I’m sorry there won’t be much blogging today. Being in L.A., I figured I owed it to myself to get my pretty face before a camera. You’ll see the results early next week. I don’t want to blow the surprise, but the end product could change the blogosphere as we know it.

We have a really big show tonight. Bill Kristol will be joining us in the first hour. In the second hour, we’ll have the Beltway Boys on, unless they’re sitting shiva for the Immigration Bill. As always, Larry Kudlow will follow hard on the heels of the Beltway Boys.

The real treat will come in the final hour when I count down the Top 10 Best Final Scenes in Movie History. Once again, Emmit remains on sabbatical, so the heavy-lifting of preparing a list falls to me. To comment on whether or not my list makes any sense, we will have as a very special guest Academy Award nominated screenwriter Roger L. Simon.

Most excitingly, I’ve convinced Salem Communications to give me a $5 bonus for everyone who makes a reference to “chowdah” when they call in!

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

Great Lowry column on how talk radio and bloggers slayed the Senate dragon on immigration:

All of that was enough to get all of 46 votes on a key procedural votethat needed 60 to pass. The fight over the immigration bill was thefirst instance of an insider parliamentary struggle in which bloggers,talk-radio hosts and citizens were able to have a major voice throughthe synergistic power of the Internet, radio waves and telephone lines.Bloggers picked apart the bill, talk-radio-show hosts broadcast itsflaws, and ordinary people jammed their senators' phone lines --blocking what had begun as a kind of legislative coup.

...

In the end, support for the bill literally collapsed. Even theimperious Voinovich voted against cloture. Now, there is really no suchthing as an "inside game" anymore, since bloggers make sure it gets"outside." Both the right and the left will take advantage of this, forgood and ill policy ends. But it's clearly an enhancement of democracy.Senators should get used to it, and buy more phone lines.

We've come to expect that bloggers will influence the populist parts of our political process, namely elections. But an august institution like the Senate is a different matter. Now, we've shown that no one is immune to the power of a little openness. They will be assimilated.

Trent Lott may call that rabblerousing. I call it democracy.

Mitch McConnell stepped up today to protect us from the Fairness Doctrine.  Thank you, Senator.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

The bill has died.

Trust me, no one will be sitting shiva for it at HH.com, and not just because I’m the only one who knows what “sitting shiva” means. Actually, Medved also knows what “sitting shiva” means, and maybe he’ll be doing it on behalf of everyone else at Townhall who is instead celebrating like it’s VJ Day. (Reports that Matt Lewis surprised Mary Katherine Ham with a kiss like the one seen in the picture of above are unconfirmed.)

So where do we go from here? Let’s take ‘em one by one, starting with the biggest winners and working our way down to the biggest losers:

1) YOU – Yes, it sounds trite, but your voice was heard. Remember, the original aim of this bill’s authors was to have it enshrined as law in a mere 48 hours. You raised such a fuss that that became impossible. But the bill’s supporters were undeterred and remained the clear majority in the Senate.

Truly, I don’t think a single Senator changed his mind on the underlying merits of the bill. Those that changed their votes did so because they heard from their constituents. So what’s the takeaway? Your voice counts.  In a democracy, that’s a very fine thing.

2) THE CONGRESSIONAL HEROES – Lest we find ourselves lost in a throw-the-bums-out mentality, let’s take a moment to recognize the Republican Senators and Congressmen who led the fight to beat back this wildebeest of a bill. I had Pete Hoekstra on the show last night; Rep. Hoekstra isn’t known as a ball of fire, but he was passionate last night. He was great. He fought against the tide and he wasn’t alone.

Jim DeMint has been a stalwart on this since day one. Same goes for Sessions, Cornyn and Inhofe. David Vitter went mano-a-mano with Harry Reid. John Shadegg showed what real House leadership would look like. Someday we’ll have a Speaker Shadegg, and that will be a fine thing indeed. If I left any of the politician good guys out of this brief list (and I’m sure I did), my apologies.

3) THE FENCE-SITTING REPUBLICANS – The bill was defeated handily this morning. We got 53 votes against cloture. Earlier in the week, it didn’t look like we’d get the 40 that we needed. I guess it’s neat that Senators like Brownback and Murkowski had a Road-to-Damascus moment some time in the last 24 hours, but where were they when the battle raged? Rather than just ask the question rhetorically, let me posit a theory: They were sitting in the middle with their fingers in the air.

In this class of fence-sitters, I would be remiss in my duties as a blogger if I didn’t carve out a special place for George Voinovich. Yesterday, Senator Voinovich was humiliating himself on the air with Sean Hannity, accusing Hannity of being irrational for opposing the bill. Today, Voinovich voted against cloture. What political courage!

How will Republican voters remember the Senators who sat out the war? My guess is not very fondly.

4) THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION – I’ve admired this president for a long time, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve had it up to here (my hand is at my forehead) with this administration’s chronic obtuseness and arrogance. The top priority right now for the administration should be the war. And yet the president spent what little political capital he had trying to shove this atrocious immigration bill down the country’s throat. This whole gambit was the logical equivalent of Abraham Lincoln in February of 1864 seeking out the non-war related issue that would most effectively divide his base and then relentlessly championing that issue. That would have been dumb, right? And yet that’s exactly what President Bush did.

President Bush is going to need a united base come September if he wants to stay the course in Iraq. Given that consideration, calling 90% of that base bigots probably wasn’t a very good idea. Fickle, weak-kneed and misguided Republican senators like Dick Lugar are already preemptively declaring defeat.

Will the Republican base forgive the administration for its actions surrounding this bill? My guess is no. We’re moving on to finding another leader for the party, and in 7 months or so we’ll have one. In the meantime, thanks to this idiotic gambit, there’s a power vacuum right now in the White House.

Maybe the base can fill that vacuum. The only good news is that the past political fortnight showed that the Republican base, when enthusiastic, can have a dramatically positive effect on Republican politicians. If the base demands victory in Iraq as loudly as it demanded defeat for this immigration bill, the Republicans in congress will once again listen.

5) THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY – Securing the border is something that 90% of the country feels should be done immediately and permanently. That’s the motherhood and apple-pie of this issue – no one opposes it.

Except the leadership of the Democratic Party. For a while now, the Republicans’ best hope for success has been Democratic stupidity. Fortunately, the Democrats have often been up to the task, handing us presidential nominees like John Kerry and Al Gore. Now, the Democrats have given us the greatest gift of all – an issue that moves the country much more than members of the political class realize and on which the Democrats find themselves on the wrong side. The Republican congressional candidates should be able to have a lot of fun with the issue of border security in 2008. So should the Republican presidential nominee unless he’s…

6) JOHN McCAIN – What’s left to say about this man? I guess you can argue whether he does what he does because his vanity compels him to plaster his name on “major” legislation, regardless of whether that legislation is good or bad, or that Mort Kondracke has it right and that McCain is as noble a politician that this county has ever seen whose conscience holds him prisoner.

You can probably tell by my phrasing of the issue which way I lean, but ultimately, who cares? John McCain has opposed the vast majority of his party too many times on too many issues. And regardless of what Mort Kondracke or McCain’s other friends in the media believe, the base’s disdain for McCain does not primarily derive from personal animus. Instead, that disdain flows directly from the fact that John McCain has been a more damaging presence in the Senate over the past six years than anyone else - Tom Daschle, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid included.

Yes, he’s right on the war, but a lot of senators are right on the war. But McCain has been so wrong and so destructive on so many other issues, his relationship with the base is fractured beyond repair. Perhaps the Senator can take some solace in the fact that he never had a chance in the presidential race anyway. Even before McCain/Kennedy thudded into the Senate with McCain demanding its passage in 48 hours, the Republican Party had his number.

7) THE IMMIGRATION BILL WATER-CARRIERS – Lindsey Graham’s approval ratings in South Carolina have dipped to 31% because of his obnoxious antics while supporting this bill. Trent Lott has made himself a national laughingstock. Again. I know – dog bites man.

But remember who the biggest winners in this imbroglio are – the voters. If the Republicans in South Carolina are sick of being embarrassed by Lindsey Graham, they have a choice – they can find someone to run against him in the primary. Just about anyone will do the trick. I’ll even make a bold prediction: Reading the writing on the wall, Senator Graham will decide that K Street beckons and remove himself from public life before his constituents do the deed for him.

As for Trent Lott, how many opportunities should this guy get to embarrass himself and the party as a leader of the caucus?

IN SUMMATION, what happened over the past month was the first real skirmish in a civil war for the soul of the Republican Party. You had good guys like Hoekstra, DeMint, Sessions and Vitter doing battle with an exhausted Old Guard (Lott, Voinovich et al.) who have forgotten what their party stands for and who they represent. Happily, the good guys won this round.

The fight will rage on. Hopefully what happened here will be just the beginning.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

The cloture vote for the McCain/Kennedy monstrosity will begin in about 20 minutes. According to Allah’s whip work, it looks like we may have reason to smile when the counting’s done.

To get you in the mood for this morning’s festivities, check out this New York Times article on Republican senators whining about how hostile their opponents in this debate have been. These are of course the same opponents that senators and media people enjoy deriding as bigots, xenophobes and nativists with questionable personable hygiene. Here’s everyone’s favorite whiny Senator holding forth on his political courage:

“There’s racism in this debate,” Mr. Graham said. “Nobody likes to talk about it, but a very small percentage of people involved in this debate really have racial and bigoted remarks. The tone that we create around these debates, whether it be rhetoric in a union hall or rhetoric on talk radio, it can take people who are on the fence and push them over emotionally.”

I think it would be swell if Senator Graham, rather than blanketing the tens of millions of people who listen to talk radio with a single slander, instead gave some specifics. And if I’ve said anything on the air to push anyone over the edge, please call in tonight and let me know. I want to help. Maybe when Graham faces his challenge in the Republican primary his opponent will press him for some specifics.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

In case you listened to our show tonight, you heard about a little friend we’ll call the Gnome on the Hill. The Gnome on the Hill reports that Lindsey Graham’s favorability numbers in South Carolina have cratered. Graham used to enjoy approval ratings of roughly 65%; now, according to our little friend, only 31% of Palmetto Staters approve of the whiny solon. We don’t have to speculate what caused Senator Graham’s recent plummet. The poll asked the respondents why they had the change of heart, and the answer was Graham’s work on the immigration issue. Maybe carrying water for John McCain wasn’t such a shrewd political move.

So what’s this mean? The Senators who support this bill from the Republican side of the aisle will all be vulnerable. 65% approval means you’re bullet-proof. 31% means anyone can beat you, even in a primary. Most of the senators who are waffling on cloture tomorrow don’t have approval ratings anything like 65%.

If you want to make a difference in this debate, call a Senator who belongs to what National Review is calling the Amnesty 8. Let them know what you think about this bill. Pete Hoekstra and Jim DeMint both appeared on tonight’s show. They said your calls matter and that your voices are being heard.

Given what we’ve learned from the Gnome on the Hill, it’s no wonder. They better care, or there’s a good chance they’ll be out of jobs.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

The picture above can mean only one thing. I am once again sitting in the Big Chair filling in for Hugh. As always, please forgive my accent – Duane and I are working on it.

What a night we have planned for you! It will be your turn to vent on this immigration bill, as our theme for the night will be “Kill the Beast.” Congressman Pete Hoekstra will be stopping by to fill us in efforts in that regard. And who knows what other Senators or congressmen might step through our metaphorical door.

And not to worry – just because we’ve got serious business to do tonight doesn’t mean we won’t be making some time for additional installments of “Reading Shrum.” We’ll also discuss the Ann Coulter/Elizabeth Edwards dust-up. We would be remiss if we did otherwise.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

The above-clip is of the now infamous Ann Coulter/Elizabeth Edwards throw-down that Chris Matthews refereed yesterday. The always delightful Frank J. has the perfect summation of the spat.

I just got this campaign e-mail from the Elizabeth Edwards, and I thought I'd share it:

Conservative such as Ann Coulter have been using many personal attacks and homophobic slurs against my husband (if that offends you, please click here to donate money). When I heard Ann Coulter was on "Hardball" I called in to confront her hate speech against my husband (to reward this courage, please click here to donate money). She then had the audacity to accuse us of trying to drum up controversy so we can use it to raise money (to reject this as a false, right-wing smear, please click here to donate money). She even accused my husband of being a sissy for sending his wife against his critics; he's still crying from that extreme slander (to help dry his tears, click here to donate money).

Finally, Ann Coulter even said that my husband and I exploit the death of our son for political purposes. That is perhaps the worst of her personal attacks, as our sons death is a tragedy we hate to recount. I can still remember his last words: "Please click here to donate money."

Help us fight back against these right-wing smear merchants by clicking here to donate money.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Edwards

P.S. Please click here to donate money.

Do you think if I'm good and pray real hard, John Edwards could be the Democratic nominee for President? That's the sort of thing that could really help a political comedy site hit it big.

For what it’s worth, I don’t claim to be an aficionado of arcane Hardball facts, but until yesterday I was not aware it was a call-in show. If I knew it was, I would have called in many times in the past to offer Chris Matthews some constructive criticism, e.g. limit yourself to 20 Red Bulls a day.

How did Elizabeth Edwards have a call in number handy when to the rest of the viewing public’s knowledge no such number existed? A cynical individual might conclude that there was nothing spontaneous about Ms. Edwards’ outrage whatsoever, and that the whole incident was big set-up co-hatched by the creative minds at Hardball and the Edwards Campaign.

I would be remiss if I left this topic if I didn’t take special note of Candidate Edwards’ willingness and eagerness to hide behind his wife’s apron-strings. I’m going to try that tack the next time I’m attacked. Careful, you pugnacious Red State kids or you DU inmates – you don’t want to get on the fighting side of Mrs. Soxblog.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

Earlier this month, I introduced you to Jon Bruning, Chuck Hagel's primary challenger in Nebraska.

Recently, I had a chance to catch up with him for an interview that's featured in my Townhall column.

The above footage comes courtesy of Michelle Malkin, who by the way was a great guest last night as I kicked off my week of sitting in for Hugh. Click at your peril – the tape shows John Kerry embracing the fairness doctrine.

As Allah would say, it’s unlike Waffles to be so far behind the curve on such a thing. After all, when you’re trailing Trent Lott by a week, you’re not exactly cutting edge. Nonetheless, the trend it is. Trent Lott declared war against talk radio, and a bunch of Democrats have heeded his cry.

Exit question: Where are the contrarian mavericks like John McCain and Lindsey Graham on this? Shouldn’t they be rushing to our defense?

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

The New York Times has a new poll out today, co-sponsored by that most reputable of news agencies, MTV. The poll samples 17-29 year olds across the land. Because of past history, I’m not going to bother reviewing Adam Nagourney’s summary of the poll. I’m not even going to read Adam Nagourney’s summary of the poll. Instead, I’m going to rush head-long into the numbers, unguided by Adam’s insights.

The first question reads, “Suppose a reporter stopped you on the street and wanted to interview you. If he or she asked you to name the most important issue facing people of your generation today, what would you tell them?” Note the cute phrasing. Instead of just asking the question, the Times’/MTV’s pollsters felt it necessary to conjure some fantastic scene where a reporter stopped them on the street. What’s going on at the Times? Has everyone there lost their mind? I was hoping every question would create similar fantasy circumstances, e.g. “Suppose you’re making your bed, and someone asks you about Hillary Clinton…”

Predictably, the kids are alright, but still marginally more liberal than their more aged and wizened fellow citizens. I found it somewhat surprising that the kids felt the same way about Bush as the general population. As far as the future crop of pols is concerned, the only ones that quicken the pulse of America’s youth are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. 18% of the youngsters are enthusiastic about him, 17% about her. Encouragingly, 0% are enthusiastic about Al Gore.

The self-esteem generation has learned to look out for itself. 86% think “that government policies covering loans, grants, and student aid that helps (sic) pay for college” are very or somewhat important. 67% think the current batch of candidates aren’t making that issue enough of a priority.

Once again, I haven’t read Nagourney’s coverage, but I assume his lead derives from the results to this tendentious question:

50. Which do you think would be better for the country: 1. Having one health insurance program covering all Americans that would be administered by the government and paid for by taxpayers, OR 2. Keeping the current system where many people get their insurance from private employers and some have no insurance.

62% of the kids would opt for the socialist experiment of a single payer system. In a way, I guess this is good. I think it was Churchill who said “If you’re not a communist when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re still a communist when you’re old, you have no brain.” Good to see the kids have their hearts in the right place, even if the phrasing of the question drove them to that particular place.

What I found really interesting about the poll was Question 62. The question in question asked, “As a result of the United States' military action against Iraq, do you think the United States is more safe from terrorism, less safe from terrorism, or hasn't it made any difference?”

31% said “more safe”, 19% said “less safe”, 47% said “no difference” and 2% said “don’t know.” All I can say is, “Huh?” After being pounded over their young heads for half a decade that Iraq has been a fiasco on every level, the kids lean in the direction that it has made us more safe? Maybe the headline to this poll should be, “Old media’s influence increasingly marginalized.”

Okay, I give in. I’m going to go read Nagourney’s article and see if Question 62 and its surprising results made it into his write-up. Here’s a surprise – they didn’t. If they begin awarding Pulitzers for missing the lede, AdNags is going to have a shelf-full before he’s left the “journalism” game.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com

Recently, I've spent a lot of time thinking whether the flip-flopping charges that abound in '08 race will eventually stick. The best answer I can come up with right now is "No."

As a jumping off point, Soren Dayton contemplates what happens when flip-flopping becomes the new normal:

Like support for comprehensive immigration reform, prior to running for President, all the major candidates were supportive of BCRA-style campaign finance reform. Indeed, Mitt Romney even went much, much farther. Now all but John McCain have backed away. And many conservatives pundocrats have demanded that he pander and flip-flop too.

So the pattern is clear. Run on some positions your whole life, then change them to win the nomination. Then what?

Is that a healthy way for a political party or a political movement to behave? What does this say about our intellectual class?

And it says something funny about the McCain campaign that the best attack line they can come up with is that their opponents once agreed with them. Attacking Fred Thompson as McCain Lite only works if people find the high-test McCain appealing.

Sure,all of them took McCainiac positions at some point or another. On some issues, they followed and McCain led. But that's the problem isn't it? McCain led. He led on BCRA. He led on CIR. He led the fight against the Bush tax cuts. He led the Republicans for the Kyoto treaty. All of Romney's flip-flops don't change the fact that McCain is responsible for the abomination that is the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.Whenever McCain leads, it's usually in the wrong direction. That's why conservatives don't trust him.

It's easy to turn a blind eye if someone's flip-flopping in my direction, but that's not it. Rather, it's that at some point, you've gotta dance with the ones that brung ya. Said another way, the positions Romney et al. are taking now, in the most important campaign of their lives, are the ones they're stuck with -- whether they like it or not.After his public conversion and being pilloried as a flip-flopper, do you seriously think that Romney can walk back his pro-life positionwithout destroying himself? Does anyone actually think that Romney would be so stupid as to advance public funding of elections after running as the enemy of BCRA? If Romney runs and manages to get elected as a conservative, why would he revert to a non-winning position?

If you look at history, how candidates run -- regardless of what they believed earlier in their career -- is how they govern once they win. Conservatives may feel betrayed by George W. Bush but his campaigns were stellar examples of truth-in-advertising. Remember, he got elected as a different kind of Republican who was pro-immigrant and who was more concerned about taxes than spending. How Bush governed is exactly how he ran, except maybe for the nation-building thing (and there was a pretty big change in circumstances there.)

Slippery as he was, Clinton ran as a Third Way Democrat and governed that way.Bush the Father was the mixed bag we expected him to be. Once he became pro-life, he stayed pro-life. But no one expected him to be Ronald Reagan ("kinder, gentler nation") and he wasn't. And what you saw was what you got in Ronaldus Maximus.

Isn't this different than the campaign we ran against John Kerry in 2004? Well, yes, I suppose it is. But the frame against Kerry was that he was too unsteady and indecisive to win a war.Can McCain credibly make that case against the others? That Rudy Giuliani will wilt against al Qaeda because he moved on CFR? Please.

And does authenticity still matter? Yes, it does. But at some point, your basic positioning on issues has to matter too. And primary voters have a right to evaluate that.

We need to start thinking of this imperfect field not as a problem, but as an opportunity. Conservatives, these guys need you. They can't take a single vote for granted. You should be forcing them to take positions that are more to your liking, because they won't be able to live them down after running (and hopefully winning) on them.

UPDATE: A source who's analysis I trust and who is also partial to McCain points this out: Flip-flopping is more of a general election issue than a primary issue. Can Romney withstand $50 million of Hillary Clinton ads calling him a flip-flopper? (Remember how the Clinton machine shredded Bob Dole with ads in 1996.) That's a good point. But how does that benefit McCain? If you want someone untarnished by the flip-flopper label, it would seem that Rudy and Fred are just as good if not better.