raise a toast to this patriot tonight. He's got the right attitude.

UPDATE. Small edit for better set-up; thanks JennOfArk for the close reading.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the brethren's reaction to the election. All I can say is: They some wack-ass motherfuckers.

MINORITY OUTREACH, REPUBLICAN EDITION. Enraged by pro-immigrant conservatism of the Heather Mac Donald, torture enthusiast Andrew C. McCarthy starts yelling about "Islamists," then drags Hispanics into it -- leading to this:

In point of fact, Islamists, like many Hispanic political activists (think: La Raza), are statists... Islamists, like many Hispanic activists, are the vanguard of a different culture that they passionately believe is superior to the culture of individual liberty. 

There is no single-issue quick-fix to the challenge of ushering them into the Republican coalition. Rather, there is a choice to be made: either convince them that they are wrong, meaning make the unapologetic case for liberty and limited government; or fundamentally change who you are, meaning accommodate their statism.

Translation: Mooslims and Messicans can't get into this party till they prove their Americanism to Andrew C. McCarthy! I'm beginning to think John Judis and Ruy Teixeira were right.

IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON AND SACRAMENTALIZE THE SODOMY! I think it was Conan the Barbarian who said that what is best in life is to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the wingnuts. I'm not much on crushing and driving -- a friend to all mankind, me -- and I even sympathize with rightbloggers' post-electoral distress and despair at the turn of the tide, having felt it myself.

But I can admit to enjoying this portrayal by George Weigel of what Obama 2 portends for defiled America:

The American culture war has been markedly intensified, as those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention will have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power, thus deepening the danger of what a noted Bavarian theologian calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

It's like he knows us, right? I like the "coercive state power" bit, too -- gives it that women-in-prison movie frisson.

UPDATE. "Finally," says Leeds man in comments, "the long-awaited Rivers of Santorum speech." Dex gives thumbs-up to Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "the most dreaded analyst of them all!"

THE LADYPARTS ELECTION. I said yesterday that I didn't know who'd win, and it wasn't because I doubted the oracle of West 43rd Street. It was because, in a weird way perhaps related to my long attention to wingnuts and the strange empathy with them that has engendered, I took one of their points: That a party with a raidable coalition whose champion presided over a weak economy had to be vulnerable.

That was why conservatives were so gloomy and doomy in 2008: They knew Bush had wrecked the party, and all the hobgoblins that emerged from the wreckage -- from Mark Foley to Sarah Palin -- made the opening for Democrats so big that they could even beat them with a black guy.

That was weird, because for years boogiemen were something GOP apparatchiks tied to the other party. I assumed that in 2012, as Obama hadn't improved things much in the here and now -- yeah, I know about all the new jobs, and they're not enough; the fundamental economic weaknesses and inequalities I've been griping about since the Bush years are still there -- the GOP would have room to Willie Horton and Al Sharpton their way into the amygdalae of enough gomers to win.

But a weird thing happened: During the campaign, instead of tying Democrats to weirdos, the Republicans generated a flood of their own. Again! And here conservatives turned out to be a big, fat liability for their cause. As Republican after Republican made crackpot comments about rape, contraception, and abortion, the GOP's rightwing brain trust unfailingly followed up and said, yeah, that's what we believe, that's what we've always believed.

And because the conventional wisdom had always been that autonomous, sexually active women and the men who love them are just a fringe constituency, instead of questioning the wisdom of attacking them, the big brains questioned the wisdom of having Sandra Fluke speak at the Democratic Convention.

I always knew this issue was a winner for the Democrats, but now I'm beginning to think that it affected everything else as well. That is, Romney's crackpot economic and environmental policies might have had more traction with voters if so many of them were not convinced that he represented and was listening to a bunch of lunatics who were totally out of touch with how human beings live. In tough times, you might go for a small-government reformer who says he has a plan to turn things around if you trust him. Americans have bought bigger grifters than Romney; a lot of them haven't even figured that the nice old man who unleashed the markets in the 1980s set them up for the hard times we have now.

Who knows what a Romney campaign might have achieved if he'd decisively cut loose the Erick Erickson contingent and run like a man trying to be governor of Massachusetts? The question was moot before the first GOP caucus vote. That was their problem.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS, I ENJOY WATCHING FOX NEWS. It was nice to turn it on just after Ohio was called and hear that lady in white talk about how the Democrats unfairly painted Romney as a corporate raider, and the guy with the beard talk about how Americans still think the government is doing too much, and the lady in green question whether Obama can work with the House of Representatives etc. 

Best of all was Karl Rove insisting that it wasn't really over. Then, like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now talking about the Vietnamese villagers who cut off their children's arms, I saw the genius of it: To have the whole nation hanging onto the word of Karl Rove! A man who, in a just world, would be buried in unconsecrated earth, or in the dock in Den Haag. 

Thank you, Fox News. You've made my night.

GO FORTH AND AVENGE NATE SILVER! As on most Election Days, I am emotionally prepared for defeat (being a Democrat will do that for you). The merry lads of Breitbartland, being too busy with goat sacrifices to do any reporting, ask "citizen journalists" to go out to the precincts and "tell us if you see any funny business," so if you notice someone outside the local middle school screaming about Black Panthers you'll know where they came from. I wish you all a happy franchise and not too bad of a hangover, and many the best man not lose too badly.

UPDATE. At 7 am, poll opening time in Takoma Park, there are 200 people waiting to vote:

That's one end of the looping line. Here's the other:

And I hate to tell ya, haters, but it don't look like a GOP crowd.

UPDATE 2. Election Day story from the Washington Times: "Gentle' Obama wins Islamist endorsement." It's the November 6 Surprise! Quick, lads, moar voter fraud! AVENGE!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the horrible final days of the 2012 campaign. I'll sure be glad when this election's over. Well, actually, probably not, but you know what I mean.

DOINGS AROUND THE CLUBHOUSE. Frequent alicublog commenter Michael Webster has put up a slideshow of his Hurricane Sandy New York pictures that warrants your attention. As with his other work, Michael doesn't go for the Pulitzer money-shots, instead showing people and things as they mostly are, even in disasters. I think it gives a more believable picture of what South Brooklynites were suffering than most of what's out there.

On a more upbeat note, new on the blogroll is frequent alicublog commenter John E. Williams who has turned his personal music blog, Abandoned and Heartbroke, into a fun ride for fans of pop crap, posting videos you'd forgotten about (Shark Tape!) and commentating like a stoned FM DJ in the 70s. (John also designed the cover of my lurid novel.)

BULLSHITTING THE BULLSHITERS. At National Review, Jillian Kay Melchior complains that Sam Brownback's gone RINO. How?

Late last week, Kansas’s staunchly free-market governor, Sam Brownback, gave his approval to a flagrantly partisan, protectionist proposal from Democrats in the state Legislature. It’s bad policy — and an unfortunate aberration for a governor who’s been a champ for fiscal conservatism.

Last Thursday, Kansas’s Democratic leaders, the legislative minority, proposed new “buy American” legislation that would force state agencies to buy American-made products, exempting them only if there’s a domestic shortage or if it would raise project costs by more than 25 percent.

Requiring government -- not private citizens, but government -- to buy American is socialism or something, and Melchior doesn't bother to explain why, instead citing authority:

A Buy America provision “essentially increases costs for Kansans and for taxpayers, at least potentially, as opposed to promoting the best value,” said James Franko, communications director for the non-partisan Kansas Policy Institute.

The "non-partisan" Kansas Policy Institute! From SourceWatch:

The Kansas Policy Institute (KPI) is a "free market" think tank, one of many listed as members of the State Policy Network (SPN). Both KPI and SPN are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)... KPI was founded in 1996 as the Kansas Public Policy Institute and was later called the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy before receiving its current name. Kansas' Flint Hills also lent their name to the Koch brothers' Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

They also founded the Kansas Reporter, one in a chain of connected rightwing propaganda mills.

You may be moved to wonder, "National Review's a safe zone, why is Melchior misrepresenting KPI to her own people?" Could be she's just reading off a sheet they put in front of her. Also, it may be that even some wingnuts might recoil at the idea that buying American is treason to one's corporate masters -- which might remind them, to their horror, that their current Presidential champion is pretty much running on that as a platform.

Oh, and at the same time Romney's accusing Obama of the same thing -- thereby moving news about his own offshore activities off the front page. I never said it wasn't clever.

TUMBLR FASCISM*. At National Review:

Translation: Your popular internet meme is Hitler. The tyranny of liberal stewardesses, on the other hand, is trenchant political commentary.

* I know, Foster is alluding to Goldberg's other magnum opus, The Tyranny of Cliches, but no one on God's green earth has read that besides me and one very drunk press agent, and since unlike National Review I have to appeal to a wide audience, I went instead with its more notorious predecessor in ignominy.  T of C stinks, BTW. The theme boils down to 1.) The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, haw, fart, and 2.) Libruls suck.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, CONT. Breitbart.com has published a press release under the arresting title "DELGADO'S 'HIP TO BE SQUARE' STAKES CONSERVATISM'S CLAIM TO BE COOL." This, says I to myself, I gotta see, so I did:

The press and liberal Hollywood can't stop telling us that President Barack Obama is eternally cool.

A.J. Delgado begs to differ.

The Big Hollywood contributor's new e-book, "Hip to Be Square: Why It's Cool to Be a Conservative," lays out 60 reasons why it's "right to be Right" -- each reason consisting of its own chapter.

If you're not convinced already by this show of confidence, get a load of Delgado's scholarship:

The author draws upon a wide variety of pop culture icons, celebrities, films and television shows to state her case, including:
A chapter on lifelong Republican Johnny Ramone.
An analysis of three "South Park" episodes blasting the Left (on the extremes of the anti-smoking crowd; the smugness of environmentalists and liberal Hollywood; and the hypocrisy of green activists)
"The Lord of the Rings" and its conservative message
"Team America: World Police"

Also, "Johnny Rotten, Siouxsie Sioux, and Bob Dylan defending Israel," and "the Beatles on leftist revolutions." Did you know the moptops came out against Chairman Mao? Talk about courting controversy!

The punchline:

"Square" is the culmination of six years of Delgado's research...

Thanks to Amazon's Look Inside feature, I also got some insight into Delgado's motivation.

Throughout college, law school, and living in New York, I was taught -- both directly and indirectly -- that it was shameful and wrong to be a conservative. Friends, colleagues, even career opportunities fell by the wayside.

Maybe they fell by the wayside because you wouldn't stop telling them how Yoda was modeled on Friedrich Hayek and speculating on the most conservative Bubble Yum flavor.

UPDATE. Ms. Delgado has graced our comments with "LOL" and other proofs of her preciosity. Sample zinger: "Thanks for proving my point about the general nasty tone of liberals these days." Anytime, kid!

NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE WINGNUTS. Culture scold Lisa Schiffren at National Review is still going on about "the generally smutty, unpleasantly manipulative political ad featuring Lena Dunham," which apparently had way more hot action in it than I noticed:

In addition to the smarmy, smutty tone, the ad was an ugly, desperate attempt to manipulate young women... it was a new cultural low. Lower, even than attempting to bribe women with free contraception — or cell phones.

Obamaphones -- the one thing worse than sex! No wait, she's still bitching about sex:

...it forced normal parents, trying as hard as we can to instill reasonable morality, virtue, and common sense into our teenagers, to confront the ugliness of the hook-up culture which they have to work pretty hard to avoid. Who wants to be reminded that teenage girls now come of age in a culture in which it is common to strategize about how and where to have sex...

I missed the part where Dunham talked about how she was going to suck Obama's cock. Is that in the director's cut?

The punch line: Schiffren's promoting a GOP ad that shows two women talking, and the one who represents a disappointed Obama supporter says things like "I supported him for four years," "I miss the way he used to make me feel," etc. No political issues are mentioned at all.

In other words, it's as fanciful (to be polite) as the Dunham ad, and it personalizes politics even more than the Dunham ad. But you can say this for it: They never allude to sex, which apparently makes it dignified.

I should be grateful, having seen what they're like when they do.

UPDATE. Ha, zuzu in comments: "Virgin in the front, martyr in the rear."

AIR RAGE. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit points to this YouTube audio from The Dennis Miller Show. Made a transcript:

CALLER: I've been a flight attendant for just about 30 years, and for years, I like to call them the 15 hour hostage crisis on these long hauls that I fly, you're together 16 hours, and for years, you know, I think all light attendants assume everyone is Democrat, and I've just listened or I just stay busy, and they're angry, angry, but as I've gotten older, it's kind of when Bush was in, I gave 'em the international stop sign, I said, "Love Rumsfeld, voting' for Romney." And talk about squelching any conversation for the rest of the 15 hours. Seriously, And over the years I've realized that the flight attendants tend to overwhelming be kind of snarky angry Democrats. However, my husband is a pilot, and they tend to almost all be Republican.
MILLER: Oh that's interesting, that's interesting.
CALLER: And I used to attribute it to them being ex-military, but we're getting more and more civilian pilots through the hearts. But I felt like I kinda had to hang with them sometimes.
MILLER: I can imagine when you first cranked up a Rumsfeld-Romney comment in front of the rest of the stews, the oxygen masks must have dropped down 'cause it decompressed.
CALLER: This one flight attendant called Rumsfeld the spawn of Satan, and I said, "Love Rummy!" I go, "Love him!"
MILLER: You should have said, oh by the way, the guy in 3A wants a Rum and Coke, doll!
CALLER: I wasn't that fast on my feet! But now I'll just go, "Love Romney."
MILLER: It's comin' around, Janet.
CALLER: You see that gal, it's like, now, Nana Jan, she is saying' it loud and sayin' it proud, and then they just, that's it.
MILLER: Listen, you gotta be your own dame. You know that. Seeing a lot more signs in yards, Janet. It's good anecdotal stuff for Romney. I didn't see any last time. People were afraid to get their house bricked. But I see a lot of signs. I think something's tectonically turned out there. Thanks for the call, Janet.

Soooo the new rightwing thing is flight attendants are prejudiced against Republicans but we're gonna show them because we have the pilots and yard signs.

I realize this is the 24-hour rah-rah stage of the campaign season but Jesus Christ, that's sad. And the worst part: Flight attendants don't take tips, so Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser and the Go Galt crew have no way to show them their disapproval.

Up next: Those damn tailors are all Obamabots, I can tell by the way they crease my trousers. But all the haberdashers are voting for Romney!

UPDATE. I should add that Miller having this on his show isn't the weird part -- air time is hard to fill, and as the rightwing talk radio form is as mysterious to me as Kabuki this just might be how they roll. What's weird is the preservation and circulation of the conversation by rightbloggers, as if there's something meaningful or uplifting in it. I'm not sure I get it. Do they actually take perverse comfort in declaring yet another area in American life (like the arts, academia, scientific research, etc.) Democrat-infested? Or do they just like the punchline that pilots are Republicans (except maybe Chesley Sulllenberger)? Maybe because pilots give flight attendants orders, they think this makes them superior...

Ugh, I have to stop thinking about it. Put on my tombstone that I got my abnormal psychology degree from the school of hard knocks.

CONCERN TROLLING. "EXODUS: INNER CITY BLACKS FLEEING BARACK OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT-LIBERAL AGENDA," runs the headline at Breitbart.com. The author, Rebel Pundit, quotes five black people, none of whom say they'll vote for Mitt Romney. Mostly they say stuff like this:

A resident of the Austin community, Jean Ray, says after 40 years of Democratic party control over the black community, the policies "are hurting,” and if there were Republicans willing to do the right job in her community, she would vote for them.

Well, Romney's still got a week to make the sale. Maybe he can come to Chicago and tell Ray he was only kidding about that NAACP speech.

At National Review, Rich Lowry tells us women would vote Republican if they only knew what the Votes for Women crew knew, which is that "the Lilly Ledbetter Act merely tilts the playing field against employers and toward trial lawyers by allowing lawsuits years after alleged acts of pay discrimination." If Romney offers nothing to address their unequal treatment, at least he doesn't pander to them:

The likes of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that women were just as capable of rational deliberation as men. The conceit of the Obama campaign is that, to the contrary, they are quite susceptible to a few powerful dog whistles and unable to see beyond their gender.

If this doesn't convince you, you can read some of National Review's anti-birth-control classics.  That'll show you who the real feminists are!

Meanwhile at Instapundit, Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds makes a particularly pathetic post-Sandy case for abolishing FEMA:

Also, the heroic first responders you saw last night were mostly NYPD and NYFD, and their counterparts in New Jersey, etc. With the exception of the Coast Guard, nearly all the rescuing was being done by state and municipal employees, not by FEMA. The Democrats’ FEMA-worship is an insult to the people who are shouldering the greater part of the load, and the danger. 

These city-employed FDNY/NYPD responders are of course unionized, like the schoolteachers of Wisconsin whom these guys like to spit on -- which goes for the cops, too, when they think no one is watching: e.g., "Another reason why police unions shouldn’t be allowed, as if we needed one after their politicization in the Wisconsin fracas."

I don't know who's going to win next Tuesday, but long, bitter experience has shown me this: Conservatives are never content, even in victory, because they are always aware that somebody (including, in some cases, the voices in their heads) still disagrees with them. So as the reckoning comes, if they're not crying FRAUD AT POLLS! they'll be insisting whatever fraction of a percent they got over with proves not just that they won, but also that everyone loves them. In either case it's sad that their proven affinity groups (e.g., Klansmen, the mentally disabled) are never enough for them; they're always beating off over people they know would desire them if only they could admit to themselves how beautiful they are. Consider the present gibberish their preemptive stroke.

DEFINING LIBERTARIANISM DOWN. At Reason, Nick Gillespie tells us not to sweat abortion rights -- it's not really a big libertarian issue:

Over at the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney writes that when it comes to abortion, President Barack Obama - and not Mitt Romney - is the true extremist... 

Carney notes that even many liberal legal theorists (he quotes once-perennial potential SCOTUS nominee Laurence Tribe) argue that Roe v. Wade is bad law... 

Kathleen Parker had a great column in yesterday's Wash Post, where she noted that whatever else you can say about abortion and contraceptives, these are not front-burner elections but rather "the same old culture war" issues that are used to ply dedicated partisans and to spray fog over more central concerns. Interestingly (and accurately), she notes that it was Obama who injected these themes into the campaign by shoving contraceptives down the throats of folks (cough) via his health-care reform...

So never mind what Republicans say they'll do about abortion -- there's no way they'll ever accomplish anything except at the state level, where it can't harm you.  Meantime there are real threats to your liberty that you should be worrying about -- for example, the jack-booted thugs at the FDA.

This is obviously good news for Mitt Romney, etc. Best part is, it barely touches Reason's reader base, as 90% of them don't have to worry about abortion because they have girlfriends in Canada.

UPDATE. Brad Smith on "Why this libertarian is voting Romney, with enthusiasm":

Libertarians often like to say that there is no difference between the two major parties. But in my lifetime... there have been two Presidents who have substantially reduced income tax rates: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both Republicans.

And Romney will complete their work of finishing off the American economy. It's win-win!

I have never believed in a “libertarian position” on abortion... A libertarian can come down on either side. I am pro-life, and therefore give a huge advantage to Romney.

Also he wants Romney to do the Supreme Court nominations because Tony Scalia and Clarence Thomas are getting old. Oh, and:

Romney may not be a libertarian, yet Romney not infrequently launches wonderful verbal defenses of hard core libertarian views. I can scarcely imagine another major party presidential candidate who would take on leftist hecklers about the rights of individuals organized using the corporate form; or defend the value of being able to fire people for incompetence...

This makes perfect sense if "libertarian" is just a synonym for "asshole." And at this point, who knows?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Lena Dunham ad. It seems such a slight topic, yet how much rightblogger lunacy I found therein! This election must not be about much of anything.

As a bonus for you Late-Night Real People, here's the Photo of the Day, which I found at Legal Insurrection, where they're trying to make people think the Obama campaign dumped a bunch of nails in the parking lot of a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin. (Jim Hoft, not being too bright, just flat out says, "A truck affixed with Obama stickers drove through the parking lot outside of a tea party rally in Racine, Wisconsin on Saturday and dumped nails." Mongo only pawn in game of life!) The LI description is lovely:

A man caught the license plates of a van covered with Obama stickers leaving the scene, but police reportedly refused to take the information because there was no evidence of the van actually being connected to the incident. 

The Tea Party attendees picked up as many of the nails as they could, although many of their tires had been punctured, and left the pile for all to see.

But the photo is magnificent:

The foam cup plainly says "evidence" yet the police refused to act! Clearly ObamaHitler has corrupted all authority.

Oh, go read the Dunham thing, it's a pisser, too.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WINGNUTS. The lights were off at the National Review offices, and Jason Lee Steorts was having a long dark night of the soulless rightwing apparatchik. Just as he was digging the sharp spear of his Bic pen cap into his thigh to chase unbidden thoughts of Katy Perry in a ballot dress, Steorts was suddenly seized with an epiphany and, in a fevered ecstasy (or an ecstatic fever, whichever is less sexual), composed this:

Do these guys even know any normal people?

THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME. I enjoyed Tbogg's roundup of conservatives enraged at Lena Dunham's ad (and was surprised to see that, even after eight weeks of strangling a sex doll with Elizabeth Warren's picture taped to its head, Professor Jacobson had enough jam left to contribute). But it was missing a crucial element -- the element of overt Ooga Booga -- which RedState has been kind enough to provide:

There seems to be no low to which President Obama will sink in his desperate attempt to win reelection. One has to wonder, is there any point at which the main stream media and the public get some self-respect and toss out this loser? First he asked for your wedding gifts, then your yard sales and now he has asked for your daughters.

One pictures the brethren holed up in a shack under assault by the forces of Barack Obama, ready to dash out the brains of Lillian Gish ere she be breached.

AND THAT'S WHERE YOU SLIPPED UP! At Legal Insurrection, Anne Sorock tells us the liberals are all prejumadissed against Mormons. This is because there are half a dozen less than respectful articles about Mormons at Salon (including this ex-Mormon's reminiscence -- no fair telling, apostate!), an "anonymous man" said Romney's "promise to obey the Mormon 'Law of Consecration' disqualifies him for the White House," and Lawrence O’Donnell made fun of Joseph Smith's completely ridiculous founding myth.

Best part:

And of course, the left-dominated world of pop culture has embraced the bigotry. From the “Book of Mormon” musical to numerous Obama supporters’ ridiculing art, the mass of collective intolerance is overwhelming.

Yes, you read that right -- Sorock thinks Trey Parker and Matt Stone are liberals, and the "ridiculing art" of somebody you never heard of is the proof of "collective intolerance" that ices the case.

But there's one thing missing -- where's the standard issue rightwing complaint in cases like these about filthy liberals not having the guts to make fun of Islam? Didn't 20 years of fist-shaking since "Piss Christ" drill that one hard enough into their heads that it would come second nature?

Well, that's only common when they're defending the One True Religion or its adjuncts. Could it be that Sorock considers Mormonism too exotic to be similarly defended? Bigot! (Hey, I can play that game as good as they can! Too bad it doesn't give me the same pleasure. Well, we can't all have been raised in Skinner boxes.)