You Know, I Don't Think She's Got It

Uh-Oh, Democrats: Realism Is "Change" Too!!!

"In the beginning, just three long weeks ago, the idea of Caroline Kennedy being a United States senator had a certain ring to it. The Camelot myth still has shelf life and a merger with the historic Obama presidency provided an intriguing story line.

Kennedy would replace Hillary Clinton, one leading lady following another on a stage where name recognition often substitutes for merit. The narrative was tailor-made for the fever chambers of celebrity-obsessed media and the bandwagon quickly picked up speed.

Some top Democrats were certain Gov. Paterson, a close-to-the vest electorate of one, would find Kennedy irresistible now and as a running mate in two years. All others were chopped liver next to her sudden star power.

But a strange thing is happening on the way to the coronation. The wheels of the bandwagon are coming off. Fantasy is giving way to inescapable truth."

-- Michael Goodwin, commenting on a kind of "change" Obama supporters haven't counted on, even New York's Daily News.

The Ultimate Sex Change

"For people who think there’s no cultural divide in this country, consider the treatment of two women much in the news in 2008.

The first is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. A woman from very humble roots and with a very blue-collar life story, she worked with her steelworker and professional-fisherman husband to provide a life for their large family. She got involved in the PTA. She became mayor of her small town, then rose, by dint of her dedication and almost naive fearlessness, to the job of governor. In a mainstream, almost romantic sense, it’s almost like she was designed by God for a Hallmark movie of the week.

But, when John McCain picked her to be his running mate, the full fury of the liberal establishment — and sizable swaths of the conservative establishment, some of whom dubbed her a 'cancer' on the GOP — came down on her with a vengeance usually reserved for Klansmen and pedophiles. Don’t get me wrong: There were valid criticisms to make. But that is quite a different thing than saying all of the criticism was valid or that the intensity and volume of the criticism was warranted.

Then there’s Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, sister of John Jr., niece of Senators Ted and Robert Kennedy, granddaughter of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, and the cousin of myriad other Kennedys and Shrivers who’ve burrowed deep into the timber of the house of liberalism. A multimillionaire from birth, Ms. Kennedy has spent most of her life on the charity-benefit and cotillion circuit. A product of the Brearley School in New York and the Concord Academy in Massachusetts before she attended Harvard and Columbia, Kennedy has made the importance of public education her signature cause.

Sweet Caroline (she was the inspiration for the Neil Diamond song) recently made it known that she would like to be appointed to Hillary Clinton’s vacant Senate seat.

One could say without fear of overstating things that the liberal reaction to the inexperienced Caroline has been somewhat more gracious than the reaction to the 'inexperienced' Palin."

-- Jonah Goldberg, on the continuing liberal feminist hypocrisy that's so outrageous - and so out in the open - we may need a new name for it, in The Los Angeles Times.

We're Losing It - To NewAge

"Eight years ago, a Senate seat from the Banana State was won by the wife of a sitting president of the republic. That wife had never before resided in Banana State, but she bought a house there, campaigned with the aura and entourage accorded to a presidential spouse, and with one leap, winning her first elected office ever, she became a senator.

Riding a national political machine to re-election for a second term, that former first lady swiftly turned her Senate seat into a springboard for her own campaign for the presidency. She lost, but took a job in the new administration, leaving the governor of Banana State to appoint a replacement senator.

That governor was himself a replacement, due to the resignation of the elected governor, a crusading moralist caught in a prostitution scandal. As the replacement governor prepared to name a replacement senator, a former president’s daughter declared her interest in the Senate seat — which one of her uncles had won some 44 years earlier, and was using as a springboard for his own presidential run, after serving as attorney-general in his brother’s presidential administration. This former first daughter had recently worked on the campaign of the President-elect — an experience that awakened in her an appetite for politics –  but she had reached the age of 51 with no direct experience of her own in public office. Nonetheless, another of her uncles, also a senator, was ready to endorse her for this leap to the Senate. So was the mayor of Big Plum (the biggest city in Banana State), who on his own turf had just succeeded in scrapping a two-term limit so he could run for a third term — which he justified as a way of offering people a broader choice (namely, himself).

That’s how it works in Banana Republics."

-- Claudia Rosett, describing something that's been bothering me - along with Oprah's role in all this - on Pajamas Media.

"At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: 'Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?' 'A republic - if you can keep it' responded Franklin."

-- Ron Paul, on that other little thing that's been nagging me, at the website for the United States House of Representatives.

TMR's Political Opinion (Freshly Brewed)

"The new year’s twin resurrections of Bill Clinton and John McCain, should they not evaporate, at last give the G.O.P. a highly plausible route to victory."

- Frank Rich, finally getting a whiff of the coffee, in the New York Times

Yes, Siree, things are moving along swimmingly in the world of politics. In other words, just the way I always said they would. (It's like he's psychic! Or he's controlling us with his mind!?! No:)

See, if there's one thing I know, there is such a thing as The American Character and - when the facts are known - almost without fail, Americans can be counted on to "do the right thing" (as Spike Lee so eloquently stated). The problem is, despite the protests of the many New Age idiots indoctrinated on the coasts, it's they - not Middle America - who don't remember what "character" or "right" mean anymore; confusing them with the part an actor might play and the immediate lead-in to the word "wing".

Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective) it looks like it'll take Obama's embrace from pre-Flower Power Caroline Kennedy (director of the Legal and Education Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People - that would be "me") to remind all our dreamy-eyed space cadets of the current political reality embedded in the United Negro College Fund slogan, "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.":

It's John McCain in a walk, Folks.