sisu

Barney Frank blames Drudge for tightening race?

"GOP unknown in striking range?" headlines Drudge, just below a photo of a goofy-looking Barney Frank and the headline "Barney Frank blames 'right-wing media' for tightening race..."

"The nervousness plaguing Democrats nationwide has touched even Frank," writes Byron York in his latest Washington Examiner column, "GOP unknown in striking range?" We've been blogging and plugging that "GOP unknown," Sean Bielat, ever since we stumbled upon his "Retire Barney" campaign at the Boston Tea Party last April, and Glenn Reynolds — who also links York's piece this evening — has been following the story at least since mid-August. Now Drudge has picked up the scent! Given Sean's opponent's ability to "raise virtually all the money he wants … national support is key" notes York:

But Frank is also one of those liberal Democrats who conservative Republicans love to hate. If GOP donors across the country think there's a chance to beat him, they'll start giving. So far, support has been steady but not overwhelming. Bielat has raised about $600,000; Frank has pulled in many times that.

Click here to help Retire Barney Frank.

Update: Byron York's column trending on Memeorandum.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Bristol Palin is following in her mother's footsteps, embracing and exploiting social media in new ways

The chemistry between an ebullient Bristol Palin and her gallant partner Mark Ballas trumped all the glitz and glamour of "Dancing with the Stars" Monday night as the enchanted couple's joyous two-step consummated in a sweet and sassy "eskimo kiss" (above). As we wrote in the comments of Cubachi's must-read "Bristol Palin: Opening the door for conservatives in pop culture?" at Riehl World View, "Bristol is following in her mother's footsteps, embracing and exploiting social media in new ways that allow these stalwart, spirited women to bypass the tired gateway media and shape "the narrative" — in words and images — in their own image." See also Cubachi's latest exegesis of Palin Derangement Syndrome: "As Rush said, the liberals will tell you who they fear the most."

"What is this 'neutral journalism' of which you speak?" we just wrote in the comments of Ben Smith's history-challenged "On Fox, where's the outrage?" Like the President himself, Smith has chosen to deal with the unpleasant reality of having lost control of "the narrative" by spinning tales of an idealized past and projecting his own tribe's unself-aware cheerleading for the left onto Fox News' "fair and balanced" hearing for the right:

I'm not sure expressions of "outrage" at the hijacking of what was, for a time, a more neutral form are all that useful. After all, neutral journalism is a historical blip. But certainly, reporters don't have to take Fox at its word on its own "balance" any more than we have to take a politician at his word.

Indeed. Any more than WE have to take an effete and flailing legacy media at its word. As we continued in Smith's comments:

I'm guessing you share the President's fantasy of a "golden age of an objective press [Journolist/Cabalist lives!] that was a pretty narrow span of time in our history." Narrow, indeed. It never existed. The gateway media's heyday in the1960s and 1970s, when Walter Cronkite was "the most trusted man in America," was dominated by a left-biased point of view. Now that new media have enabled us unwashed over here on the right side of the aisle to disintermediate the powers that be via the internet, the legacy media is reinventing history.

"Coverage that treats Fox as an observer, not a player, will miss much of the point," concludes Smith. Welcome to the club, sir. We've been a dues-paying member for years. Tigerhawk — cited in our October 2006 post "If they were wrong about Vietnam, their entire worldview is in question" — put his finger on the power dynamics at play in those halcyon days of "neutral journalism":

At the time the media perceived and promoted the Tet offensive as a great victory for the enemy. In an age when the network anchors deployed truly awesome power, Walter Cronkite destroyed Lyndon Johnson's chances for re-election when he editorialized that we were "mired in stalemate." President Johnson declared "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America" and withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.

Tet, however, was not a military disaster for the United States.

Truly awesome power? Isn't that what the Declaration and Constitution were all about cutting down to size? Are we not "God's almost chosen people," energized and made whole by spirited dissent to keep the powers that be in check? What's with this "golden age of an objective press," fergossake?

Update: Conservatives 4 Palin links.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

Crossposted at Cloven Not Crested, Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Biden stumbles into the truth again: "It's not your grandfather's Republican Party"

Vice President Joe Biden waves after speaking in the living room of Lorrie and Robert Cochran in Manchester, N.H. today. He offered supporters a "simple slogan," telling them the Republicans' "Pledge to America" would do nothing but increase the national debt and eliminate government services critical to the nation's health and prosperity. At a Party fundraiser he urged Democrats to "remind our base constituency to stop whining." (Thomas Roy, Pool / AP)

"I spent 36 years in the Senate, serving alongside Republicans of all stripes," says VP Biden, hat in hand, with no sense of the ironic jumble of fabrications and gobbledygook that is his sales pitch in a fundraising letter to the little people that just flew in over the transom. On the one hand it's those shadowy corporate special interests that are out to get us:

We launched the By The People Fund because grassroots supporters have always been the cornerstone of this movement … Reaching our goal of 3 million grassroots donations will help us fight a small but powerful group of corporate special interests who are trying to buy their way back into power.

On the other hand, it's those upstart newcomers that will be the ruination of the Republic:

But some of the Republicans running now are not from your grandfather's Republican Party. They're from the Republican Tea Party.

That's just the point, of course, from a Tea Partier's perspective. Term limits by other means for the fat cats of both parties and their special-interest allies. But Mr. Biden isn't speaking to those of us who've been paying attention and now know, "with real sophistication," everything that happens in the capital. The real quarry is John Kerry's great unwashed "electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening."

Update: Pasadena Phil in the comments at Dan's hits it out of the park:

A lot of politicians will soon be wondering if winning was worse than losing.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Instalanche!

Update IV: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update V: Cubachi!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Message to Peggy Noonan: Girls just wanna have fun

“Today we completed one pledge and we began another," says Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee: "Many months ago House Republicans committed and pledged to listen to Americans all across this country… We kept that pledge, and it allows us to make another. The Pledge to America starts with the preamble that reminds us that every American citizen is endowed with certain rights from their creator. When our government charts a course that endangers those rights, the people have the right to demand a new agenda from their government."

"This election is more and more shaping up into a contest between the Exhausted and the Enraged," writes Northeast Corridor Conservative Peggy Noonan, once again almost grasping the spirit that animates this Army of Davids. As we wrote last summer, "Tea Party to Peggy Noonan: It's not rage, but disgust!" This time, the former Reagan speechwriter and author of the transcendent "thousand points of light" decided to listen instead of pontificate. Her telephone conversation with Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is a revelation:

But Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee suggests I have the wrong word for the Republican base. The word, she says, is not enraged but "livid" …

There are two major developments, she says, that are new this year and insufficiently noted, but they're going to shape election outcomes in 2010 and beyond.

"The question is which is to be master," as we blogged the other day, and Blackburn is taking no prisoners:

First, Washington is being revealed in a new way.

The American people now know, "with real sophistication," everything that happens in the capital. "I find a much more knowledgeable electorate, and it is a real-time response," Ms. Blackburn says. "We hear about it even as the vote is taking place" …

The Internet isn't just a tool for organization and fund-raising. It has given citizens access to information they never had before. "The more they know," Ms. Blackburn observes, "the less they like Washington."

It's that effervescent disintermediation of the powers that be via the internet that we are forever flogging here. Blackburn closes in for the kill:

Second is the rise of women as a force. They "are the drivers in this election cycle," Ms. Blackburn says. "Something is going on." At tea party events the past 18 months, she started to notice "60% of the crowd is women."

She tells of a political rally that drew thousands in Nashville, at the State Capitol plaza. She had brought her year-old grandson. When the mic was handed to her, she was holding him. "I said, 'How many of you are grandmothers?' The hands! That was the moment I realized that the majority of the people at the political events now are women. I saw this in town halls in '09 — it was women showing up at my listening events, it was women talking about health care."

Blackburn casts the "rise of women as a force" in terms of "the Rage of the Bill-Paying Moms," and she's right as far as what Noonan calls "a change in national thinking regarding the role of the individual and the government." But don't discount what may be an even more fundamental dynamic at play: "Girls just wanna have fun."

Update: Instalanche! Thanks for the spelling correction, Professor. :D

Message To Peggy Noonan: Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Want to, want to …

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link! They just want to, that's all!

Update III: Cubachi links:

SISU: Must read.

Update IV: James Nicholas of What the …?! links:

Boy, do they ever. And few of 'em have more fun than Sissy Willis, whose blog SISU is about as fun as it gets here in blog land. Her latest post is a "once more into the breach" attempt to communicate with Ms. Peggy Noonan, and by my stars, she and candidate Marsha Blackburn of Tenessee seem to have succeeded.

Crossposted at Cloven Not Crested, Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Sean Bielat's "Retire Barney" campaign goes viral

"Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” The words of John Dickinson's "The Liberty Song, first published in the Boston Gazette July 18, 1768, resonate in this Revolutionary Election Season of 2010. Above, uniting they hang, "three young harvest mice link tails while sitting on a branch." Update: How could we have forgotten Ben Franklin's timeless "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately"? (BIOSPHOTO / SPECIALIST STOCK / BARCROFT MEDIA)

"Let's go viral and retire Barney!" says filmmaker Greg Joyce in the comments of Ace's rousing endorsement of our man Sean Bielat to restore "The People's Seat" of Massachusetts Congressional District Four. Ace wins Best in Show for what commenter alexthechick names "A campaign slogan for the ages":

When he's not killing terrorists, he's building fuckin' robots.

Ace doesn't mince words. It's easy to see why his fans can never get enough. This is good for Sean Bielat, and it's good for the people of Massachusetts and beyond. He's got 99 commenters — and counting! — trending strongly FTW. Our own dear blogbud Neo jumped into the fray yesterday afternoon with a moneybomb of her own. Her commenter Hangtown Bob speaks for all of us tea partying warriors out here in the Army of Davids disintermediating the powers that be on the ground and via the internet:

YES!!!! Good going, Neo! This is our power. Nationalize these local elections. Today, I am contributing to Angle, O’Donnell, and Bielat.

MONEY BOMBS FOR ALL!

We were thrilled to learn that one of our heroes in the War on Terror, John Bolton — the man whose mustache repels bullets — has joined our ranks in a GOTV effort to enlist grassroots support for key House races, including Sean Bielat's:

"I joined the Election Day Tea Party project because — perhaps more than at any other in my lifetime — the results of this election cycle will determine the future of the United States as the leader of the Free World," said Ambassador John Bolton. "Election Day Tea Party is a great way for people to become involved in a substantial, productive way, no matter where you are in the country" …

Medina added, "By adopting one — or all — of these 50 challengers, volunteers from anywhere in the country can help. For instance, people can make phone calls for their candidate of choice, donate directly to them, or travel to the district to help with get-out-the-vote efforts."

When was the tipping point? We're not sure about Bolton & Company, but in our blogging neck of the woods, Neo draws back the curtain:

Yes, I saw Ace's post, which is great because he's got a LOT of traffic — I think something like 75K hits a day.

As for how I heard about Sean's candidacy — I'm not sure, had probably seen things earlier and not paid too much attention. But I believe it was when Glenn linked it the other day.

It was one of those Instapundit links that may have slipped under people's radar, because it didn't emphasize Sean's name or anything about him really. You had to follow the link to get what was happening. Then of course I went to your blog to see what you'd written a while ago, because I figured you had and I'd missed it. And searched a few others. And then I wrote my own.

I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more traction. But maybe it will now. Scott Brown didn't catch on till the last few weeks [as Professor Jacobson pointed out in his masterful "They Also Called Scott Brown A Non-Serious Exremist" this morning].

Indeed. Click here to help Retire Barney!

Note: They're bringing in the big guns: This just in over the transom as we're about to go to press: An "RNC Victory 2010" letter from Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin herself. 'Course we've kind of gotten into the habit of giving to strategic small-government candidates, not parties.

Update: Ace links! Thanks, big guy.

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update III: Our friend Gerard Van Der Leun's spanking new Rightnetwork links:

Sean Bielat: Ex-Marine Gunning for Barney Frank's Job.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Dinner in a bowl: The mightiest Caesar of them all

Salad Pork Suzette, a variation of the Mighty Caesar, debuted in our Experimental Kitchens this evening. Recipe below.

Something new from our Experimental Kitchens. A Caesarish salad that incorporates the entrée in the toss:

Usual suspects: Romaine, shredded Parmesan, homemade croutons.

The unexpected: Slices of boneless pork chop roasted 20 minutes at 350˚ in a packet of foil with pre-roasted garlic and Apple-Strawberry Mix (that's what those juicy pink bits are in the photos). Roast, let rest a few minutes for easier cutting and then slice once across grain and then in half.

We were out of our homemade Caesar dressing so substituted Ranch Lite.

One chop and a couple of heads of Romaine make a scrumptious, texturally rich, eye-catching meal for two that sticks to the ribs. Easy to make, too, and clean-up is a piece of cake.

Amazing Grace: Libertarians in bed with Gary L. Bauer?

"Kindness effects more than severity" is the moral of the story of Aesop's Fable "The Wind and the Sun, exemplified in our own day in the coming together without compromise of social and fiscal conservatives (see below for more) in the fight to reignite the lights of the Shining City. Above, a retelling of the ancient tale in The Baby's Own Aesop (verse fables by W.J. Linton) 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane.

Gary L. Bauer, President of American Values — "Your Voice to Help Protect Life, Marriage, Famly, Faith and Freedom" — is following us on Twitter, an unlikely bedfellow for this Darwinian Libertarian. [See our post of last summer, "The opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger," for what we mean by that.] We've always shied away from what we took to be social conservatives' impulse to impose upon the rest of us their family values — whether or not we agreed with them, it wasn't government's job to force entry into our private moral universe — a kind of obverse of the left's impulse to impose their politically correct moral-equivalence "values" upon the rest of us. But we're seeing Mr. Bauer & Company with new eyes in the morning light of the Third Great Awakening that is the Tea Party movement, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote last February in what we called "one of Instapundit's great distillations of what's 'happening here'":

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different. It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It’s America’s politicians and parties. They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Back to our strange new bedfellow, Gary L. Bauer, who opens our eyes further with an intriguing thought experiment in his latest Human Events column, "GOP Establishment, RIP?:

Imagine if an inside-the-Beltway consultant met with national Republican leaders and presented an innovative strategy to develop a new political movement that would add millions of voters to the Republican coalition. And what if that consultant assured those GOP leaders that their party would not have to alter its views in order to capture and retain those voters.

He's talking, of course, about the Tea Party itself:

The Tea Party movement has attracted millions of new voters (as well as millions of formerly disaffected Republican voters) to the GOP. And all that Tea Party members ask of the GOP is that it acts according to its own principles by supporting lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and less government. So why are many in the Republican establishment recoiling in horror at the most powerful new force politics has seen in at least a decade? Perhaps it is because these self-appointed leaders are beginning to realize that a fundamental change to the party’s power structure may cause their own political demise.

The Republican establishment’s response to Christine O’Donnell’s surprise win in the Delaware Senate GOP primary was symptomatic of the change. Instead of embracing O’Donnell, the initial reaction of some Republican figures was to impugn her character and write off her chances of victory. This is a page from the same playbook that's been used to marginalize social conservatives.

Not that social and fiscal cons will ever be soulmates. It's a matter of emphasis. O'Donnell herself captured the momentary Zeitgeist — to a standing ovation! — at the Value Voters Summit in Washington Saturday, where Gary L. Bauer was a featured speaker:

But Ms. O'Donnell … has already said social issues won't top her agenda if she wins in November, despite her prior work speaking against premarital sex and masturbation. Instead, the first thing she wants to do is repeal the new health-care law and fend off cap-and-trade climate legislation.

Ms. O'Donnell's appearance …  put a spotlight on the challenge facing social conservatives, prominent in GOP politics earlier in the decade, as they try to hitch themselves to the fiscal insurgents of 2010. They may [or may not!] be ideological soulmates, but that doesn't mean they'd govern the same way.

"My sense of the average tea party-endorsed candidate this year is that what motivates them is their concern over spending and the national debt," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. "If a gay-marriage ban came before Congress, they'd probably vote for it, but that's not what motivates them."

Update: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Roughing it: Now she twitters, now she doesn't

A few stolen moments away from the twitterverse this week. Some withdrawal symptoms at first, but cocktails and cat whispering soothed the pain during a day out on the town in our sis's bedroom community north of Boston midweek. Above she and Daisy enjoy each other's company at their dining room table before the humans headed out for lunch.

After a bit of walkies along the new bike trail that goes from the railway station to the waterfront to cleanse our palates, we headed into Park Lunch, the pub around the corner on Merrimac Street.

All fried all the time. We never have fried at home. Clams and potatoes with tartar sauce, a mighty Caesar and martinis straight up with an olive (WNHMAH, either).

Back home Tuck put his new log splitter to good use, laying in a fine pile of logs for the coming monsoon season.

The course of true love never did run smooth. Tiny (right) gives her beloved Earl Gray the look of a woman scorned as she watches him indulge in the weed on the front stoop the other day.

Then there was this, midday today, further keeping us from our appointed rounds: "I hate losing to a computer, ANY computer," plaintively twittered blogbuddy Peter Ingemi of Da Tech Guy's Blog after a heroic attempt to restore a blogroll we'd accidentally deleted while trying to clear our blog of Blogrolling links that were displaying security warnings to some visitors to the site. Trscoop of The Right Scoop had first alerted us to the problem yesterday. Twitterfriend Steve Eggleston of No Runny Eggs then managed to recover the information from a cached copy of our blog and convert it to something called an OPML file, but so far no one's been able to figure out how to import that file into the blog to restore our "Blog Rolls On" blogroll. Screenshot above documents miracle of miracles, a live "Rescue" operation wherein Peter remotely occupied our desktop and tried to set things right:

Ugh. I'm not a mac guy but we will see what we can do …

Was totally ineffective in giving Mac aid to Sissy Willis. I shall leave my fedora off in shame today #hanginghead in shame

"NO! NOT THE HAT!" we twittered in mock (?) horror. But not to worry. Da Tech Guy's not a quitter. As with his blogging on behalf of the Shining City, he's on the case:

Found a typepad help blog, put up a request for a key sequence for import to see if we can get it for you.

We weren't able to do much blogging or regular twittering during the rescue op, but pretty nifty, huh? Twitter. The gift that keeps on giving.

Tea Party Power: "The question is which is to be master"

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less … The question is which is to be master … that’s all.” The Obama Administration's Orwellian/Emanuelian "rebranding" of the discredited "global warming" as "global climate disruption" comes to mind. (Life Magazine cover of Humpty Dumpty by Maxfield Parrish, March 17, 1921)

"Lotsa Tea Party energy in the air," we twittered Sistah Grizzly Angela Lash this morning, attempting a quick analysis — with "had a great fall" syntax — of the political landscape in "140 characters or less":

All the GOP's fuddy duddies and all the Journolista's men couldn't put the establishment together again!

On a mission to retake the hill and reignite the lights of the Shining City, the "almost chosen people" of our Army of Davids have been gaining ground, disintermediating the powers that be using every medium, old and new, to make our voices heard. The "Krauthammer-Rove Axis of Disdain" was stunned this week to find themselves blinking in the headlights of the onrushing narrative of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express. Cubachi has the animation and a nice twist to the irony of "reporters" halfway around the world getting the scoop on Christine O'Donnell and the Delaware upset:

Taiwanese animators have another funny video about the Delaware elections, the main players, and the establishment’s reaction. If only American news [could] be this humorous. Actually, we have MSNBC for that. Although they seem to be unintentionally facetious in their reportage.

A prescient bit of "commentary" from that Taiwanese animation:

The Democrats are happy about the infighting.

But could the Tea Party take them by surprise as well?

Are you listening, MSM? Probably not. The legacy media continue to hear what they want to hear and spin what the Son of Journolist wants them to spin. CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger's "analysis" last night [h/t News Busters] was typically tendentiously clueless:

The main Republican contenders [Borger's term for the establishment candidates who've been falling under the Tea Party train of late] have got to figure out a way to capture the enthusiasm of the Tea Party voters, without, in a general election, looking like they're captives of the Tea Party voters, and it's going to be a very difficult thing for someone to do because the Tea Party demands you to be ideologically pure, to a certain degree.

"Ideogically pure" is an old-think concept, Ms. Borger. As we twittered Mary Katharine Ham last evening in response to her latest Weekly Standard column, subheaded "Can't all us grizzlies get along?":

I agree sexism is not at issue. My objections in wild twitter nights have been [assertions of] litmus-test straw men.

As I blogged awhile back, those litmus tests or wedge issues are SO yesterday in the clarifying light of The Brown Revolution. [We trust the Values Voter Summiteers now meeting in DC will agree.]

Tea Partiers are focusing on larger issues: Limited government, fiscal responsibility, free markets. Big tent includes Indies & some Dems, BUT …

The powers that be — Rove & Co — don't like being disintermediated by new combos of old & new media.

This just in from Cubachi as we're about to go to "press":

Surprise! Mark Halperin gets it right about the tea parties, Palin.

Can they hear us now?

Update: Dan links in a robust, must-read declaration of our independence:

The message should be, in my opinion, this great growing influence in American politics, often best put in terms of a Tea Party movement, does not demand purity. It does not demand perfection. It demands a healthy respect for our Constitution and a willingness to have and support common sense values and policies which will pull America back from what has been a long, slow slide toward European socialism since the end of the Reagan era …

And we should continue to fight on no matter what the outcome, or challenges that lie ahead. Now, only we can put America back together, again. And we must do just that, not only for ourselves, but for generations of Americans still to come.

Update II: Cubachi links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Karl Rove in the doghouse? You betcha.

 

"Wha?" twittered Cubachi in response to a midmorning tweet on something we'd just seen on Fox:

FASCINATING. Karl Rove on Martha MacCallum's show is telegraphing free political advice to Christine O'Donnell & says he'd told RNSC to promise her funding.

"It must be the new social-networking thing," we tossed back. Hell hath no fury, and Rove's scorning of the freshly minted Delaware Republican Senate nominee on Hannity Tuesday night had loosed the Hounds of Hell amongst the candidates and their supporters. O'Donnell mentor Sarah Palin was the first among equals, the Mama Grizzly rearing up to face down the unteachable old dogs who would savage O'Donnell's reputation. In case you missed it, TPM has a handy blow-by-blow of this new kind of televised debate: 

O'Donnell's nomination has created deep divisions between the Republican Party and right-wing activists [TPM's tendentious term for Tea Partiers]. Last night, Rove bashed O'Donnell — and her chances of being elected — and insisted that she's said a lot of "nutty things." He was attacked by some right-wingers for those comments. O'Donnell whacked him back in a televised interview this morning. And then Rove responded to O'Donnell and his right-wing critics, daring them to 'prove me wrong.' Then Palin slammed Rove. Now it's Limbaugh's turn.

Rove tried to spin it in his favor on Fox this morning, not realizing a seismic shift had occurred while DC slept:

She's got a shot to win, but it's got to be passionate and factual and hard-hitting …

My job as a Fox analyst is to call it as I see it. My job is not to be a cheerleader for every Republican. Now I've got a different role outside my Fox role, and that's where I'm raising 50 million dollars to elect Republicans to the Senate.

Reportedly a behind-the-scenes consultant for O'Donnell's primary opponent Mike Castle, Rove was already limping badly last night when alpha grizzly Sarah went for the jugular: 

[Christine O'Donnell's] going to have to learn very quickly to dismiss what some of her handlers want. Remember what happened to me in the VP. Remember I used to have to sneak in my phone calls to you guys … She’s gonna have to dismiss that, go with her gut, get out there, speak to the American people, speak through FOX News and let the Independents who are tuning in to you, let them know what it is that she stands for, the principles behind her positions …

Some of these good old boys — and I have nothing against Karl Rove personally, yanno, he's the "expert" [finger gestures quotation marks] — but, Bill, some of these folks, they are saying that people like Christine O'Donnell and others, Tea Party Americans can't win because they don't want them to win. Because they know that a Christine O'Donnell, a Joe Miller from Alaska … These folks are gonna shake it up, and they are going to do what's right for America, not necessarily what's right for a political party machine.

This robust new form of political debate — spread out over days and weeks and months, disintermediating the moribund "gateway media" by exploiting the panoply of old and new media — will surely be the death knell of the stilted, you-will-each-have-five-minutes-for-your-reply affairs that still pass for televised debates.

The last word goes to our friend and sometime mentor Dan Riehl, who diagnosed the underlying cause of Karl Rove Syndrome last night on the Tammy Bruce Radio Podcast:

I think it's a combination of arrogance, ignorance and a lust for power and an egotism, that they believe they are so smart and so above everything that they can say and do whatever they want. 

Follow the money: O'Donnell raised over 1 million dollars online yesterday. Talk about disintermediating the powers that be through the internet! Go here to sweeten that pot.

Update: Scott Ott of Scrappleface and PJMTVs "Trifecta" in full disintermediation mode on Twitter:

Listening to DanRiehl interviewed by HeyTammyBruce on ChristineOD victory. Why do I enjoy this more than MSM?

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link.

Update III: Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross Journal links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.