Eight days ago Rick Santorum won the personal endorsements of two evangelical leaders—Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, President of the Iowa Family Policy Center. The endorsements may have been just enough to push Santorum up in the polls—at Bachmann’s expense. Vander Plaats asked Bachmann to drop out and endorse one of the social conservatives.

The Bachmann team is simply imploding with the defection of a top aide to the Ron Paul camp.  She herself has said that it would take nothing less than a “miracle” to win. When you have to keep insisting that you aren’t dropping out—it may be time to drop out.  Look to Bachmann to exit stage left after Iowa. The question becomes who will she endorse.

Three new polls—today’s NBC/Marist poll, yesterday’s Rasmussen poll, CNN/Time/ORIC poll—show Santorum moving into third place. This is good new for Santorum. Conservative Republican candidates tend to out-perform in Iowa while moderate Republican candidates tend to under-perform. If this holds, Santorum is effectively in a three-way tie with Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. He is the only one of the candidates to visit all ninety-nine of Iowa counties.

Unlike Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansa,s to whom he is frequently compared, Santorum is a northeasterner, a Pennsylvanian. His appeal may be limited beyond working-class Catholics and Midwestern evangelicals. He’s at 2.7% in South Carolina. Moreover, even if Santorum were to win Iowa—a big if—he has essentially no money and no organization in any other state.

Expect to see Rick Perry start a media blitz against Rick Santorum, which, indeed, he has already begun, releasing a radio ad. If Bachmann drops out, Santorum is all that stands between Perry and winning evangelical voters. Rick Santorum spent sixteen years in office, after all, and that leaves a paper trail.

Despite his social conservative bona fides, Santorum was anything but a fiscal conservative, as Erick Erickson points out over at Red State.

• He supported steel tariffs in Pennsylvania….
• He supported No Child Left Behind.
• He supported the prescription drug benefit.
• He supported the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, according to Club for Growth, “Santorum had the audacity to vote to continue funding the Bridge to Nowhere rather than send the money to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.”

Those kind of attack ads write themselves, and you can be sure that Barack Obama will rest at nothing to mention Santorum’s support for the Bridge to Nowhere over the blacks who suffered in Katrina.

Santorum stands ready to defend those earmarks, but calls his voting in favor of a new drug entitlement a “mistake.” Santorum was crushed in his re-election bid by eighteen points in 2006.

If you think this is by accident, you haven’t been paying attention:

—–

ABC’s Jake Tapper sees through this but unfortunately there’s only one Jake Tapper.  END UPDATE

Laugh at Democrats all you want but their decision during the last election to stay away from Fox News’ debates was brilliant. No one at Fox would’ve been unfair, but they most certainly would’ve asked tougher questions than anyone in the MSM. That’s not a cowardly decision on the Democrats part, it’s a tactically brilliant decision. Why would anyone interested in winning an election willingly put themselves in a less than ideal situation? Unfortunately, the only people who can answer that question are those currently running for the GOP nomination.

Nothing is more important than getting our failed president out of office in 2012 and therefore nothing is more important than nominating someone who can win. This is why the number one quality we should be looking for among our otherwise superb field is someone who understands that when it comes to removing Barack Obama from office, the MSM is the existential threat of 2012 — not the President. In a just world, Obama would have almost no chance of winning re-election, but we don’t live in a just world. We live in a world where Obama’s MSM Palace Guards have set their phasers to kill and intend to take out any threat to Their Precious One without prejudice.

And so last night when I saw our esteemed candidates voluntarily lined up like so many ducks in a MSM shooting gallery, I died a little bit inside.  It’s a trap, GOP!, and you can laugh at moderator John King’s questions all you want but I’m guessing that’s exactly what the MSM wants us to do. That way we don’t see the Matrix of what they were really up to. Ed Morrissey writes at Hot Air:

[W]e didn’t learn anything about energy policy.  We learned nothing about the deficit, except what the candidates could shoehorn into answers to inane questions.  We learned very little about economic or foreign policy.  We covered a lot of nonsense between the first question on jobs and the last question on running mates, but hardly anything that touched on actual voter priorities.

Questions that were asked, however, included gay marriage, DADT, Muslim’s in government(?), abortion, immigration, demonizing unions through right to work(!), the separation of church and state, and a host of inane this-or-that’s that included “Coke or Pepsi?” You know, because those issues are so much more important than, say, gas prices.

Morrissey declared CNN the real loser of last night’s debate, but I disagree. What the network did last night was to all but ignore areas in which President Obama is vulnerable (deficit, gas prices, economy, Israel) and instead intensely focused on the social wedge issues that create the kind of soundbites only helpful to the Left. And those this-or-that questions weren’t exactly designed to make anyone on our side look presidential, were they?

The MSM 2012 Matrix is simple: Ensure the election is not a referendum on a failed incumbent by toxifying his opponent. 

GOP, you had better wake up before it’s too late and in my opinion it will be too late in September when the double-threat of MSM corruption known and NBC/Politico hosts a debate. NBC and Politico are not honest brokers, they are our undeclared political enemies and any one of our candidates who walks into that rigged game deserves to have their judgment questioned. A wise GOP field would pull out of any and all debates hosted by the MSM, because NEWSFLASH: Primary debates shouldn’t be designed to cater to the media or to the public at large. They should be staged to help primary voters make a difficult choice, to make our side look as good as possible, and — wait for it!, wait for it! — to do as much political damage to President Obama as possible.

Why not arrange for a regular series of debates with tough, intelligent questioners from our side that represent the full right-of-center spectrum, people such as Jonah Goldberg, Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn, Morrissey, Tammy Bruce, Mary Katherine Hamm, Erick Erickson, Dana Loesch, Brit Hume, Hugh Hewitt, Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Prager and on and on?

What’s the downside? That the MSM will get pissy and badmouth us for not playing their rigged game? They’re out to destroy us anyway and we have a much better chance of avoiding that destruction if we fight instead of cave.

And if our side is worried about media exposure … don’t. It’s called New Media. Furthermore, the MSM will have no choice when it comes to covering these debates. The conversation that occurs on New Media will force Old Media to give these events the attention they deserve. Which brings me to the good news: Believe it or not, the corrupt MSM doesn’t completely control the narrative anymore and we need to capitalize on that advantage at every opportunity.

If you don’t understand the threat the MSM poses in 2012, you can’t beat Obama. We have a number of superb candidates more than qualified to be president … but first they have to win.

“Coke or Pepsi, Mr. GOP Candidate?”

“How about not undermining Israel, Mr. In-The-Tank-For-Obama Moderator.”

That person has my vote.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh and Elizabeth Blackney to discuss whether Jon Huntsman’s plotting to run for President against the man for whom he serves as Ambassador is dishonorable and disloyal.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Erick Erickson: Why I Will Not Support Jon Huntsman. Ever.
Responding to Erick Erickson’s broadside of Jon Huntsman
China post key to Jon Huntsman’s 2012 bid
Huntsman’s 2012 Buzz Caused Friction With Obama Team
Erick: Loyalty, Honor, and Faith. Virtues We Should Prioritize.

Follow Brad on Twitter
Follow Pej on Twitter
Follow Elizabeth on Twitter

More than 100 amendments were considered during the continuing resolution debate, 21 of which were unambiguous spending cuts. Heritage Action for America, a sister organization to my employer, compiled the votes on amendments that cut non-security spending.

The list includes some familiar names like Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and even a few members of GOP leadership. It also offers clues as to how Republicans might tackle spending cuts on two other measures in the coming months — raising the debt ceiling and producing a budget.

So who are the 47 conservative all stars? Listed alphabetically by last name:

Amash, Bachmann, Broun, Campbell, Chabot, Chaffetz, Coffman, Duncan (TN), Duncan (SC), Flake, Fleming, Franks, Garrett, Gowdy, Graves (GA), Heller, Hensarling, Herger, Huelskamp, Huizenga, Hurt, Jenkins, Jordan, Lamborn, Mack, McClintock, McHenry, Miller (FL), Mulvaney, Myrick, Neugebauer, Paul, Pence, Pompeo, Price (GA), Ribble, Rokita, Royce, Scalise, Schweikert, Scott (GA), Scott (SC), Sessions, Walsh, Wilson, Woodall, and Young (IN).

It’s refreshing to see the names of Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Tex.) and Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), all members of the Republican leadership team, on the list. Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), freshman representative to leadership, and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) also set a positive example.

Of the spending-cut amendments, most cut millions not billions, targeting programs such as the Legal Services Corporation (saving $324.4 million) or Amtrak (saving $446.9 million). But two of the amendments offered a real test of political courage.

A proposal from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for an across-the-board 5.5% cut to non-security discretionary spending would have saved $22 billion. Another amendment, offered by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), would have cut funding to fiscal 2006 levels for a savings of $34 billion.

Blackburn’s plan, backed by the conservative Republican Study Committee, lost by a vote of 147-281 with 92 Republicans siding with all Democrats. Half of the GOP leadership team, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted against the RSC’s proposed cuts.

(Cantor, who endured a scathing rebuke from RedState’s Erick Erickson this week, opposed the two largest spending cuts, but voted for the other 19. McCarthy supported 18 of the 21 cuts.)

The good news for conservatives is that the 47 all stars outnumbered the 18 Republicans who were most reluctant to cut spending. They included several appropriators:

Reichert, LaTourette, Biggert, Gerlach, Simpson, Diaz-Balart, Smith (NJ), Bass, Frelinghuysen, Wolf, Wittman, Dent, Dold, Grimm, Kinzinger, Meehan, Stivers, and Young (FL).

Disappointing as they were, these Republicans weren’t nearly as bad as the 95 Democrats who failed to vote for a single amendment that cut spending or the 42 others who opposed every cut but one.

Heritage Action’s analysis included only unambiguous spending cuts, not amendments that shifted spending or blocked policies such as defunding Obamacare or restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s rulemaking authority.

Make no mistake: this is a calculated “astroturf“ intimidation campaign by the well-funded and frightened-for-their-political-lives institutional left to quash dissenting voices. It’s what they do.

What was ABC News’ response?  Not standing up for free speech and the 1^st Amendment.  Not sticking by their original invitation.  Not standing up for diversity of opinion.

Instead, on Saturday, ABC News issued an official statement that was immediately heralded as a victory by the anti-free speech forces on the left:

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart’s role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate to be moderated by David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on ABCNews.com and Facebook. We will have other guests, as well as a live studio audience and a large audience on ABCNews.com and Facebook, who can question the guests and the audience’s   opinions.

George Stephanoplous quickly tweeted, “Breitbart NOT on ABC network broadcast http://bit.ly/bgkseJ.”

I can state with absolute certainty that the verbal pitch to me to participate was punctuated by the opportunity to appear as part of ABC News’ broadcast television for the night.  I was also aware that the majority of my participation – seven long hours – would be online.

Here is the email from ABC confirming their invitation for me to participate in their online and network broadcast election night coverage:

Andrew,

So great speaking with you, and I cannot thank you enough for joining us in Arizona on election night. We truly appreciate it.

NY is booking your travel right now, and want to make sure your name on your ID reads “Andrew Breitbart”.

I really look forward to meeting you, and would love to take you out to lunch or dinner before our election coverage.

See below about ABC New’s coverage on election night.

Cheers, and will see you soon.

XXXX

XXXX XXXX

Producer

ABC News

ABC News is conducting a live event from Phoenix, Arizona for our election night special on Tuesday, November 2nd 2010. I am looking for political figures and newsmakers to appear in our Town Hall style panel.

ABC News is providing live coverage of the midterm elections hosted by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos in New York, and correspondents across the country.

ABC News has partnered with Facebook and The Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University to live stream the entire event on abcnews.com, ABC News Now and Facebook.

The Town Hall is hosted by ABC correspondent David Muir and Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook, as well an ASU student leader.

The audience will consist of 150 students equipped with laptops and Ipads who will participate in online political conversations.

The issues include health care, the economy, immigration, terrorism, and the environment. We will have panelists who will contribute to these conversations remotely from Washington, DC, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA.

This program will broadcast on the ABC Television Network, abcnews.com, ABC News Now, and ABC News Radio.

The show will be live on the web and ABC News Now as well as on the network from 4:00pm till 11:00pm MST.

We would love for you to be a part of our program, and please let us know what we can do to accommodate your needs.

I am booking the guests for the event and will be in Phoenix starting Thursday, October 28th.

Feel free to email me back or call me at the following number with any questions.

Thanks so much,

XXXX XXXX

Producer

ABC News

In addition to the two times that an ABC News producer confirms in the email that I will be part of ABC News’ network broadcast, David Ford of ABC News confirmed to Media Matters that I “will be one of many voices on our air” on election night.

I was promised no specific amount of airtime, nor payment for my analysis, but was told that I would be a part of the broadcast coverage in addition to participating in the online event, as the email above clearly reveals.

And, clearly, I was being asked to give analysis – or, was ABC News paying for me to fly to Arizona and to foot my hotel bill so that I could perform avant-garde interpretative dance?

Apparently, a Daily Kos blogger has also been asked to participate. Daily Kos, as many of you may know, has been widely discredited for spreading malicious falsehoods and political extremism. It’s creator Markos Moulitsas is currently promoting his book, whose title says it all: American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right.

I do not ask that the Daily Kos bloggernot get air-time. To the contrary, I have a long history of trying to bring as many voices to the fore as humanly possible. One need look no further than my creating the Huffington Post – a project that’s underlying politics I never embraced – with Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer in 2005.

During its creation I explained to many bewildered observers: “Bringing my former boss and longtime friend Arianna’s intriguing friends to the blogosphere, the ultimate level playing field, makes perfect sense to me, and I am thrilled to be committed to such a groundbreaking project. Will my pals on the right have a place to offer their two cents at the Huffington Post? Absolutely. Will I agree with everyone’s written word? Of course not. But that’s precisely the point. May the best ideas win.”

This is not really about “me.”   This is about a full-fledged assault on the 1^st Amendment and free speech.  It is an unabashed attempt to win by intimidating a news organization for daring to have a dissenting voice on its broadcast. The same forces just prevailed against Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson’s CNN gig was met with the same anti-free speech, anti-opposing viewpoints full-court press from the institutional left. Again, it’s what they do.

The Internet is the revolution of our time and new media has benefited democracy by expanding the number of people who can influence the political process. My Big sites (Big Government, Big Hollywood, Big Peace, and Big Journalism) have expanded the voice and power of the center-right, and in particular, the Tea Party movement.

As is evidenced by George Soros’s $1 million dollar re-investment in Media Matters, which led the harassment campaign to silence center-left commentator Juan Williams, the political left is doubling down on its “silence your critics” strategy.

I am no stranger to this particular kind of tactic. In fact, my business has been built on the premise of fighting it. Boo, George Soros! Bring it on, John Podesta!

Is this trend of silencing dissenting voices not wholly obvious even to the untrained eye?

I created Big Hollywood for my conservative friends in liberal Hollywood to fight back against this most un-American practice. We are making up for a lot of lost ground in a very short period of time. That is why more and more voices are starting to express themselves and there are more bodies coming out of the closet. These victories motivate me to keep the pressure on.

On Sunday Big Journalism broke the troubling KTVA (Anchorage) voicemail story that showed reporters and producers plotting how to smear GOP candidate Joe Miller. The real story here is that the Big sites have broken huge stories that have affected this election cycle, including ones that show an unhealthy collusion between the political left and America’s major newsrooms. Perhaps on election eve, as I prepare to head to Phoenix to participate — one way or another — in ABC News’s coverage, it’s no surprise that we are ending this news cycle with a clash on this bitterly contested front.

Erickson included in his monologue this:  (Full audio is here)

Come on, people. It’s a Constitutional obligation. How can a 21^st century society function without knowing how many people are actually living in the country, legally versus illegally for that matter? What’s the harm with filling out the census? The Constitution — for those of you who say I’m not filling out the c — it’s in the freaking Constitution. You got to fill out your census.

He also spent some time mocking the members of extreme groups who fear giving information like this to the Government will lead to a New World Order.  He even mocked the paranoia of these conspiracy fringe groups by pretending to hear black helicopters.

He then went on to distinguish between the constitutionally mandated census and the extensive and over-reaching ACS.  Over nine minutes into his monologue, Erickson expressed his incredulity over the harassment from the Commerce Department employee who was so dogged in her pursuit of the valuable information about Mr. Freedman’s toilets:

What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

So, of course, over the past few days the headlines have not been “Erick Erickson Admonishes Listeners to Obey the Law and Fill Out Census”.  And, the headlines have not been “Erick Erickson Details Don Freedman’s Harrassment at the Hands of the Commerce Department”.  They aren’t even:  “Erickson Threatens to Scare ACS Worker at Door if They Come to Put Him in Jail”

No, the headline we see from  HuffPo is:  Eric Erickson Threatens To ‘Pull Out Shotgun’ At Census Worker. And Media Matters gives us:  CNN’s Erickson: I’ll “[p]ull out my wife’s shotgun” if they try to arrest me for not filling out the American Community Survey. (see how they cleverly make it look like he said it on CNN?)

This is all part of an ongoing campaign to paint Erickson as a wing-nut on the fringe.  If pressed though, of course, the critics at these sites would be hard pressed to find any effective conservative commentator with whom they respect or find worthy of network or cable air time.  They attempt, through their distortions, to intimidate the network in question to either fire their current employee (Beck, Erickson, etc.) or to intimidate the network from hiring another “controversial” figure from the right.

Even Newt Gingrich was called out today from the left. According to them, it is not appropriate for NBC to have him on their network.  The left is not only trying to dictate their policy on the country, they are also trying to dictate who their legitimate opponents should be.  And, if they don’t like you, you are to be silenced.

So, NBC should not have Gingrich on the air.  Fox should not have Beck on the air.  And now, even the White House has expressed that Erickson’s remarks “should concern CNN”.

And, so it goes with Rush and O’Reilly and Beck and Hannity and Coulter and Ingraham and Prager and Hewitt and Breitbart and Palin and now Erickson.

They do not want to debate the facts or the issues, they want to render their opponents as unworthy of the public’s attention.  And, they attempt to delegitimize our arguments by delegitimizing our arguers.  If Erickson is a racist scum then he is unworthy of debating.  And, if you site something he said in a friendly water cooler debate, then your friend on the left can easily delegitimize the argument by responding: “Him?  He threatened to pull a gun on a census worker!”

See how it works?

The President has recently gone after Rush and Beck as examples of incendiary rhetorical rabble-rousers.  And other critics on the left are painting them as fomenting a militia movement on the extreme right.  This is the same playbook used in the days after the tragic Oklahoma City bombing.  Somehow conservative politicians and commentators were held up as being partly to blame for the singular act of evil by that scum, Timothy McVeigh.  No it appears to be a pre-emptive strike.  The narrative from the left, and the White House, is that the Tea Party movement is fomenting rage and racism and conservatives are to be held responsible if something happens.   And you should be ashamed for listening to them.

This is what they do.  They do not create anything.  They do not start with a white page and creatively express what they believe.  They do not go on the air for hours at a time and articulate in an engaging and entertaining way a philosophy for the direction of our nation or a constructive critique of those in power.  No, they do not create, they destroy.

They sit at their cubicles listening to hours of Rush and find a sentence or paragraph they can pull out and mock or lampoon.  They read pages and pages of conservative thought on the internet and extract minutiae to prove their pre-conceived agenda.  They watch hours and hours of extremely successful people on television reaching audiences greater than they will ever dream of reaching, and they twist the meaning of their message into something unrecognizable.

They tear down and destroy.  And they are paid handsomely for doing it.

Erickson is the latest target.  Who will be next?  Me?  Maybe you.

Between now and the beginning of the State of the Union address at 9 PM EST, you can either text “UNION” to 777218 or visit our Web site (www.nrcc.org) to sign up to participate in our first-ever mobile text chat room. The NRCC is providing a forum for all concerned Americans to discuss issues that are important to them, framed in the context of the President’s speech. Additionally, national figures such as Dana Perino, Grover Norquist of ATR, Former Senator Fred and Jeri Thompson, Former Congressman Tom Davis and Erick Erickson from Red State will be part of the discussion, providing their personal thoughts on the speech.

Following the speech, we invite you to join us on our Web site for a live streaming video Question and Answer session with me and several of my House colleagues, including Republican Leader John Boehner and NRCC Vice Chairman Greg Walden. This is a unique opportunity to directly engage with House Republican Leadership and Members of Congress and to receive our immediate observations on the President’s speech.

2010 is shaping up to be an historic year – a testament to your participation in the political process. Republicans want to engage Americans in a dialogue as we work to solve the many problems facing our great country. I hope you will be a part of the discussion tonight and I, along with my colleagues, look forward to speaking with you.