Stacy McCain comments further on Christine O'Donnell's gutless removal of my endorsement from her website after a rabid, lunatic post at the subversive Salon. Who are these people who pretend to represent decent, principled Americans? We need sterner stuff.
What surprised me was that a woman who has been the object of relentless attacks by those same folks would not know what this was and what they were trying to do. Who would know better that the insults were lies and distortions, a trap set to drive a wedge in our ranks? Mission accomplished. How could O'Donnell and/or her people not vet the post? No. She caved at once. C-A-V-E-D.
Remember, I endorsed O'Donnell back in the Spring, when no one even knew who she was. She wasn't even a blip on the internet radar screen, let alone the national scene. If she trashes her early supporters, won't she trash the voter? No loyalty, no spine, no character. It's lousy, and hardly instills a lot of confidence in the candidate.
Let me also say that they tried to pull this same stunt on Ilario Pantano back in September, when he spoke at my 911 Rally of Remembrance. He would have none of it. He kicked that trash to the curb. If you haven't donated to Pantano or volunteered for his campaign, go now. Clearly, the same goes for the magnificent Lt. Colonel Allen West. Donate now.
Stacy McCain weighs in here. He guesses O'Donnell "didn't know." Give me a break. You don't know what is going on in your own campaign? Then you're incompetent.
Basic Rule of Politics: Never Lose a Friend By Trying to Placate Your Enemies
Pamela Geller is a fighter who has encouraged and supported other fighters. Go back to March 2007, when she published a column by an Army officer deployed to Afghanistan whom she praised as representing “the best, the very best of America.”
Perhaps his name will ring a bell: Lt. Col. Allen B. West.
All patriots are now praying that Allen West is less than two weeks from being elected to Congress from the 22nd District of Florida. I first interviewed him in June 2008, at which time he couldn’t get the time of day from the national Republican establishment, but he always had the staunch support of Pamela Geller. She promoted his fundraising events and demanded that the GOP leadership wake the hell up and get behind his 2010 campaign.
Knowing how valuable Pamela’s support has been to Allen West and other candidates, I was stunned beyond words this morning when I received an e-mail alerting me that some idiot at Christine O’Donnell’s Senate campaign had decided it was a convenient time to throw Pamela Geller under the bus:
It is a pity that a “maverick” and “outsider” would lack any spine and exhibit such incredible political cowardice.
This was in response to a Salon item by ex-Wonkette Alex Pareene that repeated the now-familiar LGF-inspired defamations.
My dear friend Pamela Geller is entirely justified in feeling offended by this slight. Yet my guess is that her endorsement was removed from O’Donnell’s Web site without the knowledge or authorization of the candidate. Some gutless GOP staff puke, at the behest of a stupid consultant or “strategist,” decided to try to unring an Internet bell.
Yeah. Good luck with that, genius.
Permit me to refer you to an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic Monthly, in which he talks about “the personal willingness to meet violence with violence” as a cultural marker of the “street mentality,” and observes that “the willingness to fight isn’t just about yourself, it’s a signal to your peer group”:
To the young people in my neighborhood, friendship was defined by having each other’s back.
Amen, Brother Coates. Having taken my share of abuse for instinctive displays of the Signifying Jive – is there really any need to explain? – I reckon the Street Code of West Baltimore isn’t much different than what my folks taught me growing up in Douglas County, Georgia: “Don’t ever start a fight, but don’t ever run away from a fight.”
Being a natural-born joker, I generally succeeded in averting violence through humor. But certainly the greater safeguards were (a) having an older brother who was notoriously willing to kick the ass of anyone who messed with me, and (b) being a known associate of redneck hooligans who would do the same.
The implicit bargain of what Ta-Nehisi Coastes calls the Street Code is that you sometimes have to take shit from your friends — who reserve the right to give you an ass-kicking when you deserve it — but you never have to take shit from your enemies. And as Coates says, the invaluable protection of your friends is dependent on your faithful observance of the street commandment:
Thou Shalt Not Be Found a Punk.
