I've been dying to hear Rush's spin on this defeat.  Well, I'm listening to the start of his show as I type this and it's pathetic.

His spin is: "Conservatism didn't lose, Republicanism did ..."

Um, but Rush, didn't Rick Santorum lose?  Didn't JD Hayworth lose?  Didn't Crazy Curt Weldon lose?  Didn't anti-environmental zealot Richard Pombo lose?  It looks like George Allen and Conrad Burns lost.  Didn't the SD anti-abortion ballot initiative lose?  The MO stem cell initiative?  I could go on.

He doesn't even bother with a factual basis - I guess there's no surprise there.  He sounds more desperately scrambly than ever, though, and my thought is that's because what he actually senses is the end of conservatism as a meaningful force in American politics.  And, hopefully, the beginning of the end of his relevancy.  Bye bye Rush ...

The Background: Joe Bua and The Bulldog Manifesto have excellent diaries on the outrageous (reportedly) $10,000,000 celebrity-studded bat mitzvah given by defense contractor David H. Brooks this weekend.  As they noted, what makes a (let's face it) run-of-the-mill story of obscene excess in our New Gilded Age into a national outrage is that this guy made all his money from US, the American taxpayers, and what's worse is that it seems his company provided a defective product to our soldiers in the field in return ...  When I see people that I'm pretty sure are liberals/Dems (Henley for sure, and I'm pretty sure about Nicks and Petty) taking money from a straight-up war profiteer, it makes me even more angry.  So I say let's take some action ...

I was just reading ABC News' "The Note" and was surprised to see numerous links to/mentions of Daily Kos in their VA Gov race coverage (RedState too, unfortunately, but oh well ...).  Even better, they are basically saying Kos is where the story broke on the Kilgore robo-calls, and also the spot to find the latest information on Kaine's internal polling numbers.  Look under the section "Virginia: 2005".

I know a lot of people here despise The Note, but it is where the "Gang of 500" get their daily political scoop, and the Kos mentions certainly seem to be a sign of increased influence in the MSM.  Pretty cool, I say!

Is it only a matter of months before we have Markos sitting on one of Russert's press panels?

Last night I was listening to one of the most hate-filled, neanderthal conservatives in the world - Mark Levin.  He has a local radio show on WABC in NYC.  He thinks we should have nuked Fallujah, among other carefully considered opinions.  Anyway, he was doing a segment on what a crazy left-wing nuthouse the Democratic Party has become, and started reading this story by Carl Limbacheer on NewsMax.com:
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Thursday, June 24, 2004
Democrats Welcome Cheerleader for Terrorists

"Left-wing Democrats pout and complain when Americans call them the blame-America-first crowd, but here's an excellent example of how they have earned this reputation.

"Out in La-La Land, El Cerrito Democratic Club announced that for its meeting this week it would "again welcome Markos Moulitsas Zuniga," this time to speak on "The Future of the Democratic Party: Does It Even Have One?"