On the heels of Newt Gingrich’s trouncing of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary, Republican Party brass are privately expressing deep concerns that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s high unfavorable rating in national polls could prove catastrophic to the so-called “down ballot”–the House and Senate races under the presidential race–and may even threaten the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives.

GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, who previously served as Sen. John McCain’s senior campaign strategist, told MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow that if Mr. Gingrich wins next week’s Florida GOP primary, there will be “a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language. People will go crazy.”

Mr. Schmidt said he believes Mr. Gingrich’s near universal name recognition indicates that perceptions of Mr. Gingrich have calcified over time and are therefore unlikely to change.  With a national unfavorable rating that he puts at 60 percent, Mr. Schmidt says he believes a Gingrich candidacy could spell disaster for Republican hopes of holding the House and regaining the Senate.

Newt Gingrich has a 100% name ID, has a 60% national unfavorable number and it’s a number so high that with the 100% name ID it’s impossible to come back from. You’re not electable in a general election, in a 2012 presidential election if your unfavorable numbers are that high. Particularly against a president, that while vulnerable, is still a net positive in that number. So people look at Newt Gingrich and don’t see him as a plausible candidate in the general election, so the Republican establishment who thinks that the president is vulnerable and beatable is going to begin to melt down if Gingrich’s momentum continues.

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After three years of criticizing President Barack Obama’s anti-Israel policies, and a special election in New York last September during which he supported the Republican candidate, former Mayor Ed Koch has once again decided to be an advocate for Obama in the Jewish community–without any clear changes in Obama’s positions.

This is not Koch’s first such reversal. During the 2008 Democratic Party primary season, Koch had worried that a Barack Obama would not be a friend to Israel:

Hillary recently attempted to warn Iran that were it to launch nuclear weapons against Israel, the U.S. “would be able to totally obliterate them.” Hillary’s comments were totally in keeping with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which kept the Soviet Union at bay during the Cold War when it threatened its European neighbors and members of NATO.

Instead of joining Hillary in a similar warning to Iran, Senator Obama on “Meet The Press” criticized Hillary stating, “It’s language reflective of George Bush…This kind of language is not helpful.”

Koch concluded:

We now know just how far Senator Obama is prepared to go to defend our friends and allies. It is not far enough.

Just four months later, without any change in Obama’s positions, Koch endorsed Barack Obama.

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The gist of a recently released opposition research document from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is that the former Massachusetts governor is not a real Republican because some of his centrist positions and alliances with Democrats. Researchers working for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) reportedly authored the file during the 2008 Republican primary.

But some of the claims may simply illustrate a man who is committed to his own ideals, loyal to those around him and perhaps trying to do what is morally right–maybe even by hiring advisers to offer him objective perspectives so that he doesn’t just have people around him who mimic his own views. Among some of the exacerbated criticisms are the following with an alternative counter-point below each allegation:

1. “Romney voted for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary”

Tsongas was a Senator from Massachusetts, Romney’s own state.

2. “Romney was an independent until deciding to run for the Senate in 1994.”

Mitt Romney’s 1994 bid for U.S. Senate was his first attempt at running for political office. It should be no surprise that he was independent before then since independents make up the majority of Massachusetts voters–some of whom remain non-party affiliated or “unenrolled” so that they can opt to vote in either primary in each election. According to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Elections Division online records, in February 1994  there were 418, 298 registered Republicans, 1,283,986 registered Democrats, but 3,174,759 total voters, which leaves 1,471,500 unenrolled voters. Romney was no different than the largest class of Massachusetts voters.

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Jon Huntsman Jr. has ended his bid for the presidency.

So what went wrong? A lot, but the simplest explanation may be the best.

Here it is from Ed Morrissey: “He governed in Utah as a conservative in a state controlled by the GOP, but talked like a centrist who despised conservatives. Huntsman’s expensive and embarrassing flop really isn’t much more complicated than that.”

In essence, Jon Huntsman lacked the temperament necessary to be president. His announcement that he would “take the high road came had a whiff of moral arrogance,” as George F. Will put it, created a stench that never really left his campaign. As Will rightly noted, there is always a candidate who runs who doesn’t much care for the party whose nomination he is seeking.

Huntsman seemed to believe that he was above it all. In his calls for civility, he was often uncivil–saying, for example that “they pick corn in Iowa,” he told CBS’s Early Show, “and pick presidents in New Hampshire.” (more…)

Jon Huntsman Jr. is surging in New Hampshire, but what to make of the results if he pulls off a second place upset?

Well, I predicted that Jon Huntsman would pull off that upset on Breitbart.tv with Steve Bannon and Larry O’Connor, back when it was a long shot. Here’s what led me to that conclusion. Take a gander at the WMUR-University of New Hampshire poll:

While Paul does best among Undeclared voters who identify as independents with 30%, followed by Huntsman (24%), and Romney (24%). And among Undeclared voters who identify as Democrats, Huntsman does best with 39%, followed by Romney (23%), and Paul (16%).

New Hampshire allows same-day registration for voting.

It remains to be seen if Huntsman’s strategy of appealing to his country first has any real play with these independent-minded voters. His penultimate ad of the New Hampshire campaign trail is titled “Country First,” much like John McCain’s same “Country First” slogan in 2008.

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A friend of mine called me after the Iowa caucuses and asked, “Why isn’t John Huntsman getting noticed in this race? He’s the most intelligent candidate in the field!”  I would say the GOP nominees are much like what we say in Texas about the weather. If you don’t like the weather right now, wait five minutes.

GOP insider and strategist Charles Krauthammer recently tagged the 2012 Republican candidates as “embarrassing.”  To the contrary, I believe the GOP has good candidates who have A: failed to learn from their predecessors mistakes in 2008 and/or B: suffer from a timid, frantic, backbiting GOP establishment who distrust the minds and intellect of the conservative voter and the power of conservative ideals. Therefore if Huntsman can wait on the GOP to choke on Romney he will by default he get his turn and perhaps just in time. How is that for embarrassing?

The problem for Republicans in 2012 election isn’t a fleet of poor candidates. The lack of support and backbone from the Republican establishment that would allow them to play to win is killing us. The GOP is choking. In tennis, choking happens most when the better player realizes he should and can win. Instead of going for the shots that got him in a winning position, he plays not to lose hoping his opponent will give him the match.  One backhand in the net or one forehand sailed long, and he is immediately thrown off course, convinced that he must play it safe. This has been the GOP for the past nine months which explains the ushering in and out of every running Republican candidate where no one has shown the longevity to make it to the final.

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Rick Santorum greets voters in New Hampshire (Source: Yahoo News)

South Carolina is emerging as the key battleground in the Republican primary for 2012–and the campaigns are accelerating their ad buys in the state.

Since his success in Iowa, Rick Santorum has raised $2 million in two days, $250,000 of it online. Santorum is using the money for a 1,000-point television ad buy in South Carolina–a very significant campaign, aiming, generally, to ensure that the targeted audience sees the ad ten times. (Air time is cheaper in South Carolina than in Iowa or New Hampshire, where the same ad buy would be more expensive.)

When Santorum enters the TV ad market, he’ll find he’s got competition. According to data obtained by Big Government, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry have purchased $295,273, $486,118, and $223,992, respectively, worth of television ads thus far. (SuperPACs supporting Romney and Paul have booked $147,000 and $185,000 respectively. Another SuperPAC supporting Romney spent $1.1 million last month. A SuperPAC supporting Santorum is preparing a significant ad buy of its own.)

There’s little other data to guide predictions in South Carolina: prior to last night, here had not been a poll reported from South Carolina since December 18, 2011–fully eighteen days prior. That is an eternity in this election cycle. Eighteen days before the Iowa caucuses, Gingrich was leading them. On caucus night, he was in a distant fourth place. Such is the fluidity of polling in this presidential campaign.

The Democratic polling firm, Public Policy Polling, had Romney leading by ten points in South Carolina last night, on its first night of polling.  Remember, though, that this was the same polling firm that predicted Ron Paul would win the Iowa caucuses. It routinely overstates moderate Republican support and discounts conservative Republican support. Still, if that ten points holds, the race is over.

Rasmussen’s numbers–just out this morning–are a more optimistic for Santorum, and reflect his new status as the top contender to challenge Romney. With Romney at 27 percent, Santorum at 24 percent, and Gingrich at 13 percent, the new numbers suggest a significant shift in the race. Perry is a distant fifth (behind Ron Paul) at 5 percent. (more…)

From The Hill:

A Senate committee easily cleared legislation explicitly prohibiting members from profiting by trading on inside information, despite objections from some GOP lawmakers who called it unnecessary and politically motivated.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced the bill by a vote of 7-2 Tuesday. GOP Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) dissented, calling the bill unnecessary and rife with potential unintended consequences. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also opposed the bill, but was absent from the vote.

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On July 17th, while debt ceiling talks were at their height, I had a post on Big Government in which I wrote:

Look folks, we literally have Obama right where we want him. Not only is he beatable, he has actually already beaten himself by spending this country into the ground. Now is no time to do him a favor by raising the debt ceiling and letting him off the hook.

Republicans had the world by the tail for a brief moment and, but lacking the courage to do it, they could have stood their ground and guaranteed Obama was going to be a one term president.

Instead, Speaker Boehner—with the encouragement of that great conservative stalwart John McCain—entered into an asinine agreement to allow a Super Committee to form and make decisions in lieu of Congress’s unwillingness to do so. As a result, Obama not only got a bit of breathing room but actually received a reprieve yesterday, when the Super Committee failed to reach an agreement on spending cuts. Now Obama can stand back and fault the Republicans for the committee’s failure, thereby shifting the blame for our faltering economy from his horrid policies to their unwillingness to meet the Democrats half-way.

Thus, as soon as the Super Committee’s gridlock was announced, Obama pounced on the chance to paint Republicans as inside-the-beltway politicians who are out of touch with what the people need: “There are still too many Republicans in Congress who have refused to listen to the voices of reason and compromise that are coming from outside of Washington.”

As a result of the Super Committee’s failure—which is really Obama’s success—our military will face a $600 billion cut in funding. So now McCain is all worked up and issuing press releases that describe these cuts as a “threat to the national security interests of the United States” and vowing that they must not “be allowed to occur.”

Earth to John McCain: We told you this back in July when we, as conservatives, opposed Boehner’s attempts to reach across the aisle and throw Obama a life preserver. You, however, responded to our concern by describing Tea Partiers as “hobbits” given to “crack political thinking.”

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Four years ago, Mitt Romney was the last, best hope of the conservative movement as a surging John McCain looked set to clinch the Republican nomination. Romney’s concession speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) (parts a, b, and c) cemented his bond with the delegates, who understood their ideals were about to yield to the compromise politics of the moderate–and ostensibly more electable–McCain.

Today, Romney is considered the compromise candidate, regarded with suspicion by the conservative base as the emissary of the Republican establishment. That is not, as the left (and David Frum) alleges, because the party has become more “extreme.” Rather, it is because Barack Obama’s far-left agenda has produced a strong desire for new leadership that will aggressively oppose the dramatic growth in the size and cost of government.

The Obama agenda was a challenge the Republican Party seemed unprepared, unable, and–at times–unwilling to resist in early 2009. That is why the Tea Party emerged–first in response to the Obama “porkulus,” then ObamaCare. It could not reverse those policies right away, but after the 2010 elections it ensured Republicans would refuse to raise taxes to close the deficit, or to approve bailouts of profligate state governments.

For the Tea Party, the next goal is to repeal ObamaCare and to pass entitlement and spending reforms that ensure the financial stability of the U.S. government, without raising taxes that will constrain economic growth. In so doing, Tea Party conservatives hope to do more than restrain the expansion of government, but to also restore the robust vision of individual freedom that enabled America’s rise as a global industrial power.

That is a different mission than the one many Republicans shared in 2008, when the unifying goal was to protect the military gains of the war on terror from the radical anti-war agenda that had seized the resurgent Democrats. McCain was a better fit for that agenda, and Romney is a weak standard-bearer for the new one, having supported big government interventions–albeit at the state level–in both health care and energy.

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While Obama tours the country promoting his personal donation plan, the Republican Presidential hopefuls are in a pitched battle for the nomination and arguing which tax simplification plan is best. Threatened with the possibility of rate cuts, the Media and politicians trot out the usual suspects of lies about tax hikes and tax cuts.  This is a battle Republicans must win and, to do so, they need to expose those lies.

Keep in mind that the battle between those who create wealth and those that want to redistribute it, mainly politicians, is as old as civilization itself.  We read of tax battles and even reform in every age, like Urukagina’s tax reductions in Babylonia/Sumer in 2350 BC.  Equally venerable are the constant set of demagogic lies by those against tax cuts and simplification.  It is important to note that politicians like complicated tax codes and high tax rates because they control those rates and dispense the loopholes and regulations that complicate the tax code.  Tax simplification means they lose power.  As a result, resistance to tax reform is more often the rule than reform. As for the lies, they abound, so let’s consider just a few:

Lie # 1: Tax cuts cause deficits/Tax hikes balance the budget.  The Media and the Left often say that the Reagan and Bush tax cuts led to deficits while Clinton’s tax hikes led to a balanced budget. In truth, according to the IRS, federal tax revenues rose dramatically after the overall Reagan tax cuts/reforms (98%) and the Bush tax cuts (a record $700+ billion). This is just as they did after the Harding/Coolidge cuts (61% revenue increase) and after the Kennedy/Johnson cuts (62% revenue increase).  Those are the four major income tax reductions we have had since the inception of the income tax in 1913 and every time revenues rose after they were in place – every time.

So did the tax rate cut cause a deficit? The lie, of course, is to blame the revenue gathering mechanism (tax code/rate cut) instead of the revenue spending mechanism, i.e. Congress/Presidents.  The spenders kept spending – often at an accelerated rate when they saw the new revenues.  Thus, the fault for continuing deficits lies not with tax rate cuts, which produced higher revenues, but with politicians who spent too much.

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When Gov. Sarah Palin was deciding whether or not to get into the presidential race, Karl Rove was popping up on Fox News to talk about why her skin was too thin for the job. And when Gov. Rick Perry was thinking about his entrance into the race, Rove was Johnny-on-the-spot with reasons why a Perry candidacy would not be viable either.

Now Rove’s moved on to Herman Cain, whose candidacy he’s doing all he can to sink, sidetrack, or otherwise derail.

On Fox News this past Monday, Rove did his best Mr. Rogers imitation by holding up a small dry-erase board with words (and phrases) for the day like “abortion, neoconservative, Afghan policy,” etc.  According to Rove, Cain’s “gaffes” in these areas have rendered him unelectable.

How so? Well, according to Rove: “I think it has created an image of him as not being up to this task. [And] that’s really deadly.”

Of course, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that Rove is an establishment Republican who supports McRomney And if someone really wants to focus on gaffes, they should focus on McRomney’s deception on hiring illegal lawn care workers, his full-blown support of Roe v. Wade not so long ago, his support of the assault weapons ban, his support of the Brady Bill, and his ongoing belief in manmade global warming, among other things.

But I guess all that wouldn’t fit on Rove’s little board. (more…)

I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that. …It’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.

I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

Although those words sound like they could have come straight from Obama’s mouth teleprompter, they didn’t. Rather, they were spoken by Mitt Romney on the campaign trail over the last few days and months.

I know he’s trying to pawn himself off as a conservative right now – because he wants to be president – but he’s not conservative, and since the Republican field appears afraid to point that out, I’m doing it for them.

While you’ve got to credit Romney for acting like a conservative during debates, if you really look at him, it’s easy to see he’s a big government moderate who’s susceptible to fallacious arguments any honest observer can see through.

For example, said Romney in June 2011: “I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer.”

(I should add that I once read that Elvis was serving hamburgers at a Burger King in Kalamazoo, MI. I can’t prove that, but I read it in 1994.)

If it bothers you that I described Romney as a big government moderate, just think about it: Number one, he is a moderate (no conservative would have ever supported Romneycare). Number two, what, other than government, will he rely on to fix the so-called global warming problem?

And I haven’t even mentioned his abortion problem.

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“Science!”: Beyond the Pose, Mr. Huntsman, What Would You DO?

When that silver-haired Republican candidate weighs in on the ‘climate’ debate I want to stick around until the end of the video. I love that line, “Good heavens, Miss Nakamoto, you’re beautiful!”

Wait, that’s not Magnus Pyke?

Seriously. Mr. Huntsman, beyond the pose: what would you do? “Science!” is a talking point. More of a pose, really, of being the thoughtful man while its success depends on no more than Pavlovian nodding and clucking in response. Anything else ultimately arrives at the question Hunstman’s pose begs:

What. Would. You. Do.?

What’s your point? You’re down with the kidz on campus and your media base can rest easy because you’re not, you know, ‘crazy’ as you say? Or you’re going somewhere with this? Is it cap-and-trade? Kyoto? Kyoto II? Carbon (dioxide…meaning ‘energy’) taxes?

What? And after you answer that, well, without using the word “science(!)”, please then state why?

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Michele Bachmann’s decision to vote against raising the debt ceiling, and to campaign on that stance, may turn out to be a decisive event in the race for the GOP nomination–and the presidency.

Whether that was the right policy for the economy is still an open question–especially since the U.S. credit rating was downgraded anyway. But it was the right decision for American politics, because it assures voters a real choice in 2012.

2012 is about the future. (Bachmann campaign)

The turning point in the 2008 contest was the financial crisis of mid-September–and the decision by John McCain to support the massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. That may or may not have been the right economic decision; economists are still debating that, and plenty of conservatives supported the bailouts. But it robbed American voters of the chance to choose an alternative to Barack Obama’s big government philosophy.

By the time McCain arrived at the first presidential debate on September 26, 2008, there was little apparent difference between the two candidates on the substantive question of the role and size of government. Only Sarah Palin managed to articulate an unabashed defense of the free market–one that held Wall Street accountable but also emphasized personal responsibility rather than the need for government intervention in the economy.

As House Majority Leader Eric Cantor notes in a must-read interview in the Wall Street Journal, the 2012 election will offer voters the debate over the role of government that voters deserved–and which the GOP was too timid to offer–in 2008. Any Republican candidate, including those now positioning themselves as moderates, would be better than Obama on that question–but who would best articulate the Republican position? (more…)

Our country is in crisis. Not the kind of crisis liberals invent out of mid air but the kind that results from the implementation of their policies and brings a country to its knees (and proves the president a rank amateur and many of the legislators unsuited for office). We are in debt, we have an energy crisis, we have high unemployment, and we’re more worried about whether our enemies think we’re nice that we are with crushing them with our military might.

In a word: times are crazy.

Yet in the middle of all this, I can honestly say I’m still glad John McCain lost.

If you think I’m wrong, just think back to last week, when we were praying conservatives in the House would stand their ground instead of giving in to the establishment and voting for Speaker Boehner’s bill. For standing on their principles, McCain referred to them as “hobbits” and said that theirs “is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

For the record, does he not know how much better off we’d be if Angle and O’Donnell had won? (Who wouldn’t trade ten McCains for one Angle and one O’Donnell?)

Please keep in mind that McCain spent every waking moment of his 2010 Senate re-election campaign appealing to the Tea Party for support, claiming he has always been conservative, and campaigning for Angle and other Tea Party candidates.

Yes – he campaigned for her. (He’s as fake as a Milli Vanilli song.)

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After weeks of hard negotiation a compromise deal is has been drafted and will be voted on by both houses before the end of the day tomorrow. This deal does give a political victory for some of the players and more importantly can even lead to a victory for the country provided that GOP leadership of both houses consider this as a starting point, and make certain steps to keep the pressure coming. The bill will not forestall a ratings download, but honestly I don’t believe that anything could as even a bill that cut $4 trillion doesn’t cut the deficit but merely slows down its growth.

No one in recent memory has faced the left’s vitriol like Sarah Palin (not even George W. Bush). The over-the-top, asinine attacks she’s received have been so ubiquitous they need not even be relisted here. Just suffice it to say there is a genuine hatred of Palin throughout the MSM, the leadership of the Democrat Party, and the Republican Party establishment.

And don’t be fooled folks: they don’t hate her because of her convictions – although they despise her convictions – rather, they hate her because they can’t control her.

Fortunately, the hatred the left holds for Palin is more than overcome by the love conservatives and right-leaning Independents have for her. They see in her a refreshing image that dares cast certain issues in the prism of right and wrong, just and unjust, American and un-American, etc.

Perhaps as a group, the Tea Party has come closest to receiving the kind of vindictive normally reserved for Palin alone. There’s no doubt they’re hated as she is hated, and equally no doubt that the hatred is a result of the fact that the MSM, the leadership of the Democrat Party, and the Republican Party establishment can’t control them.

For example, during the push to get Tea Partiers to “compromise” (which is political speak for check your convictions at the door) and support Boehner 3.0, an angry John McCain took to the Senate floor and referred to Tea Party conservatives in the House as “hobbits,” Senator Lisa Murkowski , whom Alaskans foolishly elected over Joe Miller last year, referred to them as “absolutists,” and John Kerry, the haughty one, described them as a group “of extremists, who don’t understand the implications even of what they’re doing.”

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Looking at the current GOP field, I share what seems to be the ubiquitous feeling of “blah.” Apart from Michele Bachmann, no one in the field appears to be serious about beating Obama, and the two guys getting the most love from the mainstream media, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, are destined to lose if they secure the Republican nomination.

To be honest, just the fact that the mainstream media keeps them front and center should be warning enough for every lucid Republican. After all, this is the same way the media carried John McCain through the primaries in 2008: because they knew if he were the Republican nominee the Democrats could win with any candidate. (I dare say Jimmy Carter could have beat McCain.)

So here we are, it’s 2011, and two different versions of McCain-lite, McRomney and McHuntsman, are trying to convince us they’re ready to lead. But I’ve got news for you: if either of these two gets the nomination, Obama will literally skate back into the White House for four more years.

Apart from the obvious problem of having instituted Romney-care while governor of Massachusetts, McRomney has the added disadvantages of supporting continued ethanol subsidies and refusing to sign a pledge to nominate only pro-life justices to the bench (were he to be president). The pro-ethanol subsidies make him look like a big government RINO (Republican-In-Name-Only), and the refusal to sign the pro-life pledge on justices makes us wonder what the future would hold were he to become president.

Think about it: Who wants a president that’s going to continue to take our tax dollars and give them to corn farmers whose corn is used for ethanol, only because those farmers are accustomed to getting government handouts? And who wants a president that would simply write off Roe v. Wade as something that can never be overturned?

Anyway, McRomney is a non-starter.

So what about McHuntsman?

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