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January 24, 2010 05:42 PM UTC

Malkin Rips Jane Norton: "Milquetoast Establishment Republican"

  • 28 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Leading conservative columnist–and Colorado Springs transplant–Michelle Malkin unleashed a furious tirade Friday against what she calls “McCain Regression Syndrome” in the aftermath of last week’s GOP victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, speaking out against Sen. John McCain’s “clinging to the coattails” of the resurgent right flank of the Republican Party.

Malkin’s Exhibit A? Senate candidate Jane Norton, “the mini-McCain of Colorado.”

Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril for The Right. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but like Paul Revere’s midnight-message, consider this warning “a cry of defiance, and not of fear.” Conservatives have worked hard over the past year to rebuild after Big Government Republican John McCain’s defeat. But McCain isn’t going gently into that good night…

Savor the irony: After a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, Sen. McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.

And pay attention to the hidden, more troubling irony: While he runs to the right to protect his seat, McCain’s political machine is working across the country to install liberal and establishment Republicans to secure his legacy…

In Colorado, McCain and his meddlers infuriated the state party by anointing former lieutenant governor Jane Norton to challenge endangered Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet. She’s a milquetoast public official who has served on a lot of task forces and GOP clubs – and who happens to be the sister-in-law of big Beltway insider Charlie Black. An estimated 40 percent of her coffers are filled with out-of-state money (and much of that is flowing from the Beltway).

The mini-McCain of Colorado claims to oppose “special interests,” but has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from D.C. lobbyists at McCain’s behest – stifling the candidacy of strong conservative rivals led by grass-roots-supported Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, an amnesty opponent whose aggressive illegal immigration prosecutions have earned him the rage of the far Left and big business Right. A recent Rasmussen poll showed Buck and another GOP candidate Tom Wiens beating Bennet – despite the huge cash and crony advantage of front-runner and blank-slate Jane…

Ouch! If Malkin is any indicator, it would seem that Norton’s recent string of bordering-on-silly fringe right policy prescriptions–“abolishing” the Department of Education, the federal government having “no role” in health care, etc.–aren’t exactly winning over the conservatives as intended. In fact, they might be in the process of blowing right past those contrivances.

Charlie Black, though? Where have we heard that name before? We find it particularly interesting that Michelle Malkin is using Mike Huttner’s talking points to hit Norton where it hurts the most, the iconoclastic conservative base–robbing Norton of the ‘anti-Washington’ energy last week’s election was supposed to be all about. Rather, Norton is identified as part of the problem…

Comments

28 thoughts on “Malkin Rips Jane Norton: “Milquetoast Establishment Republican”

  1. And she’s not here to do anything other than carry water for her party.

    Malkin’s nuttiness at least has more honesty than the cognitive dissonance running through a Grand Junction Sentinel piece today http://www.gjsentinel.com/hp/c… where two career politicians, Jane Norton and Andrew Romanoff, try and posture as “outsiders.” You have to be kidding me.  

    1. something that Dems can exploit.  For instance,the teabaggers are about anti-Wall Street populism as much as they are about being against government take-overs. Never mind the only way to oppose the power of Wall Street is to impose controls that protect ordinary people from over the top Wall Street gambling with no risk to anyone but the little guy, a basic contradiction inherent in these two aspects of the tea party narrative.  

      Conservatives have been handling their contradictions admirably for decades in their PR appeal to voters. Left over Cold War fear, religious and social wedge issues, whatever works best at the time. How else could they have managed so successfully to appeal, as the party of the power and wealth corporate elite, to Joe Six Pack? How else do you account for Republican campaign signs proudly displayed in front of tiny old rental homes with pick-ups out front. It certainly isn’t because the Republican party ever did a thing for the people inside.

      From the local level to the federal level, Dems should be going for the high ground in standing up for the average Joe, forcing Rs to join them in fighting for the little guy or explain why they are acting as hired guns for the robber barons who never lose a dime gambling with our money and whose idea of economic recovery is a return of profits for their pockets, not jobs for the little people. Naturally this means staying far  away from issues like insensitive school logos at the state level and maybe kicking the likes of Bernanke and Geithner out at the federal level to make a big anti-insider statement.

      It’s high time for Dems to change the R preferred narrative of Dems as latte sipping politically correct elites to one in which Rs are the party of let them eat cake. These fluid, volatile times (the first African American President one minute, a resurgence of Rs on the wings of populism the next), are ideal for image re-crafting.  If Dems let Rs win the PR battle now, they won’t have another opening like this for a very long time.  

      1. We live in a world of complex systems, and the policies that serve the public interest aren’t always intuitively obvious. Republicans are good at selling oversimplifications, to everyone’s detriment. I do want Democrats to get better at merketing good ideas. I don’t want them to get better at abandoning some of the most vital of good ideas because they’re too complicated to market easily.

      2. Apparently nobody now remembers, but the teabaggers started their “movement” based on a sketch that Rick Santelli did on CNBC’s comedy show. In it, he said roughly, “The real hard workers are these floor traders on Wall Street. Why don’t we give THEM some stimulus?”

        The teabaggers were ALWAYS pro-Wall-Street. The right-wingers who were against the financial bailouts voted for Ron Paul, i.e., they’re 1% of the population.

        Most teabaggers think Wall Street is getting raped in the face by regulation. There is no populist movement there. They just fetishize rich people, whether they quite realize it or not.

        1. I’m not saying it makes sense but, at the same time they rail against regulation, they also rail against the bail-outs. The rhetoric about bail outs is populist. Both regular Rs and tea partiers will have trouble opposing a Dem populist narrative in support of Main Street over Wall Street.

          The success of conservative narrative has never been about consistency or making sense. It has worked quite well without any such niceties. The advantage that Dem populist rhetoric can have over R populist rhetoric is that it can be just as effective, done right, and can make sense at the same time.  If only Dem pols will cooperate.

          Throwing out Bernanke would be a good start since he clearly has and continues to treat Wall Street with kid gloves while his policies do nothing to encourage fundamental change in the system where they gamble and take huge profits when they win while we pay if they lose. He is not ever going to see the need for fundamental change.  Neither is Geithner. They think we have to pay to keep “the best and the brightest” who made the mess. If Dems oppose them what is the good R populist narrative for supporting them?

          And, incidentally, for Bennet supporters, think about what Bennet voting against reconfirmation of Bernanke would do to Romanoff’s sole campaign meme, that Bennet is bought and paid for by big financial and health industry interests.

  2. …it’s because she is working terribly hard

    Statewide, there are around 160 Republican groups (including exec committees) that meet monthly/weekly and Norton is visiting each one of them in addition to calling every precinct captain

    Not that Buck and Weins are also working hard, but Norton is slowly dissapproving any notions that she’s anti-grassroots with all the visits she’s doing

    For what it’s worth – Bucks presentations get better and better – and Weins really needs to spend more time talking about his great work in Leadville with the draining issue – his work there was truly heroic

    Overall, there’s still a lot of time for this primary to heat up – but Jane is doing everything she can to win  

    1. or horribly uninformed re Wiens if you think he was ‘heroic’. Hero is so overused, but I think it can not be applied when one has nothing at risk and Wiens had nothing at risk. You have been in Lake County so much that I doubt you are uninfomed, you are simply putting the gloss to Wiens’ behavior.

      What Wiens did was, knowing an emergency was going to be declared he purchased a website EIGHT days prior to the declaration and videotaped some folks FOUR days before the declaration. If he believed there was an authentic emergency he should have warned the public as soon as he knew, before buying a website. This is especially so since those declaring the emergency were saying that a billion gallons of water might erupt onto a trailer court before poisoning the Arkansas. None of it was true. The only thing true is there is a tunnel that has had subsidence and caveins (normal in a tunnel) that was preventing water from getting to the portal. The only reason an emergency was declared is that those responsible were lousy communicators. What they want is for some fed agency to accept responsibility for this tunnel. While that desire is warranted, frightening people and costing 2 governments their liability insurance was a high price to pay to get the attention of the feds to something that is and was in no way emergent.

      How many bankruptcies has Wiens had? You know, nothing prevents him from going back at this date to repay those creditors.

        1. you would have to give the credit to those who did take a risk, those in the community who said “There is NO emergency.” The problem was solved soon after they got involved. Interestingly, the BOR was doing a risk assessment at the time the faux emergency was declared. The determination, agreed to by an independent panel of engineers, including one from Leadville who wants the tunnel accepted, was that no emergency was imminent.

          Actually, the problem is not yet resolved. No federal agency has yet accepted responsibility for the tunnel.

        2. you would have to give the credit to those who did take a risk, those in the community who said “There is NO emergency.” The problem was solved soon after they got involved. Interestingly, the BOR was doing a risk assessment at the time the faux emergency was declared. The determination, agreed to by an independent panel of engineers, including one from Leadville who wants the tunnel accepted, was that no emergency was imminent.

          Actually, the problem is not yet resolved. No federal agency has yet accepted responsibility for the tunnel.

          1. I get frustrated with legislators who ignore Leadville and to me, Weins was someone who paid attention, regardless of our disagreement on the mine issue

            Otherwise, my baby in Lake County was the Community Park – I’m deeply thankful it opened

    1. for providing such a pristine example of what Republicans are contributing to public discourse: Absolutely Nothing.

      Have any ideas about how to address the challenges and problems the state and nation face? Of course not. But, hey, grab your little pom-poms and give us a cheer for your favorite team, because, hell, what could possibly be more relevant than that?

  3. Malkin doesn’t want anything to do with her.

    As I recall, whenever there’s been a dispute between the racist right and the reasonable right, Malkin’s always come down on the side of the former. A meaner person than me might start sensing a pattern there. Me, I think it’s just that she’s nearsighted. A swastika looks like a peace sign from far enough away.

    1.   Let’s just say Malkin never got over the fact that Shay’s Rebellion was suppressed and the the states scrapped the glorious articles of Confederation for that damned U.S. Constitution.

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