Mo Dowd Goes Bat-Shiz Delusional

Conservatives have known for many years that Maureen Dowd lives in a parallel universe unbounded by concepts like facts.  In today's column, she trots out that old canard about George W. Bush stealing the election from Al Gore.

Lady, Girl, give it up.  You lost. And if Republicans can pull it together, you will lose again this year.

In assaulting the Republican field, and particularly Rick Santorum, Mo lets this whopper fly:  "More and more, they openly yearn for a fresh candidate, including Jeb Bush, who does, after all, have experience at shoplifting presidential victories at the last minute." (Emphasis added).

Shoplifting presidential victories?  That's a flat-out lie.  Two mainstream newspapers reluctantly so said.

USA Today reported on April 4, 2001

George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes -- more than triple his official 537-vote margin -- if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 "undervote" ballots that were at the center of Florida's disputed presidential election....

Even Mo's own newspaper, the New York Times -- not exactly part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy -- reached the same conclusion on its front page, November 12, 2001:


A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.


Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.


Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff -- filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties -- Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations....

This is what happens when a columnist forgets to read her own front page:  she internalizes the mythology of the DNC talking points without the reality check of . . . reality.

Mo Dowd on Palin

The selection of Sarah Palin as the GOP vice presidential nominee has stimulated Maureen Dowd's creative juices (which stopped flowing once Bubba left office). Mo can't quite decide how she feels about Palin.

On the one hand, she calls it a "cynical pick" and "affirmative action." Note the upper crust East Coast elitism:

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter. And she was tougher on the basketball court than the ethereal Obama, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.”

In one fell swoop of her mouse, Mo insults every voter who went to a state university instead of an Ivy League college. Who says the New York Times and the Obamas are snobs? They're just misunderstood by the little people -- the ones who are writing checks to McCain-Palin by the pick-up truck full.

In her book Are Men Necessary?, Mo obsesses about plastic surgery, and whines that feminism lost out to narcissism. Imagine her ambivalence then, about a GOP candidate who not only thrills conservatives for being literally right on the issues, but looks great, too. (And without the intervention of Dr. Liposuction.)

Sarah is a zealot, but she’s a fun zealot. She has a beehive and sexy shoes, and the day she’s named she goes shopping with McCain in Ohio for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter.

As she once told Vogue, she’s learned the hard way to deal with press comments about her looks. “I wish they’d stick with the issues instead of discussing my black go-go boots,” she said. “A reporter once asked me about it during the campaign, and I assured him I was trying to be as frumpy as I could by wearing my hair on top of my head and these schoolmarm glasses.”

Dara Torres wasn't supposed to be an Olympian as a 42 year old mother. She was said to be too old -- older than most of the swimmers she ended up beating. (And if she hadn't trimmed her fingernails, she would have won gold.) Palin, opponents complain, is too young. Sure, one sought to change the history of swimming and the other seeks to change the history of America. Both refuse to be put in a box, by the feminists or their competitors.

Mo's complaint that the choice of Palin is "cynical" or "insulting" is itself cynical and insulting. If Palin had aborted her fifth child and was running as a Democrat, Mo would be weeping with joy. Palin is relentlessly right on the issues, and she cannot be manipulated by the sages at the Times. That's what terrifies Mo and all her Democratic buddies.

The Crying Game

Nobody channels the Clintons like Maureen Dowd:

There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

As Spencer Tracy said to Katharine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib,” “Here we go again, the old juice. Guaranteed heart melter. A few female tears, stronger than any acid.”

What's peculiar is how well the tactic worked on those women voters over 65. (I can think of a number of ways to characterize that group, but resist the temptation with the fear that if I do, I won't live to join them.) This group has been driving for roughly half a century. They know first hand that the fastest, easiest way to get out of a speeding ticket is to grow misty-eyed. The prospect of tears intimidates more than the actual crying. Consequently, this group of voters should have been the quickest to spot Hillary's manipulation.

Perhaps the mature women voters sympathized with the Hillary tears that we never saw: those that must have flown every time Hillary learned that the Boy President had cheated on her.