Scott Spiegel

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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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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John King: Welcome to our 2012 Republican primary debate.  On stage are all the candidates who felt like showing up tonight.  Let’s skip the boring opening statements and have candidates introduce themselves.

Rick Santorum: I’m a former senator who nonetheless has experience making tough executive governing managerial ruling leadership decisions.

Michele Bachmann: I’m a businesswoman with 5 children and 23 foster children.

Newt Gingrich: Obama sucks.

Mitt Romney: I lost in 2008, but that won’t happen again, because Republicans are the party of “it’s his turn.”

Ron Paul: I am a senator who used to deliver babies and now champions liberty and libertarianism.

Tim Pawlenty: I’m a husband, father, neighbor, and lover.  Of America.

Herman Cain: I am not a politician and have no political experience.  I know pizza.

King: What would you do to create jobs?

Cain: Uncertainty is stalling this train that is our economy.  We need to lower taxes, which is like greasing the caboose, and then decrease interest rates, which is like putting the fuel in the tank of the train that is our economy.

King: Is it possible for the economy to grow at 5% a year?

Pawlenty: Our president is an anemic declinist who thinks we can’t have 5% growth like China or Brazil.

King: What are your views on Dodd-Frank?

Bachmann: I’m looking forward to answering that question.  But first… Guess what: I’m running for president!

King: What three steps would you take to repeal ObamaCare?

Bachmann: I introduced the first bill to kill ObamaCare and will not rest until it is dead and buried.  Take that to the bank and cash the check.

King: Governor Romney, how will you ever be elected, given that you passed ObamaCare in Massachusetts?

Romney: That’s not fair.  Massachusetts’ plan was different, because it abridged people’s liberties and introduced massive regulations on the state level, not the federal level.

Pawlenty: Obama said he looked to Massachusetts as a model for his plan.  [Nelson Muntz laugh and finger-pointing at Romney]  Ha-ha!

King: Speaker, should there be an individual mandate, as you have passionately argued hundreds of times in the past before it became unpopular?

Gingrich: In addition to the presidency, we also need more Senate seats.

Audience member: Do you support right-to-work laws?

Pawlenty: Yes, even though I and most of my family have been in unions most of our lives.

Gingrich: I hope New Hampshire adopts it.  Why would you want to be stupid like California when you could be smart like Texas?

King: Every time we go to or come back from a break, I’m going to ask a pointless random personal question.  Leno or Conan?

Santorum: Leno.  Conan is too edgy.

King: And we’re back.  Elvis or Johnny Cash?

Bachmann: Both.  I love “Christmas with Elvis.”

Audience member: What assistance should government give to private industry?

Paul: None, duh.

King: Stop applauding, audience.  We know you’re Republicans and love their answers, but you’re taking up too much time.  Mr. Cain, why did you support TARP?

Cain: I actually supported TARP before I opposed it.

King: “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol”?

Gingrich: “American Idol.”

King: BlackBerry or iPhone?

Paul: BlackBerry.

Audience member: How will you keep Medicare solvent forever?

Paul: It is not solvent, will never be solvent, and was never designed to be solvent.  That’s why we need to cut our military.

Pawlenty: I have a plan that’s better than Paul Ryan’s.  I’m not going to show it to you.

King: Speaker, why did you call Ryan’s plan “social engineering”?

Gingrich: I put my foot in my mouth.  But the question was too narrow and the answer was taken out of context.

Audience member: How do you feel about separation of church and state?

Pawlenty: It was designed to protect religious people from atheists.

Paul: Congress should make no law abridging the right to express your faith, especially if it’s Christian.

King: Deep dish or thin crust?

Cain: Deep dish.

King: Spicy or mild barbecue?

Romney: Spicy, of course.

Audience member: Gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire.  Would you interfere with states’ rights on the issue?

Bachmann: Marriage should be between a man and a woman, because children need a mother and a father.  I come from a broken home, and I was raised by a single mother, and I turned out great.

King: Should Congress pass a federal marriage amendment, or should states deal with it?

Cain: States.

Paul: Get government out of marriage.

Pawlenty: Amendment.

Romney: Amendment.

Gingrich: Amendment.

Santorum: Amendment.

Bachmann: Oh, are all the real candidates in favor of an amendment?  Well, let me jump in and say that I am too, but let me also remind you that I don’t favor trampling on states’ rights, even though I’m totally contradicting myself.

Audience member: What are your views on immigration?

Gingrich: We are not a heartless nation.  We can kick 20 million people out of the country without being cruel.

King: Coke or Pepsi?

Pawlenty: Coke.

Audience member: Should we get out of Afghanistan?

Romney: We should bring the troops home quickly, assuming the Afghan military can defend the country against the Taliban, which it obviously can’t.

Paul: I would get us out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Pakistan, because we have no national security interests there, or anywhere else in the world.

Pawlenty: That’s crazy.  I favor defending the nation against outside threats.  Hello, it’s called “Commander in Chief”?

Cain: To paraphrase my grandmother, Libya is a mess.

King: Who made the worse vice presidential pick in 2008—Obama or McCain?

Pawlenty: Biden is a horse’s ass.

Romney: I have bad blood with Palin, so I’m going to avoid the question and just reiterate that Obama sucks.

King: What have you learned in the past two hours?

Santorum: Nothing.  If I’m delusional enough to think I have a chance of winning, do you think I’m capable of absorbing new information about the candidates or my prospects?

Bachmann: I’ve learned about the goodness of the American people.

Romney: New Hampshire loves the future.

Cain: It’s all about the children and the grandchildren.

King: Good night.  God, I feel old.

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I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at Congressional Democrats’ withering scorn for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher system, a plan to which their party has yet to offer an alternative.

This is the party that vituperatively opposed all GOP spending cuts for the past two years, yet unlawfully failed to pass a budget during that period.

The party that insists on calling Republicans the Party of No should be labeled the Party of No Ideas of Their Own.

Charles Blow, for example, filled a recent column with purple prose elucidating why voters find Ryan’s plan repugnant: “[T]he electorate is hurting—a pulsing mass of tender nerves, hypersensitive to things that portend pain, reflexively reacting to the thump of even the softest mallet.”  (And most of them don’t even read the New York Times!)  He continued: “This is not to say that Medicare isn’t in crisis.  It is.  But, we don’t have to gut it to save it.”  He then spent precisely zero space suggesting any alternative solutions.

Blow and other liberals have been crowing about the obscure special election Democrat Kathy Hochul won in NY-26 last week.  They claim that Republican Jane Corwin lost because of Ryan’s recently proposed Medicare plan, since seniors in the district were terrified that electing her would increase the chances of their Medicare payments being cut.

Never mind that Democrats inserted into the race a fake Tea Party candidate who siphoned off up to 9% of the Corwin vote; that the previous officeholder was a Republican embroiled in a sex scandal; or that Corwin was a lousy candidate who failed to utter a word in defense of Ryan’s proposal until days before the election.

(Hey, how is it that thundering losses in the 2010 midterm elections weren’t a referendum on ObamaCare, but loss of one seat in a murky district in upstate New York constitutes a wholehearted rejection of conservatism?)

The irony of Democrats’ MediScare campaign is that Ryan’s relatively mild-mannered proposal is the only plan that would save Medicare.  Continuing to fund Medicare at current levels, the Democrats’ strategy, will bankrupt it.

For those who love Medicare and want to see it continue (which I don’t—but hey, to each his own), the scariest choice is doing nothing to reform it.  In contrast, the most reassuring strategy would be a course of action similar to Ryan’s.

I suspect that if pollsters asking voters whether they want Medicare cut presented the real alternative to that possibility—namely, the fund going bankrupt and an unelected board of bureaucrats rationing care for everyone—the public would be a little more receptive to Ryan’s plan.

Democratic naysayers are rife with general notions of how to deal with entitlement reform, but all of these consist of reflexive opposition to any steps Republicans want to take.

For example, Ryan has quite reasonably proposed reducing Medicare benefits for wealthy retirees—who need them less, if at all—to save money.

But leftists like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders oppose even cutting benefits for the wealthy: “The strength of Social Security and Medicare is that everybody is in.  Once you start breaking that universality and you say that if you’re above a certain income [you’re out], two years later that income goes down and 10 years later it becomes a welfare program.”

Would that Social Security and Medicare were only welfare programs!  They’d sure cost a lot less.  They’d also restore a lot more freedom to the middle class in deciding how to invest their money and plan for retirement.

But for liberals, it’s all about control.  Their message to the wealthy is: We’ll tax the bejesus out of you, but then we’ll deign to give you benefits you don’t need, and then exercise complete control over when and how you receive them.  Aren’t you grateful?

For conservatives, it’s all about liberty.  Their message to the wealthy is: We won’t bother you with government-run insurance you don’t need, and we also won’t harass you with exorbitant taxes for the sin of being productive.  Go do your thing!

Sanders, an avowed socialist whose views are nonetheless inches away from the Democratic mainstream, proves once again that liberals are instinctively upside-down on every public policy issue of importance.  Even when it makes sound fiscal sense to steer benefits toward the poor and take them away from the rich, liberals somehow find a way to oppose that progressive notion.

Democrats claim that 20 years from now, seniors will be getting less from the government to cover their health care costs.  Yes, and if Democrats get their way, not only will seniors will be getting less, the government will be deciding how they spend it, via an unelected Medicare rationing board, rather than letting them shop the market for the care they like best.  Now which party’s plan does the public prefer?

Another political axiom the MediScare campaign proves is that liberals will always take the route that proves most politically feasible, regardless of whether it fails to address the public policy conundrum under consideration, unfairly smears their opponents, or makes no logical sense.

Thus, even the Times’ Gail Collins had to admit, “There is no escaping our fate. We are going to spend the next 17 months hearing about how the Republicans want to kill off Medicare…  By the fall, there will be ads showing the Republicans hacking their way through rows of bedridden seniors with scimitars.”

What’s most frightening: Democrats’ brazenness in hiding behind MediScare so as not to have to address the Medicare crisis, the public’s likelihood of falling for MediScare, or Republicans’ failure to explain MediScare’s utter absurdity?

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Unless Mitch Daniels has an unprecedented change of heart or Rudy Giuliani lives up to rumors he’s planning another run, I’m throwing my support for the 2012 Republican presidential nominee to a candidate who isn’t yet competing.  Here’s why:

1. Republican gubernatorial candidates in 2010 did spectacularly well, mostly by emulating New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s style and substance on the campaign trail.  Christie is on the cutting edge of the Republican Party: Other GOP governors are taking his lead by standing up to public sector unions, refusing to raise taxes, declining to fund unaffordable public works boondoggles, and slashing spending.  Even Democratic governors such as Andrew Cuomo are following Christie’s playbook.

2. Christie has a talent that Donald Trump supporters wrongly insisted would make the latter a uniquely formidable candidate: the ability to take the fight to the enemy.  In Trump’s case, they meant his confronting President Obama over the trivial birth certificate issue, whereas Christie has been battling teachers’ unions in New Jersey.  But Christie’s fearless propensity to confront his current opponents bodes well for his future capacity to face off with a certain big-eared neophyte who stumbles off track without his teleprompter, and always looks nasty and petty when he fights back.

3. Christie is wildly popular as a potential candidate among Republican voters, a fact that gets masked by the fact that his non-candidacy means he’s excluded from many straw polls.  But John Zogby regularly includes Christie as a choice, and Christie took first place in all four of the primary polls Zogby’s run since November 2010.

4. Waiting until the last minute to announce his candidacy, after the current crop of candidates has had its sorry say, is neither a foolish nor an unprecedented strategy.  Confidantes say Christie is still considering running, but might wait to announce until after November 2011, when he may be able to help Republicans take over one or both chambers of the New Jersey Legislature.  Christie may also be waiting until passage of pension reform and other state legislation—i.e., until he has more fully secured his record of accomplishment as governor.  Anyway, in this country it’s always better not to appear to be lusting for power, more charming to be dragged kicking and screaming into office rather than appear to be drooling over the prospect like Gingrich, Pawlenty, or Paul.  I’m perfectly content to be despondent for the next six months by the presence of a weak field if it means Christie will enter the race this fall.

5. Christie has no patience for fools, of which there are plenty in New Jersey, but even more in Washington, where the stakes are higher.

6. Christie is electable.  He won the governor’s race in a heavily Democratic state that went for Obama over McCain by 16 points, despite facing a conservative third-party candidate and being outspent five-to-one by the incumbent opponent.  Though he claims not to be interested in the presidency, Christie has plausibly admitted, “I already know I could win.”  Fundraisers around the country are imploring him to meet with them.  Diverse conservatives from Henry Kissinger to John Boehner to Ann Coulter who know something about electoral politics have been begging him to run.

7. He’s articulate, passionate, and colorful, and makes fewer mistakes when speaking off the cuff than Obama makes when using his teleprompter.  In this amazing video—one of dozens of similar videos floating around YouTube—watch him slowly eviscerate a pro-union audience member’s loaded questions, rhetorical tricks, and sneering tone, to such a degree that by the end of his brilliant answer even she seems to be nodding in agreement.

8. All the other candidates have fatal flaws.  Most are too inexperienced or naïve (e.g., Cain, Paul) or slick and ingratiating (e.g., Pawlenty, Romney).  Cain, for example, is making the rounds of the talk shows bragging about how he has no foreign policy, while Pawlenty is already boring the nation with trite pronouncements such as, “We are going to win it, and it’s going to start right here in Iowa.”  In contrast to others in the field, Christie can use to his advantage the fact that he has a distinguished career as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey and two hugely successful years in executive government, yet is not a typical politician who says things just to make people feel good.

9. The Obama campaign is already investigating Christie’s background and trying to find dirt on him to intimidate him.  Surely we can’t let liberals get away with their lowbrow tactics yet again.

10. Christie has done a fantastic job as governor of New Jersey in his first term, and shows more promise than any of the other GOP presidential candidates.  His failure to run could cost Republicans the White House and hand Obama a second term.

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Now that Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee have been neutralized as 2012 Republican presidential primary candidates, it’s time to get to work discrediting the thoroughly inadequate and inappropriate front-runner wannabe, Newt Gingrich.

The former Speaker of the House, who initiated the groundbreaking Contract With America in 1994, then pissed away the Republican Congress’s momentum out of timidity after President Bill Clinton was reelected, had his chance to influence the course of national events.  With the notable exception of the successful Welfare Reform Act of 1996, he failed in his mission.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” candidate Gingrich revealed that he had fallen for the trap of thinking that not raising the federal debt ceiling means that the U.S. will default on its debt, or that default is necessarily a bad thing.  He told host David Gregory that if Obama and the Democratic Senate don’t compromise with House Republicans, he would favor an endless, niggling series of tiny budget cuts and “a debt ceiling [increase] every three weeks” until a long-term solution was reached.

Gingrich thinks the individual mandate component of ObamaCare—the most contentious, despised, and constitutionally dubious element of the bill—is a dandy idea.  He’s quick to clarify that he thinks such an undue violation of our individual freedoms should be carried out on the state level, not the federal level—though that’s not what he said a few years ago.

Gingrich cut a cutesy commercial with Nancy Pelosi in which the odd couple argued for Congress to act more precipitously to adopt anti-global warming legislation, though now he claims to oppose a cap-and-trade system.  He continues to support wasteful ethanol subsidies.

Gingrich famously partnered with race huckster Al Sharpton to promote greater federal involvement in the country’s educational system, based on the fantastic job Washington has done so far.

He opposed the Wall Street bank bailout proposed in the fall of 2008, until moderates in his party pressured him to change his mind, such that by the end of September he suddenly supported it.

Tea Party activists were aghast at Gingrich’s inexplicable endorsement of RINO Dede Scozzafava—who subsequently endorsed the Democrat in the general election after she lost the primary—over true conservative Doug Hoffman in the 2009 special election in NY-23.

On foreign policy, Gingrich opposes waterboarding as an interrogation technique, even though it was demonstrably successful in helping gain intelligence that led to the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

But Gingrich’s biggest blunder so far was his mindless, shallow condemnation of House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, which would cut $5 trillion from the budget over the next 10 years and take the painful and necessary step of instituting Medicare entitlement reform.  According to Gingrich on “Meet the Press,” such a plan is “right-wing social engineering.”  Reminder to Newt: Implementing a shortsighted, wealth-redistributing, unsustainable “social insurance” program in 1965 was “left-wing social engineering.”

According to Gingrich, undoing Medicare is too radical, even though instituting Medicare was too radical.  As Orwell might say: Redemption = sin.  Theft = generosity.

At this rate, Gingrich is on track to become the left-wing’s GOP darling, the John McCain of 2012.  He’ll be praised to high heaven by the New York Times editorial board for his forthrightness, bipartisanship, and flexibility—and then he’ll lose in a landslide to Obama, whom The Times and every other liberal media outlet will endorse in the general election before you can say “My friends…”

Proving that his only consistency is inconsistency, Gingrich disavowed his comments on Ryan and the individual mandate the next day.  His opposition to Ryan’s plan lingered in his stated reversal, however: “I think we should be very careful about imposing things on the American people.”  The implication being that privatizing Medicare is just as much an imposition on people as instituting Medicare.  Relief = imposition.  Slavery = freedom.

Gingrich added, “I don’t think you want to come in and to say to every single American, we’re going to come in and change uniformly for all of you in the most fundamental way what happens to you when you are 65.”  Rather than clarifying his position, Gingrich’s comments demonstrated only that he doesn’t understand the first detail of Ryan’s plan, or that he’s shamelessly misrepresenting and oversimplifying it to cover up for his blunder.

Gingrich thinks the will of the people should be respected in implementing major social legislation, but evidently the constitutionality of the legislation is of no great concern, nor does he harbor any presumption that more intrusive legislation should inherently be held to a higher standard of scrutiny than less intrusive legislation.

In a charitable characterization, Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said, “It’s typical of Newt to be whimsical.  We always say: Newt always has so many great ideas.  Well yeah, but then he shifts between them at such a rate it’s pretty hard to track it let alone keep up with it.”

Gingrich used to be considered a man of principle, but desperation for political relevance has made it clear that he, like McCain—and Huckabee, Trump, and too many other contenders in the GOP field—has no principles.



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