According to a Kos diarist, Sarah Palin faked her last pregnancy to cover up the fact that the child was actually her 17 year-old daughter’s.

Very classy. And the comments are even more so.

A breathless fundraising email plops into my in-box today from Mark Warner (why am I on his list? Search me). It boldly claims that:

…one Senator used a procedural tactic to single-handedly block nearly three dozen overwhelmingly popular bills - everything from protecting children from sexual predators to investigating unsolved civil rights murders . The bills were bundled together for Senate authorization this week, and even though the legislation did not cost a dime, it was filibustered.

Good Lord! No one is thinking of the children!

Not so fast there, Hot Lips. What Warner’s copywriters are standing on their chairs about is Tom Coburn’s effort to get the Senate to actually debate the bills that come before it rather than rubber stamp them. Not content to leave well enough alone, Warner’s crack copywriting team adds this howler:

This is really Washington at its worst. The politics of “who got what done when” should never stand in the way of making real progress on the serious issues our country faces.

Real progress, eh? Here’s some of what Mark Warner thinks are among the “serious issues” facing our country, condensed by our friends at Reason Magazine:

Had a nice young woman come to our door in the sultry Henrico suburbs this evening. She was canvassing the neighborhood for Mark Warner. After I told her, in rather colorful terms, what I thought of Warner - and Jim Gilmore - we talked a little shop.

But afterwards, something struck me — she said the Warner campaign was reaching out, even into rock-ribbed Republican neighborhoods like mine — to ID voters and maybe change some minds.

In other words, Mark Warner isn’t chasing Democratic voters any longer. They are already his. He’s chasing Republicans now (and has been for some time).

It reminded me of a similar meeting back in 2005, when Mrs. Leahy had a chat with a Kaine canvasser in the front yard (who within a couple of days, sent us a follow-up thank you note). This kind of ground game can move votes. It helped Kaine here in 2005 and it will most likely help Warner, too.

I’m still waiting for the day when a GOP canvasser comes to my neighborhood…just so I can determine whether they really exist.

The rush of old bulls to endorse Mark Warner is gaining steam, as Vince Callahan has announced he’s ready top plump for the Governor who misled the commonwealth on the need for higher taxes in 2004 over the Governor who, Callahan says, misled the commonwealth on the “cost” of car tax relief.

Callahan’s opposition to Gilmore is particularly rich. The WaPo piece notes that he helped steer Gilmore’s car tax proposal through the House. And was it only a couple of years ago that Callahan was saying this?

“The car tax relief is one of the few benefits the taxpayers of the Commonwealth, especially northern Virginia, receive in a visible way,” noted Delegate Callahan. “The impetus for providing car tax relief originated in a bi-partisan manner in northern Virginia nearly a decade ago. It is a promise we in the legislature made and a promise our citizens rightly expect us to keep.”

We are only left to wonder whether Callahan was dissembling then, in calling car tax relief a bi-partisan benefit, or is dissembling now, when he calls the reasoning behind the measure “utterly erroneous and far-fetched.”

(cross-posted at Tertium Quids)

My friend and colleague Chris has said much of what needs to be said on this topic. However, I would add an important caveat, the same one that Jonah Goldberg raises here:

…keep in mind that treating conservatism and the modern GOP as interchangeable is an analytical error of the first order.

From Marc Ambinder via Matt Lewis comes a Russ Verney strategy memo from the nascent Bob Barr presidential campaign. Methinks ol’ Russ missed a few critical elements in here. See if you can find them:

These days, politics seems to revolve around polling and predictions. I’m not convinced it’s the best use of anyone’s time — especially for someone like me who’s spent his whole life in full-time campaign activities — but consider this outline :

early October: 7% in national surveys
Mid October: wins televised Presidential debate
late October: 12% in national surveys
election day: captures 19% of national vote

That’s what happened in a previous election I was involved with: Ross Perot in 1992. That could have been the case with Ron Paul if he had opted to run on a third party ticket.

And it could happen to Bob Barr, too! Except….

Patrick Ruffini offers a primer to candidates (and John McCain specifically) on the proper use of email for communications and fundraising. Snip:

This is not direct mail. We are not some people data-mined off a consumer list who’ve never heard from you before. We opted-in. We are the top 1% — the savviest, most interested, most influential supporters. We get the joke. On the flip side, consider how much Hillary and Obama get simply by seeming real in their e-mails, even if they don’t get to cram in as many policy points.

Some years ago, the simplest lesson on email I ever got was from an old GOP warhorse (and top marketer) here in Richmond: “Email is a conversation. Keep it personal, informal and brief.” Every campaign copywriter should have that saying engraved on their keyboards.

Dick Wadhams, who brought all his skills to bear in the unmaking of George Allen in 2006, has been employing those same, deft techniques in my old Colorado home for a while now. And according to this he just might be on his way to sinking yet another Republican Senate candidate.

This certainly makes me wonder whether she’s about to put a fork in her campaign and call it “done”:

The New York senator abruptly canceled her morning talk show appearances and had no public appearances planned for today.

She was expected to meet with superdelegates, top Democratic officials, in Washington.

And this, too:

The New York senator was upbeat but conciliatory last night as she addressed supporters in Indianapolis.

“I can assure you, as I have said on many occasions, that no matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party, because we must win in November,” she said, even while vowing to continue the race.

Vows to the contrary, I think she might be through…or at the very least, making a deal to end her run on the most face-saving terms she can get.

Take a look at this post and video from Election Journal and ask yourself whether the Obama volunteer in Indiana is openly violating election law by setting up shop directly across from the voter check-in table. Hmmm…could be…

From AdAge comes word that a group of Democratic admen are gathering their mighty forces to help turn the electoral tide this November. Naturally, being admen, they are convinced they will bring life, energy and truth to the political airwaves (just as they have for soda pop, detergent and Axe Body Spray) by tackling such issues as global warming and women’s rights for down-at-the-heel groups like MoveOn and such. And there is an historical counterpoint to their efforts — the Tuesday Team that worked so effectively for Ronald Reagan back in 1984. But there is one key difference:

Unlike the members of Tuesday Team, who volunteered, members of the new team would receive nominal payments for ideas that get produced.

Which is quite funny…because it seems that in the “reality based community,” it’s not about the ideas you’re selling, but the hours you can bill.

The best reporter in Virginia has a post on Mark Warner’s on-off endorsement of former Strasburg Mayor Rich Orndorff, who has a few brushes with the law in his past and is now a candidate for Town Council:

Warner issued this statement on Saturday:

“Rich Orndorff has demonstrated a commitment to public service that is all too rare in public life today,” the statement reads. “Having served both on the council and as mayor of Strasburg, he has the ability to foster healthy community-based change that makes a difference in people’s lives.”

Spokesman Kevin Hall announced that the governor had changed his mind on Sunday:

“We don’t have all the facts, but we have enough for the governor to make the decision that he wants to rescind the endorsement,” said Kevin Hall, Warner’s spokesman.

But Orndorff did make a difference in people’s lives — if only for a day. Warner can’t take that away from him. At least until all the facts are in.

From P.J. O’Rourke in the most recent Cato’s Letter:

After all my time covering politics, I know a lot of politicians. They’re intelligent. They’re diligent. They’re talented. I like them. I count them as friends. But when these friends of mine take their intelligence, their diligence, and their talent and they put these into the service of politics, ladies and gentlemen, when they do that, they turn into leeches upon the commonwealth.

They are dogs chasing the cat of freedom. They are cats tormenting the mouse of responsibility. They are mice gnawing on the insulated wiring of individualism. They are going to hell in a hand basket, and they stole that basket from you. They are the ditch carp in the great river of democracy. And this is what one of their friends says.

There’s loads more…go read it all. (Cross-posted at Tertium Quids)

Jonathan Rauch argues that John McCain is actually more conservative, in a Burkean sense, than many of the self-described conservatives who hold him in such low esteem. Snip:

McCain, in short, is an antirevolutionary, not a counterrevolutionary. No wonder, then, he invoked Burke twice to an audience of skeptical conservatives—or, perhaps more accurately, skeptical “conservatives.” And no wonder some of them booed. To movement conservatives, McCain represented heresy. But to the conservative movement, he represented a return to home truth.

This is a piece worth reading, and considering, particularly for those of us who have had our doubts about the Senator. If Rauch’s thesis is correct, and I reserve judgment on that point, then arguably, McCain is representative of a conservative lineage that has not been seen on the national stage in a very, very long time.

This video of a recent city council meeting will give you a clue.

I have to admit I’ve never heard “Shrek” used as an insult. Gotta remember that one. (HT: Claire Ward)