Continetti Up; Will and Brooks Down

It's interesting to watch the up and comers overtake the old guard.

Matthew Continetti, associate editor of The Weekly Standard, besides writing long, thoughtful pieces there, has just penned a new book (The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star). He was also the guy The Washington Post asked to write the conservative side in reviewing Sarah Palin's Going Rogue.*

You can tell Continetti is on the rise not only by the above accomplishments but by recent snarky comments made by rival conservative writers old enough to be his father and grandfather, David Brooks and George Will. Both Will and Brooks appeared on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulis. Both made odd allusions to Sarah Palin being like William Jennings Bryan.

[WILL:] "Some conservatives think they have found in Sarah Palin a Republican William Jennings Bryan. Now, why they would want someone who lost the presidency three times, I do not know."
. . .
[BROOKS:] "But if you look at the sort of populism that has won in this country, it's not William Jennings populism, which is hostile and negative, which Sarah Palin sometimes is. It is the populism that is Ronald Reaganesque, which is simply we're for small towns, but we're not angry at the big cities. The anger turns people off. Representing small towns is fine. But what she does, which is turning into a hostility towards intellectuals in general, that just doesn't work."

Where did the out-of-left-field comments on William Jennings Bryan come from? One rarely hears political commentary about Bryan. Rightly so. The comments might work in a talk to political science professors, but almost none of the This Week audience would know Bryan well enough to use him as a reference point. They would almost all know about Reagan and a reasonable percentage about Andrew Jackson, but William Jennings Bryan? So, why bring Bryan up?

Well, Matthew Continetti wrote a long (4,700 word) semi-scholarly article published last week in The Weekly Standard comparing Sarah Palin's political appeal to that of the populist strain in Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and, yes, William Jennings Bryan. Along the way, Continetti gave numerous examples showing common themes in Reagan's, Jackson's and Bryan's populism and linking those with Palin's views.

Will and Brooks obviously read Continetti's article and were not pleased with Continetti's case for Palin's mainstream (Reagan, Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan) populist connection.

The question is why puzzle the audience by using William Jennings Bryan in their criticism? Because, as is clear from Will's comment about "[s]ome conservatives", the criticism was a slap specifically at Continetti--a rising young commentator who is gaining status among conservatives. Worse still, not only is he persuasive to more and more conservatives, major left leaning outlets are also treating him as a serious conservative voice.

Is this jealousy rearing its head? Even more unhappily for Will and Brooks, jealousy with cause?
___
*(Kudos to The Washington Post for realizing that fairness required two views.)

UPDATE: Here's the entire discussion. Note how the men completely disregard Gwen Ifill, and Bob Woodward even disses Ifill's observation that Palin's "story" is powerful politically with women. Woodward apparently assumes he knows more about how women think than Ifill! Talk about a slap in the face to Ifill. Not only does Woodward imply that she is clueless politically, but she can't even get female identity politics right and needs instruction from Woodward on what women think.

The men on this panel think pretty much alike that Palin isn't a serious political force or contender. So they interact with each other, but don't interact seriously with Ifill's views on Palin or women. Thus, proving Ifill's point that they need help in understanding how women feel in seeing another woman unfairly dissed--whether it's Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin or Gwen Ifill.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about Sarah Palin right now. We shared a little bit of Barbara Walters. Here was Sarah Palin on "Oprah."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST: That was seminal defining moment for you, that interview.

PALIN: The campaign said, right on, good, you're showing your independence. This is what America needs to see. And it was a good interview. And of course, I'm thinking, if you thought that was a good interview, I don't know what a bad interview was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: A little bit of bluntness there from Sarah Palin. The book is out, 415 pages. David Brooks, it looks like it's a fair amount of score settling and the combat with the McCain campaign aides has continued straight through the weekend.

BROOKS: Yes, she's a joke. I mean, I just can't take her seriously. We've got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama is trying to handle a war. We just had a guy elected Virginia governor who's probably the model for the future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell. Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Voters, Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Rudy Giuliani is taking her seriously this morning.

IFILL: Well, Rudy...

(LAUGHTER)

IFILL: Where do we go with this? I think he has no choice but to take her seriously. Everyone at this stage in the process is trying to appeal to everyone else. Lamar Alexander was quoted in the paper this morning as saying, well, she's interesting. And that's what Bob McDonnell does not have. She's interesting. She's the current -- politics' current example of the shining, flashing thing. You know, the balloon boy. It's something that we're into at this moment.

And you know what, she's interesting. And she does represent a lot of people who normally are not interested in politics, and therefore, she can't be ignored.

CORN: She may represent a threat to the Republican Party. If she's... IFILL: In your dreams.

CORN: No, no, I'm listening to David Brooks here.

(LAUGHTER)

CORN: If she's a joke, if the Republican Party is serious about a joke, that will reflect not so well upon itself.

There's a Palin gap. 76 percent of Republicans say they'd like to see her be a national figure. Only 45 percent of all Americans believe that. There's a 31-point gap there. Up to 71 percent of people polled don't believe she's qualified to be president. So the more seriously she's taken by Lamar Alexander, Rudy Giuliani, and anybody who's out there that's a Republican, it's not going to reflect well on the party itself.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The question, though, is can she use this book tour, George Will, to bring that number down, the number of people who say she just can't be taken seriously as a presidential candidate?

WILL: How big is the undecided element about Sarah Palin at this point? I mean, what are you working with here? If conservatives of a sort are looking for a populist, they have got Mike Huckabee, who's mounting a big campaign and is far ahead of Sarah Palin among those, at this early stage, expressing a preference. Some conservatives think they have found in Sarah Palin a Republican William Jennings Bryan. Now, why they would want someone who lost the presidency three times, I do not know.

(LAUGHTER)

WOODWARD: You know, I think that she should have her say. I don't think anyone ever got elected president because of a book. And I agree with David on this. You talk to Republicans, and they say they voted for Obama because Sarah Palin was John McCain's pick. That was John McCain's justification. And I have heard it and I think you have heard it from Republicans time and time again, so I don't think she will work in the Republican Party. But, you know -- she's going to give it a try. I think she -- I think the book sales are going to be astronomical.

IFILL: Of course, but let's just point out, as the girl at the table, I feel like I can just say you cannot underestimate the degree to which women will be drawn to her story. And that's who she's speaking to. These are people who are ignored, who nobody counts into their thinking. That's why she's appealing to Hillary Clinton. It's why -- when she made her own announcement, remember, she talked -- she used the term glass ceiling back in the summer? Don't underestimate that factor.

WOODWARD: Sure, but you can be drawn to somebody's story and buy their book and read their book. That doesn't mean you want them to be president.

(CROSSTALK) WOODWARD: ... to lead. I think those are two different realms for people.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But David, why don't you take on David Corn's question about whether this is taking away from her the personality, this whole Palinism that we have seen. What impact does that have on the party going forward?

BROOKS: Well, there's a populism in both the Democratic and the Republican parties, which is against Wall Street, against intellectuals, against Washington, against New York, against the coasts. But if you look at the sort of populism that has won in this country, it's not William Jennings populism, which is hostile and negative, which Sarah Palin sometimes is. It is the populism that is Ronald Reaganesque, which is simply we're for small towns, but we're not angry at the big cities. The anger turns people off. Representing small towns is fine. But what she does, which is turning into a hostility towards intellectuals in general, that just doesn't work.

CORN: The question is whether, you know, Americans want a rogue president. Mitt Romney has a book coming out -- it probably won't sell as much -- in the spring. It's called "The Case for American Greatness." Do we want to elect...

STEPHANOPOULOS: He's going to try to pick up on David Brooks' themes there.

CORN: Obviously. Maybe you helped him, I don't know...

(LAUGHTER)

CORN: ... but maybe you can reveal that when you want to. But you know, Sarah Palin is indeed promoting herself. And this idea that she's not just even a maverick, she's beyond maverickness. She's going for rogueness. And I think that's not a very settling sentiment for a lot of people in this country. It may be good for talk shows and to debate, but she doesn't really have I think the steady hand that people are going to want to see in a president anytime in the near future.

WILL: Two years from now, we'll be up to our eyeballs in the Iowa caucuses. And I don't think that, at that point, when we have a real, rich array of Republican candidates, that she's going to loom large. This is what happens in a vacuum of a third year out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that's the last word for now. You guys continue this in the green room.
[emphasis added]

Associated Press Cutting 10% of Staff

Editor & Publisher reports:

Gawker reported earlier today that one estimate had at least 80 jobs being cut, adding that its sources contend they have already started.
. . .
Paul Colford, AP director of media relations, declined to comment to E&P on the layoff expectations. But he reiterated the news cooperative's announcement from last year that it planned to reduce payroll count by 10% by the end of 2009.
. . .
Last summer, about 100 jobs were cut through voluntary buyouts that ended in July. AP currently has about 4,000 employees worldwide.

Incompetence comes with a price.

Associated Press Incompetence Again--This Time with Eleven(!) Reporters

Joke: How many AP reporters does it take to change a light bulb? Eleven. One to screw it in and the other ten to turn the ladder.

AP is living out the joke but in reporting rather than changing light bulbs. The Associated Press recently assigned eleven (count 'em, eleven) reporters to a big news project. Mark Steyn explains:

If you wonder why American newspapering is dying, consider this sign-off:

AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine contributed to this report.

Wow. That's ten "AP writers" plus Calvin Woodward, the AP writer whose twinkling pen honed the above contributions into the turgid sludge of the actual report. That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book, and in return the 11 fact-checkers triumphantly unearthed six errors. That's 1.8333333 writers for each error.

As Steyn points out, it took almost two AP reporters to unearth each "error". But, it turns out that a cursory read through shows a third of them aren't errors.

The first cited error is self-refuting on the AP's own terms. The AP Eleven make a big deal of Palin saying she didn't "often" stay at more expensive hotels. They then give one example when she did.

PALIN: Says she made frugality a point when traveling on state business as Alaska governor, asking "only" for reasonably priced rooms and not "often" going for the "high-end, robe-and-slippers" hotels.

THE FACTS: Although she usually opted for less-pricey hotels while governor, Palin and daughter Bristol stayed five days and four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House luxury hotel (robes and slippers come standard) for a five-hour women's leadership conference in New York in October 2007. With air fare, the cost to Alaska was well over $3,000.

Uh, Calvin Woodard, Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine, last time I checked one hotel stay is the same as (maybe even less than) “not ‘often’”.

Some actually relevant facts the AP Eleven had problems unearthing:

[Palin’s family] travel was processed by the Administrative Services Department, whose director served under the previous governor. Governor Palin followed the same protocol that past governors had followed. The one obvious difference, however, is that Governor Palin and her family spent less than her two predecessors. In fact, she spent over $913,000 less on personal expenses in her first two years than former Governor Frank Murkowski did his last two years.

Another AP Eleven assertion is not about facts but opinion about Palin's political motivation.

PALIN: "Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons." Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But "Going Rogue" has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

This isn't THE FACTS. This is opinion. There are no FACTS cited from Palin's time in office as either city councillor, mayor or governor (more than a decade in office). The only fact given is that Palin has written an autobiographical book (Going Rogue). The book was written after Palin left office. Even if it is a "pre-campaign manifesto" (again, no facts given in support) how does that show motivation for her previous time in office (which is what the fact check is supposedly about)?

For a debunking of the other four AP Eleven fact check errors see Power Line and for an in depth, fact-filled treatment see Conservatives 4 Palin.

MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Combines Ineptness + Sexism

In a “fun” look at “What is it about Palin that drives America wild?”, Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC has trouble separating fantasy from reality. The segment shows a photo-shopped fake of Palin in a bikini with a rifle alongside a real photo of former Vice President Cheney with a rifle.

The charitable interpretation is that Ratigan and MSNBC staffers are so inept and clueless they don’t know the photo is a fake.

The more realistic take is that MSNBC is out to demean and squash Palin in a “fun” way. Sort of like how fun it would be to show a photo-shopped picture of President Obama's head on the body of some guy in a bikini. A real barrel of laughs.

Or how about a photo-shopped picture of Hillary in a bikini alongside a real image of Joe Biden in a suit? One might even think it sexist. Isn't it just good fun to show scantily clad female politicians juxtaposed to "serious" male politicans in suits?

There is evidence for the ineptness explanation.  Ratigan doesn't even know the correct name of his guests.  He introduces Time's Jay Newton-Small as "Jay Small-Newton"

There's an appropriateness to the mistake.  Newton-Small proves herself to be a rather small person in smirking about Ratigan's jokes aimed at Palin including Levi Johnston's tabloid-like behavior.  And Contessa Brewer brings in Levi's posing for Playgirl.  Johnston, of course, has as much to do with Palin as Billy Carter's failings had to do with his brother Jimmy's political career and presidency.  You don't get to pick your family connections.

But, as Ratigan, Newton-Small, and Contessa Brewer point out, "She has family drama that makes you feel better about your own."  More to the point: these three have ineptness, lack of class and sexism that make pretty much everyone in the nation feel better about whatever their own failings are.

H/T Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters

UPDATE: Dylan Ratigan apologizes for using fake photos of Sarah Palin.

From Scott Whitlock of Newsbusters:

A transcript of the November 16 apology, which aired at 9:18am EST, follows:

DYLAN RATIGAN: Before we begin this one, I want to apologize to Governor Palin and all of our viewers. On Friday, in a very misguided attempt to have some fun in advance of Sarah Palin’s upcoming book Going Rogue, our staff mistakenly used some clearly photoshopped images of Ms. Palin without any acknowledgment. And on behalf of the show, I would like to say that this was completely unacceptable. We should have never used those photos in the first place and you can rest assured we spent the weekend and Friday afternoon taking measures to make sure it will never happen again. I apologize.

Al Gore: Oops! Methane and Soot (Not CO2) the Big Threat

From Tim Blair:

Next, something that – if true – should be front-page news:

Gore explored new studies - published only last week - that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide – while the focus of the politics of climate change – produces around 40% of the actual warming.?Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions.

So CO2 accounts for less than half of the warming that isn’t happening anyway. Yes, this could complicate things. It could complicate things a great deal.

“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” he told the magazine. “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.

The encompassing strategy to deal with soot should be interesting. Big Soot won’t stand idly by and let Gore get away with it, of course. I say this as someone who is obviously in the pay of Big Soot.

On Saturday, he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, he was “almost certain” Obama would attend the [Hopenchangen] negotiations.

Well, Gore’s call on CO2 was accurate enough. Maybe if enough interfaith prayer is involved, Obama will materialise for the climate talks.

CNN Poll: Obama and Palin Tie

Tommy Report of Conservatives4Palin points out that a CNN poll taken in mid-October found that 48% of Americans feel that Sarah Palin "Generally agrees with you on issues you care about". In the same poll 48% said that Barack Obama agrees with the issues they most care about. A tie!

It is telling that people identify with the positions of both Palin and Obama at the same level despite Obama's massively favorable and Palin's massively unfavorable press coverage and Obama's prestige as president. And it looks like Palin's candidates are going to be the winners in the elections today in New York and Virginia and maybe even New Jersey.

Not bad for a "quitter".

Hmm. I haven't seen anybody outraged that Scozzafava quit the NY-23 race three days before the election. The New York Times was very understanding about the heavy toll on Scozzafava of conservative attacks on her in the short three and a half month campaign:

Exhausted and emotionally drained by the attacks from conservatives seeking to paint her as a liberal who was disloyal to the Republican Party, Ms. Scozzafava said she needed time to decide whether she could endorse Mr. Owens, said one person with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke requested anonymity in order to reveal details of private conversations.

Leading Democrats, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, were courting Scozzafava's endorsement.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who urged Dierdre K. Scozzafava to endorse Democratic congressional candidate William L. Owens, the senator's spokesman said Saturday.

The spokesman, Maxwell Young, said the senator called a number of north country political leaders after Ms. Scozzafava suspended her campaign and had more than one conversation with the Republican candidate ahead of her announcement. He said the senator also called other Democratic leaders about the situation, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Mr. Owens said he was “honored” by the endorsement.

“Over the course of her career, Dede has always committed to serving the people of Upstate New York before serving a partisan agenda,” he said in a statement. “Now more than ever we need bipartisan solutions to help bring jobs to Upstate New York to get our economy back on track and move our country forward. Those are the kinds of priorities I will fight for in Congress because that's the kind of leadership Upstate New York needs right now.”

Death Panels?