The opportunity for them to embrace a teachable moment so as to explain, in layman’s terms, why the country has suffered under the current administration’s policies, and why their proposed platforms bring relief to individuals and business owners across the political ideological divide, is slowly fading into the history books as “what could have been.” It doesn’t have to be this way, but, then, the proprietary minions of the inside-the-beltway GOP establishment don’t much care for the notions of we “fly-over” types. They know all about campaign strategy. Just ask them.

If avoiding the alienation of the electorate’s goodwill wasn’t enough of a reason not to go so personally and caustically negative, there is the notion that in doing so a great amount of damage would be done to each of the candidates, so much so – and for no other reason than to win the nomination at all cost – that the Obama campaign would be handed a full arsenal of negative talking-point ammunition for the General Election campaign. Armed with this free opposition research, already tested for its maximum destructive potency, and close to a $1 billion campaign war chest, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, David Plouffe and Roberts Gibbs could get a mentally challenged three-toed tree sloth elected over the Republican challenger.

And while there is merit to the argument that the negative attack campaigning is “honing” the eventual candidate’s ability to confront the Obama campaign’s inevitable onslaught of attack ads and smear tactics, the fact of the matter is this: Axelrod, Jarrett, Plouffe, Gibbs and President Obama himself are infinitely more acclimated and proficient in the ways of Saul Alinsky than anyone on the Right side of the aisle, short of David Horowitz. The idea that any Republican candidate can compete in the arena of Alinsky negative political campaigning is a reality only in the realm of the absurd. Only a megalomaniac of a Republican campaign strategist would even entertain such a ridiculous notion.

Proof positive that the attack and smear campaign strategy currently being employed by the GOP primary candidates is doing more harm than good comes in the poll numbers. Yes, Mitt Romney’s attack ads aided his campaign in Iowa against Newt Gingrich. And yes, Newt Gingrich’s attack ads helped him in South Carolina. And again, attack ads helped Mr. Romney beat Mr. Gingrich in Florida – even though it cost him close to $17 million to achieve that victory. But, in the end, it was Rick Santorum who – without spending millions of dollars – swept the caucuses in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. Out of all of the Republican candidates, Santorum has waged the least negative campaign where attacking his fellow Republicans is concerned. I suppose one could go as far as to say that not only does Mr. Santorum believe and adhere to the Ten Commandments, he holds faithful to the “Eleventh Commandment” as well, or, at least better than the others.

But aside from the GOP primary candidates’ poll numbers and approval ratings – and perhaps more importantly, we need to look at what happened to President Obama’s poll numbers while the mainstream media was fixated on the negative campaigning of the GOP primary candidates.

In December of 2011, at the quasi-official onset on the GOP Primary cycle, President Obama’s poll numbers were something that the “axis political powers” of Axelrod, Jarrett, Plouffe and Gibbs were starting to become concerned about. His disapproval rating stood at 51.4 percent while his approval rating was an alarming 43.2 percent. Yet today, in just two and a half short months, Mr. Obama has reversed those numbers. Today, Mr. Obama’s disapproval rating is 47.0 percent and his approvals are at 49.0, according to the RealClearPolitics.com average of the major polls as of February 9, 2012.

Traditionally, negatives, or disapproval ratings – the percentage of people sampled who voice a disapproval of the elected official’s performance – are much harder to turn around than approval ratings. When someone disapproves of the performance of an elected official it takes an incredible amount of “good behavior” on the elected official’s part or an extraordinary event to change that perception. This is also the case with voter turnout. It is always easier to motivate people to turn out at the polls to vote against someone or something. To wit, in 2008 Mr. Obama’s supporters were more motivated to vote against President George W. Bush than they were convinced by the obtuse and undefined notion of “hope and change,” a recycled campaign slogan from the Clinton campaigns.

It can be easily established that Mr. Obama didn’t execute a change of agenda to affect “good behavior”:

▪ His performance in Middle East diplomacy has been dismal; his alienation of the Israelis has resulted in a movement to the Right among the American Jewish voters.

▪ The American voter has finally come to the realization that the Obama Administration’s Labor Department has been “cooking the books” where the unemployment numbers are concerned; true unemployment, when those who have given up looking for work out of exasperation are calculated in, stands at 22.5 percent.

▪ And Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to offend not only Catholics with an incredible transgression against religious liberties in his contraception mandate, a mandate aimed at Catholic universities, hospitals and philanthropic organizations, he has motivated the whole of the religious community in the United States to rally against this element of Obamacare.

So, with the idea that Mr. Obama has turned his disapprovals around because he executed “good behavior” disproved, we can only surmise that something else affected this dramatic turn-around; something extraordinary. Now, what took place between last December and today? Could it have been Republican primary votes and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado? Could it have been millions of dollars spent on ads ripping our Republican candidates apart; ads that smeared the records and characters of those who would run against Mr. Obama in November?

As I stated in an earlier article on this very subject:

“Mr. Gingrich, you’re a professor (and not a fake activist professor, like the one currently inhabiting the Oval Office)…seize the teachable moment to explain to the American people why Capitalism works, why limited government works, why American entrepreneurship is the best in the world when allowed to be free…

“Mr. Romney, seize the teachable moment. Abandon the negative campaigning and explain to the American people why Capitalism is good; why venture Capitalism serves a great purpose; and why redistribution of wealth only creates a non-motivated society that eventually devolves into the Atlas Shrugged storyline.”

I meant it then and, with the reality that this ridiculous and self-serving negative campaigning is literally aiding Mr. Obama’s approval ratings, I mean it even more now. Our candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul – have a golden opportunity to inform and educate the American citizenry on some of the most basic and critical elements of Americanism; elements blurred by the bribery entitlement mentality of the Progressive Movement and, especially, the Obama Administration. Pray tell, what do you really think this underwater mortgage homeowner bailout is all about? Why now? Think about it!!

There comes a time when even politicians have to come to the realization that they have an obligation to do what is right for the country before they do what is advantageous for themselves. That time, for the Republican Primary participants, is now. It is one thing to debate differences where issues and ideology are concerned. We the People expect and deserve that from those vying for public office. It is quite another to employ, narcissistically, the tactics of slash-and-burn politics for the sole reason of “winning.” We the People, the nation, in the memories of the Framers and the blood of true Revolutionaries – our children’s’ futures – do not deserve that.

The 2013 budget being released Monday will propose public works spending while seeking tax increases on the wealthy and corporations to claim progress on the federal deficit in his upcoming budget. The spending plan projects a deficit for this year of $1.3 trillion, the fourth straight year of $1 trillion-plus deficits, and $901 billion next year.

Jacob Lew, the president’s chief of staff, said the new budget would put the country on track to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reductions over the next 10 years, achieved by raising taxes on the wealthy and trimming government spending. Lew said the president’s budget would cut spending by $2.50 for every $1 it raises in new taxes.

“In the long run, we need to get the deficit under control in a way that builds the economy,” Lew said during appearances on the Sunday talk shows. “We do it in a way that’s consistent with American values so that everyone pays a fair share.”

The release of Obama’s spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 marks the official start to an election-year budget battle over taxes and spending as the nation’s debt tops $15 trillion.

Read more at the Associated Press

CROWLEY: “I want to read for our viewers something that Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, who said, ‘We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done, we don’t need to do it.’”

LEW: “He’s not saying that they shouldn’t pass a budget. But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.”

This is patently false.

You can’t filibuster the budget. The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 stipulates that debate is automatically cut off after 50 hours of debate. At that point, a budget can be passed by a simple majority, 51 votes. Democrats currently hold 53 seats in the Senate. They can pass a budget on a simple party-line vote.

Lew, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget, surely knows this. While the Obama Administration has regularly plumbed the depths of managerial incompetence, even they can’t be this incompetent.

That Lew prefaced this whopper with the tell-tale “let’s be honest” canard only highlights the cynical political maneuvering that is at the heart of the Administration.

So, let’s really be honest here. The latest Obama budget contains what virtually every proposed Democrat budget has for the past few decades; tax hikes, increased spending now and illusory budget “savings” some time in the ill-defined future. The Senate could pass Obama’s proposed budget within a couple weeks. The White House’s real problem is that Democrats don’t want to vote on his proposed budget.

Washington (CNN) – Sarah Palin issued a warning to Mitt Romney Saturday, calling on the former Massachusetts governor to do a better job explaining his record to conservatives or risk dampening voter turnout in November if he wins the Republican presidential nomination.

In an interview with CNN and The New York Times before her speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Palin said she was confused by Romney’s declaration here on Friday that he was a “severely conservative Republican.”

“I wasn’t quite sure what the word ’severely’ meant,” Palin said.

She said Romney and his two main rivals – Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich – should be given time to explain the flaws in their record until the Republican National Convention in August, when she said the nomination fight could ultimately be decided.

But Romney may have the hardest sale to make, she said, asking him to explain his “shifts in ideology” since he left the Massachusetts governorship.

“You have to have the tea party patriots enthused and energized in order to win this nomination, and more importantly in order to defeat Barack Obama,” Palin argued.

If conservatives are “dismissed and they are marginalized” by the Republican establishment, “they are going to be much less enthused and much less willing to put it all on the line for the GOP candidate in the general election.”

“The Occupy movement, if it weren’t so dangerous to the American ideal, would be comical,” says John Thompson, a Rick Santorum supporter who attended The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which kicked off in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 9th, 2012.

CPAC is the premier annual gathering of the conservative movement, but this year not all the action was inside the convention center. Occupy D.C. was joined by the AFL-CIO, SEIU, National Nurses United, Metro Labor Council, and OurDC for a demonstration right outside. The group says it was protesting a “gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians, and their 1 percent elite puppet masters.”

Reason’s Lucy Steigerwald was on hand to see what all the fuss was about.

Produced by Jim Epstein, with help from Joshua Swain and Julie Ershad.

Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get automatic updates when new material goes live.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick last month announced plans to push an array of new taxes and tax hikes totaling $250 million.

But news this week indicates that it is a package so outlandish that even some Massachusetts Democrats are bailing on it.

Patrick wanted to subject soda and candy to state sales tax. In addition, he wanted the legislature to approve a 50-cent increase in Massachusetts’ cigarette tax, the revenue from which would reportedly have been used to ensure uniformity among taxpayer-subsidized health benefits that are made available to low-income resident immigrants.

These proposals came despite the fact that according to the Boston Herald, “revenue for the first half of [January] is up 3.1 percent (about $30 million) over January 2011.”

But House Speaker Robert DeLeo appeared to throw cold water on the idea this week, saying in prepared remarks “For the past two years, this House has rejected balancing the budget with new taxes and fees… Any changes to revenue policy should be approached with extreme caution and should never be done piecemeal. As such, we will release a budget from the House Committee on Ways & Means that does not rely on new taxes and fees.”

Senate President Therese Murray had previously failed to voice support for the proposed cigarette tax hike itself, beyond stating that “Stopping people from smoking appeals to me.”

One reason why the proposed tobacco tax increase may be dead on arrival is that neighboring New Hampshire– already a prime destination for Massachusetts residents looking to avoid the state’s high cigarette tax by purchasing across the border– last year cut its cigarette tax, making it a potentially even more attractive tobacco-buying destination should the tax increase go through. The Granite State last month saw its reduced tobacco tax result in $900,000 more revenue than had been estimated, potentially due to increased buying by out-of-state bargain-hunters.

Massachusetts last raised its cigarette tax, which sits at $2.51 per pack, in 2008.

As for the other tax increases proposed by Patrick, perhaps Massachusetts Democrats, despite their reputation, have seen sense and decided to avoid raising consumption taxes that tend to hit the poor harder than the rich while the economy remains in the doldrums.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster says Mitt Romney has won the Maine caucuses by a slim margin, giving him a much needed boost following losses in three other contests in the past week.

The former Massachusetts governor defeated Ron Paul, the only other GOP hopeful competing in the state. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich did not actively participate in the contest.

Party leaders announced the results Saturday. The caucuses began February 4 and continued through the week. Some Maine communities have yet to hold their caucuses, though party leaders say they don’t plan to count those votes.

Romney easily won the Maine caucuses in 2008.

Read more at the Associated Press.