Tim Blair

"Could the Guardian and its Operation Clark County be responsible for a second Bush term?" asks the BBC's Kevin Anderson:

Gee, ya think?

Tim,

Once again, many thanks for your help. Please put another bug in their ear in '08.

TS

Tim Blair,

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you......

You will always have a place to stay in Nashville Tennessee if needed. It ain't much, but it's home and an ally like you will always be welcome with open arms.

I saw Ian Katz on Sky News this morning. He accused those people who are saying that the Guardian's campaign won it for Bush - he doesn't seem to realize that they're not being totally serious about it - of being "self-aggrandizing".

Take that Blair! Self aggrandizing! Bang to rights, you must admit.

Katz was at least being somewhat self-deprecating, although it looked suspiciously like a re-run of his previous and unconvincing 'Hey, we were just funny guys in the pub having a laugh, we weren't really serious about it' routine.

Tim, thank you for your Rovian genius, so much like Rove’s Tim-Blairian genius!

Thank you thank you thank you! One is tempted to say that, with enemies like the Guardian, one doesn’t need friends, but that would be crap. Thank you!

Presumably the press coverage of the Guardian's "elect bush" campaign in Ohio covered a bigger area than just Clark County. I.e. Ohio voters outside Clark County got to hear of it, so it's not just the Clark county swing to the Republicans that can be attributed to the Guardian.

Now if we can get the Guardian to do a campaign for Hillary in, say, California ...

One item regarding Ohio that hasn't been brought up is the steel tariffs. Many conservatives were opposed to the tariffs and many in the UK were offended by them. But were the tariffs politically astute in that they helped swing Ohio over to Bush?

The steel tariffs were repealed last December, so I'd say no.

PW,
The tariffs were repealed after the WTO declared them illegal. The Bush administration showed 'good faith' in pushing the tariffs as far as they could.

Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. A total of 67595 votes were cast in Clark County. So no, Clark County did not win Ohio for Bush by any stretch of the imagination.

But it would have been lovely if it had.

The tariffs were repealed after the WTO declared them illegal. The Bush administration showed 'good faith' in pushing the tariffs as far as they could.

You think that makes any difference other than as semantics after almost a year, though? People who were already going to vote for Bush a year ago didn't need to be convinced via the steel tariffs. People who only decided to vote for Bush later on likely didn't even remember the whole brouhaha when they made that decision. Besides, Kerry sounded some pretty strong protectionist rhetoric during his campaign, much more so than Bush did.

When it decided what it thought about the people of Ohio, Guardian dived into its intellectual depths -- and hit its head on the bottom.

Fortunately there was no damage to any vital organs and newspaper production continues.

That little number at the bottom of the comment screen says "969979". Funny, eh? [irony]I bet Diebold did it. They'll hide my comment with all the Kerry votes they stole. [/irony]

PW,
You think that makes any difference other than as semantics after almost a year, though?

I think that for some people in Ohio whose jobs were at risk the tariffs were a big deal - not something forgotten after a year. Whether this had a significant impact on the election is unknown.

At the time the tariffs were imposed there was much criticism of Bush playing politics. (Here's an op-ed by Tim Blair critical of the tariffs.) Bush probably was playing politics. My question is, was it the right thing to do?

Now that the election is over, we can see that winning Ohio was critical. With the War on Terrorism the dominant issue for this election, were the tariffs such a terrible transgression if they helped prevent turning the war over to the appeasers?

This reminds me of the scene in Patton where a long military column is held up at a bridge by a stubborn mule. The problem was solved when Patton shot the mule and had it dumped over the side of the bridge. Shooting a mule because it is stubborn isn't nice. But sometimes it's necessary.

After all, we're fighting a war.

TIM BLAIR SUCKS "THE GUARDIAN" INTO THE SILLY CAMPAING, OHIO GOES TO BUSH BY .. WHATEVER VOTES.
QED.TIM BLAIR WON THE SECOND TERM FOR W.
TIM BLAIR IS A BIGGER GENIUS THAT KARL "OSAMA'S VIDEO" ROVE.

WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! TYPE LOUDER!

Slate has an article on Operation Clark County. Guess who's not mentioned in it.

Medal of Freedom for Tim!

I had a little fun with the Guardianistas, thanks to the staff mailing list posted on Tim's site earlier last month:

"Dear Guardian Staff:

Your harebrained Clark County harassment campaign really made the difference:

=================================
Clark County, Ohio November 2000
=================================
CLARK (100% of 112 Precincts Reporting)
GORE BUSH
Votes 27,309 27,142
Pct 49% 48%
http://www.cbsnews.com/campaign2000results/election/index.html

...then comes the UK Guardian...

=================================
Clark County, Ohio November 2004
=================================
Clark (100 of 100 Precincts Reporting)
Party Candidate Votes V%
R George BUSH 34,444 51%
D John KERRY 32,824 49%
http://election.cbsnews.com/election2004/county/president_oh0.shtml

Bloody brilliant. Do please inform Lady Antonia Overbite and Lord Albert Inbred -- they should be ever so pleased.

And brush your g*d-damned teeth once in a while, will you?

Pip-pip Cheerio!

Cowboy Yahoo American
Red State, USA"

Hey Tim - Take a closer gander at your first link in this topic, to the BBC. Seems we gun-totin' Bible-thumpin' ignorami here in the US aren't the ONLY ones who don't know how to properly punctuate "its!" I thought it was just Yanks-who-vote-for-Bush who are stupid.

Damn! No sooner do I post the previous comment than they fix it! Kevin Anderson's lead-in did have "its" punctuated as "it's." I was hoping it would stay up there in ignominy a bit longer.

Tim;

So do we return fire? Can we get a list of voters over on that side of the pond and inform them of how their next election will impact our daily lives?

Then again, they would be pretty short emails. As much as I appreciate their alliance with us, the PM of GB doesn't really have that much influence on American lives, does he/she?