An Opportunity Denied

I see that Newt Gingrich is declining to run for President. That's too bad indeed.

As a committed lefty blogger of no consequence, I am truly disappointed. A Newt Gingrich Presidential run is a Christmas gift for those on the left. For me, it combines all the personal animosity I feel for his hand in foisting the Monica Lewinski "scandal" on me with the opportunity to rip apart his colossal ideas that the media is so infatuated with. He has it all, in abundance-hypocrisy, lunacy, cliche right-wing ideas masquerading as innovation, jowls-a lefty blogger's wet dream. If he had won the nomination, and been thumped as solidly in the general election as I'm certain he would have been, it would have left a whole pile of "conservative ideas" mouldering as a dung pile for years and years to come. As soon as I heard he was publicly making a play for the nomination, I started gathering ammunition. I know I was not alone.

And now it's over. Curse you, Newt!

As for this:

Rick Tyler said Gingrich realized he couldn't run a political action committee -- his American Solutions group -- and form an exploratory committee to run for president as well.

This sounds an awful lot like horseshit to me. Newt's self-regard is boundless. If he felt that he could manage to win, he wouldn't give it up to keep a comparatively small-time position leading a political action committee.

I think it probably has more to do with this. Scroll down and check out Newt's numbers. Newt may want to kiss himself, but the rest of the country will politely decline. I think his handlers got wind of the political realities and, realizing he might outdo even Fred Thompson for a sluggish campaign, put an end to things, lest this embarrassment give Newt's ego a terminal hematoma.

9/11 Forever

So, when Rudy takes a dump, is it because of 9/11?

Democracy at Work

Could this really, actually happen? I guess so...

Faced with the prospect of losing a committee vote, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Richard J. Durbin Wednesday backed down a bit from their opposition to a Republican nominee to the Federal Election Commission accused of stymieing minority voting power.

Feinstein of California and Durbin of Illinois had expressed serious reservations over Republican Hans von Spakovsky’s nomination to a 6-year term on the FEC. And Feinstein, chairwoman of Senate Rules Committee, seemed to be setting the stage to vote against his nomination, signaling she would take the unusual step of seeking individual votes in her committee for von Spakovsky and three other pending FEC nominations – a Republican and two Democrats.

But Feinstein and Durbin on Wednesday joined a unanimous vote to move von Spakovsky’s nomination and those of the three others to the full Senate without recommendation.

Lithwick's article lays out most of Spakovsky's crimes. Spakovsky is one of the masterminds behind the "Voter Fraud" fraud, which was used to give intellectual cachet to the idea generally that voter fraud was widespread, and that specifically voter identification laws, targeted at minorities that usually vote Democratic, was the solution:

In support of his position that voter-ID laws did not unconstitutionally suppress the votes of poor and minority voters, Hearne cited the decision of the DoJ to approve the pre-clearance of Georgia's voter-ID law, and a law review article supporting such laws, written under the pseudonym Publius. Hearne didn't reveal that the decision on Georgia was made by political appointees of the DoJ over the strong objections of career attorneys there who believed the law was indeed discriminatory. Nor did he explain that (as I discovered and blogged about a few years earlier) Publius was none other than Hans von Spakovsky, then serving as one of the political DoJ officials who approved the Georgia voter-ID law. (President Bush later gave von Spakovsky a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission.)

There is simply no way the Democratic Senate can let this slide. Spakovsky is a walking, talking affront to democracy. The Democrats approving this would be akin to a mass neutering. Of course, after that gutsy vote to condemn MoveOn.org for their ad in the New York Times, there's no telling what decision they might make.