Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.
Seneca
Blog Update
January pageviews increased once again month over month and were the strongest since last January (a negligible decrease year-over-year).
ROMNEY WINS FLORIDA!
With about 99% of the precincts reporting, Romney won the Florida primary going away, nearly capturing a clean majority at 46.4%-31.9% over Newt Gingrich. In fact, Romney beat Gingrich and third-place Santorum combined. I want to point out 4 different polls predicted the margin of victory--except the Insider Advantage and PPP polls which reduced the Romney advantage by half. (I previously commented that I distrusted these two pollsters.)
It's very difficult for Gingrich to put a positive spin on this: it's the second straight purple-state primary Romney has won going away. Gingrich will point out that he was outspent, but most voters indicated that they were influenced by two things: debates and electability. In the meanwhile Gingrich's lead in the GOP tracking poll had shrunk to the bare minimum, and I suspect the Florida win put catapult Romney back into the lead. The Nevada caucuses this weekend should also go to Romney (like it did in 2008). My guess is Gingrich's or Santorum's best chance will be Missouri and Ohio next week. The polls I see there from RCP indicate a tight race with Gingrich narrowly in the lead, but these are battleground states like Florida, the Romney campaign has more money and is better organized, and the available polls are sparse, outdated and come from questionable pollsters.
I think what we'll start seeing over the next week or two is more of a bandwagon effect towards Romney. The Romney campaign I think miscalculated in South Carolina, underestimating Gingrich's ability to rebound after bad finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. But there's no place for Gingrich to hide, as Santorum and Paul continue to fade. It's possible that we'll see nobody drop out at least until Super Tuesday in early March--and possibly not even then. Why? Huckabee in 2008 refused to concede until McCain won an absolute majority of delegates, and many of the early states this year got dinged in terms of delegates. You never can tell in politics; Gabby Giffords' tragedy and Sen. Mark Kirk's (R-IL) recent unlikely stroke reinforce that.
I"m pleased to see Sarah Palin's and Herman Cain's enthusiastic support for Gingrich went nowhere.
Late Note: I have not been watching live network coverage, but there are stories that Gingrich said in his concession speech that he will not run "Republican campaign but a people's campaign". Even the bare hint that Gingrich would go rogue would be political suicide. If there is a legitimate third-party candidate, it's Ron Paul, not Newt Gingrich. Very bizarre development and it should be interesting to see if he walks that back--or can walk that back. If I'm heading the Romney campaign, I think Romney has just clinched the nomination: I've got that tape going to every local, state, and national GOP executive in the country, it's showing up in my ads, etc.
Anybody But Newt
[NOTE: Most of this commentary was written before tonight's primary win for Romney and late developments.]
With all due respect, I'm done with the strident partisans stubbornly determined, at any cost, to engage in a suicide mission this fall against Obama. Let me start by saying first of all, from a policy standpoint, I'm closer to Ron Paul than any of the other candidates. More recently, I decided to take an editorial position from the blog to endorse Mitt Romney. This was based on two fundamental, indisputable facts: (1) Mitt Romney is the most electable candidate, over dozens of pairwise polls: he's not a career politician and is an obvious candidate whom can run against Washington; he won a statewide election in the bluest of states, Massachusetts, and he is very competitive against Obama in the battleground states; (2) Mitt Romney is the most qualified person to serve as President (among announced candidates) from either party. Let me be clear: he does understand business and the economy from a first-hand perspective. He has solid executive experience from both the private and public sectors. He has proven ability to reach across the aisle, even with a Democratic-dominated legislature.
Over the past year the so-called "Establishment choice" Romney has seen one train wreck after the other rise and fall as the designated "non-Romney" candidate: Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. I get an email inbox full of strident anti-Romney ads, news items, and columns from popular conservative media outlets like Human Events, Newsmax, and Worth Reading. (Can you say 'unsubscribe'?) This is the same man with the same views and credentials that 4 years ago prominent media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin were essentially backing in an all-out attempt to deny "RINO" John McCain the nomination. He's not a professional politician: he ran twice before the 2008 GOP nomination race: 1994 as Senate candidate and 2002 as gubernatorial candidate. He was an inexperienced political candidate trying to win statewide election in a very liberal state; did he make mistakes in his campaigns and say things he now wished he could take back? Probably, but he was trying not to let his very liberal opponents define him as a right-wing ideologue in a state that doesn't elect right-wing ideologues. It's almost like the media conservatives would rather not run a Republican at all if he or she doesn't pass their litmus test. By any account, Romney's views are at least as conservative (if not more) now as they were back in 2008.
Some people might think that having maintained the same conservative views for 6 or more years: what's the litmus test? Unlike Romney, Governor Reagan signed a bill liberalizing abortion in California; Governor Reagan agreed to a tax hike to balance the budget. President Reagan agreed to tax increases, including social security; he ran huge budget deficits; he signed an immigration law most conservatives today despise. Conservative after conservatives claims to be a Reagan Republican. What did Romney do? He basically stopped an attempt by majority Democrats to implement a variation of HillaryCare by using elements of the same approach Congressional Republicans used in 1993-1994 (including, yes, Gingrich's support). And yet Gingrich is considered the "real" conservative in this race? To reprise a John Kerry-like message, Gingrich was for Freddie Mac before he was against Freddie Mac (but only after he cashed in some $1.6M in fees through early 2008 while consulting for Freddie Mac's chief lobbyist)? I mean, give me a break.
Let me be blunt here: Newt Gingrich is a jerk, and the American people do not knowingly elect jerks to be their President. The name-calling, the constantly disrespectful tone: using, for instance, the term "Massachusetts liberal" is knowingly false and unnecessary. Romney was facing a nearly 90% Democratic legislature in Massachusetts; he vetoed lots of items, including in the famous RomneyCare legislation--for example, he wanted an exception to the mandate for people whom could post notice of financial responsibility for their medical debts. Newt's own think tank backed RomneyCare, as did the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization. It's not just that, but Newt has engaged in the pettiest type of sniping talking about a vote Romney cast for a Massachusetts Democrat before he ever became a GOP candidate. Give me a break: how many Republicans rejected Reagan because he remained a Democrat until just a few years before becoming governor? I mean, is this Presidential material? Gingrich lost his temper because a Romney PAC ran ads pointing out he took money from Freddie Mac, he was rebuked by the House while serving as Speaker, etc.: big news for Gingrich: these are legitimate issues. He may not like the negative spin, but let's face it: if Sarah Palin had run, she would be facing issues over Troopergate and her resignation as governor. Romney has never backed away from his health care reform in Massachusetts, and he's acknowledged that it's been an issue.
But to take another example: there was the revelation that Gingrich had allegedly asked his second wife for an open marriage. I mean, it's just as legitimate an issue as it was in discussing the Ensign and Vitter affairs, the resignations of Foley and Chris Lee. I thought it was in Gingrich's interests to handle the relevant question respectfully and honestly. Attacking the messenger is wildly inappropriate; it's not Presidential.
This leads to another assertion made by pro-Gingrich forces: Gingrich was the "best" debater to take on Obama this fall. I definitely don't agree with this; I have a good idea of how to beat Obama (but I don't believe in revealing my hand if I'm playing a game of poker). I will say that an erratic/undisciplined, predictable performance and a disrespectful tone plays right into Obama's hand. Obama is personally likable, but I guarantee he's going to play the part of the incumbent for all its worth and play prevent defense or rope-a-dope. He doesn't even have to land a punch on the GOP challenger; if he can simply goad the challenger into intemperate behavior, it almost doesn't matter what they're talking about. I will simply hint here that the first step is to put Obama on the defensive by using his own unfulfilled promises and words against him, his failure to back his own bipartisan debt reduction committee findings, his power grabs without Congressional authority (e.g., the Libya operation or the Gulf moratorium issue), and his legislative priorities in a tough economy (e.g., climate change, no movement on business taxes, etc). I would avoid being predictable and I would try to use the element of surprise in challenging him so he can't resort to rehearsed soundbites.
I myself have used judgmental terms in discussing Obama--for example, I think his performance has been mediocre, he has a narcissistic personality, and he's in over his head. But it's not personal--it's about policy and performance, and I think he really blew it as a politician: he was being penny-wise, pound-foolish. He decided to ram partisan legislation down the GOP's throat, which killed any chance of legitimate bipartisanship.
Gingrich has found few, if any of the Congressmen to serve with him to publicly endorse him; the vast majority joined Democrats in 1997 in rebuking him on ethics charges on a floor vote, unprecedented in American history. Gingrich constantly whines, has varied from conservative orthodoxy on at least as many grounds (and let's not forget--working for a government-sponsored entity is not something any Tea Party conservative would even consider) as Romney (despite not having to run in a blue state like Romney had to), bullies debate moderators and his opponents, and has used Democratic-like class warfare arguments against Romney's candidacy.
Finally, let's look a little bit at Gingrich's support. Sarah Palin has twice unofficially endorsed Gingrich in races in South Carolina and Florida. I'm not making this up: one pop conservative media outlet has actually condemned Fox News for reportedly cutting short a Palin interview on one of the weekend shows (I think she was once again pushing Gingrich's candidacy). Now does anybody else reading this commentary remember what happened to former Governor Pawlenty? Reportedly after he withdrew from the race, he tried to get a gig with Fox News Channel, and Ailes refused, pointing out that Pawlenty had recently endorsed Romney. Now Palin knows all this (or at least Ailes has probably told her in private), and so she can't pick sides officially--so instead she's playing fast and loose with the rules by endorsing in individual races.
[I realize the fact I've endorsed Romney may lead some to question my objectivity here, but I'm a commentator, but a reporter or contributor working for Fox News trying to work around the rules. I'm far more objective that any commentator I know, even though I have done an endorsement of Romney's candidacy. I have criticized some of Romney's views and performances.]
Parsing Obama's 2012 SOTU Address: Part III
In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005. American manufacturers are hiring again, creating jobs for the first time since the late 1990s. Together, we've agreed to cut the deficit by more than $2 trillion. And we've put in place new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like that never happens again.Obama's speeches should be called "Weapons of Mass Distortion".... Where do we start? Obama is knowingly stating things in ways that play on people's mistaken economic assumptions. In Obama terms, this is "putting lipstick on a pig: it's still a pig".
Neo-Keynesian delusional thinking is alive and well in the White House. They want you to think that everyone wins when you play Government Monopoly. Well, the odds are stacked in favor of the House: when you pass GO, you pay the federal bureaucrats $200. The only REAL winners in this rigged game are the toll-collectors (i.e., the IRS).
Now without going back to your history books (no fair peeking!), suppose I told you that by 1944 unemployment had plunged from pre-war nearly 20% to 1.2%; nearly half of the economy was aimed at WWII, deficits and the cumulative national debt exploded past the size of our economy, and we had 12 million men in the military, nearly a fifth of our labor force.
I mean, FDR threw money and regulations at the economy during the New Deal, and to his great surprise, the economy remained in a stubborn funk (revisionists will no doubt say he didn't throw ENOUGH money and regulations at the problem...) It was like FDR was lobbing one dodge ball after another at the heads of business owners and couldn't figure out why they didn't have time to grow their businesses and employ more people. His deficit spending was crowding out investment in the private sector, and all the new demands he was throwing at businesses was changing the ground under their feet: who knew what this guy was going to do next? I have used this analogy before: when you start a small campfire (yes, I was once a Boy Scout), you have to coax it to full strength: you don't snuff out the fragile flame under the weight of 2000-page laws! Or, using a different analogy, if you want a 98-pound weakling to scale a mountain for the first time, you don't strap a 45-pound backpack on him.
Yes, I'm referring here to the unconscionable 111th Congress and President Obama. Apparently they didn't take Newt Gingrich's history course on the Great Depression or remember George Santayana's famous quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Take Dodd N. Frankenstein (regular readers will recognize my coined term for so-called "financial reform") and other counterproductive government interventions under the Obama Administration: the private sector was more than willing to find a natural bottom in the real estate cycle (as it always had), but we had an activist government changing the ground under their feet. This was all pushing on a string: the last thing banks were interested in doing was further putting their capital at risk by approving high-risk mortgage applicants under the falling knife of home prices. This was all about filling a long-pending item on the progressive wish list while they briefly held the trifecta of the House, Senate and White House, regardless of the state of the economy. They put ideology ahead of their country.
FDR had found the one sure weapon to get us out of the Depression: draft all the unemployed men in the country and finance a global war, putting it on the national credit card! [Yes, readers, I'm being sarcastic...] So what happens when, all of a sudden, you end up dropping defense expenditures by more than half and let over 10M men come home and out of the service? We are taking all of thus "stimulus" out of the economy. You can all but hear Paul Krugman running around screaming, "The sky is falling!" No doubt some Keynesian economists were suggesting that we "invest" in other hotspots around the globe... [Yes, sarcasm again...] Taylor and Vedder have an interesting post discussing what happened--and "austerity" didn't "cause" massive unemployment.
Obama is wrong to focus on manufacturing for a variety of reasons. The manufacturing sector is not more equal than the service sector; workers may shift from one sector to the others. First, job losses often inevitably result from improvements in technology and increased productivity. Second, many job losses in the manufacturing sector move towards the service sector.
We've heard this sort of fear before, e.g., when we transitioned from a primarily agrarian economy. Progressives refuse to believe in Adam Smith's "invisible hand". In the 1970's nobody would have ever conceived that that people would be willingly giving up their wired phone services for multi-functional devices you could wear in a shirt pocket, nearsightedness could be permanently cured in a matter of seconds, there would be professions like webmasters, or you could send a message anywhere in the world almost instantaneously, or shop for almost anything or pay a bill in mere seconds, without a trip to the bank or buying a stamp.
(But progressives would have you know that federal bureaucrats running under defined benefit pension systems that the private sector ditched 3 decades ago as unsustainable would have done all of these things and many other even more wonderful things faster, better, and cheaper.... The secret is in the red tape bureaucrats use...)
Money is fungible; if farmers are more productive and food products are high-quality, only cheaper, we'll spend and invest elsewhere in our economy.
As for "financial reform", we have had a ludicrous ideologically-driven, pushing-on-a-string legislation which used the economic tsunami as a transparent excuse. Many, if not most of the problems during the economic tsunami can be traced to problematic public policy (including the GSE's use of an implicit taxpayer-backed guarantee, government subsidies and policies pushing home ownership (particularly for certain high-risk interest groups), incompetent and uncoordinated regulation, etc. There was no attempt to fix existing government policies, to lessen or eliminating the unsustainable subsidies, guarantees, cronyism, government-sanctioned or sponsored entities, uncoordinated, unaccountable regulatory schemes and failures in regulatory performance, etc. Of course, the Democrats weren't about to admit that government was part of the problem, not the solution. Their response was NOT to lower the taxpayer exposure to corruptible guarantees, subsidies, and the like but to expand the self-preserving federal bureaucracy and mandate. As if a government which has accumulated a $15T debt has any moral authority to lecture those in the private sector!
My position on the banks and AIG is clear: if you take on undue risk and fail, goodbye. If there is a legitimate market need for your goods and services, the private sector will find a way to address it. The same thing with the auto industry. Obama's laughable assertion that his corrupt managed bankruptcy "saved" the auto industry is certainly audacious but lacks any serious credibility. Companies with more sustainable cost structures emerge from bankruptcy all the time--the only thing that Obama did was to ensure that the interests of unions, whose unsustainable contracts were the principal contributing factor behind the two automakers' failures, were protected.
In any event, let me quote Kling's reflection on "financial reform", which is spot on:
- No exit strategy from government support for subsidized, lenient mortgage credit. No curbs on Freddie and Fannie, whose market share has skyrocketed in the past year and a half. No increase in down payment requirements for FHA, which is in deep doo-doo.
- No change to the role of credit rating agencies
- Nothing to address the issue of "cognitive capture." The regulators will still get their analysis of the financial sector from the CEO's of the largest banks.
- A pushing-on-a-string consumer financial protection agency.
Finally, the deficit reductions Obama is referring to consist of savings OVER A DECADE, not absolute cuts to current programs. A lot of them come from cuts in (below-cost) reimbursements or playing games with planned budget increases.
Political Humor
"Newt Gingrich has been attacking Mitt Romney for being wealthy and having money in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. See, that's when you know you're part of the top 1 percent, when your bank's address has the word “island” in it." - Jay Leno
[Newt knows because he met Mitt also filling out a deposit slip during the Cayman Islands cruise he took after his Greek cruise. Mitt thought that Callista's new Tiffany's earrings looked very nice...
When asked by the debate moderator for a response, Romney said, "To the moon,
"Sarah Palin has also been supportive of Gingrich but she hasn't made an official endorsement yet. Her husband endorsed Gingrich but he's a snowmobiler, so nobody cares." - Jimmy Kimmel
[Well, after all, Newt Gingrich has been snowing conservatives for years.... He makes Todd and Sarah feel right at home.]
"Newt Gingrich picked up an endorsement from Herman Cain. It's not unlike getting Carrot Top's endorsement for an Academy Award." - Jimmy Kimmel
[You see, I knew there was a downside to all those late nights between Clinton and Gingrich, talking about those fetching ladies they met on the job, just like Cain...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Queen, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Freddie Mercury does retro rock: need I say more? Brilliant...
