Mark Byron

U-g-h-l-y, UGH-ly

Politico describes Mitt as having "won ugly" in Michigan. Bingo. Hold your cards, we have a winner... of a description.

We've seen two weeks of attack ads at Earmark Rick on the airwaves and the Web, and it got him a three-point win over an underfunded Santorum. Here's Erickson's take in the wee hours of this morning-

Three percentage points. In his home state. In his wife’s home state. In the state his father served as Governor. Three percentage points against a guy few took seriously two months ago and who just three weeks ago no one expected to give Romney a run for his money in Romney’s home state.

And this is our nominee — a guy who can only win in states with a home state advantage, New Englanders and New England transplants, and Mormoms.

Next week will prove interesting, where Romney has no built-in advantage (other than running by himself and Paul in VA) and has to spread out that warchest over multiple states. When he has a week or two to carpet-bomb a state with attack ads, he can win, but can he carpet bomb ten states at once?

Mitt lives to fight again and Santorum at least covered the spread in Michigan, looking like he'll split the delegates evenly due to winning more congressional districts. A very interesting race, no?

 

Zoom Zoom, We Hardly Knew Ye

Joel Zumaya blew his elbow and might opt to hang it up at 27. He had an incredible 2006, where he was bringing 100-MPH heat as a normal thing, but was snake-bit since them. He signed with Minnesota this winter when Detroit had lost patience with his injury record.

That sadly reminds me of another short-lived Tiger great who had one of the best 15 minutes of fame ever three decades prior-Mark Fidrych; The Bird won 19 for the Tigers in 1976, lead the league in ERA and sold out stadiums whenever he started. Sadly, The Bird couldn't stay healthy after that and never came close to being the All-Star starter ace he was in '76.

In an interesting parallel, Fidrych closed out his pro career in the Red Sox minor leagues, as the MA native turned their after Detroit got burned by a string of injuries. Zumaya is facing packing it in as a Twin if he can't make it any further.

Surgery is better now than in the 70s, as Tommy John had his namesake surgery in 1974 as a cutting-edge medical procedure. Zoom-Zoom is looking at TJ surgery if he wants to give things one more try, and that means a year-plus of rehab. Since he has seen more rehab than Amy Winehouse in the last six years, he might throw up his hand and try pro fishing.

Attacking Like the Wolf by Durant-Durant

Politics is a nasty game, and always has been. We're already seeing elbows thrown in the US Senate race in Michigan as education activist Clark Durant is trying to run to former congressman Pete Hoekstra's right. I voted for Hoekstra in the 2010 gubernatorial primary, but he seems to have decided to try and tack toward the minarchist, casting him self as Mr. Spend-it-not as he recast incumbent Sen. Stabenow as Sen. Spend-it-now.

Given that you have to have some government, Hoekstra set himself up for an easy counter from Durant which seemed to almost be cut-and-pasted from the anti-Santorum ads run by Mitt Romney, blasting Hoekstra for raising the debt ceiling (alas-part and parcel of governance over the last few decades) and voting for TARP. Santorum was out of Congress by the time TARP was in play in 2008, but that was a Bush proposal that Santorum might have voted for if his take-one-for-the-team establishment streak came out.

This nice defense of Hoekstra from a Muskegon writer noted that he had a "88 percent rating in Congress from the National Taxpayers Union[.]" However, that's not enough these days in a GOP primary, as your foe will cherry-pick the 12% you didn't toe the anti-tax line as attack-ad fodder. Mr. Spend-it-less would be more accurate, but it got spun by Durant as Mr. Spend-a-lot.

Hoekstra is a lot like Santorum, and that's a complement. Both are thoughtful conservatives with a sound streak on foreign policy; Hoekstra was often a front man for Republicans on international issues from a spot on the intelligence committee and had the demeanor of an elder statesman rather than a Tea Party insurgent.

However, Hoekstra seems to be trying a bit too hard to tap into the Tea Party motif, running a China-bashing opening ad that played to ethnocentric lesser angels and tries to be too-clever-by-half with the Spend-it-not meme. A veteran conservative congressman would use to run on that track record, but he's running the risk of looking over-strident and less-than-frank and letting a liberal senator get in with another 57-42 thumping if he doesn't find a better way to reach swing voters.

I don't know much about Durant yet. He has a history with Hillsdale College, which will endear him to movement conservatives and has been a trooper on charter schools. But he also seems like a bit too much of a GOP establishment party animal and his ads borrowed from Santorum-bashers make me tune out. Are there any conservative of goodwill out there who don't bear false witness by oppo-cherry-pick?

One More Odessa File

Very convenient. The Ukrainians (who currently have a pro-Russian government) foiled a Putin assassination plot a week before the Russian elections which are primed to send Pootie-Poot back to the presidency. I'm a bit cynically, but it seems too perfectly timed for a rally-round-the-flag effect aimed to get Putin to a 50% first round win and avoiding a run-off.

What wasn't mention was the plan to take Putin's corpse and turn it into pate and serve it as a hors d'oeuvre at a celebration party-Putin on the Ritz.

 

You Have The Right to Have to Go

Here's an interesting Mark Steyn piece on government overreach that hits a discordant note at the end-

The transformation of “human rights” from restraints upon state power into a pretext for state power is nicely encapsulated in the language of Article 14 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which states that everyone has the right “to receive free compulsory education.” Got that? You have the human right to be forced to do something by the government.

On the K-12 level, that makes some sense, even if it runs afoul to libertarian sentiments. If a kid doesn't have the right to have to go to school, he (or his parents) have the option not to have him be educated. Modern versions of Leviathan have abused that compulsory aspect to bar home schooling or private schooling that doesn't meet state specs, but having the option to send a six year old to work in the factory rather than educating him isn't in the kid's best interest, at least not in a civilized society where starvation isn't the alternative to child labor.

There are other rights that get forced upon us. We have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness per the Declaration of Independence, and government can apply compulsion to the first two. We can't sell ourselves into slavery even if we wanted to, nor could we ask for help in killing ourselves in most states. Last I checked, we can't be forced to try to be happy, unlike Ming in Flash Gordon, who orders his subjects to make merry... under penalty of death.

There's a spiritual element to this as well; some of God's love has us doing things for our own good. Being born again has some birthing pains that (if we have a more Reformed take on salvation) we have the right to have to go through.

Creed 101-Part III-An Eight-Pound Miracle

I'm going to try to get back to more regular bloging and more spiritual blogging. One reason that it has been hard to write as of late is that it has been a tough stretch and I struggle to stay positive and hopeful.

However, I find that being transparent about what is going on in my walk, for better or worse, is helpful to others. If I'm such a misfit that I have nothing to lose by being transparent, I might as well be boldly transparent (to borrow from Luther's "sin boldly") as I write rather than meekly silent.

Anyways, I want to return to the Apostle's Creed series that I tried to start a while back.

The third part of the Apostle's Creed goes thusly, describing Jesus-

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,born of the Virgin Mary,

I'm surprised that people have a problem with that story. If we buy into the first part of a creator God, we have established that we have a deity that is in the miracle business.

On the way back from dropping Eileen off at a baby shower, there was one of those pass-it-on character trait billboards on M-20 celebrating the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" US hockey team with the caption, "Yes, we do believe in miracles," answering Al Michaels' rhetorical question from the end of the win against the Soviets.

People are willing to flip about the prospect of the miraculous in simple sporting events, like an Olympic hockey team or (to rewind the tape a few months rather than a few decades) a Tim Tebow comeback. At the same level, they'll quickly dismiss the idea of God actually doing His own in vitro fertilization without any petrie dish or donor sperm. That brings up the interesting question-what would Jesus' DNA have looked like? Baring any Da Vinci Code-style heirs, we'll never know.

We have a hands-on God. That's not comforting to folks who don't want a personal God, who'd prefer a deity like George Burns' version in the 70s who last miracle was the '69 Mets, a god who did the Big Bang and got outa Dodge. For such deists, ongoing miracles are uncomfortable, for that brings about the prospect of a God who cares about the present day.

Like the old Hallmark line, God cared enough to send the very best, an eight-pound miracle (by the time He got born; the miracle proper was likely in the milligram range). Where's Al Michaels in the creche scene?

The Next Round of Attack Ads

The latest attack ad against J.C. Carpenter points out that Carpenter's rhetoric often sounded like that of a Occupier bashing the rich, that Carpenter had no executive experience, nor did Carpenter ever run a business. Not only that, but Carpenter had a former tax collector as one of key aids and that open question that the birthers keep bringing up about Carpenter's parentage and his Palestinian birthplace.

Behind it all, Carpenter is too much of a Jewish liberal to get the GOP nomination.

Thankfully, Carpenter doesn't have to run for President, since He's King of Kings to begin with.

Braun and the Pickup Artist

Someone has grounds for slander in the exchange of urinary products between MLB management and Ryan Braun over the testing of urine leading to a positive steroid test. Braun was calling the process "fatally flawed" while MLB and the drug-testing folks disagreed.

At contention is whether having the samples kept at a courier's home over the weekend rather than sitting at a FedEx pickup site awaiting transit was enough to invalidate the sample. An arbiter said yes, but MLB and the WADA drug-testing agency disagreed. MLB's initial reaction had them "vehemently disagree[ing]" with the decision, which essentially says "Braun's a doper, but we couldn't prove it here based on that loophole."

The anti-doping people don't want to look like dopes and Braun is trying to avoid looking like yet another 'roider who got off courtesy of his sample's weekend at Bernie's. Whatever happened to the old Earl Warren line about the sports page being about man's accomplishments and the front page being about man's failures?

The Other Mark

If you're looking for news of my Cincy namesake, here's a link. I'm not him. I only visited there a few times, am not a photographer, and have a nearly inactive Facebook account.

This story might have some legs, since the court order of an on-line apology a day for a month to an estranged wife does have some First Amendment issues attached to it.

When I kept getting people coming in looking for me in Google, I wondered what I did or whether some old post was in the news. Nope, twern't me.

[Note-2/25:the post has been edited to remove bogus information on my part per my namesake's request.]

Friday Musings

It's a nicely snowy Friday; most of the schools in the area were off today. Eileen's preschool charges only come Mon-Thurs, so she was off anyway.

The Romney character assassination crew has done its dirty work; Mitt's now inched into a slight lead over Santorum. One thing that could be interesting is to see how much crossover voting aids Santorum, both from blue-collar social conservatives who might appreciate him and from secular liberals who consider him nuttier than a Planter's factory and thus an easy out. That might have some folks coming out on Tuesday that don't meet the "likely voter" screen.

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The NBA had a couple of interesting games yesterday. Miami made Jeremy Lin look like a D-leaguer, at least in the box score. It happens to the best of folks, but Lin will have the All Star break to stew over that stinker.

The other one that seemed notable was OKC dispatching the Lakers, with a highlight clip of Kobe exchanging nuclear looks with James Hardin, who looked like he was prepping to be the henchman for the next Bond big bad guy. The Thunder now are seven games up on the Lakers, who are now tied for fifth in the West. That would bracket them in for a second-round match with the Thunder if they get the 5-seed, which would be a major changing-of-the-guard match.

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Syria.... It's easy to say "arm the opposition." However, if you are going to take out a rather ruthless regime that is willing to trash whole cities in order to get its way, a few extra AK-47s aren't going to do the job. The Syrian army is design to go toe-to-toe with the Israelis, not like the lightly-armed Libyan army.

We'd likely be looking at something on the order of our Iraqi conflict if we were to do it "right"; a half-baked responce will give the opposition false hope and make them look like foreign stooges in the process. I'm not sure if the Obama administration and our European friends are up to the effort to do it right.

Michigan -5

Interesting polling in Santorum's backyard; a Franklin and Marshall poll has a hypothetical general election at Obama 41 Romney 33 and Obama 45 Santorum 37. Both are a +8 spread for the Old Man (a day older thay I, at least) but Santorum gets 8% off the fence vis-a-vis Mitt, four on each side. He's divisive, but that isn't always a bad thing; if you cut things such that you get a bigger piece of the swing vote, you're ahead of the game.

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Last night's debate.... Yes, Santorum was on the defensive, since this was his first go-round as the pinata du jour. However, the good thing was that the contraception debate got defused by Newt before it got to Santorum; Newt turned the question from the merits of birth control (where Rick is a bit of an outlier) to that of government overeach and religious freedom (where Rick is GOP normal). Santorum even got some mileage out of the earmark debate, pointing out that (1) everyone wants it for themselves and (2) in the case of divided government, earmarks are a tool to make sure the guys in the White House do what Congress wants.

If this is the last debate, it would be sad. Debates actually work well when whittled down to a manageable number and the moderator lets the candidates debate rather than trade one minute pre-packaged sound-bite buffets.

There were some lame questions, like the one-word description (I'd have gone down with "thoughtful" if I were on the podium) but a good evening nontheless. John King largely stayed out of the way, with only his interruption of Mitt's avoiding a question in favor of a stock spiel being notable.

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The Detroit News endorsed Romney. That might be a bigger deal than the Rick Snyder endorsement, but it fits the News' establishment libertarian worldview; Paul's too radical, Santorum's too devout and Newt is too Newt.

The Left's Hail Mary Pass

A speech Rick Santorum gave to Ave Maria University in 2008 is making the rounds; while I'm not thrilled to give People for the American Way any props, their partial transcript of the speech is useful.

Ave Maria is a conservative Catholic school set up by Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan to counter the leftward list of a lot of Catholic colleges who have become essentially secular over the years. Thus, if you were going to give a spiritual warfare in America speech to a Catholic crowd, this was the one.

From an orthodox Christian standpoint, Santorum is spot-on. That's probably why he does better amongst evangelicals than he does Catholics since roughly half of the folks who declare as Catholic have a practical theology more like liberal Protestants.

Secular folks, or those who are of a more liberal but theistic bent, often discount the idea that a Hell and hands-on forces for evil exist, unless it is as a rhetorical tool to send conservatives to when they pass on. Thus, the Ave Maria speech will sound foreign to such ears.

That is why secular folks on the left are chomping at the bit to see a Santorum-Obama matchup this fall. They assume that swing voters are secular and will see Santorum as a pious kook (or some more nasty version of that sentiment).

They might be surprised. Gallup has the belief in the Devil at 70% as of 2004. That leaves a decent side block of voters who might not blow off a spiritual warfare argument, since I don't think that number went too far away in eight years.

This gambit of the left to make Santorum to be an out-of-touch dominionist can backfire. If I can play Master of the Obvious, Ave Maria means Hail Mary, and football fans know that a Hail Mary pass is a low percentage play.

More on this faith-and-politics topic later, as I've yet to hit on Santorum's slap at Obama's liberal theology.

Welcome Back, Fielder

Heartwarming tale in the Free Press of Prince Fielder tootling down I-4 to Spring Training in Lakeland from his off-season home turf of Orlando with his two sons; this is his first official day as a Tiger in Lakeland but not his first day in Lakeland, since he was part of things when his dad Cecil was a Tiger in the 90s.

Some of the old-timers in the Tiger organization remember him as a kid-

Fielder returned to the clubhouse, and clubhouse manager Jim Schmakel outfitted both of the Fielder boys with Tigers uniforms. Just like the one that Prince used to wear when his father, Cecil, played for Detroit.

"We have a supply for the kids," Schmakel said. "I just remember him as a young man. Real quiet. He's a nice young man."

He and Miguel Cabrera seem to be long lost buddies who just met, razzing each other during batting practice; that, along with Cabrera losing weight and making a serious stab at 3B, is encouraging as a Tiger fan.

I was reminded of coming back to work where you were a student as a kid; the old Welcome Back, Kotter show was the archetype, but my short stint adjuncting at Saginaw Valley State, subbing for the professor I learned under as an undergrad, comes to mind.

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Another interesting Tiger piece ponders the fate of Nick Castellanos, the Next Big Tiger Star currently slated for AA ball this year. He's a third baseman, but that job seems to be filled for a while by Cabrera, especially if Victor Martinez comes back to claim his DH spot and keeps Cabrera and Fielder from platooning there.

Castellanos seems versatile, having played both outfield and shortstop before settling in at 3B last year. A move to a corner outfield spot might make sense if the logjam stays put by the time he gets ready to move up to Detroit. The alternative is to trade him away for talent at other positions; I recall Sandy Alomar Jr came to the Indians that way, when San Diego had a good young catcher on hand and needed to send Alomar elsewhere. That turned out very well for the Indians, as he anchored the good Tribe clubs of the 90s.

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Speaking of those 90s Tribe clubs, it doesn't seem two decades ago when I was down in Canton watching Manny Ramirez playing AA ball, as he had the Next Big Indian Star tag that Castellanos holds down in the Tiger system at present. Manny is taking his heart and baggage out to Oakland after exiling him into retirement last year after getting busted for PEDs. He will have to wait until about Memorial Day to play due to a 50-game suspension.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enimas?

The EU finally agreed to another tranche of bailout money for Greece, but the terms reminded me of the post-WWI Versailles Treaty (after living in Lexington for 2.5 years, it's hard to go back to thinking Ver-sigh rather than Ver-Sales, as the KY namesake is pronounced) where the victors trashed the German economy with reparations, leading to our old buddy Adolph taking over a decade-plus later as a reaction of Germany getting economically pillaged by the rest of the world.

The irony is that this is being done by the allies of the Greeks, not their enemies.

Greece's economic management will be subjected to permanent monitoring by eurozone experts on the ground

If that happened here.... imagine Pat Buchanan's head spinning so fast we could attach it to a dynamo and light up most of the eastern seaboard. Sovereignty got tossed over the bus, although entering into a common currency had ol' Sov junked a decade ago.

Greece will amend its constitution to give priority to debt repayments over the funding of government services

That reminds me of an acronym one of my Sullivan students would use, BOHICA, bend over, here it comes again. That's shades of Versailles, not to mention various third-world debt crises of the past.

It's a walking advertisement for populist of either side of the political spectrum to give the foreign bankers the middle-digit sal-oot. That might even happen now rather than a decade from now, as folks are already in the streets in protest.

Greece will undertake to reduce its debt to 120.5% of GDP by 2020

It's currently at 160%, so 40% of a year's worth of income, say 5 months worth, is being diverted to foreign bankers over the next eight years. Two weeks of every Greek's pay goes to pay back principle on their debt, not to mention interest. Your tax dollars at work... someplace other than Greece.

Yes, the Greeks did bring it on themselves by financing a big welfare state; [insert fratboy with new credit card metaphor]. However, this is going to leave a mark, and the protests that it will generate will make our Occupiers look like a Sunday School potluck.

Define "Woman"

I'm recalling a cute gal from one of my economics classes at Kent State who one evening was packing a NPR book bag and a Planned Parenthood coffee mug. I recall having to stop myself from laughing at the walking stereotype of the liberal intelligentsia woman.

She might not be quite as liberal two decades later (the class was circa 1991), but she wouldn't be a prime candidate to vote for Rick Santorum barring a sea-change in ideology.

That's the "woman" that Santorum will have problems with, but there are other gals who might appreciate old-school morality rather than if-it-feels-good-be-protected-while-doing-it preached from the Church of PP pulpits. If Democrats can beat Santorum like a light bag in these precincts, Santorum can counter-punch in blue-collar churchgoing areas.

Note that Santorum is outperforming Romney at present in head-to-heads against Obama (yes, only 1% better) and was barely behind Romney's pace in other polls. If he's losing centrist secular women hand over fist, he's winning something back to make up for it.

The media and pundits know more of the AAUW crowd than the blue-collar churchgoers, so this story plays better among the intelligentsia.

White and Nerdy

Governor Rick Snyder endorced Mitt Romney earlier in the week. On paper, that should give him a boost in the Michigan primary on the 28th. Emphasis on on paper.

If we rewind the tape 18 months, we see that Snyder won the GOP primary with 36% of the vote; two conservatives, Pete Hoekstra and Mike Cox, came in right behind him with 27 and 23% of the vote.

Romney is getting 29% of the vote based on RCP's average of five recent polls, trailing RIck Santorum's 37%. If you allocate a 15% undecided vote, that gets Romney at about 34%, not far from Snyder's numbers.

When you note that Snyder was running as a can-do "tough nerd" (there's the Weird Al earwig from the title for you) businessman and was the moderate choice in the 2010 primary, Snyder's voters and Romney's are likely to have a large overlap. I don't see too many Snyder voters going for Santorum nor do I see too many Cox and Hoekstra voters going for Romney.

It's always nice to have the governor on board, but this shouldn't help too much.

 

 

The Michigan Air Wars

The super-PACs out out in force, at least on conservative talk radio.

Yesterday, I heard a pro-Romney PAC going after Rick Santorum as a Washington insider. Yeah, like Romney would vote more to Santorum's right were he there from 1994-2006.

Yes, Santorum lost badly in 2006, Mitt... didn't even bother to run for re-election that year.

Santorum earned some money as a consultant and board member which can be spun as lobbying, but Romney was wealthy enough to live off of his investments and thus didn't need no steenking employers who can be spun against him.

Of course, an attack ad doesn't get the counter-spin attached to it like a blog post will.

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Speaking of attack ads, Newt's PAC is out after Romney as the choice of the establishment, from the folks that gave us the car-wreck campaigns of Dole and McCain; at least you hear the sound of a bad collision after those two centrists are invoked. Nice ad, but the downside of a negative ad in a multi-party race is that the anti-establishmentarians will likely flow more to Santorum than Gingrich.

Also, in Romney's defense, he's more conservative than either of those two GOP presidential losers of the past; he's the most moderate of the current pack on balance, but the bar has been shifted to the right in the last decade and especially the last four years with the advent of the Tea Party and a well-left president to rail against.

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12 days to go before we can put these to bed in Michigan and wait for the general election mudslinging to come once the primary campaign runs its course; the winner's PAC friends can take aim at Obama and the liberal PAC daddies can then point both barrels at the GOP nominee.

Monday Moanin'

I just got done watching Syracuse nip Louisville; I'm still plesently amazed at the live TV you can get online. I watched the last four minutes of the game via ESPN3 while starting my tutoring shift online.

One odd thought from the game; Rick Pitino had a white suit on that looked either like he was heading for a gig on TBN (the suit looked like it was up Benny Hinn's alley) or was auditioning for the role of Mr. Roarke in a Fantasy Island remake.

Second odd thought; Fab Melo is the  'cuse big man after Melo Anthony played there last decade. Fab Melo sounds like a rapper's nom de guerre.

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Strange political year; Santorum and Romney are neck and neck nationally and Santorum has a 39-24 lead in Michigan. People are quick to note that most folks here are too young to remember George Romney, but those who do might remember him as rather RINOey; the prophet has no honor in his home town, especially when his dad was squishy.

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I'm not a big pop music fan, but Adele's wins seems refreshing, picking a singer rather than a video artist.

Of course, the whole thing got taken over by Whitney Houston's passing, right at the hotel where the big Clive Davis pre-Grammy party was being held that night. Sad story, of a gal who grew up in a gospel-singing realm but had issues with substance abuse; it might have been sleeping pills that did her in, but that won't be found out for sure for a while.

Bulk Rates on Nameplates

The New Jersey Nets have four players named Williams. Deron, Sheldon, Shawne and Jordon all suited up last night against Detroit. As far as I can tell, that sets the NBA record for most namesakes on the same team and ties the major league basketball record. Based on databaseBasketball.com's records, Dallas's ABA team of 1972-73 had the ultimate basketball Jones, with Rich, Collis, Larry and Nick Jones all suiting up for the final incarnation of the Chaparrals.

Thirteen teams have had a trio sharing a last name in a given season, most recently with the Clippers having three Davises in 2008-2009. Interestingly, Jones has been tripled or better four times and Johnson three times; Smith sits in third place with just two troikas, along with a pair of Williams triplets.

No, William Wallace Mooning the English Isn't Turning the Other Cheek

Way to stay classy, CPACers.

In an overflow room next door to the main ballroom broadcasting Romney's speech, about two dozen protestors stood in front of the monitors attempting to block the view, according to two conference attendees in the room.

Two college students from New Jersey, Matt Bowe and Kevin Spiley, gave Hotsheet the play-by-play.

"They weren't tall enough to block the screen, but it was still annoying," Spiley said.

The crowd started to yell at the protestors, who covered their mouths with tape and wore shirts that read, "If money is speech, poverty is silence." Bowe said people started to shout the protestors down by saying, "'You smell, get a job' -- you know, the usual stuff."

...

As the protesters were escorted out, conference participants shouted back, "We pay your rent," and moved into the hotel lobby and perimeter hotel bars chanting, "Get a job."

The Occupy movement has not received much attention at CPAC, but both radio host Laura Ingraham and commentator Ann Coulter made jokes about it.

Ingraham opened her speech with with a jab at the group. Referring to about 100 protestors outside the hotel hosting the conservative conference, she said, "You might not have seen them, but you smell them."

Great witness, folks. Way to love your enemies.

Changing the Spoilers

The leaderboard is changing on the GOP side, as the two latest national polls have Santorum nudging past Gingrich in the first national post-2/7-hat-trick polls. Both the Fox and Gallup polls are of registered voters rather than of likely voters, but that should give Newt a slight advantage.

Romney is still well ahead (33-23 in Fox and 34-22 in Gallup) but he has nicely stuck to a mid-thirties trading ceiling. He's got a third of the vote, mostly moderate and establishment with a few just-win-baby conservatives on board. The other 2/3rds are flowing between the flavors of the month, with Newt and Santorum the two mainstream conservative flavors on the menu other than Pecan Paulines.

On the electability front, Santorum is now a smidge ahead of Romney in going up against Obama. Santorum is down 42-46 while Romney trails 40-50 in a pair of Rasmussen polls. If those numbers hold up over time, the Conventional Wisdom^TM that Romney is more electable starts to go out the window.

The current flap over making Catholic non-profits cover contraceptives will help Santorum if the election is fought somewhat more on cultural issues than economics. A lot of non-conservative Catholics aren't happy with that decision that the Obama team is trying to back-peddle out of without getting excommunicated from the Church of Planned Parenthood.

The current fudge is to make insurance companies provide the services pro-bono for folks whose employers refuse to provide them. That effectively passes the buck to the public at large who will get stuck with higher premiums, including the churches who are trying to opt out. The Catholic brass isn't quite buying in.

One thing to note is this might be more of a problem to non-Catholic swing voters than for Catholic ones, for not everyone toes the party line on this front; religious liberties are often flouted in the name of various public goods, like zoning out a church-run soup kitchen to keep the riff-raff out of upscale neighborhoods or neighbors worried about a church buying an abandoned school and changing the traffic flow of the area.

Thus, you have evangelicals who might not have any particular dog in the contraception fight but don't want the "be reasonable, do it our way" attitude of the Obama team applied to them.

 

Santorum Democrats

This has not been a good year for conventional wisdom in the GOP race. Rick Santorum went from being a theocon spoiler to being part of the lead pack after winning Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota yesterday. Santorum underpolled across the board and Gingrich overpolled, but Romney's underwhelming day opened the race up.

One thing people forget about when assessing Santorum's chances in the general is the blue collar churchgoer who is as much of a swing voter as the suburban soccer mom. People assume that swing voters are economic conservatives and social moderates, but there is a comparable block of economic moderates and social conservatives. However, the former group is over-represented in the universe most pundits live in.

The sons and daughters of Reagan Democrats are a prime target for Santorum in order to patch together a majority in November. Libertarians won't like him, but unless they major in social issues, they'll likely hold their nose and go with Santorum.

Second Half Comebacks

I'm not sure if conservative operatives are barking up the wrong tree over the Halftime in America Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad. The title does give a nod to Reagan's Morning in America ad of 1984, but is largely apolitical. The one thing that folks like Rush and Karl Rove seem to dislike most is that it was done by a government-owned company.

I didn't see the ad in real-time (I tend to take off during halftime shows, especially when I don't overly care for the artist in question) but I thought it was the kind of rhetoric that anyone from Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders could agree with; here's the close of the ad

All that matters now is what’s ahead: how do we come from behind? How do we come together? And how do we win? Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And what’s true about them is true about all of us. This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do the world’s gonna hear the roar of our engines.

Yeah. It’s halftime, America. And our second half’s about to begin.

One can only hope that America's game doesn't end in 2260 or so (maybe the beginning of Act 10 of the American Saga instead of being half-over), but other than that nit-pick, well done. I could see Newt narrating that passage nicely, or, if you want the master of the second half comeback, Tim Tebow.

Do we want Chrysler and GM to fall flat on their faces so that Obama and the UAW look bad? I, for one, am not that petty.

 

Nixon-Tanned, Rested and Vetoing

I was doing some reading on how Missouri got its beauty contest; it seems that they set the date for the primary before the Republican party opted to punish states that went early. The state legislature voted to move the primary back twice and governor Jay Nixon vetoed it twice. Despite the surname, this Nixon is a Democrat.

Rather than get hit with a penalty for a early primary, the GOP opted to use a caucus to decide delegates. Since President Obama is essentally running unopposed (I see that old Op Rescue boss Randall Terry is on the Democratic ballot along with a few other unknowns), the early primary is no skin off of a Democrat's nose.

So, if folks like Roland Martin want to criticize Republicans for spending money on a bogus primary, he might want to bop Gov. Nixon an e-mail first.

What Happens in St. Paul...

They're having caucuses in CO and MN this evening, but they're getting far less coverage than the smaller Nevada caucuses on Saturday. Could it be that reporters want to go to Sin City rather than Denver or the Twin Cities in February? Or could it be since it's a good area for Rick Santorum that they don't want the most socially conservative of the pack to look good? More the former, but maybe a bit of the latter.

Santorum is leading in MN and has a strong second in CO in the polling, as well as a lead in MO's "beauty contest". That will give him three wins in the heartland to Newt's one; Newt might have to fend off the Paulistas in MN to avoid getting the boobie-prize there.

Sunday Musings

Good Super Bowl, although I thought the idea of downing the ball at the one rather than scoring a touchdown was too clever by half; as it was, Ahmad Bradshaw backed into the end zone for the winning TD after thinking about stopping at the one and letting the Giants kick a chip-shot FG at the gun.

Bradshaw's instinctive move gave Brady and the Pats a minute to retaliate, but a Hail Mary wasn't answered.

Eli Manning now has more SB rings than big brother.

__________________

One nasty but effective political ad essentially kicked off the Senate campaign in Michigan, where former Congressman Pete Hoekstra had a Chinese girl in passable English thanking Debbie Spend-it-now (a.k.a. Stabenow) for all the jobs the US was sending their way. He's casting himself as Mr. Spend-it-not and the Democrats are TARPing about that. Is it an Asian TARP carp?

___________________

It seemed like the ads were off from their normal quality. The Coke Polar Bears were good but generic, Doritos had a couple of good sight-gags, a car company that escapes me had Matthew Broderick doing a Ferris Bueller homage. Lastly, the stock-trading baby had to protect his newborn sister from a friend trying to speed-date in the nursery (taking robbing the cradle to new levels).

Creed 101-Part II-The Boss

In my back-to-basics ramble, I get to the second passage of the Apostle's Creed-let's do the first two lest I break up a sentence-

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord

There are a number of things to unpack here. The last two words are worth noting before we head off into Trinity-land-"our Lord." Not just boss, but ruler.

I don't care for the Pledge of Allegiance, since it makes a piece of cloth my small-l lord, since I tend to wind back to the medieval construct of a liege or lord as the root of alliegance. That job is already taken.

Not everyone wants to have a ruler, since we have an inner anarchist who wants to bless and keep the Czar far away from here, as the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof said. Pop culture is cool with God watching from a distance, but doesn't want Him doing anything to get in our way; nice song, lousy theology, since God is in da house, not in some sort of stable orbit in the Kuiper Belt.

Then we have the Son of God part. That is part of the uniqueness of Christian thought, is that we have the paradox of God incarnate and the added mind-bender of a unified God in three persons that good people of faith sometime don't quite get, as we see in the case of TD Jakes; I have a post on the Elephant Room stuff fermenting at present.

That's enough to chew on for now. People ignore Jesus at their peril; downgrading Him to mere teacher doesn't quite cut it.

Mitt's Crossover to Bear

Mitt Romney's getting razzed for voting in the Democratic primary in 1992, which he could do as a registered independent at the time. In MA, independents could vote in either primary, but were logged into the party they voted for temporarily. Since most of the action in MA was on the Democratic side, signing up as an independent made sense strategically.

In 1992, you had nose-holding choice on the GOP side of a tax-raising Bush 41 or Pitchfork Pat; I recall passing on that election as a grad student in Ohio, not wanting to encourage either of them, as the old non-voter saw goes. Had I had the option of crossing party lines in Ohio and supporting a neoliberal Paul Tsongas, as Romney did, I might have done so. Back then, as a newly recovering neoliberal, I might well have voted for "St Paul" if it was a Tsongas-Buchanan race.

Michigan does let you cross party lines, since they have open primaries; the exception is that the Democratic presidential primary is a non-binding "beauty contest" since the MI donkeys do a primary-esque caucus since they don't do open primaries. That lets you raid the "other" party's primary if you have no action going in your own; by definition, Democrats are free to raid the Republican primary to either vote for the candidate they like or for the candidate they'd find easiest to beat.

As a wet-behind-the-ears 18-year-old, I recall voting for Bush 41 in the 1980 primary even though I was a Democrat-leaning voter at the time. You vote where the action is.

Trying to make the 1992 vote out to be a precursor for Romney running in the Democratic primary against Ted Kennedy in 1994 doesn't pass the sniff test. He had a shot at winning as a moderate Republican in a general election, but beating a sitting senator in his own primary when the incumbant is a better fit for the primary electorate just isn't happening.

A Pink Stink

If the Giants need an extra cornerback, they can check out the Komen folks, for they backpeddle very well to secular orthodoxy. I will leave it there for now, for I don't want to fire off ill-aimed salvos in the culture war.

Tickled Pink

It isn't often you get a general-purpose charity make a culturally-conservative stand, especially when it is a women-oriented one, but the news of the week is that the Komen breast cancer research folks stopped funding Planned Parenthood for breast cancer referrals; the link goes to a nice Megan McArdle piece on the issue.

Of course, the usual suspects on the left are up in arms, which brings forward the question of whether they are more pro-abortion or pro-liberal than they are pro-women. Everyone benefits from a reduction in breast cancer, while a thriving Planned Parenthood helps largely those on the left side of the ideological/theological spectrum; PP has some benign GYN activities, but abortion is its stock in trade.

So far, the new donors are outweighing the pulled donors. One would hope that would be the case.