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Rand Paul: "The president has been co-opted by the Tea Party"

"Young America's Foundation stepped in to save President Reagan'sWestern White House [in santa Barbara] Rancho del Cielo (above), in the spring of 1998 to preserve it as a living monument to Ronald Reagan to pass on [his] ideas to future generations," explains the organization's mission statement. Now Sarah Palin has accepted their invitation to keynote "Reagan 100 celebration" next weekend commemorating the 100th anniversary of The Great Communicator's birth.

"The president has been co-opted by the Tea Party," exulted Rand Paul as he and fellow Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Lee launched their Senate Tea Party Caucus Wednesday. With hats — crowns of laurel? — off to Ovid, "Those three form a multitude":

I went to the State of the Union … and guess who now is against earmarks?

Yes, you, Mr. President. Some of our fellow conservatives flew into a tizzy when Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio declined to join the caucus, but not to worry. Here's Rubio, and then our take:

If all of a sudden being in the Tea Party is not something that is happening in Main Street, but rather something that’s happening in Washington D.C., the "Tea Party" all of a sudden becomes some sort of movement run by politicians … I think that the real power of the Tea Party comes from its ability to drive the debate and the issues from the grassroots up, as opposed to from the politicians down.

Not a problem. As we twittered this morning:

Jim DeMnt, Rand Paul & Mike Lee launch Senate Tea Party Caucus, MarcoRubio declines to join. Room for both. Conservatives don't march in lockstep!

And that's the point that's been eluding some of our old-think fellow conservative opinionators who worried that Michele Bachmann's "unofficial" Tea-Party-Express-sponsored State of the Union response the other night would undermine Paul Ryan's party-sanctioned reply. Predictably, the usual suspects on the other side of the aisle — unmoved by the whole-cloth "new civility" — used Bachmann's presentation as an excuse to mount a same-old, same-old attack on a conservative woman, but in the light of day the next morning, leading conservative commentators acknowledged they'd weathered a tempest in a teapot. Erick Erickson said it best: 

I’m glad I was wrong. And it just goes to show that the narrative of concern, built up in the media in large part by nervous Republicans, was silly. It yet again shows the GOP is unwilling to seriously treat the tea party movement as a legitimate player.

We loved uber-seeker-of-wisdom-and-truth Andrew Breitbart's twitter reaction to the news that Sarah Palin would be keynote speaker (caption at top of post) at Young America Foundation's "Reagan 100 Celebration" (screenshot above). It represents the Fuddy-Duddies of Codevilla's Ruling Class's comeuppance as the Country Class finds its voice. Poking about YAF's web site, we felt as though we had come home. From John Heyward at Human Events:

Her presentation will include reflections on Reagan’s great “Time for Choosing” speech, in which he asked “whether we believe in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

Speaking of that "little intellectual elite in a distant capitol," it's beyond irony — chutzpah comes to mind — that our Corporatist in Chief and his minions appear to believe that "We the people" have learned nothing during the first two years of his Administration and are dumb enough to fall for the "optics" of the shiny new Obama-as-Reagan narrative:

"I think Obama's reflecting Reagan's optimism" Joe Trippi told a skeptical Megyn Kelly this afternoon.

No. We knew Ronald Reagan's vision of the Shining City, and central planner that you are at heart, Mr. President, you are no Ronald Reagan.

Update: Ed Driscoll retweets with a comment:

Maybe that explains this.

Update II: Sarah nails it on Facebook:

Consider what his “big government greatness” really amounts to. It’s basically a corporatist agenda – it’s the collaboration between big government and the big businesses that have powerful friends in D.C. and can afford to hire big lobbyists. This collaboration works in a manner that distorts and corrupts true free market capitalism. This isn’t just old-fashioned big government liberalism; this is crony capitalism on steroids. In the interests of big business, we’re “investing” in technologies and industries that venture capitalists tell us are non-starters, but which will provide lucrative returns for some corporate interests who have major investments in these areas.

Update III: Woo hoo: Instalanche!

Update IV: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update V: Maggie's links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

MLK: The only weapon in our hands is the weapon of protest

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," twittered Brandon Keser this morning, quoting Martin Luther King on the occasion of this 25th observation of MLK Day. The hare-brained idea floating about in the "post-vitriolic" Tucson-massacre ether that would urge Democrats and Republicans to cross the aisle and sit down together for the forthcoming SOTU comes to mind. They would have us become silent about our deeply-held philosophical differences, forgetting that those two sides of the aisle symbolize the great deliberative tradition of our democratic republic. "GOP T-Shirt Logo for bi-partisan seating at SOTU," above, h/t danthebarbarian on twitter.

"Everyone quotes pretty much the same MLK passages; I had to go in a different direction," writes twitter buddy dustbury, aka Charles G. Hill. Looking beyond the audacious "I Have a Dream" speech others are citing in observance of this 25th celebration of Martin Luther King Day, Hill pulls out King's Montgomery, Alabama speech at the start of the bus boycott of December 1955 in his post "Locating the turning point." As we twittered him back, it resonates in today's "vitriolic" echo chamber where so many of our trigger-happy friends on the left side of the aisle are all too quick to project their own violent impulses onto us tea partiers here on the right. Listen to Reverend King:

And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That’s all.

And certainly, certainly, this is the glory of America, with all of its faults. This is the glory of our democracy. If we were incarcerated behind the iron curtains of a Communistic nation, we couldn’t do this. If we were dropped in the dungeon of a totalitarian regime, we couldn’t do this. But the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.

Update: Sarah Palin in brief, eloquent Facebook tribute.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Vitriol spinners losing the battle for hearts and minds?

The view from our front porch at daybreak this morning: Deck cranes of the container ship "West Bay" out of Hong Kong catch the sun's early rays dockside at Eastern Minerals across the street.

"It looks like the vitriol spinners are losing the battle for hearts & minds," we just twittered," referencing a brand new CBS News poll that finds "Most Americans Feel Rhetoric, Tucson Shooting Unrelated":

Overall, 57 percent of respondents said the harsh political tone had nothing to do with the shooting, compared to 32 percent who felt it did …

In the wake of the shooting, much focus has been put on the harsh tone of politics in Washington and around the country, particularly after a contentious midterm election. Rhetoric and imagery from both Republicans and Democrats have included gun-related metaphors, but the majority of the country isn't connecting the shooting to politics.

"Much focus has been put," indeed. Dan Spencer cuts to the chase:

The left-wing hate machine's efforts to blame the shooting on the right has failed to persuade Americans, who continue to show they are smarter than many political activists give them credit for being.

Not only that, two new Rasmussen polls find "45% worried that Obama opponents will turn to violence, down from 53% last year" and "Voters Still See Democratic Agenda in Congress As More Extreme than GOP’s." Uh oh. We almost feel sorry for Soros-funded Media Matters founder David Brock, who's calling on Rupert Murdock to "rein in" Glenn Beck's and Sarah Palin's "violent rhetoric," or else:

If they fail to do so, it is incumbent upon you to fire them or be responsible for the climate they create and any consequences thereof.

It's not gonna happen. We loved Weasel Zippers' analysis:

Oh please. Now David Brock has his panties in a bunch because Beck used vampire imagery and compared him to a “smelly kid in third grade.”

Oh, the humanity! Do you suppose that our fellow citizens, despite — or perhaps because of? — media spin, have noticed after nearly two years of the usual suspects' crying wolf, that Tea Partiers really aren't into violence? As Allah Pundit, scanning the Journolista horizon twittered:

You know the media coverage was bad when even David Brooks is rushing to defend Palin.

Update: Nuance and further insight from Professor Jacobson.

Update II: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update III: Top story on Memeorandum.

Update IV: Moe Lane at Red State links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Vitriol: Progressives would eviscerate the metaphorically rich language that is our birthright

 

"Wonder which Journolist/cabalist wordsmith came up with the now viral 'vitriol' to tar Sarah & the Tea Party. John Podesta, EzraKlein?" we twittered this afternoon. The local sheriff was apparently the first to use the term in this context, but its ubiquity in the left's craven attempt to shape the narrative of the Saturday Night Massacre to blame the usual suspects suggested media-control mavens were on the case. "Broken Glass," above, references etymology of vitriol.

"People like that "are especially susceptible to vitriol," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told reporters at an Arizona Massacre news conference last night, uttering the word that would launch a thousand disingenuous news and opinion pieces. Google "vitriol giffords" and you get 14,722 related articles. Here's where it apparently all started:

Law enforcement officials continue to piece together the facts in Saturday's shooting rampage that left a federal judge dead and a congresswoman critically injured in Arizona, and some are questioning whether divisive political rhetoric may have played a role …

Dupnik … repeatedly cited what he characterized as the "vitriol" that has infected public discourse … There is reason to believe, he said, that the shooting suspect "may have a mental issue," adding that people like that "are especialy susceptible to vitriol"

Having been on twitter yesterday as the horrific news was breaking, we watched the sausage being made by those "some" who were "questioning whether divisive political rhetoric may have played a role," twitterers, bloggers, news reporters and opinionators picking up the "vitriol" narrative and running with it. Megyn Kelly took on the tendentious Sheriff Dupnik this evening. He's still sticking to the Journolist/Cabalist talking points. You know. "People like that" are "especially susceptible to vitriol." Megyn was polite, but she wasn't taking any prisoners: 

There were madmen then, there are madmen now. Is it really the role of the sheriff to stir the pot? Sheriffs have a duty to speak to the facts of the case.

Professor Jacobson of Legal Insurrection was more direct:

Dupnik should resign - He held press conference and blamed right-wing rhetoric, not admit it's just his opinion.

A final note. Google "vitriol" without "giffords" and you get "Sulfuric acid; Cruel and bitter criticism," along with this ironic "usage example" from the Vitriolizer in Chief:

I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst of other …

                 Sep 10, 2009 - Barack Obama

We've been onto then-candidate Obama's con game since December of 2006, when he implied we were a racist for disagreeing with his statist politics. 'Wish they taught things like history and English in the schools today. Lots of folks who weren't paying attention bought candidate Obama's purple prose back then. Will they now fall for humorless progressives' bowldlerized evisceration of the metaphorically rich language that is our birthright? The inedible Mara Laisson on Fox News Sunday is pontificating that "It's going to make people think twice before using certain metaphors in politics." Not. Mara and her fellow travelers need to read between the lines of Dana Loesch's tweet:

I also denounce all metaphors because we as humans are apparently too susceptible and unintelligent to not take them literally.

Update: Oh, ick. Woman who helped squelch killer just told Shep it's evil for Republicans to cast Obamacare as job-killing law.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

After the Fall: Boehner's Humility releases us from Pelosi's Pride?

"Instapundit's Washed Away By the Preference Cascade?: John Boehner's humility releases us from Pelosi's pride?" we twittered this morning. More about that below. Above, After-the-Fall former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Steny "Tea Party people come from unhappy families" Hoyer and fellow members of the new House minority listen in stunned silence to Boehner's remarks to the opening session Wednesday.

"If these sane and humble words are real, we might be able to save ourselves," writes Elizabeth Scalia, lifting our spirits with a skeptic's message of hope in "Boehner's Aria; No Hook for Now." A couple of excerpts, and then a few thoughts of our own on the "preference cascade" that appears to be washing away the old regime. Here's Scalia on Speaker Boehner's remarks to the opening session of the 112th Congress Wednesday:

Boehner cleared his throat with four magical words that would be unimaginable coming from the throats of most of our current cabal of political “leaders”: “It’s still just me…”

And then he sang not of hubris but of humility, not of superiority but of service. And in such a refreshing tone …

If this is genuine – and Boehner’s penchant for weepiness suggests to me that he is a man familiar with authentic humility – then it might actually become catalytic …

The word "catalytic" caught our eye. We used that word to explain the effect of Scott Brown's winning the Kennedy People's Seat last year:

… the "Massachusetts Miracle" served as a catalyst to break up the incumbent logjam, promising "term limits by other means" in local and national elections this spring and come November.

It was Glenn Reynolds, always ahead of the curve, who had revealed to us in another context "the phenomenon of 'preference cascades' — in which people who have been obliged to conceal their true beliefs by social pressure or sheer force suddenly discover that a lot of other people feel the same way":

This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers - or even to the citizens themselves.

"The Congressman from K Street" may have "seemed an unlikely clarion for an anti-establishment revolt," wrote Peter Boyle in an excellent New Yorker profile of the Speaker-designate a few weeks back:

But Boehner was among the first Beltway Republicans to recognize [way back in April of 2009] that the rise of the Tea Party represented, for Republicans, a near-miracle of good luck" …

While many Democrats and the mainstream media mocked the Tea Party, Boehner pressed his members to get out in front of the movement or, at least, get out of its way. "I urge you to get in touch with these efforts and connect with them," he told a closed-door meeting of the Republican Conference. "The people participating in these protests will be the soldiers for our cause a year from now."

How's that rebranding working out, Minority Leader Pelosi?

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Tears of joy: Boehner re-imposes term limits for GOP chairmanships

NMA World's animation stills (above and below) from "GOP vows to repeal Obamacare" feature Speaker-designate John Boehner's signature tendency to tear up.

"Just as fresh blood is reinvigorating the House GOP rank and file, there will be new energy in the leadership, too," writes Byron York, lifting the spirits of Tea Partiers everywhere:

Even though Republicans were out of power for just four years, the old GOP committee chairmen haven't come back to reclaim their old spots; nearly all the lawmakers who are taking over committees have never held the chairman's gavel before.

It's a consequence of a decision Republicans made back in 1995, just after taking over the House for the first time in 40 years. For years prior to that, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich and his GOP colleagues watched as the oldest of Democratic old bulls turned House committees into personal fiefdoms. Lawmakers like Reps. Dan Rostenkowski, John Dingell, Jack Brooks and Jamie Whitten each led key committees for more than a decade.

"The Republican answer, included in the Contract With America, was to support term limits for all members of Congress. But that would have required amending the Constitution, and they didn't have the support," notes York:

So House leaders did something that was within their authority: They put a six-year limit on the tenures of committee chairmen.

"Boehner's re-imposition of chairmanship term limits is just one more way the GOP is trying to tell the American people that the party has learned its lesson":

And that is one more result of the GOP's remarkable victory on Nov. 2. 

From Matt Lewis's column a coupla weeks back: "When asked about Rep. John Boehner's penchant for weeping, Palin said: 'I don't know if a woman would be given a pass necessarily … I respect John Boehner because he has worn his feelings on his sleeve on things that are so important to him … and I give him that pass, too.'" It's totally endearing to us, the opposite of Bubba's camera-ready crocodile tears at Ron Brown's funeral. 

As our readers know, Boehner will livestream opening day of the new Congress on Facebook at noon today. Pull out your hankies and enjoy! Meanwhile, in other news to set the tea partier's heart aflutter, this from the Wall Street Journal:

House Republicans are pledging to cut spending, and one early sign they're serious is the rules package they are bringing to the House floor tomorrow. More than the last time it held power, the GOP is changing the rules to make it harder to tax and spend.

Update: Larwyn's Linx links.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Speaker Boehner: The revolution will be livestreamed

"In addition to Facebook, Boehner (above) often 'tweets' out comments or announcements, but the Speaker-designate will change his Twitter name to reflect his new position. That change is not expected to happen until later Tuesday night and Boehner's staff is not releasing what his new Twitter handle will be yet," reports CNN's politicalticker.

"Seems like John Boehner's been studying Sarah Palin's embrace of the full panoply of media, old & new," we just twittered: "Opening gavel tomorrow to livestream on Facebook":

According to a blog post that will be posted on Boehner's website this afternoon, the incoming speaker will direct people to visit the "Pledge to America" Facebook page to view the transition to the GOP-controlled House.

Nick Schaper, Boehner's director of digital media, tells CNN, "This kind of streaming and real-time interaction is not only unprecedented for the House, it's helping to set the tone for a new majority that will continue to find new ways to listen to and better represent the American people." Those watching on Facebook will be able to offer feedback and comment on the proceedings as they happen live.

We assume they'll be livestreaming the controversial reading of the Constitution on Friday, blogged here. Rube that we are, we have to admit we get goosebumps at the thought of this obvious "stunt," the "showy equivalent of wearing a flag pin" — We're still sporting our post-9/11 flag pin to this day! — as bitter dustbin-of-history opinionator David Corn scoffs. Sorry, David. Disintermediating the powers that be via the internet is where we're at. Been there since our first tea party/town hall in March of 2009 and never looked back. Republican vs Democrat are no longer the relevant categories. It's "them vs us," Angelo Codevilla's the Ruling Class vs the Country Class, the vested powers that be vs the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Check out the cynical conventional "wisdom" of this item from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 

But the question being debated in legal and political circles is whether the constitutional rules are simply symbolic flourishes to satisfy an emboldened and watchful tea party base. "I think it's entirely cosmetic," said Western Connecticut State University history professor Kevin Gutzman, who said he is a conservative libertarian and sympathizes with the tea party.

 "This is the way the establishment handles grass-roots movements," he said. "They humor people who are not expert, or not fully cognizant. And then once they've humored them, and those people go away, it's right back to business as usual. It looks like this will be business as usual — except for the half-hour, or however long it takes, to read the Constitution out loud."

"Not fully cognizant"? Harrumph! Thanks to the internet-facilitated freedom of assembly — both virtual and on the ground — we're not going away any time soon.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Update II: "Boehner to livestream" trending on Memeorandum.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Barney Frank: "It's an air kiss they're blowing to the Tea Party"

"Bill Whittle, you may have put the nation on the road to recovery of the Founders' enlightened vision of freedom singlehandedly," we wrote in the caption to our post "A Declaration of Independence: Art for freedom's sake" last March: "Longhandedly, that is, as in writing out the Declaration of Independence longhand. We've completed the first part (three 8 1/2 x 11 sheets, above) and found the exercise a revelation."

"It's an air kiss they're blowing to the tea party," Barney Frank dismisses the House Republican majority's "new rule requiring members to cite the specific constitutional authority for any bill they introduce." The lower chamber's first order of business on Thursday, one day after Speaker-designate John Boehner is sworn in, will be a reading aloud of the Constitution, a shock to the system of those like Frank who have lost sight of the Shining City through the fog of their willful misreading of the Founders' intent. Jonah Goldberg explains Barney's Complaint in a must-read little masterpiece of the essayist's art that plays with progressives' eleutherophobia:

According to many commentators, Speaker-to-Be John Boehner and his crew of zealots have some very scary ideas. Chief among them: They want to make some obscure, inscrutable tract from an ancient civilization the centerpiece of their legislative philosophy. Indeed, in a move generating consternation and exasperation at MSNBC and other bastions of right-thinking, these cultists will read their perversely sacred text at the opening of the legislative session, breaking with more than 200 years of precedent.

For historical perspective, Jonah in USA Today, Cato's Roger Pilon in the WSJ and Thomas Sowell in the Union Leader are all on the same wavelength. Here's Sowell:

During the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, the denigration of the Constitution began, led by such luminaries as Princeton scholar and future President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, future Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

As a professor at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson wrote condescendingly of "the simple days of 1787" when the Constitution was written and how, in our presumably more complex times, "each generation of statesmen looks to the Supreme Court to supply the interpretation which will serve the needs of the day …

As Roscoe Pound put it, law should be "in the hands of a progressive and enlightened caste whose conceptions are in advance of the public." That is still the vision of the left a hundred years later. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution, by voting out those who promote end runs around it.

"The annoying thing is they used to be honest about this," observes Jonah:

Woodrow Wilson openly expressed his contempt for fidelity to the Constitution, preferring a "living" Constitution that social planners can rewrite at a glance to fit the changing times.

But in recent years, liberals have retreated from admitting that the Constitution is inconvenient to arguing that it is either simply irrelevant or infinitely malleable. [Enter Ezra Klein, stage left.]

Beyond the disinguousness of their sales pitch, the problem with the liberal/progressive project has always been their utopian denial of life's dark side in ourselves, the tragic view of human nature that we are forever flogging here. It was Bill Whittle — the fearless freedom fighter whose "Imperishable" inspired us all to write out in longhand and whisper out loud the words of the Declaration last winter (see caption above) — who said it best in "The Iceberg" last summer. A few excerpts:

But Progressivism is not progressive – it’s ancient. Cyclical. It’s circular. It is, in fact, the symptom and the eventual cause of impending collapse.

In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.

As Scott Ott wrote in his defense of Sarah Palin's "death panels" two summers back:

Journalism professionals would also benefit from reading some American history, including our founding documents. Our founders had a deep understanding of human nature, shaped by their lifelong, exhaustive study of history and philosophy and of the book that best encapsulates both — the Bible.

Update: Michelle Malkin Buzzworthy link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Tea Partiers vs Tea Partyers. What's in a name?

"Al Qaeda is said to be planning Christmas attacks in the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. sprang into action, telling Al Qaeda, 'You can't call them Christmas attacks" quipped Jay Leno the other night: "You have to call them holiday attacks … Al Qaeda threatening to disrupt Christmas. Who do they think they are, relatives?" Words matter, and nobody says more in fewer words than the well-tempered comedy writer. Spellings matter too (see below).

"Well, that's a good way to tell who are actual members ;-)" twittered SaveOurCountry this afternoon, responding to our own tweet about a telling spelling discrepancy that's just reared its lovely head between veteran Tea Partiers like ourselves who've always used an "i" and johnny-come-lately members of the commentariat who have chosen to use "y" — Why? — as in "partyers," in their newly fact-based analyses of our movement following the November 2 "shellacking" of the powers that were. We first noticed it the other day in former Commentary columnist Jennifer Rubin's Washington Post article about "Republicans who want no distance between themselves and the most stalwart Tea Partyers," but googling for more this afternoon, we stumbled upon a Christian Science Monitor instance from way back in May: "Sarah Palin — feminist first, tea partyer second." Then today came the NYT's Kate Zernike's "I think everyone thought of the Tea Partyers as sort of angry, white men." [Yup, and no one Pauline Kael knew voted for Nixon.] So Tea Partyers with a y has been out there, but consider this. Prior to her move to the WaPo, Rubin was talkin' Partiers with an i only last October:

With a big assist from Obama, the Tea Partiers have proved themselves much savvier than the punditocracy.

There's nothing nefarious here. Just a given publication's editorial stylepoint decisions. Still, wouldn't we love to know where the i/y distinction came from? A faint whiff of elitism, or are we being oversensitive?* We miss you, William Safire. At any rate, we're giving the WaPo, CSM and NYT editors the benefit of the doubt, unlike our friends on the left side of the aisle who tried to spin a scandal out of Fox Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon's recent staff memo regarding coverage of "climate change" stories:

Politico’s headline captures the controversy perfectly: “Fox editor urged climate skepticism.”

*Etymology/usage notes: Neither partier nor partyer can be found in our venerable dead-tree Merriam Webster's Unabridged. We may be dealing with a neologism here. Online we found this bit of anecdotal evidence that suggests what may be afoot:

Are you British? "Partier" is the common American word; "partyer" looks British to me.

Update: This in a tweet from Melissa Moore to Dan Riehl:

Don't forget "Partayers" ;-)

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Who knew that Murdoch and Soros had it in them?

 

"I LOVE THE CHEMISTRY between Greta Van Susteren and Herman Cain. She is SMITTEN w THE HERMANATOR!" we twittered this afternoon after viewing a scintillating interview between the Fox News anchoress and the "Stay inspired: We the people are still in charge" Republican rising star that got our Papa Grizzly juices flowing. We haven't felt this energized since that McCain announcement of his running mate!

"If the polarisation between liberal progressives and the conservative Tea Party is getting worse in the US, thank these men," editorializes the UK's The Independent, trotting out the left's usual moral-equivalency suspects in a lame if stylishly written attempt to dismiss belief in American exceptionalism as just another astroturf phenomenon:

Who knew that Rupert Murdoch and George Soros, two billionaires of not so tender years, had it in them? …

While the one means to impose a right-wing "dictatorial democracy" on America, the other is a "master puppeteer" bent on collapsing the dollar and forming a socialist world government. Cartoonish this may be, but a joke it is not …

Yet, political discourse in America is increasingly being held hostage to their fight and the collateral damage is accumulating.

"I'm a Conservative First and a Republican second, Herman Cain told Greta. "Less government, lower taxes, more individual responsibility." Fun and funniest question and answer ever: "Will you come back and tell us first, maybe? I know you're friends with Cavuto," said Greta. "Neil Cavuto has offered to disown me, even send Guido to break my knees." As we twittered THEHermanCain this afta, "So, Greta or Cavuto: Who gets your 2012 scoop? How 'bout you twitter to show 'we the people are still in charge'? :D"

As Dick Cheney once famously told a pack journalist, "I disagree with the premise of your question." What our friends on the left side of the aisle take to be "polarization" is simply the constitutional conservative grassroots' great awakening.

Update: Stacy links:

Sissy Willis loves her some Herman, too!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.