Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, April 27, 2008

John McCain's own personal 'Nader'

By Libby



Frank Rich picks up on a storyline about the PA primary that was largely ignored. The Republicans had a primary too and the results weren't taken into account in all the electability arguments. I'll let Frank explain why they were material.

But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn�t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party�s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party�s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That�s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.

That suggests two things to me. One, any Democrat is going to be able to take PA and two, McCain has a Ron Paul problem. Paul took 16% to Huckabee's 11%, if memory serves, I lost the link, but the problem is not confined to PA. In Nevada, so many RP supporters showed up that the party shut the convention down rather abruptly.

Outnumbered supporters of expected Republican presidential nominee John McCain faced off Saturday against well-organized Paul supporters. A large share of the more than 1,300 state convention delegates enabled Paul supporters to get a rule change positioning them for more national convention delegate slots than expected.

The party leaders claimed they had to shut the hall down because they ran out of time under the terms of their lease of the hall. I guess there was another convention standing around outside the building just waiting for them to finish up. I'm sure it had nothing to do with needing time to develop a counter strategy. I can't to see how that one is resolved, assuming our lazy legacy media will report it.



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2 comments:

  1. wufnikApril 28, 2008 at 1:29 AM

    Here's a story--about a month ago my wife and daughter made a sort of quilt shop tour of western Virginia, Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, Ohio--the eastern midwest, which is of course pretty hard core Republican. And guess what--Ron Paul signs everywhere, and not a McCain sign in sight. This is the Republican heartland, right? And what's Paul's major campaign theme? Immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Hmmmm.

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  2. LibbyApril 28, 2008 at 2:19 AM

    RP's base is set in concrete it seems. I hear NH was a lot like that too. It will be interesting to see whay they do in November.

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