Month: March 2014

QOTD: Sir Tim Berners Lee

by digby

As related by Ben Wizner, Edward Snowden’s attorney at today’s SXSW chat:

Just before this began, I got an email from Sir Tim Berners Lee the creator of the World Wide Web who asked for the privilege of the first question to you… He wanted to thank you and believes your actions were profoundly in the public interest.

For those of you who are upset that Snowden is allowed to speak freely what with being a wanted man and purported Russian spy and all, don’t worry. Nobody really gives a shit:

[A]ccording to USA TODAY’s Jon Swartz, reporting from SXSW, lines for a competing chat with Girls star Lena Dunham are 10 times longer than the the line for Snowden’s talk.

Everybody can relax.

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Oh Lordy

by digby

Sarah Posner has the latest on the new film set to charge up the Christian Right called (naturally) Persecuted.

…[R]eligious liberty is one issue both social conservatives and libertarians can coalesce around. It lets each camp play into the other’s concerns by invoking a fear of government strong-arming its citizens, in this case by violating their religious conscience in making them comply with secular laws. In that sense, Persecuted is perfectly pitched to bring CPAC’s dominant wings together.

Daniel Lusko, the movie’s writer and director, told me he was an admirer of Alfred Hitchcock, and aimed to emulate his work. But Persecuted is more like a made-for-TV melodrama than The Man Who Knew Too Much. It is rife with ham-fisted symbolism—Luther’s name is just one example—and plot twists that range from inexplicable to implausible. Imagine House of Cards for the religious set: that’s Persecuted.

The film opens with Luther (James Remar, who played the father of a serial killer on the Showtime drama Dexter) refusing a last-ditch effort of Senate Majority Leader Donald Harrison (Bruce Davison, best known for his role as Sen. Robert Kelly in the X-Men movies) to convince him to endorse the Faith and Fairness Act, a bill that would give “equal time” to all religions. “I cannot water down the gospel to advance anyone’s political agenda,” Luther tells Harrison in one of many robotic pronouncements.

Furious, the senator dispatches what later is revealed to be a Secret Service agent to drug Luther and frame him for the rape and murder of a 16 year-old girl. Emerging from his stupor the next morning on a rural roadside, Luther discovers a massive manhunt for him is underway. He spends the remainder of the film attempting to prove his innocence and evading the government’s efforts to assassinate him.

Basically, this is a movie in which it’s overtly asserted that in order for Christians to be “free” the government cannot endorse the idea of fairness to all religions. Indeed, it seems that liberty has now been interpreted as a requirement to officially acknowledge that America is a Christian Nation and must adhere to Christian precepts.

But it’s precisely the erasure of religious differences that lies at the heart of the diabolical government plot at the center of the story. Luther, the evangelist, runs a ministry called Truth. The government seeks, through the Faith and Fairness Act, to impose “equality for all faiths,” a concept presented darkly as the mysterious acronym SUMAC, with symbols nearly identical to a Unitarian Universalist “co-exist” bumper sticker.

Equality for all faiths? The bastards…

Be sure to read the entire thing. I don’t know how many people will watch this thing. But among those who did, the reviews are good!

“Given our current administration,” said Avi Davis, president of the American Freedom Alliance, a Los Angeles think tank that “promotes, defends and upholds Western values and ideals,” the film could depict realistic events, a sentiment echoed by others in the crowd.

“Government has already overtaken freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the Second Amendment,” said Teresa Frerking, a CPAC attendee from Kentucky. “I have lost total faith in the government.”

“It was very credible in this day and age,” Marlene Curry, a CPAC attendee from Virginia, said. “I grew up in a country where government was restrained and represented the people. And of course that’s no longer the case.”

Of course.

This is especially amusing:

One of the film’s many duff notes involves Fred Thompson, the former senator and presidential candidate, who plays Dr. Charles Luther, John Luther’s father, a Catholic priest. Thompson’s grimly earnest Luther advises his son that he’s “just a pawn in a bigger game” and that he must “stand up against a cabal of phony politicians” who “can’t silence the truth.” How the protagonist, named for the founder of the Protestant Reformation, is the son of a Catholic priest, is never explained in the film. After Father Luther is executed by government agents, his evangelical son goes to his church, takes communion, enlists the help of one of the younger priests in his father’s parish and begins carrying a rosary.

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Sarah Palin rips off an old chain email

by David Atkins

If you followed CPAC, you probably know that Sarah Palin dishonored Thedore Geisel’s memory by making up an inane Dr. Seuss rhyme insulting liberals. Except she didn’t. She plagiarized it from a chain email?

Many have already pointed out the fact that Dr. Seuss probably wouldn’t be too pleased with the idea of his work being used by an ultraconservative nitwit like Palin. But there’s another reason I decided to highlight this. It turns out that as “clever” as this little limerick was, it wasn’t even original! This was in fact, from a chain e-mail (which Palin modified around the edges) that’s been floating around since as far back as 2010:

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this speaker, Nan ,
I do not like this ‘YES WE CAN’.
I do not like this spending spree,
I’m smart, I know that nothing’s free,
I do not like your smug replies, when I complain about your lies.
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it. nope, nope, nope!

Of course, none of this should be surprising in the least when you think about it. After all, Republicans have relied on chain e-mails to formulate policies as far back as the early 90s.

Remember: this is the movement that Michelle Bachmann called “intellectual.”

I feel like I shouldn’t even waste space on these people, but it’s important to remember that Ms. Bachmann once led the GOP field for President, and Sarah Palin could easily have become Vice-President of the United States.

Yes, these people are jokes and buffoons who don’t deserve attention. But they’re what the Party that controls the House of Representatives is made up. So it’s not that much of a joke after all.

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The jawdropping, stunning, breathtaking chutzpah of Michele Bachmann

Via RightWing Watch:

Michele Bachmann told CPAC attendees today that the conservative movement must fight back because it is “at its core is an intellectual movement” based “on the greatest ideas that have ever been conceived in the mind of man.”​

So true. I think this illustrates the point very well:

Speaking with Family Research Council head Tony Perkins yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann warned that President Obama is “threatening Israel,” and by doing so is fulfilling biblical prophecies and bringing about the End Times. The Minnesota congresswoman told Perkins that Obama is pressuring Israel to “give up its land to terrorists” allied with Al Qaeda, which will lead to a “final war, destroying and reducing to rubble Israel.”

“That’s in the natural, I just believe that as believers in Jesus Christ who see the authority of scripture, I believe that the Lord and his strong right arm will have Israel’s back and will be her protector,” Bachmann said. “The question is, will we as the United States cooperate in standing with Israel and blessing Israel, or will we join those nations that come against her? We are definitely on the wrong side. It is jaw dropping, it is stunning, it’s breathtaking.”

And then she lectured Jews for selling out Israel:

Bachmann also skewered the Jewish community in the US for its wide support for Obama. She said that Obama “was helped enormously by the Jewish community,” who she says care more about supporting Obama than Israel:

The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, forty-eight Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the Democrat [sic] senators in the US Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran. This is clearly against Israel’s best interest. What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who it appears have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel.

I’m sure that American Jews are thrilled to be lectured by Michele Bachman about how to properly support Israel.

Oy veh …

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Handling their “guns”

by digby

Oh lord:

Nothing new under the sun.

Very young guys making these decisions …

by digby

Why shouldn’t they have to at least pay for the privilege?

The US Army’s use of Metallica’s oeuvre as a tool in its interrogations in Iraq is well documented, but it opted for something a little more esoteric in Guantanamo Bay, according to one Canadian industrial metal band.

“We heard through a reliable grapevine that our music was being used in Guantanamo Bay prison camps to musically stun or torture people,” founder cEvin Key told the Phoenix New Times. “We heard that our music was used on at least four occasions.”

While Metallica politely asked the US military to stop using their music for the sleep deprivation of detainees, Skinny Puppy took it one step further.

“So we thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the US government for musical services,” Key added. “Thus the concept of the [band’s new] record title, Weapons.”

Despite the band’s aggressive sound, they said they had never envisioned their music being used in such a way.

Asked how he felt about their songs allegedly being used in the detention camp, Key replied: “Not too good. We never supported those types of scenarios. … Because we make unsettling music, we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn’t sit right with us.”

It shouldn’t … (And they’re not the first to object.)

But music is used widely in the war zone too — to pump up the soldiers and demoralize the enemy. And weirdly, it’s often the same music they use to torture prisoners. I’m reminded of this article from 2004:

As tanks geared up to trample Fallujah and American troops started circling the city, special operations officers rifled through their CD cases, searching for a sound track to spur the assault.

What would irk Iraqi insurgents more: Barking dogs or bluegrass? Screaming babies or shrieking feedback?

Heavy metal. The Army’s latest weapon.

AC/DC. Loud. Louder!

Let’s roll.

I won’t take no prisoners, won’t spare no lives

Nobody’s putting up a fight

I got my bell, I’m gonna take you to hell

I’m gonna get you . . .

While the tanks flattened Fallujah this month, Hell’s Bells bombarded the town. Speakers as big as footlockers blared from Humvees’ gun turrets. Boom boxes blasted off soldiers’ backpacks. As the troops stormed closer, the music got louder. The song changed; the message remained the same.

I’m gonna take you down – down, down, down

So don’t you fool around

I’m gonna pull it, pull it, pull the trigger

Shoot to thrill, play to kill . . .

Louder. Turn it up. LOUDER!

Never mind that Iraqis didn’t understand the words.

“It’s not the music so much as the sound,” said Ben Abel, spokesman for the Army’s psychological operations command at Fort Bragg, N.C. “It’s like throwing a smoke bomb. The aim is to disorient and confuse the enemy to gain a tactical advantage.”

I’m like evil, I get under your skin

Just like a bomb that’s ready to blow

‘Cause I’m illegal, I got everything

That all you women might need to know

Hour after hour. For days on end.

“If you can bother the enemy through the night, it degrades their ability to fight,” Abel explained. “Western music is not the Iraqis’ thing. So our guys have been getting really creative in finding sounds they think would make the enemy upset.

“These harassment missions work especially well in urban settings like Fallujah,” he said. “The sounds just keep reverberating off the walls.”
[…]
Kuehl teaches information operations at Fort McNair’s National Defense University in Washington, D.C. His classes are part of the Army’s psychological operations, or PSYOPS, programs. He shows soldiers how to exploit information to gain power, how to get inside the enemy’s head, how mental manipulation helps win wars.

“Almost anything you do that demonstrates your omnipotence or lack of fear helps break the enemy down,” Kuehl said. “You have to understand your target audience, what makes them tick. You have to know that the same message could be received differently by different audiences.”

Sometimes that’s good. Heavy metal that tortures Iraqis’ ears also can help homesick Americans. For a 19-year-old Marine who has been coiled in a tent for weeks, ready to strike, Metallica’s Enter Sandman might be more inspiring than any officer’s pep talk.

Dreams of war, dreams of liars

Dreams of dragon’s fire

and of things that will bite

Sleep with one eye open

Gripping your pillow tight . . .

“Our soldiers like this music,” Kuehl said. “So that’s what they’re going to blast.”

Sometimes, though, the songs might have an unintended effect. They might motivate the enemy instead of upsetting him.

You have to be sure, Kuehl said, that you know whose ears you’re assaulting.

We are the world
[…]
“With the increasing globalization of the world, we know that some Iraqis do listen to American music, even heavy metal, on the Internet, the radio and TV,” Kuehl said. “Even during the height of the Taliban, they could get Western music or videos.”

Although some insurgents might have been reeling in horror at the Metallica attacks, or abandoning their fortresses to fight the frightful noise, others might have been fist-pumping at the familiar riffs, getting just as revved up as the Americans.

Hush little baby, don’t say a word

Never mind that noise you heard

It’s just the beasts under your bed

In your closet, in your head . . .

Military experts agree about the historic use of music to pump up the troops. But stories differ about the origins of its use as a weapon.

In December 1989, while Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was holed up in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City, U.S. soldiers shot heavy metal music at his compound ’round the clock. Some say the songs were set off to muffle negotiations between the general and his adversaries – a “music barrier” against eavesdropping reporters.

Others say the music was played to perk up the Marines. That it annoyed the general was at first a bonus. Then a breakthrough.

“I always heard that some soldier got tired of listening to the same stuff, so he popped in an AC/DC tape and turned it up loud,” said Abel, the Army spokesman at Fort Bragg. “Then Noriega commented that the rock ‘n’ roll was bothering him. Once the guys found that out, they cranked it up even more.”

Led Zeppelin. Jimi Hendrix. “Anything weird or kind of strange,” Abel said. “Howling laughter. Cackling cries.”

Aaah aaah aaaaah ah! Aaah aaah aaaaah ah!

Come We come from the land of the ice and snow,

From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.

The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands . . .

“Since the Noriega incident, you’ve been seeing an increased use of loudspeakers,” Abel said. “The Army has invested a lot of money into getting speakers that are smaller and more durable, so the men can carry them on their backs.”

Under pressure, Abel estimated that 30 loudspeakers swooped into Fallujah this month – bolted to gun turrets, strapped to soldiers. Speakers on the Humvees can pump Metallica’s sledgehammer riffs across miles, he said.

Exit, light

Enter, night

Take my hand

We’re off to never-never land . . .

The Army doesn’t issue an official list of songs to play during an attack, Abel said. “These guys have their own mini disc players, with their own music, plus hundreds of downloaded sounds. It’s kind of a personal preference how they choose the songs,” he said.

“We’ve got very young guys making these decisions.”

That’s reassuring, don’t you think?

It’s on him

by digby

Uhm:

The more Pope Francis strives to seem like a regular guy, the more he is praised and beloved as a revolutionary. But is it dangerous for the church to put so much weight on one man?

The last I heard, the church puts so much weight on the Pope that it even developed a Doctrine of Infallibility. They’ve been putting a whole lot of weight on the pope for a couple of thousand years:

The doctrine of the Primacy of the Roman Bishops, like other Church teachings and institutions, has gone through a development. Thus the establishment of the Primacy recorded in the Gospels has gradually been more clearly recognised and its implications developed. Clear indications of the consciousness of the Primacy of the Roman bishops, and of the recognition of the Primacy by the other churches appear at the end of the 1st century. L. Ott

Pope St. Clement of Rome, c. 99, stated in a letter to the Corinthians: “Indeed you will give joy and gladness to us, if having become obedient to what we have written through the Holy Spirit, you will cut out the unlawful application of your zeal according to the exhortation which we have made in this epistle concerning peace and union” (Denziger §41, emphasis added).

St. Clement of Alexandria wrote on the primacy of Peter c. 200: “…the blessed Peter, the chosen, the pre-eminent, the first among the disciples, for whom alone with Himself the Savior paid the tribute”… (Jurgens §436). 

The existence of an ecclesiastical hierarchy is emphasized by St. Stephan I, 251, in a letter to the bishop of Antioch: “Therefore did not that famous defender of the Gospel [Novatian] know that there ought to be one bishop in the Catholic Church [of the city of Rome]? It did not lie hidden from him”… (Denziger §45).

St. Julius I, in 341 wrote to the Antiochenes: “Or do you not know that it is the custom to write to us first, and that here what is just is decided?” (Denziger §57a, emphasis added).

Catholicism holds that an understanding among the apostles was written down in what became the scriptures, and rapidly became the living custom of the Church, and that from there, a clearer theology could unfold. 

St. Siricius wrote to Himerius in 385: “To your inquiry we do not deny a legal reply, because we, upon whom greater zeal for the Christian religion is incumbent than upon the whole body, out of consideration for our office do not have the liberty to dissimulate, nor to remain silent. We carry the weight of all who are burdened; nay rather the blessed apostle PETER bears these in us, who, as we trust, protects us in all matters of his administration, and guards his heirs” (Denziger §87, emphasis in original).

Many of the Church Fathers spoke of ecumenical councils and the Bishop of Rome as possessing a reliable authority to teach the content of scripture and tradition, albeit without a divine guarantee of protection from error.

I’m pretty sure the church knows what it wants with the whole pope thing. They’ve been at it for quite a long while.

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Prosecutors balk at being told they have to be honest

by digby

Radley Balko has posted a piece about the courts starting to make note of the fact that many prosecutors are crooked, incompetent, and/or dishonest. He quotes a South Carolina Supreme Court justice:

“The court will no longer overlook unethical conduct, such as witness tampering, selective and retaliatory prosecutions, perjury and suppression of evidence. You better follow the rules or we are coming after you and will make an example. The pendulum has been swinging in the wrong direction for too long and now it’s going in the other direction. Your bar licenses will be in jeopardy. We will take your license.”

Apparently, the prosecutors don’t care for this sort of talk. Balko writes:

You’d think that there’s little here with which a conscientious prosecutor could quarrel. At most, a prosecutor might argue that Beatty exaggerated the extent of misconduct in South Carolina. (I don’t know if that’s true, only that that’s a conceivable response.) But that prosecutors shouldn’t suborn perjury, shouldn’t retaliate against political opponents, shouldn’t suppress evidence, and that those who do should be disciplined — these don’t seem like controversial things to say. If most prosecutors are following the rules, you’d think they’d have little to fear, and in fact would want their rogue colleagues identified and sanctioned.

The state’s prosecutors didn’t see that way.

No, they didn’t.

[The main prosecutor singled out in the judges comments] accused him of bias and sent a letter asking him to recuse himself from criminal cases that come out of her district. In one sense, Wilson is unquestionably correct. Beatty is biased. He’s clearly biased against prosecutors who commit misconduct. But that’s a bias you probably want in a judge, particularly one that sits on a state supreme court. It’s also a bias that isn’t nearly common enough in judges. (Not only do most judges not name misbehaving prosecutors in public, they won’t even name them in court opinions.)

Other prosecutors around the state jumped on, and now at least 13 of the head prosecutors in the state’s 16 judicial districts, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are asking for Beatty’s to be recused from criminal cases. This would presumably end his career as a state supreme court justice.

They are saying that if you think prosecutors should be honest you are biased against prosecutors. Which may actually be true, since so many of them are dishonest.

This is our justice system in 2014.

Read the whole thing. We have a serious problem with our justice system. And I doubt if anyone cares. After all, in America, honesty is for chumps.

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So much for the GOP’s youth outreach

by digby

Gollowing up on David’s post below, I think this is just fascinating. Dave Weigel reports from the Rand Paul rally — er, CPAC, on these fault lines in the GOP:

[The]conference also skews libertarian, more and more every year since Ron Paul ran for president (2008) and Rand Paul went to the U.S. Senate (2010). Large-print placards around the conference center warn attendees not to distribute “campaign material.” Stretch your legs and you’ll see a half-dozen students wearing STAND WITH RAND T-shirts, bright red, decorated with silhouettes of the Brillo-haired Kentuckian.

In that same 2013 poll, CPAC-ers were asked whether their “most important goal” in politics was to “promote individual freedom” or to “secure and guarantee American safety at home and abroad.” Seventy-seven percent chose liberty. Eight percent, basically a rounding error, pushed the hawk button.

And now, Russia was starting a small war. Conservatives had been hating the Russians long before they had been Standing With Rand. All day Thursday, the thousands who packed into CPAC’s main ballroom heard their movement’s icons cry out against isolationism. They’d known foreign adventurism and intervention as Obama policies, blights on both parties, not part of the Republican Party they were rebuilding. They were being tested, and by people who claimed to know much more about how the party should defend America.

“Can you just imagine Ronald Reagan dealing with Vladimir Putin?” asks onetime UN Ambassador John Bolton, one of the only representatives of the George W. Bush administration to show at CPAC. “Reagan called a strong defense budget the ‘vital margin of safety.’ We are losing that vital margin all around the world. … Putin has a growing defense budget and ours is shrinking.”

If you’re Standing With Rand, that’s never worried you. The senator had supported the forced cuts of sequestration, encouraging his colleagues to “jettison some of the crap” in the defense budget and live with lower spending levels. If you’re, say, a 21-year-old CPAC attendee, you were born after the Soviet Union dissolved. You were 8 years old on Sept. 11, and maybe 10 for the start of the war in Iraq. You’ve never been a hawk.

And at CPAC, you’re seeing the hawks sprint back into the spotlight. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio uses his Thursday speech to rally conservatives in a global fight against “totalitarianism.” Afterward, he tells the New York Times that “there are forces within our party, there have always been in American politics, that basically say, ‘Who cares what happens everywhere else? Just mind our own business.’”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ventures from the main conference to an alternative all-day meeting of hawks—itself, a sign of how much ground has been lost to the libertarians—and explains how he differs with Paul. Sure, the Kentucky senator was right about Syria, but the hawks were right about Iran.

“When Iran describes Israel as the Little Satan,” he says, “and America as the Great Satan, we have every interest to make sure they don’t acquire the weaponry to kill millions of Americans.”

Cruz and 42 other Republican senators had signed on to new sanctions against Iran. Paul had not.

Oh my. What a conundrum. These baby libertarian Republicans who care so much about the freedom to not pay taxes and carry a gun don’t seem to have groked what the Republican Party really is. Paul is, literally, a party of one.

On Friday, Paul arrived at CPAC for a full day of movement building. Around noon, he was scheduled to talk to Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, so his advance team encourages Stand With Randers to get Paul in full view of the camera. Hassan Sheikh, 26, a law student who runs Nebraska’s branch of Young Americans for Liberty, talks about Ukraine while the shot is being blocked.

“We’ve got to make sure we’re not goading ourselves into yet another expensive adventure in a foreign country,” he says, wearing a Stand With Rand shirt over a white shirt and tie. “Our allies in Europe and Asia don’t need us the way they used to. It’s absolutely preposterous that we have more than 440 military bases all across the world. That’s just an expense that taxpayers don’t need.”

Paul arrives, talks, and leaves, so he can be guided to a crowded book signing in CPAC’s exhibit hall. Aaron and Elizabeth Littlefield, aged 21 and 18 and newly married, come away with valuable copies of Paul’s Government Bullies. They didn’t follow politics when the war in Iraq began; they have only really paid attention to the Obama foreign policy. And they don’t like it.

“Obama’s foreign policy has shown the United States to be weak—that we don’t want to do anything,” says Elizabeth. “Countries don’t take our red lines seriously. We are starting to lose our standing.”

“Ron Paul was a staunch isolationist,” says Aaron, “whereas Rand Paul does believe we live in an international community. That’s one of the big differences between supporters of Ron and Rand.”

How confusing. Weigel then interviews Rand Paul’s former staffer “the Southern Avenger” who explains that conservatives don’t understand that it’s wrong to be hostile to Russia because they are human beings just like us. (Unlike say, African Americans …)

Rand’s big speech was received with wild applause — but the only foreign policy question he addresses is the use of drones to kill Americans, which his followers don’t like.

Actually they don’t know what to think. They have, as Weigel points out, come of age during the Iraq war, which nobody likes now, and the Obama administration which they loathe with every fiber of their being. They are unacquainted with the GOP’s traditional love for their own hatred of enemies abroad.

But they’re coming around:

“I was in middle school when the Iraq war started,” he says. “I didn’t think much of it. As I got older, I figured going over there wasn’t the best idea.”

“It’s kind of indicative of this entire administration,” he says. “Foreign policy’s been put on the back burner. When Romney got criticized for bringing up Russia, I think that was a key moment.”

It’s in the DNA.

I know that people like to think that Rand Paul can bring in a new generation with his libertarian ideas. And maybe a little re-brand will be helpful in getting some of the younger white guys to get ininvolved with a party that is majority geriatric. (They have plenty in common, after all — mutual loathing of doing anything for people who don’t look like them and a belief that the country should be run only by rich white guys.) But a hawkish foreign policy is a major organizing principle on the American right and has been since WWII. I doubt it’s going to change. It’s certainly possible that it could change. But let’s just say that it’s a long shot. Young white, conservative guys, as a group, tend to like wars. They just need one of their own.

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A party in tatters

by David Atkins

Let’s put three stories side by side.

First, Rand Paul crushed the straw poll at CPAC:

Though hot off the stove from his now-famous 13-hour filibuster, Rand Paul just narrowly edged Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in 2013. This year, he managed to bring in 31 percent of the 2014 vote, followed distantly by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, with 11 percent. Ben Carson clocked in at No. 3 with 9 percent.
It’s the makings of a hands-off-government political dynasty: Ron Paul has twice won the CPAC poll in years past. But the younger Paul, who’s emerged as a bona fide conservative star in his own right, offers what is potentially a more realistic tie to the party’s establishment base.

Second, the more libertarian Paul faction loses control of the Iowa GOP:

The leader of the Republican Party of Iowa announced without explanation today that he will resign later this month.

Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker will step down “effective upon election of a new state chairman” on March 29.

The news comes on the same day that the influence on the Iowa GOP from the “liberty” faction, of which Spiker was a part, was significantly diminished as mainstream Republicans turned out in force to reclaim dominance.

The majority of GOP state convention delegates elected today are pro-Branstad Republicans, who showed up in large numbers to at-times tedious and lengthy county conventions typically frequented by only the most diehard activists.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s re-election campaign led a big push to get more Republicans to turn out to the neighborhood and county meetings where the people who influence party business are elected. It was a reaction to the very well organized takeover by the liberty faction two years ago.

Third, establishment Republicans are even more aggressively trying to destroy embarrassing insurgents in their own base than before:

This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to undermine their credibility. The goal is to deny them any Senate primary victories, cut into their fund-raising and diminish them as a future force in Republican politics.

“I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”

Elevating the nasty intramural brawl to a new level, Mr. McConnell on Friday began airing a radio ad in Kentucky that attacked both Matt Bevin, the businessman challenging him in the Republican primary, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the groups trying to oust Mr. McConnell and a political action committee that has been a particular thorn in his side.

Mr. McConnell’s ad, his first singling out the Senate Conservatives Fund, raises a criticism that Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republicans have leveled at the activists — that they are fund-raising and business enterprises more than political operations. The ad refers to unnamed news media reports that assert that the PAC “solicits money under the guise of advocating for conservative principles but then spends it on a $1.4 million luxury townhouse with a wine cellar and hot tub in Washington, D.C.”

This is not the sign of a party and a movement on the rise. This is rats on a sinking ship.

I know it may not feel that way at times. But these guys are in trouble and they know it. The only things keeping them afloat are a coalition of aging voters, Koch money, and temporarily gerrymandered districts.

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