‘They said they were Democrats first’

by Smitty (hat tip: TOTUS blog)

ABC contributor George Will suggested former Sen. John Edwards was irresponsible to campaign for the Democratic Party nomination.
“Think about what a tragedy it would have been if he had won?” Will said.

Tragedy? Greek? The Book of Job? The current economy?

Several of [Edward’s staffers] had gotten together and devised a “doomsday” strategy of sorts.
Basically, if it looked like Edwards was going to win the Democratic Party nomination, they were going to sabotage his campaign, several former Edwards’ staffers have told me.
They said they were Democrats first, and if it looked like Edwards was going to become the nominee, they were going to bring down the campaign.

Look, if we’re going to continue slouching The Road to Serfdom, then what difference does it make which stuffed shirt gets the credit/blame? Oh, right: non-worshippers of the POTUS are racist. OK, modulo the nebulous DNA difference, again: what’s the difference?

‘Democrats first’ is as good as ‘Republicans first’. How about ‘Constitution first’, ye losers?

‘Sleazy tabloid accusations . . .’

. . . have a predictable way of proving true:

When a person’s image is a commodity — as was the case with John Edwards, the millionaire of humble origins whose family life supposedly kept him grounded — the ideas of privacy and good taste become part of the marketing effort. The tabloids, rude and prying, are able to break through such images to the truth behind them in ways the conventional media cannot. . . .
“False, absolute nonsense,” an Edwards spokesperson told the Enquirer at the beginning of the Edwards-affair affair in October 2007, while the candidate was still working the heartland on his way to a second-place finish, ahead of Hillary Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses. Against that blanket denial, the paper cited “a source close to the woman” and “one bombshell e-mail message” to support what it called a “shocking allegation — if proven true.”

As previously noted, newspapers were generally more successful when they were more tabloid-ish, and before they gave op-ed space to dishonest twits like Frank Rich.

Princess Kennedy for SCOTUS?

By Smitty
HillBuzz scoops it:

Ladies and Gentleman, I come to you today not as the daughter of a former president, not as the daughter of a former first lady known around the world for her style and grace, not as the niece of a shameless drunk who left a woman to drown in his submerged Oldsmobile, not as the embarrassment to herself and, you know, others who tried to claim a Senate seat that didn’t belong to her, not as that same embarrassment who then thought she could be Ambassador to the Vatican, despite the Pope’s personal protests against me, and the fact the last Ambassador Kennedy did as much damage to US-British relations as was humanly possible.
No, today I come before you, my reddish-brown mane never looking better, my diamonds never sparkling more, as not any of those previously mentioned things that make my mother, father, and brother roll over in their graves. No, today I am standing before you as just Caroline Kennedy, the woman who now wants to be a Justice on the Supreme Court. The woman who once had that pony you all remember and loved. . . .

Ah, yes. Read the rest.

UPDATE (RSM): Speaking of princesses and ponies, John “Silky Pony” Edwards is under investigation for suspected campaign finance violations.

DAN COLLINS IS RIGHT!

A brilliant point, expressed concisely:

[C]onsider the Bristol Palin story, that she and Levi whatsisface have called off their engagement. That breaks on the same day that it’s reported that John Edwards has reared his silky little head to lecture the nation on poverty at Brown University. One of these babies has a father and was born to a teen out of wedlock. The other one doesn’t, and was born to a crazy lady hired to film the candidate (rather than boink him) as he jetted from campaign event to campaign event while his wife’s cancer was in remission. I don’t want to belabor the point, but one of these pairs of biological parents screwed the pooch more bigtime than the other.

Dan is an educator, and when he aims to teach a lesson, he whomps the mule in the head. I unjustly trashed Bristol Palin yesterday, and heard many arguments to the contrary, but Brother Dan knows how to whomp a mule in a loving, Christian manner.

Therefore I acknowledge my injustice to Bristol, and hope only good things for her henceforth, that she may walk in the ways of righteousness in the blessings of the Lord. And to the brilliant Dan Collins, a tip of the hat for his educational excellence. One a mule gets smart, he only needs to see the stick.

UPDATE: Conservatives4Palin:

His writing is so good that I would probably still read and link him even if I loathed him.

Yeah, my sister-in-law Ericka says the same thing. After 23 years in the news business, and 20 years of marriage to Ericka’s much-sexier older sister, there are two things I’m very good at. One of them is saying, “Yes, dear.” Because there’s a drawer full of knives in the kitchen, and I’ve got to sleep sometime.

Fellows, if you want to succeed in life, the trick is to marry a mean sexy woman.

UPDATE II: Speaking of my sexy wife, here’s a photo of her when she was 27, and already a mom:

If you’ll click that picture, you’ll see a picture of Mrs. Other McCain when she was a smokin’-hot 25, in the hot lingerie I bought her for Christmas.

As a home-schooling dad, I’m an educator, too. For the benefit of you newbies, that’s a variation of blogospheric method called a “Rick Roll.” Pay attention, this will be on the final.

Bait (sex) and switch (politics)

She’s “breaking her silence” about her husband’s adultery to get more publicity for her liberal agenda:

Elizabeth Edwards appeared Thursday morning on Capitol Hill where she discussed the need for heathcare reform in front of the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Health. Edwards veered from her prepared remarks to attack Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain on his healthcare policy.
“Neither one of us would be insured under his healthcare plan,” she told the committee, an attack she has used frequently against the Arizona Senator, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2000.
“I do think that Sen. McCain’s policy does focus excessively on providing a lower cost policy without at the same time guaranteeing a basic level of coverage in that policy or addressing the scope of inclusion for all Americans,” Edwards elaborated.

She is, if nothing else, amazingly consistent. All she has ever cared about is politics.

Short answer: John Edwards

Next time some TV talking head brings up Sarah Palin’s lack of foreign-policy experience, can somebody please point out that the Democrats in 2004 picked John Edwards as their vice-presidential candidate?

What was Edwards’ background in national security? How was Edwards — who ran third in the Democratic presidential primaries this year — so much more eminently qualified for the VP slot than Palin?

I mean, other than his possession of a Y chromosome and his membership in the Democratic Party, exactly why was Edwards spared this kind of sneering from the MSM? Granted, Joe Biden is an old hand at foreign policy. But certainly no one can argue that Palin is less qualified than Edwards. who had never held public office until he got elected to the Senate, and accomplished exactly nothing during his tenure there.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. And please read this post about “Hope for Homophobia.” It appears that the VPILF is a victim of what can only be called triple standards: One for men, one for women, and one for Republican women.

UPDATE II: Rasmussen:

After her debut in Dayton and a rush of media coverage, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 53% now have a favorable opinion of Palin. . . .
By way of comparison, on the day he was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden was viewed favorably by 43% of voters.

To borrow a phrase, “Heh.”

Enquirer: Rielle and Edwards’ Love Child

At a supermarket near you:

(Via Hot Air) Love that blurb: “He begged her NOT to abort the baby.” Seems Edwards is a closet pro-lifer. Who knew?

John Drescher’s resignation?

There is no excuse for a newspaper missing a scoop in its backyard:

About 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, former Sen. Edwards reached me on my office phone.
Earlier that day, while campaigning in South Carolina, Edwards denied a report in The National Enquirer that he had an affair with an unnamed woman who once worked in his campaign.
In the newsroom, we debated whether to run Edwards’ comments about the Enquirer story in the next day’s print edition.

Debate? What’s to debate? True or false, the Enquirer story was important. If it was false, then your state’s former senator was the object of a disgusting smear. If it was true, well … But Edwards’ denial was news, either way. Listen to the pathetic reasoning of Charlotte News & Observer editor John Drescher:

By the time Edwards called, we had decided not to publish the story in the Friday paper. But Edwards didn’t know that. I wanted to hear what he had to say. We still could have reversed our decision. . . .
He said The N&O was the paper that arrived on his doorstep every day, the one read by friends of him and his wife, Elizabeth.
He said he’d never called before to complain or state his case. Given Elizabeth’s health — she has cancer — he said it was especially important to him that the story not run in The N&O.
He was calling from an airport, and we spoke only a few minutes. I made no promises.
Edwards’ comments were off the record. Because he has acknowledged he lied, I feel free to report them.

My God. The man was running for President of the United States and is by definition a public figure. You’re going to let him pressure you not even to report that he has denied an accusation? And you only feel you can report this now “because he has acknowledged he lied”?

The man lied, period. The Enquirer’s story was right, and your decision not to publish the denial was wrong. In fact, allowing yourself to be scooped by a supermarket tabloid on a major scandal involving a local politician is a scandal in its own right, and an indictment of the news judgment of Drescher and his staff.

Question for Edwards supporters

From Deceiver:

The Associated Press looks at Rielle’s final $14,000 payment from the Edwards campaign in April ’07. After the $100,000 he’d already paid her for 15-20 minutes of amateurish video. Question for those few remaining “It was just sex!” holdouts: Do you really think the contributors to the Edwards campaign appreciate the idea that they might have helped him pay for it?

Ouch.

Jeralyn on Edwards

Jeralyn Merritt, a lawyer and a Democrat, examines the role that lawyers played in the John Edwards scandal:

The fact that all three lawyers — those for Edwards, Hunter and Young — contacted the Enquirer within days of the publication of her being photographed pregnant on December 12, and that Edwards’ lawyer told them that Rielle was going to deny the paternity allegation, suggests to me, as a lawyer, it was a joint strategy.

Well, of course, it was a joint strategy. What boggles my mind is (a) Young’s willingness to be the fall guy for his boss, and (b) Hunter’s failure to realize that she’s being played.

It’s obvious to me that Hunter’s lawyer is part of the Edwards operation, and thus representing Edwards’ interests, rather than Hunter’s. Any lawyer could see that Hunter could file a paternity suit and (assuming the kid is Edwards’) win a lucrative settlement. She could get at least a quarter-million for the tell-all magazine photo exclusive, another half-million for the book rights, and the movie rights — oh, man, the sky’s the limit.

Instead, at the insistence of Edwards’ army of lawyers, she’s hiding out and taking $15,000 a month in hush money. Crap, do the math here, Rielle — you’re getting gypped, big-time.

Now, back to Jeralyn’s blog:

Unlike the right wing bloggers covering this who may just be gleeful to see John Edwards, a prominent Democrat trashed, it bothers me for a different reason. . . .
On one level I’m angry because I supported both Edwards and Hillary between October and December. I covered them equally in Iowa and spent hours attending his campaign events and writing about them. I would have endorsed Hillary much earlier had Edwards not been in the race. As a blogger, that matters to me.

OK, first, the “glee” thing: Speaking as a right-winger, I never thought Edwards was anything other than a phony, and let me explain why. That “son of a poor mill-worker” stuff was pure bunk, if you actually know anything about life in Southern textile mill towns. (My grandmother worked for years in the mills in LaGrange, Ga., where my uncle and cousins still live.)

Edwards’ father actually worked his way up to supervisor for Milliken, meaning he was respectably middle class in the mill-town millieu, and if he wasn’t rich — well, who was? But they were by no means poverty-stricken, and if his dad felt a grudge at having to work his way up, and being passed over a few times along the way — again, welcome to a very large club. I quote:

“They weren’t quite as humble as Edwards makes it sound,” says Pat Smith of Robbins. “Wallace was a very important man at the mill. … They weren’t rich, but they weren’t struggling poor.”

In fact, Edwards’ father’s life story was a classic American bootstrap tale of upward mobility, and for Edwards to poormouth his childhood and imply that his family lived hand-to-mouth was an insult to his father’s hard work. As someone whose own parents were of the same hard-working middle-class type — my dad worked 37 years at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Ga. — I’ve never been tempted to poormouth my upbringing in some pathetic attempt to aggrandize myself by belittling my own parents.

Edwards’ masquerade is just like Bill Clinton’s phony poor-boy shtick — Bill’s stepfather owned a car dealership, his mother was a nurse, he attended private school all the way up through eighth grade, and we’re supposed to think he was some kind of barefoot urchin? Give me a freaking break.

If there is any right-wing “glee” in the Edwards scandal, it is in the vindication of our original judgment of the man as a phony. The fact that he fooled so many people for so long ought to cause those he fooled to question their own judgment, including their willingness to believe that the original Enquirer reporting on the scandal was some kind of “smear.” Not every negative fact about a Democrat is ginned up by Karl Rove, you know.

At least, right-wingers are going into this election with their eyes open. There is no conservative of any weight who considers John McCain “one of us.” Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham — not one of them trusts Maverick any farther than they can throw him. On Nov. 4, millions of conservatives will nonetheless, as Ann Coulter says, get drunk and vote for McCain. Duty, not Hope.

And frankly, far-sighted Democrats might want to buy a few drinks themselves, for I suspect that if Hope should triumph on Nov. 4, you’re in for a disillusionment as severe as anything Edwards has given his erstwhile supporters.

Wouldn’t it be strange if it turned out that, of the three leading contenders for the Democratic nomination this year, Hillary was the most trustworthy?