THE CONSERVATIVE VOID

By Robert Novak

WASHINGTON -- New York-based political consultant Kieran Mahoney's statewide survey of probable Republican participants in the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses shows this support for the "big three" GOP candidates: John McCain, 20.5 percent; Rudy Giuliani, 16.3 percent; Mitt Romney, 3.5 percent. Astonishingly, they all trail James Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia, with 31 percent.

How could that be? Because it was not a legitimate survey, but a "push poll." That normally is a clandestine effort to rig a poll by telling respondents negative things about various candidates. Mahoney makes no secret that his voter sample was told of liberal deviations by McCain, Giuliani and Romney, and of true-blue conservatism by Gilmore (Mahoney's client).

Mahoney is trying to prove a point widely accepted in Republican ranks. None of the three front-line candidates is a natural fit for the nation's right-of-center party. Without question, there is a conservative void. The question is whether Gilmore or any new candidate can fill it.

The most commonly mentioned void filler is not Gilmore but Newt Gingrich. A straw poll by the right-wing Citizens United organization of its political contributors showed Gingrich leading with 31 percent (followed by Giuliani at 25 percent, Romney at 10 percent and McCain at 8 percent). But based on his record as speaker of the House, Gingrich's conservative record is far from flawless.

Mahoney did not include Gingrich in his Iowa poll of Republicans likely to vote in next year's caucuses. It first showed McCain leading with 33 percent, followed by Giuliani with 31.5 percent and Romney with 8.8 percent (and the unknown Gilmore at 1.3 percent). This is a voter sample that described itself as 70 percent conservative and 68 percent pro-life, and gave an astounding 76 percent favorable rating for President George W. Bush.

The polltakers next "pushed" -- alleging information about each candidate that could alienate conservative voters. McCain: opposed tax cuts, favored "amnesty" for illegal immigrants, opposed a ban on same-sex marriages. Romney: "refused to ban" abortion in Massachusetts, committed to "full equality" for gays and lesbians, put health care in the hands of bureaucrats. Giuliani: supported Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo's re-election in New York, is pro-gay rights and pro-choice, supports gun control.

That additional information dropped Giuliani by 9 percentage points to 22.3 percent and Romney by 5 points to 3.8 percent, while McCain rose 2 points to 35.3 percent. The unknown Gilmore was constant at 1.3 percent.

Then the pushers projected Gilmore as a tax-cutting, jobs-creating governor of Virginia, head of a congressionally appointed commission of terrorism, chairman of the Republican National Committee and National Rifle Association member opposing gun control. With that buildup, Gilmore finished first, well ahead of the field.

That suggests at least the theoretical success of a campaign to knock down the conservative credentials of the big three candidates and build up Gilmore's. "I have the best track record of any of the candidates," Gilmore told me, adding that McCain and Giuliani are "not conservative" while Romney was a "liberal governor of Massachusetts."

With Gilmore a latecomer to the presidential fund-raising game, it is doubtful he could find sufficient funds to tear down his opponents and build up himself nationally or even in the state of Iowa. But he will have plenty of help.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) attracting right-wingers nationwide to Washington this weekend, Citizens United will distribute a 23-page attack on McCain. "He's no Ronald Reagan," it begins, and concludes: "John McCain is not a conservative." (McCain is the only announced Republican presidential hopeful not scheduled to speak at CPAC.) Simultaneously, McCain operatives are putting out material that depicts Giuliani riding into City Hall on the shoulders of the New York Liberal Party as a throwback to the old Tammany Hall Democratic machine.

It is hardly too late for such negative campaigning to tear down Republican front-runners because of inadequate conservative credentials. At this point in the 2000 election cycle, Bush was far in front with 45 percent in the polls, with Elizabeth Dole second at 29 percent, and McCain at a mere 3 percent, behind Dan Quayle and Steve Forbes, before making his run that nearly won the nomination. The GOP lineup for 2008 may still be open, considering the conservative void.

TERRORIST APPEASERS TRY AGAIN

Democrats aren't giving up yet on their anti-war proposals...now they have a new one over in the House. The latest piece of legislation would not cut off funding for the troops, but would require the president to acknowledge the military is overburdened. Huh? These people don't know when to quit, do they? How about passing a resolution banning anymore resolutions about the war? One thing's for sure, if Osama really is alive and living in Pakistan...he must be pleased with his Democratic supporters.

What is the point of all this? There isn't one. When it comes to war, the power of the House of Representatives is clear: they hold the purse strings. Again...if the Democratic majority on Capitol Hill really believes that the war in Iraq is a mistake, then cut off the funding. Otherwise, sit down and shut up. While they're doing everything they can to undermine the commander-in-chief, this country is trying to win the war on terrorism.

It sure makes you wonder just whose side some of these liberals are on.

JOHN MCCAIN'S BASE

John McCain's base

By Michelle Malkin

The Maaaverick is not going to the Conservative Political Action Conference, which begins tomorrow.

But he did have time to tape his announcement on the David Letterman Show. Video at Hot Air.

Interesting priorities.

***

Ed Morrissey weighs in on McCain's absence from CPAC:

McCain has argued that he has the most solid conservative record of all the major contenders, and with some cause. Yet it is hardly a secret that the Senator has a rocky relationship with conservatives in the Republican Party. After the McCain-Feingold assault on political speech, his work with Ted Kennedy on immigration, the Gang of 14 rebellion that allowed the Democrats to filibuster judicial nominees for appellate assignments for the first time in American history, and a generally hostile attitude until just recently towards social conservatives, McCain has more work than most to convince conservatives to support him.

That's why his absence makes little sense. If he wants to win conservatives, he needs to make an effort to meet them -- literally. CPAC provides a golden opportunity to do so. It's one of the oldest conservative forums in existence, and it gathers opinionmakers on the Right from across the country. If he can't be bothered to go out of his way to face conservatives there, where exactly does he plan on addressing them?

Not on the David Letterman show, that's for sure...

LET THEM EAT TOFU!

by Ann Coulter

Even right-wingers who know that "global warming" is a crock do not seem to grasp what the tree-huggers are demanding. Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation.

Forget the lunacy of people claiming to tell us the precise temperature of planet Earth in 1918 based on tree rings. Or the fact that in the '70s liberals were issuing similarly dire warnings about "global cooling."

Simply consider what noted climatologists Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge are demanding that we do to combat their nutty conjectures about "global warming." They want us to starve the productive sector of fossil fuel and allow the world's factories to grind to a halt. This means an end to material growth and a cataclysmic reduction in wealth.

There are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending "global warming," but liberals simply announce that the debate has been resolved in their favor and demand that we shut down all production.

They think they can live in a world of only Malibu and East Hampton -- with no Trentons or Detroits. It does not occur to them that someone has to manufacture the tiles and steel and glass and solar panels that go into those "eco-friendly" mansions, and someone has to truck it all to their beachfront properties, and someone else has to transport all the workers there to build it. (And then someone has to drive the fleets of trucks delivering the pachysandra and bottled water every day.)

Liberals are already comfortably ensconced in their beachfront estates, which they expect to be unaffected by their negative growth prescriptions for the rest of us.

There was more energy consumed in the manufacture, construction and maintenance of Leonardo DiCaprio's Malibu home than is needed to light the entire city of Albuquerque, where there are surely several men who can actually act. But he has solar panels to warm his house six degrees on chilly Malibu nights.

Liberals haven't the foggiest idea how the industrial world works. They act as if America could reduce its vast energy consumption by using fluorescent bulbs and driving hybrid cars rather than SUVs. They have no idea how light miraculously appears when they flick a switch or what allows them to go to the bathroom indoors in winter -- luxuries Americans are not likely to abandon because Leo DiCaprio had solar panels trucked into his Malibu estate.

Our lives depend on fossil fuel. Steel plants, chemical plants, rubber plants, pharmaceutical plants, glass plants, paper plants -- those run on energy. There are no Mother Earth nursery designs in stylish organic cotton without gas-belching factories, ships and trucks, and temperature-controlled, well-lighted stores. Windmills can't even produce enough energy to manufacture a windmill.

Because of the industrialization of agriculture -- using massive amounts of fossil fuel -- only 2 percent of Americans work in farming. And yet they produce enough food to feed all 300 million Americans, with plenty left over for export. When are liberals going to break the news to their friends in Darfur that they all have to starve to death to save the planet?

"Global warming" is the left's pagan rage against mankind. If we can't produce industrial waste, then we can't produce. Some of us -- not the ones with mansions in Malibu and Nashville is my guess -- are going to have to die. To say we need to reduce our energy consumption is like saying we need to reduce our oxygen consumption.

Liberals have always had a thing about eliminating humans. Stalin wanted to eliminate the kulaks and Ukranians, vegetarian atheist Adolf Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger wanted to eliminate poor blacks, DDT opponent Rachel Carson wanted to eliminate Africans (introduction to her book "Silent Spring" written by ... Al Gore!), and population-control guru Paul Ehrlich wants to eliminate all humans.

But global warming is the most insane, psychotic idea liberals have ever concocted to kill off "useless eaters." If we have to live in a pure "natural" environment like the Indians, then our entire transcontinental nation can only support about 1 million human beings. Sorry, fellas -- 299 million of you are going to have to go.

Proving that the "global warming" campaign is nothing but hatred of humanity, these are the exact same people who destroyed the nuclear power industry in this country 30 years ago.

If we accept for purposes of argument their claim that the only way the human race can survive is with clean energy that doesn't emit carbon dioxide, environmentalists waited until they had safely destroyed the nuclear power industry to tell us that. This proves they never intended for us to survive.

"Global warming" is the liberal's stalking horse for their ultimate fantasy: The whole U.S. will look like Amagansett, with no one living in it except their even-tempered maids (for "diversity"), themselves and their coterie (all, presumably, living in solar-heated mansions, except the maids who will do without electricity altogether). The entire fuel-guzzling, tacky, beer-drinking, NASCAR-watching middle class with their over-large families will simply have to die.

It seems not to have occurred to the jet set that when California is as poor as Mexico, they might have trouble finding a maid. Without trucking, packaging, manufacturing, shipping and refrigeration in their Bel-Air fantasy world, they'll be chasing the rear-end of an animal every time their stomachs growl and killing small animals for pelts to keep their genitals warm.

Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," and most recently, "Godless."

NANCY PELOSI SAYS BUSH IS IMPAIRED

Nancy Pelosi says George W. Bush's thinking on Iraq is "impaired." It is? In that case, perhaps she and her fellow Democrats would do something about that. They could impeach the president or cut off appropriations for the war. Except they'll do neither...because they don't have the you-know-whats...oh ... and they have no plan for Iraq either.

Oh and here's a question...was Hillary Clinton impaired when she voted to authorize the war in Iraq in 2002? Was her husband impaired when, for 8 years, he called for the removal of Saddam Hussein? Was John Kerry impaired when he voted to authorize the war? John Edwards? The list of Democrats goes on and on.

Oh, and Speaker Nancy still has her thong (ugh) in a knot over Dick Cheney's criticism that her plan for Iraq would validate Al-Qaeda's strategy. She claims Cheney was questioning her patriotism...which he never did. This is the Big Lie of the Left...when you run out of ideas, when you have nothing else to say....accuse your opponent of questioning your patriotism.

Sounds like somebody's pantsuit might be a little too tight. If the American people have lost so much confidence in Bush, why won't the Democrats do something about it? Why not take action? Come on, we're waiting. Time's a wasting.

AL GORE'S WEAK RESPONSE

Well, now I've heard it all. Al Gore, the Academy Award winner of the "Inconvenient Truth" documentary about global warming, got caught with his hand in the cookie jar the other day. Evidently his 20-room mansion with 8 bathrooms in Nashville uses 20 times the electricity of the average American household. Same with natural gas. Who cares, right? Well, not really. This is what you call hypocrisy...and of the highest order.

Al Gore goes around telling us all that we're environmental sinners because we're causing global warming and dirtying the planet. And yet there's Gore...riding in his gas-guzzling private jet and sitting in his 20-room mansion that almost takes an entire power plant to run. The message is loud and clear: do as I say, but not as I do. Typical politician. But the firestorm is growing, so Al Gore's office had to craft a response to the deafening roar of criticism over his Tennessee energy consumption.

According to a spokesperson, the Gores purchase offsets to reduce their overall carbon footprint. Since they invest in wind power and the like, as well as drive hybrid vehicles, this somehow balances out their gigantic power consumption at their mansion. Oh..and they had solar power panels installed...and they pay more for their power to support renewable energy. So we're supposed to believe that the good outweighs the bad here. Let's not forget. He probably plants trees also. They turn carbon dioxide to oxygen you know.

The bottom line here is that this is all completely absurd. Man is not causing any significant climate change. The carbon molecules are out there. Use them if you got 'em.
Gore got busted for not walking the talk .. and now he's trying to backpedal. Perhaps people will see right through the environmental hypocrisy of the global warming movement for once.