Quote of the Day

"For us to sort of slap them on the face and say, we no longer want your services or we're embarrassed by you and ashamed of you and we'd like to put you in the back of the tent just felt really dismissive and disrespectful."

-- S.E. Cupp on her decision not to attend CPAC this year because of its exclusion of gay conservative groups

Cupp says that she has a "long and wonderful" relationship with CPAC, which really makes me wonder if anything she says is worth a damn. But there is something to be said for her willingness to acknowledge how painfully backward the conservative power structure is these days. The unspoken reality of a statement like this is that it will almost surely get Cupp labeled a RINO -- or worse, an all-out liberal -- simply because she doesn't want to see members of the LGBT community driven into the sea.

Keep in mind that while CPAC made the wise decision to exclude anti-Muslim lunatic Pamela Gellar from its roster this year, there are a hell of a lot of Tea Party types who are furious about it.

New Rules

My issue when it comes to the recent round of Republican soul-searching has mostly been that it seems focused more on "rebranding," meaning selling a bad product in a way that makes it appear more enticing, than actually presenting new ideas.

Well, even though this little soliloquy casts itself as a series of tips on how to rebrand the GOP, it actually offers some damn good advice -- good advice that would benefit the entire country.

And believe it or not, much to her credit, it comes from the normally groan-inducing S.E. Cupp.

Good for her.

Pretty Vacant

As promised, my latest piece for the Daily Banter is up and it deals with MSNBC's comically transparent decision to hire conservative commentator S.E. Cupp.

Here's the opening shot:

"I happened to stumble across the very good 1994 movie Quiz Show on cable the other day. For those who haven’t seen it or don’t know much about it, the film dramatizes the television quiz show scandal of the late 1950s, in which 'Twenty-One' and other popular TV game shows were revealed to have been fixed by the producers behind them. The most infamous revelation during the scandal, and really the one that started the snowball rolling downhill, was that handsome and seemingly brilliant 'Twenty-One' returning champion Charles Van Doren — who rocketed to pop culture stardom because of his supernatural staying power and apparent wealth of knowledge on a broad number of topics — had actually been given the answers all along by TV exec Dan Enright and had initially won on the show only after the previous long-time winner had been ordered to take a dive. That previous champion, Herb Stempel — who admitted that he too had been handed the answers on the show during his extended run — was a somewhat schlubby dullard from Queens, while Van Doren was a youthful and engaging academic from a successful family."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"Hey, on days when she has Michelle Malkin and Gretchen Carlson on as guests we can make a new 'Two Girls one Cupp' drinking game."

-- Huffington Post commenter "Fretslayer" on the announcement by MSNBC that it would be giving partial hosting duties for its new 3PM show to conservative commentator and cultivator of the naughty librarian look S.E. Cupp

For those of you who thought that MSNBC was politically progressive by nature or that its decision to lean left was the product of its executives' and hosts' true feelings, let this be a lesson to you. It was always about ratings and money. And so is this: putting a dingbat like S.E. Cupp on the air solely because she's ridiculously easy on the eyes.

The important thing to keep in mind is that this move won't win a single critic of MSNBC on the right over. Not a one.

I'll have more on this tomorrow at the Daily Banter.

Update: Sorry, kids, but the Banter post will go up tomorrow (6.20). Busy as hell today.