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…)

Contrary to popular perception, there were no winners in the Iowa caucuses, but many losers.

Let’s dispense with the obvious losers first:

• Michele Bachmann: Hometown girl did not make good. Bachmann made much of her Iowa roots on the campaign trail and won the Ames Straw poll, but in the end she won barely five percent of the vote. Part of the problem was that she was prone to gaffe and conspiracies. Her argument that vaccines cause autism didn’t wash. Her supporters are now politically homeless, though she might still have some residual effect on the presidential race. She has a choice to make now when it comes to endorsements. Expect her to wait though if she waits too long she risks becoming irrelevant. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Matt Lewis to discuss last night’s vote in Iowa, the potential departure of Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, and how the race looks now with New Hampshire and South Carolina next on the primary calendar.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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Mitt Romney celebrates GOP win; 2 rivals flounder
Quitters: Why a conservative exodus is bad for Romney
To fend off Iowa attacks, historian Newt Gingrich turns to ‘passive resistance’
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Matt K Lewis.com

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From National Journal:

After a disappointing sixth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses over night, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, the campaign announced on Wednesday morning.

Bachmann, who won the Iowa straw poll in August, won only 5 percent of the votes in Tuesday’s caucus. After the results, she cancelled her trip to South Carolina, where she would have campaigned to win the state’s primary on Jan. 21, Fox News reported.

(more…)

I’ll assume there was a time when giving Iowa permanent “first in the nation” status in our Presidential primary contests made sense. But, I don’t know when that time was. Mind you, this isn’t some East Coast gripe about “flyover country”; I grew up in the Mid-West and went to college in Iowa. I love the state. Sure, its voters are fickle; BOTH uber-lefty Sen. Tom Harkin and mostly-conservative Sen. Chuck Grassley are hugely popular in the state. That’s not independent. That’s borderline incoherent. And, of course, Iowa’s permanent status has saddled our country with one of the more disastrous government policies in history; ethanol subsidies. My main beef with Iowa’s permanent status is simply that we don’t use caucuses to elect Presidents.

Caucuses are very different animals than primaries. Having participated in one years ago, I can say there is much to recommend about them. But the demands of the caucus mean that relatively few people will participate and those who do participate are very different than other voters. To participate, voters assemble at a set time–tonight’s is 7pm CST. They hear speeches from other voters arguing for each individual candidate and then voting begins. The entire process can take up to two hours. If you’re sick, working, don’t have child-care or simply look upon a two hour voting process with dread, you can’t take part–only around a quarter of the active, registered Republicans will likely vote tonight.

Only the most dedicated and motivated voters, whether for a candidate or an issue, will participate. Moreover, Democrat and Independent voters can show up and register as a Republican on the spot and cast a ballot. This can skew the results; just ask famous caucus losers John McCain, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Mike Dukakis or Ronald Reagan, among others.

The key to performing well in Iowa is to either become the chosen candidate of highly motivated issue voters or have a very strong field organization to turn out your supporters. Remember, only about 150,000 voters will take part tonight, so a strong ground game is critical.

The final Des Moines Register poll, released Saturday, provides the last, best snapshot of the state of the field: Romney 24%, Paul 22%, Santorum 15%, Newt Gingrich 12%, Perry 11% and Bachmann 7%. So, what to expect tonight?

(more…)

From FoxNews:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is intervening in his state’s presidential primary dispute and plans to file emergency legislation to address the inability of most Republican presidential candidates to get their name on the ballot, Fox News has learned.

Meanwhile, four GOP candidates on Saturday joined fellow candidate Rick Perry’s lawsuit against the state, urging the Board of Elections to either allow them on the ballot or at least refrain from taking any action until a Jan. 13 court hearing.

(more…)

The Des Moines Register, which is widely considered one of very best indicators of how the results of the Iowa caucuses will turn out, has released their final Republican primary poll.  The race is still up for grabs, with Mitt Romney clinging to a narrow lead over Ron Paul.  Yet, the most compelling storyline of this last weekend before the primary continues to be Rick Santorum, who has gone “all in” in Iowa and surged in the poll. He needs a great result Tuesday to jump-start a campaign that has yet to catch on nationally.

The poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, shows support at 24 percent for Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts; 22 percent for Paul, a Texas congressman; and 15 percent for the surging Rick Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

But the four-day results don’t reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.

“Momentum’s name is Rick Santorum,” said the Register’s pollster, J. Ann Selzer.

Another sign of the race’s volatility: 41 percent of likely caucusgoers say they could still be persuaded to change their minds.

Selzer & Co. of Des Moines conducted the poll of 602 likely Republican caucusgoers, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. In the final two days of polling, 302 likely caucusgoers were interviewed, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.6 percentage points.

Rounding out the field, in results from the full, four-day poll: former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 12 percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, 11 percent, and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, 7 percent.

(more…)

Evangelicals are in a civil war in Iowa. If they could unite behind a candidate, they could defeat Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in the Iowa caucuses, but they can’t. Part of the problem is that three candidates are running for evangelical support but Iowa simply isn’t big enough for the three of them. They’re splitting the vote. Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum are all making a play for the social conservatives they need to propel them onward. In 2008, sixty percent of the participants in the Iowa caucuses were evangelical.

Eight days ago Rick Santorum won the personal endorsements of two evangelical leaders—Bob Vander Plaats, CEO of the Family Leader, and Chuck Hurley, President of the Iowa Family Policy Center. The endorsements may have been just enough to push Santorum up in the polls—at Bachmann’s expense. Vander Plaats asked Bachmann to drop out and endorse one of the social conservatives.

The Bachmann team is simply imploding with the defection of a top aide to the Ron Paul camp.  She herself has said that it would take nothing less than a “miracle” to win. When you have to keep insisting that you aren’t dropping out—it may be time to drop out.  Look to Bachmann to exit stage left after Iowa. The question becomes who will she endorse.

(more…)

From the Associated Press:

With a week to go, the state of the race in Iowa generally mirrors the race from coast to coast.

Polls show Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, having lost ground and Texas Rep. Ron Paul having risen, with both still in contention with formerMassachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the head of the pack. All the others competing in Iowa—Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum—are trailing.

But, in a sign that the contest is anyone’s to win, most polls have shown most Republican caucusgoers undecided and willing to change their minds before the contest in a state where the vote typically breaks late in the campaign year.

(more…)

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Four Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul — submitted paper work in time to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 primary ballot.

No other GOP contender will be on the Virginia ballot. Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not submit signatures with Virginia’s State Board of Elections by today’s [Thursday] 5 p.m. deadline.

(more…)

In the latest Gallup poll taken the day before the last Republican debate on Thursday, Newt Gingrich was leading Mitt Romney by 20 points- 41% to 21%- among those who profess themselves to be “conservatives.” Gov. Romney, however, was leading the former Speaker by 10 points- 27% to 17%- among those who describe themselves as “liberal” or “moderate.”

Even Republican presidential candidate, and head of the congressional Tea Party caucus, Michele Bachmann, who invoked the name of George Will to accuse Mr. Gingrich, during Thursday night’s debate, of “tolerating infanticide,” once thought he was the greatest conservative since sliced bread. Does this count as a “flip-flop?”

Now, Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S. Carolina) has given her much-coveted endorsement of Mitt Romney. This is, perhaps, not a shock since, despite her rise to power on the wings of Tea Party support, she and Mr. Romney have had a mutual admiration society “thing” happening since 2008, when Ms. Haley served as Gov. Romney’s state co-chair for his presidential bid that year. Mr. Romney then supported her in her gubernatorial bid in 2010, for which she reportedly received $900,000 worth of ads paid for by the Republican Governors’ Association. After former Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed her, Ms. Haley’s status as a rising star of the Republican party was solidified.

Gov. Haley’s endorsement is considered significant because, since 1980, South Carolina has successfully picked the Republican nominee for president. Now, Gov. Romney undoubtedly hopes her Tea Party “glow” will rub off on him, since it appears many conservatives of the Tea Party philosophy are still supportive of Speaker Gingrich and some of the other Republican candidates. In a pointed dismissal of Mr. Gingrich, Gov. Haley said of Mr. Romney, “He is not a creature of Washington, and he knows what it means to make decisions – real decisions – not simply cast a vote.”

(more…)

Tonight’s debate among the Republican presidential contenders, co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and CNN, will feature the candidates’ views on foreign policy.

By now, Republican voters are used to the clash between the hawkish approach favored by the party mainstream and the isolationist posture championed by Rep. Ron Paul–a confrontation that has been a feature of GOP presidential debates since the 2008 election.

Yet the events of the past year–especially the upheaval of the Arab Spring–have generated real debates among conservatives about how the United States should respond to a rapidly changing Middle East, an ambitious China, and a disintegrating European Union. Those new fault lines within the party will likely make their appearance on the stage tonight.

Though it is certain that each of the Republican candidates on stage tonight will criticize President Barack Obama’s record, each will find something different to criticize–not just because of their own divergent views, but also because of Obama’s incoherent policy. (more…)

A number of people have contacted me voicing their concern that my coming out against Mitt Romney by signing onto the Not Mitt Romney pledge isn’t helpful. Their argument is that we must ensure that Obama is not re-elected. I agree. America is at a serious crossroads.

If Mitt Romney nabs the nomination as Republican candidate for President of the United States, I will support him with every breath of my body. That said, Obama Lite is not the answer. Obama Lite will not defeat Obama. In the lead-up to the primaries, we should fight for a candidate with the most principled values. Political will and courage is what we are in dire need of.

John Bolton was my candidate. He didn’t run.

Rudolph Giuliani was next in line for me. He didn’t run.

Sarah Palin had my vote. She didn’t run.

Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann are next.

Rick Perry? Please. I questioned his very bad judgment when I exposed his entire Islamic curriculum, dawah and proselytizing, to Texas school children. To this day he has never come clean about that. And the fact that he was Al Gore’s manager does not bode well.

Perry is a snake. Watch him. He is creepy. And his freak show speech in New Hampshire recently belonged in a Roger Corman film. (more…)

Until the most recent GOP debate took place, I was starting to think that perhaps Gov. Sarah Palin had waited too long to get into the race (if, in fact, she is getting in). Everything seemed to be solidifying around a match-up between Gov. Perry and Gov. McRomney, and it appeared that everyone else was simply fighting for their place on the periphery.

But a strange thing happened on the way to deciding who the Republican nominee is going to be, and that strange thing was Perry’s inexplicable refusal to recant his support for a Texas tuition waiver for illegal aliens. No matter how you slice it, his ongoing defense of giving nearly $100,000 (over four years) to pay for an illegal alien to go to college is an albatross around his neck that’s so big even McRomney can see it.

Perry is good man, and in my opinion, has been one of the greatest governors to ever hold the office in Texas. But all that gets overshadowed when his response to criticism about using taxpayer monies to pay tuition for illegals is: “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than that they’ve been brought there, through no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.”

First, somebody on Perry’s team needs to understand that illegals who go to college aren’t “children” – they’re 18 years old or older (that’s why they’re going into college instead of pre-K).

Secondly, even if they were children, on a matter of principle the whole idea is wrong (and it’s definitely not indicative of conservatism).

Think about it this way: What if someone breaks into my house and their kid tags along because it’s too hot for the kid to wait in the car. The argument could then be made that the kid ended up in my house “through no fault of [his] own.” Now, does the fact that the kid had no choice obligate me to provide him with a cool drink and a snack while my house is pillaged by his father?

No, no, no.

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Elizabeth Blackney discuss the latest Solyndra developments, the scandal that gets juicier by the day and how it may impact Obama’s 2012 chances. Then Elizabeth gives us her take on Michele Bachmann’s claim that vaccinations are anti-liberty, and that the HPV vaccination caused mental retardation in the daughter of someone Bachmann met at the debate. As Elizabeth puts it, Michele Bachmann needs to “pray the crazy away.”

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Solyndra failure draws attention to other firms
Is the Solyndra Scandal Obama’s Watergate?
Michele Bachmann’s Former Campaign Manager Calls ‘Retardation’ Comment A Mistake
Rick Perry knocks Michele Bachmann’s HPV story

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Last night, to its credit, CNN showed what can happen if a news organization sets aside its political bias and lets the candidates actually debate. If journalism schools exist in the future, they should build a course around comparing the MSNBC/Politico partisan hackery with last night’s CNN debate.

Below is a recap of reactions from your BIG editors:

Andrew Breitbart: Whatever Wolf Blitzer took to make it tolerable for him to be around so many flyover-country Tea Party rubes, he should distribute it to his peers in the mainstream media for the coming election year. CNN put on the show that MSNBC was government-subsidized not to. What was conspicuously missing–and thus making it journalistically fair–was the usual framing of Tea Party concerns as inherently racist. So CNN, especially with its exciting intro package that felt like an ESPN playoff game intro, gets high grades. Maybe I was so appalled by MSNBC’s lower-than-low performance that CNN comes out the winner this evening, simply by behaving professionally.

What Democrats and leftists want is that artificial injection of race. But those who will bring it up in desperation after this Tampa tea party debate will have exposed one of the Democratic Party’s greatest weaknesses: concern over the plight of real minority oppression. None of the Tea Party’s critics will recognize that one of tonight’s questioners was a Tea Party member who happened to be a Muslim woman from Afghanistan. To the modern leftist, this woman is invisible. Her question mark spurring cognitive dissonance across the Daily Kos-Huffington Post-MSNBC bizarro world spectrum.

As for the candidates, there was one moment where Chuck Barris should have gonged Jon Huntsman: his humorously prepared, yet clunkily delivered “no apology” reference to Kurt Cobain. He’s providing no value to the debates, and has no constituency. Tonight should be his last debate. If MSNBC tried to bury Bachmann in the previous debate at the Reagan library, she resurrected herself on CNN tonight. The predictable governor-à-governor sparring of Romney and Perry is already becoming tedious.

Mike Flynn: Now we know why CNN has the brand it does. Hopefully, John Harris, Brian Williams, Politico and MSNBC were taking notes. Wolf certainly got his liberal biases in, from time to time, but not at the expense of a free-wheeling and interesting GOP debate. Newt had the best lines in the debate, but he’s Newt and isn’t going anywhere. Everyone else had some good lines. Rick Perry, yet again, was the subject of attacks from all sides. He was much steadier than in the first debate. He stood his ground, so I score him with the win.

Joel Pollak, EIC Breitbart: The big winner tonight was the Tea Party.

(more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Bruce Walker talks about the government’s attempt to stop the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, and Elizabeth Blackney and Benjamin Domenech walk through the HPV vaccine issue in response to Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Bachmann on Today Show: mental retardation “very real concern” for HPV vaccine
Bachmann: Crying mother shared HPV story
Heartlander: Vaccine Fearmongers Exposed
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AT&T: T-Mobile is Awful, Please Let Us Buy Them

(more…)

Tonight, CNN and Tea Party Express co-host a debate of GOP candidates in Tampa, FL, site of the upcoming GOP convention. I’m not really sure how the ‘tea party’ is going to be represented in this debate, since the moderators are pulled from CNN, but there is no way it can be any worse than the MSNBC/Politico forum last week. In that fiasco, John Harris and Brian Williams drew deeply from lefty activists like ThinkProgress to launch attacks on the GOP candidates. It was as if the DNC had done a mind-meld with Harris and Williams (redundant, I know!), and got 90+ minutes to prospect for material for negative campaign ads.

Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

(more…)

Governor Rick Perry of Texas is being attacked by two rivals in the GOP presidential race. His sin, if you can believe it, is that he told the truth (as acknowledged by everyone from Paul Krugman to Milton Friedman) about Social Security being a Ponzi scheme.

Here’s an excerpt from Philip Klein’s column in the Examiner, looking at how Mitt Romney is criticizing Perry.

Mitt Romney doubled down on his attack against Texas Gov. Rick Perry this afternoon, warning in an interview with Sean Hannity that his critique of Social Security amounted to “terrible politics” that would cost Republicans the election. Romney’s decision to pile on suggests that he’s willing to play the “granny card” against Perry if it will help him get elected, a tactic more becoming of the likes of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz than a potential Republican nominee.

And here’s a Byron York column from the Examiner looking at how Michele Bachmann is taking the same approach.

…another Republican rival, Michele Bachmann, is preparing to hit Perry on the same issue. “Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser.  “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does.  She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

Shame on Romney and Bachmann. With an inflation-adjusted long-run shortfall of about $28 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme on steroids.

(more…)