Mark Byron

Swiss Mistep

If the Vikings need a cornerback, invite Michelle Bachmann to training camp; she backpedals well.

"Today, I sent a letter to the Swiss Consulate requesting withdrawal of my dual Swiss citizenship, which was conferred upon me by operation of Swiss law when I married my husband in 1978," Bachmann said in a statement. 

"I took this action because I want to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America, and I am a proud American citizen. I am, and always have been, 100 percent committed to our United States Constitution and the United States of America." 

She was getting a lot of flak from the right questioning her patriotism, even though she had that status all the while as she became Mrs. Tea Party.

DOMA Arigato, Mr. President

President Obama picked an odd time, right after the NC same-sex-marriage loss, to officially come out in favor of same-sex marriage. The Obama administration had been effectively on that page, opting not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court for over a year now, making congressional Republicans step in and take on the government side of appeals of DOMA.

The issue is at a statistical dead heat (50-48 for) in a recent Gallup poll. However, that's a poll of adults rather than likely voters; likely voters tend to skew right from registered voters and registered voters skew right from adults in general. That means the sentiments of people going to the polls might be closer to 55-45 against; given that the traditionalist have won the vast majority (I want to say 100%, but I might have missed one) of the time such votes are on the ballot, it's not as much of a winner as it might look based on the raw poll numbers.

However, it does throw a bone to the libertine wing of the Democratic party, and your Hollywood crowd is strongly pro-gay-rights. This is putting them in a giving mood. In an election where enthusiasm might not be all that strong, giving your base something to smile about always helps.

That works both ways; it strengthens the conservative base for Romney. A lot of churchgoers might not be thrilled with a somewhat moderate Mormon topping the ticket, but it's a better policy match than Obama's liberal mainline take. The amoral stench wafting from DC makes them eager to hold their nose and vote GOP.

It's going to be an interesting year.

P.S.- I guess too many people grew up with Mr. Roboto-check out the hits for my DOMA arigato pun.

Putting the Con in the Democratic Convention?

I didn't think the tightest nomination race would have been on the Democratic side...

In an embarrassment to President Obama, Federal Inmate No. 11593-051 – otherwise known as Keith Judd – won 10 counties and 41 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.

Mr. Judd is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, where he is serving a 210-month sentence for extortion, according to The Charleston Gazette.

...

He is even qualified to have a delegate at the Democratic National Convention, because he won at least 15 percent of vote. However, no one has stepped forward to fill that role.

I at first wondered if Rick Perry could spring him for the convention, but it's a federal case, so that's in Obama's court.

There are a lot of things you can do with naming prospective delegates, but none of them are edifying.

Swiss Mrs.

Mark Kirkorian beat me to the headline, but it was too obvious to go unused; Michelle Bachmann and her family are now Swiss citizens as well as US citizens. Her husband is of Swiss descent and they took advantage of that "loophole." I'm not sure what advantages that might have, other than allowing use of a Swiss passport that would let you visit Cuba or other places that are on poor terms with Foggy Bottom.

Kirkorian, the Corner's resident immigration hawk, doesn't like it, and that's not an uncommon response. Politicians with dual citizenship are looked at askance for questionable loyalties.

A Canadian case is new NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's French co-citizenship via his French-born wife. He was in position to congratulate fellow lefty François Holland's win as a fellow Frenchman. Mulcair and former Liberal leader Stephane Dion have gotten flak for their literal French-Canadian legal status.

I doubt that Congresswoman Bachmann will have a bias towards cutting the Swiss slack on banking policy due to this new status. It almost seems like a flag of convenience, like companies setting up shop in Delaware for their loose corporate governance laws or ships flying Panama or Liberia's flag for their light regulation on shipping.

I'm the uncle of three dual-citizens; they're being raised here and will likely be as American as I am but likely a bit less American than the gung-ho nationalist Bachmann. I wouldn't be fearful of her becoming a pacifist, isolationist Swiss fifth column.

The Second Unforgivable Sin

Interesting move in California, where they are looking to regulate "reparative" de-gaying therapies, banning it for teens and giving warning disclaimers for adults wanting to give such therapy a shot-

The bill would prohibit so-called reparative therapy for minors and obligate adults seeking the treatment to sign a release form that states that the counseling is ineffectual and possibly dangerous.

This is an area that has hot-buttons on both sides. On one side, you have the psych community, who doesn't see homosexuality as something to be treated and thus discourages trying to; it does tend to put someone on a guilt trip if they can't shake same-sex urges and see them as sinful and problematic. Leading someone to despair and suicidal thoughts trying to change something that isn't seen as wrong is a bad thing. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" might be the mantra of the psychologist.

On top of that, you have the gay lobby that wants to stress the idea that they're "born this way" (as Ms Gaga puts it) and that such therapy is fruitless.

There's another side that would beg to differ, where they do see something wrong with it and do see worth in trying. Part of the problem on the "ineffectual" description is that you have a religious world view of the reparative therapists which is using spiritual tools that don't fit into a psychologist's paradigm and thus don't double-blind test well.

There's a overlap with the problems Teen Challenge has when dealing with secular drug rehab folks dissing their program; the evangelical and often-Pentecostal nature of TC seems to work well, but doesn't fit the classic mold because of the unorthodox nature of bringing the Holy Spirit to bear on the problem.

Combine that with the fact that the psychologists don't even accept that there is a problem to be solved in this case, and the RP folks are looked askance at, especially when you have the born-this-way lobby adding their two cents in.

Could trying make someone suicidal? I wouldn't be surprised. It is a tough nut to crack in many cases, and stories like Ray Boltz's point out that there are some folks that just don't take to such therapy.

However, there are some people it does help, and if your world-view and faith wants you to move away from same-sex attraction, it might be worth a shot. Some folks are bisexual with a same-sex bias, and those people have a better shot of responding that those that aren't switch-hitters.

The problem comes when you have people driven to despair by their inability to change as they run head-long into a church culture that has two unforgivable sins, grieving the Holy Spirit and same-sex attraction [insert Andy Stanley quip here]. People who would cut a drug addict or an addicted smoker or a fat person struggling to get his appetite under control some slack won't give the same grace for someone who struggles with same-sex attraction. That's where you get the suicides and other depression issues that the critics are concerned about, when the second unforgivable sin gets judged to the hilt.

The bill is unlikely to pass, for there are tons of First Amendment issues at play; it reminds me a bit of recent moves in CA to ban circumcision. In that case, the Jewish community had some sway with swing voters and those who sided with them on religious-liberty grounds. It would be interesting if some chits were cashed in from that battle on this one.

Looks Like We'll Need a Bigger Containtment Area

The much-ballyhooed North Carolina same-sex-marriage ban passed 61-39. If I'm not mistaken, such a bill has yet to be voted down anywhere, as all of the states that have same-sex marriage did it either by judicial decree or by legislative vote.

North Carolina did vote for Obama last year, as its urban and high-tech areas are bringing in more secular folks. That showed up in the voting patterns-

The amendment was trailing in Charlotte, in the Triangle counties around Raleigh and Chapel Hill, as well as the Winston-Salem-Greensboro area, according to figures from the State Board of Elections. But it was winning by wide margins in rural counties and in the suburbs of Charlotte -- the home of famous evangelist Billy Graham, who endorsed the ballot measure last week.

I recall when briefly looking at Raleigh as a possible relocation site that a wag noted that the Raleigh suburb of Cary was an acronym for Containment Area for Relocated Yankees. Looks like they had to expand the holding pen a bit.

Mad Dogs and Hoosiers

With 70% of the vote in, it's 60-40 "Mad Dog" Mourdock; One Lugar wasn't enough fire power against a whole Tea Party.

Somehow, I don't see Lugar moving back to Indiana; he's more likely to stay in town as some sort of lobbyist/consultant like Bob Bennett has done. Lugar's spend most of his life in Washington and may well be more at home there than in Indy.

Update 9:50-Mr Erickson lets out his inner 12-year-old:  "Indiana Hocks a Lugar." I guess he didn't get the memo about being loving and humble.

The Care and Feeding of Moderates

I'm a bit concerned about running Dick Lugar out on a rail today. If the polls hold up, he'll be ousted by conservative state treasurer Richard Mourdock. Not that it won't be an improvement in the GOP delegation as it pertains to a number of issues at play, but you don't want to tick off people like Lugar.

We'll use "RINO" to designate moderates like Lugar, but he seems to be a generally decent (late desperate campaigning notwithstanding) moderate Republican, part of a WASPy midwestern style that has faded away as mainline churches list left and free-market economics becomes a non-negotiable in the GOP.

A degree of civility marked that WASP school of politics, which is something that the system could use. Also, the openness to bipartisanship and to not dis the other party as a matter of course.

The one drawback to that is that civility and bipartisanship is often a one-way street; it tends to be a center-left critter rather than a center-right one, as bipartisan often translates to "Democrats and just enough moderate Republicans to get cloture." Lugar was often part of that meme.

However, you need the Lugars of the world to vote Republican if you want to get to a majority of the vote. You might not want them heading up the ticket, but too much dissing of moderates drives them elsewhere.

Democratic-Football-Labor Party

The Minnesota Vikings "need" a new stadium; at least, based on where the state of the art is in stadium, the current Metrodome is a bit antiquated. That seems hard to believe for a kid who grew up watching the Vikings send the Lions packing year after year in old Met Stadium on the site where the Mall of America now sits, but 30 years puts the Metrodome on the stodgy side.

Is it worth $400M to have football in town? That's the tab the Minnesota taxpayers are looking to pay towards new digs for the Vikes. With 5.3 million residents, that's about $80 apiece needed to put a new stadium in.

Rep. Larry Hosch, DFL-St. Joseph, made it personal. He told of being born during a Vikings game, with his dad having to break away from an overtime game to ferry his mom to the hospital. Hosch said he can't fathom not having Sunday games to share with his own kids.

"It might not make sense in dollars and cents," Hosch said, adding, "I can't imagine a state without the Vikings."

The interesting shtick on the funding is that expanded gambling will pick up the tab; however, that means the gaming money isn't there to help with other issues. Kentucky's Democrats are plugging a gambling proposal in order to keep horse racing tracks afloat, but they have the advantage of having the horse-breeding industry there as a tie-in; you can't quite say that you have a football industry in MN.

You can parcel out the cost over 15 years and pay for it with a $33.5m/year amortizing bond offering at 3% interest, bringing the cost down to about $6 a head per year. That's a matinee movie ticket a year, but some folks would rather use the money to watch The Avengers than the Purple People Eaters.

Is it consistent to be looking askance at having your government helping the local opera yet being more than happy supporting a new stadium? Yep, but more people watch football; on the flipside, do we take taxes from everyone to support the habit of a fraction of the population?

Comtempt is in the Eye of the Be-Holder

We're got a constitutional train wreck going down, where congressional pit bull Darrell Issa has his jaw clamped down on AG Eric Holder. Or is that Alex Trebek with a good suntan?

Contempt charges are being worked up for Holder for his lack of response in the "Fast and Furious" gun-tagging case. Contempt of Congress is the natural state of an administration of the other party, especially when the pit bulls of the opposition take their frustration out on the other side.

We saw quite a bit of this in 2007-8, when a new Democratic majority was going after the Dubya team's perceived failures. Fast forward furiously four years, and the Republicans are returning the favor.

By the time any contempt charges would actually go to trial, Holder will likely be teaching law at some Ivy League school and Fast and Furious will be remember more as an interesting car-chase movie. Note the break-neck speed that Roger Clements got tried on his contempt charges and throw a political and racial overlay to it. Thus, any contempt charge is more for show than for substance.

The Justice Department is most-likely stalling; if Holder can milk things for another six months, we get past the election and he'll be interviewing at Brown and Cornell while someone else gets to be AG in 2013 either way. If Obama does manage to get a second term, Holder would likely get tossed under the bus (or asked to jump under) in order to have calmer relations with Congress.

The patron saint of cabinet members in year 4 of an administration is Stonewall Jackson; the malady of choice is selective amnesia.

Deconstructing Monumental's Reconstructionists

Normally, folks who talk about Dominionists and Reconstructionists are engaging in hyperbole, needing multiple links, like "A was influenced by B who cited C who cited Reconstructionist biggie RJ Rushdoony." However, this Julie Ingersol piece on Kirk Cameron's new film Monumental has a couple of actual Reconstructionists on the hoof.

Before going any further, I'll put in that Eileen saw the film with her mom while we were in Tennessee visiting her folks earlier this month, and both liked its take on the oft-overlooked religious nature of America's founders. Carmeron's allies seem to be fairly on-target in their history, but might be a tad off in their eschatology.

Interestingly, Cameron's adult film career (Growing Pains was his big claim to fame as a teen) has been highlighted by playing the lead in the Left Behind movies. That takes a pre-millennial take where the Antichrist takes over the UN and turns it into a world government after the believers have been raptured, leaving post-Rapture converts to take him on. That doesn't lend itself to a Reconstructionist worldview, which is not premillennial, coming in either post-millennial or preterist flavors.

Ingersol is one of the few writers to catch that disconnect;

Once the film was released, there were even more Reconstructionists in prominent places including the co-producer and significant presence: Marshall Foster. Moreover, between Cameron's pre-release promotion and the film itself, there was more and more evidence of his being influenced by Christian Reconstruction including his embrace of the three core features: postmillennialism (an end-times theology emphasizing "dominion" and directly contrary to the view he promoted in the "Left Behind" movies), the idea that there can be no philosophical or religious neutrality and the applicability of biblical law.

Good catch, ma'am. Now can we back up the Reconstructionist rhetoric? Surprisingly, she delivers the goods.

Now, Cameron is joining the conference circuit of the Christian Reconstructionist groups with a "Monumental Tour and Equipping Cruise." Each year Reconstructionist groups like American Vision and Vision Forum sponsor conferences and study tours and participate in many such events sponsored by larger groups like tea partiers and home schoolers. I've been to several as part of the research for my forthcoming book.

...

Promoters promise that "every step of the journey will be filled with in-depth teaching, soul-stirring narratives, and unforgettable experiences." But wait, there's more. The bus tour will be followed by a seven-day cruise through New England into Canada with "18 total hours of in-depth teaching and workshops for Patriotic individuals" to "train and equip the next generation of liberty minded Americans." All of it led by Cameron, Marshall Foster and Gary DeMar.

Let's crank up Google and see what Foster and DeMar are up to-

Marshall Foster has charismatic roots in his graduate studies, as the host church of Cathedral Bible College buys into evidential tongues and has an apostolic take as well. His Talbot School of Theology is premillennial and seemingly dispensationalist, so he might not be a good candidate for the Reconstructionist lable, although it is possible to get a degree from a place and not buy into their statement of faith decades later.

The Reconstructionist tag seem to flow from Ingersol's statement-"he told me at a 2009 pre-cruise conference in Ft Lauderdale that Rushdoony had changed his life." If that's true, Foster might have changed gears from a premillennial eschatology to either a post-millennial or preterist view. Other than that, Foster seems to be Reconstructionist only by interpretation, since folks with a variety of eschatologies will agree on aiming towards a godlier government.

Gary DeMar seems to have more of a traditional Reconstructionist resume, coming from a Reformed vantage point-he goes to a PCA Presbyterian church and got a M.Div from Reformed Theological Seminary. According to his Wikipedia entry, he is a partial preterist, which puts a lot of Bible passages of prophesy in the past rather than the future. Preterists tend to be amillennial, which would lead them to make common cause with postmillenialists in shooting for a godly government in the here and now.

Also, the seven-degrees-of-Rushdoony game can be distilled down to one, if we take Reconstructionist biggie Gary North as a stand-in-

In the Editor's Introduction [of Ruler of the Nations], Gary North points out DeMar's description of "an intellectual war going on, a war between two rival views of God, man, law and society." North says that the "book has made the meaning of theocracy clear."

OK. Now what do we do with Monumental and its likely follow-up films given that we have two Reconstructionists running herd behind their former teen idol front man.

1) Check for spin. The Founding Fathers were religious guys by modern standards, but ran the gambit from orthodox to Universalist; Jefferson did his own Jesus Seminar two centuries ahead of time and wrote a miracle-free rewrite of the Gospels. Washington was the equivilent of a center-left Episcopalian, more George H.W. than George W. Making all of them out to be conservative Southern Baptists would be a bit of a reach.

2) Don't get too worried. Remember, this is a minority viewpoint in the modern church. Hard-core Reconstructionism is a Reformed criter by and large, and while neo-Reformers are gaining ground in the SBC, I've yet to see any Reconstructionist thought creep into the Gospel Coalition crew even if Reconstuctionist might like them.

3) Acknowledge the truth where it lies. If the stuff's legit, then go from there. Unless they have twisted or spun things, noting that we had more of a Christian past then most people thought isn't a bad thing.

4) Agree about the past, fight in the present. If you want to fight off a theocracy, the real battle isn't over our heritage but about what we want the future to look like. My take on a state religion is that it's unlikely to be yours; that's why a Christian-tinged government that is informed by the Gospel would be better than one that strives to impose a faith on the whole country.

5) Much of the Biblical talk of government is Jewish rather than Christian. When government is addressed in the OT, it is a Jewish theocracy that it is dealing with. That can get more tribal and less grace-full than modern evangelicals would be comfortable with.

Mitigating Creative Destruction

Here's an interesting but troubling David Goldman piece on president Obama's childhood as the indirect object of the dog-eating story. To me, the wok-the-dog story is 2012's version of 2008's Hussein, using his full name to punctuate the alienness of the immigrant's son who spend a good chunk of his formative years in the Third World.

Obama's mom was an anthropologist who would document how foreign cultures were on the sharp end of globalization's creative destruction; Goldman even trots out the Shumpeterian phrase more than once and posits that Obama's worldview is that of an anthropologist who (if I can rip off Bill Buckley) stands athwart progress yelling "Stop!"-here's Goldman's close

The president isn’t really one of us. He’s a dog-eater. He tells the story in his memoir to emphasize that viscerally, Obama identifies with the Third World of his upbringing more than with the America of his adulthood. It is our great misfortune to have a president who dislikes our country at this juncture in our history.

It's not so much America that he dislikes but market-and-profit-centered globalization that he seems to dislike. Modern liberal/socialist policy is designed to mitigate the destructive nature of the market economy, but by mitigating the destruction, they also constrain creativity.

One nit to pick here is that Obama becomes not-one-of-us only if we take a narrow view of who "we" are. From a Christian perspective, we're all children of God, and the one time Indonesian schoolkid is as much one of us as your writer here who's not left North America in his lifetime.

We just got done holding a conference at church looking to reach out to Tibetans; one aspect of that ministry was to look after poor children, giving them an education and a future that their Tibetan-Nepali culture (the area in question was a ethnically Tibetan area in Nepal) wasn't otherwise providing. Such largess takes money out of the US economy and plunks it halfway around the world.

That puts both mission-oriented Christians and more secular anthropologists and their political allies focused on the least-of-these around the world. Both are trying to help folks ill-served by their society, but with different agenda; the anthropologist tries to keep the old ways intact (including native religions that the missionary would rather convert people from), often siding against progress in keeping their research subjects out of progress' way, while the missionary brings the gospel, aid and help in adapting to the evolving interaction with the rest of the world.

The church often can side with the Third World preservationists as critics of some of the seamier sides of globalization; it's not always a natural ally of the marketplace, especially when the market is selling things that shouldn't be sold and loses sight of human worth outside of their bottom line. For instance, we see fans of the Dalai Lama and those of Chinese house churches joining forces to try and get China to reform.

The other day, I was thinking of how the continuous improvement meme rampant in modern business management applies in a church setting. The Gospel isn't something that can be reformulated and improved; it's a constant. How we present it and how we create disciples can change, especially if old habits aren't helpful, but some old ways aren't subject to change; taking Sundays off cuts into potential revenue by 14%, but profit-maximization isn't our goal, Kingdom-of-God maximization is.

Agency Costs Writ Large

I'm not all that surprised at the GSA Vegas story. There is a tendency for any administrator to do stuff in their interest rather than that of their employer, whether the employer is a company or a non-profit or a government entity; agency costs is the management/finance buzzword for that disconnect. It's a bit more harder to root out at a non-profit level, since you can't give government employees stock options on the US government or do a profit-sharing plan.

This is also largely a non-partisan issue. Neither party wants to spend money on parties unless it's Democratic or Republican parties; government employee shindigs (other than modest ones as mundane morale-boosters) aren't generally the highest and best use of spare funds, especially in a big-deficit era. Republicans are reflexively outraged at this kind of stuff, but goo-goo Democrats will want to keep waste to a minimum. The greatest waste-hawk in my memory was a WI Democrat, William Proxmire, whose Golden Fleece awards skewered one bogus-looking program a month for over a decade; sadly, he never ran out of targets.

There's always a non-trivial bit of waste, fraud and corruption to weed out. The Secret Service calling on fellow professionals in Columbia is a whopper in that third bucket, and I'll quit while I'm ahead and on G-rated turf.

Mitigating Obama's Errors

Hopes that a heart transplant would change Dick Cheney have proven unfounded- he's hit the hyperbole a bit heavy in declaring Obama "an unmitigated disaster to the country."

On domestic policy, he comes close to that. On foreign policy, he's actually done an OK job, letting the security forces do their job in getting Osama and keeping Club Gitmo open. With the exception of taking a more pro-Palestinian line on Holy Land policy and being a bit too eager to bug out of Afghanistan, he's been not too far from what a McCain administration would have done.

Of course, Mitt-igation of these errors is coming if the voters so choose. One hopes the changes mitigate things as well.

A Known Homophone Runs for the Senate

We might be back to the state of affiars of having to keep John Kerry and Bob Kerrey straight if Kerrey wins back his old Nebraska senate seat. He's been off in New York City (get a rope) for the last decade running the New School and is using his sister's house as his official NE digs.

Where you were the day you filed isn't an issue, thus the nit-pick that he was in a hotel that day rather than his sister's house shouldn't be decisive. I could be up visiting my sister's cottage in northern Michigan and still be a legal resident in Midland.

Given the lay of the land, Kerrey shouldn't give up his day job too quickly; even as a somewhat straight-shooting liberal who'll buck the party line when called for, he might be hard-pressed to win in a seriously red state. Ben Nelson retired rather than try and hang on to this seat, and Kerrey will be seen as less in touch with the average Nebraska voter on the issues than the more moderate Nelson.

That being said, Kerrey's independent streak will win over swing voters and was nice to have in the Senate, as he occasionally was a Democrat that conservatives could do business with. Those are few and far between these days, but Nebraska is more likely to pick a conservative who votes that way most of the time rather than some of the time.

 

Romney Meets Dilbert

If you wonder what happened to Londo¹, Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, he may well have been hired by the Romney campaign and going by the pseudonym Eric Fehrnstrom, given the news of the week and this classic strip.

¹-He's not given a name in the strip, but his 'do reminds me of the Centari ambassador in Babylon 5.

Establishing a Nomination Path

Here's a not-as-intersting-as-it-looks Ronald Brownstein piece on the GOP race post-IL. Romney does well with upscale non-evangelials and Santorum does better with downscale folks and evangelicals.

Even though there is not much policy difference between the two on economics and Romney might actually be more liberal (if his stint as MA governor is any guide), Romney gets cast as the economic conservative.

Part of that is libertarians bashing Santorum on economics in order to get him out of a winning position. Some buzz was made of a Paul-Romney coalition to make Santorum look bad, but there is unlikely to be some grand conspiracy; thus, don't expect Rand Paul on the ticket.

While there are quite a few evangelical libertarians, there is a vocal secular bunch who hate moral conservatives. Since social liberals are in the minority in the GOP, they can't go out and campaign against Rick Sanctimonious. That would most likely backfire badly.

Thus, they attack Santorum for being not as economically conservative as they'd like. That might wind up getting votes for Romney as well as Paul, but it keeps Santorum bottled up in a trailer park in Yazoo City rather than a broader candidate, which is the first goal. Romney's PAC is more than happy to pitch the same message, since it helps Romney, even if he'd likely have voted the same way on some of the issues at hand were he in the Senate.

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Is this a bitter divide? Not too much. When you take the attack-ad rhetoric aside, Romney is not that much different on the issues. He'll have a harder time differentiating himself from the president than Santorum would, but he'll also have a more moderate persona. Blue collar churchgoers might opt to vote Obama if social issues are off the table, but Romney might pick up some extra soccer moms.

The Mormon stuff is more likely to be an issue with libertarian leaning swing voters (who might get scared off by the devoutness and funky theology) than by evangelicals (who are scared of the funky theology too, but find the moral center a feature rather than a bug when put into the policy arena). Will Democrats try and run that by folks? Yep, but it's got a good chance of backfiring, since it's likely to be done with the tact of a Sherman tank by the Church of Planned Parenthood.

______________________

Things aren't over with yet, but without a lot of debates, we're left with a ad-centric campaign which helps Romney. Barring a major faux pas, we're likely stuck with him as the nominee, which isn't the worst thing on the planet.

What's Wrong With a "Brokered" Convention?

Unless Mitt Romney starts to make a move, we're looking at a scenario where he doesn't get to Tampa with enough deglegates. Most of the other contenders have a bigger hill to climb to get there-

With his opponents, Republican strategists and the media pointing out that "delegate math" is heavily against him, Rick Santorum struck back on Sunday, saying that the delegation projections aren't great for Mitt Romney or other Republican contenders at this point in the race either.

"This isn't a mathematical formula," the former Pennsylvania senator said on NBC's "Meet the Press." When host David Gregory pointed out that Santorum would have to get 61 percent of the vote in upcoming GOP primaries to win the nomination, Santorum noted that Romney would need to win roughly 50 percent of that vote in order to become the nominee himself. "On the current track that we're on now, Gov. Romney doesn't get to that number."

Conservatives usually don't like looking overseas for inspiration give American exceptionalism, but party leadership conventions in other countries rarely come in with a working majority for one candidate unless it is an incumbent, even ones like Canada were a primary-of-sorts of party members is held.

The interesting thing here is that the old notion of a "brokered convention" assumes that there are party bosses who can broker such a deal in a smoke-filled room, as the old meme goes. Not only would the conference room in 2012 be most likely smoke-free if not virtual in nature, but there would be no stogie-packing brokers to be patching together a deal.

The delegates (and the party at large) would be looking at who would best match their policy desires and who can send Obama packing to the Kennedy Center (or some law-prof slot) come January. It will probably be one of the candidates currently going, since they've been oppoed into the ground and most of the other prospective candidates (with the exception of Palin) haven't gotten that white-glove treatment as of yet.

Horse-trading is limited by law. Santorum can't offer Newt a cabinet position for backing him per law, although putting Newt in the cabinet would be a good place for him; we could bring him out from behind the fine china every so often.

So, pointing out that Santorum or Gingrich can't easily get to a majority is not a debate-stopper. Romney seems stuck in the 30s and can't break through to a majority, so letting a convention cogitate on the alternatives for the summer wouldn't be a bad idea.

Excellence in Burpcasting

I'm not with the conservative paradigm again; Breitbart's death did not leave me with the level of loss others did, nor do I want to go backing Rush for his latest foray into bad taste and poor political judgement. Advertisers are over-reacting, for a PG-13 Rush is nothing new; the Culture War button got pushed and good PC folks answered the call to abandon the good ship EIB.

Is there a double-standard? Not really.

If a liberal calls a conservative woman a slut, it is a generic insult, not a questioning of her sexual character; likewise, every guy who gets a anti-gay pejorative flung his way on a basketball court is set to be the next member of the Village People.

However, in this case, you had a woman who was in apparent need of birth control, which gets within hailing distance of earning the title, especially when Rush followed it up with a prurient request to watch her and her Obama-subsidized birth control in action. By that standard, Rush might get some fun watching my mom go through rehab with her Medicare-financed artificial knee; quite the party-starter, that one.

Also, you have a big talk-show host picking a fight with a previously-obscure liberal activist/law student, albeit one that became the poster girl for reproductive freedom for the left. Picking on Nancy Pelosi or another member of the congressional left would have been at Rush's weight class (pun not intended-he's trimmed down quite a bit since he got started).

Thus, Rush has a bit of a dressing-down coming. Not that it's the first time nor will it be the last. There are plenty of advertisers willing to pick up where the bailers left off and any station dropping Rush will see someone down the dial grab him up quickly. There's a market for what he does; all the left can do is make its minions steer clear.

One fringe benefit- any flak Rush is getting is stuff that isn't going the way of Rick Santorum or Republicans in general on the religious liberty-versus-contraception donnybrook. It took Super Tuesday off the front page long enough for Santorum to do well today.

Yes, liberal pundits get away with far more toxic rhetoric towards conservatives, but their clientelle is more used to R-rated language coming from their side and might feel prudish if they call them on it. That doesn't make two wrongs right.

Good at Making People Look Bad

I don't like the carpet-bomb-your-enemies style of politics that we're in these days. Thus, the story of Andrew Breitbart's passing leaves me a bit cold, as I don't have the warm spot in my heart that the conservative on-line big-shots have, for a lot of his shtick was to make liberals look bad.

That can be good in a lot of cases, but created collateral damage in others, like in the Shirley Sherrod case (where You-tubing her out of context cost her a job).

Here's an interesting first-reaction obit from Jonah Goldberg; it closes thus.

There will be lots of eulogies and obituaries for Andrew, including my own, talking about his politics and his beautiful wife and kids and his bottomless happy-warrior spirit. And that’s all true and right and appropriate. But people — particularly NRO readers — should know that Andrew’s accomplishments didn’t begin with his relatively recent fame and his gonzo antics. People will talk a lot about Shirley Sherrod and Anthony Weiner and that’s all fine and good. He’d like it, in fact. But he was a great, sweet, smart guy destined for great things long before he became a cultural touchstone. Indeed, his greatest accomplishment, I’m sure he would say, was marrying up and having four wonderful kids. And that too is something that you won’t see in his clips on YouTube.

By all accounts, he seemed to be a happy warrior and a hail fellow well met. Pat Buchanan seems much the same way in person; I still don't like Pat's ethnocentrism and nasty streak towards his enemies.

Breitbart was key in getting Drudge rolling and played a key role in getting the Huffington Post off the ground, although the later listed a bit more left than he hoped, shooting for a bipartisan online salon. That and other things will give him more than a bit part when the history of the blog era gets told.

I just don't like hating my enemies and prefer my pundits with a bit less bile.

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?

 

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.