House Republicans have recently produced a major reversal in the momentum of the 2008 campaign by actually fighting democrats over their crazy environmental fanaticism and determination to maintain federal regulatory roadblocks to domestic oil exploration production at a time when prices at the pump are over $4. Tourists have come into the Capitol to applaud them.

Congressional Republicans actually find a winning issue, so what happens next?

Why, naturally, the Third Senator from New York, Lindsey Graham arrives with four other weak-kneed RINOs accompanied by a matching set of five democrats to propose a bipartisan sell-out which would protect the democrats from Republican attacks. Sheer genius! Isn’t it obvious just whom John McCain ought to be picking as his running-mate?

Speaking for real Republicans, Kimberly Strassel had a few choice words about all this.

It’s taken time, but Sen. McCain and his party have finally found — in energy — an issue that’s working for them. Riding voter discontent over high gas prices, the GOP has made antidrilling Democrats this summer’s headlines.

Their enthusiasm has given conservative candidates a boost in tough races. And Mr. McCain has pressured Barack Obama into an energy debate, where the Democrat has struggled to explain shifting and confused policy proposals.

Still, it was probably too much to assume every Republican would work out that their side was winning this issue. And so, last Friday, in stumbled Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson — alongside five Senate Democrats. This “Gang of 10” announced a “sweeping” and “bipartisan” energy plan to break Washington’s energy “stalemate.” What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat, and Mr. Obama, a life preserver.

That’s because the plan is a Democratic giveaway. New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states. The regulatory hurdles are huge. And the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast — putting off limits some of the most productive areas. Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still a no-go.

The highlight is instead $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables. The Gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on . . . oil companies! The Sierra Club couldn’t have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given antidrilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.

Sharing: A lesson on human nature

I was talking to a friend of mine’s little girl the other day. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she replied, “I want to be President!” Both of her parents are liberal democrats and were standing there. So then I asked her, “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”

She replied, “I’d give houses to all the homeless people.”

“Wow – what a worthy goal.” I told her, “You don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow, pull weeds, and sweep my porch, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where this homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward a new house.”

Since she is only 6, she thought that over for a few seconds. While her Mom glared at me, she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”

And I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”

Her folks still aren’t talking to me.

Gasoline is $4+ a gallon. It takes over $70 to fill-up my car, and around $10 more to put some gas in the plastic jerrican for the lawnmower.

Congressional Republicans want to pass a bill to do something about this by freeing up more domestic production. They have the votes, but democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a vote, has adjourned the House of Representatives for a five-week vacation, and turned the lights off in the Capitol in an effort to evict Republicans who have stayed on the floor in protest.

As Patrick Ruffin notes, a watershed has occurred in which Republicans are succeeding in mobilizing a grassroots protest effort using the Internet.

The prime tool for organizing currently is Twitter free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates, known as “tweets,” text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Sign the petition.

1:38 Call Congress Back video

Rasmussen reports:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

t’s just a shame that there is no Republican leadership whatsoever out there to offer a meaningful alternative.

Women’s Wear Daily profiles the Republican Party’s female Celtic bard, noting that she has recently developed a certain cross-over appeal.

Ordinarily, Noonan loves giving interviews. She particularly loves boys with political roundtables, and boys with political roundtables love her back. George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews and the late Tim Russert have all invited Noonan on air repeatedly, partly because she is a good counterpoint to people on the left and partly because she is reliably theatrical and can be counted on to flatter her host. Nearly any time a question is directed at her, she will turn her head slightly, look off into the distance and do what might be described as a long-studied blink, followed by the signature Noonan double-nod of agreement. It’s a dramatic gesture that says that her host is so unbelievably smart he’s caused Noonan to consider, for the first time ever, something that is, in fact, her job to consider all day long. Then comes her response, which more often than not begins with a sigh and is then followed by a Dale Carnegie-esque incantation of the host’s name. Such as, “Here’s the thing, Chris” or “I’ll tell you the truth, George.” As if Noonan and he are best, best friends and she is going to tell him (and the whole audience) a big secret. “It’s full-body communicating,” says Stephanopoulos. …

in 2005, Noonan broke with President George W. Bush’s administration over the Iraq war, among other things, and it gave her an air of cross-partisan credibility going into the current presidential season. Then, as Clinton stumbled in the Democratic primaries, Noonan found herself being embraced by an unlikely coalition of Obama supporters and disaffected Republicans to whom she was no longer a boilerplate conservative, but an iconoclast who’d turned on President Bush and been vindicated by anti-Clinton sentiment that was growing among Democrats. What’s more, being a woman gave Noonan a freedom to write critically about Clinton with little risk of being labeled sexist by the senator’s supporters.

“With Peggy Noonan, not only did I share many of her views about the election, I felt she was coming at it in a fair-minded way,” says New York Magazine columnist and Obama supporter Kurt Andersen. “It wasn’t like Bill Kristol, who you know what he’s going to say before he says it.”

“This moment was made for her,” Stephanopoulos says by phone. “She has a special feel for Hillary, though I’m sure it’s not one Clinton supporters always appreciate. And she’s had tremendous insight into what has been a troubled period for the Republican party. It gave her an opportunity to show some independence.””This moment was made for her.­­”— George StephanopoulosOr, as William Greider of the left-wing staple The Nation puts it: “She’s come face-to-face with what happened to the Republican party and acknowledged it rather than pretending it’s not so or blaming the Democrats. I think she’s terrific.”

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that a sizeable chunk of the left eventually fell in love with (or at least got a crush on) Noonan

And, perhaps predictably, some of Noonan’s critics already are predicting the end of her comeback. Last week, the political blog Wonkette ran a post about her first post-primary election column, saying: “Our girlfriend Peggy Noonan has been more enjoyable than usual this year, as a tragically drawn-out Democratic primary battle provided her with endless opportunities to touch herself while Barack Obama spoke pretty things….Now, that tortured eloquence has vanished.”

Not so fast.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Not terribly funny video satire offering a democrat’s view of Republicans, which has a few moments.

Arnold Jones (posed as American Gothic farmer, in tone of belligerent stupidity): “Because all other countries are inferior to us.”

Trudy Jones (American Gothic female): “We should start as many wars as it takes to keep it that way.”

3:28 video

Karl Rove looks at recent GOP special election losses, and talks about the Party’s future prospects.

The GOP can’t take “safe” seats for granted when Democrats run conservatives who distance themselves from their national party leaders. The string of defeats should cure Republicans of the habit of simply shouting “liberal! liberal! liberal!” in hopes of winning an election. They need to press a reform agenda full of sharp contrasts with the Democrats.

Why is it tough sledding for Republicans? Public revulsion at GOP scandals was a large factor in the party’s 2006 congressional defeat. Some brand damage remains, as does the downward pull of the president’s approval ratings. But the principal elements are the Iraq war and a struggling economy. …

What is clear is that John McCain and Republicans will prevail only if they convince voters that there are profound consequences at stake in Iraq, and that more and better jobs will follow from the GOP’s approach of lowering taxes, opening trade, and ending earmarks and other pro-growth policies.

Republicans also face challenges with the young (whose opposition to the war and attraction to Mr. Obama have made them Democrats) and Hispanics (the fastest-growing part of the electorate). A recent survey offers some encouraging news. Mr. McCain is polling as high as 41% with Hispanics – close to President Bush’s 44% in 2004.

Democrats shouldn’t be complacent after Tuesday. Their problems start with Mr. Obama’s 41-point loss to Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. Mr. Obama lost the primary because the rejection of him by blue-collar voters is hardening. The last Democrat to win the presidency without carrying the Mountain State was Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

Barely half of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters in Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia say they’re ready to support Mr. Obama against Mr. McCain today. Without solid support from these voters, Mr. Obama will be in trouble in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, Wisconsin and other battlegrounds.

So far, Mr. Obama owes his success to elites captivated by his personality. But in the general election, most folks will care more about a candidate’s philosophy and stand on the issues. And what’s considered mainstream values in a general election is different than in a primary.

Rove’s conclusion is that GOP can win, but it will require persuading voters that difference in philosophy between our candidates and theirs matters. John McCain is not exactly the ideal Republican spokesman for principled Conservatism.

Having used his bully pulpit on AM Radio to persuade Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary in several of the democrat primaries, a strategic political move which he has dubbed “Operation Chaos,” Rush Limbaugh, during his radio program yesterday, paused from mocking the Mainstream media, to hint that he may continue his Operation Chaos strategy in the general election, advising Republicans to crossover again to vote for John McCain.

Noemie Emery, in the Weekly Standard, relishes the ironies of this year’s democrat party nomination battle.

‘Strange new respect’ is the term coined by Tom Bethell, an unhappy conservative, to describe the press adulation given those who drift leftward, those who grow “mature,” “wise,” and “thoughtful” as they cause apoplexy in right-wingers, and leave their old allies behind. But no new respect has been quite so peculiar as that given by some on the right to Hillary Clinton–since 1992 their ultimate nightmare–whose possible triumph in this year’s election has been the source of their most intense fear. Lately, however, a strange thing has happened: A tactical hope to see her campaign flourish–to keep the brawl going and knock dents in Obama–has changed to, at least in some cases, a grudging respect for the lady herself. …

..she began to rouse outrage in parts of what once was her base. It is a truism that liberals think people are formed by exterior forces around them and are helpless before them, while conservatives think individuals make their own destiny. Liberals love victims and want them to stay helpless, so they can help them, with government programs; while conservatives love those who refuse to be victims, and get up off the canvas and fight. Hillary may still be a nanny-state type in some of her policies, but in her own life she seems more and more of a Social Darwinian, refusing to lose, and insisting on shaping her destiny. If the fittest survive, she intends to be one of them. This takes her part of the way towards a private conversion. She is acting like one of our own.

If this weren’t enough to make right-wing hearts flutter, Hillary has another brand-new advantage: She is hated on all the right fronts. The snots and the snark-mongers now all despise her, along with the trendies, the glitzies; the food, drama, and lifestyle critics, the beautiful people (and those who would join them), the Style sections of all the big papers; the slick magazines; the above-it-all pundits, who have looked down for years on the Republicans and on the poor fools who elect them, and now sneer even harder at her. The New York Times is having hysterics about her. At the New Republic, Jonathan Chait (who inspired the word “Chaitred” for his pioneer work on Bush hatred) has transferred his loathing of the 43rd president intact and still shining to her. “She should now go gentle into the political night,” he advised in January. “Go Already!” he repeated in March, when she had failed to act on his suggestion. “No Really, You Should Go,” he said in April after she won Pennsylvania, which made her even less likely to take his advice. “Now that loathing seems a lot less irrational,” he wrote of the right wing’s prior distaste for both the Clintons. “We just really wish they’d go away.”

And what caused this display of intense irritation? She’s running a right-wing campaign. She’s running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues, the campaign that the elder George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis, that the younger George Bush waged in 2000 and then again against John Kerry, and that Ronald Reagan–“The Bear in the Forest”–ran against Jimmy Carter and Walter F. Mondale. And she’s doing it with much the same symbols.

“Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11,” the New York Times has been whining. “A Clinton television ad, torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook, evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war, and 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden . . . declaring in an interview with ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president,” she would wipe the aggressor off the face of the earth. “Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is,” Chait lamented: “He’s inexperienced, lacking in substance,” unprepared to stand up to the world. She has said her opponent is ill-prepared to answer the phone, should it ring in the White House at three in the morning. Her ads are like the ones McCain would be running in her place, and they’ll doubtless show up in McCain’s ads should Obama defeat her. She has said that while she and McCain are both prepared to be president, Obama is not. They act, he makes speeches. They take heat, while he tends to wilt or to faint in the kitchen. He may even throw like a girl.

And better–or worse–she is becoming a social conservative, a feminist form of George Bush. Against an opponent who shops for arugula, hangs out with ex-Weathermen, and says rural residents cling to guns and to God in unenlightened despair at their circumstances, she has rushed to the defense of religion and firearms, while knocking back shots of Crown Royal and beer. Her harsh, football-playing Republican father (the villain of the piece, against whom she rebelled in earlier takes on her story) has become a role model, a working class hero, whose name she evokes with great reverence. Any day now, she’ll start talking Texan, and cutting the brush out in Chappaqua or at her posh mansion on Embassy Row.

In the right-wing conspiracy, this adaptation has not gone unobserved. “Hillary has shown a Nixonian resilience and she’s morphing into Scoop Jackson,” runs one post on National Review’s blog, The Corner:

She’s entering the culture war as a general. All of this has made her a far more formidable general election candidate. She’s fighting the left and she’s capturing the center. She’s denounced MoveOn.org. She’s become the Lieberman of the Democratic Party. The left hates her and treats her like Lieberman. . . . Obama is distancing himself from Wright and Hillary is getting in touch with O’Reilly. The culture war has come to the Democratic Party.

She might run to the right of McCain, if she makes it to the general election, and get the votes of rebellious conservatives. Or she, Lieberman, and McCain could form a pro-war coalition, with all of them running to pick up the phone when it rings in the small hours. The New York Times and the rest of the left would go crazy. Respect can’t get stranger than that.

And she’s right.

From a conservative perspective, it is definitely possible to argue that Hillary winning would be the best thing.

The responsibility for a new spate of liberal programs and entitlements (and their untoward consequences) would belong to the democrats, as would adult responsibility for American foreign policy. If we need to bomb Iran, the radical left and the media will be tearing away at their own Party.

Hillary additionally could very possibly be capable of assembling a more competent and responsible cabinet team than John McCain. Bill’s appointment of Richard Rubin as Treasury Secretary, and continuation of Greenspan’s tenure at the Federal Reserve, demonstrated a pragmatic commitment to a good economy.

If McCain wins, liberal Rockefeller-style Republicanism will be back in business, and any real conservative presidential candidate will face the kind of entrenched internal Party opposition that Barry Goldwater did. On the whole, the prospect of trying a come-back with a better Republican candidate four years down the road has some real advantages.

This anti-Obama ad was produced by the North Carolina GOP. (Good for them!)

0:40 video

And, would you believe this?

John McCain and (the now McCain-ite) Republican National Committee have called upon those tarheels to withdraw the ad, calling it “offensive,” “inappropriate,” and not “respectful.”

The Republican National Committee contrasts General David H. Petraeus‘s testimony to Congress with the two democrat candidates’ campaign pledges to withdraw rapidly from Iraq.

2:28 video

And used the same Winner Take All Primary System we do, what would the delegate count look like? Rassmussen Reports’ Wesley Little provides the answer.