Libertarian Leanings

Ridin' High In Florida

Shot down in South Carolina he's back on top in Florida.  Mitt Romney has shown that he can win a debate. 

A poll by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Research for Newsmax put Mr. Romney ahead with 40% compared with Mr. Gingrich’s 32%. Rep. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum picked up 9% and 8% respectively. The earlier survey, taken after Mr. Gingrich’s surprise win in South Carolina, showed Mr. Gingrich ahead by eight points. Until Mr. Gingrich’s strong showing in South Carolina, Mr. Romney had been ahead in the Florida polls.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey found Mr. Romney in the lead, 39%-31%, with Mr. Santorum at 12% and Mr. Paul at 9%. Electability was a factor, the pollsters found. At the start of the week, 42% of those surveyed said Mr. Gingrich would be the stronger candidate against President Barack Obama. But after a nationally televised debate and intense campaigning, 49% now think Mr. Romney would more likely to unseat the president while 34% pick Mr. Gingrich. The poll’s margin of error is four percentage points

I think the Tea Party is finally sobering up, and lest anyone be offended I include myself in that group.  All along we've been hoping for the perfect conservative candidate and the fact is, we'd never agree on what that is.  It's becoming clear in Florida is that Newt might very well become this year's Christine O'Donnel, knocking out the reliably conservative Mitt Romney so that he can lose in the general election to Barack Obama.  It's time to stop fooling around.

Mitt is our guy.  Newt Gingrich disqualified himself when he attacked Mitt's record at Bain Capital.  That is precisely what this election is all about.  Are we going to promote free markets, or should markets be more tightly controlled by the federal government?  By attacking Bain, Newt has come down on the side of more federal control.  That's the same side as Obama, but that's not the important thing.

Tea Partiers are terrified at the prospect of four more years of Barack Obama.  It's becoming quite clear that Newt needs debates with plenty of applause to be a successful candidate, because he really doesn't have much else.  He won't have such a sympathetic audience when he's debating Barack Obama.

He has grand ideas but grand ideas aren't enough.  You gotta get things done, and he didn't get himself on the Virginia primary ballot.

Obama's Fair Share

I didn't bother to watch Obama's State of the Union address.  It would have annoyed hell out of me.  All too predictably it was a campaign speech and nothing more.  Obama's campaign speeches invariably appeal to envy.

We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What's at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.

As always, Obama's call for everyone to do their fair share is really an accusation that somebody is not.  Who could that be?

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Because how unfair -- indeed, un-American -- it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet's secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate.

Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

Obama stokes the engine for his re-election with envy and jealousy.  It's his his plan for deflecting blame from how own policy failures, and unfortunately there might just be enough people willing to accept his easy answer:  The rich — that would be the Republicans — are to blame.

To some extent he's been successful.  The Occupy Wall Street crowd listens to him.  They are his creatures, the ones most receptive to his message.  They heard it and rushed out into the street to demand answers.  How is it possible that somebody has something and that they don't have.  Somebody must be made to pay. 

But it turns out that Obama's people do pretty well, yet somehow they've been reluctant to pay their fair share.  No surprise there.  Taxes are for the little people.

Here's Where I'm Confused

Watching Newt Gingrich take down CNN's John King was refreshing, even invigorating.  It would have been even sweeter had Gingrich asked King whether or not he was aware of the affair between John Edwards and Reille Hunter at the time he was reporting on the 2004 Presidential campaign.  If yes, why didn't you ask him about it?  If no, how do you call yourself a journalist?

But here's where I'm confused. 

Gingrich finally got around to declaring Marianne Gingrich's allegations “false” and said that his campaign had offered several mutual friends who could disprove the charges but that ABC declined to use them.

How would a mutual friend be able to disprove Marianne Gingrich's allegations?  Were any of them present for the conversation that she described in her interview?  Seems unlikely, unless maybe Callista was hiding in the closet at the time.  But then how would Callista qualify as a "mutual friend" to Marianne Gingrich.

Santorum's Last Gasp

Santorum's only hope for winning the nomination is if nobody was watching last night's debate.  His was a cringe-worthy performance, as described by Michael Medved.

The big loser: Rick Santorum, whose insufferably sanctimonious demeanor answered all questions about why social conservatives have begun to coalesce around Newt Gingrich rather than the former Pennsylvania senator. His decision to issue smug, full-bore attacks on every one of his rivals backfired badly. He ended up playing the role of skunk at the garden party, more eager to snicker at opponents than to make an emotional connection with the electorate. Any chance for Santorum to reverse recently plummeting poll numbers vanished with this debate.

I just wanted to tell Santorum to wipe that smirk off his face.

Look What You Made Me Do!

Obama has rejected construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

President Barack Obama said the decision, which put the pipeline on hold following a review that began in 2008, "is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline" and criticized next month's deadline as "arbitrary." The administration suggested that the pipeline's builder, TransCanada Corp., could reapply.

Under review since 2008 and it's the Republicans' fault because the Obama administration doesn't have time to make a decision?

The Importance of Bain Capital

Casting Bain Capital as metaphor for the period of American economic history between 1980 and 1989, Daniel Henninger credits it with rescuing the U.S. economy.

Arguably, the primary force that set off the 1980s upheaval in U.S. corporate restructuring was the deregulation begun by Jimmy Carter and continued by Ronald Reagan. Airlines, ground transportation, cable and broadcasting, oil and gas, banking and financial services all experienced regulatory rollback. Meanwhile, a competitive, globalized marketplace was rising. Management at some of America's biggest companies, confused by these rapid changes, found themselves sitting on huge piles of unused or poorly deployed cash and assets.

Thousands of Mitt Romneys allied with huge pension funds representing colleges, unions and the like, plus a rising cadre of institutional money managers, to force corporate America to reboot. In the 1980s almost half of major U.S. corporations got takeover offers.

Singling out this or that Bain case study amid the jostling and bumping is pointless. This was a historic and necessary cleansing of the Augean stables of the American economy. It caused a positive revolution in U.S. management, financial analysis, incentives, governance and market-based discipline. It led directly to the 1990s boom years. And it gave the U.S. two decades of breathing room while Europe, with some exceptions, choked.

Misreading The Tea Leaves

Two items:

Rasmussen reports that Obama loses in a match up against "the generic Republican."

A generic Republican candidate now holds a five-point lead over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup for the week ending Sunday, Jan. 15.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 47% of Likely U.S. Voters would support the generic Republican candidate if the presidential election were held today, while 42% would vote for Obama.  Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

Nancy Pelosi says that she knows Mitt Romney can't win against Obama.

“If the far right thought that Romney could win, they might be more enthusiastic about him,” Pelosi told POLITICO’s Mike Allen during Tuesday’s Playbook Breakfast. “But they question what he stands for and they don’t think he’s going to win. So what’s the sell? I’m not sure he knows what he stands for, and that makes it harder too.”

But according to the most recent CBS poll, among primary voters nationwide Romney draws slightly more support from the Tea Party than from non-Tea Party voters.  On top of that he draws more Tea Party support than any of the rest of the Republican candidates.

Pelosi doesn't understand that Mitt Romney is "the generic Republican."  Romney is not the Tea Party's ideal candidate.  So, why does he get more Tea Party support than any of the rest of the field?  It's precisely because Tea Partiers believe he can win.

Help Wanted: Straw Men Needed For Progressive Campaigns

Demand is on the upswing among progressive's for any issue, however remotely plausible, with which to bludgeon Republicans.  Peter Beinart is quick to the market with an innovative approach to playing the race card.  After watching the Myrtle Beach GOP presidential debate Beinart concludes that the GOP is "ill prepared to compete in an increasingly nonwhite America."

Gingrich’s problem isn’t racism; it’s ignorance. Only someone profoundly ignorant of African-American politics would suggest that black Americans have spent the past few decades seeking food stamps, not jobs.

I should point out that in no way did Gingrich suggest that African-Americans might prefer food stamps to jobs.  That invention belongs to Beinart.  And while he was busily setting up and knocking over his straw man, he managed to miss the core issue.  And I do believe he missed it.

The number one problem facing black Americans is the same one facing the rest of America.  There aren't enough jobs.  Obama's crony capitalism, his heavy handed regulations, and his taxation policies are strangling the economy and obstructing the private investment needed for creating jobs at any kind of a substantial rate.  Unemployment has recently fallen to 8.5% only because a huge number of people simply gave up trying to find jobs.  The Obama economy is that bad, and bad as it is for white Americans, it's worse for non-whites, especially blacks.

But rather than focus on the central issue of our day, which is jobs, Beinart buries himself in the minutiae of politically correct protocols.  He concocts a reason for African Americans to be offended.

...for Gingrich—a veteran politician from the state of Georgia, speaking at a debate in South Carolina on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday—not to understand why calling the first African-American in the Oval Office the “food stamp” president would offend African-Americans is simply amazing. The most plausible explanation is that Gingrich inhabits a cultural and intellectual bubble. A bubble called the Republican Party.

Obama is, in fact, the "food stamp" president, and the statistics prove it.  But within Beinart's restrictive little intellectual bubble, the sin is for anyone, particularly a Republican, to draw attention to it. 

A Little Clarity

I find a certain humor in the sequence of articles posted here on Memeorandum.  It's about the assault from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry on Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital.  Their attack and the subsequent piling on by lefties has had the unintended consequence of uniting an array of conservatives in Romney's defense.  Here's Rick Klein of ABC News.

...if you need evidence that the attacks on Romney’s record at Bain have backfired, and may be doing more to unite conservatives behind Romney more than anything Romney himself could have done, consider this partial list of those who are defending him — and chastising Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry for their “vulture capitalist” attacks:

Rush Limbaugh

Sean Hannity

Laura Ingraham

Jim DeMint

Karl Rove

Mike Huckabee

Rudy Giuliani

The US Chamber of Commerce

The Club for Growth

The Wall Street Journal editorial page

That’s quite the conservative Murderers’ Row, to borrow a baseball term, that’s lining up in an aggressive defense of capitalism, coming in the context of the attacks on Romney’s business record.

Naturally, as lefties joined the chorus against Bain and Romney, others like John Hinderaker of Power Line Blog began looking into what really happened to one of the center pieces of the anti-capitalism campaign — Bain's closing of a Gaffney, South Carolina picture frame factory.  In the lefty version Bain took over the company for the purposes of shutting it down to sell off the assets for a profit.  It turns out, the factory that was shut down as part of a cost cutting effort under Bain Capital, was also opened under the management of Bain Capital four years earlier while they were trying to grow the company.

In the late 1980s, Holson was in deep trouble because of competition from cheap imports. Bain helped to save the company, then encouraged its merger with Burnes:

Partly because of the import problem, the Holson family sold out to Bain Capital in 1986; however, the Holson Company, which was still managed by family members, continued to have problems under the Bain umbrella. To return the organization’s competitive edge, Bain called in a series of consulting teams, including one from Price Waterhouse. Among the members of the Price Waterhouse team was Hoffmeister. Bain asked Hoffmeister to join Holson as head of the company in 1988 to effect a turnaround.

In the same year, 1988, Holson opened a factory in Gaffney, South Carolina, where photo albums were produced. The factory initially employed 100 people and eventually around 150–all brand-new jobs that were created by Holson under Bain’s guidance.

Unfortunately, the new company, Holson Burnes, was losing money, suffering net losses in both 1991 and 1992. The new management “worked to streamline the company, eliminate overlap, cut production costs, and jettison poorly performing units.” Those efforts succeeded in making Holson Burnes profitable; they also resulted in closing the Gaffney plant in 1992, after four years of operation.

Generally speaking, accuracy is the last thing on lefty minds when conservatives offer a juicy target.  Generally, but not always.  Oddly enough though, as the left leaning Huffington Post finds occasion to offer a defense of the man bankrolling Gingrich's attack on Romney and Bain Capital, we find HuffPo reporter Jon Ward taking extra care to provide clarity.

WASHINGTON -- A source close to wealthy donor Sheldon Adelson, who is under fire for giving $5 million to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC that began running TV ads attacking Mitt Romney's career in private equity, distanced the Las Vegas casino magnate from the ads on Thursday.

"Some people have made this leap that Sheldon Adelson gave $5 million and every penny of that is being used to hit Mitt Romney over Bain Capital," said the Adelson source, who asked not to be identified in order to more frankly discuss Adelson's thinking on the subject. "Aren't people getting in a tizzy here about something that maybe isn't completely accurate?"

Funny you should ask.

Obama Digging Into The Exit Polls

The Obama campaign has been studying the exit polls from the New Hampshire primary and they find that Romney doesn't do well among lower income voters.

The Obama team is watching those independents carefully, as well as other key demographic groups. They’re focused on how former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney performs, since he’s the candidate they’ve long been convinced will win the GOP nomination.

Members of Team Obama say that current exit polls indicate that:

* Mitt Romney lost to Ron Paul by four points among self-identifying independents — Paul 31%, Romney – 27%;

* Romney finished a distant fourth among voters who thought “Strong Moral Character” is the most important candidate quality, losing to Paul by 21 points.

* Romney won the wealthy, but lost the middle class. His biggest margin was among those making over $200K followed by those making $100-200K but he lost those making under $50K by 4 points.

“So he loses independents and low income voters,” says a top Obama campaign official. “His right-turn isn’t going to help these things.”

What a happy coincidence for Obama that his policies dovetail so nicely with his campaign strategy.  Crony capitalism, the imposition of stifling federal regulations, Obama's war on domestic energy production, and his incessant promises to raise taxes everybody who is successful have all served to drive more people out of the workforce and increase the number of people in poverty.  He isn't called "the food stamps president" for nothing.  Could there be a method to his madness?  By expanding the under $50K demographic he may think he's building a voting block that will get him re-elected.  Good luck with that one.

Romney Cruises

It's Mitt Romney in a walk in the 2012 New Hampshire Primary.  Romney got just under 40% of the vote with Ron Paul finishing second at 23% and Jon Huntsman third at 17%.

Major broadcast networks declared Romney the winner as soon as all polls closed at 8 p.m.

But will Romney's margin of victory be viewed as wide enough to portray him as a clear, strong front-runner?

It appeared that the answer is yes.

As returns poured in, Romney had 39 percent of the vote with nearly 90 percent of the voting precincts reporting.

A battle for second place was expected, with Huntsman riding a late mini-surge to battle Paul.

But Paul was at 23 percent and Huntsman at 17 percent, while former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum split the hard-line conservative vote, with 9 percent each.

I'd have to say this makes Romney the prohibitive favorite going forwards.  His most serious remaining obstacle is the $2.3 million negative ad campaign that Newt Gingrich supporters have recently launched in South Carolina. 

A super PAC supporting Mr. Gingrich will start running anti-Romney ads this week, painting him as a businessman who sought to enrich himself by buying companies, closing them down and leaving people out of work.

We'll see how that plays out.  It didn't help Gingrich here in New Hampshire.

Gingrich The Progressive

I sat in amazement, and a bit of disgust, as Sean Hannity gave two segments of his show over to a vindictive attack on Mitt Romney by Newt Gingrich.  Maybe it was Hannity's way of contributing to the Gingrich campaign.  In any event Gingrich missed his target, instead smearing capitalism itself.  I don't find a transcript of last night's show, but Gingrich reiterated things he'd said earlier.

Newt Gingrich took Mitt Romney to task Monday for his role with Bain Capital, arguing that the former Massachusetts governor “looted the companies [and] left people unemployed” when the venture firm took control.

“They apparently looted the companies, left people unemployed and walked off with millions of dollars,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Today” show. “Look, I’m for capitalism, I’m for people who go in to save a company … if somebody comes in takes all the money out of your company, and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions, that’s not traditional capitalism.”

I suspect the former history teacher, congressman, lobbyist Gingrich wouldn't know traditional capitalism if it bit him on the ass.  The facts of Romney's tenure are Bain Capital are much different from picture presented by the former house speaker.

The Wall Street Journal, aiming for a comprehensive assessment, examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Mr. Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999, to see how they fared during Bain's involvement and shortly afterward.

Among the findings: 22% either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8% ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost.

Another finding was that Bain produced stellar returns for its investors—yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.

With Staples, Dominos, and Sports Authority among the winners, it's easy to see how Bain Capital could make so much money. At the same time Bain's investment strategy explains why there might be a higher than average failure rate.

Asked in an interview about Bain's bankruptcy and failure rate, Mr. Romney said that in buyout deals, "our orientation was by and large to acquire businesses that were out of favor and in some cases in trouble." He added that Bain wasn't the type of firm that stripped companies and fired workers, but instead, "our approach was to try to build a business. We were not always successful."

Apparently Gingrich really does not understand how private enterprise works, and it turns out he, rather than Romney, is the man who will say anything to get himself elected.  It's gets him in trouble sometimes.  Last may after trashing Paul Ryan's budget plan as right wing social engineering, he got some unexpected feedback from an Iowa voter.

As he was getting ready to leave a speaking engagement Dubuque resident Russell Fuhrman approached him in the lobby of the Holiday Inn:

“Get out now before you make a bigger fool of yourself,” Fuhrman said directly to Gingrich.

Gingrich, visibly stunned, quickly moved forward to talk with other guests.

Fuhrman told The Register afterward that he just happened to be at the hotel.  He said he’s upset with Gingrich’s disagreements with parts of the House Republican Medicare reform plan.

Fuhrman said he’s a solid Republican but that Ginrich “is a jerk.”

“I’m a strong Republican but he’s an embarrassment to our party,” Fuhrman said.

Gingrich's lip might get into even more trouble than merely embarrassment, according to Ross Kaminsky of the American Spectator.

I've never seen a baseball player get three strikes on one pitch, but former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich just accomplished the political equivalent. During a Sunday morning Republican debate in New Hampshire, Gingrich suggested that a Super PAC supporting him will be attacking former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist Mitt Romney's business history.

Strike one: As Quin Hillyer notes, Gingrich may have inadvertently tipped his hand exposing illegal coordination between his campaign and a PAC.

Strike two: Regardless of the impact of criticisms by Newt-backers on Romney, Newt has shown himself to be too bitter, petulant, and vengeful -- in short, too immature -- to be a serious candidate for the presidency.

And -- the most important and least discussed -- strike three: The PAC's impending assault combined with Gingrich's words during Saturday morning's debate that "I think it's a legitimate part of the debate to say OK on balance are people better off by this particular style of investment?" show less an attack on Romney than attack on capitalism itself, something that should be anathema to a self-described "Reagan conservative."

Gingrich is the loose cannon who proves himself to be guilty of the charges he brings against Mitt Romney.  That is, he'll say anything to get elected.

This May Explain

Almost inexplicably the "not Romneys" just come and go.  Hopes for the more perfect conservative candidate propel the "not Romneys" upwards in the popularity polls only to see them sink away after we get to know them a little better.  We had Rick Perry and Herman Cain.  And after them Newt Gingrich made his remarkable and unlikely rise in voter esteem.  He's now history, which paved the way for Rick Santorum.  Like the rest who came before, Santorum enjoyed a brief moment of adulation which unsurprisingly did not ignite similar infatuation among voters in New Hampshire where Romney maintains a solid lead.

In the meantime, a Rasmussen poll of likely US voters says that Mitt Romney is the only Republican candidate who is likely to beat Obama.

While the Republican presidential hopefuls continue to fight it out on the campaign trail, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the only GOP contender that most voters view as having a chance against President Obama.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Likely U.S. Voters think Romney is at least somewhat likely to beat the president in November.

I think this explains why Romney continues to maintain his consistent lead, in spite of a certain level of dissatisfaction with him.  It's a manifestation of Obama's unpopularity.  A large block of voters, myself included, believe the candidate most qualified among the current crop of Republicans is the one with the best chances of defeating Obama in the general election.  Romney wins among these voters, who will make up a large enough block to hand him the nomination.  

Meanwhile progressive wishful thinkers look to Romney's inability to attract more than 25% support in Iowa and claim that this shows him up as a weak candidate.  Looking on as the Occupy Wall Street protesters suck up all the media attention, progressives convince themselves that the Tea Party movement has lost its potency.  They underestimate voter unhappiness.

Democrats have created a phony crisis — income inequality — and settled on a campaign against a do-nothing congress that supposedly refuses to address it.  Even congressional Democrats are campaigning against congress.  In normal times it might work.  But with unemployment at 8.5% and the workforce at the lowest percentage of the population in since 1983, voters are looking for something more than rhetorical smoke and mirrors.  Obama hasn't got anything like that. 

In fact, Obama himself is providing the best argument in favor of supply side economics with his ongoing demonstration of everything we could possibly do to kill off a recovery.  He burdens the economy through over-regulation.  He subsidizes friends like Solyndra, and punishes enemies like Boeing.  He demonizes anybody who manages to stay productive in spite of all the ill effects of his economic policies, and he promises to tax them at higher rates.

Mitt Romney is right.  This election is about the soul of America, and people recognize that.  There is no chance that the 75% who didn't vote for Romney in Iowa are going to swing over and vote for Obama.  There is no chance that those 75% will stay home.  We Tea Partiers are biding our time.  Contributing our money and biding our time.  There is no point to marching anywhere to protest anything, whether it's on Wall Street or Washington.  Instead, we quietly wait.  In November we drop the hammer.

The New Hampshire Debate — Romney's Night

Michael Barone:

At about 10:28pm tonight, as Mitt Romney pivoted from a question on tax loopholes and started in with, “the real issue is vision,” I had recorded this thought in my notes, “He just clinched the nomination.”

Ryan Mauro:

Mitt Romney clobbered Huntsman on China when he pointed out that he’s been in charge of implementing Obama’s China policy for two years. Voters recognize that our relationship with China isn’t working in our favor. And Huntsman just came off like a show-off when he replied by speaking in Chinese. He’ll be gone next week.

Matthew Boyle:

When questioning former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Stephanopoulos, a former senior advisor in the administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton, premised some inquiries on the assertion — offered without supporting facts — that Romney’s job-creation statistics were inaccurate.

Associated Press:

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Mitt Romney brushed aside rivals’ criticism Saturday night in the opening round of a weekend debate doubleheader that left his Republican presidential campaign challengers squabbling among themselves and unable to knock the front-runner off stride.

Guy Benson:

Tonight's highly-anticipated slugfest never materialized as billed. Instead, Mitt Romney glided through nearly unscathed, some of the sharpest exchanges came over ancillary or inane issues, and the ABC News team dreamed up some of the worst debate questions recent memory.

Ruth Marcus:

MANCHESTER, NH—Nothing happened at Saturday night’s debate to touch Mitt Romney or shake his seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls here.

It was clearly Romney's night.  Meanwhile, the Obama-friendly Washington Post stretched mightily to make the case that it was a bad night for the GOP.

The GOP heads into Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary in an unexpected and uncomfortable position. The party that once seemed to have so many advantages going into 2012 — a fired-up base, an unpopular Democratic president, a struggling economy — now finds itself stuck, ambivalent about its front-runner and unable to decide on an alternative.

It's looking more and more certain.  Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination, and he will go on to win the November 2012 general election in convincing fashion.

There Are Things You Can Joke About

Grieving over the death of a child isn't one of them.   Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinsion went on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show to make these comments about Rick Santorum, and how he and his family grieved over the death of one of their children.

"He's not a little weird, he's really weird," Robinson said of Santorum. "And some of his positions that he has taken are just so weird that I think that some Republicans are off-put. Not everybody is not going to be down, for example, with the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child. It was a body that they took home to kind of sleep with it, introduce it to the rest of the family. It's a very weird story."

A day later when taken to task by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Robinson said he didn't mean to offend.

“I certainly didn’t mean to offend anybody, especially Mr. Santorum,” Robinson added. “But it was in a discussion of his views, and, you know, which I consider extreme, and Santorum himself who is a cultural — culture warrior extraordinaire, whose faith — and we all appreciate someone of deep faith — but it is — it is extremely deep, and it’s a kind of faith that some people, I think, are going be… if not surprised by… at least want to know more about.”

“That’s fair enough, but is it the decision about what you do with an infant that passed away a highly personal decision?” Scarborough pressed. “This was not a stillborn child. This was an infant that was born and that lived for a few hours, and there are actually pediatric specialists who say the family needs to say good-bye to that sort of child. Children, if you make that decision, parents, could get closure that way too. Why touch it? Why would you even talk about it? That’s a really personal decision, isn’t it?”

“It is a personal decision,” Robinson noted. “And I’ve certainly been educated on the subject since — in the past day, so I do understand that — that this is not — it’s not something that’s in any way beyond the pale or considered inadvisable and that many grief counselors do advise a period of saying good-bye to a child who tragically dies in that way.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t written that part of it?” Scarborough asked.

“I didn’t write anything,” Robinson corrected. “I didn’t write this at all. It’s something I said on the air.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t said it?” Scarborough clarified. “You can see how prepared I am.”

“I wish I hadn’t said it that way, Joe.

I'm trying real hard to imagine some inoffensive way to describe how "really weird" it was for the Santorums to grieve over their loss, however they chose to deal with it.  Can Robinson be such a blockhead that he really didn't mean to offend?  Maybe, but I get a certain sense of viciousness in his description of "a body that they took home to kind of sleep with it."  And now he says he wishes he hadn't said it that way.  But he's clearly not sorry that he said it.

I think when Robinson was spouting off he pictured himself in the vanguard of the attack on Santorum.  He confirms the answer to a question Sissy Willis posed just yesterday: Is Rick Santorum the new Sarah Palin?  The answer is undoubtedly yes, Santorum is the latest liberal media target and Robinson wanted to be one of the first to jump on him with both feet.  Santorum is not just weird, he's really weird.  Maybe Robinson thought his idea might get picked up for Saturday Night Live skit to make his hilarious point.  A Pulitzer Prize for comedy?  Of course he never meant to offend.

By way of Hot Air.

Forget What The Pundits Say

Mitt Romney has won the Iowa Caucuses.  Oh sure, pundits will tell you that the real winner is the one who beats expectations and comes out of Iowa with momentum.  That would be Rick Santorum with his late surge that left him only 8 votes shy of outright victory.  But Santorum is only the latest in a parade of "not Romneys" who come along and then fade.  He is the last gasp from the conservatives-for-purity crowd, a candidate whose socially conservative positions are not necessarily in sync with a majority of voters, a candidate who seems not to have noticed the surging libertarian trend, even as the libertarian Ron Paul took a strong third place with 22% of the Iowa Caucus votes.

So now it's on to New Hampshire where Romney holds a commanding lead in the pre-primary opinion polls.

The next nominating contest will take place in New Hampshire, where Romney holds a commanding lead. The latest Suffolk University two-day tracking poll out of New Hampshire showed Romney with 43 percent support with Paul coming in second with 16 percent.

In remarks late Tuesday night, Paul argued that he won "one of three tickets out" of Iowa -- "and one of two that can actually run a national campaign and raise the money." Paul has attracted an ardent base of supporters with his libertarian views and has the organization to carry his campaign beyond Iowa.

While he couldn't pull off a victory in Iowa, Paul said his campaign has been successful in "reintroducing some ideas that Republicans have needed for a long time, and that is the conviction that freedom is popular."

Coming out of New Hampshire at 2-for-2 Romney will be in position to run the table on the rest of the Republican field.  Whether he will or not depends in part on the question framed by Sarah Palin in a caucus night Fox News interview. 

Sarah Palin gave her analysis of the Iowa caucuses tonight, refusing to give any single candidate anything close to an endorsement. She also noted rather passionately though, that the GOP had better not marginalize Ron Paul and his supporters after tonight because their fiscal concerns are very legitimate and the GOP had better work with them.

With the Republican establishment backing him, will Mitt Romney ignore the libertarians?  And if he does, will it cost him the support of libertarian leaning Republicans?  It's my guess that Romney will be careful to do nothing that offends the libertarians or the social conservatives, and that will win him enough of their support as the single best chance for ending the disaster that the Obama presidency has become.  There is actually nothing more important than that.

The Christmas Bounce Is Over

Ah, whatever became of the Christmas spirit.  Over the Christmas holidays voters, with an inspiring outpour of political generosity, boosted President Barack Obama's Presidential Approval Index to the dizzying height of Minus-Twelve.  It was short-lived, though.

Date	Presidential Approval Index	Strongly Approve	Strongly Disapprove	Total Approve	Total Disapprove
12/29/2011	-18	22%	40%	45%	55%
12/28/2011	-18	23%	41%	45%	54%
12/27/2011	-12	26%	38%	47%	52%
12/26/2011	No Polling
12/25/2011	No Polling
12/24/2011	No Polling
12/23/2011	-13	25%	38%	47%	51%
12/22/2011	-14	23%	37%	49%	50%
12/21/2011	-18	21%	39%	47%	51%
12/20/2011	-18	21%	39%	47%	51%

Obama's latest foray into political gamesmanship, in which he berated House Republicans for approving his own proposal to extend the payroll tax holiday for a year instead of the Senate-approved two months, apparently hasn't panned out all that well.  Media gloating over the presumed Republican snafu has simmered down some, as Obama's approval has settled back to his pre-Christmas -18, which was itself an improvement over his dismal performance throughout the fall.

Meanwhile, out in Iowa, Mitt Romney has taken a lead in the questionably relevant Iowa Caucuses. 

CLINTON, Iowa -- A new poll of Iowa voters shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney surging to the lead in the Hawkeye State as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plummets and former Sen. Rick Santorum finally catches some momentum.

Romney leads in the CNN poll of 452 Republicans who are likely to caucus on Jan. 3, with 25 percent, ahead of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is in second with 22 percent.

The poll was conducted by CNN from Dec. 21 to 27.

It's hard to take the Caucuses seriously when a candidate like Ron Paul can hold second in the polling at 22%.  That said, a strong showing by Romney in Iowa followed by a convincing Romney win in New Hampshire will, in my view, all but lock up the Republican nomination.  Romney's momentum, plus his 45% - 39% lead over Obama in Rasmussen polling, puts him in position to run the table on the rest of the Republican field.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Mitt Romney has now jumped to his biggest lead ever over President Obama in a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup. It’s also the biggest lead a named Republican candidate has held over the incumbent in Rasmussen Reports surveying to date.

Romney even beats out the generic Republican candidate who only leads Obama by 1%, 45% to 44%.

And it's unlikely that President Obama will get any help when congress reconvenes in January.  The first order of business there will be the extension, yet again, of the payroll tax holiday.  For Democrats this presents the mouth-watering opportunity to demagogue the tax fairness issue and push, yet again, for a millionaire surtax.  The outcome is likely to be successive two-month extensions of the payroll tax as Democrats repeatedly fail to push the surtax through.  Get ready for a continuation of progressive class warfare rhetoric for at least another two months. 

Seems odd that it hasn't occurred to them yet.  It isn't working.  But what are you going to do?  It's all they've got left, the Democrats.  (Look for 2013 to be another year of progressive soul searching, "Why aren't we able to get our message across?  What's the matter with America?")

Further, Obama is unlikely to help himself.  As part of his winning legislation to extend the payroll tax holiday, he will also have to make a decision on the Keystone Pipeline.  And though the pipleline project will create tens of thousands of jobs, many of them union jobs, Obama will not be able to support it.  He cannot support anything that threatens to reduce the cost of conventional energy sources relative to green energy.  He'll axe the pipeline project, shooting himself, and America, in the foot.

There go energy independence, economic growth, job creation, rising federal revenues, and a host of other benefits we would expect from such a boost in domestic energy production — at least temporarily.  On the upside, there goes Obama's presidency, as well.

Status Quo: Corruption

A Washington Post article dated Christmas Day, a day when people were certain to be busy with other things, tells the story about how politics took precedence in Obama administration decisions surrounding Solyndra.  That's the solar panel company that got over a half billion dollars in Department of Energy loans and then went bankrupt. 

The documents reviewed by The Post, which began examining the clean-technology program a year ago, provide a detailed look inside the day-to-day workings of the upper levels of the Obama administration. They also give an unprecedented glimpse into high-level maneuvering by politically connected clean-technology investors.

They show that as Solyndra tottered, officials discussed the political fallout from its troubles, the “optics” in Washington and the impact that the company’s failure could have on the president’s prospects for a second term. Rarely, if ever, was there discussion of the impact that Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers or on the development of clean-energy technology.

“What’s so troubling is that politics seems to be the dominant factor,” said Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group. “They’re not talking about what the taxpayers are losing; they’re not talking about the failure of the technology, whether we bet on the wrong horse. What they are talking about is ‘How are we going to manage this politically?’ ”

It was apparently a given that with administrative support green technology could only flourish.  It didn't, though, and now come the questions.  Who made the decision to give Solyndra a half billion dollars, only to see the firm go belly up in less than two years?  Was improper political influence brought to bear?

“Everything disclosed . . . affirms what we said on day one: This was a merit-based decision made by expert staffers at the Department of Energy,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement.

We're in that familiar place, where administration officials assure us that even though it looks pretty bad, nothing unethical happened.  Maybe it would be better if it did.  At least then we could believe that there might be a smidgeon of competence among the expert staffers at the Department of Energy.  As it stands we now have to wonder what exactly are their areas of expertise that they were able to find merit in the Solyndra deal.  That's our best case scenario — administration officials, elected and appointed, are merely incompetent. 

Realistically speaking we have thinly disguised corruption, White House honesty that's really only technical in nature.  It's crony capitalism at its worst, with the Obama Department of Energy having become so politicized as to engage in electioneering for the 2010 mid-terms.  In a bid to save Democratic congressional seats, the Obama Department of Energy all but dictated a delay in Solyndra's layoff announcements.

In late 2010, Solyndra board member Steve Mitchell told his associates that Energy Department officials had conceded that additional financing was necessary yet said in private meetings that they lacked the political muscle to deliver it. “The DOE really thinks politically before it thinks economically,” Mitchell concluded. A spokesman for Mitchell said he would have no comment for this article. An Energy Department spokesman said that all decisions regarding the loan were based on merit.

Solyndra eventually realized that it had to lay off workers to stay afloat — no small step for a company that the president had backed to create jobs in a recession. But ­records indicate that the Energy Department urged company officials to delay the move until after the contentious November 2010 midterm elections, which imperiled Democratic control of Congress.

Despite the effect that timing might have on workers, one e-mail among company investors ended the discussion by asserting: “No announcement till after elections at doe request.” An Energy Department spokesman did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

The norm with the Obama administration is taking care of their friends.  George Kaiser, a political contributer who raised hundreds of thousands for the Obama campaign, is the connection between the Obama administration and Solyndra.  Kaiser denies that he lobbied the administration on behalf of the failing company, and in the technical sense what he says is probably true.

...emails released by the committee clearly show that Kaiser and Levit did not support asking the White House to intervene or agree to lobby on behalf of Solyndra.

“I question the assumption that WH is the path to pursue when both of your issues are with DOE,” Kaiser states to Mitchell in an Oct. 6, 2010, email.

The same day, Levit wrote to Mitchell and Kaiser that Solyndra’s lobbyists, not Kaiser, should be the ones lobbying the White House.

“I’d rather consult with them for them to do this than have this come from us. ... George may feel differently but I think it’s real tricky,” Levit’s email states.

Kaiser clearly recognized the problems it could pose if he discussed Solyndra with White House officials.

Kaiser did no lobbying himself because It made so much more sense to have paid lobbyists lobby the White House.  Real tricky.  Also real tricky: George Kaiser could claim that he had none of his own money riding on Solyndra.  He would not benefit personally from any federal loans to the company.  But back in September Muniland reported that it was really the George Kaiser Family Foundation that had the stake in Solyndra, not Kaiser himself.  As if that makes a difference.

Two of Solyndra’s largest investors are Argonaut Ventures I, L.L.C. and the GKFF Investment Company, LLC. Both firms are represented on the Solyndra board of directors by Steven R. Mitchell (see Solyndra S-1 page 119). Both are investment vehicles of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

George Kaiser was a bundler for President Barack Obama in 2008 election. The Daily Caller has done an excellent job of establishing that Mr. Kaiser visited the White House 16 of the 20 times that Solyndra investors or management visited there. From the Daily Caller (emphasis mine):

According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.

George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor as well as a Obama donor, made three visits to the White House on March 12, 2009, and one on March 13. Kaiser has denied any direct involvement in the Solyndra deal and through a statement from his foundation said he “did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.”

George Kaiser alleges that he didn’t discuss Solyndra with any White House officials but his investment vehicles were very hot for Solyndra. I went back into Solyndra’s IPO filing and totaled up the amount of funding Kaiser’s investment businesses gave Solyndra. Over 9 rounds of financing it invested approximately $337 million, or 48% of all equity raised for the business. Although Kaiser, through Argonaut and GKFF Investment Company, LLC, did not participate in the initial two private financing rounds, they dominated the following funding rounds and were the major venture capital investors in the firm.

By dumping this Solyndra story on Christmas Day, perhaps the Washington Post is hoping it will disappear down the memory hole.  It doesn't seem likely.  It must be hell to be a Washington Post editor these days, trying desperately to shape news that already has a shape of its own. 

Nothing left to do but manage the timing.  According to the URL this story was ready to go nearly two weeks ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/solyndra-politics-infused-obama-energy-programs/2011/12/14/gIQA4HllHP_story_4.html.  Delay til Christmas.  Best they could do. 

Though not impossible, it's going to be pretty tough for the professional journalists at the Washington Post to get their man elected.  It's because we can see the promise of Barack Obama, and we know what we can expect from this most transparently corrupt of administrations for the next four years.  Business as usual in the Obama administration means helping progressive political organizations with federal dollars.  It means leveraging administration departments for partisan purposes.  I have little doubt that congress has made it all perfectly legal as long rules are followed.  Like George Kaiser making certain never to say the words "Solyndra" or "loan" while lobbying Obama.  But it's really corruption.  We've been watching it ramp up for three years and we've really had enough.

Telling Us What We Already Know

The Wall Street Journal expects the SEC lawsuit against against six former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives will show that those two companies were central to the housing crisis, contrary to popular progressive fiction.

Far from being peripheral to the housing crisis, the SEC lawsuit shows that Fan and Fred were at the very heart of it. Private lenders made many mistakes, but they could never have done as much harm if Fan and Fred weren't providing tens of billions in taxpayer-subsidized liquidity to lend on easy terms to borrowers who couldn't pay it back.

We knew that, but it won't hurt to hear it again.

Another "Not Romney" Begins To Fade

The latest Rasmussen poll from Iowa was released today showing Mitt Romney in the lead.

Iowa: Romney 23%, Gingrich 20%, Paul 18%

Thursday, December 12, 2011

For the fifth straight survey, the GOP field has a new frontrunner in Iowa.

On this first release video, Scott Rasmussen reveals Mitt Romney as the new frontrunner in the Iowa Caucus.

I think what we've been witnessing over the last several months — what with a new front runner every few weeks — is the hope in Republican hearts for more substantial reform succumbing to the dread that Barack Obama will be re-elected.  Each "not Romney" front runner stokes the fires of our hope.  But then there is the fatal gaffe or a past indiscretion comes to light and fear takes over.  Fear that we won't be able to stop Obama from dragging America into stagnation and mediocrity.  Fear that the American way of life will be crushed under the weight of an ever more intrusive federal government, a government whose resources are devoted more and more to insulating the governing class from the voters who put them in office.

I'm settling in behind Mitt.  This is no time for Republican or Libertarian purity and no time for tossing away the good in a futile quest for the perfect.  Mitt Romney isn't perfect, but he will be very good for America.  But most important, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid must be stopped.