Forget the oil slick, TN floods (oh, Obama forgot already), the Grecian Formula for Disaster, or the Hung Parliament.

At least for the next 48 hours — it will be Elena Kagan 24/7.  So we might as well get the ball rolling.

Rick Klein of ABC’s The Note has the morning pre-game activities summed up well.

And so it begins, again and anew, with everything different, but more or less the same.

President Obama makes his selection of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court official at 10 am ET Monday — thus concluding the period of time where the White House holds ownership over the all-important narrative.

Supreme Court confirmation battles have become storytelling contests in recent decades. Neither side wants to, or will, give up the chance to tell its own story — and the nominee him- or herself is only a bit player in many of these scripts.

The first chapter belongs to Kagan herself — she’d be the third woman on this court, the first justice named in nearly 40 years never to have been a judge, a legal whiz without a reputation as an ideologue, respected and liked by prominent lawyers and judges on both sides of the political divide.

As for the man making the decision: This is a choice that leans toward caution, from a president who knows full well there are enough other big fights out there than to see the need to pick a new one.

Yet Kagan will find herself wrapped up in the volatile politics of the moment: raging debates over the roles of the courts and the entire federal government; passion over Obama’s agenda, particularly against it; and just a bit of frustration nagging at the president from his left.

In the bigger picture — will she become a justice? — this is an environment where 59 votes are almost certainly plenty. It’s also an environment where one of the 41 on the other side just found out he’s not coming back, for reasons that don’t encourage accommodating anything the president wants to do these days.

Please READ THE WHOLE THING!  Rick does the work, so you don’t have to!

[RELATED: Gay Lefties Ponder -- "Is She, or Isn't She?"]

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As I read the various conservative bloggers (as well as one of in the middle) criticizing the president for lamenting in a commencement address “Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media“, I thought of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan, like Lincoln with newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century, would have been excited by all these new media.  He would have wondered at, rather, delighted in, their possibilities.

Strange for Obama to see new media as a diversion when he tapped into the latest technologies to run such an innovative — and effective — campaign.

Yes, there are downsides as there are with any technology.  But, couldn’t the president focus on the possibilities while cautioning us about those downsides?  Instead, he chooses to dwell on the negative.  Maybe he’s decided to sing a different tune now that his ideological adversaries are using the new technologies as effectively today to criticize his policies as he used them in 2007 and 2008 to promote his candidacy.

A number of conservative bloggers have been having fun taking down a very self-important piece by Mark Lilla in the New York Review of Books.  Basically, this very smart writer is the latest intellectual to badmouth the Tea Parties, letting his ideology prevent him from understanding what’s really going on.

His piece (which I couldn’t finish because I was certain I had read this before on multiple occasions at least since Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection in 1984) basically repeats a lot of liberal clichés about conservatism and shows an incredible contempt for his ideological adversaries.  Not only does he repeat some of the common misrepresentations of the conservative movement, but he also misrepresents the past, trotting out the standard leftist lie line about the selfish 1980s:

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

So, selfish were the 1980s that charitable giving rose as our tax burden went down, with the American people demonstrating a generosity that has very much defined our history and which conservative politicians like Lincoln and Reagan so greatly appreciated.

If I had time, I might join my fellow right-of-center bloggers in taking on the clichés Lilla dresses up as an intelligent argument.  Let me first note this — in the portions of the article I read (and the remainder that I skimmed) I could discover no evidence he had taken any time to talk to a single Tea Party protester to ask why he (or she) took to the streets.

Then, there’s this:  I discovered Lilla’s article on Memeorandum not far below a series of links to posts on the nearly $1 Trillion European Union rescue package which would, to quote the New York Times on the matter, “to combat the debt crisis that has engulfed Europe and threatened markets around the world.”

And I wondered this:  is Mr. Lilla aware of the burgeoning debt of nations which have adopted policies similar to those Mr. Obama and the Democrats propose? (more…)

The second dinner I am scheduling for readers during my cross country drive will take place two weeks from today, Sunday, May 23 in New York (or perhaps Westchester depending on the responses).  If you live in the Big Apple and can join me, drop me an e-mail to RSVP and indicate your preference, either the city or the ‘burbs.

In addition to New York, I have scheduled dinners for Chicago (Wednesday May 19), Washington, DC (between May 26 and 29), Atlanta (Wednesday, June 2), Boston (Wednesday, June 9) and Brattleboro, Vermont (Sunday, June 13).  Let me know ASAP if you’ll be able to attend those dinners.  Since I’ll also be staying in Raleigh, Charlotte, Charlottesville, Nashville, Cincinnati and St. Louis, I’m open to setting up gatherings there as well.

Given, as I observed yesterday, that “clearly more gay men, more lesbians even, in the Tea Party movement than there are racists,” I’m surprised the homosexual Tea Party narrative has not yet taken hold.  But, now that it’s out there, I’m beginning to wonder if the movement might start breaking apart, given what our critics tell us about social conservatives and the participation of known homosexuals in the Tea Party movement.

The facts:

• At a recent Tea Party in Los Angeles, at least two openly gay men spoke, including one who has repeatedly called for allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military.
• A lesbian was spotted at a Tea Party in Boston, proudly advertising her admiration for a homosexual web-site.
• A gay man advertised his sexuality at a Philadelphia Tea Party.
• A left-leaning lesbian has been seen at Tea Parties at multiple Los Angeles-area Tea Parties.
• A gay man boasted on the web about participating in a Pleasanton, CA Tea Party.
• Gay Patriots have been welcomed at the most recent LA Tea Party.
• A libertarian-leaning liberal Lutheran lesbian has been “making many friends from the local Tea Party movement” in Phoenix

And these are just some of the stories we have received of homosexuals participating in the Tea Party movement.  We now have more examples of this gay infiltration of the movement than we do of ugly racial epithets hurled at these rallies.  As soon as the media pick up on this narrative, we’re bound to see a social conservative exodus from the movement.

Because I’ve been busy finishing up (what is turning out to be) the longest chapter of my dissertation (should have the first draft done this afternoon), I haven’t had as much time to blog this week as I would like.  I am most grateful to Glenn (Reynolds) for so thoroughly covering the events at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, CA where 5 students were sent home for wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinquo De Mayo.

Instead of sending the students home, the school Administration should have been able to explain to their charges like the girl speaking at 0:44 in the video linked here.  What is preventing her from wearing a Mexican flag on July 4?  And how would that be disrespectful?

“What seems to elude people in this incident,” Ed Morrisey observes, “is that everyone has the right to express themselves on every day of the year in the US, and that “some people may be offended” is no just cause for censorship”.  Commenting on students who took off from school to protest in favor of the school officials’ action (fascinating to ponder the meaning of students protesting in support of the Administration), the CPAC 2010 blogger of the year added:

I have no problem with political demonstrations either, but it obviously hasn’t occurred to these students that they’re protesting for the elimination of the right of free expression, a rather ironic and highly contradictory position.  As far as the “celebration of diversity” idea goes, what Live Oak High had on Wednesday was a celebration of diversity.  Its administration preferred the conformity of political correctness.

Well said, very well said.  This could have been, as Bob Owens put it (also linked by Glenn) “teachable moment of tolerance” (more…)

This morning, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, Glenn links two posts, the first by 1970s bombshell Raquel Welch who observes:

In stark contrast, a lack of sexual inhibitions, or as some call it, “sexual freedom,” has taken the caution and discernment out of choosing a sexual partner, which used to be the equivalent of choosing a life partner. Without a commitment, the trust and loyalty between couples of childbearing age is missing, and obviously leads to incidents of infidelity. No one seems immune.

But, what really caught my attention was this in neoneocon’s (must-read) post:

Now we have to worry about rampant promiscuity among teens and even preteens, and the deep psychological and even physical damage it can cause (such as STDs). Girls who once were protected by the mores of society and their own fear of the shame of pregnancy are free to enjoy sex—but how many of them are really having all that much fun, and at what cost? How many of them have the maturity to understand what they want and with whom they might be happy? How many are giving in to the age-old pressures of popularity and the needs of teenage boys?

Emphasis added.  I would say the pill has been a mostly good thing.  It helped launched the sexual revolution which, in turn, made it easier for gay people to start being more open about our sexuality.  But, this revolution while mostly a good thing, was not entirely a good thing.  It did have some downsides.  And these two smart women get at some of the issues we all wish to brush under the table when discussing sexuality.

Past social mores, while often oppressive, did serve a certain purpose.  But, some served only to censure folk like us.  We are grateful for the lifting of the social stricture on homosexual conduct.  But, I wish to draw your attention to the part of neoneocon’s post that I emphasized.  Too many of us try to write off the psychological consequences of hooking up.  We say that the shame we feel is only a social construct and so try to wish it away.

But, it’s real and often recurring.

I just think we need to consider the psychological consequences of hooking up.   (more…)

So, what did y’all think?  I missed it.  Had made enough progress in my dissertation that I treated myself to a fun movie about training your dragon or something.  A lot of fun.  Good score.  Fun animation.

Missed Betty White on Saturday Night Live.  So, a reader suggested a do an open thread.  As per his suggestion, here it is.

Over at Just One Minute, Tom Maguire comments on “Charles Blow['s], the NY Times other professional grievance columnist” explanation “that the Tea Party is racist until they can prove otherwise”:

According to an article accompanying a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Wednesday: “About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters.”

This gulf of perception has left Tea Party organizers struggling to scrub the stain of racism from its image, but those efforts may fly in the face of the facts.

Once again, relying on the critics of an organization to determine the beliefs of the organization’s members.

This is like a film critics writing a series of scathing reviews of a movie and then talking about the gulf of perception that leaves the films producers struggling to scrub the stain of bad notices from the flick’s image.  This isn’t the pot calling the kettle black.  This is the pot photoshopping a picture of the kettle to make it black and then pronouncing it so.

And while Blow blathers on about “facts,” he offers no facts whatsoever to justify his accusations, trotting out only an interpretation of a study “highly skewed by political bias.”  Those looking for racism in the Tea Party movement will surely find it, just as those looking for gay participation in such rallies will also find it.

But, no one is accusing the Tea Parties of being focal points of the homosexual agenda.  It just doesn’t fit the narrative.  From my experience, however, there are clearly more gay men, more lesbians even, in the Tea Party movement than there are racists. Far more, far, far, far more.

Ponder that for a minute as you consider the left-wing narrative.

Saying that outgoing U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-San Francisco) “doesn’t display enough intellectual firepower”, the “editors at the biggest newspaper on the West Coast, who were expected to endorse Sen. Barbara Boxer in her primary campaign“:

The left-leaning Los Angeles Times on Friday declined to offer endorsements in all Democratic and Republican primaries for governor and Senate, saying the races have been undermined by politics and money.

But the newspaper’s decision to sit on the sidelines for the Boxer race could prove to be the most damaging of all, given the newspaper’s criticism of the three-term senator.

“On the Democratic side, we find that we’re no fans of incumbent Barbara Boxer,” the newspaper said in an editorial Friday. “She displays less intellectual firepower or leadership than she could.”

Boxer displaying “less intellectual firepower or leadership than she could”?!?! Now, that’s the understatement of the year.

In his piece on the decline and fall of Newsweek, Ace offers some insight into the liberal media mind-set:

They prefer being instructed that their opinions are not opinions at all, but facts and/or simple common sense and/or the manifestly just and right way to view the world. . . .

They don’t like hearing, for example, that by choosing Equality as the paramount good, they have decided that Freedom is a far less important good, and always to be compromised and diminished in order to expand Equality. They will insist, until their dying breath, that by choosing Equality over all else, they are actually also creating the most Freedom, too. . . .

And that’s why we’re so outraged at the MFM. This isn’t just about their smug arrogance or corrupt pretense of being the fair-and-objective Deciders. It’s a personal thing — our personal revulsion at a set of know-nothing inexpert, unprofessional clowns arrogating to themselves the power to decide what is and is not permitted in polite, enlightened discourse — but it’s not justpersonal.

(H/t:  Ed Driscoll and Glenn Reynolds.)

There’s more to it than that.  And the piece is a little long, well, okay a lot long, but well worth your time.

If I were no so deep in dissertation mode right now, I would devote more attention to the George Rekers story because there is far more to it than the bloggers covering it have considered.  First and foremost, the story reminds us of the pseudo-science behind much of the “scholarship” folks like Rekers use to address the causes and supposed “cures” of homosexuality.

It’s unfortunate that all too many of those who have written about it have been determined to focus on the tawdry aspects of the relationship.  And unfortunate that gay bloggers have taken it upon themselves to track down the young escort, make public his profession and torment him with their questions.  They should have left him out of this — or at the very least not made public his name.

The (very) young man is caught in the crossfire, so to speak, while Rekers acts out one of the oldest pathologies in the book, seeking solace with a younger companion to fill the emptiness in his own life.

The real story here is not just the contrast between Rekers’ public life and his private passions.  It’s too easy (though, in this case, not entirely inaccurate) to call him “self-loathing” (as at least one person has done) or to dwell on his hypocrisy.  The real story is what human beings do to address their loneliness, to feel connected with our fellows.

George Rekers is, by all evidence, a very lonely man.

As I have been reading about his European travels with a young escort, I am reminded of a passage describing such loneliness John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.   (more…)

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

The U.S. jobless rate rose to 9.9% in April, the first increase in three months, but the government’s broader measure of unemployment ticked up for the third month in a row, rising 0.2 percentage point to 17.1%.

The comprehensive gauge of labor underutilization, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification by the Labor Department, accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or who can’t find full-time jobs. Though the rate is still 0.3 percentage point below its high of 17.4% in October, its continuing divergence from the official number (the “U-3″ unemployment measure) indicates the job market has a long way to go before growth in the economy translates into relief for workers.

The 9.9% unemployment rate is calculated based on people who are without jobs, who are available to work and who have actively sought work in the prior four weeks. The “actively looking for work” definition is fairly broad, including people who contacted an employer, employment agency, job center or friends; sent out resumes or filled out applications; or answered or placed ads, among other things. The number ticked up this month as more people came back into the labor force to look for jobs. (Read a more in-depth explanation for the rise in the unemployment rate.)

The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find.

A U-6 figure that converges toward the official rate could indicate improving confidence in the labor market and the overall economy. This month pushes convergence even further away.

Hopeandchange continues to kill us by 1,000 cuts.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

All of us who read the Democratic healthcare legislation and warned that this would result in employers dumping health benefits and forcing us into the Exchanges/Public Option…. well, we were right.  As reported by Fortune Magazine.

The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama’s statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we’ll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America’s employers would remain the backbone of the nation’s health care system.

Obama Lied, Your Healthcare Benefits Died.

Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences. Amazingly, the corporate documents that prove this point became public because of a different set of unintended consequences: they told a story far different than the one the politicians who demanded them expected.

What does it mean for health care reform if the employer-sponsored regime collapses? By Fortune’s reckoning, each person who’s dropped would cost the government an average of around $2,100 after deducting the extra taxes collected on their additional pay. So if 50% of people covered by company plans get dumped, federal health care costs will rise by $160 billion a year in 2016, in addition to the $93 billion in subsidies already forecast by the CBO. Of course, as we’ve seen throughout the health care reform process, it’s impossible to know for certain what the unintended consequences of these actions will be.

Welcome to the Brave New World of Total Government Control.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

This is just added good news from the Tory majority election win in the UK (despite the hung parliament thingy). (h/t – VictoryFund)

Three openly gay Conservatives in party leader David Cameron’s shadow government are set to become ministers if the Tories are able to form a government with the Liberal Democrats.

National elections held yesterday saw a swing of nearly 100 seats from Labour to the Conservatives, but no party controls the requisite 326 seats needed to form a government.  Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg, who today finds himself in a kingmaker role, said this morning he would give Cameron (pictured) the first shot at an alliance with his party.

According to Pink News, 20 Conservative Members of Parliament are openly gay, though the party has only named 11 of those.  The first out lesbian MP in the Tory party will be Margot James of Stourbrige, who was elected last night.

Cameron has sought to transform the Conservatives when it comes to LGBT issues, going so far as to issue an apology for the party’s anti-gay past.  Earlier this year one of his shadow ministers, Nick Herbert, traveled to the U.S. to speak at the Cato Institute about the place of LGBT people in the conservative movement.  During his speech he urged the U.S. Republican Party to embrace LGBT rights as a conservative value.

Now THAT is change you can believe in!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Last month, I read that a left-of-center friend of mine, a decent person who shows great respect to her ideological adversaries, likened some of the Tea Party language to “hate speech”, with the rallies providing cover for racist rhetoric.

She has, like many critics of this dynamic, grassroots movement, not yet attended a  Tea Party and, like many busy professionals, doesn’t have time to look to as many alternative sources of news as do bloggers.  Thus, given the tilt of the media coverage of the Tea Party, it’s not surprising that the average consumer of news, has a jaundiced view of this phenomenon.

People busy with his work and family don’t have time to surf the web to confirm every story they read in such left-leaning dailies as the New York or Los Angeles Times.  Thus, it is no wonder, as blogging law professor William A. Jacobson observed, a Washington Post poll found that 28% of Americans find racial prejudice underlying the Tea Party.

. . . the fact that “nearly three in ten” Americans perceive the Tea Parties as racist is amazingly low considering how much time WaPo and NY Times columnists, Democratic members of Congress, and left-wing blogs spend calling Tea Partiers racist.

The only reason Tea Parties are “battling perceptions of racism,” as the Post puts it, is because of the prejudices of the reporters from papers like theirs as well as from various and sundry mainstream news outlets.

Since these journalists are predisposed to find racism on the right, they will play up the handful of nasty slogans they see on random signs at our rallies or the occasional nut-bag who happens to show up at the protests they cover.  As we (and other conservative and libertarian bloggers) have said repeatedly, there are nuts in every political movement.  But, somehow, the isolated extremists are supposed to define ours.

Nobody was asking Barney Frank to differentiate himself from the mean-spirited anti-war protesters in Bush era who likened the then-president to Hitler and wished for his death.  Why then are his ideological allies in the halls of Congress and the offices of mainstream news outlets then defining our movement by its fringe?

NB:  I cleaned up a few typos and changed a few expressions to improve the flow of the piece.

With such indecorous language does Bruce Kesler join me in backing former HP CEO Carly Fiorina to replace Barbara “Call Me Ma’am” Boxer.

Still, he remains critical of the candidate, saying she sometimes “sounds like a script of platitudes, and she lacks the experience in government to be truly effective.”  Actually, I think her lack of experience in government works to her benefit.  She make take a few months to find her footing in Washington, but at least she’s not a creature of Washington.  She’s a smart lady.  Once she learns the ways of the Senate, she’ll be an effective force.  A most effective force.

And if we’re judging by experience, Mrs. Boxer with 28 years in Washington should be one of the most effective Senators.  Yet, she’s only managed to pass three bills in her eighteen years in the Senate.

Kesler does find a silver lining Carly’s sometimes platitudinous rhetoric:

. . . her platitudes are conservative, she has the ability to spit venom, and she has the funds and temper to take on Barbara Boxer. Barbara Boxer has no record to run on, despite several terms, except for being a reliable vote for whatever Democrat programs are on the floor.  If Fiorina wins, at least she should be a fairly reliable Republican vote in the US Senate.  And, it will take a rich bitch to down a rich bitch. Californiaelections require tens of millions to be a competitive candidate.

He doesn’t mince words, does he?  And he articulates one of my concerns about Tom Campbell:  he doesn’t seem to have what it takes for a rough-and-tumble campaign with Mrs. Boxer, one of the nastiest partisans in the business.  (So, read the whole thing.)

I met Carly tonight at an event for supporters after the debate.  To this very diverse crowd, Carly didn’t mince words either:  ”We’re going to beat Barbara Boxer because she deserves to be beaten.”

That’s my gal

Exit polls in the UK show a “Hung parliament with Tories as largest party with 307 seats. Lab[our] 255. L[iberal] D[emocrats] 59.”

This may not be as hung as some people would like if British exit polls, like those over here, undercount conservative performance.

UPDATE:  From the updated link above, why does this sound familiar?

2242 Lord Mandelson on BBC1: “People have voted for change but they don’t know what type of change they want”. So that’s cleared things up.

UP-UPDATE:  Tories take King Offa‘s seat!  Been following some of Michael Barone’s coverage of the British election at the Washington Examiner and just learned that the Tories captured the first capital of England: “Conservatives gain High Peak (a suburban district outside Manchester) and Montgomeryshire in Wales (where the Lib Dem had won big in 2005), Leicestershire Northwest , Aberconwy, Basildon South, and they’ve gained Tamworth from the Lib Dems.”  In the 8th century, Tamworth was the seat of King Offa, the first man to be called rex Anglorum–or King of the English.  The word Englisc (so spelled but pronounced as we pronounce the language we speak) did not appear until two centuries later.

Technically, Offa was King of Mercia, but the various kingdoms, Wessex and Kent for example, looked to him for leadership and protection.  Only the Nothumbrians did not fall under his sway.  He was most famous for building Offa’s Dyke, which was, contrary to some of our readers’ hopes, not the court lesbian, but a great fortification protecting the English from Welsh raids.

Several Beowulf scholars believe that that, the greatest poem written between the early days of the Roman Empire and the first stirrings of the Italian Renaissance, was written in Offa’s court.

Thus, the Tory taking of Tamworth has great historical significance.

Greece is on the brink of anarchy due to their debit crisis.

The Dow Jones is down 350 points today on reports that European banks’ lending has seized up.

And US retail sales reported today were much lower than expected — consumers are not spending.

Most top U.S. retail chains reported weaker-than-expected April same-store sales Thursday, suggesting that Wall Street’s hopes for a consumer rebound have gotten ahead of the actual pace of recovery.
Sales at stores open at least a year rose 0.5 percent in April, well short of Wall Street estimates of a 1.7 percent increase. Nearly 70 percent of 28 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters disappointed, with the biggest misses seen among apparel retailers like Gap and teen chains like Abercrombie & Fitch.

“Nobody has told American consumers that the recession is over although some officials have rosy predictions of growing consumer spending,” consumer trend expert Britt Beemer said in a note. “We’re seeing a lot of people on the edge of financial distress.”

So why the hell did we spend $787B last year for the Stimulus and another $1T this year on healthcare “reform”?

The President needs to address America’s financial distress quickly or his dreams of a Socialist Utopia are going to go up in flames.  Literally (see: Greece).

Welcome to the Double Dip Recession.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

A woman who stood up to entrenched interests and corruption the Republican Party in her home state and for smaller more efficient government, has just signaled her support of another strong woman.

Sarah Palin has endorsed Carly Fiorina to replace a Senator who has sat idly by while businesses flee her state, taking jobs with them.  The accomplished former Alaska governor said:

Carly is the Commonsense Conservative that California needs and our country could sure use in these trying times. She’s not a career politician. She’s a businesswoman who has run a major corporation. She knows how to really incentivize job creation. Her fiscal conservatism is rooted in real life experience. She knows that when government grows, the private sector shrinks under the burden of debt and deficits. We can trust Carly to do the right thing for America’s economy and to make the principled decisions she has throughout her professional career. . . .

Please consider that Carly is the conservative who has the potential to beat California’s liberal senator, Barbara Boxer, in November. I’m a huge proponent of contested primaries, so I’m glad to see the contest in California’s GOP, but I support Carly as she fights through a tough primary against a liberal member of the GOP who seems to bear almost no difference to Boxer, one of the most leftwing members of the Senate.

Now, you can bet that when Carly wins the primary next month, Ma’am, knowing that liberals blanche in terror at the mere mention of Palin’s name, is going to wrap the former Governor around the former HP CEO, doing anything she can to deflect attention from her sorry record.

With Tom Campbell unable to commit to opposing tax increases, Carly remains the one viable candidate in the race committed to fiscal conservatism.

UPDATE:  Over at Conservatives for Palin, Ian Lazaran explains why Sarah Palin is backing Carly: (more…)