Barack Obama’s promotional materials, as late as 2007, said he was born in Kenya. Read about it here and then, come back.

Why would he do this? It seems crazy.

Imagine you’re a hippie kid. Your dad is some Kenyan big wig. Your mom is a self-important sociologist doing such important work that you, Barack Obama, must be left home with grandma and grandpa.

You are boring.

You are a mixed race kid on Hawaii in the sixties which is not a big deal because everyone has Hawaiian blood and has mocha skin. You are relatively wealthy and end up at a prep school with other wealthy kids.

You have to justify your existence.

No mom. No dad. Rather provincial, if privileged, Hawaiian life, but lots of questions from peers.

What do you do?

Well, nothing, other than smoke dope, do cocaine (expensive – but no big deal for rich kids), and hang out acting like a badass.

And then, there’s privileged college which you navigate by being mundane and calculated.

You don’t find yourself there. You just find out how you don’t want to self-identify.

Like Elizabeth Warren, it’s really not enough to be a white, privileged kid. Or even a mixed-raced privileged kid.

It takes some resume juicing to be legit in the diversity crowd.

So, you lie.

You pretend you’re a man of the world. You tell people you were born in Kenya. You brag about your time in Indonesia.

You don’t talk about Hawaii.

You don’t talk about your white mother.

You don’t talk about your white grandparents who raised you and gave you a conventional, privileged upbringing.

You pretend you’re part of the victim class.

You pretend you’re worldly wise.

You pretend your dad is a good man.

You idealize your Kenyan roots and lie about having tight ones.

You create a whole tapestry of falsehoods about yourself — not only does it make you feel better about being abandoned, it gives you credibility with those who judge not on the content of your character but the color of your skin, the exotic nature of your past, the superficialities of diversity.

Hippie lefties, it turns out, are kinda biased against people with conventional upper middle class American backgrounds.

Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya.

Barack Obama didn’t have some tortured, hard-scrabble youth.

Barack Obama was a materially indulged, emotionally deprived typical American child of divorce.

It’s his conventionality that embarrasses him.

And that’s why he lied.

UPDATED:

Some questions.

MORE QUESTIONS. Bookworm says:

Normally, in the years since the Civil Rights movement, the answer would be “Yes, being half-black (not half-white, but half-black) should have given Obama the leg-up he needed to parlay mediocre grades and a drug habit into a shiny diploma from one of America’s best institutions of higher education.” Obama’s problem, though, was that he came of age at a very specific time in the annals of affirmative action. To appreciate this, you have to know that Obama, who graduated from high school in 1979, must have started looking at colleges in 1978.

When it comes to college admissions, 1978 isn’t just any year. It’s a very special year. It was the year that the Supreme Court decided Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) 438 U.S. 265.

Allan Bakke was a young man with an excellent academic record, who nevertheless got turned down by 12 medical schools. When he applied to the medical school at UC Davis, and was again rejected, he learned that he had almost certainly lost out on the opportunity to attend that medical school because UC had set a quota for admitting non-white people in order to meet the University’s “diversity” requirements. Bakke sued. In a deeply fragmented decision, the Supreme Court held that this race-based admission process was unconstitutional.

Tonight, I had the very special opportunity to talk to former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz. Ted is running for U.S. Senate but first he must win a very expensive and very challenging primary against an opponent who is spending a million dollars a week to beat him. He’s still confident.

Ted received another big endorsement — this time from Governor Sarah Palin. He’s also been endorsed by Rand Paul, (and just now, RON Paul!!), Mike Lee, and a bunch of other people.

What Ted needs is your vote and money.

Please go to TedCruz.org and DONATE HERE. He needs your help. He’s running against a pile of money.

Have a question about Ted Cruz? He answers it here. Everything from social to fiscal to economic issues. Listen and share!

Governor Scott Walker’s campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews finds herself on the receiving end of misogyny by feminists and leftist press.

Her crime?  She waited tables at Hooters while going to college.  Steven Elbow asks the penetrating question:

But to the direct question: Were you a Hooters girl? She said, “I was.”

Matthews said she waited tables for the popular restaurant chain — which features tasty chicken wings and waitresses in short shorts and low-cut tops –- while attending college at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

“So you guys want to write a story that I waited tables in college,” she said. “I’m confused as to why that’s a story.”

Well, she may have a point. What makes news is not always easy to pinpoint. But as we say in the biz: You know it when you see it. [Emphasis added.] And with a recall election looming in which she will often be front-and-center as Walker battles to keep his job, details that might otherwise be ignored become interesting.

Like porn? So, working at Hooters is like story porn? That’s the allusion that this writer made:

The phrase was famously used by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for pornography in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964). Obscenity is not protected speech under the Miller test, and can therefore be censored.

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that. [Emphasis added.]

—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.

The expression became “one of the most famous phrases in the entire history” of the Supreme Court.[1

Nice.

But that’s just the beginning. Jezebel publishes a provocative picture of Ciara. Because, you know, conservative women get what’s coming to them.

And Ciara’s story comes on the heels of feminists doubling down on attacking Ann Romney.

Bill Maher gets in on the act.

Oh, and don’t forget Amanda Marcotte and the feminists over at Pandagon. Some women are more equal than others, just ask Amanda.

And then there’s Time Magazine’s Judith Warner piling on Ann Romney, too. Her implication is laughable. As though, she, Judith Warner, is somehow more touch with the suffering masses than Ann Romney.

And finally, because what would your day be like without Roseanne Barr’s opinion, the comedienne weighs in. It’s what you’d expect. More privilege bashing from a woman who is unbelievably privileged.

On the positive side, one feminist, Wendy S. Goffe at Forbes, said this:

I thought of all this when the news broke recently about Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comment that Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.”

I don’t know Ann Romney, but as a working mom, I don’t know how she found the time to raise five children. And by the way, Ann Romney has multiple sclerosis. Her life sure sounds a lot harder than going to an office, where someone else makes the coffee, and I know my daughter is well cared for by a nanny that is the closest thing to Mary Poppins in the 21^st century.

As a Democrat, I am simply embarrassed by that comment.  Rightly distancing himself from Hilary Rosen, President Obama came to Ann Romney’s defense, and the defense of all stay-at-home moms, saying that “there’s no tougher job than being a mom. . . Anybody who would argue otherwise, I think, probably needs to rethink their statement.” I am proud to have a president who is in touch with his constituents, regardless of political party or appearances.

I also feel privileged to have the job that I do and the ability to hire a nanny. Frankly, I don’t have the skills to raise five children.

Many liberals are wholly hypocritical about how they treat conservative women–whether they’re young, beautiful up-and-comer working outside the home women or middle-aged, working inside the home moms.

They hate conservative women and attacks are fair game.

That’s too bad because it seems to be the opposite of what the Women’s Movement was supposed to be about.

Says Goffe:

None of us lead the lives our appearance suggests. We each lie in bed at night with our personal terrors as to what life could be, or about what life is like right now, and whether we have the strength to get through it. Clothes and money rarely can make that go away.

The women’s movement loses all credibility with it’s “choices for me, but not for thee” and creating the abortion litmus test.

When conservative women are destroyed because they dissent from popular feminist opinion, all women lose. Why can’t liberal women see this?

Thanks for the links Hot Air (Ed has more at the link about the Wisconsin tax deal and recall election), Insty, and Ann Althouse.

Lots of people hate Obama. Most of them hated him and his moronic ideology before he got elected the first time.

Many more people loved Obama; they were enthralled and captivated by him. They thought he was different. He was special.

Back in the day, I had a photoshopped picture with Britney Spears screaming girl fans except I exchanged the picture of Britney on their pink T-shirts for a picture of  Obama.

The Obama fangirls didn’t like this picture.

Everyone loved Obama and the ones who weren’t totally sure thought something like this, “well, everybody is doing it, so he must be okay. He’s gotta be better than the boring old boyfriend.”

He turned out to not be better. Depending on one’s point of view, he turned out to be much worse and for a variety of reasons.

Jim Geraghty has a very insightful piece explaining the mind of an Obama voter  that is must-read. Here’s an excerpt:

Monday I spoke to a smart political mind who had been watching focus groups of wavering Obama voters in swing states, and he said that one word that those voters kept coming back to, again and again, was “naïve.”  (The term was to describe the president, not themselves.) Those who voted for Obama won’t call him stupid, and certainly don’t accept that he’s evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, Obamacare touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on. He seemed to think that reaching out to the Iranians would lead to a change in the regime’s behavior and attitudes. He was surprised to learn that shovel-ready projects were not, in fact, shovel-ready. He was surprised to learn that large-scale investment in infrastructure and clean energy projects wouldn’t great enormous numbers of new jobs. He’s surprised that his past housing policies haven’t helped struggling homeowners like he promised.  He’ssurprised that his signature health care policy has become as controversial as it has. The “recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.” When a woman says her semiconductor engineer husband can’t find a job, Obama says he’s surprised to hear it, because “he often hears business leaders in that field talk of a scarcity of skilled workers.”

Naive. The screaming girls weren’t naive. Oh no. The new boyfriend was naive.

The part that bothers me about this mentality is that people who externally project their stupidity tend to not learn from their mistakes.

Still, it’s wise to think of all the divorced people you know.  Few admit they screwed up. Most, to their dying day, will call their ex evil or wrong and that they, the innocent victim, was horribly deceived. Conned, even.

One Twitter acquaintance says this: RT @heatpacker:  The #GOP must speak #truth about the 2008 Obama Con. Voters must not be insulted for credulity, but portrayed as victims.

A nation of gooey-eyed victims.

Well, for Republicans to win, I don’t think that blaming Obama voters for their vapidity will go a long ways to convincing them to vote for someone else. How many beaten wives stay with their abusive mates out of sheer stubbornness? He is too good! You just don’t understand.

America can’t afford that nonsense. So, those voters who saw the Obama fraud for what he was would do well to use great restraint and reinforce the (hopefully) better decision of the deceived masses this time around.

The best thing to do for conned Obama voters? Feel sorry for them. They know not what they did.

There shouldn’t be any surprise videos about Obama, should there be? Do you find it stunning that there’s more out there about Obama?

The press no longer functions independently. It is wholly co-opted by the Democrats. Americans don’t really want to believe this yet, but Breitbart bringing out videos four years after Obama is president demonstrates how corrosive and complete is the press-Democrat collusion.

Just. Wow.

See Jim Hoft for the whole story.

People like to separate fiscal conservatives from social conservatives. It’s impossible to do.

The nut of Sandra Fluke’s argument is this: pay for my contraception. If it doesn’t work, pay for my abortion. If I decide to have the kid, but not work and do something like “community organizing” or “reproductive rights activism”, pay for my lifestyle choice. [More on Sandra Fluke here.]

And herein lies the problem with a purely libertine argument: Someone has to pay for all this freedom.

True personal liberty comes with a lot of personal responsibility.

The way it stands now, though, feminists are pushing for the state to take care of everything.

At the least, a man should pony up a condom to have sex, but no. A woman is too afraid to have this discussion, evidently, and refuses to force the man to buy and wear a condom. Were she mature enough to have this conversation, her sex life would be “free” so long as the condom wasn’t defective or broke.

Then, of course, whether the woman is on the pill or using condoms, there’s always contraception failure. The woman will have to live with the STD or baby consequences. And again, she’ll want the taxpayer to pay for that, too. Antibiotics and prenatal care aren’t free, after all. Worst, she wants people of conscience to pay for her abortion. They, in turn, feel forced to pay a hitman to kill an innocent person.

A truly “free” woman would pay for her choices, but the fact is, that these choices can all be very expensive.

In the past, when sex was more the provenance of two monogamous and committed people, the man and woman would negotiate these things. And if a “mistake” did happen, the man would “do the right thing” and marry the woman.

Old fashioned? Maybe. Cost effective for the taxpayer? Absolutely. Good for the fabric of society and for that child? No question.

Barack Obama and his merry band of slutty misfits want to have all the fun and none of the responsibility of the consequences should things not go just the way they’re supposed to in the sexual arena (and when do they ever?).

So, in the last year of a horribly failed presidency, President Obama wants the focus to be on “contraceptive rights” when there are no such thing. It’s a great way to distract from the statist policies he’s employing: He wants to diminish the role of faith in the public space, and in the place of men/husbands/fathers, he wants an all-powerful state to pay for, mold, and control the next generation. Or kill them.

If this fight feels primal and visceral, it is because it is. The cultural war that the left has started has had dire public policy consequences. The welfare state has failed.

We have a nation of fatherless children living in poverty because their mothers bought the feminist lie that having sex like a hound-dog man, outside of marriage is “empowering”.

Single mothers are faced with the bitterness of powerlessness.

Defend that, liberals. Explain how living in poverty, alone, with multiple children, no education, an STD and no father is better than a two-parent family, feminists.

Answer: It isn’t.

There will be no apologizing from me. The feminist movement as symbolized by the useful idiot Sandra Fluke has lied to and cursed a generation of women. Meanwhile, putting future generations of responsible tax paying men and women on the hook. [Update: Dana Loesch on faux rage.]

The culture war is a fiscal war. And America’s children are the losers both ways.

Ace has more.

Teri Cristoph of Smart Girl Politics to Women: You’re Being Used. Teri says:

Knowing that women voters are leaving Obama, the left has deliberately waged a war designed to scare them into thinking their birth control will be taken from them. EMILY’s List calls these disenchanted women voters “defectors” and they’ll stop at nothing to get them back.

The use of the word “defector” by the left is supremely insulting. A defector is someone who switches allegiances, usually in a manner deemed to be traitorous. Got that? If you are a woman who voted for Obama in ’08 but don’t like what he’s done as president and don’t plan to vote for him again, you are considered a traitor by the left. Newsflash: Women are not born with a genetic allegiance to the Democrat party and its liberal causes. Plenty of us prefer to think for ourselves.

Democrats are running scared knowing that a significant number of women are wise to the fact that the economy has tanked, true unemployment is around 25 percent, and our president is wholly unequipped to deal with any of it. They also know that women voice their discontent at the ballot box. So they are waging this war against women. They use people like Sandra Fluke to distract from the real issues at stake this election season. They use women as pawns in their political game.

Yes, there is a war against women in 2012 and it’s certainly no fluke.

UPDATE & ASIDE:

What Rush Limbaugh should have done in the face of the attack by Mean Girls (emphasis on girls–women don’t act irresponsibly and then want to be personally bailed out):

There are many conservatives who unfortunately allow the left to take their morality and use it to stifle their dissent. Limbaugh should have gone on the attack. He should have said “no apology” and exposed her for the partisan hack that she is. Do I care if Fluke fucks 50 guys? No, but I do care if she uses her position to gang up with other mean girls (and guys) to ram a political mandate down the throats of companies who do not believe in what she is peddling.

Standing up to mean girls is hard. I am in the process of writing a book on men’s attitudes towards marriage and society and it is damn hard to get individual men to be interviewed. If I ask questions on the internet or in an anonymous setting, I am flooded with comments from men. I recently had over 3200 men answer a poll about paternity fraud, but try to get just a few men to talk in person? That’s tough. And most are very concerned that their name will not be published. I don’t blame them. The mean girls are out in society in full force.

If Rush Limbaugh can’t stand up to the mean girls, who can?

Via Instapundit

More on Fatherhood from LaShawn Barber.

Imagine being afraid you’ll lose your job because you believe the people to blame for 9/11 are the Islamofascists who plotted it. That’s what one Hollywood writer, Daniel Knauf endured. Here’s what he said:

Toadies in the MSM assert that there is no Blacklist in Hollywood.

And they’re right.

It’s not necessary because Hollywood is a very, very small, very, very ruthless town, where a few key words spoken in the right ears can absolutely wreck a career–code-words like “difficult,” “high-maintenance” and “uneven.” When you can obliterate a fellow professional with a few well-chosen phrases, why maintain something as crude and inelegant as a Blacklist?

How dare anyone even suggest that there’s a Blacklist against conservative artists and performers?

Blacklists are for mouth-breathers.

Blacklists are for knuckle-draggers.

Blacklists are so… so… Republican.

And so I kept my mouth shut. And a funny thing happened: The longer I was forced to withhold my opinions and beliefs, the brighter they burned in me. Funny. Oppression has a way of doing that to the oppressed.

Ask any Soviet defector…

For years, I bit my tongue, nodding and making non-committal sounds while listening to the most virulently noxious Leftist spew imaginable: Explicit rape-murder fantasies directed toward Palin, Coulter, Malkin and Ingraham; blithely expressed wishes of cancer, assassination and mutilation of Bush, Cheney and Limbaugh; the snide denigration of “civilians” (i.e. anyone not in the entertainment business) in the “flyover states” (i.e. everywhere except New York and east of the Golden State Freeway–Pasadena, for instance is a “flyover state”); and, of course, the endless venomous, profanity-laced screes against the Tea Party.

Even more shocking was the rampant hypocrisy, the endemic corruption, the casual thievery–from producers ordering custom built doors and windows for their homes from the construction department, to having their Beemers and Benzos topped daily with gas by Transpo. All on the studio dime.

Meanwhile, any actress or female writer can tell you that the Casting Couch is alive and well in contemporary Hollywood. And it’s absolutely fascinating just how many male producers and execs time their set-visits to coincide with nude-scenes…

And forget about “diversity.”

Please, go read the whole thing.

Hollywood and the Left use their political correctness–sexism, racism, environmentalism–as a sword and a shield. They would skewer Rush Limbaugh, destroy him, and happily do it while their own side commits grievous insults of the worst, most virulent kind. More here.

They do it so people will be afraid and so people will shut up.

And many in Hollywood are afraid and have stayed quiet. Who wouldn’t be afraid of being Black Listed? Andrew Breitbart gave them courage and a voice.

Across this fruited plain, there are all sorts of folks either too cowed or too weary to take on the liberals.

The folks in Hollywood have to endure the leftist mentality in the surreal insanity of an utterly narcissistic culture. They need help. They need an army of Breitbarts.

So what are conservatives doing to help the Hollywood types?

Are we buying Robert Davi’s music CD’s and watching his movies? I interviewed him. Get to know him here. See what he said about Andrew Breitbart here.

Are we supporting Gary Sinise’s charities?

Are we signing up for Daniel Knaup’s new production? Sign up here. (Just need an email.)

Are we listening and buying Five for Fighting’s music? See what John Ondrasik says here.

Are we watching Chuck to support Adam Baldwin? Buying Firefly (something you should do no matter what, anyway, because it’s perfect.)

Are we supporting Patricia Heaton, off of Twitter right now, as she bravely stands for what’s right?

Are we standing for Kirk Cameron while he stands for traditional values? Do we stand for his free speech even if we disagree with him?

Are we downloading the Children’s app [full disclosure: I am helping promote the app -- business sent to me via Andrew Breitbart, by the way]: CherryTree? It’s for children. It’s safe. It’s free. And it’s being developed by Hollywood conservatives Dan Kessler and Allen Covert. These men, by the way, are wonderful. I had the joy and honor of walking around CPAC as these two Hollywood men, locked in liberal land, received hugs from adoring conservative fans.

If Andrew showed us anything, he demonstrated an absolute faith in the conservative movement–from conservative moms doing Tea Parties fearing for friendships to Hollywood actors fearing for livelihoods.

We need to do better helping each other, building each other’s businesses, hiring each other, buying each other’s products and promoting the work of dedicated conservatives–some risking everything.

Andrew Breitbart is dead. I still cannot believe it. [Details here.] [Updated: Father In Law says it was probably a heart attack.]

Andrew Breitbart lit up a room. Out at Western CPAC in Southern California a couple years ago, his star was rising, and he gave an interview. I asked him what he was doing; as in, how do you see your role?

He told us that he saw himself as a “merry mischief maker”. He wanted to turn the media upside down. He wanted to destroy them.

Andrew succeeded. He created the most surreal media moment ever: He ended up speaking at Anthony Weiner’s late and ill-fated press conference. He was at once the press and the news. It was a seminal moment. It was the moment I felt that Andrew had achieved his ends.

Everything had changed. The New Media was rising.

The grief-making part of it? He’d just really started. So much work to do. So much vitality.

In the spring of last year, Andrew called me and asked if I’d help him promote his book Righteous Indignation. He overnighted a review copy. In a day, I read it cover to cover.

If you haven’t read Andrew’s book, you really must. Not only is he a great story teller and beautiful writer, and he is, he also gives great hope through his own story. His biography shows a man, who like most Americans, didn’t pay attention and how he “woke up”.

And boy, did he wake up. He was the righteous, pointed finger in the chest of the empty and sanctimonious left. He had their number and they knew it.

As I sit here crying, I fear looking at Twitter for seeing all the nastiness and venom that will spill forth about Andrew from the left. He was hated because he was effective. They hated his persona. They hated his gumption. They hated him. [Updated: Do they ever.]

Knowing Andrew–knowing his sweet nature, knowing his kindness, knowing his generosity–I would just marvel at the contrast between what the left caricatured him as being with who he really was.

You know that carousing guy? That guy who skates on the edge or goes over it? The guy who cheats on his wife while out of town or likes to give the impression of being a player?

That wasn’t Andrew. Ever.

Andrew was devoted. He was a true family man. He chortled about people implying that he was gay as his domestic life with his wife and four kids was so tranquil and happy. He liked that someone viewed him as edgy.

At one small gathering, I found Andrew walking aimlessly around the hotel lobby with his iPad. I asked him what he was doing. Well, he couldn’t find anyone and was waiting for people to show up–for three hours. When it was suggested that he could have called one of us, he responded, “I’m not very good without my wife or Larry.”

Scattered, brimming with ideas, mulish, and hell-bent, Andrew could be a handful. His best friend Larry Solov is as sweet, calm, and circumspect as Andrew is bombastic, frenetic and bold. Larry helped Andrew succeed in so many ways. When it came to the business of Andrew Breitbart, Andrew and Larry were two parts of a whole.

Andrew was so full of life, it is almost impossible to fathom the emptiness that will be felt by those close to him. I feel it and I didn’t interact with Andrew every day.

I worried for Andrew. Before CPAC this year, there had been threats made on his life. Andrew was symbolic for the left and his death would be a triumph. And yet Andrew didn’t seem concerned at all. He just plowed on and engaged.

He gave his phone number to anyone. He would talk to anyone. He was not a respecter of persons.

I wish he was still here. There’s too much work to do. Who will do it? Who will do it like Andrew?

Someone will have to do the work, but no one will do it like Andrew.

Andrew Breitbart. Happy Warrior. Devoted husband and father. Generous friend and co-worker. Merry mischief maker.

I miss him already.

More:

Andrew’s best friend Larry Solov.

Matt LaBash: By way of greeting, I used to ask Breitbart what kind of evil he was up to. “Most kinds,” he’d say, gamely.

Jim Hoft

Ben Domenech

Andrew’s speech at CPAC:

Andrew’s last tweet:

I called you a putz cause I thought you werebeing intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize. @CenLamar @dust92

— AndrewBreitbart (@AndrewBreitbart) March 1, 2012

Michelle Malkin.

Andrew in pictures

Sarah Palin

Rush Limbaugh

Jonah Goldberg and Jonah says this here:

I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.

Matt Drudge says this:

“DEAR READER: In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what’s happening. I don’t think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20′s. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today… MDRUDGE”

Greg Gutfeld

Roger Simon: “When a whirlwind dies, there is a sudden quiet.”

William Jacobson: “Andrew is irreplaceable, but we would serve his memory well to aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action.”

Tucker Carlson

Jonathan Last

Uncut podcast at Liberty Pundits with Clyde Middleton and Andrew Breitbart.

Steven Crowder

Josh Trevino

Ed Driscoll

Michael Walsh

Scott Johnson

Andrew gives birth with his mouth

Ace who drubs David Frum aka The Rat.

Iowahawk

Man against the mob

Matt LaBash

Mark Levin

Guy Benson

James O’Keefe

Dan Riehl

Erick Erickson

Megan Barth

Dana Loesch

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

The Anchoress

Ed Morrissey

Pamela Gellar

Felicia Craven: Andrew Breitbart was our William Wallace.

Andrew Malcolm: So?

Micky Kaus

Betsy Rothstein

Mitt’s followers are really sick of the competition. The stakes are so high, time to come together on the inspiring Mitt banner. He’s nearly flawless. Better than that, he’s awesome. Also, he’s all that we have.

All the remaining candidates, including Romney, are flawed and would be nearly fatally so if they weren’t running against such a weak president.

Times have changed. A big government Republican is not what most of the GOP, or country, want, but that’s what is before them.

None of these guys are much likable. None are trustworthy in the ways of trimming the fat of the government.

Barack Obama isn’t trustworthy about cutting government but he is likable. We may not like him, but most of America still does or really wants to.

So.

The argument that Mitt Romney is the only guy, the smartest guy, the electable guy gets wearying in the face of clear evidence that he’s imperfect and runs a kinda nasty campaign all while expecting kid-glove treatment by others. In addition, his core is so middle of the road, people don’t trust that he will do anything he says he will.

An independent, fiscally conservative friend in Michigan shared this with me after I asked who got their vote:

I did not vote. I was contemplating it on the way home and decided against it.

I had determined I would have to vote for Romney since Santorum still elicits no confidence from me. The thought of it disgusted me so much that I chose to not vote.

Primary voting has been rather suppressed everywhere. If it weren’t for the Democrats in Michigan, would turnout have been lower?

In a disastrous Obama administration, it’s difficult to fathom that people on the right are so completely disheartened.

Still, they feel about Mitt Romney the way they felt about Health Care Reform: He’s being rammed down their throats.

It makes people a little less forgiving when the Super McAwesome Candidate flubs a stupid question by a stupid reporter. Like Josh Trevino says, “The real problem with this Blunt/Romney thing is that it was eminently plausible as first reported.”

Also, Britt Hulme gets to the heart of it:

@ByronYork I thought Romney skipped past the question, to seize a chance to stick it to Santorum on contraception. Not a considered answer.

— Brit Hume (@Kimsfirst) March 1, 2012

It’s that eagerness to jam Santorum and the absolute insistence by Mitt’s followers that he’s the nicest and smartest and most electable guy in the field, left that makes folks dig in their heels. If Mitt were such a stellar candidate and seemed so nice and electable, people would forgive the foibles. The problem is that he doesn’t.

Obama is so awful that a GOP turnip would get most of the bases’ vote but it’s naive to believe that folks like my independent friend will make the effort to do so. They’ll just stay home because “they all suck”.

Will the not-Mitt crowd submit? Some might. I’m afraid this acrimonious primary will make it difficult for everyone to fall in line this time.

So, Tea Party Patriots co-leaders Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin weren’t so much “co” and fought over leadership. And then they spent $250,000 on the ridiculous Southern Republican Leadership Conference to host the debate which by all accounts was an unmitigated debacle.

What will come of the Tea Party?

Locally, Tea Parties are either getting involved on issue advocacy or remaking their state GOP or working on getting elected, etc. Nationally, I’m not sure the groups continue to have much purpose anymore–thus the acrimony.

It is long past time for Tea Party leaders (of whom?–the Tea Party movement was/is like an amoeba breaking apart and coming back together depending on need) to either go back to civilian life and make a difference by getting a job and getting involved civically locally or to have a concrete mission. There is already an over-abundance of political organizations who don’t do much good but do manage to fundraise a lot of money.

A couple years ago when the Houston Tea Party split up, the two leaders displayed some wisdom: they chose different missions and stayed friendly.

One, True The Vote, has been doing the tough job of cleaning up elections–cleaning up voter registration lists, validating registered voters, teaching people how to be poll watchers, etc. They had over 17,000 volunteers to help Governor Walker verify signatures on the recall ballot and managed to get it 92% finished by the absurd deadline.

The volunteers from all fifty states entered over 4.5 million pieces of data in only 32 days. In stark contrast to anything Democrat, the data is uploaded and completely transparent for all to see.

What did they find? Donald Duck. They found people who signed the petition multiple times.

In short, they found Democrats being Democrats.

Unsurprisingly, the Democrats are displeased. They operate more happily when they can commit their fraud unchecked. Well, they’re being checked.

Democrats view the Scott Walker recall election as symbolic and worthy of all their resources. They figured they could push through the recall with no transparency.

Republicans need to see the urgency in Wisconsin, too. The Left must be pushed back. Please listen to Alan Vera, National Training Director of True the Vote, implore activists to get involved. [Text at link, too.]

Catherine Englebrecht, founder of True the Vote, has been sued, vilified, threatened, and continually harassed. Yet, she sees True the Vote’s most important work ahead and that keeps her motivated.

“If the government won’t do their job, we as citizens must do the job they won’t do,” she says of stopping voter fraud.

So, what should the Tea Party groups do? Find a mission like True the Vote. Find issus to advocate. Get or make a job and do it.

The next phase after awareness is action. Part of the reason for all the scuffling is one, a fight over resources and two, a lack of clear mission. The latter will clear up the former.

Learn more about True the Vote Summit here.