So, the Queen is dead — long live the Prince!

Well, she’s not actually dead — more like dethroned –- and she’s probably more dangerous now than ever before. But the Prince –- and his full court press of followers –- will only discover that later, when it’s too late to do anything about it.  That alone proves he’s not up for this job.  Eager and impatient, the Prince has his sights set on the old battle-tested soldier who now stands in his way of becoming a King.

In politics, like war, it’s best not to take prisoners. The crusty old Kings of Europe had the right idea: kill your enemies on sight and leave their rotting corpse lying there to remind everyone of what you’re capable of.  That way, you not only kill off any potential rivals but also send the message to any potential troublemakers of what’s in store for them if they don’t get with the program -– or in this case –- get back in the party.

For good measure, burn their homes and crops to the ground so their immediate necessity is survival, not retribution. It’s difficult to make war when you’re unarmed, hungry and homeless. Translated into today’s mantra of ‘change you can believe in’: It’s difficult to have a voice in the castle when you’ve openly supported the Queen –- who’s just been evicted — and now you’re refusing to bow to the Prince. If you want to be part of the platform and invited to the coronation, you’d better believe in change -– or else.

For decades now, the Kennedys, the Carters, Gores, Kerrys, and even the Clintons have operated as a home-grown government in exile, shooting verbal spitballs from the balcony of history against their archrival, the Republicans.  Now, their little kingdom of kooks is faced with the prospect of a civil war within the Democratic Party with calls for secession, abdication, and an outright purge of perceived internal rivals.

That’s the scary thing about the Left: they’re either groveling at your feet – or clawing at your throat.  If they can’t convince you with emotional pleas of ‘unity’, they’ll beat it into you by brute force.  Any moment now, I expect the racially-balanced, gender-neutral, carbon-friendly firing squads to line up in a perfect circle, and start taking aim at their former comrades.

And these people have the nerve to say the Sunni and Shia can’t get along?

If the Kennedys of Boston were known for “Kennedys never cry” and the Bushes were tagged with “Never Explain, Never Complain” then the Clinton’s would have to be labeled: “Never Forgive, Never Forget”.

The Clintons, like despotic dictators, know that power if not used regularly against your enemies, slowly erodes over time. It’s the original “Use it or Lose it” exercise in regime retention.  Hillary, with an angry, vocal and loyal base of supporters combined with the bad luck of holding too few high cards in a race card poker game, silently watching a wounded Obama limp to the nomination, she has truly become ‘the lady in waiting’.

As for the newly-crowned Prince: I’m guessing he’ll go back and study the techniques and tactics of Stalin and Mao, two of history’s most successful practitioners of power politics and the art of making your enemies an offer they can’t refuse.  Since he’s already a follower of their economic teachings, their political philosophy can’t be that foreign to him.

As for the Queen Without a Kingdom and her husband, the King Without a Castle, they’ll retire to their island of Elba in Chappaqua and await the call of the faithful once the Prince is pounced by the old soldier who studied – and remembers – the tactics of Princes who sought to be Kings.

Cheers!

-Vera Charles…. sipping a Tom Collins.  Or dating him?

As I noted in a previous post, yesterday was an exciting, but strange day for me. Part of it was the number of items on my plate, having the chance to write for a larger audience than this blog about an issue to which I have devoted much thought over these past few years and getting to participate in a conference call with my party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Mixed within the excitement, I also had a kind of a “bad feeling,” as if I were Han Solo approaching the forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi. It wasn’t until later in the day, after I had finished and edited my Pajamas piece that I got a handle on this.

I recalled why it was when I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a screenwriter, I went in to the closet politically, concealing my Republican inclinations. Sometimes, I then felt, it’s not worth the effort to speak out and offer an opinion different from those around you, given that many gay people (and others in the creative professions) tend to define conservatives by our politics and oftentimes to dismiss us because of them.

I didn’t want to criticize something (in this case, the California Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage) that so many around me (including many people I love and respect) were celebrating. But, given my position as a blogger who has written much on gay marriage, particularly criticizing courts for deciding an issue which, I believe, should be left to the legislatures and the people, I had to say something. And as one seeking a larger audience for my work, I thought it would be folly to turn down Pajamas’ invitation to write a piece for them on the decision.

Given my emotional state yesterday, I’m delighted that so many found so much to praise in that piece, even some who disagreed with my conclusions. And I was heartened this morning when a reader linked me to Jonathan Rauch’s piece on the Independent Gay Forum, warning gay marriage advocates to “Hold the Champagne:“

I wish I could be as overjoyed by the California Supreme Court’s ruling for same-sex marriage as the rest of the gay world is. Politically, the ruling merely tees up an initiative battle, to be decided by simple majority vote. Backlash against the Court may make that battle harder to win. Affirmation of the Court’s decision by plebescite would be tremendous, but it’s too early to celebrate.

Not only is Jonathan, like yours truly, fearful of the backlash, but he also had some problems with the majority opinion, calling it “an example of judicial overreach.” (As with anything Jonathan writes on marriage, just read the whole thing.)

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about yesterday’s decision, if only to be more like those around me, but cannot in good conscience. I find the opinion flawed on a number of levels and fear a backlash which could extend beyond the Golden State. And fear that those who would like to prevent that backlash would rather attack opponents of state recognition of gay marriage than defend the merits of extending the benefits of this institution to gay people.

(more…)

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds encouraged his readers to support a variety of bloggers (instead of himself), notably Michael Yon and Michael Totten who are doing yeoman’s work covering the War against Islamofascism, going to battlefields many in the MSM won’t dare visit or may not even know about.

He also recommended supporting embattled Canadian bloggers whom serial “human rights” complainant Richard Warman is suing.  His targets include Grande Conservative Blogress Diva nominees Kathy Shaidle of FiveFeetofFury.com and Kate McMcMillan of Small Dead Animals. In order to prevent protected groups, including enemies of the West, from not being offended in the Great White North, Warman is trying to shut down conservative web-sites and silence conservative pundits.

As you can’t support all the bloggers through one legal defense fund, you need to support them separately. Please join me in sending a few bucks to Kathy and Kate, the latter of whom commenter John Santos much (and unfairly) maligned during the Blogress Diva Competition.

Click here to help Kathy and here to help Kate.

I apologize for not being able to blog today even though I have much on my mind. I had wanted to comment on yesterday’s Oscar nominations and what they say about Hollywood. My thoughts are not much different from those of Roger Simon who blogged about this yesterday, noting that the nominations were “met with a yawn.”

And there’s much to be said about the nastiness of Ms. Hillary and her husband and how they may well have succeeded in their attempts to bait Obama. Perhaps the left will realize that all things they ascribe to Rove are based on their assumptions that that man utilized Clintonian tactics.

Anyway, a local paper has asked me to write an endorsement of my man Rudy. I just finished the first draft and am now editing it, hoping to get it in by the deadline. It’s funny how I initially struggled with the project when first assigned. I wanted to make my piece so good that it would convince skeptical Republican to vote for the former New York City Mayor. Perhaps overwhelmed by this ambition, I failed to make any headway.

Then, when I decided to write it, it pretty much fell into place. (I will link it when they post it.)

I guess the lesson is that when we often fail to accomplish when we exaggerate our own expectations, when we fear something will not be as good as we would like it to be.

Just over two years ago when I asked, Who are Our Conservative �Divas�?, I defined a diva a strong, successful woman who commands the respect of men. At the time, we were looking for those divas whose politics didn’t turn the stomachs of gay conservative men, given how much we gay guys look up to strong women.

When we decided to limit our poll to consider only blogresses, we included (over the past three years) a number who were not conservative per se, notably Virginia Postrel and Ann Althouse. While these gals may not be as ideological as some of their competitors, we do admire their independence and the confidence with which they express their opinions.

In some ways, particularly in the case of Althouse, it’s their very absence of ideology which makes them divas. For, isn’t it a mark of a true diva that she’s not beholden to any individual or any ideology?

It’s one reason Arianna Huffington who once carried herself like a diva can no longer be considered for the honor. In her eagerness to curry favor with the Bush-hating left, she’s sacrificed the independent voice she provided in the second half of the 1990s. Maybe that’s because Huffington knows that to be accepted by the leftist blogosphere she has to toe their line.

That ideological conformity which the left seems to demand seems absent on the right, at least among the conservative (and libertarian) pundits and bloggers I read on a regular basis. Or maybe it’s because the liberal ideology has become so dominant in the MSM, that we conservatives delight in reading pieces by those willing to challenge it.

While Ann Althouse is certainly not a conservative, she is definitely a blogress who challenges liberal orthodoxy. She speaks her mind. When commenting on the competition last year, she said it best when she wrote:

If the emphasis is on the word “diva” — as it should be — rather than on “conservative” — I think I definitely deserve it. It’s not about who is the most conservative — which would be incredibly stupid — it is who embodies “diva” and can also be accepted by the conservatives. Clearly, I fit that.

It’s not just that. Despite her decidedly non-ideological bent, Althouse somehow manages, in her words, to drive liberals “nuts.” Which seems to me more a reflection of their narrow-mindedness than of her ideology.

Indeed, it was amusing to see some of the comments on her blog wondering why she was nominated to be Grande Conservative blogress diva while reading posts on left-wing blogs attacking her with the venom they tend to reserve for such conservative women as Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.

Today, as I “researched” this piece, reading her latest entries and some of her past references to our contest, I realized how much I liked her blog. Even when I disagreed with some of her points, I delighted in the way she expressed herself. While my posts, like this one, tend to be essayistic, hers are sassy and succinct with a sizable sampling of snark.

We gay conservatives like Ann Althouse because she speaks her mind and retains her independence, calling them as she see them.

While Sondra K has once again earned the honor to be Grande Conservative Blogress Diva, Ann Althouse remains a diva to this blogger. As are some of her more ideological competitors in our recent competition.

When we launched the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva contest this year, we expected to have a number of blogresses nominated and seconded as we did. So, we assumed a run-off would be necessary.

What we did not anticipate was the number of glitches in this year’s competition. We were delayed in setting up the contest due to misunderstandings and miscommunications (between Bruce and me). When we first announced the nominees, Bruce set up a poll which for some reason didn’t work.

I tried to fix it, but failed. At the same time, Bruce was taking care of his Mom. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, wanted to set up a new poll, but feared that some people had already cast their ballots in the original contest. In the end, I did set up the poll, more than two days after we had anticipated the voting to begin. When I posted that poll, I neglected to announce that there would be a run-off nor to indicate when voting would end. I didn’t even link the post announcing the contest.

Given that the final tally had reigning Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Sondra K so far ahead of her competitors, we decided to dispense with a runoff and anoint her Grande Conservative Blogress Diva for the coming year.

We believe Sondra is especially deserving of this honor because of the spirited way she campaigned for the title, enlisting her readers and fellow bloggers to sign her praises in our comments section and to pump for her on their own web-sites. Self-promotion and devoted followers: qualities of a true diva.

This is not to say that the other competitors are less than divas. In their outspoken ways, all of them have earned the respect of these gay conservatives and merit the diva label. But, only one woman can become Grande Conservative Blogress Diva. And once again, Sondra K of Knowledge is Power has earned the title.

Congratulations Sondra!

In the original post announcing our annual Blogress Diva competition, I wrote that there would be a “run-off from December 17 until the 23rd.” But, given the initial glitches with this years competition, we didn’t have a workable poll up until last Wednesday so we had to extend the initial round of voting until today.

At the close of the competition, the four finalists are Sondra K of Knowledge is Power (1,593 votes), Pamela of Atlas Shrugs (912) and Michelle Malkin (798), Tammy Bruce (731).

Given reigning Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Sondra’s considerable lead and this year’s glitches, we are debating whether or not it would be in order merely to crown her once again or continue with the promised runoff.

Please let us know your thoughts. We will reach a final decision later on today.

Here is the final and deciding poll:

In just under 24 hours, we’ll be ending the first round of balloting from Grande Conservative Blogress Diva. At 9 AM tomorrow PST (High Noon in the east, GayPatriot Blog time), we’ll be announcing the 4 finalists who will appear on the final ballot.

Please click here to vote for your favorite diva.

And make sure to check out the blogs of these divas, blogresses who by the power of their prose, the eloquence of their expression and the intelligence of their ideas have earned them the enmity of the angry left and so endeared them to gay men like us who admire strong women who speak their mind, even at the expense of encomia from those in the entertainment industry and the MSM:

The Anchoress
Ann Althouse
Little Miss Attila
Tammy Bruce
Dymphna of Gates of Vienna
e-Claire
Bridget Johnson of GOP Vixen
Sondra K of Knowledge is Power
Carol Platt Liebau
Rachel Lucas
Michelle Malkin
neo-neo con
Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury
Pamela of Atlas Shrugs
Virginia Postrel of The Dynamist
Debbie Schlussel
Fausta Wertz

After some glitches with the initial poll, I decided to create a new one. Let the cat fight voting begin!

Due to a glitch in the original poll, we have created a new one here where you can vote for your favorite blogress diva!

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for. After reviewing the comments sections to the two post announcing this year’s competition for Grand Conservative Blogress Diva, the nominees are. To receive a nomination, a nominee’s name must be put forward, either in one of my posts and then seconded in the comments section. Given that this is a diva competition, a blogress may second herself.

And the nominees are:

The Anchoress
Ann Althouse
Little Miss Attila
Tammy Bruce
Dymphna of Gates of Vienna
e-Claire
Bridget Johnson of GOP Vixen
Sondra K of Knowledge is Power
Carol Platt Liebau
Rachel Lucas
Michelle Malkin
neo-neo con
Kathy Shaidle of Five Feet of Fury
Pamela of Atlas Shrugs
Virginia Postrel of The Dynamist
Debbie Schlussel
Fausta Wertz

We hope to get the poll up by tomorrow morning. And when it’s up the first round of voting will begin.

Congratulations to all nominees. No matter who wins, you’re all divas, but only one can be the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva.