A Cheney-style prediction

As if to set the mood for the Sandra Day O'Connor replacement battle, the manly James Taranto at OpinionJournal says:

It may turn out, then, that the O'Connor successor confirmation battle will mark the final throes of the left's insurgency against American democracy. In which case it won't be successful, but it will be ugly.

That's really quite a summary of American politics in the Bush era, but pretty illustrative of the loony direction the Right is headed in as a result of the Iraq quagmire. Speaking of which, check out their use "final throes': perhaps they were aware that "last throes" would have sounded too much like Dick Cheney's unhinged description of the Iraqi insurgency. And since the spinning of Cheney's prediction claimed that the last throes are often the most potent, do they mean that "the left" has a chance of winning the nomination battle?

In an Irish angle, Taranto has also discovered that people misuse the word "literally." The quest for examples takes him, or a reader, to an odd place:

Gary Pointon is quite literally a shadow of his former self," reports the Ballymena (Northern Ireland) Times. Yes, we're following up on yesterday's item about misuse of the word literally.

Now why would a right-wing American commentator have fans in Ballymena?