A ship in harbor is safe,
but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd
Editorial Endorsement
for GOP Presidential Iowa Caucuses Tomorrow
I have a daily miscellany format, but I've also published occasional separate posts; for example, later this month I will be publishing my Person of the Year and my Jackass of the Year selections. (These awards have no intrinsic value other than several bytes in cuberspace; the award along with $5 will get the winner/loser a cup of coffee at Starbucks.)
Over the past year or two I came close to moving to Iowa (IBM attempted to recruit me to an Iowa facility). So I will publish tomorrow which candidate I would be supporting if I was voting nearly 3 weeks for now. My choice may surprise faithful readers because I've been implicitly supporting a different candidate. I will explain my reasoning in the post. (Notice the endorsement is preliminary; I will be making a final endorsement, most likely before Super Tuesday or the Maryland primary.) I don't know if I have any readers in Iowa, but the candidates I don't endorse will no doubt be grateful for the support of my angry readers.
This special edition post will be published by late afternoon EST.
Why I Don't Bother Watching the GOP Debates Any More....
Michele Bachmann joins Sarah Palin in the Inane One-Liner of the Week contest: Mitt Gingrich or Newt Romney. The two men are not the same; one of them writes historical fiction (including his own record in Congress and afterwards). [I see media conservative media host Michael Savage has offered Gingrich $1M to leave the race this week as unelectable for reasons familiar to any faithful reader to my blog.]
GOP strategist Alex Castellanos had this to say on Meet the Press:
This is, this [kerfuffle from Gingrich that Palestinians are "an invented people"] is Newtonium. Newt Gingrich is radioactive material. The establishment thinks if they get too close he could kill every Republican on the ballot....Then there was the infamous $10,000 bet Romney made with Rick Perry; Perry was arguing a familiar talking point that suggested that Romney politically conveniently edited out language (advocating a mandate as national policy) in the more recent paperback edition of his No Apologies book. On the specifics of the book edits, the fact checkers, who have rated Perry's assertion false, are correct. I want to go beyond what the cited fact checker says. The detailed quote from the Romney hardcover clearly says (I'll rephrase): "There's a trend towards a national policy; I prefer a states-based approach." He then goes on and says if you are going to have a national policy, it should be to promote interstate competition of insurers (which, of course, ObamaCare doesn't do). I submit that you don't even have to go to the paperback edition. I think his writing could be more direct and clearer. I don't have a problem with his saying that other states could look at RomneyCare and decide whether that solution (or a variation thereof) works for them.
Chuck [Todd, NBC political chief], to your point, the best thing about Mitt Romney is not that he's been a cautious man. The truth about his success is he's been a transformational figure. He transformed the Olympics, he transformed, you know, Bain Capital, built companies, transformational change in Massachusetts. That's the Mitt Romney I know. And this campaign, I think, has diminished him by making him smaller than his great gifts really reveal.
The problem I have is not what Romney put in the book but the whole context where in prior media interviews he's talking about the need to do something about the 45 million uninsured nationwide (which is a Democratic talking point), similar to what Massachusetts did : isn't he implicitly admitting that the states as a whole have failed to address these? And one could easily point out that RomneyCare doesn't help people whom leave the state for job or other purposes. (I've held drivers licenses in six different states, and as an Air Force brat I lived in 4 other states.) I don't think, at least in these excerpts, we've seen Romney tackling what I see as a core free market problem: special interest state mandates that serve as barriers to entry. He does imply if we are going to do a national policy, we should look exactly at that. Companies that operate in multiple states do have options that allow them to operate under a federal basket of core benefits.
I do empathize a bit with Gingrich and Romney because their proposals (including the use of individual mandates) were more of a tactical response to Democratic Big Government approaches to health care. You try to co-opt the opposition with a more feasible alternative.
I didn't particularly like the fact that Mitt Romney painted himself out to be cautious versus Newt's reputation of bomb throwing. I will say the kerfuffle discussed above contradicts this image Newt Gingrich is trying to present as a wise grandfather/senior citizen. I simply don't Gingrich's talking point regarding his marital infidelities and 3 marriages; he was a middle-aged career politician when these "youthful indiscretions" occurred.
Gingrich slapped back that Romney was simply a career-politician wanna be whom failed in his 1994 challenge to Ted Kennedy. I really don't buy that: would a business executive (particularly one whom saved the Salt Lake City Olympics, rescued Bain & Company, and whose father ran for President) be satisfied with being a career US Senator like Robert Byrd or Joe Biden?
But getting back to Romney, using terms like "cautious" is the wrong type of message to send to the GOP and Tea Party faithful. We are not going to be able to finesse our way to a balanced budget. Romney needs to let the faithful know that he is going to bold action as President, just like he's done as CEO. In fact, I might suggest a tagline for the Romney campaign: "Rebuilding America: A Turnaround Strategy".
Sunday Talk Soup, Sen. Graham (R-SC) and Ron Paul
Every single Sunday talk show moderator has attempted to get Ron Paul, even before the very first caucus or primary, his intentions should he not win the nomination, which is all but certain: will he launch an independent bid for the Presidency or at least endorse the eventual GOP nominee. David Gregory did much the same yesterday (see above link), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was obviously obsessed with Ron Paul's potential role as a spoiler, allowing Obama to be reelected by diluting the anti-Obama vote.
Ron Paul knows the game being played here. For him to talk about a potential independent run would undermine any chances he has of winning the GOP nomination. This is simply my take: the issue for Ron Paul is not personal ambition but his strongly held, consistent beliefs, and I personally believe that Ron Paul is the obvious Tea Party candidate for President: he's the only one with a legitimate budget cut plan on the table, and he sees Big Defense and the Patriot Act, basically backed by almost all the other candidates, as part of Big Government, the same government the Tea Party wanted contained, across the board. Paul sees Democrats and mainstream Republicans as merely nuanced promoters of Big Government. If Ron Paul doesn't win the nomination, he would like to use his influence to promote pro-liberty planks in the GOP platform. For Ron Paul to affirm his support to the GOP nominee without concessions (including the party platform) is to undermine his negotiating position. Stay the course, Congressman!
Musical Interlude: Nostalgic/Instrumental Christmas
"Silent Night", The Three Tenors (Pavarotti, Domingo, & Carreras). Another multi-lingual take (cf earlier "O Holy Night" cover): thumbs UP! RIP, Luciano Pavarotti; as far as I'm concerned, he had The Voice.
Kenny G. Love the sax in this instrumental take!
Mariah Carey. After hearing this soulful rendition, I have a sudden urge to hear Mahalia Jackson's "Go Tell It On the Mountain" (stay tuned). I loved it when Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston competitively teamed up (i.e., "When You Believe", one of my all-time favorite tunes). I love Whitney Houston's voice, but Mariah has The Female Voice. She has this awesome seemingly effortless vocal ability to shoot up the scales most singers can't hope to reach (like around 3:15 into this performance). Her pop success is unparalleled, but I personally think the songs haven't measured up to the voice. [It reminds me of a legendary story about one of the greatest southpaw pitchers of all time, Sandy Koufax. The scouting report was that Koufax could always strike out this one batter with a high fast ball; the response was: who has a high fast ball like Koufax's? Similarly, what female vocalist dares to cover a Mariah Carey song and invite comparisons?]
Andy Williams & Claudine Longet. I LOVED the old Andy Williams Christmas TV shows (as well as Bing Crosby's). Andy Williams' silky smooth pop tenor and superior tone set the standard, and he has always been one of my favorite male vocalists. Claudine Longet has had her moments herself--I featured one of her performances ("Love is Blue") in a past post; I used to have a crush on her (maybe it had to do with her French accent and the fact French was my first language). Unfortunately, her career ended after her separation from Williams and the tragic circumstances of boyfriend skier Spider Sabich's death in 1976. I love this duet where Longet's soft angelic voice blends effortlessly with William's affective delivery; their beautiful children in the background just set the right scene for perhaps the world's best-known lullaby.
