Please join me in an all-out effort to keep Rush Limbaugh from voting in the 2008 election. But more on that later.

Our favorite right-wing nut job, Richard Viguerie, is up on his soapbox again. This time he’s calling on his fellow conservative Goldwater worshipers to call on the Republican Party to open up its convention next September in hopes that some party savior will materialize. Here’s Viguerie dreaming out loud:

The discombobulated state of the Republican presidential campaign means that it is still possible for someone to jump into the race. Such a candidate could serve as a kingmaker at the Republican convention in September, or even – yes, it’s possible – could become the party’s nominee.

Viguerie then goes on to critique the current batch of GOP candidates. Guess what? He finds that none of them is Ronald Reagan:

• McCain has Reagan’s toughness, is a Vietnam War hero, supports a strong military, and opposes pork-barrel spending, but sides with liberals on immigration, freedom of speech, taxes, environmental extremism, and other important issues.
• Huckabee is a Reagan-style populist and a conservative on social issues, but is sympathetic to Goreism, and he fought conservatives on taxes, spending, immigration, and other issues when he was governor.
• Romney has adopted a mostly-Reaganite platform, but he is suspect because he converted to conservatism only after serving as governor, and, besides, many conservatives see him as a probable loser in November.
• Ron Paul is the real straight-talker in the race, the one who stays truest to the libertarian beliefs that are, as Reagan said, “the heart of conservatism.” He is the one candidate who doesn’t confuse a strong defense with the failed policy of nation-building. But most conservatives want a powerful U.S. presence in world affairs and will never support Paul’s defense and foreign policy. In any event, Paul’s chance of getting elected, or even nominated, is infinitesimal.

But do you want to know how really bad it is? Viguerie lays it out like the voice of doom:

Even Rush Limbaugh has raised the possibility that he may not support the Republican nominee this year. The nomination of McCain or Huckabee, he said, would destroy the party as we know it.

Gasp! The Bloviator not support the GOP nominee? Man, things really do look bleak. Of course, they don’t look much brighter when Viguerie goes down his short list of possible party saviors: Former Virginia Gov. and Sen. George Allen, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Sen. Jim DeMint or Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. That’s it? That’s the best you can do Richard?

Well, I think readers of Pensito Review could help out in Viguerie’s time of need by making some recommendations. Viguerie asks for them. He even provides an e-mail address to send them to: RAV@ConservativesBetrayed.com.

What about a Tom DeLay or Larry Craig? Not conservative enough? I hear David Duke’s out on the lecture circuit. But don’t let me tell you who to suggest. Let’s all e-mail Viguerie and do our part to keep Rush Limbaugh away from the polls.

There is nothing as fragile and elusive in politics as charisma. It has been sorely lacking of late. George Bush doesn’t have it, and neither did John Kerry or Al Gore. There is no question that Barack Obama has it, and that he could be in the same charismatic league as Bill Clinton and (the much lower wattage of) Ronald Reagan.
The Swiftboating of John Kerry in 2004 was nothing compared with what the rightwing did to the Clintons in the 1990s — and will pale in comparison with what they have in store for Barack Obama.
But in the knife fight that is today’s political way of war, when opponents are attacked not on their weaknesses but on their strengths, no personal attribute is easier to destroy than charisma.

If Obama is the Democratic nominee, I believe Republican political tacticians — whoever the next Karl Roves turn out to be — will have his charisma sliced to ribbons within a week or two.

The question is, without his charisma, who is Barack Obama? I don’t know, and, dear reader, neither do you. Compared with the other candidates in the race, he has barely been vetted. His opponent in his run for the Senate in Illinois in 2004 was Alan Keyes, who had no money and barely put up a fight.

I have no doubt Barack Obama is a smart and decent man who’d make a fine president. But then John Kerry and Al Gore were fine and decent men, too. Sans charisma, my fear is, Barack Obama is like them — an upright, honorable fellow whom the GOP can easily mow down. (Yes, I know they cheated at the ballot boxes too, but vote rigging only works if the margins are slim. We need a blow-out this year.)

Clinton may be thin on charisma, but she is as much a known quantity as we’ve had from any candidate in memory who was not an incumbent. If she is the nominee, most of what the GOP will have to throw at her will have already been vetted — and either has been proven false or accurately could be labeled “old news.”

I am generally neutral on the Clintons. I think the Clinton administration was a hallmark in good governance among administrations of the recent past (which is not really saying a lot) and that America made net gains during their eight years in office. On the other hand, I will never forgive Bill Clinton for signing the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 at the same time he was conducting an extramarital affair.

But having read extensively on the Republicans’ behind-the-scenes anti-Clinton campaigns in the 1990s, the record is clear: Most of what people seem not to like about Hillary Clinton is based on lies and distortions that had their genesis in the Arkansas Project and were fed to the public by the likes of Barbara Olson, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and David Brock — all of whom were nobodies before becoming professional Clinton-haters in the 1990s.

We know now what liars the Republican blond squad turned out to be, and, in 2002, David Brock published a full mea culpa on his hatchet jobs against Hillary Clinton and others, titled “Blinded by the Right.” He has come out of the rightwing darkness and is using his considerable intellect as a force for good instead of evil, as the brains behind Media Matters for America.

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