During the 2008 presidential election, the Clinton campaign, and then later on the McCain Campaign, often characterized Obama as a Harvard-educated elitist who was out of touch with regular working-class Americans. This talking point was enlivened when Obama nonsensically called Western Pennsylvanians “bitter” while trying to sympathize with them over their economic difficulties. For the most part, Obama’s adversaries found the “elitist” characterization to be a wildly successful point of debate. For starters, the McCain campaign went on to hire hockey-mom Sarah Palin who famously (and without any hesitation) decided to draw a line between “Real America” and the urban, liberal elites like Obama. Along those lines, John McCain traveled to Western Pennsylvania where he made possibly the greatest rhetorical flub of all-time while trying to condemn Obama’s remarks about the people there:

McCain: You know, I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama’s supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately. And you know, I couldn’t agree with them more.

I couldn’t disagree with you… I couldn’t agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most god-loving, most, most patriotic part of America, and this is a great part of the country.

(2)

Much to my surprise however, a similar “elitist” criticism is now being used against Elizabeth Warren as she begins her campaign for Senator of Massachusetts:

All indications are that Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and the Democrats challenging Elizabeth Warren in the Senate primary will adopt the same playbook against her.

The plan: define her as a high-and-mighty academic whose tactics are overbearing and whose loyalty is to Washington’s elites.

It has already begun.

Now that the former Obama administration official is officially in the race, primary challenger Alan Khazei (D) is calling on her to reject PAC money and Brown is doing his best to paint her as an out-of-touch elitist.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already sent out a half-dozen releases calling her “Professor Warren,” and a Brown aide purchased the domain name QueenElizabethWarren.com, but has not yet launched a site.

And of course, a key aide to Scott Brown worked for John McCain’s presidential campaign:

Brown appears to be taking Warren’s challenge seriously, announcing Friday he was bringing his congressional press secretary back to Boston to head communications for the campaign. Colin Reed is a veteran of the presidential campaigns of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Somehow, I don’t think this line of attack is going to work in Massachusetts, a state that boasts some of the highest educational attainment rates in the country. Having lived in Massachusetts myself for a substantial period of time, I can personally say that it would be a stretch for anybody to argue that a significant amount of voters are going to be turned off by the fact that Elizabeth Warren is a Professor at Harvard.

Asked about whether he’s concerned about anti-incumbency attitudes this year, McCain said, “No, I don’t worry about it. I know that I can out-campaign anybody.” Well, perhaps not “anybody.”

(I’ll go ahead and note, before someone else points it out, that I do realize that “John McCain apparently thinks” is a pretty hilarious statement just by itself.)

More seriously, maybe this explains why McCain has come across as so angry-crazy over the last year and a half. To thoroughly out-campaign somebody (oops, I do mean nobody) for President, and then be declared the loser, would make anyone angry-crazy. (Al Gore is just the exception that proves the rule.)

This is perhaps the natural result of seeing admitted serial adulterer John McCain make it all the way to the finals, and eventually enjoy the full-throated (no pun intended) support of all segments of his party, and seeing proudly in-your-face adulterer Rudee Giuliani regarded throughout as a credible, front-rank candidate, even if he didn’t exactly win many votes.

In fact, at this point, keen observers of the political scene may be forgiven for thinking that lustful fornication outside the sacrament of marriage may well end up becoming a prerequisite for the 2012 Republican primaries.

Here, therefore, in an act of bipartisan generosity, is a helpful note to Republican would-be-Presidents: in the minds of Republican voters (or maybe it is their Christian hearts?), adultery ages well. Newt Gingrich, no less celebrated an adulterer than John Ensign or Mark Sanford, is a more credible candidate at this point precisely because his adultery is so much more ancient. So all Ensign and Sanford have to do is
— not run for elected office again for the next ten or fifteen years
— cultivate the media, and turn themselves into political talk-show fixtures, and keep publicly spouting stuff that makes absolutely no sense at all (which, judging by past performances, shouldn’t be hard at all for either of them)
— buy the loyal support of some loyal supporters, who will keep hailing them as intellectual heavyweights

And before they know it, they’ll be credible President candidates again. (Assuming that the Republican Party still exists, of course.)

(2)
What’s with The State just sitting on the Sanford-Maria emails for more than six months?

What were they waiting for exactly? That question clearly leads to some very disturbing thoughts about the power of the media to influence our politics, and the potential for abuse of that power in ways that do not bear thinking about.

If they had published those emails at any time up to one week ago, it would have served the public interest. To publish them yesterday, as they did, only served a prurient interest.

Also, as a post in Daily Kos points out, publishing those emails many months ago would have served their own urgent economic interests. In March 2009, The State laid off 11 percent of its work force. They also cut wages for the remaining employees by 2.5 to 10 percent. Clearly, they could have used a boost in circulation right around then. And they just sat on this story, and did nothing.

Now, when economists are pretty unanimously agreed that running huge deficits is necessary to rescue the economy from the deep and devastating recession that eight years of Republicanomics have wrought, Republican lawmakers have suddenly become deficit hawks again. Of course, they are still saying “Up yours!” Not to economists so much as to you and me.

“Congress cannot keep writing checks and simply pass IOUs to our children and grandchildren,” says Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

No sir, certainly not. Congress simply cannot keep doing that forever. Only during Republican administrations.

Asks House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio: “How much debt are we going to pile on future generations?”

I don’t know, John, please put it into perspective for us. How much debt did you enthusiastically cheer for piling on future generations in the last eight years? Speak up, sir, don’t mumble! Almost five trillion dollars? So that’s the magic number, then, is it, the optimal amount? Running up the national debt from $5.727 trillion on the day Bush took office to a projected level of $10.649 trillion on the day Obama takes office was proper and fitting and laudable. But anything over $10.649 trillion will be criminally irresponsible?

(That, boys and girls, is a foretaste of the new and improved version of IOKIYAR that Republican lawmakers are going to be playing during the Obama administration: It’s only OK if you’re a Republican!)

Most reports of his appearance focused on his attempt to quietly start reclaiming his earlier persona, the one he put through the shredder when he decided he would say and do whatever he thought might improve his chances of being elected, no matter how contemptible or unsavory or just plain wrong or how totally false.

Once again, our John is the maverick voice of reason in the Republican party. Here he is, telling the Republican National Committee, and other Republican party officials, not to be such douchebags over the Blagojevich scandal:

I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.

If this attempted rehabilitation works, then the American people are really prize chumps. Or maybe I should say, the American media, not the American people? This PR offensive (and I use that word advisedly) is probably aimed at winning back media love. (Once that’s in the bag, then McCain can set about weaseling his way back into our affections too with the media’s help.)

However, with all the focus on his Blagojevich comment (and with the shoe-throwing incident sucking up a lot of the available media oxygen), what has largely slipped through the cracks are McCain’s remarks about Sarah Palin, and whether he would support her in 2012.

He wasn’t even willing to paper over the reported discord between them with a bland non-answer:

Sen. John McCain said Sunday he would not necessarily support his former running mate if she chose to run for president.

Speaking to ABC‘s “This Week,” McCain was asked whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could count on his support.

“I can’t say something like that. We’ve got some great other young governors. I think you’re going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party,” he said.

He then mentioned governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Jon Huntsman of Utah.

McCain said he has “the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them.”

“She invigorated our campaign” against Barack Obama for the presidency, he said.

McCain was pressed on why he can’t promise support for the woman who, just months ago, he named as the second best person to lead the nation.

“Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and my view of her viability, but at this stage, again … my corpse is still warm, you know?” he replied.

That clearly translates into: “Sarah Palin? Bleep her!”

Incidentally, I doubt if it was a smart move for McCain to throw in that “my corpse” reference when reminded about the enthusiasm with which he picked Sarah Palin as his Vice-President, and with which he defended that pick. (Of course, there’s really no reason at this point why anyone should expect smart moves from John McCain.)

Pr0n Secretary, indeed.

When Senate Democrats meet Tuesday to decide Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (ID-Conn.) fate, leaders are expected to propose that he keep his gavel at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee but lose his Environment and Public Works subcommittee chairmanship.

After all, what did little Joe ever do to deserve taking the chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee away from him?

Focusing just on the really recent stuff, all he did was back-stab the Democratic party and the Democratic presidential candidate for months on end. And cheerfully become a willing instrument of the contemptible and despicable smear campaign against Barack Obama (embracing, for instance, the “Marxist” and “unpatriotic” calumnies). And openly campaign not just for McCain but very much against Obama and other Democratic candidates as well.

And surely he deserves the chairmanship of this committee just for redefining its role as “First of all, do nothing at all”? For refusing to conduct any oversight whatsoever of the Bush administration?

There’s also this lesser known what-Joe-did:

Lieberman should lose his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee because it’s about to be 2009 and there is no reason to keep an anti-Muslim bigot who believes the United States is being subverted by Muslims from within in charge of a Committee that handles national security affairs. Lieberman participated in The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision For America, a movie which claims there is a vast conspiracy of American Muslims to subvert democracy… . These are the same people who gave us the shadowy anti-Muslim Obsession film that was distributed in newspapers in swing states during election season.

Put simply, you can’t have an anti-Muslim bigot in charge of Homeland Security when the country as a whole is dealing with the threat of Islamic extremism. The reason you can’t have a bigot in charge is that a bigot can’t tell the difference between normal Muslims and extremists. Lieberman is simply incapable of doing his job correctly. He is a security risk.

Suggestions for further reading: If you suffer from low blood pressure, you might read this or this, and skip your medication today.

(Nice to see how the election results have changed nothing. Democrats in Congress continue to specialize in making the most bewildering, unfathomable decisions. They continue to be unable to take a stand on anything.)

*** Update, 9:12 am ***

It went down as expected:

Senate Democrats on Tuesday yielded to the wishes of President-elect Barack Obama and allowed Joe Lieberman to keep his committee chairmanship despite having backed Republican John McCain for the White House, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said.

Emerging from a closed-door meeting, Harkin told reporters that Democrats had stripped Lieberman of a subcommittee chairmanship, a far lesser punishment.

“The Party’s Over” by Zina Saunders

…Palin denounced criticism from unidentified McCain campaign aides as “cowardly.” She said she found it frustrating trying to respond to false allegations when she didn’t know who was making them.

“It’s ridiculous,” she told reporters. “You guys report based on anonymous sources, so it’s hard to have a defense.”

No, it’s hard to have a defense when you’re a complete moron who doesn’t have even the faintest conception of the world beyond our borders, and who lies as easily as breathes.

But it’s extra rich that the woman who, until a week ago, was trying to convince the country that she was ready to be Vice President is calling people cowards when she didn’t have the guts to submit to an open press conference. Wonder what her “defense” is for that one…

I haven’t done especially well on predictions this year, but I’m going to turn it around right here: Palin will be in the race for 2012, and so will the Newt. The media loves a comeback, especially when they can just invent the whole thing.

Check it out.