On the front page of The Washington Post, Jerry Markon has an excellent , lengthy look at the conservative movement’s newfound — or at least newly invigorated — online organizing. RedState, for example, has long pushed news favorable to candidates liked by the site’s readers, and has long included fundraising appeals, but as Markon points out, an email list launched one year ago quickly swelled from 498 to 70,000 subscribers. The reception of the story on the right? Not bad, but not altogether thankful. Tim Graham of the Media Research Center took to the Newsbusters blog to attack the story for its nomenclature . While the Post can do an entire story on a left-wing group like Code Pink and use one liberal label , the most noticeable tic in the Markon story is how many times the word “conservative” appears, and not counting the headline — forty-six .

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Conservatives: This Story About Conservatives Makes Us Sound Too Conservative

I reported yesterday that the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco was putting on a lecture by alleged phone-tamperer James O’Keefe on “undercover journalism.” According to Commonwealth Club spokeswoman Riki Rafner, the event is still on for Monday, although “things can change.”

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Confirmed: O’Keefe Journalism Lecture Still a Go

The governor-turned-Fox News pundit tells Greta Van Susteren that she’s still headlining the embattled National Tea Party Convention next week. Oh, you betcha I’m going to be there. I’m going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I’m honored to get to be there. I won’t personally gain from being there. The speaker’s fee will go right back into the cause. I’ll be able to donate it to people and to events, those things that I believe in that will help perpetuate the message, the message being, Government, you have constitutional limits. You better start abiding by them. Palin doesn’t have the out that Michele Bachmann and Martha Blackburn had–as a former office-holder, she has no lobbying/ethics hurdles to jump over. The unfolding drama and scandal of this convention, though, make her decision to attend it while bitterly blowing off CPAC seem less and less astute.

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Palin, Still Tea Partying

Ken Vogel has an essential story looking at the not-so-secret, but rarely examined, collegiate conservative fund network that trained James O’Keefe, Stan Dai, and the other plotters in the Mary Landrieu phone tampering scandal. The Leadership Institute and the Collegiate Network helped O’Keefe and the others get trained and fund college newspapers; the Phillips Foundation gave Dai one of its fellowships. (Disclosure: From 2002 through 2004 I edited the Northwestern Chronicle, a paper that received funding from the Collegiate Network, and I was a CN fellow at USA Today from 2004 to 2005.) Today, those organizations are condemning what their proteges got up to. [LI's Steven] Sutton said the Institute suggested to O’Keefe that he ask Rutgers officials to banish the breakfast cereal Lucky Charms from campus dining halls because it was offensive to Irish American students. O’Keefe took the advice a step further and video recorded the meeting, posting it on YouTube , which Sutton said was an example of him pushing the envelope. Worth remembering: the Leadership Institute didn’t always say this about O’Keefe. I noted on Tuesday that LI President Morton Blackwell gave O’Keefe fulsome praise for the ACORN sting, happily crediting his LI training. With training and a little financial help from the Leadership Institute, James O’Keefe started in 2004 an independent conservative student newspaper , The Centurion , at Rutgers , a large state university in New Jersey. James fought the liberal administration at Rutgers.  Leftists on campus stole whole issues of The Centurion .  His paper continued and grew stronger because of the abuses. James went to ten different training schools of the Leadership Institute.  The Institute hired him for a year (2006-07) to help conservative students around the country form their own campus publications.  He conducted 75 training programs for LI. Among the useful things James learned at LI was:  “ Don’t fire all your ammunition at once. ” In September 2009, each day for five days James released new videos exposing ACORN’s outrageous practices.  The roof caved in on ACORN .  Obviously, the impact of his work would have been much less if James had released all those videos at the same time. Now James is a national conservative hero, and I believe he will write his own ticket to a future career doing just what he loves to do. Obviously, the ACORN tapes went further than the college stunts that LI now characterizes as over-the-top.

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Conservative Journalism Networks Back Away From O’Keefe and Co.

Zachary Roth has details on the recent history of the Pelican Institute, the libertarian Louisiana think tank that brought James O’Keefe into the state before the alleged bungled Landrieu phone plot. That the institute “went after ACORN” is totally unsurprising — what conservative or libertarian group hasn’t? — but O’Keefe and his three alleged co-conspirators have plenty to reveal about how this plot was hatched.

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The Mysterious Pelican Institute

Before James O’Keefe recorded his undercover ACORN videos he cut this Yes Men-ish video for Right.org , in which his “Taxpayers Clearing House,” mimicking the Publisher’s Clearing House, conducted a series of stunts to attack the bailouts. They drove up to the homes of ordinary people, seemingly awarding them enormous checks, then informing them that the checks were for corporations — the taxpayers got $20,000 “invoices.” They tried to deliver the checks to corporations, unsurprisingly getting rebuffed. The most interesting thing I saw in the video occurred at the 4:00 mark, after one of the pranksters has been “detained by the police.” It looked as though O’Keefe was taping the phone call from the officer with a device in his right hand.

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James O’Keefe Mocks People With Giant Checks

What’s happening on James O’Keefe’s Facebook wall ? Almost exactly what you’d expect.

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‘Keep Doing What Your Doing Man’

At a luncheon held at the Heritage Foundation, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) was cautiously open to the idea of a three-year non-defense discretionary spending freeze floated last night by the White House. “I never met a spending freeze I didn’t like,” said Pence. The first he’d heard of the concept, he said, came at a December 2009 meeting at the White House when Republicans suggested it. Rather than dismissing the idea as a political stunt, Pence was ready to take some ownership of it. “I’d welcome a sincere attempt at a spending freeze.” Pence also joked a bit about how the media covered conservatives. “The New York Times reported that there were a few thousand on the mall on 9/12,” said Pence. “Fox News reported that there were a billion.”

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Mike Pence: ‘I’ve Never Met a Spending Freeze I Didn’t Like’

The National Republican Congressional Committee  is up on the air in South Carolina with an ad not-so-secretly aimed at getting Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.) to reconsider his career options. But the striking thing about the ad is its claim that “Spratt’s the architect of legislation Democrats may use to ram through a government takeover of health care.” What does that mean? The NRCC spells it out in the press release that was sent to reporters. They’re knocking Spratt “for his authorship of a budget plan that would allow Pelosi and Congressional Democrats to ram government-run healthcare through Congress using an arcane procedure known as reconciliation.” They explain: The budget that Spratt designed allows Democrats to strong-arm the government takeover of healthcare through the Senate with only 51 votes necessary to advance the bill, instead of the 60 votes required in the upper chamber. So whether or not Democrats use the tools available to them and pass the health care bill, they’re going to get hammered on it. This has been obvious for weeks.

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Running Against Reconciliation

A new Rasmussen poll has Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) trailing Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.)–rumored to be interested in a challenge, in the wake of the Massachusetts upset–by only three points. Bayh, who was on nobody’s list of endangered Democrats last month, is the sort of senator who found himself endangered in last two elections of the Bush presidency. He regularly visits TV studios to state his concerns with the administration’s policies. But he never really votes against them. Complaints about, for example, how much Congress is spending, are matched with votes for more spending. It’s a tactic that’s sapped Bayh’s credibility with conservatives and angered liberals.

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Pence 47, Bayh 44

As “Avatar” sails past a $500 million box office gross, more than 50,000 anti-abortion rights activists have signed up to participate in the annual March for Life with boxy little avatars of their own. How it looks: Via RightWingWatch, here are the avatars of famous Republicans who aren’t making it down. And here’s the voice of the opposition, Randall Terry, arguing that activists would be better off doing hardcore activism, like singing.

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The Virtual March for Life

Shira Toeplitz reports on the ego boost that Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts has given to Republican candidates and strategists. So far it’s been enough to nudge businessman Richard Hanna into a rematch with Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.); from there, it’s giving a second wind to recruiters who are trying to see whether they can put more Senate races on the map, and boosted the fortunes of Republicans like Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). I had a call and a text message from two significant donors of mine, who I never hear from other than when I’m calling them for money, say: ‘Wow, this is huge. Keep up the good work. Let me know how we can help. This pales before the effect that Brown’s win is having on congressional Democrats’ plans for their agenda. One dog that hasn’t barked: No vulnerable Democrats have bailed out of re-election this week.

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The Republican Surge, of Sorts

BOSTON — At his first press conference as senator-elect from Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown hued pretty closely to the rhetoric of his campaign and welcomed questions about what his win meant for the future of the GOP. And asked what parts of health care reform he wanted to pass this year, Brown spoke vaguely about the value of expanded coverage while saying it should be left to the states. “Let the states tell the federal government, hey, this is what we’d like to do,” said Brown. “Just so we’re past campaign mode, I think it’s important for everyone to get some form of health care, so to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important.” He pointed out that he’d voted for this state’s health care mandate, but he saw his role “as the 41st senator” to bring the reform bill “back to the drawing board.” After Fox News’s Carl Cameron asked what side of the GOP’s ideological tussle he’d take as the party’s “poster boy,” Brown mused about working between party lines and blowing off Washington chatter. “Maybe there’s a new breed of Republican coming to Washington,” Brown said. “I hear all these discussions about someone who said this, or someone who wrote this in their book. My response is: Who cares? We have terrorists trying to blow us up in Afghanistan.” Brown quickly dealt with, and brushed aside, questions about when he might be seated. He’d filed the requisite paperwork with the secretary of state, was confident that absentee ballots would not diminish the margin of victory to the point where it was in question, and would pay a courtesy call to senators tomorrow. Brown was vague on what he’d do when he got to the Senate, suggesting that he could “offer guidance as to what we’ve done here in Massachusetts” and work across party lines. The only clear sign he gave of his other intentions was a warning about some expiring Bush tax cuts–he wanted to save them.

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Brown: ‘It’s Important for Everyone to Get Some Form of Health Care’

This is part of the voicemail that callers get when they’re unable to reach someone at GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown’s campaign headquarters in Massachusetts. Due to the high demand for lawn signs and bumper stickers, we are currently out. We encourage you to show your support for Senator Brown by making your own lawn signs and bumper stickers.

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Here’s One Show of Support for Scott Brown

The organizers of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville have announced which media outlets will get full access to the event. “Everyone from a small town newspaper in Iowa to Fox News has asked for press credentials,” say organizers in a press release. “We have had requests from Canada , England , France , Germany , Switzerland , Spain , Norway , Croatia and Japan .” But the lucky winners: Fox News Breitbart.com Townhall.com The Wall Street Journal World Net Daily WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah is also speaking at the convention; other reporters may get access to a “press room” if the venue “would be willing to provide” one. In the statement, organizers finally answer some of the attacks they’ve received from angry Tea Party activists and former sponsors. Between last February and the present, Tea Party Nation has seen members come and go.  We have tried to deal fairly with our present and former relationships, however, not without some criticism.  This criticism has been unfortunate and we believe, unwarranted.  However, it is the policy of Tea Party Nation not to focus on past challenges, but to stay focused on the task of advancing the conservative cause and defeating liberalism. With that in mind, we will not be making any comments regarding former members.

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Media Allowed to Cover National Tea Party Convention: Fox, WorldNetDaily, Breitbart

A reversal from the Nashville, Tenn., event , which has battled back a lot of criticism of its organizers’ finances and its lack of media access. Media will be allowed in, but still not allowed to ask questions.

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Press Allowed Into Palin’s National Tea Party Convention Speech

Josh Marshall is all over GOP Senate candidate Scott Brown’s strange statement to reporters that he was “unfamiliar” with the Tea Party movement. Whatever he meant, that’s not true — Brown, like many Republican officeholders, spoke at Tea Party events in 2009, and has counted on their support to raise money for his sleeper campaign. It’s the first time Brown has really failed to thread the needle between his support from a national conservative movement that’s not popular in Massachusetts and his promise to be an independent, “people’s” senator.

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A Strange Scott Brown Gaffe

Democratic strategists are champing at the bit for Republicans to go on the record for total repeal of health care reform — the strategists believe that once the furor dies down, provisions like the ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions will prove popular. Right on cue, the Club for Growth has launched the “Repeal It!” pledge. The pledge, for candidates: I hereby pledge to the people of my district/state upon my election to the U.S. House of Representatives/U.S. Senate, to sponsor and support legislation to repeal any federal health care takeover passed in 2010, and replace it with real reforms that lower health care costs without growing government. The first congressional candidate I’ve seen sign on is Republican Tim Huelskamp, who’s running in the first district of Kansas.

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Club for Growth Launches ‘Repeal Obamacare’ Pledge

Perhaps the strangest thing about the National Tea Party Convention’s quasi-blackout on media coverage is the innocuous nature of the stuff organizers don’t want covered. Here, for example, is the work-in-progress list of the breakout sessions that reporters won’t be allowed into. The Leadership Institute: “Grassroots on the Ground” FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform): “Operation Amnesty Shield” Philip Glass, National Precinct Alliance: “How to Change Elections – Becoming a Precinct Committee Chairperson” Young Americans for Freedom: “How to Involve the Youth in the Conservative Movement” Dr. Rick Scarborough, Vision America, Author of “Enough is Enough”: “Why Christians Must Engage” Mark Skoda, Memphis Tea Party: “Collaboration in the Cloud-Applied Technology in the TEA Party Movement” David DeGerolamo, NC Freedom Tea Party: “How to Unite State Tea Party Groups” Lori Christenson, Evergreen/Conifer Tea Party: “How to Organize a Tea Party Group” Dr. B. Leland Baker, “Dr. B”, Professor of Management and Homeland Security, Researcher/Analyst, Author of “Conservatism and the Tea Party Movement” Walter Fitzgerald: “Emergency Preparedness” Smart Girl Politics: “How to Do Voter Registration Drives and Where to Find Conservative Votes” and “Women in Politics” I can sort of understand the worry that national media, coming into town to cover Palin, would flood these events and make attendees uncomfortable. But I’ve covered, and filmed, and watched other people cover and film, convention breakout sessions on pretty much all of these topics.

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Behold, the National Tea Party Convention’s Secret Breakout Sessions

It’s a testament to Jon Stewart’s extraordinary abilities to speak sensibly in an age of insanity that we expect him to skewer knaves like John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel torture advocate, who appeared on “The Daily Show” last night. Stewart has a great command of the facts and of his medium. Still, maybe it shouldn’t disappoint us to recognize that Yoo skillfully deflected most of Stewart’s assaults. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Daily Show: Exclusive – John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1 www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis Yoo’s being pretty disingenuous here. The August 1, 2002 OLC memo on torture isn’t about perishable circumstances shortly after 9/11. It’s about the scope of executive power — and exclusive, inherent executive power. Yoo tells Stewart that Congress or the courts could rein in a rogue president on his conduct of a war. Yet his consistent view, as expressed in the memo, is that there’s pretty much nothing Congress can do during wartime short of cutting off funding, a politically extreme step. Maybe people should give Yoo credit for picking his speaking venues.

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John Yoo Wins Battle of ‘The Daily Show’

Erick Erickson (whom, full disclosure, I’d asked about the story earlier today) posts a scorching attack on next month’s Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which has been attracting some flack for its high cost (minimum ticket price, $349) and rumors of huge speaker fees. Comparing the event to a Nigerian scam email, Erickson frets that “the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be.” And he says Sarah Palin is making a mistake by giving a speech that cost organizers a rumored $100,000. Sarah Palin is certainly giving the National Tea Party Convention legitimacy. But at what cost? I am fearful this thing will blow up and harm her. I am more fearful that a bunch of well meaning people from across the nation are going to show up, expect more, and then grow disaffected or burn out when the deliverables they expect do not come in. I hope I am wrong about all of this. I could be. But something tells me I am right. And because no one else will say it, I will — I think Sarah Palin got some bad advice and probably should have done more due diligence.

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RedState: Palin Might Be ‘Ruining’ Herself By Attending Tea Party Convention

For $9.99 — not including shipping — you can purchase a Sarah Palin embryo ornament from Etsy.com. “Sarah’s got a gun  and a nice pair of…glasses,” says the designer, whose other “baby’s first” ornaments include characters from “Twilight.” This one is “just for fun, no political statements being made here.” etsy.com More on Palin’s appeal to opponents of abortion rights here .

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The Sarah Palin Embryo Ornament

This is a starling quote from the omnipresent Larry Sabato, who tells the Boston Herald that Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley’s “light schedule of campaign events” is evidence of a lazy campaign that’s wasted a big lead in the Massachusetts special election. That’s not the money quote; this is. In a competitive state, Coakley would be well on her way to losing. If the Democrats lose, they deserve to have health care go down. That’s right–Coakley’s losing ground not because of health care, but because she’s running a lazy campaign. And if she loses, the Democrats “deserve” to have the health care bill fail. That’s some serious spin — it makes a wintry special election more important than the presidential election, 435 House races, and 34 Senate races that produced the current executive and legislative branches. And expect to hear more of that. The Herald piece also gets into spin I’m hearing from a lot of Republicans — that, in the words of John Feehery, interim Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.) “should’ve just shut up” instead of telling a reporter he’d vote for the health care bill no matter who won the special election. That doesn’t quite wash — Kirk would have caused a firestorm among liberals if he suggested that he’d vote against Ted Kennedy’s life’s work depending on who turned out in a January special election. But it’s become a rallying point for conservatives who, in the face of a less lazy Coakley campaign, are trying to keep up a push against her “arrogance.”

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Tomorrow’s Conventional Wisdom, Today!

Public Policy Polling, conducting an automated poll on the Massachusetts Senate race, is finding good data for Republican candidate Scott Brown. According to PPP’s Tom Jensen, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley’s sleepy campaign–which is increasingly starting to irritate party strategists who trusted her to lock the race down early–has resulted in an electorate that’s more Republican than usual and more anti-health care reform than the state as a whole. Brown, one of the few Republicans of stature in the state, has a 60 percent favorable rating–a result of his own ads and of being basically ignored by Coakley. Writes Jensen: This has become a losable race for Democrats- but it could also be easily winnable if Coakley gets her act together for the last week of the campaign. Complacency is the Democrats’ biggest enemy at this point and something that needs to be overcome to avoid a potential disaster.

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Pollster: Massachusetts Has ‘Become Losable’ for Democrats

Via Ben Smith , it seems meaningful that Sarah Palin’s camp explained her decision not to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference with two unprovoked attacks on the American Conservative Union. The first is on a micro-scandal over ACU Chairman David Keene’s advocacy for FedEx . The second, less convincing attack is on CPAC for letting the John Birch Society co-sponsor the event. As I’ve reported, the conspiracy site WorldNetDaily , which posts content far to the right even of JBS’s content, is heavily involved in the Tea Party Convention that Palin is being paid some sum of money to speak at. The news that Palin is speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, however, protects her from a little of the criticism that she’s skipping established political events because they won’t pay her. The SRLC conference doesn’t pay its speakers and is seen as must-attend run-up to the presidential primaries.

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Palin Goes After CPAC, Sticks With SRLC

The American Future Fund has purchased $400,000 worth of time to air this ad in Massachusetts — a straightforward (if misleading)* attack on Democratic candidate Martha Coakley for opposing tax cuts and spending cuts. Republican candidate Scott Brown, who had been running an under-the-radar campaign until this week, has condemned the ad . One reason to suspect that he might really want it off the air: the record of third-party conservative groups getting involved this cycle is pretty rotten. In the NY-20 and NY-23 special elections last year, conservative PACs barreled into moderate districts and ran negative ads that, according to Republicans, hurt more than they helped. Up to now, the only ads Massachusetts voters have seen for Brown have been positive. *It’s based on Coakley’s comment that to shrink the deficit “we need to get people back to work, we need to get taxes up,” which she has explained — pretty convincingly — as a reference to the increased revenue that will come when more people are working. There’s an interesting argument to be had over whether “across the board tax cuts” would actually increase revenue when people, in the economic downtown, are dropping off the tax rolls.

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Conservatives Dive Into Massachussetts Senate Race

I was surprised that Sarah Palin, who has twice passed on chances to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, agreed to keynote the National Tea Party Convention. Undoubtedly the Tea Party event has more to offer her financially–tickets for her speech, as I reported last month, are selling for $349 . But while CPAC is a well-established event with a filter for extremism, the Tea Party event is an unknown quantity. And right on cue, the conspiracy-minded site WorldNetDaily is joining the program , with Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah getting a plum Friday night speaking slot. To be asked to speak at the first national tea party convention is a great honor for me. I believe the tea party movement is a powerful and righteous social and political force that can help take America back from the grips of out-of-control and tyrannical central government. It’s also a personal privilege for me to be on the same bill with Gov. Sarah Palin and so many other distinguished leaders and friends such as Judge Roy Moore, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Phil Valentine. Two months ago Farah appeared on the same stage as Bachmann and other conservative House Republicans to promote WND’s “pink slip” campaign against Congress, and political reporters pretty much ignored it. And WND has sponsored CPAC in the past. But CPAC has explicitly ruled out a “birther” forum at this year’s event, and some Republican activists have called for conservatives to cut ties with the birth certificate and conspiracy-obsessed WND. And here you’ll have Sarah Palin, giving her first political speech in months, on the same stage as Joseph Farah.

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WorldNetDaily and Palin, Together At Last

First announced in May 2009 , Tucker Carlson’s new conservative website The Daily Caller is launching on Jan. 11. The next day, fans and friends (no crashers!) are invited to a launch event hosted by famed party-thrower Juleanna Glover, Vice President Dick Cheney’ former press secretary. Sponsors include the Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association. The invitation is below the jump.

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Take a Ride on Tucker Carlson’s Spaceship

Republicans began the year in worse shape than they’d been in any time since the 1970s. Conservatives and libertarians, the party’s traditional base, were angry and alienated, swearing that the mistakes of George W. Bush’s failed presidency would never be repeated. By the end of 2009, there had been a massive power shift from the leadership of the movement to its activists, from Washington to places like Watertown, N.Y., and Andrew Breitbart’s Los Angeles basement office. Click here to begin slideshow. Stop back tomorrow for “Ten Conservatives to Watch in 2010.”

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The Best and the Rightest

Hillary Chabot talks to grumpy Massachusetts Republicans who think they have an outside chance at an upset in next month’s special election for U.S. Senate — a credible candidate (State Senator Scott Brown) and an anti-Democratic Party headwind — but are being starved for funds. Local operatives say the national GOP and the NRSC have donated voter lists, telephone systems and at least $50,000 to Brown’s effort. But that support is barely a blip when compared to the intense GOP involvement in the unsuccessful but vigorous Romney and Weld Senate bids. In 1994, NRSC’s leader, then-Sen. Phil Gramm, vowed an “all out effort,” during Romney’s underdog battle against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. The national party boosted Romney’s campaign coffers by $540,000 – the legal limit – in so-called coordinated spending. The problem for Republicans is that state Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic primary. She he has tapped a state fundraising base to haul more than $2 million for the one-month campaign and she cannot easily be tied to national Democrats. Running against Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), a Democrat from the state’s most liberal district, would have been one thing. Running against Coakley is just too daunting. But if Scott Brown keeps the race surprisingly close — around 10 points — expect attention to swing to the special election in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District.

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What Can Brown Do for Us?

If you weren’t watching MSNBC at around 7 a.m. EST today, you missed some great television. TWI’s Spencer Ackerman appeared on “Morning Joe” alongside NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan to talk about the failed Christmas terror plot. The conversation took a sharp turn, however, when Buchanan took a Cheney-ite stance in favor of “hostile interrogation” of the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and fireworks ensued. Check it out after the jump. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy

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Spencer Ackerman vs. Pat Buchanan on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

Jonathan Martin takes the measure of libertarians’ enthusiasm for Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico — he left office in 2003 — who has edged back into politics after a long stint as, in the words he used when I last spoke to him, a “businessman and adventurer.” I think Martin is right about how much hope libertarians have for Johnson, but he might under-rate Johnson’s credibility with supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). He gave one of the best-received speeches at the Rally for the Republic, the Paul rally held across town from the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. Video of his speech is below the jump. Next to Rand Paul, the congressman’s son who is running strong for a U.S. Senate seat in Kentucky, Johnson might be the best-liked politician among Paul supporters — e specially now that Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-S.C.) career has been shredded by a sex scandal.

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The Rise of Gary Johnson

Paul Rolly reports on Sarah Palin’s trip to Utah, who burned hairdresser Rhonda Halliday by not paying for all of her services. Halliday was the last one out of the room because she had to put her equipment away, then watched as they all drove off without anyone mentioning payment or a tip, which is common when the hairdresser travels to the client for the appointment. When the valet attendant got her car, he said that would be $10. She said she was with the Palin party and assumed they would take care of parking. That was news to him, so she had to fork over the $10. I don’t find this sort of thing interesting, but “candidate stiffs local” stories are political poison, no matter how true they are or how much the person was stiffed. Ask Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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Tip Your Hairdressers!

The office of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has sent around a document preemptively attacking a new stimulus bill. This objection is perfectly in line with Republican thinking, but I’m still surprised to see it: The bill includes $79 Billion for safety net programs (more than is actually supposedly dedicated to job creation), including: * Extension of unemployment benefits through June of 2010; * Extension of COBRA subsidies through June of 2010; * Extension of Increased Medicaid Matching Rates (FMAP) from December 31, 2010 to June 30, 2011; and * Extension of the refundable child tax credit to those with income less than $3,000 (under the original stimulus, families must have at least $3,000 in income to qualify). Those are all pretty popular programs, and ones that voters would notice if they suddenly vanished. Attacking this stuff — and implying that a Republican majority would cut off these benefits — is something an opposition party can do, but something very hard to imagine a Republican congressional majority getting away with. See 1995 for evidence.

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No More Safety Nets!

Ken Vogel has the run-down . It’s not a lot of money being passed around so far, but it’s the brand every conservative wants.

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The Tea Party PACS

Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller magazine , which I’m told is prepping to launch in mid-January, has hired Mike Riggs, an editor at the struggling alt-weekly Washington City Paper, to be one of the new site’s Web editors. Riggs was an intern at Reason — where I’m a contributing editor — and his libertarian-minded journalism is collected here .

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Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller Hires Mike Riggs

Here’s the text of an ad that the Republican National Committee is running on health care, with Chairman Michael Steele doing the voiceover. The Democrats are accusing us Republicans of trying to delay and stonewall their government takeover of health care. You know what? They’re finally right. Republicans are trying to stop this disastrous health care takeover. Republicans are trying to keep the liberals from creating yet another entitlement program, spending yet another trillion dollars. America’s already seen the results of this year’s “binge spending” by the Democrats: our economy’s in deep trouble and our jobs are evaporating. Now Democrats want a health care bill that will raise taxes, cut Medicare, and increase premiums. Democrats know America doesn’t want this health care takeover, but they’re arrogantly trying to jam it down our throats. This is our last chance to stop them. Contact your Senators. Make Washington listen to you. Log on to GOP.com. Make Washington listen, before it is too late. The “party of no” label, as an attack, is always conditional on the popularity of the issue that’s being said “no” to. With opinion running roughly three to two against a health care reform bill, the RNC’s going all in on “no.”

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RNC: Yeah, We’re Obstructing

Here, via Jim Newell , is a striking example of the Tea Party movement grabbing and appropriating a tactic of the anti-war movement: On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor.

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‘Some Of Us Will Pretend to Die From Our Untreated Illnesses’

Brian Beutler gets his hands on a Democratic graphic meant to encapsulate the Republican position on Medicare. After months of appealing to seniors — who, according to polls, are the toughest critics of health care reform — over theoretical cuts to Medicare, the GOP is in the position of campaigning against an expansion of Medicare. The graphic: This is mostly a message problem for Republicans, but it’s one that’s been a long time coming. Much of the conservative movement has honed in on “Medicare cuts” as a killer argument against health care reform. This led to even the 60 Plus Association, a conservative group more or less founded to campaign for the privatization of entitlements, running TV ads to demand that seniors get all the Medicare benefits they were promised. It was not hard to find Republicans who’d admit that a spirited defense of Medicare was not in their long-term interests — Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told me as much — but they expected immediate short-term benefits.

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We Have to Save Medicare in Order to Destroy It

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this about Republican attempts to delay a health care vote. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough. Today, the Republican National Committee sent out an email memo on its health care polling, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele spun Reid’s comments like this: On the say anything front — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made it clear this week that any American who opposes Trillion dollar legislation that raises taxes, cuts Medicare, and increases your health care premiums – is a racist. That’s quite an interpretation of Reid’s remark.

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That’s One Way of Putting It

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is rolling out his economic speech at the Heritage Foundation today with a lot of fanfare. Earlier this morning, he held a conference call that was fairly vague on details and heavy on explanations of how Democrats were blundering the economic recovery; that got some friendly coverage . Two hours before the speech, he has released excerpts of what he’ll say. Possibly the least surprising element: “Agreeing” not to consider tax increases until unemployment falls below 5 percent. In other words, if unemployment plunged 50 percent below today’s rate of 10.2 percent — something that would clearly mark the end of the recession and an economic revival — it would not be enough to justify any tax increase of any kind. The basic points after the jump. 1.) “We must tear down self-imposed obstacles to economic growth and wealth creation. Therefore Congress and the Administration should stop the deluge of detrimental rules and regulations.” 2.) “We should agree to block any federal tax increases until unemployment drops below 5 percent. Americans of all political stripes can agree that the government should never raise taxes during periods of high unemployment.” 3.) “We need to restore confidence in America’s economic future.  Record deficits and debts – coupled with runaway spending – have shaken confidence in our economic future. Many believe that the only solutions will be higher taxes or inflating the dollar, which promise lasting pain for small businesses and working families.” 4.) “We should reform the unemployment system to help people out of work find jobs.” 5.) “We need to approve three promising free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama that have stalled under the new administration. Recently the President stated that increasing U.S. exports by just 1% would create over 250,000 jobs.” 6. “We must take action to reduce regulatory and tax barriers that inhibit domestic job creation.” 7.) “We must deal swiftly and honestly with the looming commercial real estate collapse.  Congress should move to give bank regulators incentives to deal responsibly with banks and their borrowers.”

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Cantor: No Tax Increases Until Unemployment Falls Below 5 Percent

John Gizzi of Human Events gets an interview with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) in which the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee “gleefully” takes on the conservatives who’ve bucked the GOP in NY-23 . If you are not interested in winning and making John Boehner speaker of the House, then I don’t have time for you. Taken literally, that’s Sessions saying he has no time for the Club for Growth, the American Conservative Union, the Susan B. Anthony List and Fred Thompson. The whole interview is worth reading, as Sessions opens up a bit to a friendly conservative reporter. Democrats “killed and now want to field-dress the auto industry, among other businesses.” His idea candidate: A community leader — someone who holds an office in the local Chamber of Commerce or the Kiwanis or Rotary — can solve the problems that a community-organizer causes.

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‘Pelosi Puppets’

Yesterday, TWI’s David Weigel appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” to talk about his reporting on this past weekend’s “How to Take Back America” conference in St. Louis. In case you missed it, you can watch the video after the jump. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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David Weigel and Ed Schultz Talk About ‘How to Take Back America’

ST. LOUIS — Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.), speaking to a very friendly dinner crowd at the “How To Take Back America” conference, said that he’d “nearly had an Elvis moment” watching this week’s United Nations general assembly sessions and spoke about pulling out of the world organization altogether. “It’s time to get a jackhammer and to simply chip off that part of New York City,” said Huckabee, “and let it float into the East River, never to be seen again!” That remark got him a standing ovation, and Huckabee went on to suggest de-funding the U.N. entirely. “It’s time to say enough of the American taxpayer’s dollar being spent on something that may have been a noble idea, but has become a disgrace!” said Huckabee. “It has become the international equivalent of ACORN and it’s time to say enough!” Huckabee continued, suggesting that the U.N. be handed over to one of the nations that attacked America. “Let’s end the diplomatic excesses that these people enjoy,” he said. “Let any country that is willing to spend the money that the United States is hosting–let them have it. Give it to the Saudis and let these diplomats suck the sand out of the Saudi desert for a few summers and see if that’s where they’d like to go, and make their ridiculous speeches.”

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Huckabee in St. Louis: Get America Out of the U.N.

TWI’s David Weigel appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” last night to talk about last weekend’s Values Voter Summit in Washington. In case  you missed it, you can watch the clip below the jump. Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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Rachel Maddow, David Weigel and the Values Voter Summit

I spent a few minutes talking with Maggie Gallagher, the president of the National Organization for Marriage , after she gave a rip-roaring introduction for Carrie Prejean at the Values Voter Summit. First, however, she expressed some disappointment that TWI wasn’t a gay publication. “I love the gay press,” said Gallagher. “I really am impressed with gay journalists, as a group. I like reading the marriage issue in the gay press because they cover it as if what happens matters, whereas if you read The New York Times, it’s always about how this is going to affect who gets elected president.” Fair enough — my questions were about NOM’s chances of winning a November 2009 gay marriage vote in Maine, and about whether pro-gay marriage campaigners were making the right moves there. “I’m pretty confident that, as in California, we’re going to win,” said Gallagher. “We’re in much better shape in Maine than we were in California at a similar point. We were ten points down on September 1, 2008 and we won. I saw a poll yesterday that had us up two points in Maine.” Gallagher also dismissed a TV ad by Equality Maine, a pro-gay marriage group that beat pro-traditional marriage forces to the airwaves. “I think that ad is not very effective,” she said. “I think that’s a very soft-focus, nice, pleasant ad, but I don’t think it changed any minds one way or another. If I was them, I wouldn’t be spending money there.”

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National Organization for Marriage President: We’ll Win in Maine

In a rote column about “liberals stifling dissent,” The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone argues that “the two most violent incidents at this summer’s town hall meetings came when a union thug beat up a 65-year-old black conservative in Missouri and when a liberal protester bit off part of a man’s finger in California.” The “black conservative” is Kenneth Gladney, who claimed to have been assaulted by members of the Service Employees International Union at a health care town hall in St. Louis. Curiously, however, there is no record of charges being filed against Gladney’s alleged attackers. And Gladney’s Website is down, with this message replacing the content. Unfortunately, this site is no longer available due to nonpayment on the part of Kenneth’s attorney, David Brown. The site will resume normal operation once payment is received. The site below the jump:

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The Mystery of Kenneth Gladney

One of the final events of the Values Voter Summit was a Saturday breakout session on “the new masculinity,” a wide-ranging topic that one speaker used to explain how any and all pornography could lead young people into homosexual lifestyles. That speaker was Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) chief of staff Michael Schwartz, a longtime conservative activist who has worked for the senator since 2005. “Pornography is a blight,” Schwartz told an audience in a crowded room of the Omni Shoreham hotel. “It is a disaster. It is one of those silent diseases in our society that we haven’t been able to overcome very well. Now, I may be getting politically incorrect here. And it’s been a few years, but not that many, since I was closely associated with pre-adolescent boys, boys around 10 years of age. But it is my observation that boys of that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. They don’t want to fall into it.” Schwartz told the crowd about Jim Johnson, a friend of his who turned an old hotel into a hospice for gay men dying of AIDS. “One of the things he said to me,” said Schwartz, “that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark… he said ‘All pornography is homosexual pornography, because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards.” There were murmurs and gasps from the crowd. “Now, think about that,” said Schwartz. “And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants! You know, that’s a good comment, it’s a good point, and it’s a good thing to teach young people.” Here’s the final portion of Schwartz’s remarks. – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) Chief of Staff: ‘All Pornography Is Homosexual Pornography’

It’s hardly a surprise now when Republican leaders align themselves with the Tea Party movement, and the Value Voters Summit has been full of it. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) got closest to the spirit of the crowd — which had heard wildly diverging estimates of the 9/12 march on Washington all day. “If the national media covers this like it covered the events last weekend,” said Pence, “the headline will be: ‘Dozens attend Value Voters Summit!’” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) heaped the most fulsome praise on the Tea Party movement, bashing the media for the way it had covered the protests. “You know who these protesters were,” said McConnell, “because you were the people at these town halls … you were the men and women who filled the Mall here in the District to overflowing last Saturday, surprising even the strongest supporters of the event. “You’re the people who prove the politicians wrong when they say that all this activism and unrest was crafted, somehow, in a boardroom, down on K Street. The grassroots movement isn’t astroturf, as they like to put it. It’s something that started at your kitchen tables.” Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) praised the protesters from the stage for “fighting on the fighting lines of what we know is a battle for our democracy.” After his speech, he told TWI that the protests represented an “awakening in America.” “People are beginning to wake up and see a country they don’t really recognize,” said Cantor.

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McConnell, Pence, Cantor, Praise Tea Party Protests

Speaking of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) — who apparently is weighing a run for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) — Kate just passed along the all-time money-est Barton quote ever (and that’s saying something) about how wind power might aggravate climate change. From a March 10 energy and commerce committee hearing: Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about. This man was once the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which this year passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

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Barton’s Greatest Hits: Wind Power Might Mess Up Global Wind Patterns and Make the Earth Warmer