This is the short version of a rather lengthy essay I might begin work on…

Conservative and libertarian activists today like to speak in revolutionary language. Head to the tea parties. Head to the Ron Paul forums. Watch the Glenn Beck program. There is a common theme: a return to the values of 1776, to the values that define Americanism, at its core. Some have dismissed it as a temper tantrum, since there aren’t really any practical solutions involved, but it seems to signal, at the very least, a sea change in activist thought toward anti-statism away from general conservatism.

And they have taken up the right theme — but alas, the wrong message.

If there is to be a revolution, it will not be political in nature. It must start at the very root of everything: it must be, as America’s first revolution was, and be philosophical in nature. It must signal a return to the rights of man, individual achievement, self-reliance, and the counting of one’s blessings.

America today is utterly obsessed with what it lacks. The entitlement mentality has instilled an ethic of counterfeit individualism that tells every man, woman and child that he or she is special — that, by the virtue of his birth, they are entitled to comfort from, as the saying goes, cradle to grave. That he needn’t work for his labor. The fruits of one’s labor come from a magic tree in the sky — or, rather, in the White House, the State House, and the halls of Congress. And if the tree isn’t producing enough to eat, water it with the dollars of The Rich.

As a culture, we have an unprecedented standard of living, but we’re obsessed with the next fix.

We seek what entertains us, rather than what brings happiness.

We are utterly obsessed with celebrity and showbusiness, but not with work, philosophy, or self-improvement.

We refuse to make hard choices: we want Social Security to survive, but we’re unwilling to either partially privatize it, raise taxes, or cut benefits. And our spineless politicians refuse to make the tough choices that inevitably must be made, because they’re more concerned with saving their own skins.

Worst of all, We glorify victims and seek to become one: everyone likes to be persecuted. It’s how you get attention. Who’s not a victim nowadays? Women are victims. Gays are victims. Hispanics are victims. Blacks are victims. Christians are victims. White men are the victims of the victimhood of the rest of them. We’re a nation of helpless little victims.

This is the ethos that kills nations. Or, rather, it is the ethos of a dying culture. It is the one of a culture that wants to take its ball and go home, retreat into its own shell, and rest on its laurels. It is lazy, it is cocksure without being wise, and it is philosophically confused. Someone must provide all of these goodies for the receiver. But by all means, let’s not let it be the receiver, himself.

As author Mark Smith pointed out: a century ago, the rich drove while the poor walked. Today, the rich drive Jaguars while the poor drive Hyundais. That is not such a big difference. In this current health care debate, counting our blessings might be a great place to start. We’ve eradicated polio. The infant mortality rate is incredibly low. Men and women who live a healthy lifestyle can expect to live to 80-100 years of age. We have pills, vaccines, and medicines for virtually every problem under the sun. A century ago, most of these solutions did not even exist. Now, instead of celebrating the fact that they even exist — and considering just how incredible that is — we obsess over the fact that every person in the country can’t have access to them whenever they are wanted. The quest for utopia goes on.

If we are to return to the values of 1776, we must return to an ethos of self-reliance, individualism, and the conviction that we really do have the potential to live the good life — and that the good life comes from within our own capabilities, not the power of government, our neighbors, or pop culture. It comes from a commitment to virtue, productive work, and constant self-improvement.

That is not a political agenda. Politics do not arise from a vacuum. That is a philosophical commitment that we must get back to, if we are to survive as a nation.

Poll Watch: Rasmussen Survey on Health Care

How do you rate the healthcare you receive?

• Excellent 35%
• Good 39%
• Fair 17%
• Poor 7%

How do you rate the U.S. health care system?

• Excellent 17%
• Good 31%
• Fair 30%
• Poor 19%

Do you have health insurance?

• Yes 85%
• No 14%

(Among those with health insurance) How do you rate your own health insurance coverage?

• Excellent 35%
• Good 45%
• Fair 15%
• Poor 4%

Are you willing to pay higher taxes so all Americans can be provided with health insurance?

• Yes 28% (32%)
• No 60% (54%)

Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted August 1-2. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted May 13-14 are in parentheses.

Inside the numbers:

There is a huge partisan gap on perceptions of the U.S. health care system. Seven-out-of-10 Republicans rate it as good or excellent, but only one-of-four Democrats agree. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 53% rate the current system as good or excellent while just 18% say it’s poor.

Over the past few months, as the health care reform debate has raged, confidence in the current system has increased significantly among Republicans and unaffiliated voters. There has been little change among Democrats.

Rasmussen Survey on Taxation and Government Spending

Suppose one candidate for office promised to oppose all tax increases and another said he would raise taxes only on the rich. For whom would you vote?

• Candidate who promised to oppose all tax increases 45% (40%)
• Candidate who would raise taxes only on the rich 38% (44%)

Generally speaking, do tax increases help the economy, hurt the economy, or have no impact on the economy?

• Help 16% (24%)
• Hurt 54% (47%)
• No impact 14% (16%)

Do tax cuts help the economy, hurt the economy, or have no impact on the economy?

• Help 54% (56%)
• Hurt 19% (16%)
• No impact 16% (18%)

Generally speaking, do increases in government spending help the economy, hurt the economy, or have no impact on the economy?

• Help 30%
• Hurt 50%
• No impact 8%

Okay, do decreases in government spending help the economy, hurt the economy, or have no impact on the economy?

• Help 46%
• Hurt 26%
• No impact 14%

Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted July 30-31. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted February 24-25 are in parentheses.

Inside the numbers:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Republicans and 59% of voters not affiliated with either major party view tax hikes as bad for the economy. Democrats are much more closely divided: 25% say tax increases are good for the economy, while 36% say they’re bad.

Rasmussen War on Terror Update

Who is winning the War on Terrorism…the United States and its allies or the terrorists?

• United States and its allies 48% (48%)
• Terrorists 21% (19%)
• Neither 21% (25%)

Over the next six months, will the situation in Iraq get better or worse?

• Better 34% (32%)
• Worse 29% (34%)
• Stay the same 25% (24%)

Over the next six months will the situation in Afghanistan get better or worse?

• Better 22% (29%)
• Worse 41% (39%)
• Stay the same 24% (21%)

Which country is a bigger threat to the National Security of the United States…..Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, China or Russia?

• North Korea 31% (38%)
• Iran 20% (17%)
• China 16% (18%)
• Pakistan 9% (8%)
• Afghanistan 4% (3%)
• Iraq 4% (2%)
• Russia 3% (3%)

Is the United States today safer than it was before the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

• Yes 47% (45%)
• No 33% (37%)

Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted August 1-2. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted July 1 are in parentheses.

Inside the numbers:

While the plurality of all voters believe North Korea remains the biggest threat, 29% of Republicans now say that of Iran, compared to 13% of Democrats. Fifteen percent (15%) of Democrats see Pakistan as the biggest threat, compared to four percent (4%) of Republicans.

Unaffiliated voters remain fairly divided on the question: 21% name North Korea, 20% say Iran, and another 20% see China as the top threat.

#6.  Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom

The following is from an essay on the health care debate by Dr. Scott Atlas, chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute.  Dr. Atlas lists 10 reasons why the US medical system is better than you’ve heard from pop culture:

#6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

Be sure to read the entire piece here.

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Benjamin Hodge publishes the Web site KansasProgress.com, based in Johnson County, KS, in the Greater Kansas City area.  Hodge is a delegate to the Kansas GOP, a former state representative, and a former board member at Johnson County Community College.  You can join Hodge’s efforts on Facebook, through his personal Web site, on Twitter, and through his PAC.

Senator Specter and Secretary Sebelius facilitated a town-hall discussion in PA, to discuss health care reform.  They received a ‘Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’ reaction from attendees. 

If this is a sample of the broader reaction Congressman and Senator’s are receiving while on summer recess…ObamaCare may be dead by September.

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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and twitter/Kris_Lorelli.

Less than a week after Romney’s USA Today health care piece, Pawlenty offers his own thoughts in The Washington Post:

If you tie money to results, you’ll get better results. Unfortunately, government often dumps money into programs without regard to accountability and outcomes. This past week, Democrats in Congress have been busy tinkering with a Washington takeover of the health-care system, but perhaps they should look instead to the states for models of market-driven, patient-centered and quality-focused reform. Rather than taking power away from states, federal health-care reform should use the lessons we’ve learned tackling this crisis in our back yards.

In Minnesota, our state employee health-care plan has demonstrated incredible results by linking outcomes to value. State employees in Minnesota can choose any clinic available to them in the health-care network they’ve selected. However, individuals who use more costly and less-efficient clinics are required to pay more out-of-pocket.

Not surprisingly, informed health-care consumers vote wisely with their feet and their wallets. Employees overwhelmingly selected providers who deliver higher quality and lower costs as a result of getting things right the first time. The payoff is straightforward: For two of the past five years, we’ve had zero percent premium increases in the state employee insurance plan.

Minnesota has also implemented an innovative program called QCARE, for Quality Care and Rewarding Excellence. QCARE identifies quality measures, sets aggressive outcome targets for providers, makes comparable measures transparent to the public and changes the payment system to reward quality rather than quantity. We must stop paying based on the number of procedures and start paying based on results….

In typical fashion, the self-proclaimed experts piecing together this Democratic health-care legislation are focusing on only one leg — access — of a three-legged stool that also includes cost and quality. Expanding access to health care is a worthwhile goal. But equal or greater focus should be placed on containing costs for the vast majority of Americans who already have insurance. Those costs will not be contained by a massive expansion of federal programs.

Massachusetts’s experience should caution Congress against focusing primarily on access. While the Massachusetts plan has reduced the number of uninsured people, costs have been dramatically higher than expected. The result? Increased taxes and fees. The Boston Globe has reported on a current short-term funding gap and the need to obtain a new federal bailout.

Imagine the scope of tax increases, or additional deficit spending, if that approach is utilized for the entire country.

Read the whole thing.  Oh, and where have I heard that talk of three-legged stools before?

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Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com

My latest piece is up at Pajamas Media. Here’s an excerpt:

I wrote a column on 2012 myths and misconceptions back in June discussing conventional wisdom that doesn’t necessarily match up with reality. However, we just scratched the surface of the political myth-making business. Several more common memes deserve to be busted.

Myth: 2012 primary polls are legitimate news.

Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney have all led trial heats for the 2012 race for the GOP nomination that have been taken in 2009. None has topped 30 percent in any poll, and, generally, all three are within six points of each other. So what does this all mean?

Nothing. Perhaps even less than nothing.

Since I write about 2012 frequently, taking on this myth is akin to a pro-wrestler admitting that pro-wrestling is fixed. However, national 2012 primary heats (particularly those taken 1-3 years before the election) should be regarded with all the seriousness of an MSNBC online poll.

They may be fun, but they aren’t serious news. The polls are, to quote a classic TV line, “very interesting, but stupid.” There are two reasons these trial heats don’t matter.

First, we don’t know which candidates are running. The latest Rasmussen poll assumes candidacies by Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN). What if Palin, Gingrich, and Barbour, who got a combined 39 percent of the vote in the Rasmussen poll, decide not to run? Until we know who’s running, trial heats are pointless. It’s like asking someone to bet on who’s going to win the heavyweight boxing championship without knowing who’s fighting.

Second, national polling would be fine if there were a national primary, but there isn’t. The national poll numbers tells us nothing meaningful because we have a primary process where the votes of early states drastically change the race in future states. Rudy Giuliani continued to show strong national poll numbers long after his campaign effectively began its collapse.

The numbers in trial heats only reflect name recognition at a national level. For example, Huckabee and Romney were both nonentities in national polls taken throughout 2007, but emerged as two of the top contenders for the nomination based on Romney’s money and organization and Huckabee’s performance in Iowa.

National trial heats have no predictive power. Doing more polling in early primary states would have some merit, but those voters aren’t focused on the campaign yet, so the results will still be based solely on name recognition.

If there’s one value to a 2012 poll, it’s favorability numbers. The internet conversation is often dominated by people who loathe Huckabee, Palin, or Romney, and these loathers often assume all who don’t favor their own candidate of choice loathe him or her. In truth, polls show the loathers are in the minority. Any of these three would have an easier time uniting Republicans than did John McCain.

However, the headline news of a 2012 poll is a worthless piece of filler that serious people shouldn’t waste time on.

Click here to read the rest.

‘Racist’, is a powerful term used to describe the least enlightened in our society.  The left has always exploited this term to score political points against right-leaning political leaders and institutions. 

In recent weeks, this term has been used to describe President Obama.  I prefer not to use the term, ‘racist’, but President Obama (and many of his Democrat colleagues) clearly exhibit many traditional liberal prejudices.

• Anti-Zionism -  Sympathy to a political antagonist of Israel and outright rejection of Israel’s right to defend itself from state-sponsored terrorism.
• Christianophobia -  Promotion of discrimination and intolerance against devout Christians and conservative Catholics.
• Anti-Affluence - A belief that those who embrace the love of money are at root of all evils.
• Casteism -Democrats who pretend they support the impoverished and working people, but live a lifestyle of wealth and luxury in gated communities.  Those who perpetrate this system are generally described as ‘limousine liberals’.
• Anti-Soldiery -  A belief that America is a military culture and the continued promotion and funding of this culture will ruin civilian institutions.
• Hoplophobia – A mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to firearms and a belief that weapons possess a will of their own.

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Have I missed any?  If so, please add them to the comments section.

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Kristofer Lorelli can be contacted at lorville@rogers.com, on Facebook and twitter/Kris_Lorelli.

Cash for Clunkers is a success! Obama said so! Our economy is on the quick road to recovery, right?

Switch back to reality. The U.S. economy is like a small flame on a campfire, flickering and striving to light up the dark. The U.S. Congress, in its ‘wisdom,’ is not addressing the fundamentals of the economy. No, they are not conscientiously building up the woodpile underneath the flame to make it a roaring fire and strong economy. Sad to say, they are merely throwing gasoline on the flame, hoping that it will ignite the economy’s recovery.

The reality is the Cash for Clunkers program, a.k.a. the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, is a very small part of total U.S. annual auto sales. If, as some reports say, dealers have processed or are trying to complete transactions on somewhere between 240,000 to 250,000 vehicles under CARS, we can crunch some numbers.

So, what’s our return on investment? Let’s see. The allotted $1 billion for CARS seems to have been spent, and if about 250,000 vehicles were sold under the program, then it seems more money is needed for the program. If the Senate approves an additional $2 billion for CARS, you’d like to think more vehicles could be sold under the program. But the problem is, no one can say how much funding has already been spent. It could be that the additional $2 billion will cover autos sold through August 2. We just don’t know. And that’s the way the government can operate.

CARS gives a big incentive to car shoppers who trade in their old, inefficient vehicles and buy an ‘efficient’ vehicle, gaining up to a $4500 credit for trading in their ‘clunker.’ The $1 billion program was so successful that it ran out of funds in one week. The U.S. House of Representatives hastily approved an additional $2 billion more to fund CARS July 31; the funds would come from the stimulus bill passed earlier this year. It is unknown how much funding has been spent in the CARS program, something Republicans have complained about. The U.S. Senate is expected to vote on the additional $2 billion more allocated to CARS this week before their August recess.

Lest we forget, the CARS program took a huge amount of money from all American taxpayers, and spread it around to a relatively small number of car shoppers. The hope? To reinvigorate the auto industry and the economy. The change? Getting more fuel-efficient cars on the road in America. But at what cost?

Meanwhile, small businesses in America are really hurting. Loans are hard to come by and credit lines have been cut. So far, an inordinate amount of ‘too big to fail’ businesses have been bailed out by the U.S. government. Although the U.S. government bailed out companies such as AIG, numerous big banks, and GM and Chrysler, the American taxpayer is footing the trillion dollar bill. Ouch.

Oh, and the middle class? The group defined as those making less than $250,000, the middle class that Pres. Barack Obama promised would not pay more taxes? Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner isn’t ruling anything out regarding taxes. After all, all these bailouts and stimulating programs have to be payed for somehow, and the pain of higher taxes could be really spread around. Really, it’s only common sense. The deficit has gotten so big from continuous, big-ticket spending since Obama became president, that there just aren’t enough rich people to pay for it.

After that hopeful dousing of gasoline (think CARS) on the small flame, there was a big whoosh as the flames shot up, only to die quickly back down. Do you see the campfire now? I think I can make out a flicker or two. For now.

Video Source: YouTube

On August 7th the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its estimate of the unemployment rate for July.

In July the BLS estimated a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.5%. The unadjusted unemployment rate was estimated to be 9.7%.

Economists have long believed in the wisdom of crowds so lets see what you predict.

What do you guys predict will be the unemployment rate released by the BLS in a few days?

Remember how Obama somehow convinced most voters that he would cut taxes more than McCain?  Well, surprise, surprise, he may do the opposite:

Geithner and Summers sought to blunt these concerns on Sunday, saying the government needed to show the will to slash deficits. They declined to rule out future tax increases to accomplish that.

“We have to bring them down to a level where the amount we’re borrowing from the world is stable at a reasonable level,” Geithner said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

“And that’s going to require some very hard choices. And we’re going to have to do that in a way that does not add unfairly to the burdens that the average American already faces.”

Geithner left unclear whether Obama would be willing to set aside his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year. “We can’t make these judgments yet about exactly what it’s going to take and how we’re going to get there,” he said.

While Summers added that the White House would not look first to raise taxes on the middle-class, he refused to rule out the possiblity.  This could set the stage for the reversal of a major promise Obama made on the campaign trail – that he would not increase taxes on the middle class.

This letter is often attributed as being Benjamin Franklin’s letter to Thomas Paine in regards to the publication of “The Age of Reason.” Cooperative Individualism, a site sympathetic to Paine, disputes that the letter was written to him and with some reason. It was written in 1757, long before Paine wrote Age of Reason or even came to America. It was written instead to an anonymous writer, who apparently taking Frankin’s advice, remained anonymous.

Still, Franklin’s letter with its lack of attribution could serve as a warning from one of America’s least religious founding Fathers to those would haplessly attack faith. While some of the men mentioned in the headline may not even have allowed for a general providence, Franklin’s wisdom is worth consideration if any be wise enough to receive it:

DEAR SIR,

I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For without the belief of a Providence, that takes cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion, that, though your reasonings are subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.

But, were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.

I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a proof of my friendship, and therefore add no professions to it; but subscribe simply yours,

B. Franklin

The following is a snippet from an essay on the health care debate by Dr. Scott Atlas, chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical School and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute:

#10.  Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

Be sure to read the entire piece here.

HT – Jonah Goldberg.

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Benjamin Hodge publishes the Web site KansasProgress.com, based in Johnson County, KS, in the Greater Kansas City area.  Hodge is a delegate to the Kansas GOP, a former state representative, and a former board member at Johnson County Community College.  You can join Hodge’s efforts on Facebook, through his personal Web site, on Twitter, and through his PAC.

Barack Obama declared himself, in Berlin, to be a ‘citizen of the world’. It was not a mere rhetorical flourish. He has a globalist agenda under which the US will enter into a series of treaties that would subject America to foreign rule over its wealth (redistributing it world-wide), its trade, its laws, its use of energy, and even its defense.

The United Nations, that ghastly powerhouse of corruption, hypocrisy, and injustice, is envisaged as the nascent institution of world government.

Liberal left opinion tends to be against the nation state. It is the opinion of approximately half the voters in the Western world. Half the people of the free West apparently want to destroy their nations, and are literally doing so. They may explain their hatred of the nation state by reference to ‘colonialism’, as if in many cases colonies were not more prosperous, just, and free than the independent tyrannies they have become. Or they may say that the wars and massacres in the last century resulted from ‘nationalism’ so the nation must go; but their thinking would not be right, because the wars and massacres were the work of dictators, not democratic states of which the strongest opposed and defeated the aggressors.

Whatever their explanations, they have launched a movement for the suicide of Western nations.

All over the Western world men and women in national and international assemblies, ministries, academies, councils and committees devote themselves to the business of putting an end to their national identities. Patriotism to them is utterly absurd. Any manifestation of pride in their nation’s history, culture, traditions, institutions, even law, embarrasses if it doesn’t outrage them. In all the countries of Europe, and now under Obama’s leadership in the United States, they work towards their goal.

The very idea of the nation state they consider to be an anachronism; a nasty thing of the past much to be regretted. The more powerful and glorious the past, the more regretful they are. Filled with remorse for what their forefathers achieved, they will apologize to any foreigner who’ll listen to them. However hard their independence as a nation was won, their system of government developed, their individual freedom wrested from the fist of tyranny, they count it all worth nothing. Obama, whose ignorance of history should but doesn’t embarrass him, routinely apologizes for America to appalling little despotisms, and to countries who have survived as comparatively free nations only because America saved them from conquest by tyrannical powers.

National borders between European countries are already as good as gone. The EU plans to have ‘regions’ which will cross the borders of those outdated old nation states and replace them for the convenience of the central administration. American liberals – how many nobody knows – apparently look to this development across the Atlantic as a model to be emulated.

What will be lost if the nation state is lost?

For the most part, our countries have been identical with our nationalities. Our nationalities give us the inestimable gifts of an historical significance and a hopeful destiny beyond our individual lives; a meaning, a kind of immortality, a role in a drama, which, whether we are leading or bit-part players, involves us all. Just by existing as people of this or that country we may feel ourselves to be part of an endless story. Our nation is our greater self, the ‘we’ that is a greatness for every ‘I’, whether the ‘I’ be small or grand in personal achievement.  For many it is worth fighting and dying for. But now the story may end after all. For though it is possible for a nation to live on after its state is destroyed (the Jews did), the likelihood is that it will not. How many nations have disappeared from history with the loss of their settled, coherent, self-protected territory?  Top of the head guess – too many to count.

What else can endow us by birthright or adoption with that powerful plural identity which we seem to need and glory in? How will we fare as individuals without the nation state?  It places us in the scheme of things. It gives us a ‘local habitation and a name’. It defines us for ourselves and for others, clothing us in connotations derived from a certain history to intimate a special character. We inherit its language, which shapes our thoughts. It sets many of our goals, provides the chances for achieving them, holds a place for us, notes and records our existence. It protects us from foreign enemies and domestic assailants. It makes demands of us that we can fulfill with pride and delight, or chafe against. It provides the causes we may strive for or oppose. It is our home, our stage, our shelter, our fortress, our field, our base. Personified, it is our guardian, our teacher, our judge, and our avenger.

The nation state makes and enforces the rules that, at their best, allow us to live in freedom. It was one of the great steps forward of mankind when the city-states of ancient Greece embraced as citizens all those who would live in them not because they sprang from that particular soil but because they would accept a common law. The tribe was superseded by the state. (The great Spanish conservative Ortega y Gasset called it citizenship by virtue of  ius rather than rus – a commonality of law rather than of native soil.)  The citizens could have been born elsewhere, and could remain individual in their tastes and choices, but owed a common duty and allegiance to the state.  The United States of America is the greatest development of that splendid idea.

The European Union may have been intended by some of its enthusiastic founders to be a bigger nation-state itself in which people could live their individual lives as they chose provided only that they obeyed the laws that they themselves would have a hand in making through the democratic process. But it hasn’t worked out like that, and there is cause to doubt that it was ever really meant to. There were other purposes in the minds of its creators: Germany needed to dissolve its guilt for the Holocaust in the ocean of Europe; France hoped to be the hegemonic power in a union populous and rich enough to rival the United States.

In fact the EU is not a democracy. Representatives are elected to a European parliament, but that body is not a legislature and has little power to affect its laws. Tasked with homogenizing peoples who have different histories, languages, traditions, tastes and temperaments, an unelected bureaucracy rules. It is an authoritarian Kafkaesque Castle. Already a police-state-lite, the EU is on the road to totalitarianism.

True, it may not survive long enough to become as bad as the late Soviet Union because a Muslim majority will in all probability turn it in another direction. But there’s little comfort in that thought for those who have always preferred the old national independence to the new Europe with its Babel of tongues, its shameless corruption, its politically correct restrictions on freedom. If a Caliphate should be established by the emerging Muslim majority, freedom will not be merely restricted, it will be destroyed, erased from the book.

Politically correct opinion may like the prospect of the Caliphate because Islam aims to dominate the whole world and will wage jihad until it does, and then the dream of World Government will be realized.

But where, without the protection of the nation state, will the rest of us find shelter?

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Jillian Becker is editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative.

Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions hauled in $8.1 million dollars in the first six-months of the year, a figure that eclipses the total of his main 2012 rivals combined times four.

Congratulations to Speaker Gingrich.

The following chart makes an interesting point:

If in the first half of 2009, a dollar in sub-$200 donations was sent to the leadership PACs of the Big Three:

19 cents went to HuckPAC
37 cents went to SarahPAC
44 cents went to Free and Strong America PAC

If one were to divide the Palin figures by five (her PAC was in existence only five months) and the others by six and adjust accordingly, Palin would be ahead of Romney by one penny.

It would seem that neither Palin nor Romney are having many problems connecting with “the little money”, sometimes equated with “the grassroots” — at least for the first half of 2009.  We shall see what the future brings.

Huckabee comes on strong in this Fox News clip. His solution: portability.

Dodd, Conrad told “Friends of Angelo” deal sweetened.

Democrats cover up for friends of Angelo while talking about investigating Gates arrest. (Hat Tip: Colussus of Rhodey.)

Conyers to introduce Constitutional Amendment creating write to health care.

Obama’s mad science czar endorsed legal rights for trees. (Hat Tip: The Corner.)

78 year old can’t stand it anymore.  (Hat Tip: Sister Toldjah.)

Teacher’s union hurts Michigan kids.

Sweden backs off socialism. (Hat Tip: Red State.)

Hawaii’s dumb new gambling tax law. (Hat Tip: Club for Growth.)

Second Amendment update via Gun Watch.

An Irish welcome to American troops.

Muslims kill six in Pakistan.

Christians beaten in China.

Mission organization does rescue in India.

Music by Recent Rainfall via the Podsafe Music Network.

Click here to listen.

When I look within the dictionary one definition of the word freedom jumps out at me:

1) The capacity to exercise choice.

When is a choice free?

A choice is only really free when someone is can make choices with a potential to affect the future. Making that sort of decision often requires a lot of information or an orderly situation.

Often we face situations where the relevant information is unknown or where a disordered situation limits our ability to choose with an outcome in mind.

Nations with weak governments are often too disorderly for individuals to make plans for the future (except to leave).

In financial markets a continuing problem has always been the inability of owners of assets to have information about financial institutions.

Bank runs, wild speculation (on the part of banks) and the current financial crisis are largely due to the lack of information for owners of financial assets.

Much more simply I think we all like to know the ingredients of the food we eat. People with allergies probably appreciate that more than most.

When it comes to economics, I don’t believe imposing order or sharing information to those who need it is inconsistent with freedom.

I think this is the crux of why I just can’t take the more extreme strains of libertarianism seriously.

Matt Yglesias doesn’t like the Constitution much, apparently:

Not to just keep flogging a dead horse endlessly, but it does strike me as worth noting that when you read a puff piece in The New York Timesabout the Gang of Six bipartisan dealmakers in the Senate that vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans.

The largest metropolitan area contained in whole or in part within any of those six states is the Albuquerque MSA, population 846,000, the 59th largest in the United States—smaller than New Haven or Fresno or Richmond.

Well, Yglesias is right. In a democratic system, those of us who lived in small states would have no real say in what laws were passed. They would be decided by leaders of New York, California, Texas, and Florida, and we would have to like it.

However, we don’t have a Democracy, we have a Republic. Thank God. And the founders of this Republic had a correct view of human nature. They knew that the masses could be as unjust, despotic, and disrespectful of liberty as a tyrannical king, so they gave us a Republic with the purpose of protecting liberty. 

And of course the left’s children of the McDonald’s generation chaff against our system of government. It may have secured our liberty for 200 years, but we have a very inconvenient Constitution for those seeking to steamroll hopenchange through congress over night.

But I’ll take the wisdom of the Founders over the rantings of the leftwing blogosphere any day.

While his daughter sat still, unable to walk, talk, eat, or speak, Dale Neumann said that he would not put earthly doctors before the power of God. That, he said, would betray his faith and tell God that he was something he wasn’t — incapable of curing the sick, dying, and weak. Prosecutors disagreed and said that he recklessly endangered his daughter, whose care he’d been trusted with, and argued that it was tantamount to killing her. Neumann was charged with second-degree homicide.

He trusted God, he told the jury, over doctors — anything less would be abandoning the precepts of the Bible. His defense attorney insisted that he had benevolent motives and had no idea that it would not work.

The jury threw that back in Neumann’s face and convicted him of homicide. He faces up to twenty-five years in prison.

The poll on the site I link to, although obviously not scientific, shows some cognitive dissonance: almost half of respondants with an opinion claim that they believe that prayer can cure diseases. Seventy percent, though, believe that the jury made the right decision.

Apparently, people believe in God’s power to heal, but their reason places them more with Emily Dickinson, who once wrote, in a wonderful little poem: Faith is a fine invention / When gentlemen can see / But microscopes are prudent / In an emergency.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Alex Knepper can be contacted at apkkib@aol.com

Politico leads with a misleading headline on HuckPAC’s latest financial reports, “Huck pays daughter $29K”:

The PAC paid Huckabee’s daughter Sarah Huckabee $29,250 in salary during the first six months of the year, making her the highest paid of the PAC’s five employees, which is perhaps unsurprising since she is the executive director.

Of course, the headline makes it sound like Huckabee just gave 29K away for nothing. In reality, it’s a fairly modest salary for an Executive Director of a Political Action Committee, particularly with Sarah’s experience from the last Presidential campaign. If anything, she’s offering her services at a significant discount. She could probably quite easily pull down six figures elsewhere.

Now, there’s been a lot of discussion about HuckPAC’s fundraising figures and making comparison to Free and Strong America PAC and Sarah PAC.  I think the comparison is off because HUCKPAC is not focusing on the same thing as other PACs out there.

I was on a conference call this past week with Sarah Huckabee and what she conveyed to us was that it was not HUCKPAC’s goal to simply exist as a funnel to other campaigns, which is what Free and Strong America PAC does and much of what SarahPAC will probably do. HUCKPAC is focused on building a volunteer base, and putting those volunteers into action.

On August 22nd, HUCKPAC will be holding nationwide house parties to place calls into Virginia for Bob McDonnell. These calls are high impact, low cost activities that you can expect HUCKPAC to do more of.

The aim here is not to compete with other PACs. HUCKPAC has set a fundraising goal for the year that they’re on-pace to reach. And I think much of this jockeying is a little silly, because we’re comparing apples to oranges.

The lefty blogosphere was abuzz with the news that Sarah and Todd Palin were calling it splitsville. The rumor was denied by Palin’s camp. And one of the chief pieces of evidence that was cited by the lefty blogs (Sarah Palin not wearing her wedding ring in recent weeks) and particularly at the farwell address, Palin addressed during the campaign:

“My wedding ring, it’s in Todd’s pocket cause it hurts sometimes when I shake hands and it gets squished,” Palin told a crowd in Tampa, Florida.

But Palin herself provided the slam dunk rebuttal this afternoon:

“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”

And there goes your half day controversy. Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen.

The left has not ceased it’s relentless assault on Sarah Palin. She is more hated and more targeted than George W. Bush. This to me should eventually raise the chances of her running for President. If no matter what you do, there will be a concerted campaign of personal destruction headed your way, why not make it count for something?

In a continuance of T-Paw’s “coming out tour”, the governor recently gave a speech to the RNC in San Diego.  Echoing comments he has made in the past, he focused on opposing Obama when prudent and reaching out to conservative Democrats and Independents.  Pawlenty also harnessed the opportunity to increase his media exposure:

The keynote speech to the Republican National Committee was designed to energize a party hammered in recent elections and to introduce Pawlenty’s middle America, outside-the-Beltway persona to those who could help generate buzz about his prospects and open up campaign checkbooks.

To that end, Pawlenty also made the rounds of national media, offering interviews to CNN, FOX and the congressional insiders’ newspaper, The Hill.

He also illustrated how he plans on attacking Obama:

In his speech, Pawlenty painted Obama as a big spender who is sending the nation hurtling toward larger deficits and ever-broader Washington control over people’s lives. Obama’s policies, Pawlenty said, would make good attack fodder in the 2010 elections and beyond.

Finally, he laid out his view of the GOP’s future:

Pawlenty, who announced earlier this year that he would not seek a third term in Minnesota, said Republicans “need to get over their political post traumatic stress syndrome” from the blistering losses.

Republicans, he said, need to offer “hopeful, meaningful solutions. And we need to state it boldly.”

Drawing on his South St. Paul boyhood and his working-class brothers and sisters as a springboard, Pawlenty spoke of reaching out to conservative Democrats and independents.

“People don’t want to spend more on government, but they want good value for the money they do spend,” Pawlenty said. “That’s a good sentiment for us as Republicans.”

Even if Pawlenty cannot take the nomination in 2012, he will set himself up well for serious VP consideration and the future.

With Romney in the news for his impressive fundraising figures and word that the RNC has considered instituting new primary calendars, I got to thinking: how should Mitt focus his efforts during the 2012 primary season (obviously, assuming he runs)?  Should he forgo Iowa and concentrate exclusively on New Hampsire?  Should he divide himself evenly between them?  Should he take a completely different course?  Also, who would our Romney supporters like to see him select for VP in ’12 if he wins the nomination?  I really look forward to heaving everyone’s thoughts!

Rasmussen finds that in July 2009, 33.3% of adults (not likely voters) consider themselves Republicans, and 36.8% consider themselves Democrats.

During the past 12 months, the number of Republicans nationwide has stayed between 32.2% and 33.8% every month.

The number of unaffiliated adults grew from 28.9% to 29.9%. That’s up two points in two months the largest number of adults not affiliated with either major party since November 2007. It is not unusual for the number of unaffiliateds to grow during off years and shrink as elections approach…

The Democrats now enjoy a 3.5 percentage-point edge over Republicans, the smallest advantage since the end of 2007.

Keep in mind that figures reported in this article are for all adults, not Likely Voters. Republicans are a bit more likely to participate in elections than Democrats.

It’s tough to read these, without knowing where they’re going to go in the future.

Here is a link to helpful graph of trends since 2004.  I’ll highlight a few of the periods: (more…)

During the recent Mitt/T-Paw feud over health care reform, I noticed something interesting: both men seemed to be taking the exact same position. Gov. Romney wrote an excellent piece for USA Today on the successes and failures of the Massachusetts model. In the piece, Romney maintains that RomneyCare was and is a good idea because it successfully expanded access to medical care, but that as governor he was limited in what he could do to control the costs of health care, which is something that, says Mitt, must be done at the federal level. Meanwhile, T-Paw recently blasted RomneyCare due to its inability to bring down the costs of medical care, arguing that a market-driven, conservative approach must be taken in health care reform in order to bring costs down, but also suggesting that insurance companies must be required to cover folks with pre-existing conditions. Well, I agree with that, but I suspect that many in the GOP base don’t.

What’s curious is that both Romney and Pawlenty are essentially arguing the same thing: that we need health care reform that both expands ACCESS to medical care and that addresses health care COSTS. Universal access is what the technocratic, pragmatic center wants. Cost-control is what the right wants. Hence both Romney and Pawlenty are taking a broad center-right position on the issue.

This is a welcome change from the politics of the last few years, when someone, somewhere, managed to convince Republicans that all that mattered was the third of Americans who comprise the GOP base, and that sent the entire GOP ’08 presidential field running to the hard right and burying any evidence of past pragmatism or moderation. This allowed Obama to run on a Clintonian center-left platform and win between 350 and 400 electoral votes just as Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. It wasn’t hard for Obama to grab the center when the national GOP was so intent on ignoring it. The left wants to punish the wealthy, the center wants to close the deficit, so Obama proposes taxing the rich and no one else. The left wants single-payer, the center wants everyone to have health insurance, so Obama proposes a “public option” as a way for everyone to have health care. And so on. It’s only after Obama started to govern that the center began to realize that the public option is a path to single-payer, and that Obama’s spending is going to require tax increases on the middle class and not just the rich, and thus the center is sent back out into the political market, where savvy Republicans who understand marketing, like Mitt Romney, are already working to grab moderates, knowing that Independents will have no Democratic primary to participate in this time around in states like New Hampshire, and knowing that the big, delegate-rich states are filled with moderate/liberal Republicans who were poised to nominate Giuliani until they decided to nominate McCain in 2008, and who will be the key to victory in 2012 in both the primaries and the general.

Indeed, the blue hue of the 2008 electoral map is the best thing that could have happened to Republicans because now every GOP strategist in the country is forced to figure out how to win back voters who voted for Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2008. And 2009/10 will provide the GOP with yet more guidance in the event of a big Republican victory, as the number-crunchers will then be able to pinpoint with precision which Obama voters are experiencing enough buyer’s remorse to vote Republican again, as well as the types of Republicans these folks are supporting.

But back to Romney and Pawlenty. Both men, in my view, have an excellent shot at crafting a winning center-right agenda that can yield at least as much electoral success as Obama’s center-left agenda, and by that I mean an agenda that garners more than 51% of the popular vote and more than 350 electoral votes in a presidential election. The Republican Party hasn’t been able to craft such an agenda since the Contract With America, which wasn’t tested during a presidential year but which yielded Republican victories equivalent to the aforementioned vote share. The victories won by President Bush earlier this decade were not the result of a center-right coalition, they were the result of a fifty-percent-plus-one coalition, which is very tenuous and short-lived by nature. But if the Republican Party is truly going to move into the future as a viable electoral force, it needs to be able to build a coalition that can deliver it more than 350 electoral votes, just as Democrats have such a coalition that showed up in the ’90s and last year. Such a coalition won’t be a permanent majority, because there are no such things in politics, but it will be able to break the trend of very narrow Republican victories during good GOP years, and very large Democratic victories during Democratic years. There’s no reason that Republicans should settle for a ceiling of 300 electoral votes.

Now, it’s not likely that either Romney or Pawlenty would win Vermont or Rhode Island in 2012, just as the president won’t win Alabama or Idaho regardless of his approval rating. But just as Obama was able to craft a center-left majority using the Kerry states plus Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and a few others, a Romney or a Pawlenty could presumably build a center-right coalition using the 2004 Bush states plus Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and a few others. Indeed, Romney, a Michigander who spent much of his life and governance in the Northeast, and Pawlenty, who was elected and re-elected in Minnesota, are already culturally attuned to this region and are by nature packaged in a way that is amenable to Great Lakes voters, Mitt’s 2008 attempt to transform into a Jacksonian notwithstanding. The Great Lakes states are certainly available to a low-key, soft social conservative in a way that the West Coast and the Northeast aren’t, preventing any need to blow up the Republican Party over an abortion fight. There’s no reason that a center-right economic platform and an understated social conservatism couldn’t win both the traditionally red states as well as the Great Lakes states, especially if packaged in a clearly intelligent, articulate messenger who doesn’t use red-state cultural cues.

As such, I think a Romney or a Pawlenty is the GOP’s best bet in 2012 and beyond, and while Romney appears to be the Republican frontrunner right now, Pawlenty is in many ways appealing as a fresh face with good political instincts who won twice in a state that is actually winnable for Republicans in a presidential election.

You can’t get re-elected without our votes. Here is how you get our votes.

But first some admissions about why we are even having this conversation given the party you have chosen to empower and the debunking of the relevance to your re-election of the threats you are hearing from the Speaker of the House and the President’s Chief of Staff if you don’t support their government takeover of health care and the destruction of the health insurance industry.

Ordinarily, this convert to the GOP wouldn’t even consider supporting an elected member of my former party for election or re-election given your minority status within a Democratic Party controlled by the far left that your vote for Speaker empowers.

But, an accident of history has at once given monopoly power to this far left minority to permanently damage this Republic and given self-identified “fiscally conservative” Blue Dogs the exclusive power to save us. My use of the scare quotes bespeaks the lack of any evidence based on your votes that you are anything more than a Jack Ass version of Bob Dole as “tax collectors for the welfare state.”

Why we are willing to make this deal

We are told there are 52 of you. Yet, less than 30 Democrats voted against Cap and Trade direct assault on the poor and middle class via massive increases on the necessities of gasoline, oil and coal; less than 25 voted against the $4T budget blueprint that quadruples the deficit in one year; only eight voted against the disastrous $780B Stimulus; and zero against the $400B+ Omnibus pork bill.

Those bills alone threaten this nations economic health thru massive growth of government and hostility to job producers.

But, given the massive threat to our prosperity from the socialization of medicine; the sill alive Cap and Trade bill now in the Senate; and the still pending budget authorizations in October, I am willing to encourage my conservative Republican voters to vote for your re-election if you start getting it right NOW.

You simply must not allow Cap and Trade tax increases; any public option in health insurance; any watered down version like Fannie Mae style co-ops nor massive regulations that would bankrupt the private insurance industry; nor the massive $1.8T Budget deficit bill.

You can’t vote for Union Card Check either.

If you do all that, or better yet, Do Nothing, we could vote for you, despite the ever present danger posed by a Democratic Congress.

I feel we must make this proposal explicit, given our loathing of your party. The stakes are just too high to have these dangerous bills become law that we may never be able to reverse. We understand the risk of putting you back into office with the leftist-empowering “D” after your name, but if you vote right on these bills, we will take the risk.

Don’t fear Pelosi

You are now being told by Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emmanuel that unless you vote for health care reform you will not be placed on “powerful” committees and/or not get certain pork project money for you “district”. The threats are based on the false assumption that House members only get re-elected if their constituents see them on TV acting all important or if a certain bridge gets built.

Poppycock! Get over yourself.

Do you think voters will forgive the devastation to their lives from a deep recession and the destruction of their lives from high energy prices and damaged health care/insurance options? Heck no.

Want to help your district? Well, your district is in America, whose economy is imperil due to Obama’s hostility to job producers in America.

Stock market rally refutes the Washington mantra to “do something”

The current Wall Street rally is due to the prospect that Congress will do nothing on health care and cap and trade. Get it? Read the Hippocratic Oath and first do no harm. Eschew the mantra that the “status quo is unacceptable”. We were told of the crisis in health care but the crisis that has emerged more potent is the fear of losing the status quo.

If you can’t vote for a bill that promotes the general welfare, don’t vote for it, because re-elections hinge on the general welfare much more than on campaign brochures touting bridges built of committee influence.

No more drawl and that’s all

You can’t get away with the old method of talking conservative in campaigns; making a few sybolic conservative votes on amendments to bills; and then vote liberal when iy matters.

Not this time. Not during a Great Recession where the stimulus done failed and Obama tells the elderly to zone out and die.

Want to get re-elected?

Then do nothing. Vote no on health care reform; cap and trade and the budget.

We won’t be fooled by fake fixes either. Don’t pass a law that delays the effects and/or gives broad discretionary power to future bureaucrats.

Vote no, and you can keep your precious job for one more term. Otherwise, you will be swept out in 2010, sentenced to live like us in the damaged America ObamaDems are ensuring.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

At long last, we now have the FEC filings for the Big Three.  HuckPAC waited until the last possible moment to file.  Bearing in mind that SarahPAC only existed for five of the six months, here are the results:

Contributions from Individuals Greater than $200:
HuckPAC:$84,083.45
SarahPAC:$312,408.79
FnSAPAC:$1,083,066.18

Contributions from Individuals $200 and Less:
HuckPAC:$214,888.99
SarahPAC:$420,458.91
FnSAPAC:$497,953.56

Total Contributions from Individuals:
HuckPAC:$298,972.44
SarahPAC:$732,867.70
FnSAPAC:$1,581,019.74

Contributions from other Committees:
HuckPAC:$5,250.00
SarahPAC:$0.00
FnSAPAC:$29,000.00

Total Contributions
HuckPAC:$304,222.44
SarahPAC:$732,867.70
FnSAPAC:$1,610,019.74

Romney led in all catagories.  He even beat Sarah Palin in the much ballyhooed sub $200 donation category.   That puts a damper on all the, “Romney has no support with the grassroots”, talk.  HuckPAC is far behind in all categories save Contributions from other committees.  SarahPAC got none.  HuckPAC got $5,250, and FnSAPAC blew him away at $29,000.

Contributions to Federal Candidates (not State Candidates)
HuckPAC:$10,000
SarahPAC:$10,000
FnSAPAC:$34,214.23

Total Expenditures
HuckPAC:$336,589.56
SarahPAC:$276,200.94
FnSAPAC:$1,107,635.18

The most obvious thing to take away from the expenditures is SarahPAC and FnSAPAC have been in the black so far this year.  HuckPAC, with its  $304,222.44 income and its $336,589.56 outflow is operating in the red.

Bottom-line:  Romney is far out in front.  Palin is in a comfortable 2nd place, and Huckabee is struggling.

Watch the following clip from The Daily Show.

What are you doing to help Mitt Romney?

In this bit about the 2012 nomination, Jon takes shots at Sanford, Palin, and Jindal (a couple of them rather childish), but that was not what caught my eye. It was the title more than anything else.  The title and what it implies. Romney is starting to be viewed as the grown-up among those with a shot at the 2012 nomination.