Clueless: Moderate Republicans And The IRS's Attacks on the Tea Party

We've spent so many decades hearing about how Richard Nixon (unsuccessfully) tried to sic the IRS on his political opponents, it was almost funny to learn that the "white hat" Obama lead an effort to systematically suppress conservative activists through abusive auditing. You would think anyone with an "R" after their name would know what to do with a scandal like this: righteous anger mixed with a resolve to fight these b**tards to the political death. But that's not what the GOP's moderate elements are doing. Instead, they are working hand-in-glove with the Obama administration to pass immigration reform while harrumphing about "special prosecutors" and generally allowing public anger to diffuse. 

As the perfect exemplar of this strain, Sheriff Michael Gerson rode into town on his high horse a couple weeks ago and declared the heated reaction by Tea Partiers to be, erm, unhelpful:

A number of libertarians and conservative populists have found data collection by the National Security Agency(NSA) to be the final confirmation of their worst fears about Barack Obama and modern government. It is an attempt, according to Ron Paul, to “deliberately destroy the Constitution.” To radio talk show host Mark Levin, it reveals “the elements of a police state.” To Rush Limbaugh, it is part of a “coup d’etat” by the Obama “regime.” 

Some on the right believe, as they say in the intel business, that they have connected the dots. All the scandals are really part of one big scandal. For Levin, it encompasses abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, the collection of DNA by policemen, Obamacare’s centralization of medical records and the use of domestic drones. “The Transportation Department, people forget, has proposed black boxes in all of our automobiles to track how they function,” Levin adds. 

Limbaugh presents a similar list, demonstrating what he calls “the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration,” and homes in on the NSA revelations: “The main question is, why is such a gigantic surveillance operation even necessary? What is really going on here? Who is the enemy? The tea party, we know, is an enemy of the administration. We know that conservative Republicans — and I could give you names — are enemies of this administration.” 

Let me stipulate that the IRS targeting of tea party groups is deeply disturbing andEric Holder’s Justice Department is politicized, swaggering and incompetent. Distrust of government is deep in the American DNA, and the Obama administration has often managed to justify it. 

But asserting that U.S. intelligence agencies are part of a conspiracy that somehow includes a national gun registry, drone surveillance and Lois Lerner crosses a line. 

I guess we shouldn't expect any real fight from the man who helped craft the Bush 43 administration's pathetic non-response to the scurrilous attacks the left subjected it to for years. But, come on! Doesn't any of this make Gerson angry? It should. Decent, hard-working Americans of the sort whom the GOP has historically relied on at the polls, were subject to attack and abuse by cold-hearted left-wing activists disguised as bureaucrats. The GOP base was literally being hounded and suppressed - while the left wailed about a bogus "war on women" and a mythical effort to suppress minority voters via voter ID laws! Mr. Gerson, your people were under attack and that doesn't seem to bother you, nor does it bother many of the DC-based GOP leadership. Frankly, that is almost as disturbing as the IRS asking conservative groups about the contents of their prayers. 

What's worse is that progressives have been using 501(c)(3)'s and (4)'s as political tools and income streams for years. The NAACP, NARAL, the teachers unions (and every other union), Greenpeace, PETA, and so on are all tax-emept organizations. They are also political through and through. How is that "legal" while some women organizing a Tea Party group around their kitchen tables is untoward? 

And, left-wing groups aren't just organizing tools. Rich progressives like the Kennedies use them as tax shelters and as income streams. The grant-writing liberal is not far removed from the conservative businessman going to the bank for a loan, only the liberal is looking to start an activist group and pay herself a salary. And, the non-profit sector is notorious for its prodigious fund-raising and pathetic disbursement rates. Rush Limbaugh has been saying for years that the modern left is funded by tax-payers. He's not far off the mark. Again, Mr. Gerson, doesn't it make you angry that leftists are excluded from the sort of rigorous enforcement to which conservative groups were subject?

That's not to let Tea Partiers totally off the hook. As earnestly as they wanted to comply with IRS rules, it should have been clear to anyone receiving those crazy document demands that quick approvals would not be forthcoming from Cincinnati or Ogden or wherever. As Prof. Reynolds suggests, they should have self-exempted at that point. And, while it's admirable that conservatives wanted to make sure they were crossing all of their T's and dotting their I's re: accepting donations, I have to ask whether, say, the Black Panthers or Mario Savio or the Chicago Seven or other leftist rebels ever went through the bother of complying with IRS rules. Maybe they did and there was a Black Panther 501(c)(3), but I have no idea and anyway I doubt it. They just went out and started taking care of business, committing real crimes along the way. The left's funding has always been murky with an unknown but significant portion coming from Moscow and Beijing back in the good ol' days. Somehow the Tea Party hasn't managed to figure out that successful political activism is probably inversely proportional to compliance with the rules created by the political class. 

And, finally, while the right has a compelling case that its vote was suppressed in 2012, it was hardly a case of involuntary suppression. People just stayed home and didn't vote. Excuse me? That's pathetic! You don't like Romney, or are being inundated with insane IRS correspondence, or are getting Obama robo-calls, and your response is to stay home? Voting in America is still one of the easiest public duties a citizen has available to him. Obama richly deserved to lose, whether that loss came at the hands of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry or John Huntsman should have been beside the point. 

I had no illusions about Mitt Romney, no one should have. The man was a technocrat, not an activist. All those promises about repealing Obamacare, etc. would have wilted at the first sign of leftist counter-attack. But, that would still be better than what we've got now. 

To bring it all back to Michael Gerson's plaintive whining about unhelpful right-wing rhetoric, there's a reason why the Bush/Romney/Dole/McCain/Ford/Dewey branch of the party has so much trouble winning elections. They have no fight in them, and worse, don't realize they are in a fight at all. And, if they manage to win an election, they don't fight back. They don't protect themselves, and they don't protect their voters and most active supporters. Pathetic. 

Now It All Makes Sense: Romney Didn't Really Want To Run For President

That, at least, is the word from Tagg Romney, who told the Boston Globe that he and Ann Romney had to work hard to persuade Mitt to run for the 2012 nomination. It was "his turn" after all!

No one wanted to be president less than Mitt Romney, his son said in an interview out Sunday that raises new questions about the candidacy of the losing Republican nominee. 

In an interview with the Boston Globe examining what went wrong with the Romney campaign, his eldest son Tagg explains that his father had been a reluctant candidate from the start. 

After failing to win the 2008 Republican nomination, Romney told his family he would not run again and had to be persuaded to enter the 2012 White House race by his wife Ann and son Tagg. 

"He wanted to be president less than anyone I've met in my life. He had no desire... to run," Tagg Romney said. "If he could have found someone else to take his place... he would have been ecstatic to step aside." 

Mitt Romney "is a very private person who loves his family deeply and wants to be with them. He loves his country, but he doesn't love the attention," his son said.

To paraphrase Johnny Rotten, "Ever had the feeling you've just been ripped off?"

I guess now it makes sense how Romney essentially took a dive in the third debate and eased noticeably off of the throttle during the last three weeks of the campaign. He came dangerously close to winning the election - remember how everyone on the left was relieved when Hurricane Sandy hoved into view? - which would not have been an optimal outcome for someone who didn't act like he really wanted the job to begin with.

In a way, we averted disaster of a sort. (trying hard not to diminish the disaster we're living through right now). If Romney couldn't bother to campaign, he certainly wasn't ready to govern in the manner he promised. There would have been no major spending cuts, no tax reform, and, of course, no repeal of Obamacare. It would have been Bush 41 all over again, only without the preceding 8 years of real conservative governance to build on.

Of course, "thanks" to Romney, we had no viable conservative candidate to put up against Obama. While he was not enthusiastic about waging political war against Democrats, he was quite happy to let it rip against his fellow Republicans. Funny how the guy who violated the 11th Commandment didn't really want the job to begin with.

Santa v Jesusland: Critiquing Mitt Romney's Post-Election After-action Report

Mitt Romney is one of those guys whose "gaffes" are in the category "inadvertant utterance of the truth" rather than simple misstatements or mispronunciations. (I thought his "corporations are people, my friend" was one of his best moments despite the ignorant caterwauling that arose in response). Even in defeat, the "gaffes" keep coming as Romney has sought to blame his loss on Obama giving "gifts" to certain targeted constituencies.

In a conference call with fund-raisers and donors to his campaign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday afternoon that the president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” 

“In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.” 

Mr. Romney’s comments in the 20-minute conference call came after his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, told WISC-TV in Madison on Monday that their loss was a result of Mr. Obama’s strength in “urban areas,” an analysis that did not account for Mr. Obama’s victories in more rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire or the decrease in the number of votes for the president relative to 2008 in critical urban counties in Ohio. 

“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.” 

The president’s health care plan, he said, was also a useful tool in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters. Though Mr. Romney won the white vote with 59 percent, according to exit polls, minorities coalesced around the president in overwhelming numbers: 93 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Hispanics. 

“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge,” Mr. Romney said. “Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus. But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

This has inspired a furious counter-reaction from some Republicans who have have accused Romney of dividing the country and engaging in some kind of corporatist politicking that excludes the lower half. John Podheretz probably came up with the best summation of this latest attitude du jour:

Romney didn’t say on that call that the election had come out as it did because Obama’s team had outplayed and outfoxed his. He should have, because that’s the truth. 

Rather, he said that Obama had won the second term essentially through bribery — or what he called “gifts.” According to The New York Times, Romney said Obama had pulled out an “old playbook” to woo “the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.” 

Obama and his team, Romney said, were“very generous in what they gave to those groups.” He mentioned certain immigration reforms the White House designed without the need for congressional vote and ObamaCare policies mandating free contraception and extending a child’s ability to stay on his parents’ insurance to the age of 26. 

By contrast, Romney said, he talked about “big” national issues: “military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.” So, compared to the “gifts,” he just couldn’t compete. 

Aside from being bad sportsmanship — Romney basically said Obama won by cheating — he was displaying the same obtuseness about the wants and needs of ordinary people that did more to torpedo his campaign than any goodies Obama might have had to dole out.

Podheretz is a Serious Thinker (who writes for the New York Post, but still) or at least is descended from Serious Thinkers,  so you'd think he'd know what he's talking about. I mean, is there any doubt that what Romney said was true? Podheretz seems to have forgotten that Obama just won a national election, in large part, by motivating the constituent parts of his base with gifts or with outsized claims about the efficacy of his various bailouts. Not only that, these groups came relatively cheap. Remember how restive Hispanics complained about the absence of comprehensive immigration reform? All he had to do was sign a constitutionally dubious executive order authorizing the DREAM Act. Don't tell me that didn't satisfy most Hispanics.

Even better was his "evolution" on gay marriage. Obama was calling for legalizing gay marriage back in the 1990's, then cynically switched positions to say his "religious beliefs" told him marriage was between a man and a woman. Everyone knew he was lying - about gay marriage and about his having religious beliefs that had any influence on his "evolution" on marriage. The Left was especially aware of the lie, and simply waited for an electorally motivated evolution in their direction, and then voted accordingly. Let's see a conservative get away with this.

Most important, there was the Democrat Convention, which featured speeches offering one "gift" after another. As I said at the time, if a Libertarian (or serious conservative) saw any part of that convention, they would be overcome with despair at their philosophy's bleak prospects in the face of millions of voters for whom such gifts are highly prized and worth their vote. To deny this is to deny reality, not to mention experience.

Podheretz points to Gov. Bobby Jindal as a Young Turk who knows how the world works:

Bobby Jindal, the brilliant and effective governor of Louisiana, raged against Romney in response. The former candidate was “absolutely wrong,” he said. Romney was “dividing the American voters.” Republicans, Jindal asserted, “need to continue to show how our policies help every voter out there achieve the American Dream.”

Sorry, is that a joke? The governor of Louisiana has trouble understanding how Democrats use pay-outs and patronage to win elections? And thinks that discussing such matters is out of bounds?! If true, then he literally should not run for president, but should stay in the Pelican State. The man clearly does not know the enemy, and that has to be a foundational requirement for any serious conservative presidential contender.

Is Romney over-selling the "gift" spin? Absolutely. There were a lot of other factors involved in his loss including the catostrophic failure of his GOTV, and his hesitant campaigning style that saw him ease off the throttle in the last debate and in the final 3 weeks of the campaign. Romney is, unsurprisingly, not ready to admit to his own failures.

But, Democrats have been winning elections since Andrew Jackson's time by running against moneyed interests and offering gifts to their supporters. This is basic stuff! I assume Podheretz, Jindal, et al. would recognize this dynamic if they saw it play out somewhere like Argentina and France (and it has played out in both countries in the last 18 months). That they can't see it in the good ol' US of A tells me that they, and many other Republicans, are woefully unprepared to compete in the current environment.

Beached Whale: What Happened To Mitt Romney's Project ORCA?

One of the infuriating data points that came out of Mitt Romney's loss on Election Day was the catastrophic failure of ORCA, a GOTV effort, based around a computer program that brought live voter data to the Romney camp's Boston HQ so that they could better deploy resources to hustle up voters who hadn't made it to the polls. At least that's what it was supposed to do. The program apparently crashed, stranding tens of thousands of volunteers and leaving the GOP blind. This is why tech companies don't like to release the beta version of their latest products. (Word on the street is that Romneys wizz-kids didn't do a system-wide test before election day. We kept being told this was the "most important election of our lifetime" but it sure is beginning to look like a lot of people in the upper levels of the GOP didn't act like it.)

By contrast, check out this inside look at the Obama campaign's data-mining system, named Narwhal. Obama hired top tech guys from Google, Facebook, and other companies. They set up a complex cloud-based system on Amazon's servers, and then subjected it to rigorous tests, including a number of live-action practice runs. They worked 14-hour days, etc. You get the feeling Romney's guys were doing this (or were as smart)? Me neither.

That there was a massive failure of some kind is undeniable (people have testified to experiencing it in Ohio, Colorado, Florida and Virginia). But, there has been precious little talk of it from the Romney camp's after-action reports (that's in contrast to his "notorious" comment about how Obama won by giving voters gifts. more on that tomorrow). I'm sure there are a lot of red faces out there, at least there better be. But, we are being told that the GOP needs to make all sorts of dubious ideological adjustments based on a narrow election loss that you could plausibly blame,  at least in part, on a crippled GOTV effort. At the very least, we should know who put this disaster together so we can make sure they are never allowed near a Republican campaign ever again. (the enterprising Stacy McCain has already named some names).

Word is now coming out that Anonymous claims to have hacked ORCA and brought the system down. Is that true? Well, they have hacked plenty of other systems in the name of global leftism, ranging from San Francisco's BART system to websites daring to support Israel. Hacking a Republican campaign would fit right in with their modus operendi. And it's not implausible that someone disabled ORCA, whether as a dirty trick or for darker reasons. Plenty of characters inside and outside of the US had reason to dread the return of Republicans to the Executive Branch, and hacking into a buggy system like ORCA - apparently ramped up in a hurry in a few months - doesn't seem like all that daunting a task, especially since the Romney camp was bragging about ORCA in the months before the election, in contrast to the tight lipped Obama operation.

Mitt Romney lost a very close election that he genuinely believed was in the bag. You could make a list of "reasons he lost" as long as your arm. The absolute failure of his GOTV operation in states where he lost by tens of thousands of votes has to be a factor, and is deserving of a lot more attention before we start making any "deals" as a sop to this or that disenchanted voting block.

Sotto Voce: Bitter Recriminations Edition

Good thing I wrote that "What If Romney Loses" post last week. Now, I can start at #11

11. You ever get the feeling that Republican candidates and their consultants have never run for office before and/or never participated in a national election?

12. Mitt Romney is a fine man: decent, charitable, hard working, brilliant, etc. For the first time in my lifetime, the lesser candidate won the presidency.

13. But

14. After crushing the first debate and taking a 5% lead in many polls, he took the foot off the pedal, didn't he?

15. The most shocking stat out of the election was that Romney underperformed McCain by 3 million votes, (second most shocking was that Obama underperformed by approxiamtely 7 million).

16. We heard all about how the GOPGOTV effort was going to blow everyone away, but that didn't happen, did it?

17. If you want  to be angry, read this first-person account about Romney's Project ORCA, which was supposed to mobilize 30,000 GOP precinct workers. The GOP establishment is literally throwing away money and votes.

18. Everyone's talking about how they missed this, or missed that, in the polls; but it's amazing how everyone missed the depressed turn-out among Republicans. We told ourselves this was a "broken-glass" election (as in, crawling over broken glass to vote), but it really wasn't. There was an enormous, unspoken unhappiness out there that our side missed.

19. But, you're not going to hear me knock social conservative voters. They loyally turned out as they always do.

20. Social conservative leaders and politicians on the other hand? You guys are killing us. Todd Akin should have been thrown bodily off the ticket for what he said about how women's bodies can "shut that thing down" during rape. Instead, you guys closed ranks and insisted that he stay in.

21. Richard Mourdock, meanwhile, showed how frankly unprepared social cons are in dealing with basic politicking. He had advanced warning that "abortion/rape" questions were going to be an issue...and still f***ed up.

22. We got along for many years with the formulation that abortion should only be allowed for cases involving incest, rape and to save the life of the mother. What happened?

23. During the Iraq War, you could always count on a Lincoln Chaffee or George Voinovich to undercut the president. On Gitmo and "torture," there were Lindsay Graham and John McCain, ready to give aid and comfort to the left. Ben Bernanke has given the president whatever feeble lift in the economy he might need. And when it came time to be a man and strike down Obamacare, John Roberts was at the ready to vote to the left of Anthony Kennedy.

24. Which brings me to Chris Christie.

25. Has there ever been a time when a prominent politician made a very public display of support for the incumbent president of the opposing party the week before a national election? If, yes, someone has to tell me where, when and who, because I think what Christie did was unprecedented and unforgiveable.

26. I mean, does the guy read the newspapers? Was he in a coma in 2005? Back then, Democrats were not interested in working with W to deal with the aftermath of a destructive hurricane. Why are we repaying that perfidy with political cover for a leftist president?

27. The day after the election, the stock market tanked. I swear, I heard over and over on the radio that the sell-off occurred because of the recession in Europe and "investor worries about gridlock in Congress." No mention at all of the just concluded presidential race. What a joke.

28. The other joke is that, the day after the election, suddenly the news was full of talk of the "looming fiscal cliff," something that I'll bet will come as a suprise to the typical low-information voter. Maybe someone should have brought that up during the campaign.

Fingers Crossed: Get Out And Vote

Here's hoping!

I've been seeing a lot of aggressively optimistic election predictions from lefty analysts. From the right, the analysis is more in the category of "quiet determination." Regardless, there's no excuse to stay home today (nor, if you live in a swing state, is there an excuse to vote for Gary Johnson). Then again, if you are still "undecided," you probably should stay home.

I've been seeing some anecdotal tales of people stroking their chins, if not their nether regions, over the idea of voting for Romney for president; but then voting for Kaine in VA, Donnelly in IN, McCaskill in MO, etc. Ticket splitting, in other words. I guess people have forgotten, or never knew, that ticket splitting was one of the great banes of the Reagan Revolution. Voters, especially Reagan Democrats, had no problem electing a full-throated conservative president, but then voted into office some of the most vituperous and obnoxious leftists imaginable to Congress. Reagan didn't have a Republican House to work with until 1994 (D'oh!) which meant every step of the Reagan years was made with the dead weight of querolous liberals attached. Back in those days, Democrats could still get away with the old "talk Right at home, vote Left in DC," but surely those days are past. Keep it simple and just vote (R). Remember, a brain-dead Todd Akin is better than a fully engaged Claire McCaskill.

See you tomorrow. (hopefully with a still-intact television set).

Confident Men: Bucking Up the Troops Before The Election

It's the weekend before the election, and the 'net is filled with aggressively optimistic pronouncements from lefty analysts:

Sam Stein says the Obama campaign has personally contacted 125M voters. And I'm sure all of those people politely nodded and said, yes, of course I will vote for the president.

Eleanor Clift says the Obama campaign is working hard to make sure young single mothers get to the polls. Funny how the spohisticates on the Left are so reliant on naive, poorly educated people who have made bad life choices...and who don't tend to vote in large numbers.

Charles Blow says Romney is "unraveling" and his time is running out. Blow is right. Romney's been wasting his time going to all these huge rallies in Democrat precincts.

Bob Shrum has a long list of mistakes that have doomed Romney. If there's a guy who understands mistakes made in presidential campaigns...

Greg Sargeant says Obama's in good shape with three days left. He even says the polls would have to be systematically and catastrophically wrong for Romney to win. Of course, if there's one thing we've had a lot of in the last 10 years it's the phenomenon of once-unimpeachable institutions being systematically and catastrophically wrong

Jesse Jackson says (in the UK Guardian) America and the world "need" Obama because that mess he inherited was so deep, a standard no Democrat ever afforded "mess" inheritors Reagan and Bush 43.

Sean Sullivan, quoting David Plouffe, says Mitt Romney's play for Pennsylvania is a desperate ploy. Look, I get it that PA is a stretch, but didn't conservative stalwart Pat Toomey just win a Senate seat two years ago? (and didn't Rick Santorum represent PA for two terms when the state was even more Blue?)

Roger Simon says the "swift boating" of Obama (via Beghazi-gate) has failed, which is why everyone in the Obama Administration is pointing the finger at everyone else.

And, of course, Paul Krugman says you would have to be stupid to think the election will be close. I agree that a lot of people will look stupid come Wednesday. Hopefully, we won't be among them.

Sotto Voce: What If Romney Loses?

Like most evil right-wingers, I find it hard to believe that Mitt Romey could possibly lose the election this Tuesday, but here are some of the things I might be muttering under my breath should Obama squeak out a win with a mandate based on "binders/birth control/Big Bird/Benghazi-gate:"

1. The GOP really is the Stupid Party.

2. Winning debates and "looking presidential" don't mean s***.

3. If Republicans can't win with a brilliant, articulate, data master like Romney, we might as well stick with our gaffe-intensive evangelicals and Texans.

4. We had an incredible foreign policy debacle with the murder of our ambassador and the virtual abandonment of a dozen staffers, plus a cover-up featuring bald-faced lies by the president on down, and the best Romney could do was a hurried "fact check" during the second debate???

5. I mean, you don't have to go out there and talk about drones, and Catherine Herridge, and "layering the target," but, jesus, run an ad or two!

6. The only possible excuse is that Romney learned that there was some brilliant, but classified, "eyes only" reason for the president to act the way he did, and that behind the scenes Obama was weeping in Romney's arms over the anguish of it all.

7. Years of high unemployment, spiraling debt, government take-over of health care, Israel kicked to the curb, cash-for-clunkers; plus, Obama broke his fundamental 2008 promise to govern as a pragmatic moderate; but apparently if you stroll through hurricane damage with Chris Christie for an afternoon, that's enough to restore your "presidential" luster.

8. To paraphrase the Free Will Brother ca. November 6, 2008: "I'm very disappointed with the American People."

9. Then, what the heck was the 2010 mid-term election all about?

10. We're gonna need a bigger boat

Sotto Voce: the Town Hall Debate

I hate "town hall" debates. We've only had them since 1992, (can you imagine Tricky or LBJ sitting through an exasperating series of earnestly uninformed questions from "regular" people?), but the media loves 'em, no doubt because Republicans visibly struggle with the format.

I have to call BS on the idea that these were "undecided" voters. The girl asking about why women "only make 72 cents for every dollar a man makes" was repeating one of the indestrucable bits of feminist camp. (it will outlive roaches).

Obama and Romney's answers to that question were ludicrous, of course.

Obama nearly asphixiated himself when he reached behind to pat himself vigorously on the back for signing the Lily Ledbetter Act. Hey, big shot, it was already illegal to not pay a woman the same as you would pay a man for the same job under the same circumstances. All Ledbetter did was extend the statute of limitations for some gender discrimination claims. Big Whoop.

Romney, of course, offered us his "binders full of women." What he didn't offer was the names of some of the high powered women he had worked with in government and in business. (Meg Whitman spent time at Bain, for example), or debunk the myth that women - as a rule - only make three-fourths of what men do. He did dance around it a little, alluding to flex time and talking about how women in his governorship appreciated his flexible approach to scheduling. But, he couldn't quite bring himself to say, "look, kid, women have to make different choices in life than men, like it or not. They have to decide whether they want to have kids, how many, and who will take care of them. The answers to those questions will impact their career prospects, usually negatively, until the kids are teen-agers. Sorry to be the one to explain that to you." But, he would never say that. The unforgiving "town hall" format does not allow for truth telling.

Romney also semi-screwed up the tax cut issue. First of all, it should be a rule in GOP Debate Club that you should never allow a liberal to get away with the line about tax cuts that aren't paid for. For God's sake, you don't pay for tax cuts! It's our money, not the government's!

Romney also made no attempt to explain (for the one millionth time) that a tax cut will not mean a decrease in revenue, just as a tax hike will not lead to an increase. Quite the reverse happens, and you don't need to mention the Laffer Curve to get there. Just mention JFK like Paul Ryan did. This was Romney showing his RINO roots, as far as I'm concered.

Romney's Big Moment came when he was able to lay out all of the economic failures of the Obama Administration. Really, it was devastating, and the reason the GOP hired him for this job. Rick Perry would never have remembered all those numbers, while Rick Santorum would have run out of breath.

I listened to the debate in the car, so I missed all of the supposedly intense body langauge between the two combatants. Instead, I heard Romney's earnest soft-shoe, always with a bit of smile lurking, and Obama's rapid fire yapping. Neither of them sounded all that great, but Obama's timbre really betrayed his youth. Romney at least sounded presidential.

I did NOT hear the great Crowley fact check. What I did hear was her constant shutting down of the argument. She simply wouldn't let Romney or Obama finish their sentences. That was completely out of bounds, moderator or not.

If time is that important, why not use a clock like they use in debate club, or the Supreme Court, for that matter? I'm sure that got nixed somewhere in the mists of time because the media wanted to be able to control the flow of conversation.

I keep hearing that Obama personally dislikes Romney. I find that incredible, as Romney is a decent man, regardless of your feelings about capitalism. I like to think Obama's media people put that out to get their base into fighting mode. If Obama truly dislikes Romney, then Obama would personally dislike a majority of the country, that majority being the earnest strivers who get married, raise a family and try to treat people decently.

Remember that 60 minutes interview where Obama smirked and said his opponents were "new to foreign policy?" (Haw! Haw!) His struggles over Benghazi are a deserved bit of nemesis for that singular bit of hubris.

Never forget that this was coming at the time when (1) Obama had declared the consulate attack to have been the result of a YouTube video even though (2) he already knew al-Qaeda was behind the attack. Romney's initial response to deplore terrorism and denounce efforts to blame the First Amendment was the correct response, but Obama was arrogent enough to think he could get away with a cover up. We'll see you on Monday for the foreign policy debate, bud.

I said this before, but it bears repeating: the GOP might be the Stupid Party, but what do you call a party where Ivy Leaguers craft argument designed to appeal to stupid people?

Campaign Anecdotal

I may be just one man living in a Blue State (and living in the Bluest part of one of the Bluest States in America), but that doens't mean I can't offer some pertinent 2012 campaign anecdotes:

One of great bits of presidential campaign conventional wisdom is that people don't start to focus heavily on the presidential campaign until October when the debates begin. I hadn't heard much campaign talk here in the Bay Area...until last Wednesday when suddenly everyone was buzzing about Romney & Obama.

In fact, I heard two guys at the gym spend 20 minutes talking about the merits and demerits of Obamacare (get a room). Their conclusion: sure health care is expensive, but WTF do we need some crazy 2000 page law to deal with that?

The stationary store near my office is selling a box of mints with Obama's face on them. The mints are called "Disappoint-Mints." Ouch.

In 1992 & '96, the official progressive position was that there was no difference between the parties; so if you voted for Bush or Dole, you got the same pitying look as someone who voted for Clinton. (this "no difference b/w the parties" business always results in Dem victories, btw, so it's best to ignore it.)

In 2000 & 2004, if you dared to announce that you were voting Republican, you had to be prepared to take an undeserved rhetorical beating. Some folks literally could not abide such a thing.

In 2008, we Republicans would gather in quiet rooms with the shades drawn and shake our heads ruefully over our fate, the unerring genius of the American voter being of the "unappreciated" variety that year.

(of ourse, there were the loudmouth Republicans who voted for Obama due to disgust with TARP and/or the Crash of '08. Smoove move geniuses, electing a leftist because you were upset over government spending. If you were that righteously angry, you should have voted for Bob Barr.)

In 2012, people will walk up to you unsolicited and declare their intent to vote for Romney-Ryan. I'd say the great Democrat Social Enforcement Mechanism has broken down this year.

Been seeing a lot of openly displayed (hubba-hubba) Romney-Ryan bumberstickers, attached to cars and everything. I've also seen a lot of handmade Romney signs, some with elaborate messages and mini-essays, in car windows. People want to get their message out. 

A friend who just spent six months in Michigan caring for her father reported that people in her dad's ostensibly Democratic town were not shy in voicing their anger at the government.

I don't want to oversell this. Obama is going to carry California. Diane Feinstein's going back to the Senate. Jackie Spier is going to continue to represent my District (although her campaign is leaning heavily on her holding the Pentagon accountable for rapes in the military. You go, girl). But, there is a discernable anti-Dem buzz that I haven't previously experienced in California presidential politicking.

Repeated As Farce: Obama Echoes Carter In His Critique Of Romney's Foreign Policy Skills

A great history lesson from the Examiner which reminds us of the last Democrat president embroiled in a Middle East crisis who dared to chortle over his GOP rival's approach to diplomacy:

Carter criticized Reagan’s views on foreign policy during his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980, slamming Reagan for living in a “fantasy world” and noting his inability to understand the “complex global changes” in foreign policy. 

“It’s a make believe world. A world of good guys and bad guys, where some politicians shoot first and ask questions later,” Carter said, “No hard choices. No sacrifice. No tough decisions. It sounds too good to be true – and it is. The path of fantasy leads to irresponsibility. The path of reality leads to hope and peace.” 

After Reagan’s nomination in July 1980, Carter criticized Republicans calling it “a party with a narrow vision, a party that is afraid of the future, a party whose leaders are inclined to shoot from the hip, a party that has never been willing to put its investment in human beings who are below them in economic and social status.” 

As Philip Klein noted on Twitter, the Carter campaign ran fearful “man on the street” ads during the campaign, fretting that Reagan would be a president who would “shoot from the hip.”

You really can't make this stuff up. The only people in US politics who seem to remember the lessons of the Carter years are conservatives!

The idea that Mitt Romney committed some kind of gaffe by talking tough against the Middle East mob is a striped-pantsed fantasy that can only work inside the Beltway. Americans have been watching Muslim a**holes attacking our embassies for decades. We "get" the idea that we can't treat every burned American flag as a casus belli. But that doesn't mean we have to like the peoples of the non-Israeli Middle East, and frankly there is little reason to. And, that also doesn't mean we have to lie back and enjoy the trashing of our emabssies and the murder of our ambassadors. Do we still need to be sending $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood's Egypt? Do we need to be hosting their diplomats? Best of all (and something we could implement in short order), do we need to be issuing so many visas to these folks?

A war-weary America will not react well to Republican sabre rattling, but will react well to a show of resolve. That's the real lesson of the Carter years.

Romney-Ryan:

It's Romney-Ryan carrying the Republican banner for 2012. Conservative grassroots types had been pushing Ryan, so no one can really complain that we got RINO-ed to death.  Prof. Jacobson raises the obvious problem with the Ryan pick:

The Romney Veep App made the announcement earlier this morning, and every news source is reporting it. The decision was made on August 1. 

The left already is going crazy, but that would have happened regardless of who the Veep nominee was; only the details of the outrage would have differed.   

This was a bold choice, far more bold than I expected. My first reaction when I heard the news was one of deep ambivalence, drawn naturally from knowing how the Obama campaign and media would distort Ryan and his budget proposals.

That's true, but hardly unexpected. Dems only know one way to deal with anyone who dares to suggest progressive governance may be insolvent. Just look what they did to Ross Perot. Man got so crazy he thought Republicans would disrupt his daughter's wedding, as if we gave two sh*ts. I do hope that Romney-Ryan (Rom-yan? Or, better yet, R-yan?) aren't planning to leave any scrap of lefty hysteria unanswered for more more than a second because the media is poised to write the first draft of history wherein it is noted that Paul Ryan was too anti-Grandma to be VP.

btw, I did not sign up for the Romney VP App. No, I get my news the old fashioned way: via my Facebook feed, which was going nuts when I woke up this morning, followed by a confirmatory glance at Drudge and Instapundit.

Message Disciplining: How Should GOP Candidates Approach The Media

With the media having heckled Mitt Romney across Europe and the Middle East, the question of how the GOP should deal with its adversaries in the MSM is a salient one. Conservative shoe-leather reporter RS McCain offers some sharp criticism of GOP-style "message discipline" whereby Republican candidates enter into a protective bubble to avoid baying reporters:

This Ziegler-style hostility toward reporters was something I experienced during the 2008 campaign. No publication on the planet had been more hostile to the Clintons than The American Spectator, yet when I showed up on the campaign trail to cover Hillary’s primary campaign, the reception I got was surprisingly cordial. 

Twice I covered impromptu post-event ”availabilities” (i.e., press conferences) with the candidate, including one in Shepherdstown, W.Va., where I sat in the front row less than 10 feet from Hillary while she took questions from a press corps that kept asking variations on the question, “When are you going to quit?” 

When I subsequently went out on the trail to cover John McCain, by contrast, there were no press conferences, and when Sarah Palin was added to the ticket, she was kept within a protective “bubble.” In fact, McCain campaign staffers at times tried to cordon off reporters in a pen, so as to prevent them even from interviewing people attending campaign rallies. 

This is what GOP operatives like to call “message discipline,” and it has the predictable effect of entirely alienating the press corps. 

Suppose that you are a correspondent who is following around a candidate at considerable expense to your news organization. Your bosses expect that you’re going to provide them with actual news, and hopefully something exclusive. Instead, you go to three events a day at which the candidate gives the same basic stump speech over and over. There’s never a press conference, never a minute of unscripted access to the candidate, and the campaign staffers are under orders never to tell you anything useful in terms of actual news that might distract from the pre-approved Message of the Day. 

Wouldn’t that piss you off? And especially if your editors had sent you all the way to Warsaw, Poland, for such a dog-and-pony show?

On the other hand, Bill Quick says, why bother, the media hates us and is only interested in our candidates long enough to destroy them:

Republicans didn’t alienate the press corps. The (mostly) left-wing press corps hatesRepublicans, and ever since the Kennedy era, has done everything in its power to destroy Republican candidacies when and wherever it covers them. This sort of thinking is akin to a similar malady that far too many Republicans do believe in – that if they can just get the left to like them a little, they can get the left to compromise on principle with them. Then they are shocked when the left says, “You know, you’re kinda likeable, but this is business, sorry,” and then hands them their heads. Again. 

The fellating tools, hack propagandists, and lying leftist liars of the press corps are not going to be any friendlier to the GOP, not at least where the journalistic rubber meets the reporting road, no matter how the GOP attempts to “manage” (read: ingratiate themselves with) them.

I don't think you can argue against Quick's point. The press is unabashed in claiming an aggressive "independent" role in "vetting" Republican candidates and then dogging any Republican office holder with all manner of absurd charges whether of "shredding" the Constitution or engaging in nepotism by arranging a minimum wage job at a souvenir store for your 14-year old daughter. Really, it's not even the bias that grates; it's that the media is congenitally incapable of treating conservative or GOP politicians with the sort of bottom-line level of respect that they offer to the Prime Minister of Canada. And, don't think Democrats don't know this and revel in it. 

Still, if media bias were as all-powerful as Republicans believe, they would never win elections at any level. But, many Republicans do win elections, including 5 of the last 10 presidential contests. That's because our successful politicians are able to do what the losers think is impossible: talk over the heads of the media. (I can remember an old Doonesbury cartoon set at a Reagan press conference where Ron was explaining supply-side economics to a skeptical White House Press Corps. Reagan starts saying,"Say you have a watermelon and a cherry..." and a reporter yells out, "Oh, no! He's going over our heads and speaking directly to the American people!") Harsh reality is that our guys have to be twice as smart and capable as the typical Democrat. A GOP-er with the wit and wisdom of John Kerry or Harry Reid would have been drummed out of office years ago, but as Democrats they are respected elder statesmen. 

McCain, though, has the better argument because not every reporter is a leftist a**hole still seething over high school. I don't think Mitt Romney needed to respond to a gaggle of hecklers at a Polish war memorial, but there's something to the idea that he should be facing some questioning from the press. McCain relates a story from his days covering the Hillary! campaign where she - the former First Lady, and Senator from New York - went out every day to face hostile questions about why she hadn't yet dropped out of the Democrat primary race. You can't help but admire that sort of grit, and more importantly, she was able to get a message out without looking like she was fleeing a hit & run. 

There are plenty of fair, if not sympathetic, reporters out there. McCain, for one, is a great one with an unerring nose for politics. (He covered Hermain Cain from that candidate's earliest days and, in typical "message discipline" style, found himself shut out once Cain began to rise, and the "vetting" began). But, he's out there in an undisclosed location living hand-to-mouth instead of pissing away millions on a DNC-talking points operation like Tina Brown's Newsweek. Republican candidates, and more importantly their media guys, still look to CNN, MSNBC, the Times, and the Post for coverage. Are you kidding me? No Republican should ever go on MSNBC unless they lose a bet, but Romney's guys go on there all the time, emerging with manufactured gaffes trailing in their wakes. 

There is a media that Republicans can engage with. It's called talk radio, Fox News, W$J, and the blogo-sphere. Talk to those folks. They have bigger audiences, anyway. 

Corner Office: Defending Corporations As People

Does GE have an asbestos underwear division? Because Jack Welch is going to need a triple-pack after daring to write in the WSJ that, to quote Mitt Romney, corporations are people.

Corporations are people working together toward a shared goal, just as hospitals, schools, farms, restaurants, ballparks and museums are. Yes, the people who invest in, manage and work for corporations are there to make a profit. And yes, corporations may employ some bureaucrats, jerks, cheapskates and even nefarious criminals.
But most individuals working in corporations are regular people, people just like you and your friends and neighbors. People who want to make a living and want to make a difference.
... 

This fact is so obvious that there can only be one conclusion drawn when we hear the pronouncement, "Corporations aren't people"—that it's doublespeak. That is, when people say that corporations aren't people, what they really want to say is, "Business is evil." 

They want to say what they feel, which is that capitalism doesn't work, that it's unfair, and that America needs another system—one that, to quote the president himself, "spreads the wealth around." 

Obviously, we're not in that camp. We know capitalism isn't perfect. But free markets are the best system there is to provide opportunity to those with an idea, or simply the motivation to work their butts off to make their lives better. We also know capitalism can spawn bad behavior; greed is part of the human condition and always will be. That's why regulations and controls exist, as they should. 

But this movement afoot that hates on business is craziness. It will destroy America as we know it because very few jobs get created in an environment that's outright hostile to business. And without jobs, the whole thing falls down. It becomes a welfare state. We become a welfare state. 

If that's what you want, we can't change your mind. But in your efforts, stop hiding behind words. Corporations are people. If you want to put an end to corporations, at least say what you mean.

I love that earnest "say what you mean." As if Pres. Obama and Elizabeth Warren, whom Welch quotes at length are ever going to start doing that. 


It's incredible that anyone has to make such a basic point - plenty of whiny liberals work for big corporations, after all, whinging the whole time - but there you are

Foreign Correspondent: Guess Who Else Made A Ton Of $$ Overseas?

The Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney's (hissss) "foreign" bank accounts has inflicted the inevitable collateral damage. Turns out, there's a highly-placed campaign operative who made significant income from foreign sources over the last three years:

I find it strange that the Obama campaign would be making so much of Romney’s income from foreign sources when Obama’s foreign source income appears to be a much bigger percentage of his income over the last few years. Of course, one can’t tell for sure because Mitt Romney has not released his 2009 tax return. 

Yet in the three tax years in which Barack Obama has been President (2009, 2010, and 2011), fully 30.1% of the Obamas’ gross income has come from foreign sources: ($2,711,340 out of a 3-year total gross income of $8,993,449).  In 2009, 26.5% of the Obamas’ gross income came from foreign sources. In 2010 it was a whopping 41.4%, and in 2010 it was 30.2%. 

The salary that we taxpayers pay him as President (just under $1.2 million over the 3 years) accounted for less than 13% of the Obamas’ income, a share dwarfed by their 30% from foreign sources over the same period. 

From 2009 through 2011, the Obamas paid $87,429 in foreign taxes, which they applied toward a credit to reduce their U.S. tax bill.  The amounts I examined are reported on Form 1116, of which there are two filed along with their 1040 when they had both general and passive foreign income. 

Their returns do not disclose which foreign countries are responsible for paying the Obamas the $2.7 million in foreign source income, but the overwhelming bulk of it must come from payments resulting directly or indirectly from book sales.  

Nonetheless, the Obamas did report a total of $3,611 in foreign passive income in 2009 and 2010, a type of income that most often results from investments in foreign countries.  Like some of the foreign investments for which Romney has been pilloried, this Obama passive foreign income might result from the foreign investments of U.S. financial entities in which the Obamas invested.

According to Lindgren, the Obamas don't make clear the source of all of this (hissss) foreign money, but reasonably assumes that it comes from sales of the Obamas' books. Good catch by Lindgren, who blogs over at the Volokh Conspiracy. And another sh*t job by the Romney camp, which is haughtily demanding non-forthcoming apologies, rather than looking to turn this thing around on Obama.  

We Have The Technology: Romney Was Right To Be Amazed By Touch_Screen Sandwich Shop

You may have heard about MSNBC's failed attempt at editing a video of Mitt Romney exclaiming over a touch-screen at a Wawa (no I'd never heard of this chain before, either) to make him look like an out-of-touch plutocrat. Turns out that the touch-screen system at Wawa is very impressive, and is worth discussing in a "what a world we live in" kind of way.

I live in South Jersey, where we have more Wawas per square mile than any place on earth. They were a regional milk provider who started selling sandwiches and coffee, and became a kind of upscale 7-11. It’s a huge success story. They make a damn good sub and a better cup of coffee than Starbucks at half the price. 

The thing is, their touchscreen ordering system is a great example innovative tech in daily use. It’s a brilliant, relatively recent application of touch screen technology for custom food orders. Other stores may have something similar, but I’ve never seen one in common use anywhere other than Wawas. (My Shop Rite has something similar for ordering cold cuts.)  I doubt very much Mitchell has either. 

I’m still impressed by the panels, which work well under heavy use and are designed in such a way that technophobes can navigate them with ease. They’re adjustable, easy-to-read, and responsive. You can pick from a wide selection of condiments and toppings, and even choose the amount of mayo or olive oil, add bacon or extra cheese, choose to have it toasted, and order things on the side. Automating this element of the process also eliminates errors in orders and makes the entire process more efficient. It’s a good system. It must have been a risk for Wawa, and it deserves a shoutout. 

Honestly? I get a little thrill every time I use it, but then again I’m a technonerd. I actually like Romney a bit more for showing this gee-whiz side of his usually robotic self. We should be amazed by amazing things. I like a man with a sense of wonder. When did wonder become a quality to be mocked?

You know, it just occurred to me that the "out of touch millionaire gee-whizzing over technology" cliche makes no sense. The wealthy are often the first ones who can afford to buy gadgets and high-tech gizmos before the rest of us slobs. Don't you  think that Mitt Romney's house with, among other things, its car elevator, might have some pretty snazzy technical elements? 


Romney probably has had experience with high-tech, both in his personal life and his business life, that the rest of us can only imagine. He has a great deal of respect and enthusiasm for technological progress. He is certainly not ignorant or out of touch. 

Sotto Voce

This has been a busy week at work, so not enough time to blog. But, that doesn't mean I haven't had time to mutter things under my breath.


1. Mitt Romney's Bay Area fundraiser happened just up the hill from Free Will HQ, but sadly we were not able to attend the $50,000/head affair. I will definitely attend any $50/head fundraisers that Mitt might be holding in the coming months.


2. Good show on Romney's part to head over to the abandoned Solyndra factory, which is just a bridge away from last night's party. One wonders whether this was spur of the moment (tipsy billionaire partygoer: Hey, Mitt, you know that Solyndra factory is right across the San Mateo Bridge!) or if there was a little more planning involved. 


3. The main problem with the Facebook IPO was that everyone was sure that FB was a sure thing. They forget that Google faced a lot of pre-IPO skepticism over its prospects. They also forget that, 20 years ago, Apple was a niche company with a string of failed short-term CEO's and a $5/share stock price. Nothing happens overnight, sadly, even if we keep needing to be reminded of that. 


4. With all the abuse hurled at FB and Morgan Stanley, an overlooked aspect of the FB disaster was the complete breakdown in NASDAQ's trading system. I thought the whole raison d'etre for NASDAQ was that is was more tech-friendly, but it performed worse than the old ticker tape stock exchange. 


5. Come to think of it, there was an IPO a couple months ago by a company (its name escapes me) that designs computerized trading systems and...the system crashed.


6. Another big, unacknowledged loser from the FB IPO was Jerry Brown whose budget forecasts relied quite a bit on the one-time boost of a "pop" that was not to be. See what I mean about people  and sure things?


7. If you asked the Free Will Grandparents, they would likely tell that folks like Dolores Huerta helped to ruin California through their racially-tinged intimidation campaigns against state farmers. No doubt seeing the socialist Huerta receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom from a guy who says he "stole" Huerta's "Yes! We! Can!" slogan (but don't call Obama a socialist!) led to a lot of midnight grave-rolling.


8. Don't even get me started on Obama's "Polish Death Camps" remark. For one thing, I don't think I've ever heard such a phrase. (kinda like "White Hispanic"). "Nazi Death Camps" is the conventional shorthand and has worked well for decades, but I guess the Obamites wanted to get fancy.


9. If you haven't given Spotify a try, you should. There's limitless music available virtually for free, if you can handle sitting through the occasional ads. There's gotta be a catch...


10. The John Edwards verdict is breaking as I write this, and so far it looks like a hung verdict. Not surprising, as there are strong arguments for both guilt or acquittal. Still, if Edwards can get away with receiving a million dollars as a "gift" for non-campaign expenses, that seems like a bigger campaign finance loophole than anything you could point to in the Citizens United case. 


11. Speaking of the Supreme Court, it's hard to believe that in a few weeks we will know whether or not Obamacare will be upheld or struck down in whole or in part. No matter what happens, someone's not going to be happy.

Denouncio: Rick Santorum and Obama's Christianity

Remember last month after the New Hampshire primary when Mitt Romney began "pivoting towards the general election" by laying into Obama, more than into his rivals (some of whom he labeled "desperate Republicans")? Now Mitt's trying to figure out how to lay a glove on the motels-and-rental-cars candidacy of Rick Santorum while Santorum is starting to go after the president: 

White House candidate Rick Santorum on Saturday questioned President Barack Obama's Christian values and attacked GOP rival Mitt Romney's Olympics leadership as he courted tea party activists and evangelical voters in Ohio, "ground zero" in the 2012 nomination fight. 

Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator known for his social conservative policies, said that Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.

The White House was not amused.

Obama campaign deputy press secretary Ben Labolt said Santorum's comment was "the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness, and searing pessimism and negativity." He said it was "a stark contrast with the President who is focused everyday on creating jobs and restoring economic security for the middle class."

Fighting for the middle class? Is that what the contraception mandate is all about? 


The media is presenting this as Santorum - the "hardline" Catholic, natch - questioning Obama's Christian faith, as if somehow the issue of Rev. Wright and his liberation theology church had been laid to rest (it wasn't and is ripe for re-litigating). But, actually, it's much worse than that: Santorum was obliquely referring to the socialism that informs Obama's policies and practices. That's the "phony ideal" and "phony theology." Frankly, it's about time one of the GOP candidates got to the nub of the matter. 


I keep hearing that Santorum can't win, and that we should all get behind President Ford, er, Mitt Romney. But, Santorum is the guy saying the things I want to hear, and I don't think I'm alone in thinking this. I don't want to hear tortured excuses about Romneycare/Obamacare or TARP. I want hear a principled attack on these matters from someone who knows what he's talking about. Right now, that guy is Rick Santorum. Let's hope he can keep things going. 

Surrogocracy: Mitt Romney's Awful Surrogates

Mitt Romney may have the worst taste in surrogates of any major presidential candidate in my lifetime. We've had John Sununu, who gave us David Souter and the rationale for the 1990 budget deal. We've had Tom DeLay, who gave us a Congress filled with Republicans who used their pro-life voting records for cover to shovel money to their campaign donors. We've had Bob Dole, the ultimate "next-in-line" moderate who was at his best making a concession speech. We've had John McCain who is only willing to attack conservatives, never liberals. And, now, we have Norm Coleman - last seen losing a Senate race to Al Franken - telling us what he really thinks of the prospects of repealing Obamacare when/if  Mitt wins office: 

Norm Coleman – the former senator from Minnesota and a prominent advisor for Mitt Romney – suggested over the weekend in an interview that no matter who the Republican nominee is, they are unlikely to fully repeal Obamacare. 

"We’re not going to do repeal. You’re not going to repeal Obamacare… It’s not a total repeal... You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president... You can't whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what's been done 

He goes on to say: "The Supreme Court first of all will have to deal with it. If you get rid of the individual mandate, then this whole thing may collapse." Asked by the moderator whether this means other provisions will go away as well, Coleman says: "I don’t think they will go away, because I don’t think the Act works financially, it simply doesn’t work, if you have severability." Coleman maintains that Republicans still "need to do health care reform" and suggests that he supports the approach put forward by Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden.

Frankly, I could have guessed that a loser like Coleman (I mean an electoral loser. I realize he is an otherwise accomplished man) would quail at the thought of repealing Obamacare. It might be a "right" that is just two years old, but the left will fight like the dickens to keep it in place. Republicans like Coleman and, yes, Romney simply don't have it in them to carry on that sort of fight. For one thing, they are incapable of taking incoming fire from the media, which will be scorching. For another, they are nowhere near nimble enough to deal with the legislative roadblocks that will come up. Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid; they got Obamacare passed by hook or by crook. When was the last time Republicans did that? (hint: the guy we are being told is not a "real" conservative was Speaker of the House back then). 

Mitt Romney has already told us he'd look at imposing a VAT on the United States. He has hinted that he looks favorably at the idea of refinancing the nation's mortgages. He supported TARP. He supports, as near as I can tell, the auto bailouts. He has refused to repudiate Romneycare. And, all the while, he has touted his "business experience." Granted, Romney is a very effective advocate for the rights and values of the private sector. But, he has consistently governed and advocated for big government policies throughout his career. 

Mitt says he will "repeal" Obamacare. He may say that, but I suspect we are going to need a lot of Tea Party congressmen to help him along. 

Shot From Both Sides: The Left Targets Mitt Romney In Florida

The DNC and labor unions (public and private) are apparently running a ton of anti-Mitt advertising in Florida this week. The plan seems to be to "take out" Mitt so that the more target-rich Newt Gingrich becomes the nominee. Hugh Hewitt lays out the dastardly details:

This reporting by Scott Powers in the Orlando Sentinel scoops the New York Times, the Washington Post and Politico by pulling together in one place and charting the obvious implications of Team Obama's assault on Mitt Romney in Florida. 

Obama is trying to prevent Romney's nomination: 

The Democrats are targeting Mitt Romney as if he were already the Republican nominee running against President Barack Obama, with campaign ads, Internet videos, daily news conferences and dozens of news releases attacking the former Massachusetts governor.

Traditional Democratic partners are jumping in, too. Both the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' and Service Employees International Union's political-action committees are running their own TV commercials in Florida this week — attacking Romney. 

Gingrich and the other two Republican candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas U.S.Rep. Ron Paul, are being all but ignored by the DNC and its allies. 

Read the whole thing.

The Chicago Rules at work.  Obama fears Romney so he is trying to eliminate him early.  In the old days it would be called a "dirty trick," but MSM loves the president and won't criticize his operation.   

And it is his operation.  The president has had to approve of this attempt by the Yankees to get the Red Sox eliminated by sending players and cash to Tampa Bay in the last week of the season.  

Hewitt declares this to be "cheating," and he's probably right, but there are no refs or red cards in politics, so no one is going to give a damn.

This isn't cheating. It's a test, and it's a test Mitt Romney has to pass or he really has no business being the nominee. News flash: the DNC and unions will be running ads against Romney sometime in the calendar year 2012. These ads will not be flattering. They will probably look like that dumb (but effective!) Gingrich Bain movie: full of quavering-voiced old folks who lost their jobs when Big Bad 15% Tax Rate Mitt blew into town. Mitt has to be able to defend himself forcefully, simply has to. Complaining about "Chicago-style politics" isn't going to cut it.

Unfortunately, what we've been learning is that Mitt can't even adequately defend himself from attacks on his business record and tax returns from the right, let alone the left. Oh, he gets off some good lines in speeches and debates. He even manages to come up with the sort of business friendly sound bite (corporations are people) that drive liberals crazy. But, most of the time, he doesn't do much at all to blunt these attacks. Is it really that hard to explain that, no, I don't pay a 15% tax rate, and that I have already paid the full 35% corporate rate when those investments made their $$? I don't think so, but Mitt sure has had trouble fitting that on to a 3X5 card.

Not only that, is Romney out of options and/or money? The Democrat ad buy amounts to about $800,000. NewtPAC (or whatever) is spending $5 million in Florida. Romney can't match this with some commercials of his own? This is why businesspeople often make lousy candidates. Romney could buy and sell Obama, Gingrich, Santorum, and Paul five times over, but at least the (shudder) professional politicians wouldn't have fallen into a trap this obvious.