I Thought McCarthyism Died?

Apparently not.  If there is anything we have learned over the past three years it is that Senator Joseph McCarthy created plenty of conspiracy theorists just like himself.  It appears that the vast majority of them abide in the Republican Party these days.  President Obama has been called a 'socialist', 'un-American', an 'Arab', 'boy', and a 'muslim' by these nut jobs.  Worse, mainstream members of the GOP fail to disavow these attacks, except for Senator John McCain, to whom much credit should be given.  Now, with just one day until voters in Mississippi and Alabama cast their ballots in their state's respective Republican primary, a new poll by Public Policy Polling indicates that 45% of likely Republican voters believe President Obama is a Muslim.  Another 41% aren't sure.  Frightening.

Exactly what is the problem these people have with otherness?  Anyone who doesn't act like them, talk like them, look like them, and consume greasy deep fried foods like them is suspect.  America is supposed to be a melting pot filled with different ethnic groups, racial groups, and a shared commitment to liberty for all.  Except if you're an 'other', apparently.

I probably shouldn't be surprised when this stuff comes up in the two most ethnocentric states in the union.  After all, in another Public Policy Poll conducted last year in Mississippi nearly 45% of Republican respondents said miscegenation should still be illegal.  At least that number dropped to 29% in the most recent poll with 17% unsure.  Yeah, plenty still want to ban inter-racial marriage.  The Soviet Union may be dead and there may not be a communist behind every tree or fencepost but good old McCarthyism is alive and well in the old confederacy.  Uncle Joe would be proud.

Mock Debate Video

Now this was fun...I moderated a mock debate at Mississippi State University between students representing Ron Paul, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.  Alas, we were unable to locate a Gingrich supporter.  It's about two hours long but we had a lot of fun.

Santorum Wins Kansas

According to reports from the AP Rick Santorum has easily won the Kansas Presidential Preference Caucus.  Early reports indicate Santorum has won more than 50% of the statewide vote and if the numbers hold up he will receive at least 34 of the state's 40 delegates because none of the other candidates managed to reach the 20% threshold required to receive any of the statewide delegates.  Congressional District results are not yet available so it is not yet clear if this is a 40-0 sweep for Santorum.  His win today helps make up for the 18 delegates Romney earned overnight in Guam and the Northern Marianas.

Update:  Looks like Romney has made the 20% threshold and will get a share of the 25 statewide delegates.  As of now it looks as though he will get 6 or 7 while Santorum gets the rest.

Romney Wins Guam and Northern Marianas

Mitt Romney's delegate total went up by 18 overnight as he swept the caucuses in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands (who says we're not an empire?)  In contrast, none of the non-Romneys picked up a single delegate overnight.  That will likely change today if Senator Santorum pulls off the expected victory in Kansas, as I wrote about yesterday.  Even so, Romney will probably pick up enough delegates in Kansas (combined with the two islands) so that his overall lead on Santorum is larger on Sunday morning than it was on Friday morning.  Of course, you probably won't hear this from the talking heads on the boob tube.  Santorum's path to the nomination just got a little bit more difficult, not to mention Gingrich's or Paul's.

The Non-Romneys and the Delegate Math

As of March 9th, 23 states have held presidential preference primaries or caucuses.  Several of these have been non-binding or awarded no delegates (Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri to name a few).  Each of the four GOP hopefuls has won at least two of these states except Congressman Ron Paul.  To date, former MA Gov. Romney leads the pack with 14 wins.  Former Senator Rick Santorum has captured seven states, and Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has won just two states.  Each has made the argument that he is the 'true' conservative in the race and the only one that can beat President Barack Obama in November.  Each believes, or at least asserts, that he can win the nomination and represent the GOP in November.  Barring a massive collapse of support for Mitt Romney, each is wrong.  In reality, what they are doing is splitting the non-Romney vote and making the nomination of Mitt Romney more likely than not.  The next four days are likely to go a long way toward making Romney's nomination that much more certain.  Here's why:

Kansas--The Sunflower State holds its presidential caucus on Saturday March 10th and Rick Santorum is favored to win, though it is all but impossible to poll a caucus state.  Kansas has 40 delegates up for grabs, 37 of which will be proportionally allocated.  Three delegates are assigned to each of Kansas' four congressional districts and will be awarded to the candidate that carries the popular vote in the district.  The likely allocation here is 9-3 in favor of Rick Santorum, but depending on how Romney does in Kansas City and Wichita it could end up 6-6.  The next 25 delegates are awarded proportionally based upon a candidate getting at least 20% of the statewide vote.  Assume Santorum grabs 40% of the vote and Romney grabs 30% while Gingrich and Paul split the rest.  The latter two would receive no delegates while Santorum and Romney divide the 25 delegates according to their share of the total votes cast for candidates getting at least 20%.  Assume this is 7000 votes, 4000 for Santorum, 3000 for Romney.  This translates to 57% Santorum and 43% Romney.  Fifty-seven percent of 25 equals about 15 delegates for Santorum to 10 for Romney.  Santorum could end up with anywhere between 21 and 27 delegates while Romney scoops up 10 to 16 delegates.  Finally, there are three at large delegates that are bound to the winner of the statewide vote.  Best case scenario for Santorum is 30-10, a net gain of 20 delegates.  More likely is a 24-16 split and a net gain of only eight delegates.  Confused yet?

After Kansas, the voters in Mississippi, Alabama, and Hawai'i get their say in a trio of primaries next Tuesday.  Mississippi will allocate proportionally and recent polls have shown Newt Gingrich with a small lead here.  Mitt Romney is favored in Hawai'i, and Gingrich is favored slightly in Alabama.  By most accounts Romney will do no worse than second in both of the southern states and probably draw 28-30% of the vote.  That will net him a good chunk of the delegates in both states so he moves ever closer to 1144.  It will be a slow but steady march to Tampa for Romney but he'll likely get there, even if the media keeps yapping about his 'poor' performances.

Ironically, the strategy the Gingrich and Santorum campaigns are pursuing is the one strategy most likely to ensure Mitt Romney is the GOP standard bearer in November.  If either of them really wants to stop Romney's momentum he would take one for the team and quit the race and throw his support to the other.  Neither has a small enough ego to do so and that's just one reason neither of them deserves to govern our great nation.

Mitt Romney and the Road to Tampa

Super Tuesday has come and gone.  All four of the GOP contenders are still in the race and not much seems to have changed apart from the candidates delegate counts.  Four years ago Super Tuesday was in February and the Republican nominating process was officially all but over.  What a difference four years makes.  But why are things so different this year?  A few reasons are evident...

1. The Republican National Committee modified the delegate allocation process for 2012.  In 2008, many more states were 'winner take all' states, which means that the winner of the popular vote took home the lion's share of the delegates.  All states voting before April 1, 2012 are required to allocate some delegates proportionally UNLESS a candidate passes the 50% mark.  This year, all but Arizona and Florida have had some kind of proportional allocation of their delegates, which allows any candidate meeting the state established threshold minimum percentage of the popular vote to get a few delegates.  For a full explanation see Josh Putnam's excellent site.  Seth Masket also has an excellent analysis showing that Romney would be in roughly the same position McCain was in at this point in 2008 if the rules were the same this year.
2. Fewer states have voted so far in 2012 than voted on Super Tuesday in 2008.  At first glance one might be tempted to say 'so what'?  So everything!  The spacing in the primary/caucus calendar for 2012 has allowed Romney's challengers to regroup after a defeat in one state and make their case in other states.  Additionally, the geographic distribution of the primary/caucus states in 2012 has itself contributed to a long, drawn-out race.  One week the contests are held in areas where Romney is either dominant (Arizona) or competitive (Michigan) while the next few contests are in areas that his opponents are stronger (Georgia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma).  To expect Gov. Romney to deliver a 'knockout blow' under these circumstances is downright silly.  In fact, the next set of caucus/primary states should favor Rick Santorum (Alabama, Mississippi, and Kansas) as Larry Sabato and others have argued.  Had the calendar looked more like 2008 there is every possibility Romney would have wrapped this up and the GOP would be resting comfortably until Tampa.  
3. Mitt Romney simply isn't that good of a candidate.  Half of Republican voters don't trust him for one of two reasons; 1) either he isn't sufficiently conservative or; 2) they're uneasy with his Mormon faith.  The latter of these two is probably more true among southern evangelicals than anywhere else in the country.  The former explains his mediocre performance among those who self-identify as 'somewhat conservative.'  I'd love to see some cross tabs of the exit polls in each state to measure the overlap between 'extremely conservative' and 'born again/evangelical' but so far I haven't found any.  Add to that Mitt's failure to connect with average folks as I wrote about here and here and you've got a candidate who will likely be limping all the way to Tampa.  
4. Citizens United and the birth of the Super PACs.  Conservatives have absolutely no grounds for complaining about this causing the nominating process to drag on for months and months because they gave birth to these monsters.  They have wanted unlimited spending for decades and they've got it.  I'm sure they envisioned using it to destroy Democrats rather than to have these things cannibalize their own but sometimes when you create a monster you lose control of it.  Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.  Virtually any objective analysis will show that neither Newt Gingrich nor Rick Santorum would be posting serious challenges to Mitt Romney right now, in spite of the above, if they had to rely on the traditional method to secure a presidential nomination.  Neither of them have 'real' campaign organizations, neither has much financial support, and neither has a coherent, consistent, electable message.  In an age where all that is needed to run for president is a billionaire willing to contribute a million bucks (or twenty million) to your 'unaffiliated' Super PAC who needs an organization?

For all these reasons and more, I think the media (and citizens) are asking the wrong questions.  The question is not why has not Governor Romney wrapped up the nomination (he has...we just don't know it yet).  The question is why in the world would we have expected it to be over so soon?

An Eye for An Eye Until the Both of Them Be Blind

Conservative firebrand blogger Andrew Breitbart died today at the age of 43 while walking in his Los Angeles neighborhood.  Over the past four years there has been no love lost between Mr. Breitbart and his liberal critics.  After all, Breitbart was responsible for the take down of the liberal leaning community organizing group ACORN by posting doctored videos of organization officials purportedly advising conservative activist James O'Keefe how to run a brothel and avoid federal taxation.  He also posted a partial video that led many, including officials in the Obama Administration, to conclude that Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod admitted to discriminating against a white farmer in Georgia.  The full video later exonerated Sherrod but the damage to her reputation had been done.  More recently, Breitbart was the first to post the partially nude photos Representative Anthony Weiner had tweeted of himself to a young woman in Washington.  The scandal resulted in Weiner's resignation from Congress and his seat being won by a Republican last summer.  Breitbart's single mission in life was to destroy all things liberal.  He often took it too far and engaged in distortion, deceit, and outright lying to achieve his purpose.  In Andrew Breitbart's world, the end clearly justified the means.  When liberal icon Senator Edward Kennedy died of brain cancer in 2009 Breitbart called him "a villain", "a duplicitous bastard", and "a prick" among many other unflattering things.

A short 2 1/2 years later, Breitbart himself is dead.  The left has been equally uncharitable in response to his death as he was to the death of Edward Kennedy.  Now, I didn't know Ted Kennedy or Andrew Breitbart.  I had, and have, questions about what motivated both of them to do what they did.  I will say that while I disagreed with Sen. Kennedy on many issues, I nevertheless respected his passion for the poor and unfortunate among us.  I cannot say the same for Andrew Breitbart or his tactics but my heart goes out to his wife and children.  But neither will I resort to nor condone the epithets hurled by the 'tolerant' left at Mr. Breitbart.  He is the product of a system that idolizes free speech without regard to truth, that elevates ideology above country and truth, symbolism above substance, and sensationalism above critical thinking.  When passion replaces reason all of us end up as losers.  And the national conversation about the important issues of our time is silenced.

I am reminded of a song by Tommy Sands called "There were roses" about the tit for tat killing of protestants by Catholics and vice-versa in Northern Ireland.  The lyrics read:

So my song for you this evening, it's not to make you sad
Nor for adding to the sorrows of our troubled northern land
But lately I've been thinking and it just won't leave my mind
I'll tell you of two friends of mine who were both good friends of mine 

Isaac Scott from Banagh, he lived just across the fields
A great man for the music, the dancing and the reels
McDonald came from South Armagh to court young Alice fair
And we often met on the Ryan Road and laughter filled the air 

There were roses, roses
There were roses
And the tears of a people ran together 

Now Isaac he was Protestant and Sean was Catholic born
But it never made a difference, for the friendship it was strong
And sometimes in the evening when we heard the sound of drums
We said it won't divide us, we always will be one 

For the ground our fathers plowed in, the soil it is the same
And the places where we say our prayers have just got different names
We talked about the friends who'd died and hoped there'd be no more
It was little then we realized the tragedy in store 

There were roses, roses
There were roses
And the tears of a people ran together 

It was on a Sunday morning when the awful news came round
Another killing had been done just outside Newry Town
We knew that Isaac danced up there, we knew he liked the band
But when we heard that he was dead we just could not understand 

We gathered round the graveside on a cold and rainy day
The minister he closed his eyes and for no revenge he prayed
And all of us who knew him from along the Ryan Road
We bowed our heads and said a prayer for the resting of his soul 

There were roses, roses
There were roses
And the tears of a people ran together 

Now fear it filled the countryside there was fear in every home
When late at night a car came prowling round the Ryan Road
A Catholic would be killed tonight to even up the score
Oh Christ it's young McDonald they've taken from the door 

Isaac was my friend! he cried, he begged them with his tears
But centuries of hatred have ears that do not hear
An eye for an eye, it was all that filled their minds
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind 

There were roses, roses
There were roses
And the tears of a people ran together 

So my song for you this evening, it's not to make you sad
Nor for adding to the sorrows of our troubled northern land
But lately I've been thinking and it just won't leave my mind
I'll tell you of two friends of mine who were both good friends of mine 

Now I don't know where the moral is or where this song should end
But I wonder just how many wars are fought between good friends
And those who give the orders are not the ones to die
It's Scott and McDonald and the likes of you and I 

There were roses, roses
There were roses
And the tears of a people ran together
There were roses, roses
There were roses....

I hope and pray that is not the road we are heading down as we elevate our politics to the status of a religion.  For if it is, soon we'll all be blind.  Or worse.

Take Two and Call Me in the Morning

It seems that Mitt Romney followed the doctor's advice very well on Tuesday.  Romney was able to successfully fend off a primary challenge in Michigan by the increasingly erratic Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania, as well as cruise to a huge victory in Arizona last night.  Even though it appears that Romney and Santorum will each receive 15 delegates in Michigan, the fact that Romney won the popular vote, albeit by only 3 points, has squashed any discussion of late entrants into the race for now.  A win is a win and to the victor go the spoils.  Romney will be able to control the news narrative as we head toward Super Tuesday and its ten contests in just six days.  Romney is currently favored to win half of them, including delegate rich states like Virginia (only Ron Paul is on the ballot with him) and Massachusetts.  Romney should also easily win Vermont.  Idaho has a fairly good sized Mormon population that will help Romney in that state's caucuses.  Alaska is probably up for grabs.  Ohio will be the big question for the Romney campaign, and probably where the candidate will focus his attention for the next week.  The rest of the contests are either in rural states or the south, where the environment will be far more welcoming for both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.  Newt should win Georgia and he and Santorum will pick up a fair share of delegates in the rest of the states.

Super Tuesday will not settle the nomination for the GOP but it will probably make it all but inevitable for Mitt Romney.  After last night he has at least 145 delegates compared to Santorum's 82 (if all unbound delegates from Colorado and Minnesota are awarded to him).  Ohio will be the harbinger of things to come.  I expect Mitt Romney to win Ohio, probably in much the same fashion as he did Michigan.  One reason for that is Rick Santorum's inability to craft a clear, concise, and concrete message to voters.  He suffers greatly from his need to pander to social conservatives by making outlandish claims about Dutch euthanasia, wanting to 'throw up' when hearing JFK talk about the separation of church and state, calling the president a 'snob' who wants all kids to attend college so they can be spiritually destroyed and 'indoctrinated' into Obama's 'phony theology.'  Instead of focusing on his economic policies (Santorum makes a lot of sense when he does so) he wanders down rabbit trails and says things that make him seem naive, if not downright crazy.  In addition, Santorum, like Gingrich, appears to have no real campaign in the normal sense of the word.  It is a fly-by-night seat-of your-pants operation that doesn't know what the next move should be.  I have tried contacting all four campaigns with invitations to speak in Mississippi and received relatively quick responses from two of them (Romney's camp has indicated a willingness if he visits Mississippi, Paul declined).  Not a word from Santorum or Gingrich.  Mitt Romney has, if anything, demonstrated to us once again that nominations are won by well-organized, well-funded campaigns backed by the established party elite.  It's Romney's turn and the GOP will do what it always does and nominate the guy whose turn it is.

Has the Day of Reckoning Arrived for the GOP?

Today is an important day for Willard 'Mitt' Romney and the GOP.  The direction the party takes from here may well be decided today.  Republican voters go to the polls to cast their ballots in the GOP presidential preference primaries in both Arizona and Michigan.  The first of these, Arizona, seems to be solidly in the Romney column.  That's important for his campaign because it is a 'winner take all' state meaning Romney will get all of the delegates there even if he wins by just a single vote.  Arizona has violated Republican National Committee (RNC) rules by holding its primary prior to Super Tuesday (March 6) and by awarding all its delegates to the winner of the popular vote.  These violations cost Arizona half its seats at the Republican Convention in Tampa this summer.  Thus, Romney will likely pick up all 29 that are available.  Get the details here.

Michigan, on the other hand, also violated RNC rules by holding an early primary but is awarding two delegates to the winner in each of its 14 congressional districts, plus dividing the two statewide delegates between the top two vote getters.  This means Romney will get at least 1 delegate in MI whether he wins or loses.  A blowout victory in the state could net Romney 29 delegates from MI but a narrow win or loss could result in Rick Santorum securing more delegates from Michigan.  Santorum could lose the statewide vote but win 8 congressional districts and pick up 17 delegates to Romney's 13.  Would this be considered a loss for the Romney campaign?

The media and 'anonymous' Republicans in the establishment have hinted that a Romney loss in Michigan would set the party searching for a different candidate, including presumably, drafting a 'dark horse' candidate at the convention in August.  It has happened before (James K. Polk in 1844, Benjamin Harrison in 1888) but not in the modern age of primary politics.  I think it unlikely to happen this year either.

The bigger question, I think, is why does the party see a Santorum nomination as toxic to the party's hopes of unseating President Obama in November?  Is this a tacit admission that the party is out of touch with most Americans on the social issues he advocates?

Regardless of the outcome today we likely will not know what it really means until November. If Romney wins today and ultimately becomes the nominee and then loses to Obama in November it will give rise to the purists who want it to be the party of family values and purity.  If Santorum wins and gets blown out by Obama in the fall, the establishment will be strengthened in its conviction that the best Republican nominee is not a far right conservative but one who is slightly right of center and it will be time to shed the blood of the purists.  So, while today will be important to at least one of the prospective GOP nominees, the day of reckoning will really come in November.

Romney: Wrong for Detroit, Wrong for America

It's time to admit what has been painfully clear to many Americans for a long time:  Willard 'Mitt' Romney is a terrible candidate to be President of the United States.  No, it isn't because he's not qualified.  I believe he has as much, if not more qualification to be president than any of the other GOP hopefuls and perhaps even our current president, though if three years of on the job experience doesn't qualify someone I don't know what does.  And it's not because Willard is unlikable, either.  I think he's probably a swell guy to hang out with at the country club, sipping vermouth and chatting about everything he's done to save businesses, the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, and Massachusetts.  No, those things are all good accomplishments and he should be applauded for whatever role he played in them.

The problem for Willard Romney is that he is a stranger to the truth.  He has apparently never made its acquaintance.  Even after it has been demonstrated time and time again that if Presidents Bush and Obama had followed Gov. Romney's advice the only automobiles manufactured in the U.S. today would be Japanese and German automobiles made in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi.  Michigan would be a barren wasteland with plenty of trees at the right height but no automobile companies.  Beyond the job losses for the hated United Auto Workers would have been the suppliers to the industry, the truck drivers who deliver the vehicles, the restaurants that serve the workers, and so on and on.  It would have been the largest collapse in American history and Willard Romney advocated that the U.S. Government just stand by and watch it happen.

Over and over on the campaign trail he has talked about letting GM and Chrysler go through a 'managed bankruptcy' financed by private capital.  Nice in theory, but impossible in the economic conditions of 2008-09, as economist Steven Rattner discussed in the NY Times on Friday.  There simply was no private capital available.  The result would have been the liquidation of GM, Chrysler, and perhaps Ford (who didn't accept government loans but would have experienced supply disruptions that might have paralyzed the company).

It's one thing to be wrong about an issue at a time when foresight is limited.  If 2008 had been a normal recession perhaps Romney's approach would have been the right one to take.  But it wasn't and both President Bush and President Obama deserve credit for recognizing that fact when few others did.  It is entirely another thing to double down and insist that a prior position was correct when hindsight demonstrates it was clearly wrong.  A healthy and profitable U.S. auto industry (GM turned it's largest profit in history in 2011) shows that Romney was wrong then and continues to be wrong today.  President Bush recently affirmed that he made the right decision and he'd do it again.  Just one more reason Willard Romney is wrong for America.