The dig at Christopher Cross on CBS Sunday Morning was pretty damned funny. And deserved.
That Wasn’t Supposed To Happen
John McCain, the anointed Republican frontrunner whom the brave souls at CPAC endorsed through gritted teeth, might lose all three contests tonight to Mike Huckabee.
[A]s of right now, of three Republican contests held today, it looks likely that Mike Huckabee will win all three.We already know about Kansas, which was a blowout for Huckabee. With 62% of precincts reporting Huckabee is up by 8 point over McCain in Louisiana. And Huckabee is ahead of McCain by 3 points in Washington state with 37% of the caucuses there reporting.
Huge swathes of the Republican party loathe the guy, but since governor cellophane dropped out of the race primary voters don’t have anybody else to turn to. Except Mike Huckabee.
Huckenfreude obviously won’t win, even if he does make the next few months a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
***Update***
It’s still a close call, but it looks like the rampaging McCain juggernaut just barely scraped together a win in Washington state.
Open Thread
I am sick for the second week-end in a row. Felt great all week, woke up Friday morning with the creeping crud. GRR.
Friday Beer Blogging – Tim F’s Midwinter Stout
Homebrewing goes on nonstop, although otherwise I’m mostly too busy to go near a blog. But since it’s Friday, and since I promised beer blogging when you guys voted us to the top in that crazy Wizbang contest, here is the latest brew that is just about done bottle fermenting.
White Labs Irish Ale yeast, prepped for 36 h. in a 1 l. starter culture
8 oz. 80L crystal malt
4 oz. 40L crystal malt
11 oz. chocolate malt
6 oz. black patent malt
4 oz. roasted barley
3 cans John Bull dark extract
20 BU mixed bittering hops
1/2 oz. cascade hops for aroma
The gravity reading was clearly wrong (1.055, ha) so I can’t say how big it is. But it’s BIG. The color is pitch black while secondary fermentation mellowed the hops from intolerable to something like a Lagunitas. The thinnish head comes from adding a packet of yeast nutrients in secondary, drying it out and increasing the alcohol, but for a guy who finds Guinness saccharine the crispness is worth it. One bottle takes me a long time to drink. Of course I bottled half in 22 oz. bottles; it’ll be fun to see how I get through those. Hic.
My next batch is an OG 1.075 pale ale with Cali ale yeast, but something feels off. Fermenting yeast usually rises fast and mostly exhausts itself in a week or so, but this one took a few days to get started and has gone on tepidly bubbling for over a week. Most likely I’m growing bacteria this time.
Question for the community: do Belgian breweries take some precaution against stealing yeast out of the bottom of their bottles? I’ve tried to culture that beautiful stuff twice and came up empty both times.
Also on the topic of Friday theme blogging, Tom Levenson’s Newton blog this week is sublime.
Friday Beer Blogging – Tim F’s Midwinter StoutPost + Comments (33)
Lack of Self-Awareness Alert, aka Great Moments in Movement Conservatism
Conservatives at CPAC care mostly about one thing: getting the policy right. Saying the right words is of paramount importance. And what you say today is more important than what you said yesterday (provided you didn’t make a sport of poking conservatives in the eye). And so while we all got a chuckle out of “Flip Romney,” CPAC rewards the candidate whose words (today at least) most closely match the clearly defined worldview of its audience. Much the same is true of the predominantly economic and national security conservatives in the blogosphere and on talk radio.
Just say the right words, and us CPAC fools will take off our panties.
Tax cuts – “MOAN.”
McCain-Feingold- “OH, BABY.”
End Illegal Immigration- “DO ME BABY!!!”
The Democrats want to surrender- “OH MY, YOU ARE SO BIG!”
Will these people ever stop embarrassing themselves?
Lack of Self-Awareness Alert, aka Great Moments in Movement ConservatismPost + Comments (178)
The Comedy Never Stops
Fresh off their good hot dickings from Mr. Romney losing the race, the right-wing blabosphere and punditocracy is now telling McCain who he has to choose as his Veep, with Pat Toomey leading the way. Like he cares what you think?
Is this funny, pathetic, or both? Consider this an open thread.
The Romney Post-Mortems
And with the demise of Mitt Romney come the inevitable few months worth of “What went wrong?” columns rehashing the new conventional wisdom about why Mitt lost. Howard Fineman:
I have covered a lot of presidential campaigns, and I can’t think of one that so lost its way-so expensively-as that of the former governor of Massachusetts. A board room and business favorite, a man with a Midas managerial touch, he was widely admired and even beloved. But he was a Republican of an old moderate school-that of his own father-and, like George W. Bush, Romney the Younger decided that he had to jettison all that he was to become something that he was not.
The NY Times:
Yet Mr. Romney’s advisers acknowledged Thursday an array of tactical missteps and miscalculations. Perhaps most significantly, they conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney’s authenticity as they sought to position him as the most electable conservative in the race, a jarring contrast to his more moderate record as governor of Massachusetts. And during the January nominating contests, as his opponents attacked his shifting on issues, polls showed his favorability ratings plummeting.
Mr. Romney spent more than $35 million of his own money trying to get himself elected, but his campaign faced challenges from the start, some from obstacles beyond his control.
Pretending to be something he is not would be one of those chief obstacles. It really is that simple. I constantly trash the folks at Red State for their incessant Bush boosterism (which on many days is so over-the-top it makes Hugh Hewitt blush), but one thing they got right and stated early and often was their belief that Romney was a complete fraud. It was Erick who came up with resurrected the phrase Multiple-Choice Mitt. Any candidate who can not sell themselves to these guys is in for a LONG campaign, and Romney’s make-over was just so phony that he couldn’t fool our moronic electorate (I’m a Democrat now, which means I don’t have to pretend the people are rugged and smart anymore). Probably fitting to let Dan McLaughlin from Red State have the last word:
I may expand on this later…I am sympathetic to the people who bought into the idea of the Romney campaign but, as happened to those of us who backed Rudy or Fred, the time has come to accept that the reality of the campaign was never what it was cracked up to be. In Mitt’s case, he just wasn’t the champion of conservative principles and enforcer of conservative orthodoxy he played on the trail…
A hamburger is a delicious and popular meal. A grilled chicken sandwich is nutritious and reasonably tasty. You can sell a hamburger, and you can sell a grilled chicken sandwich; both have their virtues. But as anyone with a marketing background could have told you, you can’t get people to buy a grilled chicken sandwich by convincing them that it is a hamburger.
See you in 2011, Mittens.