the turban flap and the final word on flip flopping

Hillary Clinton, when asked about it, didn't exactly deny the charge that her campaign chose to circulate the above picture that first appeared on the Drudge report. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the move “...the most shameful offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election."

It remains to be seen what effect the disbursement of this photo will have on American voters who most likely are not appreciative of the finer points of Taliban-esque fashion.

However, my concern here is the endless use of the term "fear mongering" by those on the left side of the aisle. It is overused and almost exclusively employed by those on the left. Further, the term starts to become a caricature of itself (for lack of a better depiction) when you stop and consider that by running around proclaiming "fear mongering" in everything that the people making the charge are themselves fear mongering. The net result is to attempt to make people afraid of fear mongering. Democrats are, at this point, fearful of fear mongering.

And like a few other bumper sticker tag-lines that Democrats use, it has been used so often and applied to so many situations that it is watered down to the point where it has almost no meaning. The term "swift-boated" , which apparently now applies to any negative campaign attack no matter how substantive is another term that I would ask be retired for similar reasons. Also, the expansion of the definition of what many on the left believe constitutes a "flip-flop" has watered the term down to the point where it apparently applies to every politician who has ever changed their position on any issue, for any reason, over any period of time. When a term is applied so generically like this it loses any distinctive meaning. For example, back in 2004 John Kerry flip-flopped when he said that he voted for the 80 million "...before he voted against it." This was an example trying to have it both ways within the span of one statement. This was back when "flip-flop" meant changing your position within a very short amount of time for political reasons. Apparently now the term flip-flop applies to any policy position change that occurs for any reason during any amount of time. Since this would apply to almost every politician under the sun, the term has now lost meaning and like the terms "fear mongering" and "swift-boated", it should be retired due to bastardization, co-option, and overuse.

Just words. Just not Obama's

The Clinton campaign has accused Obama of plagarizing Deval Patrick when he used nearly identical language in a speech the other night that Patrick used on Boston Common in 2006. The similarities of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama have been chronicled before here. The two men are friends and it doesn't surprise me that they share speeches and, unlike the Clinton campaign, I don't see this as a "where's the beef" gotcha moment. If both parties have no objections, then there is really no problem with two allied politicians sharing the same rhetoric. Deval Patrick responded to this incident by saying,

"Sen. Obama and I are longtime friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language. The argument in question, on the value of words in the public square, is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before. Given the recent attacks from Sen. Clinton, I applaud him [for] responding in just the way he did."

I can't imagine that anyone would at this point be terribly surprised to learn that Obama is using the same playbook that Deval used to wax poetic his way to office. In the end, this is nothing more than manufactured controversy concocted by a flailingly desperate Clinton Campaign.

the movie

Coda

The last hope of conservatives that they might have some representation in November has dwindled away to nothing. Mitt Romney has just suspended his presidential campaign.

Despite all the heaps and heaps of criticism and questioning of everything from his religion, to his conservative credentials, to his stance on the Iraq war, this man was a great candidate. Today is a sad day for conservatives, for Republicans, and for America.

Conservative talk radio decided too late to support Romney and now they have ended up with a presidential candidate who has been the bane of their existence for decades in John McCain who has taken the opportunity to side against conservatives and conservatism almost whenever given the chance.

I suppose Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul remain in the race which isn't a surprise given the politically tone deaf nature of their campaigns. By suspending his campaign now, Romney graciously allows McCain to consolidate Republican support behind him. I would expect nothing less from the man I have passionately supported for years. Today Mitt Romney has acted in accordance with the way he ran his campaign, with class and selflessness.

Independents for Romney

As an independent/unenrolled voter, I hadn't planned on voting in today's Massachusetts primary election. I was under the impression that these were "closed" primaries, but after John McCain won the GOP primary in Florida as a direct result of independents and Democrats voting for him, I figured I would at least try to go and vote for my candidate.

And vote I did, for Mitt Romney. No ID was needed and once I found my name on the rolls I was asked which party's primary I would like to vote in. "Republican", I said happily and moments later I had cast my vote for Romney, hopefully canceling out one of the the countless other independents and Democrats in Massachusetts who today voted for McCain in a contest many believed was restricted to only those registered in a given party.

While I was pleased to be allowed to vote, I would have preferred to have been prevented from voting since I am not in fact a registered Republican.

The fact that independents and Democrats can vote in a GOP primary is disturbing. Given that there really is no difference in terms of policy between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton I imagine that there will be quite a few left-leaning individuals voting for John McCain, thereby corrupting the purity of what should be a contest amongst Republicans rather than the general electorate.

I think the argument that McCain is a conservative and has conservative Republican support will be settled by the end of today's voting when we see the typical Florida-type results where McCain wins, not on the basis of conservative Republican support but because of the independent and Democratic vote.

The latest John McCain TV ad boasts, "John McCain: the True Conservative". That is correct, if by "conservative" they mean "guy who votes with liberals".

mythbusting

As I was reading the lengthy comment section of the latest Hugh Hewitt piece, I came across this gem. I have been ham-handed in my defense of the charge that Romney has flip flopped on issues when compared to this concise run-down written by fellow unknown conservative blogger laboring in virtual (ha) obscurity, Ryan Larsen. As usual, click the title of this post to see the referenced composition.

"This is not just Overbite; it's the media. I'd like to talk about the fact that the timetable charge is not the only false charge made against Romney. If you go down the line you see distortion after distortion.

For example, they say that Romney flip-flopped on Immigration, charging that he supported McCain’s bill in 2005 and that he had sanctuary cities in Massachusetts. But the fact is, sanctuary status was instituted on a city level that Romney had nothing to do with and with a liberal legislature there was nothing he could do about it. And Romney did not endorse McCain’s bill in 2005. In fact he explicitly said he was not willing to endorse it. He did say that it was “reasonable” but the 2007 bill is very different from the 2005 bill and the provisions Romney objects strongly to like the z-visa, were NOT in the 2005 bill. So his position did not change, the bill changed.

They also say he changed on the death penalty because he didn’t execute anyone in Massachusetts. But the fact is, Massachusetts doesn’t have the death penalty and Mitt Romney fought to try to get one.

They also say that Mitt Romney changed on gay marriage. But the fact is, Romney has always been against gay marriage.

In 1994 he said he supported gay rights, but the term “gay rights” had a different meaning in 1994 than it does today.

They also say that he changed on waiting periods for guns. But the fact is, Romney supports background checks and because technology has changed, waiting periods are no longer required for background checks.

They say that Romney refused to comment on Bush’s tax cuts, but the fact is, when he was asked he was trying to pass a budget through a liberal legislature and wisely chose to stay out of national politics.

They also claim that the total tax burden went up under Romney, but the numbers they use include city taxes. At the state level, taxes went down because Romney cut them. And then they try to say that fees are like taxes. And I’m surprised at how many conservatives don’t understand that fees are conservative. A fee covers the cost for a special good or service (similar to paying a local business except it’s the government); when the fee is not high enough to cover the cost of the service provided, the taxpayer ends up subsidizing. Romney saved tax dollars by eliminating the taxpayer subsidizing of fees. This is conservative because if I lose my drivers license, why should tax dollars be used to get me a new one?

And then with the Martin Luther King stuff, they conveniently leave out the fact that George Romney not only led civil rights marches but Martin Luther King Jr. actually said that he thought George Romney would make a good president.

And then another distortion is they claim that Mitt Romney put 50 dollar abortion co-pays into his healthcare plan. But that’s a lie. It was a court decision that did that, it was not in the bill.

These facts need to get out"

The sell out express

Conservative thinker Thomas Sowell has written a scathing piece regarding the very same subject matter that I have been addressing here at length lately. Sowell suggests that McCain's lies about Romney are a symptom of a larger issue, namely his lack of character and his general dishonor.

"We have been hearing for years that Senator John McCain gives 'straight talk' and his bus has been endlessly referred to as the 'Straight Talk Express.' But endless repetition does not make something true.

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker.

There are short, blunt lies — and he told a big one on the eve of the Florida primary, when he claimed that Mitt Romney had advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Even the Washington Post, which supports McCain, said that the senator 'has distorted the meaning' of what Governor Romney said, that Romney 'has never proposed setting a date for withdrawal.’

During Mitt Romney’s ABC News interview that Senator McCain twisted, Governor Romney was asked by the interviewer whether he agreed with President Bush’s veto of congressional legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal, and whether Romney as President would veto similar legislation.

'Of course,' was Romney’s reply. There was no ambiguity.

Confronted with his lie on Wednesday night’s debate, McCain blustered and filibustered in a manner reminiscent of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, when he was caught in a lie during a navy inquiry.

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let’s talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming president of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

The presidency is a heavy responsibility for the future of the nation, including generations yet unborn. Character and integrity are major qualifications.

The passing years and a friendly media have allowed Senator McCain’s shortcomings in the character and integrity department to fade into the background.

McCain was one of 'the Keating Five' — senators who used their influence to try to protect a failing savings & loan company, which also became the subject of a corruption investigation.

During the 2000 primaries, the Associated Press reported Senator McCain’s joking about people with Alzheimer’s.

This went beyond bad taste because (1) it was known at the time that Ronald Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer’s and (2) the media to whom McCain was pandering hated Ronald Reagan.

It is especially ironic now to see McCain wrapping himself in the mantle of President Reagan.

With the momentum of his Florida primary win behind him, going into the 'Super Tuesday' primaries, John McCain has now been restored to the position of front runner that the media gave him at the outset.

Other Republicans are jumping on his bandwagon. This may have less to do with McCain’s own qualities than with the prospect of getting Cabinet posts or Supreme Court appointments as rewards for their political support.

It may all look like a done deal. But the McCain-Kennedy bill giving amnesty to illegal aliens looked like a done deal two years ago — until the public realized the truth behind the spin and brought that sell-out to a screeching halt.

Super Tuesday may be the voters’ last chance to bring the so-called 'straight talk express' to a screeching halt.

It should be called the 'sell-out express' because McCain has sold out not only with amnesty for illegal aliens but also sold out the First Amendment with the McCain-Feingold 'campaign finance reform' bill that was supposed to take big money out of political campaigns, but blatantly has not.

McCain also sold out on judicial nominations by making his own side deal with the Democrats, undercutting Republican attempts to stop Democrats from filibustering judicial nominees instead of voting them up or down.

This is quite a record for someone running as a straight talker.

McLame

John McCain's debate performance last night was an affront to reason. It grated on every precept of logical discourse and good taste.

Listening to McLame attempt to explain why he has been lying about Romney's record on Iraq war policy was a crash course in all that is wrong in politics. The kind of answers McCain gives, full of obfuscation and topic jumping, are part of the reason why so many non-political junkies are so disenchanted with politics and politicians. And listening to John McCain drone on generically and uninspiringly last night, I don't blame them. The only time John McCain said anything interesting or exciting was when he was relentlessly reinforcing his lies and circling the wagons in defense of his mind-bending twists and turns of the truth.

"Romney supported a time table for withdrawing American troops from Iraq like Hillary Clinton does."

No, categorically wrong. This accusation is a complete and intentional mischaracterization of Romney's philosophical and literal position on the Iraq war.

Romney batted down all of McCain’s intentional misrepresentations of the facts last night immediately and forcefully. By any kind of objective standard resembling anything close to the truth, Romney trounced McCain last night. But to listen to the pro-McCain CNN 'experts’ after the debate, the fact that Romney effectively confronted each and every fraudulent charge directly, honestly, and succinctly was unremarkable. The CNN panel must not have been watching the same footage I was. In fact, I’m not sure how any adult who comprehends the English language could watch last night’s debate a conclude that McCain came out on top.

If I was in a coma for the last 5 years and just woke up in time to watch last night’s debate, I would come away with the same conclusion I do now. Because, regardless of the issues, I would see how illogically and churlishly John McBlame was behaving. He debates like a Democrat, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since he is one. He rarely answers a question or charge directly, if at all. For example, the final question of the debate last night was:

“Would Ronald Reagan endorse you? And if so, why?”

McCain responded:

“Ronald Reagan would not approve of someone who changes their positions depending on what the year is.

Ronald Reagan -- Ronald Reagan came with an unshakable set of principles, and there were many times, like when he had to deploy the (INAUDIBLE) cruise missile to Europe and there were hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against it, he stood with it. Ronald Reagan had a deal in Reykjavik that everybody wanted him to take, but he stuck with his principles.

I think he knows that I stick with my principles. I put my political career on the line because I knew what would happen if we failed in Iraq.

I hope that the experience I had serving as a foot soldier in his revolution would make him proud for me to continue that legacy of sticking to principle and doing what you believe in, no matter what.”

Summary? Rather than answer the question, McCain took a final cheap jab at Romney, mentioned some Reagan history and finished up with a general platitude.

If that same answer had come from Romney, Anderson “in-the-tank-for-McCain” Cooper would have followed up with something like, “So… does that mean that he would endorse you or not?” But at after 10 o’clock on a Wednesday night, the vibe with old man McLame was, just move on, it’s getting late and McCain is getting (more) angry and tired. Cooper was too afraid to press John McCranky, so he just let it go. Another bad moment for McLame swept under the rug by the MSM, whose bias was on full display last night.

In fact, CNN was running a clinic on leftie media bias last night. Anderson Cooper completely blew off the results of an entire Frank Luntz-esque focus group in which Mitt Romney scored extremely well. He listened to the report on the focus group from Erica Hill and then went directly to commercial promising to “discuss the results [of the focus group] after the break”. When the program returned from commercial, a long clip of Ron Paul played followed by a lengthy panel discussion about how great McCain and Huckabee were in the debate. How stupid CNN must imagine people are. If you are going to take the time to run an in depth focus group, you should at least address the results in any panel discussion that follows. But because the results were so overwhelmingly pro-Romney, they swept them under the rug. It was a moment that exceeded even some of the most brazen and careless examples of media bias I have ever seen. It was a Stalin-esque moment of straight up censorship and reverse propaganda.

Conclusion? CNN is biased and Anderson Cooper is a twit. He would not shut up at certain points to let the candidates explain themselves, stammering over Romney’s attempt to bring some clarity to the discussion of his own April 2007 Iraq comments. "How is it that you're the expert on my opinion on Iraq?" Romney turned and questioned McCain. And just when Romney began to make progress and really make McLame look bad, Anderson Cooper shouted over him, brusquely changing the subject back to one where Romney was again on the defensive.

If I were on the left side of the aisle, I’d be rolling in the aisle watching last night's debate. The idea that Democrats are afraid to face John McCain in a general election is a red herring, by the way. If I'm an Obama supporter, for example, I'm looking forward to seeing my guy run circles around a confused, backward looking, angry old man in John McCain. And the MSM will turn on McLame so fast in a general election, it will make your head spin. Right now they're holding back and even propping up McLame. All of the bogus charges the left and their like-minded pals in the MSM have come up with have already been leveled at Romney, while McCain has been issued a temporary free pass. It’s so obvious what is going on here with McCain, the left, and the MSM. They want McCain as a fall back plan if somehow Americans are not yet ready to elect an anti-war woman or far left African American.

If Republicans are collectively too foolish to figure out what is going on and they continue to vote for Huckabee in droves, for example, then they don’t even deserve to win the presidency anyway. Dark days will be descending on Republicans and conservatives if we continue down the dreary path that is a John McCain nomination.

would reagan endorse you?

The great one speaketh

Goerge Will and others have written devastating articles about John McCain and his countless flaws. While these efforts certainly help, it is not enough to merely tell the truth about McCain. Mark Levin has now sharpened the anti-McCain message and attached the necessary conclusion: That conservatives must rally for Romney.

McStain

John McCain did not win amongst Republican voters tonight in a race that was supposedly a "closed" primary. I guess it was wishful thinking to assume that everything would be on the up-and-up in the land of 'hanging chads'. Exit polling data showed that Romney won by a few percentage points amongst actual Republicans, but McCain ended up defeating Romney once all of the non-conservative and independent votes were counted. Apparently independents showed up at polling places and declared themselves Republicans on the spot and promptly voted for McCain. Call me crazy, but I was under the impression that these events were 'the Republican primaries' not merely primary events in which Republicans happened to be running.

"Romney won [The GOP vote] 33-31 according to CNN exits. Even in Florida, independents were McCain's margin of victory. Kind of incredible." -Rich Lowry

According to the exit polls in tonight's "Republican" Primary, only 8 in 10 voters were actually registered Republicans. Somehow Independents and Democrats managed to account for 20 percent of the Florida Republican primary vote again corrupting the process and making it look more and more like the general election choice will between a Democrat and Democrat pretending to be a Republican. The New York Times will be pleased.

I wonder if now McStain will at least stop inventing facts about his opponents. I guess we'll see what lies he comes up with about either Hillary or Obama. It will be poetic justice to have the McStain dishonor campaign go up against the Clinton character assassination attack machine. After all, they essentially have the same campaign strategy, characterized by avoiding mentioning their own shaky records and instead simply making up lies about and personally attacking the character of their opponents. And on a side note, they also both have their own special type of creepy laugh. The forced, inappropriate cackle of Hillary will go up against the angry and over-confident snicker of old man McStain. These two candidates, Hillary and McCain, do truly deserve each other.

It's still hard to comprehend that all of the sleazy tactics of McStain ultimately paid off tonight. After all the lies, all the distortions, all the personal attacks, all the robo-calls and the push polling, all the tag teaming and piling on with help from henchman Huckabee and this is how the results turn out? It's hard to be optimistic about our country tonight, the dumbing down of America is in full effect.

And as if the tag team duo of McStain and Hackleberry wasn't enough, it now appears that Giuliani will bow out and endorse McStain. If you didn't have a reason to question the conservative credentials of Giuliani before, you do now.

I haven't quite given up hope yet that there might be some conservative representation moving forward into November but tonight it's hard to see the silver lining. If there are any conservatives left in America, I urge you to please vote for Mitt Romney because any Republican who votes for McCain is either not any kind conservative, a shockingly uninformed conservative, or a RINO.

A sad state of affairs

Desperation

John McCain makes me sick. He has now taken to inventing facts about Mitt Romney.

In the last 24 hours, he has accused Mitt Romney of having "wanted to set a date for withdrawal [from Iraq] that would have meant disaster."

This statement is untrue, as in false, incorrect, fictitious.

That is the beginning and end of the debate on this issue. John McCain is making statements about Romney, as Obama said of Bill Clinton's South Carolina attacks, "...that are unsupported by the facts".

This is yet more evidence that John McCain is a Democrat. Or at least, he certainly represents the worst of Democratic tactics as made evident by this latest reprehensible and blatantly desperate attack strategy. He is going well beyond distorting an opponent's record into straight up inventing facts about it.

McCain is also demonstrating that he is a very stupid man. Did he not see what just happened to Hillary in South Carolina? Barack Obama just wiped the floor with Hillary for many reasons, chiefly among them a backlash against the over the top and fictitious attacks made by Bill Clinton against Obama.

McCain admits that he knows next to nothing about how the economy works, so I can see why he would want to change the subject. But by trying to mislead voters about an opponent's record he again reveals why he is severely lacking of the character one would want in a commander in chief. John McCain is supposedly honorable? There is no honor in lying about the record of your opponent simply because he is surpassing you in the polls.

John McCain represents the worst kind of old school, egotistical, and cheesy politician. Even if he wasn't a RINO, I would never vote for a man of his ilk. This latest behavior is without honor. He deserves to lose in Florida and be driven from the race. And then he should go sit in the corner with a dunce cap on.

good ole Fred

redound against them

old media, old guard

The New York Times, standard bearer of the old school left-wing dinosaur media, has endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain. To anyone who finds themselves agreeing with the New York Times editorial pages more often than not, these are your candidates.

Those of us who do not agree with the New York Times editorial pages on a regular basis should take notice of these endorsements and vote accordingly.

If the New York Times were to endorse Mitt Romney, for example, it could be a crippling blow to his campaign. But somehow, since McCain is already the media darling, the fact that the far left bastion of the New York Times has endorsed him will most likely go unnoticed and underreported.

"We'll always stand strong together"

Fred Thompson has officially withdrawn from the presidential race. With no campaign events planned in Florida and a top adviser explaining why Fred would make a good vice-president, one might have seen the writing on the wall. His final speech was sadly one of his most forceful, as if to lay to rest once and for all the notion that the man is without passion.

"We will always be bound by a close bond because we have traveled a very special road together for a very special purpose. We'll always stand strong together... we'll always stand strong together, and I can't thank you enough for that."

I hope that we do all stand together. And by 'together' I mean with Mitt Romney, the only remaining conservative in the race who is not required to finish first in Florida in order to justify further campaigning.

With the Fred votes now up for grabs, we have to focus on the next order of business: John McCain. Having him in the race is like having a Democrat in the Republican primary. He must be defeated as the first order of business. In order to do that, Republican voters will have to settle on a single alternative sooner than they might have wanted to.

Of course, it would be nice if pastor Huckabee realized that his own one-dimensional appeal precludes his viability, but driving McCain out of the race takes priority at the moment. So, to the conservative forces of the blogosphere and elsewhere, train your rhetorical guns on McCain and commence firing!

Strategery

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune is urging conservatives to cease the 'whompin' of John McCain.

"While they're whomping, they might want to answer this question: Don't they want to win the White House?

Or would they feel better if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were commander in chief, dealing with the Islamofascists, filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court and turning the Justice Department over to a big city political machine?"

As a Romney supporter, I have to admit that I have used this kind of an argument to attempt to convince people not to vote for Mike Huckabee. My rationale is simple; if Huckabee wins the nomination, he will certainly lose the general election almost solely because he does not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. I simply don't believe that Americans, in this day and age, would elect such a blatant enemy of science and scientific advancement.

But the argument that I had better embrace McCain or face the prospect of a Barack Obama presidency, for example, is not convincing. I know that it's a conservative apostasy to say this, but I think I would prefer Obama to McCain at this point, so to try to scare me with an Obama presidency rings hollow.

Hillary Clinton is attacking Obama on the campaign trail today because in a radio interview Obama conceded that, "I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

Obama is of course, correct. Whether Republicans can still claim to be the party of ideas is perhaps debatable, but this statement by Obama shows remarkable frankness and an accurate grasp of reality.

Hillary responded in a nasty tone, "That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years."

Here we have an example of the stark contrast of old style partisanship -not willing to concede anything- versus forward looking open-mindedness and a willingness to bring in new ideas, regardless of the source. This is a mature attitude for Obama to adopt and I have to say that I am impressed.

In another study of contrast, McCain seems anything but mature at times. In his ABC New Hampshire debate performance he looked at times childish, petty, and thin-skinned. Couple this with the fact that his 'maverick' attitude seems at times to adopt the contrarian view simply for the sake of being contrarian and we have a picture of a man who, like Hillary, represents the old style of ego-politics. McCain seems obsessed with showing that he is own man at the expense of his own willingness to listen to good ideas. In this regard Obama seems to have much more of a sensible and reasonable approach. As right leaning individuals, we don’t ask that liberals become conservatives overnight, but a willingness to at least listen to conservative ideas and not dismiss them out of hand like Hillary Clinton would is refreshing. Maybe there is something to the ‘new politics’ that Obama seems to be peddling. One thing is sure, Hillary Clinton represents the old guard, characterized by bitter partisanship, the politics of polarization, and the politics of personal destruction. There is not a more divisive figure in American politics than Hillary Clinton.

I would welcome a debate on ideas between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and I hope that they both win their respective nominations. Both men strike me as honorable and earnest in their desire to improve the country. Of course, because Republicans are more interested in substance than they are flowery rhetoric, we have the benefit of knowing a lot more about what Romney would do as president when compared to the tabula rasa of Barrack Obama. And While Romney has had to go into much greater detail about issues of policy than any Democrat has ever been asked to, we can at least have the 'audacity to hope' that Obama would be a president who would listen to well reasoned ideas regardless of the source.

I really don’t care if Hillary is considered more beatable than Obama in a general election and similarly, I don’t care if McCain is considered more viable than Romney in a general election. It’s time to dump the old guard, time to bring about more solutions instead of more Hillary Clinton 90’s style partisanship and/or the ego trip of John McCain.

"Manifestly the best candidate."

Ann Coulter has written a very illuminating and somewhat scathing article explaining to Republican voters, hopefully once and for all, that Mitt Romney is "...manifestly the best candidate."

Coulter makes an argument that I have been making for about six months now and that Rush Limbaugh has been hinting at lately. The argument is essentially this:

"The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide."

Coulter chides voters who have thus far supported Mike Huckabee and/or John McCain. And as I have pointed out in various formats, the votes for McCain or Huckabee are derived from almost any other method than critical thinking. Emotion, identity politics, popularity contest, nostalgia, random implulses ... pick your poison, but those who take a moment to think things through in only even the most minor of ways will arrive at the same unmistakable conclusion that Ms. Coulter has.

"One clue that Romney is our strongest candidate is the fact that Democrats keep viciously attacking him while expressing their deep respect for Mike Huckabee and John McCain."

Coulter brazenly chastises her own audience, urging Republican voters to "...please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car."

I share her frustration with some of the voters so far who, other than in Michigan and Wyoming, seem to treat the election with a noticeable lack of seriousness and due diligence. It would be nice if voters could take a break from watching American Idol and tracking the latest Britney Spears news long enough to put at least some thought into who should be elected as the next leader of the free world.

No-Mentum

Chaos Theory?

Does Romney's win in Michigan represent a three way split for the Reagan Coalition?

I know what my answer is. Here's a hint... No. Romney is strong in all three areas of concern: Economic, National Security, and Social.

On the heels of tonight's Romney win comes the latest talking point out of the McCain camp, that Romney was somehow against the surge and has been or is anti-Iraq war. Just like the McCain campaign would like us to believe that McCain is a tax cutter and that he's tough on illegal immigration, this 'Romney was anti-war' argument is divorced from reality. Let me save the McCain camp countless advertisement dollars.

There is no substantive piece of evidence that you can point to that suggests that Romney has been or is anti-Iraq war.

If I was advising the McCain campaign, I'd advise against attacking Romney for not being Hawk-ish enough on the war in Iraq. It would further burnish the notion that McCain is a one issue candidate. That, and it has no basis in objective reality. Romney, by no stretch of the imagination, has ever been opposed to the surge. Short of jumping up and down with pom poms, Romney has been in full support of our efforts in Iraq. Let us also remember that on the issue of torture, that while McCain has the high moral ground for being categorically against it, Romney has the more responsible and more practical approach by not arbitrarily ruing it out. So if anything, McCain is weak on national security when compared directly to Romney. In any event, there simply is no running room with this issue for McCain based upon objective reality.

Romney takes Michigan

Michigan

Romney, Thompson, and Giuliani

The days of this race characterized by having unacceptable Republican candidates as front runners may be drawing to a close. Jay Cost of RCP makes some interesting points about the McCain candidacy, the Romney candidacy, and the (Republican) race in general.

"Examining congressional endorsements for McCain and Romney, excluding in-state supporters (as they often act more out of home state pride than ideological proximity), we find some interesting results. 34 Republicans have endorsed Mitt Romney, while just 24 have endorsed McCain. Furthermore, Romney's supporters are more in line with conservative opinion. Their average 2006 ACU rating was 84.1, and 26 of them come from states Bush won in 2004. Meanwhile, the average 2006 ACU rating for McCain's supporters is 70.7, and just 12 of them come from Bush states."

"I do not think that McCain can end the nomination battle with wins in Michigan and South Carolina. Because conservative leaders dislike him, I think they might 'rediscover' a viable alternative to him. Romney, Thompson, or even Giuliani could be brought back to life in a final effort to stop McCain."

"...Everything that has been written here applies to Mike Huckabee all the more. Huckabee is even more unacceptable to conservative leaders (he has the endorsement of only three out-of-state Republican members of Congress). His campaign even seems to be courting their contempt. McCain, to his credit, has worked hard since the immigration bill not to thumb his nose at conservative leaders. But not Huckabee. And I think that they would only accept Huckabee's nomination after he has won a majority of delegates. Until then, they'll find somebody, anybody to oppose him."

There is a growing consensus building amongst the Republicans who are not jumping onto the John McCain and Mike Huckabee popularity contest/populism bandwagon. That is, any combination of Romney, Thompson, or Giuiliani is preferable to John McCain or Mike Huckabee.

Escape & Evasion

Fred Thompson was strong in last night's South Carolina GOP debate. For once, it wasn't only Romney who effectively targeted Mike Huckabee for the pretender that he is.

In one exchange, Thompson ticked off a devastating litany of the not-so-conservative credentials of Mr. Huckabee. When given the chance to respond, as pointed out by the guys at Powerline, Huckabee addressed exactly none of the very valid points made by Thompson.

Instead, Huckabee smiled and trotted out one of his tired cliches:

"The Air Force has a saying that says that if you're not catching flak, you're not over the target. I'm catching the flak, I must be over the target."

This huckster-ism wasn't even appropriate. He's certainly not "catching flak" because he is too conservative, that's for sure. In fact, exactly the opposite. If the "target" is Reagan conservatism, he's at least three timezones away from being "over the target". Chuckabee must have zoned out during Thompson's laundry list because this generic answer, meant to charm the audience, was not a good fit rhetorically based upon what Thompson said.

I, for one, have had my fill of one-liners and quips in this election cycle. Mike Huckabee is trying to smile and wise crack his way into the White House at this point. He's the used car salesman of Presidential politics.

Here's what Thompson said of Huckabee to which the silver tongued Huckster escaped and evaded with no substantive response:

"This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and its future. On the one hand, you have the Reagan revolution. You have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security.

On the other hand, you have the direction that Governor Huckabee would take us in. He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies. He believes we have an arrogant foreign policy and the tradition of, blame America first. He believes that Guantanamo should be closed down and those enemy combatants brought here to the United States to find their way into the court system eventually. He believes in taxpayer-funded programs for illegals, as he did in Arkansas. He has the endorsement of the National Education Association, and the NEA said it was because of his opposition to vouchers. He said he would sign a bill that would ban smoking nationwide. So much for federalism. So much for states' rights. So much for individual rights.

That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party."

Right on Fred, right on.

the Silver (lining)

While real conservatives may be disappointed with a second place finish by Governor Romney in Tuesday's NH primary election, I would hasten to point out several items.

The state of New Hampshire, which allows independents to vote in either primary, is one well suited to a centrist like John McCain. Before the results were revealed last night, many pundits believed that there would be a heavy independent break towards Barack Obama resulting in the trouncing of Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, this analysis was woefully incorrect. Perhaps it was a case of the media shaping the results by leading independents to believe that since Obama was going to win resoundingly, independents could now vote for McCain in what may have been perceived by the public to have been the closer race. Whatever the case may be, McCain was able to garner the affections of moderate and even probably some left leaning voters and Romney did well amongst conservatives, as in, those of us you want the borders closed, want lower taxes and less government intrusion into our daily lives. The AP is reporting that, “In New Hampshire, McCain won among moderates and independents — despite his strong right-leaning Senate voting record — while Romney had an edge with hard-core conservatives.” If you also keep in mind the fact that McCain skipped Iowa to do several straight weeks of campaigning in the Granite State, I think it's fair to conclude that McCain had a kind of unnatural advantage. McCain may have been able to win over independents in New Hampshire using largely an emotional appeal, but it will be interesting to see how he does in states in which he cannot rely on voters who might usually vote for Democrats. Many anti-Romney pundits assert that since Romney has his own personal fortune to contribute to his campaign that there is no excuse as to why he did not win in NH. These same pundits never mention the fact that Romney out raised McCain in NH by nearly 2 to 1. So, the anti-Romney pundits can bash Romney for having the ability to contribute to his own campaign and spin it as a somehow a bad thing, but the fact remains that Romney is raising more money than all other Republican candidates. How you can construe either the ability to contribute to your own campaign or the ability to raise more money than your opponents, as a negative is certainly foreign to my way of thinking. How do these various right leaning, in some cases, pundits imagine that a Republican candidate would be better poised to defeat the now back on track Hillary Clinton coronation machine? The idea that raising or having more money for your campaign is a drawback is ludicrous.

Mike Huckabee proved in Iowa that in a presidential race, money isn’t everything. If you have a fairly mindless voting bloc that votes on the basis of identity politics and/or an ‘us vs. them’ message of economic populism, all the money in the world won’t stem a lemming-like tsunami of voters who vote more by mood than they do critical thinking. There are, luckily, objective criteria one can use for determining who is leading in a given presidential race. If you throw out all of the media noise, either the anti-Romney noise or the swooning media support for Huckabee and McCain, you can look at the actual scoreboard of the contest so far. On that scoreboard, otherwise known as the delegate count, Romney is way out in front of all other Republican candidates. The scoreboard is as follows, in terms of total delegates: Romney 30, Huckabee 21, McCain 10, Thompson 6, Ron Paul 2, Giuliani 1.

So, at this early phase of the race, Romney is leading all other candidates if you look at the most objective criterion, the delegate count. On top of that, Romney is raising more money than the other candidates and, as the anti-Romney press loves to point out, he has more money of his own to theoretically contribute to his campaign. The only evidence that I see that Romney is not doing well overall comes from the fact that the media keeps telling me to think so. As someone who is able to look at the facts of the situation rather than the media spin, it is clear to me that Romney is leading all other candidates at this point. Anyone who preaches that Romney is not doing well overall is either a closet liberal who wants the most articulate champion of conservative principles out of the race or they are a very confused conservative who is not familiar with the not-so-conservative records of Mike Huckabee and John McCain. To be fair, Fred Thompson and Giuliani haven’t started to really compete yet but certainly their supporters would not claim that their guy is beating Romney at this point.

I welcome any explanation of the position that Romney is not leading at this point in the race. Hopefully you would agree that, while it was disappointing for Romney voters to see another ‘silver’ in NH, there is still plenty of upside to his campaign's performance thus far overall. By looking at objective criteria such as the delegate count and money raised, Mitt Romney is beating all other Republican candidates at this point in the race.

Manchester NH Campaign HQ

Mitt Romney receives a warm welcome at his Manchester, New Hampshire campaign headquarters the night before the closely contested Republican primary election.

Non-pundit review

The cool kids

A few thoughts on last night's ABC GOP debate.

How is it that someone like McCain attacks Mitt Romney for changing his position on abortion over the years while McCain himself changed his position on illegal immigration during the campaign? McCain has drastically changed his position on one of the most pressing issues of the day within the last few months. McCain is a candidate who will prevail only if adequate scrutiny is not paid to his record as a senator. The McCain-Kennedy bill and the McCain-Feingold bill are not exactly hardcore conservative credentials.

And when has Romney ever changed his position on the war in Iraq? Huckabee supposedly scored a hit when accusing Romney of changing his position on the war? This is the same man who accused Bush of having bunker mentality? How Huckabee has any running room criticizing some one else's foreign policy ideas is beyond me. In last night's debate Huckabee again proved himself to be an utter hack, representing the worst kind of opportunistic and substance-free politician.

Then we have what I call the 'cool kids' factor. The piling on of personal insults and marginal policy critiques by every candidate upon Romney. First of all, the fact that no one piled on say, Fred Thompson is revealing enough. You don't pile on a non-factor. But beyond that, what we saw last night was reminiscent of high school cafeteria table where the cool kids gang up on the smart kid. (Often times in 7th and 8th grade I was with the cool kids, I'm not proud to say.) We've all seen versions of this phenomena countless times in life, some people are threatened by smart, capable individuals. It's just easier to team up and pile on than it is to compete on a legitimate basis. In the case of last night's debate, it was easier to rely on personal attacks, one-liners, and quips in an attempt to hide mediocrity.

During the debate, John McCain snickered at his own supposed jokes and sat back in his chair with an over-confident smirk after delivering insults. As Romney's press secretary suggested, McCain "Looked like the guy who had just pushed someone down a stairwell." He's right, McCain looked childish, the ringleader of the brats who are tired of having their not-so-conservative record being pointed out.

If Romney were to drop out of the race, all other candidates would look much better. Guiliani would look like a genius. McCain would look like a wise elder statesmen and not a petty, sinister, grumpy old man. Fred Thompson would look like the only legitimate conservative choice. Huckabee would be the sole 'family values' candidate. Ron Paul would be... well he'd still be Ron Paul, the natural foil to any Patriotic American who believes that the Islamo-fascists are the enemy, not our own foreign policy.

The more the Republican candidates pile on Romney exactly because he is a worthwhile candidate, the worse they look. Romney wanted to have an honest policy discussion last night and largely succeeded. But by teaming up on the smartest guy in the room and playing the role of the cool kids, the other major candidates (aside from maybe Fred Thompson) merely succeeded in looking petty, vindictive and loser-ish. These are not the qualities I would want in a president.

Romney takes Wyoming

After weeks of Iowa hype, Mitt Romney has quietly won the Wyoming Caucusus.

If Romney can finish at least second place in NH, that would mean he has finished in 1st or 2nd place in the first three states. No other candidate will have collectively done as well at that point in the race. This does not seem to me to be nearly the disaster that the media and other talking heads are declaring.

Have you ever noticed how most lefties in the media constantly downplay or bash Romney? The reason for this is that they realize that the Democratic candidate, whomever that is, can never beat Romney in a legitimate, distraction free, debate on the issues. And so, all of the smartest lefties would like nothing better than Romney to take enough hits that he has to drop out of the race, thereby taking the most articulate champion of conservative principles in the race, out of the race.

The man from hope

Today is one of those days I remember why I consider myself a conservative, if anything, rather than a Republican. If Mike Huckabee represents what it is to be a Republican, then I want no part of it.

I'd consider voting for Barack Obama rather than Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, cultivating the popularity of populism.

Why I don't 'Like Mike'

By now Mike Huckabee has proven himself to be an utter fraud, a complete charlatan.

He was "for negative attack ads before he was against them".

He has despicably played the 'religion card' against Romney and is playing, as Rush Limbaugh calls, 'identity politics' to the highest degree.

His shamelessly populist rhetoric has been, at this point, vetted and analyzed to be the thinly veiled liberal philosophy that it is.

His main criticism of Romney, the amount of money Romney has spent in Iowa, is classic liberal backwards logic. The Huckabee campaign would have us believe that being able to raise money and run a well-organized campaign is a bad thing. What does the Huckabee campaign imagine is a good approach to beating say, Hillary Clinton I wonder? That running a campaign "out of your back pocket", as Rich Lowry calls it, is somehow a viable way to defeat the entrenched Democratic apparatus? This kind of John Edwards-esque backwards logic is what we can expect from the other side of aisle, which represents yet more evidence that Huckabee is a RINO.

Pastor Huckabee has bungled every single opportunity to prove he knows a thing about foreign policy. Even his most ardent supporters would concede that, as Huckabee himself would probably quip, that his foreign policy experience amounts to that he has twice eaten at the International House of Pancakes.* He actually did say something like “I may not know a thing about Pakistan, but I did stay at a Holiday inn Express last night.” Sorry Mike, we are not electing a comedian-in-chief, we would prefer that our candidate at least know that illegal immigrants from Pakistan do not outnumber those from all other countries but Mexico.

That I haven't heard more about his completely inappropriate responses to the so-called negative ads that Romney has been running is somewhat puzzling to me. Huckabee has vindictively whined about the Romney campaign contrast ads running on TV in Iowa and elsewhere. The ads, which stay miles away from any personal attacks, highlight the substantive differences between the two candidates. Claiming that he is running a positive campaign, Huckabee counter attacks Romney about the ads with all the pettiness and vitriol of a classic Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi anti-Bush rant, yet never does he address the substance of what Romney is saying. Does anyone still fall for this kind of obfuscating, smoke screening defense? I'll make it very simple. If candidate A makes a charge against the record of candidate B, candidate B when addressing the charge, should do so squarely. Save the one-liners, the folksy quips, the homespun logic, and the personal attacks, just address the direct subject at hand. Such as, do you support in-state tuition for illegal immigrants under any circumstances or not? Or, did you grant pardons to X number of violent criminals while governor or not? I have to believe that I'm not one of the only people to notice that for all the caterwauling regarding Romney's ads, never does the Huckster address the substance of the ads.

I could go on for days about Huckabee and why he is a fraud but I just hope he does not win Iowa tonight.

Like Susan Estrich, all those who want Republicans to lose in ‘08 want Huckabee to finish first place in Iowa.

*credit, Jay Severin

Space Wars '07

We couldn't have a year pass in Boston without rehashing the old argument of reserving parking spaces with household items during a snow emergency. This year the debate rages just as virulently as ever. It's basically trench warfare out there in the streets of Boston during and after a snow storm dumps mounds and mounds of the white stuff everywhere in sight.

The parking and overall traffic situation is already a major problem for the city. The amount of cars on the roads and cars that need to be parked on the streets is an ever increasing proposition, with no relief in sight. With construction projects blighting the city at every other intersection, the amount of room to maneuver and/or park your vehicle anywhere in the city is of the ever increasing difficulty variety.

When there is news of an impending snow storm in the greater Boston area, a kind of general mania sets in amongst its population. Suddenly people realize that they have to rush out and do 5 more errands. Housewives rush to their mini-vans to go pick up their dozens of kids early from school. Everyone dashes to their car to either leave work early or do those last few deliveries. Public service personnel and the transportation industry deploy all of their assets to aid those who feel the need to flock around as if a nuclear device was about to be detonated somewhere in the city. Every car that can start its engine in the entire greater Boston area hits the roads in some form or another. And if they're lucky that's the only thing they'll hit in the upcoming bedlam.

The first snow storm of the year this year resulted in massive traffic jams throughout the state of Massachusetts resulting in 7,8,9, hour commutes for some people depending on just how ambitious of a journey was being undertaken.

The 'Deval Crawl', as its come to be known, was probably the single worst experience commuters have ever endured in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The overall chaos, which represented a confluence of factors including the mania of the people and clear mismanagement of the situation by state and local officials, is not the end of the story however.

The mania does not recede when the snow ceases. In fact it intensifies as frustration slowly builds in those seeking to navigate the now almost impassible in some cases, streets of greater Boston. The surface area of the already over crowded streets is reduced because of the massive piles of snow buffeting parked cars and covering street signs entirely.

Then the real fun begins when the perennial debate and struggle I call 'Space Wars' ensues. Vigilantism and 'street justice' are the order of the day when Bostonian sets upon fellow Bostonian in the struggle to find a place the park their car. In recent years, the Mayor has weighed in, ordering residents not to deploy household items into the street in order to reserve a shoveled-out parking space. But despite the pleas of Mayor 'mumbles' Menino, all manner of items have been and continue to be employed as an informal disincentive to park in "some one's" space all day long when they are at work or simply out on the streets causing grid lock.

The situation has gotten so out of hand that last year a city councilor from South Boston came out in support of residents reserving their little piece of public property indefinitely with whatever manner of unsightly piece of house hold refuse. The mania caused by snow storms even drives many space holders to keep their devices in place on the public streets long after the majority of the snow has melted. It does start to look exceedingly silly to see old toilets and rusty lawnmowers sitting on the side of the road when merely a few hand fulls of very dirty snow are strewn around. Only in an old school town like Boston would so many residents defend the practice of reserving spaces like this with a straight face. People are set in their ways, and are immune to the use of logic in order to dislodge a long held view that during a storm a given person has the right to temporarily posses a piece of public property.

Read this Boston Herald article for a good laugh and view the comments section of the article to get a glimpse into the mindset of those who are proponets of this sociological phenomena.

The Centrist Ticket

I'll take the centrist ticket over any combination of two of the following names: Clinton, Obama, Huckabee, Edwards, Kucinich, and Ron Paul.

Fateful Moment

Pakistan's interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her vehicle's sunroof when she tried to duck after a suicide attack, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found in her.

Ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said the opposition leader had died from a head wound she sustained when she smashed against the sunroof's lever as she tried to shelter inside the car.

"The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull," Cheema said. "There was no bullet or metal shrapnel found in the injury." -AFP

Killed

Pakistani television is reporting that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in what appears to have been at least a two pronged attack involving several suicide bombings and a secondary gunman attack. This is terrible news.

Backtrack-abee

At this point Mike Huckabee has distanced himself from his own belief that illegal immigrants should be entitled to pay instate tuition as well as distancing himself from his own disbelief in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The other day Huckabee raced to assure Larry King, of all people, that his own disbelief in evolution would in no way change or effect his public policy if elected president.

Today Huckabee, in response to Condi Rice's ardent defense of Bush foreign policy, is essentially backtracking on his comments about the Bush administration's "bunker mentality" as he called it. He's parsing, dodging, and weaving even suggesting that he was not responsible for writing his own commentary which appeared in the most recent issue of "Foreign Affairs Journal".

Huckabee is man who seems to come out proudly and say the wrong thing and when pressed on it, rather than admit he was wrong, he prefers to backtrack and/or obfuscate. "Did she actually read the article?", he said today in an obvious attempt to muddle the issue by suggesting that his criticism of the Bush Administration has been some how misinterpreted or taken out of context. No Mr. Huckabee, nice try though. We all knew what you meant. We've heard the exact same refrain countless times from your leftie brethren and other agenda driven critics of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

I'd have more respect for Hackabee if he just flopped and said," I was misinformed or mistaken and I'm sorry, I was wrong." Instead we have this bad Bill Clinton impersonation of parsing the truth. "My comments were taken out of context." Yeah... sure they were.

Christmas Message (and response)

No Mr. Huckabee, I'm not worn out from all the political ads but I can imagine why you are. For your sake, the less conservatives know about you the better. So I'm not very surprised to see that you seem to be advocating a moratorium on political ads.

Sorry Huck, but we're not suspending civics and politics because it's Christmas time. Christmas will come again next year, but the opportunity to expose you for the closet liberal that you are is a now or never proposition.

Stressful times

Huckacide

Rich Lowry of National Review is quickly becoming one of my favorite political analysts. In the following brilliant piece he succinctly lays out why Huckabee winning the Republican nomination would be a disaster for Republicans.

The ghost of Howard Dean haunts the pundit class. As soon as a candidate of either party spikes up in the polls, he is compared with Dean, who had a spectacular boomlet in the second half of 2003 only to deflate as soon as people began to vote in early 2004.

After many false prophecies, Dean circa 2008 has finally arrived. He is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Not because he will inevitably blow himself up in Iowa. But because, like Dean, his nomination would represent an act of suicide by his party.

Like Dean, Huckabee is an under-vetted former governor who is manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States. Like Dean, he is rising toward the top of polls in a crowded field based on his appeal to a particular niche of his party. As with Dean, his vulnerabilities in a general election are so screamingly obvious that it’s hard to believe that primary voters, once they focus seriously on their choice, will nominate him.

The GOP’s social conservatism inarguably has been an enormous benefit to the party throughout the past 30 years, winning over conservative Democrats and lower-income voters who otherwise might not find the Republican limited-government message appealing. That said, nominating a Southern Baptist pastor running on his religiosity would be rather overdoing it. Social conservatism has to be part of the Republican message, but it can’t be the message in its entirety.

Someone needs to tell Huckabee. His first TV ads in Iowa touted him as a “Christian leader,” and his target audience of evangelicals has responded. But according to a Pew poll released in early December, only 1 in 7 nonevangelical Republicans support him in Iowa and 1 in 20 nonevangelicals in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Huckabee has declared that he doesn’t believe in evolution. Even if there are many people in America who agree with him, his position would play into the image of Republicans as the anti-science party. This would tend to push away independents and upper-income Republicans. In short, Huckabee would take a strength of the GOP and, through overplaying it, make it a weakness.

He’d do the same on taxes. In general, the public tends to support Democratic proposals for bigger government, which Republicans counter by saying that the proposals will require higher taxes. Huckabee will be equipped poorly to make this traditional Republican comeback, given his tax-raising history in Arkansas. Huckabee tries to compensate with a sales-tax scheme that allows him to say he supports eliminating the IRS, but is so wildly implausible that it would be a liability in a general election.

Then, there’s national security, the Republican trump card during the Cold War and after 9/11. Huckabee not only has zero national-security credentials, he basically has no foreign-policy advisers either, as a New York Times Magazine piece this Sunday makes clear. In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in September, Huckabee struck notes seemingly borrowed from Barack Obama, hitting the Bush administration for its “bunker mentality” and strongly supporting direct talks with Iran. A foreign-policy debate with a Democratic nominee would be a competition over who can promise to be nicer to foreign countries.

None of this is a winning formula. Huckabee has been running his campaign out of his back pocket, and has done it extremely well. There’s a reason, though, that serious candidates surround themselves with policy experts. It’s necessary to running a campaign based on more than sound bites. Wherever you scratch Huckabee on policy, he seems an inch deep. Do Republicans really want to enter what is already a tough political year with a candidate apparently allergic to preparation, and who has shown no predilection for organizing or fundraising, when he can do cable TV appearances instead?

Democrats have to be looking at Huckabee the way Republicans once regarded Dean — as a shiny Christmas present that is too good to be true.

'Crashingly Dull'

The lefty journalists in charge of today's Des Moines Register Republican debate were so focussed on stacking the deck against the Republican candidates that they totally missed the goal of making an interesting debate. The humorless moderator announced that no discussion of illegal immigration or the war in Iraq would be allowed. What???

Is it mere coincidence that discussion of these issues makes Democrats look bad? The war is going better and the Democrats have failed to effect any change in war policy, which pisses of the far left. Illegal immigration makes Democrats look bad because they are not on the side of the rule of law and favor amnesty and open borders.

And then the Des Moines Register, who are obvious fans of Hillary Clinton, insert Alan Keyes into the Republican debate in order to provide further distraction of relevant issues while at the same time they disallow Denis Kucincich from appearing in the Democratic debate. The debate organizers are scrambling to come up with a reason for the obvious double standard. I'll save them the trouble... there's no squaring it! Democrats have to stack the deck at the debates and in other formats because they will never win on the merits. In a raw un-interupted, un-handcuffed discussion of the issues, Democrats lose all day long.

Zoning Out

As soon as I saw the dour and humorless moderator hosting today’s Democratic Presidential debate I wondered just how quick the Bush bashing would begin. I didn’t have to wait long. The very first sentence delivered by the candidates involved throwing president Bush under the bus. And as I watched softball question after softball question, all met with the same sort of bush bashing answer, I started to zone out.

It wasn’t until later that I paid attention. I was semi stunned out of my stupor by the shrill tone of Hillary Clinton. She was giving a generic enough of an answer but I noticed how she seemed to me to be yelling. “Why are you yelling?”, I said to the TV as I considered just how loud in terms of decibels she must have been speaking. I concluded that she wasn’t necessarily that loud, yet listening to her voice made me very uncomfortable. It was that angry, grating tone that made me leap up to turn down the volume of my TV.

Hillary doesn’t seem to be able talk quietly and/or calmly very well. She seems to slowly build in shrillness to a crescendo which usually has the phrase “Bush administration” in it. Later in the debate, she had a revealing moment in which she cackled loudly when Obama appeared to be uncomfortable having been asked the one and only non-softball question of the entire debate relating to his experience. And on that matter, Obama’s resume may be paper thin, but Hillary’s modest senatorial experience is hardly something to draw too much attention to let alone make it the lynch pin of your campaign.

The Democratic candidates, have you zoned out yet?

Coalescence

'Romney for President' by the editors of National Review:

Romney is an intelligent, articulate, and accomplished former businessman and governor. At a time when voters yearn for competence and have soured on Washington because too often the Bush administration has not demonstrated it, Romney offers proven executive skill. He has demonstrated it in everything he has done in his professional life, and his tightly organized, disciplined campaign is no exception. He himself has shown impressive focus and energy.

We believe that Romney is a natural ally of social conservatives. He speaks often about the toll of fatherlessness in this country. He may not have thought deeply about the political dimensions of social issues until, as governor, he was confronted with the cutting edge of social liberalism. No other Republican governor had to deal with both human cloning and court-imposed same-sex marriage. He was on the right side of both issues, and those battles seem to have made him see the stakes of a broad range of public-policy issues more clearly. He will work to put abortion on a path to extinction. Whatever the process by which he got to where he is on marriage, judges, and life, we’re glad he is now on our side — and we trust him to stay there.

For some people, Romney’s Mormonism is still a barrier. But we are not electing a pastor. The notion that he will somehow be controlled by Salt Lake City or engaged in evangelism for his church is outlandish. He deserves to be judged on his considerable merits as a potential president. As he argued in his College Station speech, his faith informs his values, which he has demonstrated in both the private and public sectors. In none of these cases have any specific doctrines of his church affected the quality of his leadership. Romney is an exemplary family man and a patriot whose character matches the high office to which he aspires.