Quote of the Day
To be able to practice five things everywhere under heaven
constitutes perfect virtue...
gravity,
generosity of soul,
sincerity,
earnestness, and
kindness.
Confucius
Santorum Narrowly Wins in Alabama and Mississippi
Romney Blows Opportunity to Seal the Deal
[LATE NIGHT EDIT: I'm reporting on CBS News primary/caucus tabulations, e.g., the Hawaii race. I've been tracking results all night before publishing. Romney has maintained a consistent lead all night, down to as little as 3 points over Santorum, but some major precincts have reported for Romney and he's now leading Santorum 46%-26%. I expect the caucus to be called shortly. In fact, just after I wrote the last sentence, I see that CBS News has in fact called the race for Romney.]
I knew that Romney was in trouble when I looked at the Gallup Tracking Poll this morning and found that Santorum had managed to cut Romney's lead in half to about 5 points (mirrored by a Reuters GOP beauty count poll). The news is a mixed bag for Romney: Santorum's wins were not predicted by the polls I had seen; in fact, Romney led by nearly 8-9% in a couple of polls late last week (Rasmussen in Mississippi and Alabama Education). I should note that that those were oddball polls, with probably Gingrich leading most by a narrow margin in a majority of relevant polls. Still, Romney placed a strong third with 29% of the vote or better.
The good news, if there is good news from Romney here, is that no one really expected Romney to carry these states, and because of the proportional delegate rules which Romney easily qualified for, he added to his delegate total to 476 delegates (by WSJ count), more than 200 ahead of Santorum's 246, and we still have Hawaii and American Samoa to report in this evening (this post will publish before those results), but based on what we've seen to date, Romney has been doing very well picking up delegates outside the continental US.
The other good news, in a sense, is that Gingrich did a credible enough job in the two primaries to justify continuing the campaign. Rick Santorum has already been complaining that Gingrich is getting in the way. Romney has arithmetic on his side; for example, for all the bragging rights Santorum has for tonight, he only cut into Romney's delegate lead by 10 delegates. Until we get into the latter winner-take-all states--which will likely favor Romney, Santorum won't be able to pick up much traction.
I think at this point Gingrich is playing for influence on the party platform and possibly to make a deal for the VP slot. Most pundits would rule this out of hand, noting how Gingrich went after Romney following the Iowa campaign attack ads. Romney should probably seriously consider putting Gingrich on the ticket: Gingrich is the anti-Palin, very articulate, and Gingrich has a reputation as an idea, vision guy whom is broadly acceptable to the GOP base.
Do I really need to comment on the fact that Romney AGAIN was caught paying more attention to Obama than his main competition? How many times is he going to let Santorum or Gingrich resurrect their candidacies at his expense. Santorum is SO UNACCEPTABLE to me that I almost wish I was running the Romney campaign so I could do the honors of crushing his candidacy. Gingrich has been slowly but surely using some of the attacks I've been urging, like pointing out after he left, the GOP let spending get out of control, and Santorum is part of it.
So Romney: let me give you some advice. First, there is no doubt Santorum's sweep of today's doubleheader, no matter how slight it is (just like Santorum's narrow wins in Iowa and Colorado), will give him a boost going into the Missouri caucuses and next week's Illinois primary. YOU NEED Illinois; right now you have a narrow lead.
I don't have any special insight into Illinois today--I haven't lived there in 8 year. But let me quote from a mischief-making Illinois Democrat thinking of doing what Democrats unsuccessfully tried to do in Michigan and Ohio, namely, vote for Santorum in order to embarrass or defeat Obama's strongest opponent, Mitt Romney (now do you understand why I'm frustrated the Romney campaign has failed to put away a politically embarrassing, unqualified, sure-loser Rick Santorum whom is wrong on almost any issue involving economics or individual liberty?):
Throughout my life, Illinois has been the home of what are now called “moderate” Republican officeholders: Charles Percy, Jim Thompson, Robert Michel, Jim Edgar. These were solid conservatives of the Sinclair Lewis model, more in tune with bankers and businessmen than with bishops and Birchers. In short, Mitt Romney’s kind of people.The Maryland primary is coming up soon; I've never been involved in Maryland politics either, but former Governor Bob Ehrlich seems to be the "moderate" GOP type so that Sarah Palin was motivated enough to support his opponent for renomination in 2010. Several months ago Romney and Gingrich were battling it out for bragging rights at the straw poll. I haven't seen local support for Santorum (I live less than an hour's drive from Gettysburg, PA), but I'm sure that he's picked up some support locally since the straw poll.
Romney has to be very careful with Santorum, and I think he needs to bring out the heavy artillery. The polls in Santorum's own home state were close before Santorum's hat trick in Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota. It's like the GOP in Pennsylvania have forgotten all about Santorum's landslide defeat to Casey in the 2006 election or the fact that Santorum supported Specter's GOP renomination over fellow conservative current Senator Toomey. I think Romney has to rebound in Illinois in order take the fight to Santorum in Louisiana where Santorum has a slight lead. Romney should have a good election in the Northeast Super Tuesday later next month (except for maybe Pennsylvania). And Romney looks good right now in California and Utah.
On the better news front, the latest Gallup Romney vs Obama trial heat shows Romney up by a few points, Rasmussen has them at a tie, and ABC News has Romney up by 2.
A final note for Romney's general campaign against Obama this fall: the Obama campaign is fearful of one thing, something I have stressed in past columns: ROMNEY NEEDS TO THROW BUSH UNDER THE BUS, AND LINK OBAMA'S POLICIES WITH BUSH'S. This is like Politics 101. Obama renominated Bush's guy to the Fed. He nominated one of the Fed governors under Bush to become his new Treasury Secretary. He's used Bush's military commander--whom now happens to head the CIA. Obama's been a big spender, just like Bush. Obama's had anemic economic growth: so did Bush. Bush added to entitlements, so did Obama. I could go on and on. What Romney needs to do is to distance himself away from Bush, nicely, and say something like the intent was good after the 9/11 tragedies, but Bush turned too much to government intervention--including during the economic tsunami and TARP legislation. (Romney has a bit of the problem there because he supported TARP at the time, but he could argue that he was trying to get McCain elected.)
Let's Play Whack-A-Mole, GOP Edition
The conservative talk show host/comedian Dennis Miller occasionally interviews lawmakers; one of them, with a particularly droll sense of humor is Thad McCotter, a Michigan GOP Congressman whom made a brief, quixotic run for the Presidency last summer. McCotter, like Santorum and Sarah Palin, is someone I would classify, in my own blunt style, as a "weasel conservative", or more politely, an unprincipled populist-infused conservatism. For example, I absolutely loathe Santorum whom claims the mantle of a conservative, but has voted against free trade, has supported union-friendly policies, supports forms of industrial policy, helped push through a new, unpaid for Medicaid prescription drug benefit and grabbed all the federal earmark money he could get for Pennsylvania instead of trying to pay down the Bush deficits. It takes some audacity for Santorum to claim the conservative title over someone he himself had endorsed as a conservative in 2008.
McCotter although allegedly one of the first to brand TARP legislation as socialistic reengineering, wanted to pass price-gauging legislation during 2008's energy bubble, has supported card check and public sector collective bargaining agreements, and how about his supporting a pet owners' tax deduction in spite of conservative calls for SIMPLIFYING AND LOWERING the income tax burden.
So, in any event, I'm listening to Miller's recent podcast interview with McCotter, when McCotter, yes, the very same guy who condemned TARP, came out strongly in favor of government loans propping up the auto industry and talking about them in terms of investment. Spoken like a true believer in crony capitalism!
Anyway, what started up this rant was a wonderfully sarcastic open letter to GOP Congressman Dave Camp from Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek; Camp is engaging in anti-China trade, protectionist-populist nonsense, whining that Chinese are unfairly subsidizing certain industries/goods, and he wants to remedy the situation by slapping a tax on relevant Chinese goods. (I'm sure that lower-income Americans everywhere are grateful for this idea of a regressive tax on competitively-priced goods enabling them to stretch their dollars...)
I'm paraphrasing Boudreaux's brilliant free market defense (thumbs UP!). First, Boudreaux wants to remind Camp that Uncle Sam does his own subsidizing of exports and engages in corporate welfare: before we start casting stones, shouldn't we look at we are doing and not be hypocritical in tax policy. Second, Boudreaux points out under zero-sum conditions, one exporter's subsidy is another exporter's tax hike. This additional tax amounts to an indirect subsidy to American competitors: does Camp propose to slap a tax on domestic products to make the trade fair?
Boudreaux is basically saying here that pick-and-choose tax policies are inefficient: it's like squeezing a balloon. You can't help one industry without handicapping others. It all washes out in the end.
Political Humor
"With daylight-saving time, we lose an hour of our lives. It's like a Kardashian marriage." - David Letterman
[It's like listening to a Barack Obama speech.]
"President Obama today released his NCAA bracket. He is a huge basketball fan. But privately, White House aides are worried that if he spends so much time on this, it could affect his golf game." - Jay Leno
[President Obama was initially confused when reporters asked him about March Madness; Obama thought they were talking about GOP voters choosing between Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. When asked whom he thought would win the non-Romney bracket, Obama said, "I will."]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Cars, "Let the Good Times Roll"
