JustOneMinute

Cross-Selling Fail

Here in the land of the uneasy Internet connection I finally placed a call to my ISP to see whether they had any vision for restoring my balky service. First I played the dial-up game: "For permahold, please press one; for holiday-themed muzak, press two; for voice mail hell, press three; to preserve the illusion that meaningful human contact is still possible, press four". After two tries I hit a winning combination and managed to speak to a representative who, I have no doubt, was trying to be helpful.

"So you're having problems with your internet? I'm going to connect you to our tech support in just a moment, but first, let me ask you this - are you using DISH or Direct TV for your television?  If you are, you might want to consider bundling our internet and television services."

I explained, perhaps too forcefully, that I wan't interested in paying for even more services from a company that couldn't even deliver the service they had already  been paid for.  He parried with the notion that he was only trying to save me some money, but when I started screaming that I was only interested in trying to save his life he put me through to the tech people.

And a day later, my problem remains unresolved.  Grr.

Boxing Day

Drop the gloves!

Merry Christmas To All

Happy Holidays.

Retreat, Hell! We're Just Advancing In A New Direction

The spin doctors at Obama 2012 the NY Times re-work their headline on the unraveling in Iraq.  Here we dredge up the original internet version:

"nytimes.com/2011/12/25/world/middleeast/us-loses-leverage-in-iraq-now-that-troops-are-out.html?hp"

Rewrite! 

U.S. Embraces Low-Key Plan as Turmoil in Iraq Deepens

How reassuring to learn that we are embracing a plan rather than losing leverage.

Bracing

The traditional "Are you ready? It's too late not to be!" open thread.

Ask A Different Question...

Ask a different question and you'll get a different answer - that is my take on Mitt Romney's latest alleged "flip-flop".  Both the interesting Jon Chait and the invaluable Byron York tells us that Romney has changed his view on the wisdom of the Iraq invasion.  Mr. York:

In an appearance on "Fox News Sunday" a few days ago, Mitt Romney was asked whether, given what we know today, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. Romney wouldn't say.

...

Wednesday morning, in an interview on MSNBC, Romney got the question again.  This time, his answer was not only different but definitive: No, the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq had officials known there were no weapons of mass destruction there.

"Well, if we knew at the time of our entry into Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction -- if somehow we had been given that information, why, obviously we would not have gone in," Romney said.

"You don't think we would have gone in?" asked MSNBC's Chuck Todd.

"Well, of course not," Romney answered.  "The president went in based upon intelligence that they had weapons of mass destruction. Had he known that that was not the case, the U.N. would not have put forward resolutions authorizing this type of action. The president would not have been pursuing that course."

Romney's statement on MSNBC is not only a change from what he said on Fox a few days ago.  It's also a change from his position during his first run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2007-2008.  In a January 2008 GOP debate in Florida, Romney was asked, "Was the war in Iraq a good idea worth the cost in blood and treasure we have spent?"  Romney answered: "It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now."

Here is the actual debate question from 2008:

MR. RUSSERT: The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll today, the highest percentage ever of Americans -- six in 10 -- said that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power was not worth the price we have paid in blood and treasure. Every Democratic -- (applause) -- excuse me. Excuse me, please. The Democratic nominee will go to the country and say the war in Iraq is a bad idea not worth the price in blood and treasure, and we should get out.

I want each of you to take 30 seconds. Will you go to the country, Senator McCain, and say the war was a good idea worth the price in blood and treasure, and we will stay?

And Romney's answer:

MR. ROMNEY: It was the right decision to go into Iraq. I supported it at the time; I support it now.

It was not well managed in the -- after the takedown of Saddam Hussein and his military. That was done brilliantly, an extraordinary success. But in the years that followed, it was not well -- we were undermanaged, underprepared, underplanned, understaffed, and then we come into the phase that we have now. The plan that President Bush and General Petraeus put together is working. It's changing lives there.

And perhaps most importantly, it's making sure that al Qaeda and no other group like them is becoming a superpower, if you will, in the communities, and having a safe haven from which they launch attacks against us.

It's critical for us. When we think about debating the Democrats, they might want to go back and talk about what happened at the beginning. But the most important issue is what do we do now, and their just run and retreat regardless of the consequences is going to be a real problem for them when they face a debate with a Republican on the stage.

It strikes me that there is a large difference between retrospectively describing the likely play of the political process, as Romney was doing recently, and assessing the fundamental desirability of removing Saddam.

Up, Up And Away!

I have to go with the "How come you aren't shopping?" open thread on this desperate day.

Effective Is As Effective Does

Politico reports on a somewhat astonishing claim made by Barack Obama in his interview with 60 Minutes - in his first two years he accomplished more than any Presidents other than Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln.  Let's roll the transcript, from the very end of the interview:

KROFT: Tell me, what do you consider your major accomplishments? If this is your last speech. What have you accomplished?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, we're not done yet. I've got five more years of stuff to do. But not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we're gonna start lowering health care costs and you're never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we've got millions of kids out here who are able to go to college because we've expanded student loans and made college more affordable. Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America's respect around the world.

The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we've got a lot more work to do. And we're gonna keep on at it.

Just off-hand, I would immediately nominate George Bush as having had a strong break from the gate - on the domestic side Bush 43 got his 2001 tax cut and No Child Left behind; in foreign policy he led a seemingly successful war against Afghanistan and rallied the United NAtions against Iraq and its imagined WMDs (obviously, the war commenced shortly after Bush's two-year mark).  Most tellingly, Bush's party picked up House and Senate seats in the mid-term elections, something Obama forgot to achive while working wonders in his own imagination.

Now clearly, Democrats view these as triumphs of the Anti-Christ.  My point is that Bush did what he set out to do and maintained public support for his agenda, at least for a while. 

HARDLY A MINOR POINT:  This from Obama is either deluded wishful thinking or an annoying talking point:

But putting in place a system in which we're gonna start lowering health care costs and you're never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick.

First of all, subsidizing the number of health care consumers without changing the number and/or circumstances of health care providers does not lower costs; it simply shifts those costs to others.  And the increased demand probably results in higher prices.

Secondly, we all understand that Elizabeth Warren liked to pretend that medical bills were driving people into bankruptcy.  But is Obama really dumb enough to believe his side's talking points?  The loss of income associated with a serious illness is generally the proximate cause of the bankruptcy; since Obama did not mandate new and expanded disability insurance, most "medical" bankruptices that would have occurred pre-ObamaCare will still occur.

Fearing A Ronulan Takeover

Politico tells us that the Iowa Republican establishment fears irrelevance if Ron Paul wins the caucuses:

Conservatives and Republican elites in the state are divided over who to support for the GOP nomination, but they almost uniformly express concern over the prospect that Ron Paul and his army of activist supporters may capture the state’s 2012 nominating contest — an outcome many fear would do irreparable harm to the future role of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

...

Paul poses an existential threat to the state’s cherished kick-off status, say these Republicans, because he has little chance to win the GOP nomination and would offer the best evidence yet that the caucuses reward candidates who are unrepresentative of the broader party.

“It would make the caucuses mostly irrelevant if not entirely irrelevant,” said Becky Beach, a longtime Iowa Republican who helped Presidents Bush 41 and Bush 43 here. “It would have a very damaging effect because I don’t think he could be elected president and both Iowa and national Republicans wouldn’t think he represents the will of voters.”

What especially worries Iowa Republican regulars is the possibility that Paul could win here on January 3rd with the help of Democrats and independents who change their registration to support the libertarian-leaning Texas congressman but then don’t support the GOP nominee next November.

I don't think frustrated libertarians are going to flock to Barack's banner, but I can imagine them sitting out the November voting.

To be fair, up to now Iowa has not had a bad history of separating winners from losers, in both parties.

Newt Fading In Iowa

The new Public Policy poll shows Newt continuing to fade in Iowa.

I doubt his radical conservatism approach to court reform will be helpful to him.

Kim Jong-il Dies

Kim Jong-il has died; his baby-faced son is the annointed successor, but who knows?

Sunday Morning

Away we go.

Keystone Cops President

Obama threatened to veto an extension of the payroll tax cut that included a hurry-up for the Keystone pipeline approval process.  Republicans ignored him, and now Obama is prepared to move on and accept the tax cut extension linked to Keystone.  Can we hear from yet another lefty as the rug is pulled out from under him?  Yes We Can!

Nonetheless, environmental advocates were unhappy. “We’re stunned that the president would say one week that he’s going to veto any provision that includes Keystone, and then cave the next week,” said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an environmental group opposed to the pipeline. “Where I come from, people don’t do that, but I guess this is Washington.”

No, I guess this is Obama.  Maybe they can run the Keystone pipeline all the way down to Gitmo, which will still be open.

I suggest the DNC resurrect Mack Sennett for the Obama campaign videos.

Newt And The Health Care Mandate

As of this writing Newt Gingrich is opposed to the ObamaCare individual health insurance mandate.  However, the Times tells us that this is a recent conversion:

More broadly, he has indicated his agreement with the most controversial aspect of President Obama’s heath care plan, the requirement that every American buy health insurance. Although he now says he is opposed to the so-called individual mandate, in a May 2009 conference call — previously unreported — he told health care executives, “We believe there should be must-carry; that is, everybody should have health insurance, or if you’re an absolute libertarian, we would allow you to post a bond.”

Previously unreported, and as of May 2009?  Alana Goodman of Commentary is troubled by that timeline:

First, here are Gingrich’s remarks on the individual mandate at a Republican debate in New Hampshire in June:

“I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. You can see all the things we did to stop it at HealthTransformation.net. I am for the repeal of Obamacare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.”

He claimed to have been fighting against the individual mandate for two and a half years.

Prior to his unexplained conversion Newt had supported the mandate in 2007 and 2008, when it was an endless topic of debate at Democratic debates (Hillary supported a mandate, Obama opposed one).  Here is David Corn of Mother Jones explaining that as of 2008 (and in fact, right now) the Center for Health Transformation supports something that looks like a mandate, but opposes federal mandates.  Ahhh!

The Gingrich Group's most prominent project is the Center for Health Transformation, a for-profit outfit Gingrich launched in 2003 that works with clients to "drive transformation" within the health care system. The center promotes numerous programs, including its "Insure All Americans" initiative...

The site asserts—in distinctly non-tea-party-like rhetoric—that "[c]overing the uninsured is, indeed, a moral imperative," and it details a proposal to expand coverage "to every American citizen within five years."

This proposal—posted on the Center for Health Transformation’s website since at least 2008—blends a variety of health care reform ideas: incentivizing consumers to focus on wellness and prevention, promoting Health Savings Accounts, shifting the focus of Medicare and Medicaid toward managing chronic diseases, and requiring physical education five days a week in schools (and removing junk-food vending machines). And there's this:

Require that anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.

The site does include this bafflegab as a supplement to that seemingly-simple bullet point:

We agree in principle with the idea that it is good for all Americans to have health insurance – it encourages improved health and lowers costs within the system. However, this coverage should come via private sector and state mechanisms, and not as the result of a federal government mandate that forces every American to purchase health insurance. Therefore, we disagree with the individual mandate as it’s currently constructed under PPACA, but would support private sector and appropriate state solutions to achieving universal coverage such as allowing individuals to deduct health insurance expenses similar to corporations, among other solutions.

Requiring people to buy insurance or post a bond strikes me as a mandate, but I do not have as nimble a mind as Newt.  (Maybe that's why his "I never lobbied" claim stumps me, too).

On June 13, 2007 Newt provided a guest piece on health care reform to the Des Moines Register which included this:

Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance as well. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it. However, an individual mandate must take one’s income into account, and more importantly, it is an acceptable option only when the larger healthcare system has been fundamentally changed. It is unjust to require an individual to buy into a broken and dysfunctional system.

I would say that Newt has been an unsteady foe of the individual mandate.  People who have a problem with Romney on that basis might wonder whether Newt is better positioned to make the no-mandate case against Obama.

Christopher Hitchens, RIP

Here is the NY Times obit.

The Final Showdown (Of 2011)

The final Republican debate of 2011 is on Fox News at 9 PM Eastern. Go, Mitt!  Or Rick!  Uhh, Rick Santorum.

NR - Not Newt!

The National Review exhorts its readership to consider Hutsman, Romney and Santorum as Presidential candidates.  They spend a lot of time on Newt, but here is a highlight:

Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure to an end [as Speaker in 1998]. His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests above those of the causes he championed in public.

Perry lacks gravitas:

Governor Perry has done an exemplary job in Texas but has seemed curiously and persistently unable to bring gravity to the national stage. Republican presidential candidates have not been known for their off-the-cuff eloquence in recent decades, but conservatism should not choose a standard-bearer who would have to spend much of his time untying his own tongue.

Their plug for Huntsman is amusing:

Three other candidates deserve serious consideration. Governor Huntsman has a solid record, notwithstanding his sometimes glib foreign-policy pronouncements; his main weakness is his apparent inability, so far, to forge a connection with conservative voters outside Utah.

Yeah, that lack of a bond is funny because Don Rickles' audience always seemed to enjoy his insults.  C'mon, Huntsman chose to position himself as the Maverick Media Darling who dislikes conservatives almost as fervently as the mainstream press.  That kinda worked for McCain in 2000 and 2008 but this is 2011 and open conservatives have an excellent chance to win. (Watching Hunstman nibble at some crow on global warming was kind of fun, but I suspect its too little, too late.  And To Be Fair, one might very well believe the mainstream scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming without embracing the mainstream policy prescriptions that have emanated from, for example, Al Gore.)

Occupy TIME Magazine

TIME's Person of the Year is a protestor.  Mercifully, they trace their inspiration back to Tunisia and Egypt, and take a few paragraphs to segue to the Wall Street occupiers.

Eventually there is a mention of the Tea Party,which some of us consider to be a bit more coheret than the Occupiers:

In each place, discontent that had been simmering for years got turned up to a boil. There were foreshadowings. In the U.S., the Obama campaign was in part a feel-good protest movement that galvanized young people, and then its shocking success and the Wall Street bailout produced an angry and shockingly successful populist protest movement in the Tea Party, which has far outlasted its expected shelf life.

Bah.  TIME has outlasted its expected shelf life.

Now Newt Double-Dog Swears...

Newt re-affirms his marital vow of fidelity in a letter to an Iowa-based family values group:

"I will also oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman," Gingrich wrote in a letter to The Family Leader announcing his support of the group's pledge. "I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others."

That would actually be the fourth time Gingrich has taken a no-adultery pledge. He took the first one in 1962 when he married Jackie Battley, and then again in 1981 when he married Marianne Ginther and made a third one to Callista Bisek (now Gingrich) in 2000.

 

Now Who's Stupid?

A new study updates an older effort which concluded that libs and progressives are less economically informed than their conservative and libertarian counterparts.  However, tha study's author has since concluded that his victory lap was premature:

Back in June 2010, I published a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that the American left was unenlightened, by and large, as to economic matters. Responding to a set of survey questions that tested people’s real-world understanding of basic economic principles, self-identified progressives and liberals did much worse than conservatives and libertarians, I reported. To sharpen the ax, The Journal titled the piece “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”—the implication being that people on the left were not.

Unfortunately the survey questions shaded right, for reasons of confirmation bias.  A new survey, with a better mix of left and right-leaning questions, produced comparable stupidity acorss the politcal spectrum, or so we are told.  However, I am stumped by the first question (which apparently was the case with many righties but few lefties):

More than 30 percent of my libertarian compatriots (and more than 40 percent of conservatives), for instance, disagreed with the statement “A dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person”—c’mon, people!—versus just 4 percent among progressives.

Hmm.  Where I come from, interpersonal comparisons of utility are suspect.  The law of diminishing marginal utility suggests that the next dollar I earn will mean less to me if I already have vast savings than if I am tapped out, but it is a matter of controversy as to how to compare Bill Gates' satisfaction with a profitable new product to the excitment felt by a Bowert bum finding a bill.

Or so I would have thought.  Which means that calling the answers "right" and wrong" inappropriately resolves the controversy in favor of one side.  From Wikipedia:

Following Jeremy Bentham, utilitarians have argued that preferences and utility functions of individuals are inter-personally comparable and may therefore be added to arrive at a measure of aggregate utility. Utilitarian ethics call for maximizing this aggregate.

Lionel Robbins questioned whether mental states, and utilities they reflect, can be measured and, a fortiori, interpersonal comparisons of utility as well as the social choice theory on which it is based. Consider for instance the law of diminishing marginal utility, according to which utility of an added quantity of a good decreases with the amount of the good that is already in possession of the individual. It has been used to defend transfers of wealth from the ``rich to the ``poor on the premise that the former do not derive as much utility as the latter from an extra unit of income. In an essay (1935, pp. 138–40), Robbins argued that this notion is beyond positive science; that is, one cannot measure changes in the utility of someone else, nor is it required by positive theory.

 

Sunday Morning

Away we go.

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Getting ready for the weekend.

Diogenes Better Hurry

An honest lib admits that of course Elena Kagan ought to recuse herself from the Supreme Court deliberations on Obama Care next summer.  There will be no similar outbreaks of contact with reality from the left next spring.

However!  A Kagan recusal may yet happen!  Courtwatcher Orin Kerr predicted last summer that there were six to eight votes for the ObamaCare mandate.  If his vote-counting is correct I can imagine (based on nothing but speculation) a scenario in which Chief Justice Roberts privately suggests to Ms. Kagan that she should recuse herself for the sake of the Court's public image, and also assures her that her recusal won't affect the outcome.

Which means that from here in the cheap seats, if we see a Kagan recusal it means that the ObamaCare decision is already in the bag for Obama.

The Hail Mary Candidate

Peggy Noonan explains the excitement and high risk of backing Newt Gingrich.

Left unmentioned - two of Washington's Big Three from the 90's - President Clinton and Minority-turned-Majortiy Leader Dole - got their party's nomination for President.  Gingrich can ride a wave of 90's nostalgia to complete the trifecta.  (And we saw how well that worked with Dole.)

Occupy Class Warfare

Glenn Kessler fact-checks Obama's latest class warfare speech.  I will cut to the conclusion:

The Pinocchio Test

 The president does not need to lard his case with such suspect data. There are few independent tax analysts who have much good to say about the Bush tax cuts. But it is difficult for Obama to justify blaming those tax cuts for being mostly responsible for today’s slow job growth, especially when he wants to retain a good chunk of those tax cuts.

To bolster his case about unfairness, the president is also relying on a suspect statistic about billionaires paying as little as 1 percent in taxes. Even if true, it is a clearly a rare event. Moreover, it is certainly surprising that the White House would rely on such a dubious, unverified source for a major presidential address.

 

Three Pinocchios

Back To The Future

Newt Gingrich assures a radio audience that "'Kids shouldn't work in coal mines".  Breakthrough stuff.

Politico notes Gingrich's use of his Enhanced Auto-Distract functionality:

This is the kind of statement that probably falls into the "if you have to say it ..." category. Gingrich has not backed away one inch from his suggestion that public school children be paid to do some work around their schools. He has now spent well over a week trying to clarify what he meant, however, and that kind of time isn't a luxury he'd have in a general election.

OUCH:  A vigorous Newt-blast from Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg and NR.  The intro:

Before Republicans put Newt Gingrich at the top of their party, they should consider what happened the last time he led it.

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich was the de facto head of the Republican Party. He helped lead it to victory in the congressional elections of 1994, which brought about real accomplishments such as welfare reform. But once he attained power, both his popularity and that of his party started to plummet. In the aftermath of his leadership, a Republican was able to take the presidency only by pointedly distancing himself from Gingrich.

Conservatives who dislike George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism have Gingrich to thank for it. After Gingrich lost the budget battles with President Bill Clinton, it took 15 years for any politician to take up the cause of limited-government conservatism that he had discredited.

Although Gingrich isn’t solely responsible for the Republican policy defeats of those years, his erratic behavior, lack of discipline and self-absorption had a lot to do with them.

Then Ramesh drops the gloves.

Our Full Service DEA

Apparently, arming the Mexican drug cartels is not enough - now the NY Times reports that the DEA also helps launder their money:

December 3, 2011

D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

By GINGER THOMPSON

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

So when did this start?  Sometime after 2006, when Calderon took power in Mexico.  The Times says "the past few years"; I am highly confident that if any of their sources had claimed this started under Bush the Times would have been delighted to say so.

 

The Huntsman Revisitation

George Will dismisses Newt Gingrich as a faux-conservative with a liberal, big-program for everything mindset, dismisses Mitt Romney as a soulless, unlikeable techocrat cut from the same cloth as Thomas Dewey and Mike Dukakis but with a greater inclination to flip-flop, and exhorts Republicans to reconsider Rick Perry (groan!) and Jon Huntsman (gasp!).

The exhortation:

Before settling for Romney, conservatives should reconsider two candidates who stumbled early on.

Rick Perry (disclosure: my wife, Mari Will, advises him) has been disappointing in debates. They test nothing pertinent to presidential duties but have become absurdly important. Perry’s political assets remain his Texas record and Southwestern zest for disliking Washington and Wall Street simultaneously and equally.

Jon Huntsman inexplicably chose to debut as the Republican for people who rather dislike Republicans, but his program is the most conservative. He endorses Paul Ryan’s budget and entitlement reforms. (Gingrich denounced Ryan’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.”) Huntsman would privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Gingrich’s benefactor). Huntsman would end double taxation on investment by eliminating taxes on capital gains and dividends. (Romney would eliminate them only for people earning less than $200,000, who currently pay just 9.3 percent of them.) Huntsman’s thorough opposition to corporate welfare includes farm subsidies. (Romney has justified them as national security measures — food security, somehow threatened. Gingrich says opponents of ethanol subsidies are “big-city” people hostile to farmers.) Huntsman considers No Child Left Behind, the semi-nationalization of primary and secondary education, “an unmitigated disaster.” (Romney and Gingrich support it. Gingrich has endorsed a national curriculum.) Between Ron Paul’s isolationism and the faintly variant bellicosities of the other six candidates stands Huntsman’s conservative foreign policy, skeptically nuanced about America’s need or ability to control many distant developments.

As to Perry's debating skills, a President's ability to present his ideas forcefully and cogently can be helpful in rallying public support for his agenda. Of course, we can see how well that has worked for Obama, the greatest speaker in the history of forever, not to mention George Bush, an epic mumblemouth, but still, let's not toss out both baby and bathwater here.  I think a huge part of Newt's appeal is his ability to deliver a conservative message in a way that Rush Limbaugh can but Rick Perry cannot and Mitt Romney will not. Newt may have no ability to govern (or win) but I would pay extra to watch him run.

And while on the subject of Rick Perry, let me steal a point from (IIRC) Jonah Goldberg - Perry adopt a lot of right-wing symbolism, as packing heat to gun down stray coyotes, but that masks some distinctly no-conservative attitudes on, for example, immigration. The net result is that conservatives feel more or less sympatico with the guy even though they don't agree with him on everything.

Jon Huntsman, by pandering for the NY Times endorsement, has managed the opposite trick - people who might actually like his positions can't get behind a guy who clearly doesn't like them.

Troubling.  Still, my commitment to defeating Obama is so great that I will even re-consider backing a guy who thinks I am a knuckle-dragging, unreconstructed maroon.  But only briefly, and only because George told me too.

Cain Out, Uhh, On To Plan B

Cain suspends his campaign; Times eulogy here.

Hardly A Distinction Without A Difference

In the course of criticizing Mitt Romney, ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber offers Romey's best defense of RomneyCare in Massachusetts:

He credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign, but said Romney's attempt to distinguish between Obama's bill and his own is disingenuous.

"The problem is there is no way to say that," Gruber said. "Because they're the same fucking bill. He just can't have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying. The only big difference is he didn't have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes."

Huh?  Making better use of already-available Federal money at the state level is much different from kicking new money into the pot (or squeezing Medicare) at the Federal level.

The Secret To Success

As someone nearly said, the secret to success in politics is authenticity - once you can fake that, you've got it made.

Nate Silver looks at polls and notices that Mitt Romney has an unexpected problem with moderate Republicans.  The obvious guesses are that Romney has an authenticity problem (he ran as the conservative alternative to McCain in 2008; now he is the moderate alternative to whomever) and a Mormon problem.

Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich is a conservative darling.  Authenticity problem solved!

Meanwhile, Huntsman (who is presumably due for a second look sometime soon) will share a stage with Newt in a one-on-one debate.  Ross Douthat recently explained why Huntsman desperately needs a re-introduction:

But his salesmanship has been staggeringly inept. Huntsman’s campaign was always destined to be hobbled by the two years he spent as President Obama’s ambassador to China. But he compounded the handicap by introducing himself to the Republican electorate with a series of symbolic jabs at the party’s base.

He picked high-profile fights on two hot-button issues — evolution and global warming — that were completely irrelevant to his candidacy’s rationale. He let his campaign manager define his candidacy as a fight to save the Republican Party from a “bunch of cranks.” And he embraced his identity as the media’s favorite Republican by letting the liberal journalist Jacob Weisberg write a fawning profile for Vogue.

This was political malpractice at its worst. Voters don’t necessarily need to like a candidate to vote for him, but they need to think that he likes them. Imagine a contender for the Democratic nomination introducing himself to liberal voters by attacking Planned Parenthood, distancing himself from “left-wing nutjobs” and giving a series of interviews on Fox News, and you have the flavor of how Huntsman’s opening act was perceived on the right. The substance mattered less than the symbolism, which screamed: I want your vote, but I don’t particularly care to be associated with your stupidities.

Yes, Huntsman's positioning as the Republican who hates conservatives was a poor choice.  Maverick and media darling worked for McCain, eventually, but McCain had a bio and national profile that Huntsman lacks.

Occupy Obama

Rockefeller Center lit up the tree and Occupy Wall Street lit up Obama.  Doesn't matter - they are still his people and he still carries their stench.