Scott Spiegel

10. Andrew Cuomo – Yes, really.  As I wrote earlier this year, “When Democrats cut spending and refuse to raise taxes, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has—i.e. when they abandon their party’s core philosophy and govern like conservatives—they enjoy skyrocketing popularity ratings and set their constituents on a path to financial solvency.”  Cuomo’s late-career, probably temporary, but remarkable conversion followed the example set by New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who also stood up to public sector unions, slashed spending, and held down taxes.

9. Darrell Issa – California Representative Darrell Issa held hearings this summer on the Justice Department’s botched, scandalous Operation Fast and Furious gun-trafficking sting operation, including gripping testimony from ATF officials from Phoenix and Mexico.  Recently Attorney General Eric Holder was forced to admit that Fast and Furious was “flawed in its concept and flawed in its execution”—kind of like his boss’s presidency.  Along with the Treasury Department’s pursuit of the administration’s tainted $535 million loan to solar energy company Solyndra, Issa’s persistent work erased the laughable notion that the corrupt Obama tenure has remained blissfully transgression-free.

8. Peter King – New York Representative Peter King bucked controversy by holding hearings on whether Muslim Americans were becoming radicalized and linking with terrorist groups to plot attacks on home soil.  From my column “Liberals’ Game of Cat-and-Muslim”: “[King] held a hearing on whether al-Qaeda is trying to recruit young Muslims in the U.S. and whether Muslim Americans are sufficiently cooperating with federal officials…  [H]undreds of willfully naïve, politically correct New Yorkers gathered in Times Square, steps from where [Faisal] Shahzad tried to kill hundreds of New Yorkers, to protest King’s hearing as racist and Islamophobic.”

7. Mitch Daniels – Second-term Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels navigated such juvenile obstructions as Democratic legislators walking out to protest Republicans’ agenda, and ultimately got the bulk of long-stalled GOP legislation passed in the state.  Daniels wowed CPAC with a speech on fiscal austerity that included such zingers as “Our morbidly obese federal government needs, not just behavior modification, but bariatric surgery” and his reference to federal debt as “the new red menace.”  One of the only feasible GOP presidential candidates both conservative and articulate, Daniels declined to run this year despite widespread pressure to do so.

6. Pat Toomey – The deficit reduction supercommittee boasted only one reliable fiscal conservative: Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.  All five other GOP members voted for the boneheaded budget bill in August that unnecessarily raised the debt ceiling.  Without Toomey, Republican supercommittee members might have caved to Democratic pressure to raise tax rates on high-income earners.  The committee failed—which, given Democratic intransigence, is the best outcome we could have hoped for.  Toomey’s first year in office after dispensing with Joe Sestak in hostile blue-state territory in the 2010 midterms was a resounding success.

5. Rick Perry – Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry held the distinction of leading the state that oversaw 40% of all new U.S. jobs created since the recovery began, triple the number of the next-closest competitor New York, with over 1 million added since he took office.  Texas’s jobs boom resulted not just from rising oil prices—private sector industries such as construction, hospitality, and professional services also saw growth—but also Perry’s understanding of the hindrance excessive regulation places on incentives to invest and hire.  Perry offered a more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, thus helping push the GOP front-runner to the right.

4. Herman Cain – Businessman, radio host, rocket scientist, and presidential candidate Herman Cain spent the year touting his 9-9-9 flat tax plan, which would gut the federal tax code and replace it with a 9% federal income tax, 9% corporate tax, and 9% national sales tax.  Rick Perry produced a copycat plan, and Newt Gingrich revived his old plan, and suddenly the nation began seriously debating the merits of flat tax plans for the first time since Steve Forbes’ last run.  And did you know that, back in the day, as president-elect of the National Restaurant Association, Cain was one of the most vocal critics of Hillarycare?

3. Ann Coulter – The left-wing, Obama-endorsed Occupy Wall Street movement that seeped into the national consciousness like a whiff of raw sewage had no concrete antagonists, just the sorry spectacle of a bunch of hippy retreads and trust fund brats battling hypothermia and body lice in tent cities around the country.  Ann Coulter was the conservative who foretold it best, in her bestseller Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.  From the book jacket: “The Democratic Party activates mobs, depends on mobs, coddles mobs, publicizes and celebrates mobs—it is the mob.”

2. Scott Walker – From “Wisconsin’s Government Cheese Revolution”: “Governor Scott Walker… proposed a bill that would… prevent [public sector] unions from forcing members to pay dues, require annual secret ballots on whether to remain unionized, and ask members to contribute a pittance toward their lavish pensions and health care plans.”  Walker’s courage in standing his ground in the face of protestors calling him Hitler and Hosni Mubarak, and Democratic legislators fleeing the state to avoid voting on the bill, presaged the guts that mayors around the country didn’t have in dealing with Occupy Wall Street.

1. Michele Bachmann – Minnesota Representative and Tea Party leader Bachmann embodied the best combination of conservative/articulate out of all the 2012 GOP presidential nominees; it’s inexplicable that she isn’t doing better in the polls.  From my column “CDC Prepares for Outbreak of Bachmann Derangement Syndrome”: “Bachmann has labeled herself a ‘constitutional conservative’—precisely the correct label to use in this bizarre era of pay czars, light bulb bans, and trillion-dollar deficits…  Bachmann [took] leadership roles on… repealing [Dodd-Frank] and replacing ObamaCare with free market reforms.”  Here’s hoping she can at least snag the VP slot.

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FiveThirtyEight whiz Nate Silver recently asked whether Chris Christie is the anti-Romney or the anti-Perry.

The answer is yes.

Christie is the anti-Romney, because he genuinely and unapologetically embraces and enacts conservative policies, at least on fiscal matters—in particular entitlement reform, the most important policy realm our nation currently faces.

Critics charge that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as global warming and gun control.  Yet Rick Perry critics complain that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as immigration and the HPV vaccine, and most people wouldn’t call Perry a liberal.

Christie is the anti-Perry, because he knows how to identify, articulate, and justify his positions, using fiery, uncompromising rhetoric that doesn’t sound rehearsed, and isn’t afraid to say things that tick off hallowed interest groups.

Critics charge that he’s arrogant, has a temper, and insults people.  Yet his style has proven wildly popular with voters who are fed up with politicians who can’t or won’t stand up to bullying public employee unions that are bankrupting the nation’s most populous states.

If Mitt Romney held more consistently conservative positions on the major issues of the day, he’d be able to articulate them to voters.  But he doesn’t.

If Rick Perry were more articulate and had a better understanding of the issues, his positions would be conservative enough for most Republicans.  But he isn’t.

The other candidates still in the running all have their weaknesses, with most embodying one of the fatal flaws represented by frontrunners Romney and Perry.

Ron Paul is blisteringly conservative on economic issues but crazily isolationist on foreign policy, to the extent that he thinks Iran should be allowed to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the U.S., and to the degree that he approvingly quotes Osama bin Laden’s reasons for attacking us on 9/11.  Newt Gingrich led the Republican Revolution of 1995 and enacted welfare reform, but is prone to making insane statements such as claiming that repealing ObamaCare involves as much abridgment of people’s liberty as enacting it.

Michele Bachmann is a solid conservative, but is prone to gaffes and sloppy slips of the tongue such as her mindboggling insinuation that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation.  Herman Cain is a successful former businessman with sensible ideas about the economy but a stunning, blissful ignorance about foreign policy.

Michael Barone correctly notes that just about the only remaining feasible Republican presidential candidates who both are conservative enough and know how to speak without sounding like idiots are Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie.  Daniels is concerned about his family’s privacy and has decided not to run; Ryan is young, early on in his career, and clearly has no intention of running in 2012.

That leaves Christie, who has certainly denied numerous times that he is running, but whose supporters and staffers seem to be leaking rumors that he may change his mind.  Christie has spent the past few months jetting around the country speaking at high-profile Republican fundraisers, giving speeches at prominent venues such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and meeting with potential donors.

Elsewhere I have written at length about why we should encourage Christie in particular to run, including the fact that Republican candidates for governor did well in 2010 in part by emulating his substance and style; that he knows how to take the fight to his opponents; that his popularity among Republican voters is underreported; and that his electability among independents and Democrats is underappreciated.

Christie’s not perfect.  But where is the glaring RomneyCare albatross–whose defense Romney cheekily deleted from the paperback version of his book No Apology—in Christie’s past that will come back to haunt him in the general election, when voters are focused perhaps foremost on repealing ObamaCare?

Christie’s not perfect.  But where are the embarrassing misstatements—like Perry’s lame, botched attack on Romney’s flip-flopping in last week’s debate in Orlando—that lead us to fear Christie will flounder in debates with the supposedly golden-voiced Obama?

Contrast Christie, if you will, with the Republicans’ 2008 nominee, John McCain, who combined the worst aspects of Romney and Perry: liberal policies and inarticulateness.  Republicans should never again have to suffer the ignominy of a nominee who differs only a little bit from the Democratic candidate—or who can’t convincingly explain why he’s to the right of Barack Obama.

The conservative establishment prefers Romney to Perry because they believe him to be more electable.  Some commentators, such as columnist Sandy Rios, believe Republicans will break for Perry over Romney because people “prefer an honest hesitator over a slickster with all the answers.”

But why should Republicans have to choose between a conservative and someone who can talk?

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Maybe Michele Bachmann is reluctant to elaborate on her views on homosexuality with reporters because—gasp!—she doesn’t care.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, host Dick Gregory badgered Bachmann about comments she had made seven years ago on her interpretation of the Bible’s statements on homosexuality.

Since 2004, the country has radically evolved in its understanding and acceptance of homosexuality, including its approval of same-sex couples getting married and adopting.  Gay marriage is legal in six states plus D.C. and available to 11% of the country’s population.  Gay marriage was used as a wedge issue in many states in the 2004 Congressional elections, but in 2008 it was used as such primarily in the context of California’s Proposition 8.  Prominent Republicans who now support same-sex marriage include Dick Cheney, Laura and Barbara Bush, Cindy and Meghan McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, S. E. Cupp, Margaret Hoover, Ted Olsen, and Vaughn Walker.  Countless other prominent Republicans favor gay civil unions; most didn’t back in 2004.  Even Ann Coulter was recently appointed Honorary Chair of the Advisory Council for gay conservative group GOProud.

Bachmann’s views on gay issues have also presumably evolved since 2004, or else she would have racked up a lot more anti-gay statements since then.  All of the Bachmann homosexuality quotes the media have been broadcasting appear to have emanated from just two sources: a two-part March 2004 interview she gave on the local Minnesota radio program “Prophetic Views Behind The News” and a November 2004 address she delivered at the EdWatch National Education Conference.  That’s it.  If Bachmann had truly been waging an anti-gay jihad for the past seven years, liberals wouldn’t have had to dig up archives of obscure evangelical talk shows and one-off education conferences from George W. Bush’s first term to find recordings of self-incriminating statements.

Bachmann’s position on gay marriage roughly mirrors President Obama’s.  Like Republicans Rick Perry and Herman Cain, she prefers allowing states to implement gay marriage if they choose—a position even Obama has barely uttered his support for.  She favors a constitutional amendment defining marriage as opposite-sex, which Obama opposes—though she well knows that such an amendment has little chance of becoming law.

If Bachmann weren’t too polite to share it, her response to repeated questions on her views on homosexuality would be, “Oh, God… not again.  Really?”

Bachmann clearly cares first and foremost about federal spending and national defense.  She became a conservative rock star two years ago as the most prominent elected official to spearhead the nascent Tea Party movement, with its primary goal of stopping ObamaCare and runaway government spending.  She has voiced vociferous, well-informed support of Israel and our military missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran to stop the threat of Islamic terrorism to the U.S.  These are the things that keep her awake at night—not whether Ellen DeGeneres gets a marriage license instead of a domestic partnership.

On Meet the Press, Bachmann addressed Gregory’s questions on homosexuality by insisting that she is not one to “judge” anyone.  She affirmed that she would not use sexual orientation as a criterion in hiring for positions in her administration or for judgeships.  Why wasn’t that a good enough answer for Gregory, who continued to hound her on her theory of human sexuality?  What was she supposed to do—declare herself a True Blood fan and invite Gregory out for cosmos?  Why don’t reporters grill Obama about his opposition to gay marriage, bludgeoning him with the same boring questions and refusing to accept his self-protective platitudes on his eternally “evolving” stance?

Liberals call Bachmann a hypocrite and claim they object to her “double-talk” and dodging questions.  They declare that they would have more respect for her if she simply endorsed her past statements point-blank.  What if she doesn’t quite believe them anymore?  What if the issue isn’t as important to her, or wouldn’t be a legislative priority for her if she became president?  Bachmann repeatedly responded to Gregory’s questions by reminding him that she is running for the presidency of the United States.  If she believes gay marriage should be dealt with by the states, then why would a President Bachmann staring down a $14 trillion deficit and a hostile Middle East worry about Neil Patrick Harris’s love life?

Liberals aren’t upset about a Bachmann presidency because they fear she would roll back gay rights or slow the national tide of increasing acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage.  As with Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle, the left are using a few nutty, outdated statements to stop a genuine reformer and charismatic populist, whose views on social issues are probably evolving like everyone else’s, from getting into office.  Liberals can’t stand the fact that Bachmann might effect real change on causes that are anathema to them, such as slashing unsustainable entitlement spending and stopping the worldwide spread of Sharia.



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If there’s an 80% chance President Michele Bachmann would repeal ObamaCare, enact entitlement reform, and prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, I’m sold.

Whatever trivial misstatements she’s made in her political career, this three-term Minnesota Representative is the strongest nominee the GOP has seen so far this campaign season.

Fox News host Chris Wallace recently demonstrated his journalistic integrity and respect for women in politics by asking Bachmann, “Are you a flake?”

There’s more evidence that Barack Obama isn’t a capitalist than that Bachmann isn’t a serious candidate, though I don’t recall any journalist asking candidate Obama, “Are you a socialist?”  If this is how Fox treats Bachmann, one can only imagine how the mainstream media will treat her.

Fortunately, Bachmann appears quite capable of defending her record.

Unlike candidate Obama, Bachmann has a real work history, with actual responsibilities, including five years’ tenure as a tax attorney, and experience running two mental health clinics, a charter school, and a family farm.

Unlike Senator Obama, Bachmann productively used her time in Congress, taking leadership roles on allowing drilling in ANWR, repealing the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and replacing ObamaCare with free market reforms.

Bachmann has labeled herself a “constitutional conservative”—precisely the correct label to use in this bizarre era of pay czars, light bulb bans, and trillion-dollar deficits.

Bachmann is a more seasoned version of Sarah Palin and an excellent substitute for Palin fans who believe the former governor unelectable.  (And if depicting Bachmann staring off-camera is the best Saturday Night Live can do to mock her, the 2012 election is going to be no career-booster for Kristen Wiig.)

Bachmann may not have extensive foreign policy experience, but she’s clearly capable of fighting the United States’ gravest enemies, as evidenced by her having survived growing up in a Democratic household.

America’s favorite Tea Party hostess stands up to powerful RINOs in the House who refuse to get serious on spending.  She organized and chairs the vital Congressional Tea Party Caucus.

To top it all off, she’s electable, as evidenced by her recent dead heat showing with Mitt Romney in Iowa, her first-place finish in a national Zogby poll, and her winning performance in the New Hampshire GOP primary debate this month.

Naturally, liberals have temporarily recovered from their Sarah Palin hysteria and are developing a creeping case of Bachmann Derangement Syndrome.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, for example, branded Bachmann a conspiracy theorist for her claim that Obama wants Medicare to go broke so seniors will be forced to rely on ObamaCare.  Bachmann was in fact mistaken: She failed to note that Obama also wants all private insurers to go broke so the whole country will be forced to rely on ObamaCare.

Benen called Bachmann’s concern that federal voluntary “community service” might lead to mandatory service “obvious madness.”  Apparently Benen was unaware that the original version of the GIVE Act authorized a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service” to address “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented…” (p. 267 in a 275-page bill).  No mandatory service here—move along!  The Commission was eliminated from the bill after conservative uproar, but this incident highlights Democrats’ modus operandi for sneaking unpopular provisions into legislation: First they tuck something objectionable deep into a bill where few will read it; then Republicans find it and raise objections; and finally Democrats remove it, deny it was ever there, and scoff at Republicans for “fear-mongering.”

As another example, Washington Post “Fact Checker” and partisan hack Glenn Kessler derided Bachmann’s claim of $105 billion in implementation funds being “hidden” in the ObamaCare bill as “ridiculous,” giving it a maximum rating of “four Pinocchios” on his truthfulness scale.  In fact, former Appropriations Committee member Ernest Istook confirmed that the authors’ act of authorizing so many new programs and funding them in the same bill was highly unusual.  The legislation isn’t clear on what the money will be spent on, and Obama-appointed bureaucrats are unlikely to be held accountable for it.  Neither the Washington Post nor any other major news outlet reported on the $105 billion implementation sum—probably because, as Bachmann noted, it was broken into small pieces and scattered throughout the 2,000-page bill.  But because the provisions weren’t written in invisible ink, Kessler claimed Bachmann was lying through her teeth.

The liberal site Think Progress blasted Bachmann as being crassly calculating for observing that Democrats hope to transform American society into one that’s more dependent on government, thereby securing a permanent “power base.”  In liberals’ projection of their own vile behavior, Republicans preventing Democrats from buying votes via taxpayer-funded entitlement programs is somehow the equivalent of Republicans buying votes.  This is like saying that Republicans’ efforts to prevent Democratic voter fraud is Republican voter fraud.

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi claimed that on Hardball, Bachmann had demanded McCarthy-style investigations of Congress to determine which of our leaders are anti-American.  In fact, Bachmann was merely responding to an endless, tiresome line of questioning from host Chris Matthews, who had introduced the label ‘anti-American’ and was trying to get Bachmann to pin it on her colleagues.  Matthews whined, “How many Congresspeople… There’s 435… How many are anti-American?… How many people in the Congress… How many do you suspect?”  After fending off his badgering for several minutes, Bachmann finally replied, “You’d have to ask them, Chris,” and added, “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?”  Not exactly the Salem witch trials.

These are just a few threads in the tangled web of “conspiracy theories,” “lies,” and “gaffes” that supposedly disqualify Bachmann from office.

Bachmann may not be the perfect candidate—who is?—but she’s the best conservatives have among those currently in the race.  I’d rather have a president with 80% of the facts at her command than one who governs according to 100% discredited crackpot redistributionist economic theories.



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John King: Welcome to our 2012 Republican primary debate.  On stage are all the candidates who felt like showing up tonight.  Let’s skip the boring opening statements and have candidates introduce themselves.

Rick Santorum: I’m a former senator who nonetheless has experience making tough executive governing managerial ruling leadership decisions.

Michele Bachmann: I’m a businesswoman with 5 children and 23 foster children.

Newt Gingrich: Obama sucks.

Mitt Romney: I lost in 2008, but that won’t happen again, because Republicans are the party of “it’s his turn.”

Ron Paul: I am a senator who used to deliver babies and now champions liberty and libertarianism.

Tim Pawlenty: I’m a husband, father, neighbor, and lover.  Of America.

Herman Cain: I am not a politician and have no political experience.  I know pizza.

King: What would you do to create jobs?

Cain: Uncertainty is stalling this train that is our economy.  We need to lower taxes, which is like greasing the caboose, and then decrease interest rates, which is like putting the fuel in the tank of the train that is our economy.

King: Is it possible for the economy to grow at 5% a year?

Pawlenty: Our president is an anemic declinist who thinks we can’t have 5% growth like China or Brazil.

King: What are your views on Dodd-Frank?

Bachmann: I’m looking forward to answering that question.  But first… Guess what: I’m running for president!

King: What three steps would you take to repeal ObamaCare?

Bachmann: I introduced the first bill to kill ObamaCare and will not rest until it is dead and buried.  Take that to the bank and cash the check.

King: Governor Romney, how will you ever be elected, given that you passed ObamaCare in Massachusetts?

Romney: That’s not fair.  Massachusetts’ plan was different, because it abridged people’s liberties and introduced massive regulations on the state level, not the federal level.

Pawlenty: Obama said he looked to Massachusetts as a model for his plan.  [Nelson Muntz laugh and finger-pointing at Romney]  Ha-ha!

King: Speaker, should there be an individual mandate, as you have passionately argued hundreds of times in the past before it became unpopular?

Gingrich: In addition to the presidency, we also need more Senate seats.

Audience member: Do you support right-to-work laws?

Pawlenty: Yes, even though I and most of my family have been in unions most of our lives.

Gingrich: I hope New Hampshire adopts it.  Why would you want to be stupid like California when you could be smart like Texas?

King: Every time we go to or come back from a break, I’m going to ask a pointless random personal question.  Leno or Conan?

Santorum: Leno.  Conan is too edgy.

King: And we’re back.  Elvis or Johnny Cash?

Bachmann: Both.  I love “Christmas with Elvis.”

Audience member: What assistance should government give to private industry?

Paul: None, duh.

King: Stop applauding, audience.  We know you’re Republicans and love their answers, but you’re taking up too much time.  Mr. Cain, why did you support TARP?

Cain: I actually supported TARP before I opposed it.

King: “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol”?

Gingrich: “American Idol.”

King: BlackBerry or iPhone?

Paul: BlackBerry.

Audience member: How will you keep Medicare solvent forever?

Paul: It is not solvent, will never be solvent, and was never designed to be solvent.  That’s why we need to cut our military.

Pawlenty: I have a plan that’s better than Paul Ryan’s.  I’m not going to show it to you.

King: Speaker, why did you call Ryan’s plan “social engineering”?

Gingrich: I put my foot in my mouth.  But the question was too narrow and the answer was taken out of context.

Audience member: How do you feel about separation of church and state?

Pawlenty: It was designed to protect religious people from atheists.

Paul: Congress should make no law abridging the right to express your faith, especially if it’s Christian.

King: Deep dish or thin crust?

Cain: Deep dish.

King: Spicy or mild barbecue?

Romney: Spicy, of course.

Audience member: Gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire.  Would you interfere with states’ rights on the issue?

Bachmann: Marriage should be between a man and a woman, because children need a mother and a father.  I come from a broken home, and I was raised by a single mother, and I turned out great.

King: Should Congress pass a federal marriage amendment, or should states deal with it?

Cain: States.

Paul: Get government out of marriage.

Pawlenty: Amendment.

Romney: Amendment.

Gingrich: Amendment.

Santorum: Amendment.

Bachmann: Oh, are all the real candidates in favor of an amendment?  Well, let me jump in and say that I am too, but let me also remind you that I don’t favor trampling on states’ rights, even though I’m totally contradicting myself.

Audience member: What are your views on immigration?

Gingrich: We are not a heartless nation.  We can kick 20 million people out of the country without being cruel.

King: Coke or Pepsi?

Pawlenty: Coke.

Audience member: Should we get out of Afghanistan?

Romney: We should bring the troops home quickly, assuming the Afghan military can defend the country against the Taliban, which it obviously can’t.

Paul: I would get us out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan, because we have no national security interests there, or anywhere else in the world.

Pawlenty: That’s crazy.  I favor defending the nation against outside threats.  Hello, it’s called “Commander in Chief”?

Cain: To paraphrase my grandmother, Libya is a mess.

King: Who made the worse vice presidential pick in 2008—Obama or McCain?

Pawlenty: Biden is a horse’s ass.

Romney: I have bad blood with Palin, so I’m going to avoid the question and just reiterate that Obama sucks.

King: What have you learned in the past two hours?

Santorum: Nothing.  If I’m delusional enough to think I have a chance of winning, do you think I’m capable of absorbing new information about the candidates or my prospects?

Bachmann: I’ve learned about the goodness of the American people.

Romney: New Hampshire loves the future.

Cain: It’s all about the children and the grandchildren.

King: Good night.  God, I feel old.

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Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe, Dede Scozzafava… whoops—that’s the Huffington Post’s Top 10 Conservatives of 2009!

10. Hannah Giles, Conservative Activist and “Performing Artist” – Twenty-year-old Giles helped bust ACORN with her brilliantly direct scheme of walking right into their offices and asking their staff if they’d help her set up a prostitution ring with underage El Salvadoran girls, to which they responded by falling all over themselves to comply.  It’s so horrifying it’s like those classic psychology experiments in which researchers had no idea their subjects would actually carry out their instructions, like Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment.

9. Sarah Palin, Democratic Congressional Reelection Death Panelist – This summer Palin helped put Democrats’ health care “reform” initiative on indefinite life support by identifying the logical conclusion of their plans to expand health care coverage while slashing Medicare and not increasing the deficit—i.e., health care rationing, or “death panels.”  In addition to resigning in July and saving Alaskans millions by heading off costly and baseless ethics complaints against her, she released an autobiography that’s on track to become the best-selling political memoir ever.

8. Dick Cheney, Former Vice President and Current Presidential Superego – If there’s anything that can compensate for not having Dick Cheney as VP anymore, it’s getting to hear him expound on the pigheaded mistakes the new President is repeatedly making on foreign policy.  Cheney hammered Obama for promising to close Guantanamo Bay, for releasing the “torture” memos, for “dithering” over his decision on General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan, and for bringing self-confessed 9/11 masterminds to Manhattan for civilian trials.

7. Rick Santelli, CNBC Editor and Ranteur Extraordinaire – On a wintry day in February, some prescient burst of fiery indignation took hold of this outspoken CNBC commentator, who railed on-air against the irresponsibility of Obama’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan and got the CME Group futures traders on the floor around him up in arms.  His idea led to the grassroots Tea Party Movement, which spawned rallies on April 15, the July 4 weekend, and September 12 in thousands of cities across the country, with hundreds of thousands of attendees.

6. Doug Hoffman, RINO Party Crasher – Though he lost the special election for the open House seat in New York’s 23rd congressional district, he came remarkably close to winning, and he forced out a RINO who had backing from ACORN and was as bad as or worse than the Democratic candidate.  Hoffman reenergized the GOP on a national level, and an Obama visit or two to New York’s 23rd district, like the multiple stops he made for losing gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia, would probably have pushed Hoffman over the top.

5. Liz Cheney, Accomplished Conservative Mother of Five Who Isn’t Palin or Bachmann – Cheney tirelessly fought off the fact-deficient ravings of Andrea Mitchell, Norah O’Donnell and others, demonstrating the temerity desperately needed by the GOP in defending its principles against an MSM stacked against us.  Cheney will indisputably be a figure on the national political scene in coming years, because she’s already said she’s “open” to running for public office—and in politics, “no” means “maybe” and “maybe” means “yes.”

4. John Boehner, House Minority Leader and Stimulus Bill Percussionist – Boehner played an unassuming but important role, out of the spotlight, visible mostly only to his colleagues on the House floor.  He consistently pushed for free market reforms to health care and denounced the Democrats’ plans to increase government involvement and spending in health care.  He also ably deconstructed Obama disasters like the stimulus bill and Cash for Clunkers.

3. Rush Limbaugh, Racist Attention-Seeker Who Hates Obama for Personal Reasons – Rush could have taken the year off and coasted into the top 10 with the cumulative influence he’s had on the conservative movement, but in 2009 he had a particularly effective year, one in which he dissected the Obama administration’s schemes and always kept his listeners one step ahead of the MSM.  Rush stated early on, “I hope Obama fails.”  Everyone, including Rush’s opponents, knew exactly what he meant—and Rush never backed down from his statement.

2. Michele Bachmann, America’s Favorite Tea Party Hostess – This was the year that Bachmann, like Liz Cheney, became a conservative rock star.  She rallied the troops at Tea Party gatherings, including the massive march in D.C. in September, proposed her own health care reform bill, and cosponsored others.  Gail Collins labeled her “Washington’s newest Famous Strange Person,” proving once again that liberals have no measure of the force of the reinvigorated conservative movement that is about to hit them.

1. Mark Levin, Best-selling Author Never Interviewed by ABC, CBS, or NBC or reviewed by the Times or the Post – Sarah Palin was photographed carrying it at rallies, Michele Bachmann called it “the book of all time,” and Rush Limbaugh predicted conservative college students would clandestinely pass it around in plain brown wrappers.  Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year, spending three months at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list; Levin also had the best year yet of his radio show, still the fastest-growing in the country.

Honorable Mention: Joe Wilson, Destroyer of Obamacare Illusions – Wilson refused to let Obama get away with lying about illegal immigrants’ not being covered under his health care reform bill; the Democratic denouncement of his “You lie!” outburst resulted in a heated, protracted debate over an issue that was supposedly already settled.

Ineligible, but Fought the Good Fight: Joe Lieberman, Obamacare Obstructionist – He’s not reliable—he marched three miles to the Capitol on the Sabbath to vote for a $2 trillion spending bill, after all—but this Independent Democrat stalled health care “reform” almost long enough to push the Senate’s deliberations into the no-man’s land of a midterm election year.

Special Award: Jake Tapper, Reporter So Ruthless in Investigating Obama You Couldn’t Tell What Party He Belonged To – From uncovering Tom Daschle’s unpaid taxes to investigating the President’s phony stimulus spending claims, Tapper deservedly ended the year at the top of Mediaite’s list of most influential journalists in the country.