Scott Spiegel

Michael Barone titled a recent column “Romney Appeals to White Collars, Santorum to Blue.”  Santorum’s appeal to blue-collar workers—at least those who believe in hard work, small government, personal responsibility, and self-driven upward mobility—is highly suspect.

Santorum woos primarily conservative voters who obsess over opposing abortion and gay marriage.  These voters would gladly hand over the country to a big government “compassionate conservative,” so long as he channels his policies on social issues from holy men in white collars.

Mitt Romney downplays social issues relative to Santorum (which isn’t hard) and focuses on economic issues, emphasizing his private sector business experience running Bain Capital and the Salt Lake City Olympics.

How are “blue collar voters” supposed to get excited about a candidate whose strongest campaign positions are outlawing abortion and gay marriage rather than stopping the federal government from micromanaging our economy via taxes, regulations, and shovel-ready-job-killing “green” initiatives?

Santorum boosts “faith-based initiatives”—basically welfare redirected toward religious rather than secular agencies.  He calls for expanding Medicare, and authored a “Social Security Guarantee Act” that promises never to cut seniors’ benefits—in fact increases them every year.

As a Pennsylvania Senator, Santorum earmarked record amounts of money for public education and proposed more funding for the demonstrably worthless Headstart program.

Santorum sponsored a “Fair Care” act that would require taxpayers to subsidize continued health benefits for laid-off workers, and a “CARE Act” to deal with drug addiction, and wants more federal funding for organizations like “Healthy Start” and “Children’s Aid.”

He corralled federal funding to pay for low-income Americans’ heating bills.  He blocked federal legislation that would have made tiny cuts to food stamps.

He wants the U.S. to spend even more millions we don’t have to fight AIDS in Africa and genocide in the Sudan.  (Bono’s a big Santorum fan.)

He proposed a “Gasoline Affordability and Security Act” that would ban gas “price-gouging”—in 2005, years before the economic crisis and $4-a-gallon gasoline caused liberals to lose their minds over the fact that our gas prices were only moderately less expensive than Europe’s instead of much less expensive.

He bailed out Pennsylvania dairy farmers via the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program.

Why, Santorum is positively Reaganesque!

As Jonathan Rauch noted, Santorum favors “national service, ‘individual development accounts,’ publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, economic literacy programs in every school in America, and more.  Lots more.”

And Santorum brags about all of this, on his website and in his campaign literature and in his books and on TV and in radio appearances and at voter rallies.  And then he has the temerity to lecture the GOP that he is the most conservative of the 2012 lineup.

In case you were wondering, Santorum dabbles in environmentalism when he has the time.  He secured $100 million in earmarks to build an expensive, inefficient “clean coal” plant in Pennsylvania.  He diverted funds to pay for restoration of the Chesapeake Bay and preservation of farmlands, natural resources that could otherwise have supported greater commercial fishing and agricultural activity.

If Santorum were merely a garden-variety big government type, I would call him a “Democrat” and move on.  But Santorum claims a different mantle.

Santorum has been making the rounds expressly rejecting the libertarian brand of conservatism, going so far as to say he has “real concerns” about the Tea Party, because they focus too much on economic and not enough on social issues.

Rauch notes that Santorum favors “promotion of prison ministries, strengthened obscenity enforcement, and covenant marriage”—all hot-button issues at the top of voters’ priority list this year.

In a disgusting interview with NPR in 2006, Santorum lamented, “[T]he left has gone so far left, and the right in some respects has gone so far right, that they touch each other…  This whole idea of personal autonomy—well, I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view.  Some do.  They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low…”

Take away his opposition to abortion and gay marriage, and Rick Santorum doesn’t have a conservative bone in his body.

Santorum’s followers see his crusade as blinding white and pure, because it centers on the moral absolutes of two narrow religious issues on which at best half the country agree with him.

Given his 18-point loss in his senatorial reelection bid in his home state of Pennsylvania and his spiritual inclinations, it seems that Santorum’s true calling—and most suitable vocation after he loses the Republican presidential nomination—is that of a small-town preacher, or perhaps a Salvation Army volunteer.

While Rick Santorum courts evangelicals in a holy war to save fetuses and the exclusive legal status of opposite-sex marriage, Romney focuses on the issue that interests conservatives, moderates, and independents—our next president’s hands-off handling of the economy.



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The media have been aghast over GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney’s remark in an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien last week that the very poor in this country can go to hell.  The comment supposedly reinforces Romney’s image as a cold, heartless country club Republican who eats orphans for breakfast.

Of course Romney said no such thing; what he said was, “I’m in this race because I care about Americans.  I’m not concerned about the very poor—we have a safety net there.  If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it.  I’m not concerned about the very rich—they’re doing just fine.  I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90 to 95% of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Only a party with a very dull, tiresome axe to grind would willfully misunderstand the obvious meaning of Romney’s words.  (Then again, this is the party that heard “I like being able to fire people…  If someone doesn’t give me a good service… I want to say, ‘I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me’” as proof of a sadistic streak.)

Romney’s message was that he was using his campaign to focus on how Obama’s policies have hurt the vast middle class, the bulk of whom don’t receive federal assistance.  As he clarified, “Of course I’m concerned about all Americans—poor, wealthy, middle class, but the focus of my effort will be on middle income families who I think have been most hurt by the Obama economy.”  Call it the Goldilocks campaign: He won’t dwell on the upper 5%, he won’t dwell on the lower 5%—he’ll focus on the 90% in between.

Being offended over Romney’s innocuous remark is like being offended because a university offers financial aid to only its poorest students, but enacts structural reforms to save the rest of its students tuition money.

Don’t we have enough politicians endlessly lamenting the plight of the poor—most of whom, by the way, eventually escape poverty, usually when they grow out of their twenties?  I’m not holding my breath for politicians to defend hardworking, job-creating billionaire software engineers or hedge fund managers, but is it so wrong for a politician to empathize with the middle class every now and then?

Conservatives who argue that Romney should have encouraged the poor to prosper on their own instead of promising them more handouts are missing the point.  Romney wasn’t offering a policy prescription for low-income Americans; he was trying to get a pesky liberal journalist off his back by assuring her he wasn’t about to slash the left’s cherished social programs.

The same commentators who claim Romney will say anything to get elected are the ones who complain he’s perpetually screwing up by being too honest.

Since the media is so interested in divining presidential candidates’ degree of empathy for the poor, how about we dig into the vast trove of encomiums Obama has piled up for the middle class:

“I’m a warrior for the middle class.”

“We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun.  We’ve got to have middle class families up in front.”

“Responsible businesses are forced to compete against unscrupulous and underhanded businesses who… take advantage of middle-class families.”

“In an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”

“I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans.”

Where’s your love for the “very poor,” Obama?  Don’t they need a warrior, too?  Shouldn’t they be allowed to sit up front?  Aren’t they harmed by unscrupulous and underhanded businesses?  Don’t they pay taxes?  (Well, no, actually, they don’t.  I’ll give you that one.)

Obama gives a shout out to the middle class every five seconds, yet the media never accuse him of pandering for votes the way they do Romney.

Meanwhile, Romney reaffirms his commitment to the social safety net and promises he’ll make it bigger if whiny Democrats insist, and he’s blithely accused of tossing sacks of kittens in the river.

(Let’s not forget Obama’s luxurious three years of parading around on the taxpayers’ dime in the middle of a brutal recession: his endless expensive vacations, tony outings, golf games, and lavish White House bashes—celebrity concerts, conga lines, Alice in Wonderland recreations—to which I’m sure few of the “very poor” were invited.)

More important than rhetoric is the effect candidates’ policies have on the poor.

As The New York Times reported in September, the number of households living below the poverty line has increased to its highest level since the Census Bureau began reporting the statistic 52 years ago.

The Times also noted that median household income declined more in the two years since the recession supposedly ended than it had during the actual recession.  Declines have been greatest for African Americans and those without high school diplomas, groups historically overrepresented among the “very poor.”

As a result of Obama’s growth-stalling, business-strangling, debt-accumulating policies, one in seven Americans is on food stamps, and Medicaid enrollment has surpassed 50 million recipients—both record highs.  One out of six households relies on some form of government assistance.

But it’s all good for Obama, so long as he can hobble the economy and slow the rate at which the “rich get richer,” even if it means hurting the poor.  As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once noted of her opposition in the House of Commons, the socialist left “would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich.”

Cynics will claim Democrats are merely fostering a permanent underclass to ensure a solid voting bloc—a damning enough accusation.  But for Obama, who is more redistributionist at his core than any Democratic president since FDR, there is a darker motive behind his policies:

Obama would rather be less concerned about the poor if it means he can demonstrate even greater contempt for the rich.



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Much has been written about 2012 GOP presidential primary frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich’s weaknesses as candidates.

Less has been written about how they stand up next to each other, and whom the comparison favors.  A close look at their records makes it clear that Romney can only benefit from Gingrich staying in the race as long as possible.

Gingrich will likely help Romney in two ways: first, by making Romney seem more conservative to hesitant members of the Tea Party wing of the GOP.  This will happen via Gingrich’s patchwork quilt of liberal positions on such issues as Romney’s role at Bain Capital (“Exploitive!”), Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity (“Right-wing social engineering!”), and Nancy Pelosi’s cap-and-trade bill (“Bipartisan!”).

Second, Gingrich may push Romney to the right on some issues, nudging his competitor to come out more forcefully for the conservative aspects of his platform and commit to them more unwaveringly as campaign promises.

(This is in contrast to the advantage Romney gains by Ron Paul staying in the race, which is for Paul to make Romney seem like a spring chicken with a manly laugh instead of an old goat with a girlish giggle.)

Newt’s attacks on Romney from the left will help Romney develop defenses against the charges the Obama campaign will inevitably fling at him in the general election.

And positions on which Gingrich is good—for example, his promise to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office—may spur Romney to take ever bolder stances.  If you have any doubts about Romney fulfilling his oath to issue a 50-state executive waiver, Newt’s upping the ante on Obamacare will make it harder for Romney to back down.  Newt’s grandiosity, however annoying and impracticable, will prod Romney to promise and act bigger.

(Give Newt credit, I guess, for proposing too many ideas rather than too few.  It’s just that voters get suspicious when the ideas include things like giving the moon statehood.)

Newt’s arrogance and intemperance will make Romney seem even-handed and statesmanlike.  Take Newt’s petulant refusal to debate Obama in the general election if the events are moderated by “the media.”  And they say Newt won’t help build party unity!

What of Newt’s endless, reckless assaults on Romney?  Won’t they hurt Romney in voters’ eyes?  I doubt it.  Being called fickle by Newt is like being called a blowhard by Al Sharpton.

But it’s not only Newt’s venomous attacks on Romney that will drive voters to side with the former Massachusetts governor.  Newt’s pathetic justifications for his dips in the polls and poor recent debate performances belie his claim that Romney is the forked-tongue prevaricator in the race.  My favorite Newt excuse, on his Tampa debate with Romney last week, is: “I stood there thinking, ‘How can you say these things you know are falsehoods?’  That’s why I was quiet, because there was no civil way to call him out on what was in fact a series of falsehoods that were astonishing.”  Because if there’s one thing we know about Newt, it’s that he’d rather be quiet than uncivil!

Or consider this half-baked zinger, which Gingrich offered as a rationalization for why Romney would win the Florida primary: “He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money, most of it raised in Wall Street from the guys who got bailouts from the government.”

Let’s unpack this obfuscating, run-on defense, which sounds like something a Democrat would say.  Under normal circumstances, we tend to accept that candidates who raise lots of cash have many passionate supporters.  Gingrich himself has been bragging about how much cash he raised after his unexpected South Carolina victory.  Now suddenly campaign cash is bad?

“A very short amount of time” implies that Romney will best Gingrich in the polls for just a few days, maybe a few weeks—a mere blip in the unstoppable wave of his opponent’s gathering momentum.  Um, wait—doesn’t that precisely describe Gingrich’s standing?

As for Wall Street: Which former GOP Speaker of the House supported the September 2008 bank bailout?  Why, that’s right—Newt Gingrich!

Gingrich has threatened to stay in the race until the 2012 Republican National Convention in August.  I say bring it on.

Romney doesn’t give the GOP exactly what it wants as a candidate, but what he gives us is better than what any of the remaining candidates gives us—and Newt’s presence in the race makes Romney an especially appealing contrast.  Rick Santorum obsesses over social issues and is an unreliable fiscal conservative.  Ron Paul is terrible on foreign policy.  But Newt is in a category of his own: erratic and reckless, bombastic and bloviating, he alienates independents, many conservatives, and probably his own dog.



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Governor Mitt Romney has finally capitulated to the nation’s wealth-haters, releasing his tax records months before primary candidates typically do to quell swelling resentment fueled by Occupy Wall Streeters, left-leaning media, and boobs like Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and John Huntsman.  (Thanks, GOP candidates!)

Of course Romney’s forthrightness isn’t good enough for the left, who now argue that he must release a dozen or perhaps 20 years of tax records, so we can spend the next ten months scrutinizing them for rounding errors and keep the focus off President Obama’s record.

Obama-friendly journalists are suggesting Romney also release information on his complete financial portfolio, his retirement accounts, his trust funds for his wife and children, and sworn affidavits from eyewitnesses that he never cheated at Monopoly.  (When is the media going to demand that Obama release his college transcripts?)

Romney’s tax records showed apoplectic liberals and gullible mainstream media that he paid 14% federal income tax on the $42 million he earned in 2010 and 2011.

Doesn’t sound like a lot?  It’s much higher than the percentage shelled out by the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income taxes, and it’s more than the effective tax rate of 97% of Americans.

Mitt’s tax rate was lower than it otherwise might have been, in part because he lost tens of millions of dollars during the recession and carried those losses over, thus reducing his tax burden in subsequent years.  Our system handsomely rewards smart risk-taking in investment, because it’s just as likely that you’ll lose your shirt as strike it rich.

But the main reason Romney wasn’t taxed at a higher rate is that he wasn’t paying ordinary income tax.  He was paying long-term capital gains taxes, which have been levied at a preferential rate to encourage capital investment since their inception nearly a century ago.  Romney already paid the highest federal rate on the income he earned in years past, then paid again for the profits he made investing that income.

How many Occupy Wall Streeters understand that Mitt Romney paid a 14% tax rate on his long-term capital gains after he had already paid over 30% in federal taxes on the earnings he invested to acquire those gains?

Not to defend Warren Buffett, whose fabled secretary was trotted out as a campaign prop during the 2012 State of the Union address on Monday, but the reason Buffett got away with claiming he paid a lower percentage in taxes than his secretary was that he omitted that he had already paid handsomely in taxes on the income he earned and invested in capital gains.  If Debbie Bosanek ever becomes a celebrity business magnate and gets filthy rich, she’ll be forking it over to the government twice, too.

Lest we forget, all the wealth that Romney’s wise investment choices created will in turn be taxed, and the next generation of investments funded from this wealth will be taxed, and on down the line in a snowballing cycle of tax revenue generation.

The most fascinating aspect of the brouhaha over Romney’s tax returns is that it’s largely Democratic presidents who signed into law such favorable capital gains terms of which he has taken advantage—and of which they now disapprove.

Democratic presidents throughout the 20^th century have certainly been less likely than Republican presidents to cut the marginal federal income tax rate.  But it’s Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, who have foolishly raised capital gains taxes again and again—admittedly often under pressure from overwhelmingly Democratic Congresses.

Richard Nixon raised the maximum capital gains tax rate from 36.5% to 39.875%, before Jimmy Carter slashed it to 28%.  Reagan raised it from 20% at the beginning of his first term to 28%, George H. W. Bush inched it up to 28.93%, and then Bill Clinton hacked it from 29.19% to 21.19%.

This ironic partisan trend wasn’t broken until the presidency of George W. Bush, the first Republican president to lower the maximum capital gains tax since it was instated under Warren Harding in 1921.  Maybe Democratic presidents lowered capital gains taxes to compensate for having raised income taxes.  But Republicans’ embarrassing record on capital gains taxes speaks for itself.

So why didn’t Romney make his tax records available to the public immediately after he was asked?  Perhaps he didn’t want to embarrass Obama.

As revealed in his War and Peace-length tax returns, Romney gave 370 times as much to charity in 2011 as Barack and Michelle Obama gave in the four years from 2000 to 2004.  By percentage of income, Romney gave 20 times as much.

Romney gave 1,000 times as much to charity in 2011 as Joe Biden did in the ten years from 1999 to 2009.

Mitt gave so much to charity in 2010 and 2011—$7 million—that it eclipsed the not-insignificant $6 million in federal income taxes he paid.

If liberals refuse to believe that high-income earners like Mitt are the ones who do the bulk of the investing in our economy, foster the largest share of job creation, and shoulder the overwhelming majority of the federal tax burden, can they at least admit that rich people are the ones who keep most charitable organizations afloat?



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Ahead of its 2012 GOP presidential primary, South Carolina is under fire for having enacted a voter identification law that would require citizens to show poll workers a photo ID before voting.  (You know—sort of like having to pay a poll tax and prove your ancestors came over on the Mayflower.)

The law is intended to curb voter fraud, which is more prevalent in South Carolina and other southern states and states with relatively small populations.  Some states’ historically corrupt local governments and proximity to the Mexican border have yielded a disproportionate incidence of voter-impersonation fraud, including non-citizens voting, ex-felons voting, and dead people voting.  Small populations increase the influence that a handful of invalid votes can have on a precinct’s outcome.

Seven states besides South Carolina require a government-issued photo ID to vote: Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Kansas.  Seven additional states require a simple photo ID: Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan, South Dakota, Idaho, and Hawaii.  Three state legislatures passed photo ID laws in 2011 but were blocked by their governors’ vetoes.  Sixteen other states require non-photo identification.

So South Carolina isn’t exactly doing something new and different.

Naturally, the Obama camp has been riling up its base by accusing Republicans of trying to disenfranchise minorities.  Last month the Obama Justice Department blocked South Carolina’s attempts to implement its law, claiming that the statute violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the first time the Department has interfered with a state’s voter ID requirements since 1994.  The Department is also taking its sweet time approving Texas’s recently passed voter ID law.

On Monday, Attorney General and chief racial instigator Eric Holder ginned up the controversy again at a Martin Luther King rally in Columbia, South Carolina.

Democrats use this tired old tactic time and again: Take a perfectly neutral, fair-minded policy whose originators don’t consider or mention race in the slightest, then twist it to make it look as though people who support it are bigots.  College admissions committees should be color-blind?  Racist.  Black firefighters should pass the same test as white and Hispanic firefighters?  Racist.  Voters should produce photo IDs before they vote?  Racist.

Opponents of the law argue that, since getting a photo ID costs money, the voter ID requirement constitutes an illegal poll tax.  Never mind that it’s free to get a state-issued ID in South Carolina, and that Governor Nikki Haley has supplied taxpayer-funded, free carpools to take people to pick up their free IDs at the DMV.

The Supreme Court concluded, in its 2008 rejection of a challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law, that requiring voters to obtain an ID is not an unseemly burden.  Tellingly, the plaintiff was unable to produce a single witness who couldn’t meet the voter ID requirement.  Even liberal stalwart John Paul Stevens joined the 6-3 majority and penned its consensus decision.  (In his dissent, Justice Souter wrote that the state must provide evidence of voter fraud before it can pass a voter ID law, which is like saying that a jurisdiction must provide evidence of stolen credit cards before it can pass a law against identity theft.)

Another nonsensical argument is that South Carolina is using a states’ rights position to defend its law, which it used to defend slavery and racial segregation; therefore, voter ID laws are racist.  Yet South Carolina has been battling the federal government recently over other states’ rights issues, such as ObamaCare and the NLRB’s lawsuit against Boeing for moving jobs from Washington to South Carolina.  The Palmetto State is currently ground zero for states’ rights defenses against federal overreach, and none of it has a whit to do with race.

The media has also been linking South Carolina’s efforts with all sorts of other “racially tinged” proposals emanating from the campaign trail, such as Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that children help keep their schools clean and Rick Santorum’s comment about not wanting minorities to be dependent on government.  Tied together with all of this “coded language” and “racial politicking,” the media is invoking a “climate” of intolerance among GOP nominees and prepping for a revival of the “Republicans Hate Obama Because He’s Black” campaign theme for the fall.

What all of the opponents of the statute have failed to answer is: Why will the new voter ID law specifically disenfranchise blacks?  Are African Americans unable to get driver’s licenses?  Do they not have access to hundreds of local state facilities where an employee will take their picture, put it on a card, and give them an ID?  If African Americans can register and get out to vote every two or four years, why can’t they go pick up a one-time ID?  Do Democrats not consider blacks capable of taking that step?

In response to these ridiculous criticisms, state legislatures have bent over backwards to make it easy for voters to get IDs.  In addition to Nikki Haley’s Reliable Chauffer Service, the Indiana law allows voters without IDs at the voting booth to cast provisional ballots, so long as they bring their ID cards back or get new ones in the next 10 days, or else sign a statement saying they can’t afford one.  Are Democrats insinuating that blacks can’t fill out forms?

Voting is a right—but it doesn’t take place in a vacuum, and states may use constitutional means to enforce fair, non-fraudulent voting activity on their turf.

No one’s saying we need voter ID laws in every state, or that such laws can’t vary in strictness.  But on this states’ rights issue, South Carolina has determined it needs this particular law to ensure the integrity of its elections.

We need photo IDs to buy alcohol, drive a car, fly on a plane, get a library card, rent a movie, cash a check, enter federal buildings, and collect welfare.  Many of those reviews involve verifying age, residency, credit history, or citizenship; but presenting a voter ID confirms something more fundamental—identity.  Why are Democrats so scared of voters’ having to be who they say they are when they vote?



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Michelle Bachmann, the most conservative and articulate 2012 GOP presidential candidate, dropped out of the race after her poor showing in Iowa last week.  Herman Cain’s disappointing withdrawal last month over spurious sexual harassment allegations suggests we won’t be discussing a flat federal income tax for at least another election cycle.  John Huntsman was a surprisingly conservative governor of Utah, and could still benefit from the shell game Republican voters have been playing with their candidates for the past six months—if voters ever notice he’s running.  Mitt Romney is an unreliable conservative; Newt Gingrich is a combustible bloviator; and Ron Paul is a nutty America-hater.

What about Rick Perry?  Last September, he was the GOP’s latest, greatest hope for about three invigorating weeks.  The only—only—reason Republican voters abandoned him in droves after his bump in the polls was his clunky and unscripted performance in the first few debates—a flaw he’s long since overcome.  Perry’s marble-mouthed tendencies have been limited thus far to one format—the presidential primary debate—and even there he’s improved dramatically, such that commentators have been gushing, “Perry had a really good night!” and “This was the best Perry debate performance so far!”

(I don’t fault Perry for not being able to remember the third agency he would close; there are so many I would shut down, I also would lose track.  When Ron Paul helpfully offered “EPA?” I would have said, “That too!”)

Perry detractors who are incessantly angling for Romney argue that the country doesn’t want another cowboy as president, but those objections are more stylistic than ideological.  I’m confident that conservatives would warm to a President Perry who repealed ObamaCare and rid us of the Commerce, Education, and Energy Departments, even if his Texas twang recalled George W. Bush’s.  As for liberals’ being driven clinically insane by another Lone Star president: Are we seriously counting that as a negative?

As RedState notes in a lengthy, thoughtful endorsement, Governor Perry snatched the Texas governorship at a time when the state was left-leaning; he has won more state elections than all the other candidates combined; and he boasts a fearsome track record as a limited-government conservative.

Perry doesn’t have Romney’s real-world business experience—we could argue whether it’s more appropriate for a president to have private or public sector experience—but he is the longest-serving governor in the nation’s second-largest state, which suggests he’s been doing something right as an executive.

Perry opponents quibble about his support for in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants and his introduction and retraction of an opt-out HPV vaccination for young girls—minor issues that don’t loom large in the big picture.  I’ll trade you one Romneycare for a Gardasil any day.

Some who viewed Saturday night’s debate were aghast at Perry’s heretical suggestion that we send troops back to Iraq if need be to consolidate and preserve the fragile security gains we made during our eight-year war there.  To any conservative who believes Obama removed troops from Iraq prematurely and precipitously to fulfill a campaign promise to the anti-war left, Perry’s suggestion is logical and common-sensical.  Would conservatives prefer we send troops back to Iraq in ten years to fight this war again after conditions dramatically worsen because we didn’t finish it the first time?

Perry is the only candidate who’s served in the military other than Paul, the latter of whom has more or less pledged to decimate it.  I think we can safely assume that Perry, of all candidates, would not take lightly the decision to send troops in harm’s way.

Perry’s gotten flack for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme—it’s not; it’s much worse—and labeling the Fed’s quantitative easing program “almost treasonous.”  As for the latter, he did say “almost,” and in this era of trillion-dollar deficits, I’d wager that our greatest danger is underreacting to the federal government’s overreach, not overreacting.

Perry deserves major points for expressing “inappropriate” enthusiasm for the death penalty for aggravated violent crimes, which are particularly prevalent in his state—and would prevail even more under a liberal, soft-on-crime governor.

Perry has taken brave, “extremist” positions on abolishing the 16^th and 17^th Amendments to the Constitution, which would rid us of cancers like Olympia Snowe and the IRS, respectively.

Of course Perry didn’t make a dent in New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, where he didn’t even campaign, but with any luck he’ll make a strong enough showing in the Palmetto State next Saturday to encourage him to stay in the race.

Before Mitt kills it in South Carolina and we succumb to “Romney is the inevitable nominee” fever, please, early primary and caucus states that have yet to vote, give Rick Perry—a flawed but underappreciated candidate—one more careful look.



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While the left-wing media delight over Republican 2012 presidential nominees’ slugfest in early-state caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, some forward-thinking conservatives are engaged in a constructive plan to win the general election no matter who the nominee is.

Crafty Republican National Committee staffers are compiling a 500-page document, known informally as “The Book,” that juxtaposes direct quotes and video clips of Obama making grandiose promises with statistics on the reality of how his efforts have turned out.  The compendium, which covers 2008-2011, promises to be a virtual treasure trove of fodder for 2012 general election GOP campaign ads, chock full of sound bites coupled with cold, hard facts that will yield devastating and irrefutable attack ads.  RNC communications director Sean Spicer boasts, “We have everything he has done and said catalogued six ways to Sunday.”

Republicans tried using Obama’s words against him once before, in the 2008 general election; however, a fawning press, a weak GOP nominee, and an electorate asleep at the wheel mitigated the impact of such Obama albatrosses as “Spread the wealth around,” “Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” and “A guy who lives in my neighborhood.”

The press is still sycophantic, and Republicans still need to ferret out a strong candidate from among the choices they have, but the electorate will not so easily be lulled this time.  Voters have witnessed Obama in action for three years, and they don’t like what they’ve seen.  The quotes GOP operatives amass will directly reflect Obamanomics’ failure to improve the economy.  Democrats won’t be able to argue away Obama’s words as tangential, hyperbolic, or referencing distant episodes in the past.  These words will have been spoken during his campaign and presidency, about his specific policies—and will be demonstrated time and again to be at odds with reality.

For starters, RNC staffers have documented—as revealed in a sneak preview to the Washington Post—Obama’s failed promises to bring millions of Americans out of poverty (millions more are in poverty since he took office), help homeowners get above water via his foreclosure assistance fund (the program helped a fraction of the intended number of owners), create millions of “green” jobs (the number was greatly overestimated, and his efforts overshadowed by the Solyndra bankruptcy), and lower health care premiums (which have increased under ObamaCare).  The GOP will likely nail Obama on the number of jobs his stimulus bill was supposed to create but didn’t, the failure of the stimulus bill to keep unemployment under the promised 8.0%, and the inability of our economy to rebound from the 2008 recession as it has every recession since WWII.

Republicans will censure Obama for disregarding the grand ethics standards he set regarding lobbying and transparency, and his failure to usher in greater civility, bipartisanship, and racial harmony.

Part of the ease of assembling a WikiObama derives from recent technological advances in archiving and indexing video clips.  A bigger part, though, comes from the fact that for four years, Obama hasn’t seemed to know when to shut up.

Ironically, a leader whose vaunted oratorical skills were his strongest asset on the campaign trail will likely be undone by those very words.  If Obama hadn’t aimed so high via his rhetoric, perhaps his words wouldn’t now be coming back to haunt him—but then perhaps he wouldn’t have been elected in the first place.

Had Obama’s economic and foreign policy prescriptions succeeded even moderately over the past three years, then attack ads against him might now seem churlish or petty.  Yet Obama has made so many specific promises, and failed so spectacularly to deliver on them, that pointing out the discrepancies between his assurances and his results will strike undecided voters as the only responsible thing to do.

If Obama had been a big speech-giver, but his policies had been sound—a combination that recalls Ronald Reagan—then his utterances wouldn’t have become the noose with which opponents will now hang him.

Not to be cocky about it, but the RNC’s strategy seems utterly foolproof to me.  How can Obama deny what he said on record?  And—unless economic conditions improve dramatically over the next ten months—how can the country’s circumstances fail to belie the incantations offered by candidate Hope-and-Change?

Regarding The Book, Spicer adds, “This is not an effective tool—it’s the most effective tool.  We literally have gone through and looked at this over and over again.  Survey after survey, focus group after focus group all say this is the most effective way to bring [independents] over to our side.”

It’s also the most honest and focused technique.  And GOP operatives won’t even have to revisit potshots like “57 states,” “corpse-man,” and “breathalyzer.”



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Over the past few weeks, a controversy has been brewing between conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Mark Levin over the relative fitness of frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.

In her columns and TV appearances, Coulter has been stumping for Romney and stomping all over Gingrich.  On his syndicated radio talk show, Levin has been denouncing Romney as a non-conservative and bolstering Gingrich as a flawed but superior alternative.

The tiff echoes Coulter’s endorsement earlier this year of Chris Christie, before he insisted he wasn’t running, and Levin’s dismissal of Christie as a RINO.  In both cases, Levin has expressed contempt for the “Republican establishment” trying to decide the GOP nominee, though it would be hard to characterize Coulter as part of any establishment.

Coulter’s endorsement of Romney is a bit puzzling, when one recalls her animosity toward John McCain and her tongue-in-cheek threat to campaign for Hillary Clinton if McCain got the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.  Coulter argued then that Republicans do not win elections when they run moderate candidates, because such candidates appear ideologically weak against genuine leftists such as Obama.  On the contrary, because this is a center-right country, Republicans win when they run unapologetic conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, who offer a contrasting alternative to the Democratic candidate.

Coulter has reconciled this apparent contradiction by arguing that McCain was consistently moderate or center-left.  In contrast, Romney has flip-flopped and been inconsistent, but has switched from liberal to conservative positions.

Levin claims that Gingrich has a stronger track record as a conservative than Romney, including the former’s efforts to get the first Republican majority reelected in the House in 68 years and his implementation of welfare reform.  Levin warns that we can’t trust Romney to go to bat for conservative principles, given his spotty past.

I sympathize greatly with Levin’s frustration that we can’t seem to find a strong, consistent, articulate conservative this election cycle who’s willing to run, doesn’t have heavy personal or political baggage, and can maintain a double-digit showing in the polls.  I worry whether anyone we nominate—Romney, Gingrich, or someone else—will consistently stand up for conservative principles once president.

I’m no Romney fan, and I empathize with those who claim his major virtue is his electability.  However, the more I think about Coulter’s argument—or rather, my take on it—the more I think she’s right, but with one major caveat.

As Coulter explained to Sean Hannity recently, the most important thing we need our next president to do—among the many Democratic messes that have to be cleaned up—is to repeal ObamaCare.  The GOP can’t get rid of ObamaCare without a Republican president, unless they have a supermajority in the Senate, a majority in the House, and no Republican defectors.  None of this is guaranteed.  A Senate supermajority will be especially difficult to achieve, perhaps even more so than putting a Republican in the White House.

As Coulter noted, ObamaCare must be repealed as soon as the 113^th Congress and the 45^th president are sworn in.  One of the many compromises/blunders Congressional Democrats made in order to ram ObamaCare through was pacifying voters with a phony claim that the bill would save money over the next 10 years; they did so by having ObamaCare taxes kick in starting in 2010 but most benefits not begin until 2014.  This gave the GOP a leg up in getting the bill repealed—but it gave them only so much time.  Coulter predicts that once people start collecting their “treats” and federal insurance starts crowding out the private market, the bill will never be repealed.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments for and against the ObamaCare individual mandate in March; however, it is not certain that the court will find the provision unconstitutional, or that Congressional Democrats won’t find some way around the ruling.

Thus, if the most important thing for the next president to do is to repeal ObamaCare, then I would paraphrase William F. Buckley, Jr. and recommend that we vote for the most electable Republican who will repeal ObamaCare.  Assuming that all seven contenders would repeal it—and all have credibly pledged to do so—and that Romney is the most electable candidate, this suggests we go with Romney.  Other issues are important—but not as important as repealing ObamaCare.

The situation recalls moderate Republican Scott Brown’s battle against Democrat Martha Coakley for the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat in November 2009.  Brown’s win in liberal Massachusetts, and his swearing in as the 41^st GOP Senator—the one needed to block Democrats’ supermajority—was seen as a referendum on ObamaCare, because Brown had sworn to vote against the House’s version of the bill.  (Democrats cheated by using budget reconciliation to meld the Senate and House bills, but that’s another story.)

Brown ran on a platform of promising to vote against ObamaCare.  As I wrote at the time, Senator Brown could propose “a bill using Medicare funds to subsidize partial-birth abortions for illegal Islamist immigrant tax cheats with Al-Qaeda ties, and he would still be Republicans’ hero for having voted down the health care bill.”

Similarly, Romney could be squishy on all kinds of issues, and conservatives would still be grateful—as long as he repeals ObamaCare.

But here’s the caveat: Is Romney in fact the most electable Republican?  Will RomneyCare, and the fact that Obama cited it as a model for ObamaCare, do him in?  Will Romney be more electable than Gingrich, who formerly supported the individual mandate on a national level?

For those who find some issue other than ObamaCare more important, or are willing to risk not having it repealed for the satisfaction of running a preferable but less electable candidate, my arguments won’t be persuasive.

But for those who think that the #1 priority of the next president should be undoing ObamaCare, Romney’s electability is the pressing unknown that must be discovered.



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FiveThirtyEight whiz Nate Silver recently asked whether Chris Christie is the anti-Romney or the anti-Perry.

The answer is yes.

Christie is the anti-Romney, because he genuinely and unapologetically embraces and enacts conservative policies, at least on fiscal matters—in particular entitlement reform, the most important policy realm our nation currently faces.

Critics charge that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as global warming and gun control.  Yet Rick Perry critics complain that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as immigration and the HPV vaccine, and most people wouldn’t call Perry a liberal.

Christie is the anti-Perry, because he knows how to identify, articulate, and justify his positions, using fiery, uncompromising rhetoric that doesn’t sound rehearsed, and isn’t afraid to say things that tick off hallowed interest groups.

Critics charge that he’s arrogant, has a temper, and insults people.  Yet his style has proven wildly popular with voters who are fed up with politicians who can’t or won’t stand up to bullying public employee unions that are bankrupting the nation’s most populous states.

If Mitt Romney held more consistently conservative positions on the major issues of the day, he’d be able to articulate them to voters.  But he doesn’t.

If Rick Perry were more articulate and had a better understanding of the issues, his positions would be conservative enough for most Republicans.  But he isn’t.

The other candidates still in the running all have their weaknesses, with most embodying one of the fatal flaws represented by frontrunners Romney and Perry.

Ron Paul is blisteringly conservative on economic issues but crazily isolationist on foreign policy, to the extent that he thinks Iran should be allowed to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the U.S., and to the degree that he approvingly quotes Osama bin Laden’s reasons for attacking us on 9/11.  Newt Gingrich led the Republican Revolution of 1995 and enacted welfare reform, but is prone to making insane statements such as claiming that repealing ObamaCare involves as much abridgment of people’s liberty as enacting it.

Michele Bachmann is a solid conservative, but is prone to gaffes and sloppy slips of the tongue such as her mindboggling insinuation that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation.  Herman Cain is a successful former businessman with sensible ideas about the economy but a stunning, blissful ignorance about foreign policy.

Michael Barone correctly notes that just about the only remaining feasible Republican presidential candidates who both are conservative enough and know how to speak without sounding like idiots are Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie.  Daniels is concerned about his family’s privacy and has decided not to run; Ryan is young, early on in his career, and clearly has no intention of running in 2012.

That leaves Christie, who has certainly denied numerous times that he is running, but whose supporters and staffers seem to be leaking rumors that he may change his mind.  Christie has spent the past few months jetting around the country speaking at high-profile Republican fundraisers, giving speeches at prominent venues such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and meeting with potential donors.

Elsewhere I have written at length about why we should encourage Christie in particular to run, including the fact that Republican candidates for governor did well in 2010 in part by emulating his substance and style; that he knows how to take the fight to his opponents; that his popularity among Republican voters is underreported; and that his electability among independents and Democrats is underappreciated.

Christie’s not perfect.  But where is the glaring RomneyCare albatross–whose defense Romney cheekily deleted from the paperback version of his book No Apology—in Christie’s past that will come back to haunt him in the general election, when voters are focused perhaps foremost on repealing ObamaCare?

Christie’s not perfect.  But where are the embarrassing misstatements—like Perry’s lame, botched attack on Romney’s flip-flopping in last week’s debate in Orlando—that lead us to fear Christie will flounder in debates with the supposedly golden-voiced Obama?

Contrast Christie, if you will, with the Republicans’ 2008 nominee, John McCain, who combined the worst aspects of Romney and Perry: liberal policies and inarticulateness.  Republicans should never again have to suffer the ignominy of a nominee who differs only a little bit from the Democratic candidate—or who can’t convincingly explain why he’s to the right of Barack Obama.

The conservative establishment prefers Romney to Perry because they believe him to be more electable.  Some commentators, such as columnist Sandy Rios, believe Republicans will break for Perry over Romney because people “prefer an honest hesitator over a slickster with all the answers.”

But why should Republicans have to choose between a conservative and someone who can talk?

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Image by Scott Spiegel via Flickr

If there’s an 80% chance President Michele Bachmann would repeal ObamaCare, enact entitlement reform, and prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, I’m sold.

Whatever trivial misstatements she’s made in her political career, this three-term Minnesota Representative is the strongest nominee the GOP has seen so far this campaign season.

Fox News host Chris Wallace recently demonstrated his journalistic integrity and respect for women in politics by asking Bachmann, “Are you a flake?”

There’s more evidence that Barack Obama isn’t a capitalist than that Bachmann isn’t a serious candidate, though I don’t recall any journalist asking candidate Obama, “Are you a socialist?”  If this is how Fox treats Bachmann, one can only imagine how the mainstream media will treat her.

Fortunately, Bachmann appears quite capable of defending her record.

Unlike candidate Obama, Bachmann has a real work history, with actual responsibilities, including five years’ tenure as a tax attorney, and experience running two mental health clinics, a charter school, and a family farm.

Unlike Senator Obama, Bachmann productively used her time in Congress, taking leadership roles on allowing drilling in ANWR, repealing the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and replacing ObamaCare with free market reforms.

Bachmann has labeled herself a “constitutional conservative”—precisely the correct label to use in this bizarre era of pay czars, light bulb bans, and trillion-dollar deficits.

Bachmann is a more seasoned version of Sarah Palin and an excellent substitute for Palin fans who believe the former governor unelectable.  (And if depicting Bachmann staring off-camera is the best Saturday Night Live can do to mock her, the 2012 election is going to be no career-booster for Kristen Wiig.)

Bachmann may not have extensive foreign policy experience, but she’s clearly capable of fighting the United States’ gravest enemies, as evidenced by her having survived growing up in a Democratic household.

America’s favorite Tea Party hostess stands up to powerful RINOs in the House who refuse to get serious on spending.  She organized and chairs the vital Congressional Tea Party Caucus.

To top it all off, she’s electable, as evidenced by her recent dead heat showing with Mitt Romney in Iowa, her first-place finish in a national Zogby poll, and her winning performance in the New Hampshire GOP primary debate this month.

Naturally, liberals have temporarily recovered from their Sarah Palin hysteria and are developing a creeping case of Bachmann Derangement Syndrome.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly, for example, branded Bachmann a conspiracy theorist for her claim that Obama wants Medicare to go broke so seniors will be forced to rely on ObamaCare.  Bachmann was in fact mistaken: She failed to note that Obama also wants all private insurers to go broke so the whole country will be forced to rely on ObamaCare.

Benen called Bachmann’s concern that federal voluntary “community service” might lead to mandatory service “obvious madness.”  Apparently Benen was unaware that the original version of the GIVE Act authorized a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service” to address “whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented…” (p. 267 in a 275-page bill).  No mandatory service here—move along!  The Commission was eliminated from the bill after conservative uproar, but this incident highlights Democrats’ modus operandi for sneaking unpopular provisions into legislation: First they tuck something objectionable deep into a bill where few will read it; then Republicans find it and raise objections; and finally Democrats remove it, deny it was ever there, and scoff at Republicans for “fear-mongering.”

As another example, Washington Post “Fact Checker” and partisan hack Glenn Kessler derided Bachmann’s claim of $105 billion in implementation funds being “hidden” in the ObamaCare bill as “ridiculous,” giving it a maximum rating of “four Pinocchios” on his truthfulness scale.  In fact, former Appropriations Committee member Ernest Istook confirmed that the authors’ act of authorizing so many new programs and funding them in the same bill was highly unusual.  The legislation isn’t clear on what the money will be spent on, and Obama-appointed bureaucrats are unlikely to be held accountable for it.  Neither the Washington Post nor any other major news outlet reported on the $105 billion implementation sum—probably because, as Bachmann noted, it was broken into small pieces and scattered throughout the 2,000-page bill.  But because the provisions weren’t written in invisible ink, Kessler claimed Bachmann was lying through her teeth.

The liberal site Think Progress blasted Bachmann as being crassly calculating for observing that Democrats hope to transform American society into one that’s more dependent on government, thereby securing a permanent “power base.”  In liberals’ projection of their own vile behavior, Republicans preventing Democrats from buying votes via taxpayer-funded entitlement programs is somehow the equivalent of Republicans buying votes.  This is like saying that Republicans’ efforts to prevent Democratic voter fraud is Republican voter fraud.

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi claimed that on Hardball, Bachmann had demanded McCarthy-style investigations of Congress to determine which of our leaders are anti-American.  In fact, Bachmann was merely responding to an endless, tiresome line of questioning from host Chris Matthews, who had introduced the label ‘anti-American’ and was trying to get Bachmann to pin it on her colleagues.  Matthews whined, “How many Congresspeople… There’s 435… How many are anti-American?… How many people in the Congress… How many do you suspect?”  After fending off his badgering for several minutes, Bachmann finally replied, “You’d have to ask them, Chris,” and added, “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?”  Not exactly the Salem witch trials.

These are just a few threads in the tangled web of “conspiracy theories,” “lies,” and “gaffes” that supposedly disqualify Bachmann from office.

Bachmann may not be the perfect candidate—who is?—but she’s the best conservatives have among those currently in the race.  I’d rather have a president with 80% of the facts at her command than one who governs according to 100% discredited crackpot redistributionist economic theories.



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