We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th.

In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention.

So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to the degree that Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia do. Santorum has some strengths he can draw on in the Buckeye State, as his blue-collar message could play well even among Republicans there. If he wins, it means that we probably do have a deeply divided GOP, with Gingrich taking the anti-Romney vote in the South, and Santorum taking the anti-Romney vote in the Midwest.

So with Ohio holding such incredible importance to Mitt Romney’s hopes of becoming President, why is he betraying the very Ohio conservatives he needs to assure victory?

Let me explain.

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When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty.

And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction.

This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly but surely coming around to the same point of view.

• The European Central Bank published a study showing “…a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth.”
• A study by two Harvard economists found that “large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted spending cuts, have often led to expansions.”
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in recent research that welfare programs are economically destructive because they lure people into dependency because “net disposable income would increase despite putting in fewer hours.”
• A study from the International Monetary Fund concluded that “Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth.”

This is remarkable. It’s beginning to look like the entire world has figured out that there’s an inverse relationship between big government and economic performance. (more…)

Obama's Alinsky-Style Power Analysis

New York Times columnist Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, tries very, very hard to paint a sympathetic picture of her eponymous subject matter–she gets her digs in against the supposedly racist tea party everywhere she can–but every once and a while the truth cracks through. Take this interview at the Texas Book Festival for example:

The Obamas often don’t mingle freely – they often just stand behind the rope and reach out to shake hands but he sees Jerry Kellman, his old community organizing boss, and he’s so happy to see him he reaches across and pulls him in. And Obama says, “I’m still organizing.” It was a stunning moment and when [Kellman] told me the story, it had echoes of what Valerie Jarrett had told me once – “The senator still thinks of himself as a community organizer.” How fully has this guy resolved himself to what he’s really doing? On the one hand, he’s passing these backroom deals to pass health care reform, but on the other he’s telling his old boss he’s still a community organizer. I think that plays into what will happen in the 2012 race.

Jerry Kellman was Barack Obama’s former boss, a student of Saul Alinsky’s in the 1970s, and a permanent fixture of the progressive left in Chicago.

While some have downplayed Obama’s connections to Saul Alinsky, Kellman’s link is pretty easy to discern.

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Robert Creamer–Democrat strategist, Obama 2008 campaign aide, and political architect of ObamaCare–argues that the new contraceptive mandate for Catholic institutions isn’t really about equality for women, or religious liberty.

Rather, it is about population control.

Creamer–like his wife, the pro-abortion Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)–embraces the left-wing fallacy that children are a burden on the planet, which the state should encourage the church–and everyone else–to limit.

At 6:16-7:03 in the video below, by CNS News, Schakowsky describes abortion as “most often” a “responsible decision” to control the size of their families:

Writing in the Huffington Post yesterday, Creamer declared:

…[T]here is a worldwide consensus that the use of birth control is one of society’s most important moral priorities. Far from being something that should be discouraged, or is controversial, the use of birth control is critical to the survival and success of humanity….It is simply not possible for this small planet to sustain that kind of exponential human population growth. If we do, the result will be poverty, war, the depletion of our natural resources and famine. Fundamentally, the Reverend [Thomas] Malthus was right–except that the result is not inevitable….That’s why it is our moral imperative to act responsibly and encourage each other to use birth control.

Malthus’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century views, which still inspire much of today’s environmental movement, have been repeatedly disproved over the course of two centuries. Economic freedom, growth and innovation have made human society vastly more productive and efficient. (more…)

In a time when America’s immigration system is swamped – when illegal immigrants are routinely caught and released, many of whom are dangerous – it seems that one of ICE’s top priorities is public relations with illegal immigration advocates.  Yesterday, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait announced via the Department of Homeland Security website that he had been named ICE’s “first-ever public advocate.”

Lorenzen-Strait

His job will be to “serve as a point of contact for individuals, including those in immigration proceedings, NGOs, and other community and advocacy groups, who have concerns, questions, recommendations or important issues they would like to raise.” This new role, says Lorenzen-Strait, will help ICE “focus the agency’s immigration enforcement resources on sensible priorities” – code for doing less, since the Obama Administration consistently makes a big deal out of the notion that most illegal immigrants aren’t dangerous and therefore should be left to their own devices – and “implement policies and processes that priorities the health and safety of detainees in our custody.” And he has one more job, according to ICE Enforcement Director John Morton: he’ll have to explain to all of us why ICE lets illegal immigrants off the hook.

What did Lorenzen-Strait used to do? He’s been with ICE since 2008. Before that, he was a pro bono attorney in Maryland, doing child advocacy and divorce work via Community Legal Services. How does that qualify you for working in immigration, exactly? And then there’s the question of money spent. It’s more and more obvious these days that working for the government is the quickest road to a healthy paycheck – and Lorenzen-Strait’s salary proves it. In 2010, he was paid $112,224 by the feds. We can only imagine that the salary has risen since then. Not bad for being a public relations officer who does nothing to actually enforce immigration law.

We’re constantly hearing that the government has trouble finding places to cut spending. This seems like a good place to start.

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I say offers little but in reality Romney has more to lose than Santorum does to gain. The contests in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado were all non-binding, which means it was nothing more than a beauty contest as no delegates will be awarded to Santorum. But the trifecta — there’s always a but — means the race will be extended.

Politico

Santorum, who faded quickly after his narrow win in Iowa last month, now has his best and almost certainly last chance to show that he can compete at the same level as Romney and Newt Gingrich. In a month his campaign hoped to use as an opportunity to outflank Gingrich on the right and establish himself as the primary alternative to Romney, Santorum is on his way to accomplishing both goals.

There is a catch, however: Santorum still needs to prove that he can hold and sustain political momentum on a grand scale. The trick is maintaining his forward motion as the primary process expands to truly national proportions and stretches Santorum’s already-taxed resources and organization thinner than ever.

Still though, this raises questions about Romney’s appeal outside of the more high profile states where money and media is essential. Consider this: Romney’s campaign is looking a lot like Hillary Clinton’s. They won the same key states early in the contest and Clinton later lost to Obama off the well beaten path in other states. It was death from a thousand cuts. I’m not saying the same results are likely, I’m only saying the on again-off again surges Romney is battling against is expressive to conservative feelings and misgivings. I said not likely, but it should be considered a possibility.
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That Rick Santorum won big last night is a fact that cannot be denied. Voters in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado chose him, at times by a wide margin, over every other GOP primary candidate.  Clearly now, Santorum has gained momentum that exceeds even that which he garnered with his earlier victory in the Iowa caucuses. Another fact from last night that cannot be denied is that Mitt Romney lost, and he lost big. After riding the mantra of “electability,” that at times seemed to approach inevitability, the man who gave us Romneycare went down in flames in flyover country. And while his campaign and the Republican establishment will surely do all they can to make the losses look less important than they were, it’s axiomatic that a man who can’t win in flyover country in a man who can’t be the GOP candidate.

Now, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I’m not saying that Romney won’t pick up a win in flyover country at some point. But I am saying that last night, Colorado, one the states that should have been a shoe-in for him based on his numbers in 2008 and his religious affiliation, went to a more socially conservative candidate. (Even the democraticunderground.com noticed that Romney’s numbers in the most conservative of counties were down from 70% in 2008 to less than 50% last night.)

In explaining how last night happened the way it did, I go back to the exchanges between Santorum and Romney during the South Carolina debate earlier this year. No one, to that point, had stood toe to toe with Romney and forced listeners to truly consider the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare. But Santorum did. And when Romney contended that Romneycare was working pretty well for the citizens of Massachusetts and that he was pretty proud of what they’d done there,  Santorum replied: “What Gov. Romney just said is that government-run, top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts and he supports it. Now, think about what that means.”

People are thinking about it, and all the candidates have to remember that Obamacare will never be popular in flyover country because it is a freedom-robbing mechanism.

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At a Federal Bureau of Investigation conference on Monday, FBI agents said state and local law enforcement should be on alert for people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens,” individuals who believe they are not subject to any type of government authority.

According to Reuters, these anti-government extremists “may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.”

Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

The heightened concern against “sovereign citizens” is the result of the rise in legal convictions from 10 such cases in 2009 to 18 cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

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Steve understands that while we’re trying to work our way out of this economic crisis, we have to hold the financial industry accountable to prevent the next one. That’s why Steve wrote a bill that would have taken back the bonuses paid to top executives at Wall Street firms – like AIG – that received federal bailout funds. (Source: Steve Israel For Congress Website)

Did you ever wonder where a self-proclaimed corporate raider and Occupy Wall Street supporter such as Congressman Steve Israel gets his campaign donations from?

According to Open Secrets, Israel has raised $1,581,081 for this election cycle (2011-2012), of which $15,790 comes from small donors, the “average Joe” like you and me.

Another $965,850 was raised from his top 100 donors, an all-star team of big labor and big business; many of those businesses from industries, which based on his committee assignments, Israel is supposed to be overseeing (including those Wall Street firms he talks about on his campaign site). The following takes a look at the donations to his reelection campaign and political action committee (PAC).

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On Tuesday, February 7, House Republicans proposed adding a “Pelosi Provision” to the fast-moving insider trading ban known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act that would prevent members of Congress from landing coveted and lucrative initial public offerings (IPOs), similar to the Visa stock IPO Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi scored that made them a staggering 203% profit.

The Pelosi Visa IPO revelation made headlines when Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer published the evidence in his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out.  CBS News’s 60 Minutes did a subsequent report based on Schweizer’s book that sparked a media firestorm.

In early 2008, Nancy Pelosi and her real estate developer husband, Paul, were given an opportunity to buy into a Visa IPO.  Despite Rep. Pelosi’s consistent railing against credit card companies, on March 18, 2008, the Pelosis bought between $1 million and $5 million (politicians do not have to report the exact amounts, only ranges) worth of Visa stock at the IPO price of $44 per share. Two days later, the stock price rocketed to $65 per share, yielding a 50% profit. The Pelosis then bought Visa twice more. By their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was worth $85 per share.

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Fear the sweater vest!

So much for Governor Mitch Daniels’ “truce” on social issues. Rick Santorum refused to raise the white flag on his principles and charged ahead. Tonight he celebrates a trifecta victory in Missouri, Minnesota, and Colorado, all but shattering the myth of Romney’s inevitable cruise to victory in the presidential primary.

I’ll admit it. I didn’t see it coming. To be sure, this victory comes with caveats, as I wrote here. Santorum picked up only five delegates tonight and has 22 delegates to Romney’s 106, but it’s a move in the right direction. (The delegate count is here.)

But Santorum understands something that few of the other candidates can put into words: that the power to mandate is the power to compel and compulsion must be grounded on something higher than the mere will of the sovereign. This is a very effective argument against Barack Obama, but it it also a very effective one against Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, who also supported the Wall Street bailouts, cap and trade (taxing breathing) and of course, the individual mandate in health insurance. Both Gingrich and Romney are essentially progressives in their view that there is nothing government mustn’t do.

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Rick Santorum’s stunning sweep of the Missouri primary and the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses is a sign that Republican voters are rejecting Mitt Romney and declaring their desire for a strong ideological contrast with President Barack Obama–”a choice, not an echo.”

It is also a sign that the 2012 presidential election is about more than fiscal and economic issues, despite the conventional wisdom that social conservatism had fallen out of fashion. Even if social issues are not the focus in 2012, they have become important to establishing a clear and successful opposition to the radical agenda of the Obama administration.

Above all, Santorum’s win–which was decisive in all three states–showed that Republican voters are not going to behave the way that the media wants them to; they will not put principle aside to coronate a winner, nor follow the big money and big-name endorsements. (more…)

The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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Update: The Colorado GOP Chair has announced that Rick Santorum has won the caucus of the Centennial State.

WASHINGTON (AP) – A resurgent Rick Santorum won Minnesota’s Republican presidential caucuses with ease Tuesday night and reached for victory in Colorado, raising fresh questions about front-runner Mitt Romney’s appeal among the ardent conservatives at the core of the party’s political base.

Santorum triumphed, as well, in a nonbinding Missouri primary that was worth bragging rights but no delegates.

“Conservatism is alive and well in Missouri and Minnesota,” the jubilant former Pennsylvania senator told cheering supporters in St. Charles, Mo. Challenging both his GOP rival and the Democratic president, he declared that on issues ranging from health care to “Wall Street bailouts, Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama.”

Returns from 74 percent of Minnesota’s precincts showed Santorum with 45 percent support, Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 27 percent and Romney—who won the state in his first try for the nomination four years ago—with 17 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich trailed with 11 percent. (more…)

“The new debate in the Republican party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians,” says Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). “A lot of the libertarian ideas that Ron Paul is talking about…should not be alien to any Republican.”

Yet right after the 2010 midterm elections, the influential Tea Party favorite proclaimed that “you can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative,” a comment that was widely viewed as a slap at libertarians. And South Carolina’s junior senator is also a staunch pro-lifer, has favored a constitutional ban on flag burning, and is on the record saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to teach at public schools.

More recently, DeMint has been leaning libertarian. His new book, Now or Never: Saving America from Economic Collapse, is a warning to the nation that we need radical spending cuts (including putting defense spending on the table) or else face economic oblivion. And he was instrumental in getting Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010, including the most libertarian member of the caucus, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who also wrote the foreword to DeMint’s book.

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GOP voters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri vote today. Colorado and Minnesota are caucuses. Missouri is a non-binding primary.

Rick Santorum may be about to do what was unimaginable to most people just a few weeks ago: take 2 of 3 states from Mitt Romney. Yet Santorum is still considered a long shot for the Republican nomination, and the presidency. That is because his campaign has lacked money and organization; he is still failing to qualify for ballots in several states, for example. But it is also because Santorum’s social conservatism is seen as a liability.

Rick Santorum in Minnesota (Photo: AP / Washington Times)

Conventional wisdom has long held that the 2012 election would be about fiscal and economic issues, not social issues such as abortion or gay marriage. The Tea Party movement seemed to have put limited-government issues ahead of social issues on the Republican agenda. And controversy over the religious views of presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann seemed an obstacle to their success in the general election.

But social conservatism may be due for a revival, for three reasons. First, the Obama administration and the left in general have provoked fights with religious communities. Catholic voters are upset by Obama’s decision to force religious institutions to offer contraceptives and abortifacients under ObamaCare; opponents of gay marriage are upset by (largely) liberal efforts to overturn Proposition 8, California’s 2008 referendum. (more…)

Russ Feingold is already criticizing Barack Obama for his reversal on the use of Super PACs. Obama has consistently been on record condemning the process whereby individuals and corporations can donate to a PAC anonymously to support a related campaign.

So much for priorities. Obama’s Super PAC is Priorities USA.

Liberal ex-Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.) is ripping President Obama’s decision to embrace super-PACs. Feingold, who co-authored landmark campaign finance legislation with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to regulate campaigns, said Obama is “dancing with the devil” by deciding to fully support Priorities USA, a Democratic political action committee.

Says Team Obama, we won’t bring a knife to a gunfight. But will they attempt to punch back twice as hard? I’d make book on it, if I were you.

With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

Check out the above video of Obama denouncing said Super-PACs.

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Today, the 9th Circuit upheld the absurd ruling of Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, striking down Proposition 8, the voter-approved constitutional amendment that would uphold traditional marriage in the state. The ruling itself was highly political and in no way legally oriented. “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians,” wrote the Court, “and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior… the Constitution simply does not allow for ‘laws of this sort.’”

This, of course, is blatantly false. To begin, the Constitution says nothing about marriage whatsoever, which means that its definition is left to the states to decide. Second, there are plenty of great reasons to uphold traditional marriage and to disapprove alternative forms of marriage, ranging from thousands of years of history to state interest in childbirth to state interest in child rearing. Thirdly, the notion that the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution applies to homosexual behavior rather than innate distinctions like race is absurd. Marriage laws approve and disapprove behavior, not status. While gay rights advocates like to equate race and sexuality, the two are vastly different – you can’t shake your race, but your behavior can always change, no matter how unpleasant that change may be. Behavior is routinely regulated by the states and invariably affects people differently based on whether or not they engage in said behavior.

Leave aside the absolutely correct charges that this ruling is a legal abomination, and the fact that our judiciary wields far too much clout overall. Let’s focus instead, for a moment, on the impact this ruling will have on the presidential race.

President Obama has been able to elude the question of same-sex marriage overall. His slippery rhetoric indicates that he’s pro-civil unions but anti-same sex marriage but is “evolving.” This ruling will force him to take a side. He will likely attempt to suggest that this is a decision best left to the courts, but he’s never taken that position before – see, for example, campaign finance reform. It’s unlikely that the gay community or the religious community will allow him to get away with that. (more…)