Stacy McCain asks, ‘Why does Ann Althouse refuse to own up to being a rube?’

Posted byCynthiaYockey 8 Comments on Stacy McCain asks, ‘Why does Ann Althouse refuse to own up to being a rube?’

It’s a fair question. And dear Stacy was and is right, right, right, while Prof. Althouse was and is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Here’s what Prof. Althouse wrote that set dear Stacy off — and gave me a big enough shot of adrenalin that I’m up past my bedtime writing about it, too:

This is how people* got hooked into voting for Obama in the first place! Plouffe and company massaged people into the place where they had a feeling about Obama. Hope. Change. Yes We Can.

[snip]

*Not me. I voted for Obama, but I coolly observed all this emotionalism, soberly examined the 2 major party candidates, and made a rational choice.

Oh, for heaven’s sake! I pity the fool who didn’t have Obama’s measure from the moment the preaching and character of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were revealed along with the fact that Obama spent 20 years attending his church and had Rev. Wright perform his marriage and baptise his children AND the fact that as soon as he was no longer useful Obama threw him under the bus. That one episode epitomizes Obama in all his sociopathy. I was a lifelong Democrat and liberal and I still figured it out. By the time John McCain chose Gov. Palin as his running mate, I was ready to vote for him. By October I had finally pierced the liberal media’s veil over fiscal conservativism and in December — just as Stacy predicted — I registered as a Republican.

Stacy’s shellacking of Prof. Althouse is apt and richly deserved. I only have one thing to add. Here is the point Prof. Althouse was making:

You can savage Plouffe all you want for his seemingly stupid remark, but don’t miss the opportunity to see what he revealed about the theory of the reelect Obama campaign [that David Plouffe will shape Obama’s message to create the feeling in voters that Obama cares about them and makes his decisions based on them personally, no matter who they are].

OK, yes, the Obama campaign will try to evoke feelings — all smart campaigns do. But it appears to me that Obama’s sociopathy is still in a blind spot for Prof. Althouse. What Obama will do, shamelesssly, is tell any audience he’s facing whatever they want to hear, regardless of whether that is the opposite of what he just told another audience. The only reason Obama says anything is to get what he wants without any intention of keeping his promises. This is his lifelong pattern. That is what you need to know about the theory of the re-elect Obama campaign. And if Obama wants to make this election about the decisions he’s made and how they affect American families — yippee! Game on!

Update: One of Stacy’s commenters links an essay at Reason from 12/29/06 by Ronald Bailey, “Grande ‘Conservative’ Bloggress Diva Ann Althouse Among the ‘True Believers’ — What Really Happened?,” which is well worth reading, if only for the quick overview it provides of the principles at the foundation of conservative and libertarian thought.

Also, Stacy’s post is now linked at Memeorandum.

8 replies on “Stacy McCain asks, ‘Why does Ann Althouse refuse to own up to being a rube?’”

  1. You did a lot better than Scacy McCain.  (Notice how needlessly combative Stacy is?  It’s because his Dad named him Stacy.  Almost like naming a boy Sue…)  Stacy didn’t vote for president in 2008, thereby marginally contributing to Obama’s ascendancy.  You voted for the other guy, John McCain.

    1. Thank you. BTW, Stacy lives in a blue state so he could vote his conscience due to our electoral college system under which voters do not directly elect America’s president.

  2. 2008 was the most surreal year of my life, personally and politically. Liberals were determined to impose 0 on us, since they KNEW who he was, by lying to us about who he was and setting up an elaborate stage play in which this charlatan walked to the podium, said his lines and took the credit for someone else’s eloquence and stagecraft. 

  3. I’m a sheltered country/small town gal – I never even left my state before I went to live abroad. (Yes, it was a culture shock.) And even I knew that Obama was a bad ‘un. The tongue bath the lamestream media gave him gave me the creeps. No one could point to any achievements.

    So it was striking to see all these self styled “sophisticated” “intelligent” “elites” bend like pretzels in order to justify their vote for a man they, in reality, knew nothing about.

    If you pressed them for specifics – “*why* do you think Palin is stupid?” “What exactly do you think Obama would do if elected?” “What exactly do you know about him?” – they would prevaricate for a while, then smile in a dopey way, and admit that Obama just seemed so sophisticated, and intelligent, and family oriented, and they *felt* like he just *got* their values…Like he was the candidate they would have liked to have a glass of Chablis with.

    It was that faith that led them to decide that, whatever Obama might have *said*, he really did support marriage equality. He was just lying to get the votes of the hicks (and the blacks, but no one wanted to think about that). The fact that they supported a man because they assumed he was a liar never impinged.

    The honest answer would have been that support for Obama was a way that people could signal to each other that they were sophisticated, and non racist – they supported a sort of black man! look! – and, like, not like the hicks.

    I understand why Althouse wants to save pride, and act like it was a rational decision given what she could have known at the time. I do think that people need to make it easy for people to cross the aisle. But she didn’t need to be that snotty in her response. I don’t see what she would have lost by admitting that she got her estimation of Obama catastrophically wrong. This isn’t ignoring the issue; it’s constantly revisiting it and whining when people disagree.

    1. And if you ever doubt that Obamabots were operating from a cultural/tribal viewpoint, as opposed to a rational/political one, try being me. My accent and background were consistently mocked and held against me during the 2008 election. Apparently small town gals are too stoooopid to talk about politics, unless they’re ostentatiously dismissive of their background and deliberately lose the accent.

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