Fighting back

"The point which strikes me most strongly is SusanAnne's emphasis on the courage to fight, which requires the willingness to become a target. Americans love a fighter." --Robert Stacey McCain (The Other McCain)

Mr. McCain takes a look at a post on RedState by SusanAnne who researches and fills in the blanks that are overlooked or ignored by others, and she specifically slaps Michael Barone on the wrist for not following through. For example, she takes Mr. Barone to task for not fully explaining the Al Franken win in Minnesota:

In analyzing the Franken-Coleman senatorial race, it doesn’t simply come down to ‘if only 157 Franken voters would have voted for Coleman, then Coleman would have won’ mentality. When, in fact, on election night:

Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass.

York does not mention this fact as well as the main factor in overturning the election results was the strategy to challenge the rules to secure a victory with a proven technique.

The Democrat’s strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.

So to simply say that ‘if only voters voted for Coleman, then’….one cannot do.

Mr. Barone does a good job in his analysis and I agree with him ... but SusanAnne makes an extremely important point. Too often Republicans let the press define their issues and frame the story without rebutting. An example is Hurricane Katrina, which she also addresses:

Katrina, although a state and local issue, in addition to a personal responsibility issue as the residents did have mandatory evacuation orders, the GOP and Bush administration took the fall, rather than the irresponsible residents who violated the mandatory evacuation order and mismanagement by Democrat mayor and Democrat governor of Lousiana.

It continues to this day as the MSM give Barack Obama a pass on issues they would have excoriated President Bush about. Currently the Obamas are in Hawaii on Christmas vacation even though a terrorist attack took place in Detroit on Christmas Day. There have been no howls of protest from the MSM about Obama being away from Washington, and nothing about his silence for two days after the foiled attack.

After Katrina, the MSM took the opportunity to turn on President Bush:

... it was at this time that the MSM started its ground assault of the Bush administration and mauling of the GOP. And the GOP never fought back. Bush never fought back.

With this defeatist attitude, the MSM reshaped conservative thought to hate Bush, creating apathy and division in the Republican party, and ultimately causing Republicans to vote Democrat or stay home on election day in 2008.

I do not believe it was a "defeatist" attitude that kept the Bush administration silent but, instead, it may have been their desire not to get into a mud battle with the media. In retrospect that may have been a miscalculation but we all would like to have 20/20 hindsight especially in politics.

SusanAnne go on to add:

In reality, the American people crave a party to take on the media, Democrats, and corruption. Just look at Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Andrew Breitbart, Rush, Hannity, Beck, Tea Partiers, and our own Erick Erickson. Look at Fox’s sky-high ratings. All signs of the American people’s thirst for knowledge and someone–anyone–to stand up against Obama, Congress, the media, and the left. And those who do get major support from the GOP base.

Mr. McCain noted that Americans love a fighter, and that definitely applies to Virginians. We are, after all, the home state of Patrick "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" Henry.