so far, so good

For a political movement that is supposed to be in retreat, Conservatism seems to be doing just fine. So far, in three special elections, the Conservative candidate won handily. In one of these, Anh Cao, defeated the execrable criminal William "Cold Cash" Jefferson in the rottenest of boroughs, New Orleans. As important, the thirty-five of the GOP senators plus four Dem senators hanged tough and refused bailout money for the Detroit Big Three.

So why is this happening? Buyer's remorse for Obama? Possibly. We also gotta thank Blago, the Chicago nonsense is already a mini-Watergate, besmirching the Light-worker. Islamic terrorism proceeds apace, obviously the Bombay murderers didn't get the memo from Islam central that all would be peace and light now that the evil Crusader Bush and his evil Christianist party is out of the picture.

I think there is something else at play here. The Republican Party, which is where the conservative movement resides for the most part, is becoming a regional party. Of the South. While the East Coast elites decry this trend, I say: fie on them! Two of the Dem senators that voted against the bailout were from Arkansas, the other two were from the Mountain West. This area is the demographic homeland of Reaganite conservatism.

Personally, I could care less if the GOP retreats to the South and West (except for California --long gone). We don't need to accommodate the RINO's of New England, who have long skewed the party to the Left. And now, we wont have to: Chris Shays, the last remaining GOP Congressman in New England, went down to defeat. To be sure, we'll have to keep an eye on the weak sisters of Maine, but to sustain filibusters, we have new Dem friends that can cause us to overlook them.

Make no mistake: we're going to have to hang tough to derail the continued nationalization of our economy. Obama will ride a crest of popularity after his inauguration, but this Chicago thing ain't going away. The jihadists will strike again. Just because the MSNBC crowd gets weak in the knees means nothing to the rest of the American population who lives in the real world. Obama's magic ain't gonna fly unless he starts performing, no matter what his cheerleaders in the MSM say.

Memory Eternal...

I direct your thoughts today towards the Orthodoxie blog immediately to the right. The author (Fr Joseph Honeycutt) has it exactly right. Patriarch Alexei II of Russia was a true shepherd of the Orthodox Church, respecting its canonical norms and leading his Church "from glory to glory."

Because of his resolute stewardship, the Orthodox Church emerged from the rubble of the old Soviet state intact. As Fr Joseph says, neither retrograding to an imperialist past, nor adopting the fads and whims of the moment.

Some have accused the late patriarch of colluding with the old KGB, indeed being an agent of it. While some collusion was necessary, "by your fruits you shall know them." In no way could it be said of Alexei that he was not a true Christian shepherd. All you have to do is look at his record of accomplishment and you can see for yourselves the fruits of true Christian labor.

Let us pray that the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church elects as good and pious a leader. One who is sober, judicious, prudent, but not afraid of taking a stand, a man for our times. (May I suggest His Grace Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna, Austria?)

May his memory be eternal.

He may be losing it

Like millions of others, I gave Obama credit for running --along with his apologists in the MSM--a masterful campaign. How masterful? He's basically an empty suit who looked better than the old guy, plus he had the great good luck to run when the stock market tanked.

Granted, I was rather pleased with the quasi-Reaganites he chose for his economic advisors, not as good as Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, etc., but hey, we're talking Democrats here, on the whole, not bad.

However if there was ever any more proof needed that Obama is an empty suit, it was solidified today, when he named his national security team. Yeah, yeah, I know, Gen Jim Jones is a stand-up guy, no --a great guy. But Napolitano is a non-entity who will shill for La Raza and the open-borders crowd, Eric Holder's a joke as AG, the UN ambassador is a nobody in a dead-end job. But Hillary? Don't get me wrong, as a conservative and hawk, Obama could do a lot worse (we're talking Dems remember?). Most of the Democratic intellectuals have what I call the "surrender at any cost" mentality. We could call them the SAC Caucus for short. These people would love to see America defeated on the field of battle. They are worse than dissidents, they are seditious bastards. So yeay, I'm real happy Hillary was chosen.

But Obama opened himself up for major grief here. Hillary will take over, becoming a co-president. She won't undermine Obama, she'll overtake him. And he'll be too scared to do anything about it. If he fires her, she will take him on in 2012. If he keeps her, his far-Left base will get angry at him.

Besides the obvious, what this tells me about Obama is that he's basically a weak man. He didn't have to hire Hillary, or interview her. For the first 3 weeks after the election, Obama basically owned this country. He certainly owned his party. He could have told Reid, Pelosi, Hillary, etc. that he was president, not them. But he didn't, he caved unnecessarily to Hillary, who engineered the whole interview and appointment from soup to nuts. She not only set up the interview, but steered the conversation to SecState talk, then leaked it making it impossible for him to renege, and now she's the belle of the ball. Plus, she screwed Bill Richardson big-time, causing Obama to piss off the Hispanics who expected a guy like the governor of New Mexico to get this plum position, especially after he screwed up the requisite cojones to endorse Barack when the going was iffy.

Is there a silver lining? Yeah, Hillary screws up bad on some issue forcing him to fire her. (Would Bill's connections to nefarious foreigners have anything to do with his? Possibly.) In this scenario she looks bad and effectively destroys herself as a political player. But I don't see this happening.